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Officers' Quarters: Return of an X guild leader
Patch 4.3 will be upon us very soon. All large content patches bring with them the possibility of guild members returning to the game or to the guilds they left behind. This patch, with its huge amount of content, should bring back more than most. Such returns can often cause controversy, especially if the players left under questionable circumstances. No return is more likely to cause drama, however, than that of a former guild leader -- and in this case, our weekly email contains an added twist . . . This is sort of long and rather complicated. I'm currently in a guild that I like but has had a leadership problem. In late Wrath/early Cata, we had a medium-sized, friendly guild who aspired to be a casual raiding guild. It was run by a guy we'll call X. X was a pretty good guild leader -- he sponsored events and would sometimes run dungeons. We were, for the most part, a great little guild with potential to be a great little raiding guild. This all changed when X went to another server. At first he left leadership to Y, but Y soon left and leadership ended up all of a sudden in the hands of Z. Z was not a level 85 and rarely participated in the guild. He would not log on for weeks and this made it difficult to have a functional guild. As a result, people left in droves, many of whom had been important parts of the guild before the leadership change. Two of the most active players who logged on regularly were myself and my sister, B. We tried to do things as a guild but we didn't have enough active players to regularly form a guild group, even with just 3 people. Sometimes Z would log on after 29 days, just in time to prevent us from kicking him. After a few months, we finally did take back leadership and B became GM.
Officers' Quarters: In the wake of drama, tragedy
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, available now from No Starch Press. Drama happens in guilds. As officers, we do everything we can to avoid it. Sometimes we make mistakes that set us up for it. At other times, it's simply inevitable. Much of it is stupid and pointless. However, nothing puts it all in perspective like a sudden, shared tragedy. This week, a guild leader wonders how he can deal with this terrible circumstance in the aftermath of a guild-shattering argument. Scott, I have a really difficult problem that I would like your advice, or at least your opinion. This problem is two fold and I will start with the short but serious series of events that have transpired the last few days. I (basically) started the guild a week before Cataclysm. We took off quick and became extremely successful. One of the first guilds to hit 25 on the server (which made me a really proud guild leader). Early in the guilds history, we had a member join our guild, lets call him Eddie. Eddie has an abrasive personality and he tends to insult people. The thing is, hes not and never is being serious. He jokes and unless you spend more than 5 minutes talking to him, you just assume he's insulting you, which he's not. Well Eddie, being new to the guild (that had relatively little officers), hit the ground running and showed qualities of a true leader. He built our raid team, geared people, taught people, and did his job in a way that I've not seen done even as I raided through Wrath. Eddie however joined the military and had to leave for Basic Training. When he left, it was agreed upon that the raid leader spot would be temporarily given to another officer and would be given back when Eddie returned.
Officers' Quarters: Walking away
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, available now from No Starch Press. Marriage or ... your guild -- it's a fairly straightforward decision! However, it's not an easy thing to walk away from a community you've spent so much time leading and developing, even when you're feeling burned out on the game. This week's email features a guild leader who is simply torn up about the prospect of leaving the guild to another officer. Scott, I've been putting off writing this for a long time, but I don't think I can any more ... During the days of Vanilla I came across a player (we'll call him "Dan") who helped direct me to a great guild ... The guild was small, close-knit, extremely helpful and the most at home I've felt in a gaming community in ages. Through the years I worked my way up the ranks, eventually earning a spot as one of Dan's officers. Several years later, when Real Life go the best of Dan, I was chosen as his successor. There were other officers there longer, but Dan felt I understood his vision for the guild better than anyone else. I was honored, and have done my best to carry on the guild in the foot steps he left behind. We're not the biggest guild on our server, or the most advanced raiders, or the best PvPers, but we're good, and we're well known. Our guild name has always been synonymous with quality people, and we let our members know that we value quality of character above all else. When guilds on our server fold, their members clamor to join us, and we're careful about who we let in. We've been around for over five years now, and I am damned proud of everything we've accomplished. Don't let my glowing self appraisal fool you.
