I am a killer of guilds

I have a confession to make: I'm a guild killer.

I don't do it deliberately, I swear. See, back in vanilla, my raid guild lost pretty much all of its officers to EverQuest II right around the time Ahn'Qiraj-40 was coming into play. So the officers who were left (and the new guild leader) decided I should also be an officer -- and I agreed, which was probably the worst decision I've made in my life. Two weeks later, the guild was belly up and I was off trying out a roleplaying server for the first time, since I now had loads of free time to play an alt.

I figured it was simply the lack of leadership experience that had ultimately killed the old guild. The officers who had been promoted weren't really officer material, myself wholeheartedly included. After losing most of our officer corps, the wind had gone right out of the guild's sails, so to speak.

But see ... the trait of guild killing followed me after that. I couldn't help it. And I began to wonder if maybe I am just a terrible, terrible choice for an officer.

Miri over at Guarded By the Light put together an excellent, insightful look about what it takes to run a guild -- and let me tell you from personal experience, it's a lot harder than it looks. If you take a look at Miri's post, you'll see what is just one small fraction of the everyday life of managing a guild. Miri's got the right of it, though -- running a guild is very much like running a business. And really, that's what struck a chord with me when I read it.

I am not a business leader. I am not a manager, and I am not a supervisor. At least, I'm not any of those things when I play a video game. For me, playing the game is about having fun playing the game, not time management and orchestrating events and figuring out who gets what loot drop. And there are lots and lots of people out there just like me -- people who want to play simply to play. But here's the thing -- everyone's got their own unique idea of fun.

I've been puzzled more than once at the antics of Auction House players, largely because I just don't understand what's fun about selling things on the AH. I think maybe, in the end, guild leadership is kind of the same thing. Miri's post illustrates just a little of what goes on in guild management, and Officer's Quarters talks about it every week as well. I'm guessing that as far as guild leadership is concerned, it's along the same lines as the Auction House -- either you really get it and you get the fun out of it, or you're like me, simply mystified by the process and not quite sure why anyone would call it fun.

Maybe I'm not quite a guild killer; maybe I'm just the one who wants to stay behind, make sure the building is cleared out, lock the door and turn out the lights. It's not the most pleasant of tasks, but there's something cathartic about that final /gquit. I'm not really a bad officer; I'm just not cut out for the task. But ... I think I'm still going to avoid any officer positions from here on out. Just in case.