leadership
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Officers' Quarters: When your mate is a member
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.This is going to be a tricky week for me, since my girlfriend reads this column. Like most subjects, I'm not claiming to have all the answers about this, but in this case I'm really clueless sometimes. I'm wondering how other guild leaders and officers out there handle it. So this week, I'm the one providing the question! Dear Readers: How do you deal with having a significant other in the guild -- especially when he or she isn't an officer?Thanks!Scott
Officers' Quarters: A dangerous gift
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It's the holiday season, and for many players that means extended periods away from Azeroth as we spend more time with family and friends. If your characters are a critical part of your guild's success, you may be tempted to give another player access to your account so they can help the guild in your absence. It's a generous and noble gesture, but in the big picture it's a dangerous gift to give. I would urge everyone to be a Scrooge and keep your account info all to yourself. And this week's e-mail shows why:What do you do as a guild leader, when you have two or three different people in your guild that have, in the past, shared accounts, and then one leaves the guild in an ugly way? Or at all?Especially if one has guild bank access?I know that, technically, sharing accounts is against the EULA, but among young teens it seems fairly common . . . especially in raiding guilds, where if a raid is short a priest, JohnnyX may have access to another guildies' account so he can bring the AFK player's priest on.What do you do if one leaves? The other two accounts are mostly played by the owners . . . but if the toon comes online, but the player isn't on a voice chat application, how do you know it is REALLY the owner, and not the player that left? Worse yet, what if the player had been booted?Is it right to remove other people from a guild because they have shared their account with someone else?
Officers' Quarters: Two heads > one
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I sometimes envy those two-headed ogres. Imagine if you could fill out your tax forms and play Warcraft at the same time. Hmm, has anyone actually done that? This week's e-mail comes from a pair of players who want to start a guild as co-leaders. Can a guild survive with two GL's running the show?I have a question or two I'd like to ask you, oh great guild master guru. My friends (RL) are all going to reroll on another server because most of them are new, while I have two 70's already. My friends count a total of around 6, maybe a 7th if he decides to join us on retail instead of private servers. We will start a guild of course and one of my friends (who has a 70 already) and I will be the guild masters. I will be the raid leader and such and he will be the PvP leader. We came to this agreement mutually and have decided that we will be each other's counsel. A small system of checks and balances, if you will. Our main reason for choosing ourselves is because of our extensive experience and we get along together, not to mention work like a well-oiled machine in almost all situations. While this will be our first time actually leading the guild, we have both been officers in several different types of guilds and we have sort of an inkling as to what we need to do.My question is: Is this bipartisan (excuse the loose word usage) leadership a good idea? And could you give us some tips on starting/leading a guild? Just the vital things! :D
Officers' Quarters: Why we lead
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.If you've read my column or our Guildwatch features in the past, you've heard about all kinds of terrible situations involving guilds and their officers. Sometimes, serving as an officer is a stressful, thankless job and everything you try to accomplish is just setting yourself up for more abuse. Combined with real-life pressures, it can really wear you down after a while. I've had some dark moments as a guild leader when I've thought about stepping down and giving it all up. And sometimes I find myself wondering why I've stuck with it for so long. We officers certainly don't get paid for our efforts. We rarely receive any kind of tangible benefit. So why do we do it?
Starting a guild from scratch
I don't think Scott has ever covered this topic in his Officers' Quarters column, but it might be a good one: how exactly do you start a brand new guild from scratch? Actually this is pretty close, but even that column doesn't get to the nitty gritty of bringing a guild from an idea in someone's head, to a group of 25 people raiding successfully every week. It seems such a tough job that it's a wonder guilds have succeeded at all.I have only formed my own guild once, and it wasn't in World of Warcraft-- a group of people I grouped with in another online game thought "Silver Monkeys of Death" would be a good name for a guild, and so, strangers though we were, we paid the fee and grouped up. It lasted about a week. The only way I can see a guild really succeeding is if you have a few people who know each other in real-life to support it-- if you can get a chain of about 10 people who know each other really well (as in friends of friends), then you're on your way to getting a good guild rolling.But other than that, I can't really see it happening. I'm not talking about guilds who move from game to game-- I'm talking about guilds that are supposedly formed by people who've met each other only in game. Is it really possible for a group of people who have only met each other in game to actually form a full-fledged raiding guild?
