Guild politics: Dictatorship or Democracy?
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Apr 6th 2007 at 2:14PM
It's sometimes hard to make analogies between WoW and real life. After all, in WoW people know the world is entirely imaginary and that they can easily disassociate from their guild or the game itself, which is a bit harder to do in the real world. Nevertheless, it's a truism that there are as many ways to run a guild as there are ways to run a country.
Most guilds seem to be based on the "dictator + loyal advisors" model. The guild master is the be-all, end-all of decision-making in the guild. Sure, there can be votes or opinions expressed by the rest of the guild, but the GM is the final authority on everything. Most GMs don't have enough time to micromanage everything in the guild, so they usually delegate it to officers, class leaders, and second-in-commands. This system can be great if the GM is nice and terrible if the GM is corrupt or controlling. Many guilds have met their downfall from megalomaniac GMs or conspiring officers, although a GM who goes totally off the wall isn't going to have a guild for long. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, except apparently for George Washington.
A lot of guilds use a council system, which works particularly well in guild mergers. But although every council member is supposed to be equal, someone still has to have those GM powers. Death and Taxes seems to have come up with an unusual solution to this issue -- their official GM is the guild bank. They have several members at the second rank in their guild, suggesting that they either use a council system or the actual GM has a TON of alts.
A few guilds have moved up on the social evolution scale to become republics or democracies. Republican (little r, not big R) guilds have elected officers and GMs that rotate every time an election is held. A guild on my server had this system, and it worked great until the elections stopped and the GM started appointing officers. After that, things fell apart quickly. In a democratic guild, every member has an equal say. Much like in real life, this does not work for large groups of people. There are also some fringe guilds that use variants of other political systems, like communism (everything you've got belongs to the guild bank, and you need to spend your time farming for it) and anarchy (think most PVP guilds.)
What system does your guild use? What do you think is the best way to run a guild? Do you like being a GM or officer, or would you rather just slip under the radar?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hehe Apr 6th 2007 2:29PM
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort-of-executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority
Melf Apr 6th 2007 2:38PM
Our guild (Apotheosis - http://www.apotheosis.org) is very democracy oriented -- even to a fault sometimes. Each person has the opportunity to vote on any applicants and can propose changes to the bylaws or loot system at any time. Applicants must be sponsored and have vouchers before voting can take place, and amendments to the bylaws have to go through a mandatory discussion period and have at least 5 people who support the amendment before it can go to a vote. Additionally, applicants and amendments must receive a majority vote in favor to get invited/accepted.
On the adminstrative side of things, we have a number of "administrators" and "councils" to get things done. The GM does have ultimate power, but he doesn't abuse it. The Bank Council (3 members) fulfills bank requests and does research for upcoming instances and events to best manage guild resources. Nobody has to donate, it's all voluntary. Though crafting items collected during raids are banked. The Grievance Council (3 members) is the judicial side and makes sure that people stay in line. They hear complaints and enforce the bylaws when needed.
Then there are the administrators -- Amendment Administrator (me) makes sure that voting and amendment process goes smoothly. The Recruitment Administrator handles invites and voting on applicants. The RPP (our zerosum dkp method) Administrator maintains the point database for all characters.
So do I like the democratic method? Definitely. Does it sometimes get bogged down when people don't participate? Of course! Luckily all 55+ of us are pretty active ;)
James Apr 6th 2007 2:42PM
I've been a part of two raiding guilds, both of which had approx. 50-60 unique people in the guild. Without a doubt, both guilds were firm followers of the "Highschool Sophomore Clique of People Who Are Better Than You and Who Personally Don't Care if You Live or Die" (HSCPWABTYWPDCYLD) political philosophy.
This political system basically centers around a select group of people, usually 5-10, who team together, hang out together in RL, and who basically want nothing to do with anyone else in the guild except when they need your toon for a MC (Kara now) run. I say toon because they don't really need or care about whoever is playing, as long as they can get an OT or some extra DPS. Once the raid is done, its off to Strat (or a Heroic Blood Furnace run) to hang out and get away from the low-lifes.
