Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficers' Quarters: No poaching!
by Scott Andrews 
Mar 10th 2008 at 11:00AM
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.If the wildlife in Nagrand didn't reproduce faster than rabbits injected with Viagra, one could accuse the genocidal Hemet Nesingwary, or even the Consortium (with their endless need for ivory tusks), of funding poaching on a massive scale. And of course, we would be the perpetrators, guilty of the annihilation of entire generations of species. But fortunately, those elekks, clefthooves, and talbuks never seem to become endangered. This week's e-mail is about a different kind of poaching, but one that is no less nefarious.
Hey. I have been reading your blog for awhile now and I am an officer in a small casual guild (66 accounts) that one day hopes to have some endgame on farm. The problem we seem to have is people just leaving with a stealth guild quit. When asked they normally say they left for a friends guild or something along the lines of "just wasn't working out." About a week later I see them in Shattrath with a guild tag of another guild that I know just poached them from us. I understand that it's their $15 a month but is there anything that we as a guild can do to keep them? We seem to lose one once a week.
This is really beginning to get on guild morale, and getting to the point where we have some people leveling from 60 and I am wondering if we will see them at 70 or if they will get poached along the way to one of the bigger guilds on the server that have progressed further into endgame. It has gone from having about 15 people on Saturdays to now to only about 8 people online. We were planning on doing Kara but we just can't get the people. I have been trying to recruit but I feel bad since I could just be poaching from another smaller guild. This is a low pop server so chances are I run with the same guild if not the same people that are poaching from us.
Xioyn, A-Cho'gall <Dark Covenant>
However, not everyone feels the same way I do. With the current state of Warcraft raiding, poaching is practically inevitable. There are only so many adequately skilled raiders on any given server, and with fewer people raiding every day, demand for them is high, particularly on a low-population server such as yours.
On top of that, there just aren't enough built-in reasons to stick with one guild. It would be great if Blizzard gave people better reasons to stick with their guilds. Guild banks were a step in the right direction as far as people feeling invested in some way. The possibility of guild-based attunements, hinted at by Tigole, could be another. But of course the other side of that coin would be losing members to another guild just because they've earned an attunement that your guild hasn't been able to accomplish. Guild housing could be a huge way for people to feel invested in their guild, but it seems to be pretty far down on Blizzard's priority list, just above collectively stabbing themselves in the eye with their car keys.
So where does that leave us? Well, recognizing that poaching is going to happen, you have two options: You can either blame the players who leave, or you can work hard to give your members reasons to stay. The only players that can be poached are players who aren't 100% happy where they are. Think about it: If you work for a certain company, and you absolutely love working there, corporate "headhunters" are going to have a very difficult time luring you away. On the other hand, if your boss is a jerk and they're paying you peanuts, it won't take much to get you to jump ship.
Xioyn, as an officer, it's up to you to keep all of your members happy and content to be right where there are. And unfortunately, in the long term, it's an impossible task. Even so, if people know that you're trying your best to help them achieve their goals, they are much more likely to stick around.
Do I feel guilty when someone comes to me from another guild under the circumstances I described above? Not a bit, and neither should you. The best way to recruit is simply to be a guild whose members have fun, and other people will catch on to that. That's not poaching -- that's just good leadership!
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters!
Filed under: Guilds, Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Carrie Mar 11th 2008 4:44AM
Xioyn,
No one is poaching from you. Trust me on this.
You can't get the people to put together a Kara run. Who would want to poach someone who hasn't even experienced the Kara fights? No one. It's better to recruit a fresh new 70 and not have the grief, than to "poach" someone who has been in one or two Kara fights and already has set ideas of how the fights should be done (which then have to be unlearned or just plain fought against).
Your members are not being poached, they are leaving for a guild that *can* get it done. That's all it is. It's nothing against you personally.
Make a list of the things that are keeping you from getting a solid team through Kara. Not enough healers? Too many people can't stay for the whole run? Folks showing up late? Unannounced AFKs? Seriously, make a list. Then show this list to your guild (most likely on your forums, you have those, right?). Call them out on it when they do something. Reward the people who put forth the effort, and find some way to reprimand people who don't (a dkp system of some kind is great for this). Make sure that *everyone* knows that the guild wants to be a raiding guild, and keep that first and foremost in their minds. Trust me, there are a mass of people in your guild right now (even plenty of 70's) who still think you're a casual guild. Even if you've been trying to get Kara runs together each week for 5 months.
