To Merge, Or Not To Merge?
by Christopher Linton 
Mar 6th 2006 at 1:14PM
I have never been a part of a successful guild
merger. I have been involved in three, and in each case the downfall of the guild has been imminent. Why is it that
when two (or more) groups try to combine their resources and members, they fail most of the time?
1.
A guild merger is often a symptom of deeper problems within one or both of the guilds. Guilds
with no problems a far less likely to be interested in mergers than those with lots of discontent among their
members.
2. Officers don't like to give up respect and
privilege. Guild officers earn respect from members. That’s why they are officers. In a guild merger,
some officers are bound to get demoted, and those who aren’t have to earn the respect of a whole new group of
members. That inevitably leads to friction within the larger group.
conclusions after the jump.
These are the three main issues which I have observed to cause meltdowns in newly merged guilds. What can be done to prevent dissent? I'm not sure, since I have never seen a successful merger, but I think that the most important thing is to take time, before and after the merger. Make an effort to party with your guild-mates-to-be before the merger. Talk with the officers to find out how they handle conflict within their group. There's usually a reason that they are officers; maybe it's their leadersip ability, or their willingness to help others, or their skill as negotiators. Communication before, during, and after solves most problems, and for Pete's sake, deal with internal issues before joining together. Nobody wants a whole new load of problems dumped on them right after they join up.Have you ever been a part of a succesful merger? How did you make it work? What are your horror stories from failures?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
geepee Mar 6th 2006 1:37PM
I play on Bloodscalp where recently the guild i've been part of for awhile (Killer Rabbits LLP) merged with the Wyld Stallyns. I always enjoyed how laid-back the Killer Rabbits were, and I'm not sure I'm going to like being part of the Wyld Stallyns. We'll see what happens, but I'm sure I'll eventually be leaving the guild.
hkedi Mar 6th 2006 6:10PM
My guild, Unhinged destruction (horde) on Gorgonash, actually went through a very productive guild merge. before it happened, we had about 20 level 60s that could run well on the weekend, and we were doing guild ZG runs. We merged with another guild (Knights of Shadows) which was about our size (20 steady lvl 60's) and it worked out great to the point where we have taken down Sulfuron in MC. As far as the lessons learned on the merge dealing with the original article, I give the list below:
1)Best guilds to merge are "Good" guilds that just don't have the population.
Like I said, we had a core of 20 60's. not enough to do anything more than ZG (AQ was not open on our server at that time). The merger really was a joining of two equal guilds, not the aquisition of one guild by another. In this way we were very fortunate.
2) before the merge work out everything between the two guild leadership groups.
I'm not one of the leaders, but they were hashing out exactly what was going to happen when the merge took place. This not only considered who was guild leader and the officers, but the non-WoW properties as well. In our case, KoS moved to our web-site/forum, and all of the UHD people moved to their Ventrillo server. If you don't work this out, you start the new guild on a fonduation of mistrust and confusion; not a good way to go.
3)Stuff will change, FAST, get ready for a wild ride.
We went from a casual/barely-weekend-raiding guild to a major raiding guild overnight (I think we are 5th to 8th on the server right now). and because of this we needed to make our loot rules for guild raids, as well as clamping down on recruitment because we could suddenly do MC raids. For a week or two we actually closed recruitment entirely, just so we could all play with each other and let things settle down.
In many ways, a merger of guilds is like a merger of companies in real life. you have to have a good reason to merge, and a merging for a bad reason (i.e. AOL/Time Warner) can mess up both groups. Due diligance is needed, things will be confusing enough. Finally, beware of too much sucess, it can be just as dangerous as not enough.