Needless to say, this model works quite well. It lends itself well to ridiculous guild drama, with the best being when someone in the innercircle gets mad at someone else. Or, in the case of one of the guilds I was in, causes the GM to quit, take several high level people with him who also raid the guild bank on their way out. Then, the remaining guild members, apparently not learning anything from this, start a new guild only to have the identical thing happen 4 months later with the added bonus that RL friendships got destroyed in the process when the innercircle split in two. Now? Two new guilds exist, and I'm sure they'll see unprecedented raiding success right up until Labor Day when both implode and start all over again.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of this model. So much so that my end-game gear will be made entirely of PvP gear and Heroic 5-man gear.
martineau Apr 6th 2007 2:46PM
I just started my guild, Army of the Light, on The Underbog server. What I did was make the 7 signers of my charter who stayed in the guild officers; these guys can invite to the guild but can’t remove; only I can remove. I then recruited 8 more to act as veterans; veterans can also invite but can’t remove. When I get 10 in a class that class will close, and I will hold an election to get a class officer. Once I get a class officer for a particular class only they can recruit for that class, and only if the numbers for that class are bellow 10 members. Once I have all 9 class leaders, the original 7 officers will become councilman, and will help me make big decisions for the guild; with impute from our 9 elected class officers. The 9 class officers have the ability to remove a councilman from power, but there has to be a 75% consensus; class members are able to remove class officers with the same consensus. When a councilman is removed the 9 class leaders must have a replacement decided on; same with the members if they remove a class leader. If any of these groups wish to remove a leader but can’t agree on a replacement, I can then pick anyone I choose to fill the slot. So when the guild is fully formed: I and the 7 councilman will be in a leadership position, but won’t be able to recruit; only the 9 class leaders will recruit, but they won’t have much power other then leading there class in raids. Well see how it works.
Hank Apr 6th 2007 3:14PM
Is it possible to have 'not quite anarchy'? We have a leader, but his only decision, in the 10 months I've been there, wasn't such a good one- "Hey, let's move to the new server post BC!" Granted, our existing server was going to hell, but I think we jumped too quick.
Other than that...there's no real leadership, and we're PvE.
Triptych Apr 6th 2007 3:02PM
I'm in a casual raiding guild, the GM has the final word , but officers (me+others) have a hand in making decisions. So far it has worked well, we have no drama, and it's more about having fun and making friends rather than downing "X" boss tonight no matter what it takes. We don't require people to respec, if you want to it's up to you, you can bring pots in raids if you want, if not someone always has extras.
Over all I think the GM+Officers works better over the democracy thing because to tell you the truth most people need leadership. Yes, to some leadership skills and abilities come naturally or more easily, but people need to be led rather than just give opinions and going with what "sounds" the best. Another thing that I think makes things run smoother is the fact that we really don't get people that are under 21, so people are more mature, and willing to take constructive criticism in a non-personal way.
I love the guild that i'm in and wouldn't change a thing! ^_^ The really funny thing is that the server, Haomarush, is east coast, but most of the guild members just happen to be in Cali which is nice, i'm trying to organize a raid on Las Vegas :p I dunno we'll see what happens. You can check out at www.dheroes.net
Zinger Apr 6th 2007 3:20PM
Dragonbane-A over on Garona was a good guild till the day members from Dragonbane on a different server came over and the two merged. At that point, the high-and-mighty's from server two pretty much took over and took the fun away from our smaller, tighter knit group. Then there were too many of each class and even if you signed up for a raid using group calendar, the preferred guildees would get the spot regardless of signing up or not.
PS: Shortmidget sucks.
RogueJedi86 Apr 6th 2007 3:22PM
It seems like guild politics only applies to guilds that are actually doing stuff. I'm in a casual guild that does nothing, the most we do is chat with each other, and occasionally ask for help on quests. With levels ranging from 5-65, it's never really had a need for a leader to give orders. No need to lead people when all we do is casually chat in /g. But I know that's the exception, not the rule.
James Apr 6th 2007 3:38PM
Casual guilds I don't think have too much trouble with the politics. The trouble starts when you get a bunch of people together who don't necessarily all like each other, and then put them into a high pressure situation like downing Ragnaros. One of the most successful guilds on my former server had no pretences about the whole thing--it was a business for them. In fact, they took payment from others to run them through raids. Sure, some of them of might have been friends, but they were very clinical about it all, and since alot of the passion was taken out of the process, they were very successful in their raiding. Now, I don't know if they were fun or not, but they were efficient.