Officers' Quarters: Rank and file
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Greetings, fellow officers! This week's question concerns guild ranks -- a topic that will see increasing relevance as Blizzard rolls out the new guild bank system in patch 2.3. Hi Scott,I'm the GL of a largish casual adult guild that is growing fairly rapidly. I inherited the GL role 10 months or so ago, and we've enjoyed a great deal of stability ever since thanks to a close, friendly atmosphere, lots of support from higher members, strong but fair decision making on everyone's part, etc. However, I also inherited a bunch of officers. The previous GL made pretty much anyone an officer who wanted to be, without clear roles or responsibilities. This hasn't been too bad up to now, but the lack of organization is starting to strain a bit as we grow in size and start to raid. It seems like a good time to revisit our officer roles and guild ranks. I was curious which officer roles and ranks you use in your guild, or systems that you've found successful?Cheers,Jim
Officers' Quarters: Dark pacts, Part 2
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Two weeks ago, Officers' Quarters presented Part 1 of an in-depth look at guild alliances -- how to avoid all the negativity and actually make them work. I talked about assessing compatibility, communicating, and keeping your finger on the pulse of your own members' feeling about the other guild. This week, we'll talk about leadership roles, loot rules, and more!
Officers' Quarters: Dark pacts, Part 1
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.You've tried to run 10- or 25-player dungeons, but you just can't manage to find a night where enough guild members are available. Your recruiting efforts have fallen short. You've got a bunch of unhappy members burned out on Heroics and daily quests, itching to move on to new content. What do you do? You do what any corporation does when its own employees aren't quite up to the task ahead of them: You outsource. You find someone else to do half the work. You cooperate with another business. It doesn't have to be a deal with the devil. You both get something out of the arrangement, and everybody keeps their job. That's the essence of a guild alliance, and such agreements can turn into a lucrative opportunity -- or a total nightmare.
Officers' Quarters: A depressed GL
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It's been a couple of weeks since I answered a letter, so let's jump right into it!Hi there, I've been in my guild for about half a year now, basically since i started playing WoW. In that time I've gone up from newbie member to officer and done quite a lot of work for the guild (if i may say so myself lol) like starting and setting up the guild site, creating a guild bank, starting a recruitment spree and such things. Recently I've run into the next problem though: With the guild growing, my GL has become more and more negative in general and is basically only complaining.I've tried to talk to her about it (being an officer i think its my responsibility to give feedback to others, GL included) in private, which didn't really [have] any effect. After another negative and, other than that, empty response from her on the forum I replied to her in public (well semi-public, it being in the officers' corner of the forum) [and asked] everyone to keep an upbeat attitude and to not complain but instead to come up with solutions (or at least try to do so). I'm really hoping this will work, but I fear that it might not (lol, upbeat attitude?).
Officers' Quarters: How do we govern? Part 2
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.If you're just tuning in, last week I discussed how running a guild is much like running a country -- or an empire. In the previous column, I covered the dictatorship, the constitutional monarchy, and the democratic republic. This week, we'll talk about three others that aren't quite so conventional.
Officers' Quarters: How do we govern? Part 1
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.All of you guild leaders out there, ask yourself this question: Is your management style most like__Genghis Khan?__Thomas Jefferson?__Queen Elizabeth?__Kim Jong-il?__A council of elders?__An inanimate carbon rod?I started thinking about the many ways a guild can be managed after receiving the following e-mail. My apologies to Rodrigo in advance -- it was a very insightful, but very long e-mail, and I'm only including about half of it below. Hey Scott,First I want to congratulate you for adding such an interesting topic to the biggest WoW blog there is. Hope you keep up the good work! I'm a civil engineer from the far country of Chile. Before BC came out I was the GM of the biggest Hispanic-talking guild in all the US servers, we had over 250 active accounts and 400 characters. Our only recruitment requisite was being able to talk Spanish . . . [One of] the true keys to manage a guild this large and diverse was democracy. Officers vote for certain decisions. Guild members vote for certain officers. I think this point would be a great topic for a blog discussion. For some reason today guilds are ran by their founders . . . The GM is usually the guy that started it all and officers are then elected using different arguments but what is certain is that they are never removed (unless he kinda quits the game). How do you tell your own officers that he isn't wanted by the majority of the guild or that he isn't cutting it? We had leadership elections every 5 months and it worked great . . . All the level 60s had the option to vote via a Web form for officers and officers would then elect the GM. This method automatically removes most of the causes that could eventually destroy the guild . . . like dictators, friendship influences, greedy people in charge, etc As an engineer I've found that being a GM combines the two biggest challenges of any organizational leadership: Emotional Intelligence and Strategic Management. Regards,Rodrigo JimenezRiddance @ Smolderthorn-US
MMO players make great leaders
Do you think that playing World of Warcraft has given you leadership skills? A study done by IBM and Seriosity claims:Hundreds of thousands of players -- sometimes millions -- interact daily in highly complex virtual environments. These players self-organize, develop skills, and settle into various roles. Leaders emerge that are capable of recruiting, organizing, motivating, and directing large groups of players towards a common goal.Of course, IBM and Seriosity are attempting to sell MMO-inspired business solutions, but the study itself is interesting even to those of us who aren't in the market. In it, IBM and Seriosity suggest that within MMOs, players need to organize in order to accomplish goals -- and the skills of the player who organizes your guild's raids are no different from a manager in a traditional office environment.