Officers' Quarters: Formal invitations
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, available now from No Starch Press. To the esteemed druid Shapez: The Guild of Heroes formally requests the honor of your presence to attend our martial gathering, to be commenced on the evening of October twenty-fourth, in the year of our lord two thousand eleven, for the purposes of assailing that fiendish realm the Firelands, forthwith to slaughter its inhabitants most precipitously and attire ourselves in the abundance of their worldly treasures. The horn heralding our advance shall be sounded precisely at seven o'clock. Your humble servant and friend in all things, Orcman For casual raiding guilds, attendance can often be a huge struggle. The handful of players who seem to show up (or not) on a whim are the bane of their officers' existence. The example above is of course exaggeration, but you do begin to feel that you should send your players written invitations on fancy stationery. This week's email is from a guild leader who seems to be running an entire guild of such people, and he's looking for answers. I have been the leader of a small, casual, friends-and-family guild for over three years. We have seen good times and bad together, including a LK kill before the end of Wrath. Cataclysm, however, just isn't working out. At any given time our roster is experiencing a great deal of churn, and despite the fact that several of our core members are rock solid, I just can't put a raid together any more. We customize the schedule, confirm it, re-confirm it and still have people not show up. Recruiting is a bit tough due to the atmosphere of the guild. If you're not casual enough to enjoy raiding with three generations of the same family, you probably won't stay, and that's okay. We usually wind up picking up entire clans, for at least a little while, but these affiliations just don't seem to be strong enough to keep the guild running. I've read your book, and we've adapted a lot of our practices around your advice. Unfortunately, it hasn't been enough. A week ago we lacked enough players to field our regularly scheduled progression raid, even though I had confirmed we were raiding only the day prior. I was angry enough to hang it all up right then and there. I decided I'd give it a week, try harder on the organization and make sure to express how important it was that everyone be on time, etc. Same result this week. I suspect that because my guild members know that I'll never actually remove them from participating -- because, after all they're all someone's family -- they just don't have any reason to uphold their agreements.
Officers' Quarters: Mailbox roundup 4 -- raid leaders
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, available now from No Starch Press. Here at Officers' Quarters, I receive a number of emails every week that don't get featured in the column for various reasons (which I explained the first time I did a roundup). Today it's time to examine two of these shorter -- but no less interesting! -- topics. This roundup's theme is raid leaders. Bad player = bad raid leader Scott, I really don't know if I'm writing just to get this off my chest or to ask for advice ... We had the same raid leader through several expansions who was very authoritative, decisive, and effective. Then he had to step back due to irl stuff and we were left with a leadership gap. No one really wanted to step up and be raid leader but eventually one of our officers decided to take it over. I'll call him John. John had a very different leadership style. I'm not sure if it was your column or elsewhere that I once read about the personality differences between a raid leader and guild leader but John has much more of guild leader style. Very much focused on having everyone get along, trying to get everyone to agree with everything, trying to get everyone to like each other ... When John makes mistakes that contribute to something bad happening, he likes to take whole blame for it. He won't look beyond his own contribution to the fail to find that the tanks failed a switch, a dps pulled aggro, or someone failed to move out of the fire, which is what put them in extreme danger in the first place. When I try to point out that I need him to be more critical than just taking all the blame, two things happen. First, he backtracks and tries to say he's not taking on all the blame, even if he's typed out explicitly that something was "all my fault." Second, he becomes completely demotivated and sullen in Vent, which effects the mood of the raid.
Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.3 -- An officer's perspective
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, available now from No Starch Press. Patch 4.3 is shaping up to be the most exciting and feature-filled of Cataclysm. Let's take a look at which features might impact your guild and how you can take advantage of them. I have located a raid The Raid Finder is not just for the guildless. Guilds can also take advantage of this new feature in several ways. The first and most obvious is that it will allow your raiders to get practice time on bosses for your own normal-mode raids. Since you don't get locked to the instance using the finder, you can see the mechanics ahead of time and still raid with your guild in the same week. If you have players who need to get up to speed, you can also use Raid Finder runs as a training ground. New players can learn the fights without wasting time and causing wipes in your normal runs. (Of course, we have yet to see how different finder mode and normal mode will be, but odds are the mechanics will be fairly similar.) Plus you can use the opportunity to address any issues that the player might be having with DPS rotations, awareness, etc.