This can be contrasted with a casual raiding guild I was in where everyone 'friends' and it was one big happy family etc, etc. That's how they billed themselves, and the place was a mess. So, in a way, running a guild more like a corporation could be pretty effective, at least from a management standpoint. Everyone who joins knows that the guild isn't there to make them friends, they are there to raid. Again, whether or not this would be fun is a matter of perspective.
Oh, and having a solid, understandable and fair DKP system doesn't hurt.
dean Apr 6th 2007 4:00PM
Casual guilds have problems too. I was an officer for five years in another game, and the biggest problems we had were personality related. Mostly that boiled down to people acting like they in charge when they weren't or being completely paranoid about anything anyone did.
As far as guild mergers go, we tried that a couple of times, and both times that officers in the other guild didn't mesh well with ours. When one of these people in particular didn't get their way, they went out of their way to make it look like the guild leadership was doing all kinds of crazy things behind the scenes. I've never met someone so vindictive.... well, just about ever.
The raiding we did worked pretty well, but that's mostly because we only recruited people that had our same mentality, and didn't get too worked up about loot. The people that did get worked up ended up leaving for greener pastures. Later they realize dthat they had it pretty good in our guild, so they tried to come back. Some made it, some didn't.
....I wouldn't want to be an officer again though.
Dan B. Apr 6th 2007 4:17PM
I'm an officer in a adults-only casual guild on Sen'jin-H, which shares a channel with 3 other guilds for grouping, raids, etc. Despite being casual guilds, we've done several ZG and AQ20 runs, and are starting to put together TBC Raids.
Our guild has our GM, and then 8 officers (for around 80 accounts). Our GM is leadership, and a public face, but really, he's just first among equals. He's the ultimate arbiter, but it's never come to that in a year. He's more like a cat-herder.
Lori Apr 6th 2007 4:21PM
My current guild, that I joind last October for raiding, is the GM+10 friends/all the rest trash or HSC......CYLD type. As a part of the trash group, I don't like it at all. But they use me, I use them, neither one cares except for a few occasions when the GM "rmembered" something about DKP that took loot away from me and gave it to someone else. Decisions are made in backroom chat and are usually announced by "oh yeah, thats what we are doing now" when someone questions an action. There are never any posts on the guild site from the GM+10. Only trivial personal stuff from the Trash. This guild was number 3 on it's server last December but in what terms I don't know.
It would be interesting to see a post here from a GM of this type of guild to read their reason for being this way.
Rebekka Apr 7th 2007 6:53PM
I've been a member in several Guilds, an officer in a few Guilds, and Guild Master in two Guilds. To be honest, caual Guilds are exactly what they are...casual. No one is expecting the Guild to last to be able to do the 25-mans in Outlands. How can you when you are a "casual" Guild. Like the one poster alluded to, if you want to be a SUCCESSFUL Guild and you define SUCCESS as downing the latest and greatest BOSS, you have to think of WoW as a job. It's hard work and takes effort to accomplish.
That being said, I do see a place for "casual" Guilds. When you are leveling from Level 1 to Level 70, you want people to hang out with, talk to, run instances with, etc., etc. And, obviously, at that point no one really, really cares how you are specced. However, once I'm ready to run Kara (at the present time), I want HARDCORE people who treat the game as a job and not as a way to relax after a day at work, etc., etc. You have got to be specced the right way, you have a specific job to do, etc., etc.
Just my two cents. In the meantime, if you want to find a nice "casual" Guild, check out Unity on Terokkar Server. A nice group to level with. End-Game, at this point, remains to be seen.
Tainted_Mage Apr 28th 2007 9:18AM
IDK really what type we are we don't force people to do things and when it comes to name changes and stuff we take votes. We do have a co-GM thats always on because the GM is always busy......and of course every few months he comes on and does a newbie clean up meaning all the people who haven't been on in a while either get their status demoted or /Gkicked but i guess its probably Democratic......not really forced into anything we can sign ourselves up for stuff
James Apr 6th 2007 5:32PM
@12
You can see my earlier post regarding my experience with 2 similar guilds. I made the mistake in the first guild of buying into their whole we're all friends crap, and learned quickly that was a falsehood believed by all 10 or so people on the inside. The second guild I was not that naive. I understood that I'd never be in the their innercircle, and didn't want to be. I was there to see the sights and get some better gear, not to make friends or even have social interaction other than to raid. Why are guilds like this? I think there are two reasons. One is that it is just general human behavior. Most people like to have their in-group, and an out-group. If its a few close friends in a guild, that's not going to be happen. It happens in school, work, or pretty much any social situation. But, when they become a few close friends who decided to make a raiding guild, then number Two happens (literally and figuratively).
