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Officers' Quarters: How to persuade your guild leader
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Every so often I write a post purely for my own convenience, and this is one of them. I get a lot of e-mails week to week all asking the same question: How can I try to change my guild leader's mind? The topics can vary greatly, from loot systems to promotions to guild bank rules to the level of roleplaying the guild enforces. I want to point all those people in one direction. Now that this column is live, I'll be able to send them here, as a starting point, and offer to answer any follow-up questions they might have. So without further ado, here is, from my point of view as a guild leader, the best way to persuade yours. 1. Spend time thinking about why he or she instituted the rule or the policy. Try to put yourself in your guild leader's place and imagine what motivated him or her to do things that way. Is it a matter of convenience or fairness? Is it meant to quell drama? You'll have a much better chance to get your guild leader's attention if you can begin your argument with a statement showing that you understand why they made the original decision. The first thing your GL is going to assume is that you don't understand why, so if you can get past that point, you'll be in better shape to persuade! 2. Spend time thinking about the consequences of changing the policy. Notice that you have taken no action yet. This is intentional. Many players approach me with knee-jerk reactions to a guild situation they don't like. They try to talk me out of it before even thinking too deeply about why that policy is in place or what would happen if it were changed.
Officers' Quarters: LF guild leader PST
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Some guild leaders think we are irreplaceable, but few of us actually are. Who will carry on the Torch of the Damned if we can't fulfill our duties? I know exactly who would if I ever had to stop playing. But some guild leaders aren't that lucky. Caasi is one of them. She wrote me this week to ask what she should do. Erro thar. I've been playing WoW since 2006 and started my own guild in July 2007 and, at times when RL does not allow enough time, I have handed the guild over to a friend. As it stands there is currently two 2ic's and various raid and class leaders. It has generally gone smoothly, starting off as a leveling guild and then moving on to (very) casual raiding. We didn't get to do much of TBC raiding due to most members leveling slowly and only starting to play the game in TBC. We are up to TotC standards but have encountered a raid and guild breaking issue. When the Australian DST changes kicked over our raiding teams were pretty much split. This has meant that raiding stopped for around 6 weeks causing quite a few of our main raiding team to leave. During that time I took over main guild leadership to try and kick people back into gear. Things were working well enough until I realised that I had over committed myself both IRL and in game. I was fast heading to "SCREW THIS GAME AND YOUR STUPID BLOODY ATTITUDES" before I realised that something needed to be done.
Officers' Quarters: Policy and practice
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. With the release of Icecrown Citadel in Patch 3.3 on Tuesday, it seemed like a good time to talk about loot policy. Everyone's going to be drooling over the upgrades in there, especially some of the unique items like Deathbringer's Will, and loot assignments may become heated affairs. This week's e-mail highlights an issue that could come up in your guild -- and why you should think twice before you let it happen. (FYI, to explain why he's talking about Ulduar loot, the e-mail was sent to me in October, and I responded to it then.) I am an officer in a guild where our loot rules until recently seemed fair to me but now I am not so sure. I have been raiding with my guild for almost a year as part of the first team and the way our loot rules work is main spec then off spec NEED rolls, if no one needs, it gets D/E. You get 1 epic and 1 tier per run unless there is no one else who can use the item or every 1 that qualifies for the item has already won something in which case you get to roll again. This system has always seemed fair to me even though I don't always win the item I want. In fact I haven't won a single upgrade since July. Where as other team members seem to keep getting better and better geared and I am getting left behind. There is a DK in our team who has out-rolled me 4 times for weapon upgrades. His weapon keeps getting better and better and mine just stays where it is.
Officers' Quarters: The ethics of loot selling
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. A few weeks ago I wrote a column about husband/wife guild leaders who were using the old double-roll scam in a new way now that loot doesn't bind to a character for two hours. I also mentioned in that column the new trend in raids, particularly PUG raids, of offering gold for an item that someone else has fairly won. This week I received an e-mail from a player feeling guilt for selling an item. I'd like to address his situation first. Then I'll talk about what you as an officer should consider when this situation arises in your guild. Dear Scott, I wasn't entirely sure who to ask for this, and seeing as how the Officer's Quarters column you write seems to be the most "Dear Abby" esque that I can find, well, I figured you might be able to help me out. With the recent implementation of being able to give "mislooted" items to other qualified members of a raid upon a bosses completion, there has obviously been a lot of abuse to this new change. Abuse which, until very recently, I had been abhorrently against. However, I was put into such a situation recently, and well, suffice it to say, I am a bumbling hypocrite.
Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding 2009
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. I feel like it's been a while since I wrote a column about casual raiding. I posted a four-part guide to making it work back in April 2008. Since then, I've pointed most people who write me about this topic in that direction without writing a full column on their questions. A lot has changed in WoW since then! It feels like the right time to revisit the topic. First, here is this week's e-mail: Scott, First, let me thank you for publishing such a wonderful column. I read it religiously and find the topics and information extremely helpful. I am writing to you with a problem in the hopes you may have some advice. Let me start from the beginning to give you a more clear picture. Pre-Wrath Currahee had a solid core group of players and we were progressing forward with heroics and beginning to enter Kara. About this time the guild began to crumble as the core players left for raiding guilds that were progressing into further content. Wrath comes out and most of our core players are gone, those that remained leave within a few months after Wrath is released. This summer, the guild leader handed over the reigns to me and left the guild to focus on school as he was returning to college. There was a drop in membership as he left (from about 100 to around 50), though the ranks have held pretty steady, increasing by a few players under my leadership. Today I am facing unrest in the guild as folks are unhappy that there is "never anyone online". I do my best to recruit, I have posted on the official forums, setup an account on WoWHeadhunter, I have joined forces with a small guild <Punisher> on my server to run ToC 5-Man on a near nightly basis. As we typically only have 4 members online, we usually have to find our 5th. If they are any good, I ask if they are interested in joining Currahee (no new recruits from this method yet).
Officers' Quarters: Cross-server LFG and you
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. With Patch 3.3, the new LFG interface will certainly reshape PUGs as we know (and loathe) them. This week, one reader wants to know how the new system might affect guilds. Hi there Scott, As we all know, patch 3.3 will bring many great things. As a guild leader, one of the new features makes me happy but also slightly worries me: the new LFG system. Of course, it's a big boon to everyone and will greatly increase the chance of success of pugs (particularly the lower level dungeons), but it also takes away that what I liked about pugs: meeting new players from your own server.
Officers' Quarters: Does class matter?
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Hello, fellow officers! This week I received an interesting question in my mailbox. It's not something I've really thought about before, but I think it's worthy of discussion. Here it is: Hi Scott, I had e-mailed you a couple months ago with a question. I don't remember what it was (lol), but you answered it and it helped me out a bit. I wanted to return the favor by giving you an idea for a column. I've always thought about what role a guild leader, like myself, should be playing, in relation to class, in a guild. Most Guild Leaders I know are Tanks, as am I. I just thought it would be a cool column for you to do. Ghostey <Struggle of the Common>
Officers' Quarters: Patch 3.3 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Much as I've done with Patch 3.2 and other major patches in the past, I'd like to examine what 3.3 will mean for officers. All major patches require some forethought and adjustment, and this one just happens to be a doozy! Icecrown Citadel The ultimate raid of this expansion, Icecrown Citadel is poised to be one of the most exciting raids that Blizzard has ever released. As such, I can virtually guarantee you'll have long-lost players coming out of the woodwork to get back into the raiding scene for a chance to face off with the Lich King. Make sure you review your guild's policies for inviting players to raids to make sure that slots will be awarded in a way that's as fair as possible while still giving your raid a solid chance at success. One debate that's sure to rage among officers and raid leaders this time around is whether to extend lockouts until you beat the zone and unlock the hard mode toggle or to reset the instance each week to farm the early bosses. I'm still not sure how my guild is going to handle this. It will certainly depend on how quickly we can clear those first bosses and which bosses present more of a roadblock. If we're clearing quickly, we'll probably keep going until we hit a boss we can't beat. Then we'll reset and farm up more loot and Frost Badges.