Officers' Quarters: Thanks, but no thanks
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, available now from No Starch Press. With all the emphasis this summer on complaints, prima donna raiders, AWOL guild leaders, and rebuilding, this week seemed like a good time to focus on an email from a guild that's flourishing. Success, alas, comes with its own set of problems, but at least many of those are good problems to have. For example, when your guild is the rising star on a server, it seems like everyone wants to get in on the action. One guild leader wants to know: How do you turn down players politely when you don't want to invite them to your rapidly expanding roster? Hello, I hear a lot about small guilds falling apart in the new guild system that was implemented in Cataclysm, but my guild is having the opposite problem. In classic, I started a guild for myself and several real life friends. It was just our five man team for a very long time, no recruiting. We were very active in our realm community, so we had a lot of in game friends outside the guild and eventually some of these people began asking to join. We were glad to have them and so we grew slowly. But in Cataclysm our roster exploded. Every time an efriend's guild would die because too many quit or jumped to a mega guild, they would ask to join ours. The problem is that many of those people wanted to bring their friends too, so with every person that asked to join we would have one or two of their friends also asking. We grew so fast it all caught us unaware.
Officers' Quarters: Rebuilding your roster
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, available now from No Starch Press. If there's one phrase that drives sports fans crazy, it's "rebuilding year." In sports, a rebuilding year is one in which expectations for the team are low, either because the team traded away aging veterans, gave starting positions to young and inexperienced players, or both. But sports fans are an impatient bunch. We don't want rebuilding years -- we want championships. Thus, teams do everything they can to deny that they are, in fact, rebuilding. The same is true for guilds. Potential recruits don't want to hear about rebuilding -- they want to join an established organization in its prime. Thus, when your guild is in that starting-over situation, it can be very difficult to dig yourself out of the hole. For some reason, I've received three emails about this topic over the past two weeks, so I figured I'd feature one of those emails here. I chose the one that bounced my message back when I tried to reply to it, so at least that person will know I did respond! Dear Scott and the Officer's Quarters, I am writing to ask for some perspective on the current state of my guild and the actions I could take to turn things around. I am the GM of a small guild on one of the older, more established WoW servers. I am told this server has been around since the early days of vanilla WoW. As with any established server in any game, cliques are formed, reputation is king, and small guilds have a hard time flourishing when three quarters of the active player base belong to one of a few monster guilds. Our server has both monster progression guilds that field multiple 10-man raid groups in addition to 25-man groups as well as the Mega-store bargain perks blowout guilds that give every member the ability to invite new members with no real guidelines for membership. My humble guild began as a way for a few real life friends to play together. Raiding, progression, and consistency were never a big deal for us toward the end of Wrath. Once Cataclysm came along with guild levels and the perks associated with them, our roster of casual and fun people plummeted. Some left the game completely because they were accustomed to blowing through the Wrath content without any difficulty. Others were deployed with their military units to the ends of the earth to fight real life wars. At this point we are left with the few real life friends in addition to a mere one or two other active members. Enough of the back-story, now it is time for the point of my email: How can a weak-roster guild survive amongst the concrete establishments of the dominant guilds? What can I do to find new members who could be beneficial to the guild and our goals of breaking into raiding without having to beg?
Officers' Quarters: Soloing a guild
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, available now from No Starch Press. One of the most frequent questions that new guild leaders ask me is this: How many officers do I need to run a guild? It varies, of course, based on what your ambitions are. However, the following email represents the first time anyone has asked this question: Do I even need officers? Hi Scott, I have started a social guild recently with the purpose of it being a place for guild members to have others to chat with, run dungeons, and other game related activities. The guild won't really be for progression or leveling, though I'm not opposed to guild members doing those activities. As I've never ran a guild before, I was wondering, are officers truly necessary for a social guild? I do plan to draw up rules for if members run dungeons, or do raids, together but I didn't know if I'd need more then that. I truly want to make this a fun place for my guild members so any help you give will be appreciated! I. Blue
Officers' Quarters: Raid leading is stressful
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, available now from No Starch Press. The title of this post goes without saying, but let's say it anyway. It's something that the other nine or 24 players in your raid need to be reminded of from time to time. If anyone reading this has never had the dubious honor of leading a raid before, I strongly urge you to peruse the following email. I'll warn you, though, it's a long one! As for you dedicated raid leaders out there, this column is for you. Dear Scott, This is a raid leadership question rather than a guild leadership question -- I hope that's all right! I'm not much of a leader by nature, and I could really use some advice on how to deal with the position in which I've gotten myself. I'm not a guild leader (thank god), but I run a one-night-a-week raid group for friends who don't have the opportunity to raid more often, and for alts of members of the main raid group. Progression-wise, we're doing fine; H 3/7, with each new fight being picked up pretty quickly. I have no complaints at all about progression, which I thought would be the main source of stress. Instead, I've been stressing out over the drama between players -- mostly loot drama, as three members of the raid are on the same token and use similar gear -- and decision-making. I hate drama, and I hate having to make decisions that affect 9 other people and could very well be WRONG decisions (going after Beth'tilac instead of Shannox our first week in FL, for instance), and having to worry about both of these things just makes the raid a source of pressure and something I wish I could avoid.