The group of close friends remain that way, and everyone else is, as you said, 'used' for raids etc. Aside from raids, they won't piss on the out-group if they were on fire. A few people may cross over into that closed group at the top, but most won't. Guilds like this are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and it is an unfair situation for anyone not on the inside. DKP gets 'tweaked', people get removed from raids to let someone's buddy in, and if there is ever a fracture in that inner group, everyone suffers. I would be really interested to hear from GM's in these guilds that play favorites as well, though I doubt any of them will speak up either because they don't see the problem, or they know its a problem and don't want to talk about it.
I'd like to hear from GM's of guilds who formed solely for raiding--no real friendships, just a group of people with the single purpose of end-game raiding and nothing else. Is the group dynamic different? Is there as much guild drama? Is DKP and raid placing carefully managed and devoid of favoritism?
Tseran Apr 6th 2007 11:26PM
Our guild (Piscus Inferno on Kirin Tor) is a very friendly and open guild when it comes to policies and how we decide things. We kinda follow Death and Taxes style, making the official guild master tag belong to one of the guild banks. One of mine in fact, that I rarely log on to except to transfer stuff in and out of the bank. We have a group of Offishers (yes, that's how we spell it) who make descisions and make final votes, but we do bring almost all guild change ideas to the guild as a whole to discuss first. The guild has grown from two separate exodus from two other guilds we were allied with for raiding, and have become like a big family. Ironically, most of our arguments are along the lines of "Hey, this is a bigger upgrade for you, take it! No, I don't want it as much as you do, take it!"
One thing, being on a RP server, we have to avoid drama that we have seen as the downfall of other guilds. This is one of the reasons that we insist on knowing the people that we have in our guild. Sure, we are relaxed, and playful (Look for the First Interdimensional Air Show coming to Strattrath soon!) but we a family, and so we are tight knit, and don't want things to go wrong. The funny thing is, I was scared of joining when I first looked for a guild, but once I got to know everyone, it just went awesome.
Ghen Apr 7th 2007 10:23AM
My former guild was somewhat unique. The GM was a fantastic leader who didn't care one whit about politics. they did their job quite well leading raids, helping people in 5 mans, telling jokes, and just overall making people feel welcome. It was the other officers who decided that exclusion was for the win apparently. They would LFG in the officer channel, make threads about why people should be kicked out of the guild in the officer forums, and hold grudges for well over 6 months even when an individual has apologized for wronging said officer.
All of this was completely opaque from the rest of the highly successful guild, such was their secrecy. Officer status was only granted to those willing to think like they do, and if someone dares go against the other officers they get demoted in a flash with zero explanation to the rest of the guild.
Then comes TBC.
Our insanely smart and funny guild leader decides to re-roll and starts from scratch with their RL friends. Noone is raiding anymore but 5 mans are flying in abundance. Officers are only LFG with officers and are very successful, while other hardcore members are left guessing as to when they might instance next (mind you these are tanks and healers left guessing sometimes!) The guild leader gets his position usurped and one of the inner circle is appointed. Slowly things start to change. Officers who used to be extremely active and friendly to the guildies are forced from the game or demoted, and the inner circle starts talking about "Cutting the Chaff" (exact words). Now from my point of view I find every single guild member to be at least a 9/10 in terms of skill, and at least 8/10 in personality. As comparison, I'd say server average is 3/10 in both. So why Cut the Chaff? Because the inner circle never groups with guildies and just. doesn't. know. them.
This is the point where I leave the guild, I asked for help about some finer points of tanking gear and get flamed by my worst opponent who said I had no idea how to play my own class. /gquit
The guild? You know who you are. I'm not hiding my name.
Choktzul Apr 7th 2007 10:09PM
My guild, Servants of Kaelthas, (servantsofkaelthas.wikispaces.com , look us up!!) Is run by me and 18 officers. I elect the officers with help from the current officers. Officers are very important, so we are not full on officers yet. The officers help me to plan big event, etc