Officers' Quarters: More loot-rolling shenanigans
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Last week, I addressed a situation where a married couple who leads a guild were using the old double-rolling scam to get extra loot for each other. Normally I don't like to address the same topic two weeks in a row, but based on some of the comments from that post and the following e-mail that I received, some people still don't get why this is a problem. So here we go again! I read your article and while I understand it I disagree in principle. Myself (holy priest) and one of our other guild officers(Lock) routinely run in pugs for 25 Naxx, we have on several occasions rolled for gear that neither of us need. Why? Long story short, we do not need the gear but we also try to make sure than one of our less geared guildies in cloth is along for the ride, and now that we can trade the stuff to them we can use three rolls per item to help them gear up faster. We are not selling the stuff to them merely giving it to them so they can gear up faster. If I do not need gear from the raid and niether does the lock, there is a reason we are there, I don't have a problem with it and would not have any problem with anyone else doing the same thing, in fact I would commend them on the efforts on their behalf to help their guildmates. The only time I have an issue with loot distribution is when it is a straight ninja job, player looses a roll and still gets an item or there is no roll at all and Lootmaster gives it to someone anyhow.
Officers' Quarters: Partners in crime
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Patch 3.2 brought a welcome change for both raid leaders and game masters: BOP loot no longer binds to a character immediately. We now have a convenient two-hour window to make sure the item goes to the right player. It's a change that saves both time and hassle, and I applaud it. However, now that items aren't bound as soon as they're looted, I've noticed some shenanigans going on in my guild's partially pugged 25-player ToC runs. Sometimes, when a player wins an item with a roll, a few people who really want that item have been offering the winner gold in exchange for trading the still-unbound item to them. I've made it clear that we're not running a GDKP raid and that I don't want to hear about any such transactions. It's a slippery slope. Pretty soon you'll have everyone who's eligible for an item rolling on it whether they want it or not, solely in hopes of banking a tidy profit. It seems this two-hour window has also brought back a classic cheat. Click through to read about it in this week's e-mail!
We have a Tabard: New kid in town
Looking for a guild? Well, you can join ours! We have a tabard and everything! Check back for Amanda Dean talking about guilds and guild leadership in We Have a Tabard. So you've got goals for your guild, and you've been working very hard toward recruiting new members. One of your next big challenges is keeping them around. Turn over is a plague among beginning and middle-tier guilds. Sure, guild dynamics like raid rules and bank privileges play into who stays and who goes from your guild, but it is more important to help make someone feel a part of the team. Think about your own experiences in joining guilds. Have you ever been in one where nobody seemed to talk to you, except to ask if you could make them a flask? What about the guild that shifts their raid times, and doesn't make it clear to all members. WoW is a social world and new guildies are subject to the same anomic forces that someone might feel during their first few weeks at a new job. First things first. Let your new guildies in on your expectations. It's helpful to have guild policies posted permanently on a website so that they can quickly learn what to do and what not to do. Be firm, fair and consistent with enforcing these rules for new guildies as well as established guild members. For example, loot systems can be daunting at first. Have a clear explanation and be prepared to answer questions. You may consider appointing an established member to helping your rookies learn the ropes.
Officers' Quarters: An exclusive party
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I get a lot of e-mails, many more than I could ever cover in this column. I hear about a lot of drama, drama of all different kinds, for all different reasons. So it always piques my interest when I read an e-mail like the one below, with an entirely new kind of guild drama. This one sounds more suited to a middle school class than a guild, but here it is: secret party drama. Read on for the details!I am a member of a fairly progressed raiding guild. I am a member of the main raid. I am not an officer, but almost all the regular raiders are officers. In many ways the guild is good. Raiding rules and loot are fair. However, it has become clear that the guild is dominated by a clique and that promotions to officer and most raid invites are largely based upon becoming part of the in group. Recently it was announced during raid that we would be taking a week off as many would be out of town. After the week off, during Vent chat, it became clear that the many out of town were all out of town together. That is, the guild officers were invited to an in person party (some traveled to go to it, others didn't but all were invited). I also learned that the officers intentionally tried to keep the party a secret beforehand.