Officers' Quarters: Classic blunders
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, available now from No Starch Press. Last week, we heard about an incident where a player received a rather hostile in-game mail from an officer after missing a raid following the death of a relative. The issue stemmed from a lack of communication among the guild's officers. Along that theme, this week's email describes a case where lack of communication -- and some other classic blunders -- escalated into a full-blown drama bomb. Hey Scott, So I'm an Officer in a medium sized guild. Our main focus is to simply have fun, help each other out, PVP, raid, and everything else in between. I've only recently become an Officer for our guild as decided by other Officers and the Guild Leader. About a month ago we got a new recruit. Let's call him Jack. Jack is a personal friend of our guild leader which we thought was awesome. Having at least one person you know in the guild personally has always helped us stay grounded in and out of the game. My girlfriend is a recruit in the guild and one of my best friends is one of the Officers. So about a week ago, I logged in to see that Jack had mysteriously been ranked up to Officer rank as well. This confused me. I had been in the guild for almost a year before I was even considered for a role of responsibility. I pulled out my phone and texted my Officer buddy, let's call him Bob, to come over. I explained to him that I didn't think it was very fair that Jack got to be an Officer when everyone else had to work their way up in the guild. To my surprise, Bob had no idea about Jack's promotion. There are only 3 people in our guild that can even rank someone up to Officer and that's our GL, Bob, and another high ranking Officer. Bob proceeded to contact our GL and found out that she had promoted Jack without consulting any of her officers first. Now Bob was pissed.
Officers' Quarters: Downsized
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, available now from No Starch Press. Word went around this week that one of my server's long-time 25-man guilds would be switching to the 10-man format. It's a phenomenon that has become more common recently. For many guilds, fielding the number of quality raiders needed for the larger size has grown more difficult over the past few months. Part of the reason is likely the drop in attendance during summer. Some of it could be the game's declining subscription numbers. We also can't ignore the fact that 10-man versions of Firelands bosses are, in most cases, significantly easier to beat. This week's email comes from a player whose guild has also made this decision. In the process, he's found himself without a slot. Hello Scott, I am a raider in a casual/raiding guild with a bit of a problem . . . I joined this guild after running with a couple of it's members in my first pug once I hit 85. Things were really quite amazing at first, the guild runs were so well run and actually fun, which was something I rarely experienced during ICC. I was usually in the top 3 in damage on most bosses, knew my role, never had any issues with other raiders, always showed up prepared and did what I could to help the guild. Then my problem arose. One night during a raid, I got a call that a relative was in poor health. When the raid ended, I whispered the raid lead that I may not be on the next week. The relative passed away. My in-game problem arose when I logged in for a minute that first week and found an in-game mail from an officer admonishing me for not accepting/declining for raid on the calendar and asking "if I didn't want to raid, what the hell was I doing in the guild?"
Officers' Quarters: How different is too different?
