Breakfast Topic: The motivations of guild leaders
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My guild sucks. No, no ... it's okay. You don't have to comfort me. I've already accepted it. My guild sucks and it's entirely my own fault. I never finished our website. I've never done any proper recruiting. We have a tabard, but I'm not sure that it's very "sick" or even "awesome." I've been a terrible guild leader so far and as a result, I've watched our membership dwindle down to just the dedicated few over the past several months.
I'm not stuck there by any means. I've been offered spots with raiding guilds that actually do things like -- say, I don't know -- raid. So, why do I do it, you ask? Well, I choose to continue leading my cold, dead husk of a guild because I so thoroughly enjoy the concept of the guild management metagame. Call me stubborn, but for me it's a huge part of World of Warcraft. Even if I were to finish off every single achievement in the game, it wouldn't give me nearly the same sense of satisfaction that leading a mildly successful guild would.
Doing that, however, takes a lot of work. You can only get so far with word-of-mouth recruiting and a friendly atmosphere. Eventually, you have to have something to offer your few members or they'll find greener pastures. It's a big job, but somebody has to do it, right?
Have you ever tried to run a guild or is that a job that doesn't even interest you? For those current guild leaders out there (both successful and otherwise), what drives you to keep on keepin' on?