We Have a Tabard: Hang up and raid
Looking for a guild? Well, you can join ours! We have a tabard and everything! Check back every Friday for Amanda Dean talking about guilds ad guild leadership in We Have a Tabard.I've been having a blast raiding since Ulduar was released. It's been a joy learning new fights and getting more and more bosses on farm. I understand that learning new fights in raid encounters takes time, but once a fight is on farm the only thing more annoying than healing preventable damage is wiping because someone wasn't paying attention.Just like distracted driving can cost lives, distracted raiding can cause wipes. In most cases the time for tank and spank is over once you walk in the portal to a raid. The encounters require players to be prepared and on the ball. Not only should officers lead by example when it comes to raid awareness there are a number of things that can be done to improve attentiveness:
Officers' Quarters: Hot-headed healers
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.A little healthy competition among your raiders can be a good thing. It encourages people to push to play their best, to show up completely prepared, and to gem and enchant their gear with the most effective possible options. A bit of banter can enliven your raids and ease the tension when your run is struggling. But what if your players take it too far? What if their drive for personal accomplishment becomes detrimental to your raid? This week's e-mail asks how to handle two healers -- and officers -- who are turning their personal competition into public drama.Scott --I'm the raid leader in a growing progression guild with some pretty hot-headed healers. While our raid healing shaman is competent and professional, I've started to suspect that the other healers (the paladins in particular) are engaging in behavior that hurts the raid and creates drama. As an example, one paladin healer in particular will overwrite the other paladin's Judgement of Light at every chance to inflate his numbers on the meters. Both of them vie for having "the biggest", whether it's mana pool, meter numbers, or SP; it's something new every week. This has also encouraged similar behavior in some of our other healers.
We Have a Tabard: A little help from my friends
The We Have a Tabard series is designed to help guild leaders, officers, members achieve their goals to maximize their cooperative experience.I'm relatively new to leading a raiding guild. I've been working on building and training my team for about six months. I've been leading the recruiting and correcting members, managing raids, and in general trying to make my online family as functional as possible. It's a lot of work for one person, and no matter how much I love my guildies I have to admit that I am tired.The best thing that I've ever done for myself and my guild is to ask for help. I have some great players in my guild that are well respected by other members and the server community. They have expertise in areas that do I do not. Probably most importantly they are less likely to mince words than I do and are willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Having some backup has helped some become more invested in the guild and has really lightened my load.Choosing who to ask for help can be a tough call. It does little good to select only your favorites or your friends, if they are not successful leaders. Take several factors into account when selecting a council of officers:
Officers' Quarters: Normal raiders are people, too
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership."Normal" mode sounds so dull, doesn't it? Who would want to be "Normal" when you can be "Heroic" -- particularly when being Heroic garners better loot and, for healers specifically, a chance at the ultimate healing mace, Val'anyr. Most guilds on my server prefer the larger raids, and who can blame them? Normal mode is often seen as a fun distraction. Something for raiders to pass the time with, or gear up their alts in, when their guild isn't tackling the "real" version of the instance.Sometimes Normal mode is easier. There's no question that fights like Vezax are much less complicated when you're only dealing with 10 players. It's certainly nice not having to worry about switching tanks on Kologarn or interrupting Auriaya's Sentinel Blast. But sometimes Normal is not easier. The margin of error is a lot thinner when one death means you've lost half your tanks, a half or a third of your healers, or 15-20% of your DPS. And it could be that your raid doesn't have a single battle rez, let alone three or four. Maybe that's why players prefer Heroic raids: Unless you're going after the more difficult hard-mode encounters, it's not the end of the world when you screw up and die. This week, one guild leader asks, when most serious raiders only want to run Heroic raids, how can someone recruit for a Normal raiding guild?Hi Scott,I'm the GM of a reasonably-successful 10-man raiding guild (we're ranked in the top 90 US guilds according to GuildOx's "Strict 10-man" filter). Like many other guilds, we're seeing a decline in attendance lately (as per your most recent column, "Surviving summer"), and it's become obvious that we need to recruit 4-5 more people of various classes/specs so we can reliably run our scheduled raids without depending on 100% perfect attendance from anyone.
