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Officers' Quarters: Last man standing
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Guild leadership is a tenuous social construct. It's all volunteer. It's based purely on someone's commitment to a community of people, most of whom they have never actually "met." It's based on their continued enjoyment of a single game, over months and years. When you look at it that way, it's amazing how stable and long-lasting some guilds can be, thanks to dedicated and enthusiastic leaders. This week's email, unfortunately, is about a guild in a different situation. It's from an officer who, after a series of mishaps and disappearances, is the last leader left. Hi Scott, First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of your column, it's helped me out a lot in the past. I'm currently one of 3 officers in a midsize guild. My guild has recently been hit by a perfect storm of bad events over the summer. The guild's raid team has seen moderate success since the end of Cataclysm, enough to keep 8 people interested in raiding. However, we haven't been able to fill a raid team since Mists of Pandaria launched. I'm the PvP officer for the guild, but our Guild Master put a horrible new rule in place (disallowing any kind of guild events on Raid Nights) in January that send our entire PvP team off to another guild. Ever since then I haven't been able to recruit and gear enough people to make a full team. All of the issues started at the beginning of June, when our Guild Master started logging on less and less. He'd only log on for raids, but after a few weeks, he stopped logging on at all. In addition to that, one of our 3 officers stopped logging into WoW completely in mid-June. My colleague and I just kept trying to drive up guild activity with events, gearing nights, and raids, just trying to keep the raid team afloat.
The Guild Counsel: The guild leader's gone - now what?
Every guild needs a good leadership structure in order to succeed, and much of it revolves around the guild leader. The leader helps establish the vision, tone, and atmosphere for the guild, screens potential members, and establishes goals for the guild to work toward. But there is a growing number of in-game powers that a leader has as well, making it even more important for him to be online and active. So when a guild leader suddenly becomes inactive, the guild comes to a virtual halt, and it can lead to a guild's downfall. And unlike most other guild problems, this one can't always be solved internally. Let's look at the issue of MIA guild leaders and why studios should sit up and take notice.