Officers' Quarters: Pistols at dawn?
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Most GLs can't handle all the duties of running a guild by themselves. We rely on our officers to pitch in and set a good example. But what happens when one of your officers wants to run things differently than you do? That brings us to this week's question: I'm the GL of a small, up-and-coming guild. We started the guild with the full intention of having fun while accomplishing our goals first and foremost. The guild was started by myself and several friends of mine from real life. Well we started to expand and have since tripled our numbers. This has also tripled the amount of drama that has occurred as well. But, the main focus of this drama has come from one of the lead officers who is the newest edition to the rank. He's arrogant, pushy, quick to snap and his judgement isn't exactly what I would call favorable in given situations. But, and here's the main problem: he is also someone I've known for several years in real life.
How to Destroy Your Guild: An Officers' Quarters Special Feature
The feedback to my first Officers' Quarters column made me realize something that was floating around in my head for a while but that I never fully acknowledged: It's usually the guild leadership that causes a guild to collapse. I don't have any hard data to prove this statement. However, from what I've seen on my server and heard about on others, the cause of a guild's demise is much more likely to be its officers than its nonofficer members. It's obvious when you think about it: A guild's leadership defines not only the guild's rules and regulations, but its philosophy, purpose, and culture. When its purpose is to do what the GL wants and its philosophy is to do what the GL says, that is a guild headed for extinction. From time to time I'll be bringing you a feature in addition to my weekly Monday-morning posts. Today's feature will explain how to destroy your guild in seven easy steps. 1) Invite everyone. That 10-year old warlock whose dad obviously helped him fill out the app. That warrior in Serpentshrine gear who wants to switch guilds so he can raid more. That guildless hunter who melee'd his way through the Ring of Blood quests with you. There are often many warning signs that someone may not be the right fit for you guild -- ignore them at your peril.
Have You /hug'd your raid leader today?
Good raid leaders need to have a lot of tools in their tool basket. People skills, the ability to manage people and understand people is critical. Tactical skills, being able to study an encounter, look through a combat log and understand what went wrong, and being able to make the adjustments to complete an encounter more efficiently and more easily next time is critical. It's a political job, keeping groups happy and managing everyone's expectations. It requires time, effort, and a lot of knowledge. So give your raid leader a /hug.
Penalty for being the worst raid leader ever? 50 DKP MINUS! [update 1]
In the NSFW video that follows, a raid leader flips out ninja-style as his team of 40 raiders fails to kill the dragon known to World of Warcraft players as Onyxia. For those who've never raided Onyxia, you need to know that this multi-phase fight is laden with traps and tricks, and usually takes hours upon hours of failed attempts before a group finally downs her for the first time. An experienced raid team can finish the encounter in 20 minutes. The video that you're about to see captures the frustration of the Onyxia experience, showing just how emotional things can get when total party wipe follows total party wipe. It also highlights the hilarity that results when people with very little management experience are given the opportunity to lead a large group of people. Some soar, some flop. Our protagonist in the following video flops like a pancake. Click here to watch. Turn the sound down (or put on some headphones), because the raid leader loves to drop the F-bomb. [Update 1: Fixed autoplay issue.]
Poor leadership kills BattleGround teams
Oh, man. So last night, I got a chance to play a few rounds in Warsong Gulch. Usually, I have a good amount of fun doing so, following along with nicely placed orders and helping out while trying not to get slaughtered, lose my tank, or go through all my soul shards. I'm not going to name names here, but last night, I was in a group with a complete and total jerk who continually bossed everyone in the team around because he was a higher level, continually calling us all noobs and flipping out constantly about how we all couldn't do anything right.The thing is, we were winning until he started yelling repeatedly, "EVERYONE IN THE MIDDLE NOW!" And since the team was a little n00b heavy, most people listened to him. This left our flag unguarded by any but my lone self, who ignored him until I just gave up, and we quickly had our flag stolen and planted and he just kept shouting "WHAT? HOW!?"Because your strategy sucked. You need people to charge in the raid, and people to guard the flag. Put all your cards too heavily in one place or the other and you are screwed. Word to the wise: good leaders don't start yelling at you and calling you all noobs. If that happens to you in game, it is time to pick a new leader. What do you think? What's your best BattleGround strategy? Who has been your worst leader?ps—There's an update this morning, and I only need one more signature on the charter for Akama's Horde WoW Insider Guild.