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, available now from No Starch Press. One of the most important things you can do when you start a new guild is to differentiate your community from other guilds on the server. When you offer a different experience or a different set of expectations from the typical guild, no matter how slight, you increase your chances of garnering attention and, thus, recruiting players who are attracted to those differences. It's a concept I've mentioned in a number of columns over the years. But is there such a thing as differentiating too much? One guild leader wants to know: Hello, I'm Emir Ergenç from Turkey, i read your wowinsider column for a long time. And i really enjoy your writings. Me and my girlfriend found a new guild named "Efsane" (meaning Legend in English) in our realm (Wildhammer-EU), i'm telling this to you for checking us :). Our website is efsane.guildomatic.com (although its Turkish). My characters are Alhara, Faelha, Eladia on guild. My girlfriend is guild leader and Shehrazad. Together we wanted to form a Turkish speaking Rated Battleground guild. Our aim is to have about 14-20 members (we do not aim to be a big guild, but time will tell) and get high ratings (read: hardcore) in rated battlegrounds as Turkish people. This is a very specific aim, thats where i started having some issues.
Officers' Quarters: More on raid saves
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, available now from No Starch Press. Part of good leadership is admitting when you've made a mistake. I admit it: When I wrote last week's column about trash farming, I was operating under the old raid ID system where the ID is shared among everyone. As many of you were quick to point out, that is no longer true. Each player simply gets saved to the bosses they've killed, plus any required bosses for those killed bosses, if the player didn't kill them. If you (like me), completely forgot about this new system, here's the full explanation of how raid saves work now. I wish I could say that I was jet-lagged from traveling halfway around the world, feverish with a strep throat infection and disconnected from WoW after not playing for more than a month. Actually, I was all of those things when I wrote the column. It's not an excuse for fumbling such an important point. There really is none, but I hope my readers will forgive my lapse in accuracy. I'd like to thank everyone who pointed out the error for the benefit of any readers who may have been confused. Now that I actually know what the heck I'm talking about, let's revisit the issue and talk about a few other controversial topics in the context of raid saves.
Officers' Quarters: Secret farmers of the Firelands
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, available now from No Starch Press. In the Firelands, red fire and black ash rain from the sky. Meanwhile, purple axes, scalpels, scales, mysterious apparati, and even scraps of purple parchment rain from its dying denizens. Another raid has brought with it the opportunity to kill scores of trash mobs for high-ilevel loot, much like players did in tier 11 with the Bastion of Twilight's first-room trash-athon. The purple recipes hearken back to the days of the Sunwell Plateau. Yes, trash farming has a long and illustrious history in WoW. With such great opportunities for both loot and gold, it's hard to blame players for getting in there and farming away. WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley even wrote a guide about how to do it. But should your members ask permission before they use the guild's raid ID for such runs? This week, one guild leader found out that some members have been venturing in without telling anyone. Hi. The basics. I run a decently good 10-man raid guild. We have a guild-master, me, a few officers, a few semi-officers, and raiders. The semi-officers are guildmembers that are very good at their class and been in the guild for a long time. You could say very valued members or maybe classleaders and they have some areas of responsibilty in the raids and guild. We often seek their advice but they dont have decision making rights like the GM and the Officers. The background. We killed Shannox and some other bosses the first week of Firelands, and we have done so every week up to date. We recently learned that since the first week a few of the semi-officers has been going in to the guilds Firelands instance, between raid days and farmed trash. The drops [have] been used to gear themself and their alts, but the stuff they havent had any use for, odd drops recipies, has been sold on the AH for quite alot of gold.
Officers' Quarters: Raiding without characters
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, available now from No Starch Press. A question for the readership: How important is it to you that the players you raid with are interesting and engaging people? Is it essential, or merely a bonus? This week, a raid leader complains that his guildmates are boring -- to the point that he's considering leaving the guild altogether. He wants to know what he can do to inject some much-needed personality into the guild. Hi Scott I read your column regularly and find it very insightful. I have implemented various pieces of advice within my guild to varying degrees of success so thank you for this. Now however its my turn to pose a question. How do you create a guild with character? Let me explain this a bit with some history. I have been raid leader for my guild for the last 7-8 months and in the last 2 I inherited the GM tag as he didn't have much time to play. I was practically doing all the work anyway so this wasn't an issue. My issue is two fold, firstly I don't think I really like anyone in the guild apart from one person. And secondly it seems like I play with a bunch of automatons. This isn't to say I dislike anyone but its just they all seem to lack any sort of character and wouldn't say boo to a goose!
