Behind the Curtain: Guilds are serious business
First off – don't worry, it is indeed Saturday, not Thursday. We've just decided to move Behind the Curtain to a weekend slot; you didn't just hallucinate the last couple of days.
How serious are you when you're either creating a guild, when you're inviting people to join, or when you're looking to join one yourself?
Guild drama is always just one forum post away for many guilds today, and if you're not careful you could end up one of the many, many casualties to appear on the pages of Guild Watch on our sister site, WoW Insider. Drama doesn't happen all by itself – it's created by the people in your guild. More specifically, it's created by the personalities in your guild; it's not uncommon for guilds to have more personalities than they have people in them.
There are a few personality types that we all recognise – drama llamas (thanks, Michael) we've had the bad fortune to run into in person, or simply read about after the fact. You have the fascist-types who camp out in your guild's chat channel and log every and anything that fits their ridiculously broad definitions of 'inappropriate' or 'offensive'.
There's the serial guildie who sees you as nothing more than the next rung on his ladder to whatever his personal goal is. My personal favourite is the player for whom every day is a trial. Their lot in life is to suffer the most unbearable burdens which they feel compelled to share with the rest of the guild, whether you want to hear it or not. They're the kind of player who drops hints at their tribulations, stopping just short of specifics. Reading between the lines though, and you'll sense their aching desire for you to ask them to tell all. You can spot them a mile away by their flagrant abuse of ellipses. Forums posts by him/her will be along the lines of, "Sigh...another day and more bad news... Sometimes I just don't know...how I'll cope...does anyone else ever feel like that? Or...am I just being stupid like...they...say I am?" That's just a few, look around and you'll find plenty of examples of personalities we all know and tolerate.
Guilds may be like families, but they tend to be an awful lot bigger than the average-sized family. Let's face it, while humans are definitely social animals, if you get a large enough group of us together in one place, there will be fireworks. I'm not suggesting you use kid gloves when putting guilds together, but it makes sense to use some kind of qualification process.