Officers' Quarters: Prodigal raiders
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, available now from No Starch Press. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "I can resist everything except temptation." There will come a time when raiders in your guild are tempted to leave and join another group. Many things can prompt this desire: struggles in a new raiding tier, unhappiness over loot, personal issues with other raiders, scheduling conflicts, and so on. Losing raiders is part of the game, unfortunately. But what do you do, one guild leader asks, when they change their mind? Hi, First I need to probably intended to apologize for the very poor English and I hope the text is understandable. To read English texts is not my problem just write is not as good. I am the founder of a small Raid guild. Guild was founded by myself and two friends. Since we have found no guild on our server, which could meet our requirements, we have decided to take matters into their own hands. The goal was to create a small raid guild for 10 man content and fill available spaces possible only with talented players. We only raid twice a week and still want to complete the content successfully, both NHC and HC. Currently we have set 11/12 and 1 / 13. The real problem is as follows. Since we are the last 2 weeks Nefarian failed for various reasons is currently not possible to move forward. The Guild Board is of the opinion that we have before tackling other HM only complete once the content on NHC. The equipment of the raid member is above average, and thus should Nefarian actually be a problem. In the last week we learned that two members have applied for another guild, which has put in 25 man content already 7 / 13 and is four times a week raiding.
Officers' Quarters: Split decision
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, available now from No Starch Press. Just about every long-time WoW player has, at some point or another, found themselves at a crossroads, wishing they could split into multiple copies like a mage. Should you stay with the guild you joined and the friends you've made there, or should you go join that other guild so you can see more content? That's probably the most frequently asked question that I receive. This week, a player faces a similarly difficult crossroads, but in this case, one of the guilds she has to choose between wants to make her the guild leader. Hey, I'm currently split between two guilds. On the one hand, I have Guild A, which has been my home for two years, and more or less died about two months ago (by died, I mean that the Guild Master has completely abandoned it, and the only officer that logs on more than once every three-four weeks is the one who's recently returned from a WoW break). The GM has been swapping which of his characters has the "big rank", and never logs on to actually play, let alone to give any explanation as to why he no longer cares for the guild. A few people still log on regularly, mostly, I believe, out of a hope that Guild A will return to its former glory. On the other hand, I have Guild B, a serious but lighthearted and social raiding guild, which I joined on my main just over a month ago, when it was apparent that Guild A had been abandoned. I told myself that only my shaman would move over to B, but in the end, I preferred B's humorous banter and regular conversations over A's graveyard-like silence, and moved over all but two of my alts.
Officers' Quarters: Suffocating in a leadership vacuum
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, available now from No Starch Press. A few months ago, I wrote a column about replacing a guild leader who disappeared without naming a successor. This week, the problem is slightly different: The guild leader named a successor who turned out to be a poor replacement, and the remaining officers have all but disappeared. In light of this leadership vacuum, a member of the guild wonders whether he should step up and bluntly ask for the top rank. Hello Scott, For close to a year now I've been part of a large social/raiding guild with a very healthy and active player base. In WotLK everything was fine, raiding went great and the guild chat was always full with friendly players so basically the guild was at its best and a great home for everyone. Probably this was very much thanks to the capabilities of our guild leader ... She was liked by many and formed the heart of our guild easily. One day I logged in to hear from some officers that the guild leader was going on a long break to sort out real life issues. Only a few people knew how long this would take and they refused to share this information with the rest of us to respect her privacy. Before she left, one officer was appointed to lead the guild in the meanwhile. Problem was that this was a very unreliable player (he used to disappear for months without notice because he suddenly grew bored of the game) and before he hadn't been an officer and was only given the role because he was the only one to volunteer.
Officers' Quarters: Silent revenge
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, available now from No Starch Press. Guild drama comes in many forms, and it can thrive even after people quit the guild -- with some unpleasant consequences. This week, one officer describes how an angry former member took revenge on the guild with a particularly spiteful act. Hi Scott, I've been reading your column on and off for a few months now and I don't know if you've covered this, but my guild is having issues with a former officer (we'll call him X Member) who /gquit of his own accord . . . X Member still has ties to many of the guild members and to some extent he is expecting us to treat him like he is still a guild member (i.e. not hold him to the same expectations that we hold all PUGs when raiding and automatically take him along on both progression raids and fun runs.) When we treat him the same as other PUGs, he takes it out on our guild in vengeful ways.