Our guild recently gave up trying to raid, and we let our 70's move on. Looking back allowed me to see where we went wrong. Our officers are still together and even our 70's still get together in a shared chat channel even though we're in many seperate guilds now. We could try again now that the "casuals" have left and we have that wonderful 20/20 hindsight, but you know what... it isn't worth the headache.
If you really care about your guildies and want them to see as much end content as possible, consider letting them go. Our ex-guildies are experiencing things that would never have been possible with our old guild, and we're able to share in each others' victories and progression in our private chat channel.
Sometimes an "ending" isn't a dramafest, it's simply realizing that what's good for the guildies doesn't have to be what's good for the guild tag. One door closes, many more open.
And this is coming from someone who posted here at WI about 4 months ago saying we were here to stick it out and wait for the cream to rise to the top (as our door kept revolving). We lost too many players that simply QUIT playing completely because they couldn't stand to leave us, but they couldn't stand to sit around on Tuesday nights banging their heads against the summoning stone wishing we could get a full team together, either. We weren't doing those people any justice by keeping the guild together, we were simply holding them back. And now they're gone.
Much better that you still see your friends and are able to group up and play with them regularly, regardless of what the line under their name says, than to lose them completely and just hope that one day they log in again to say hi.
Netherscourge Mar 10th 2008 12:22PM
It's BLIZZARD'S FAULT.
Pre-BC, guild poaching was not a major problem - in fact, you had to turn down people WANTING to join your guild.
Now, thanks to the removal of 40-man raid dungeons, guild rosters are shrinking due to the limited availability of Raiding slots.
40-man raids were great because you didn't NEED all 40 to raid successfully, meaning there was plenty of room for people to join even after the primary class slots were full.
10-mans, and even 25-mans fill up fast. Nobody wants to get passed over week after week or be a "sub" for the guild-leader's real-life-friend who only sticks around till their favorite loot-dropping boss is downed and then logs off after midnight because "mom is yelling at them" or "there's a storm coming and lightning" or "I have to get up early for work tomorrow"... typical BS lies to get out of a full raid run.
Sorry, but most people hate waiting till midnight or later to get an invite into an already-started raid run.
Blizzard screwed it up for us - now we all suffer.
kenney Mar 10th 2008 2:07PM
Ironically, pre-bc we had issues trying to grow to 40 man raids (our timezone was a significant barrier). We were 20-manning Onyxia, Luciferon, and Magmadar- but we lost members as fast as we got them to guilds that had the numbers to go into blackwing lair and beyond.
Post-burning crusade our guild has been flourishing, and we've had to deal with a number of very different issues (mostly involving how to be fair to our raiders and casuals alike, and how to be fair to all the different personalities we are getting from new recruits that come to us). We've never actively recruited but our website combined with our wowjutsu rating seems to bring us a lot more members than we lose.
Maybe things will be different when/if our progression goes from being mediocre to being impressive. If not, I wonder how the 25-man dynamic has changed things so that some old 40-man guilds are having difficulties?
Ahoni Mar 10th 2008 3:27PM
Netherscourge said...
"It's BLIZZARD'S FAULT."
[snip]
"Blizzard screwed it up for us - now we all suffer."
Just quit. You will not be happy with anything, so why bother trying. My guild is thriving in 25 man content. If your guild is having problems, maybe the problem is you.
Savant Mar 11th 2008 2:17AM
I definately agree with the remark about smaller raids. Not only because of the limited availability of raid spots themselves, but because you could bring many lesser geared players in on a 40-man raid without much concern. (with the exception of server-first bleeding edge content) If someone went AFK, no big deal, they catch up. Heck, if you were short people for MC you could bring in people who hadn't even hit 60 yet. Try doing that with any content now. Poaching wasn't an issue then since you could always bring in new people and gear them up as you go.
Nowadays, everyone needs to be geared up before they enter, and with smaller raids you need all hands on deck, if someone is afk you have to wait. Every encounter requires textbook precision. There is no margin for error anymore, and that really limits the type of people that you can bring on a raid.
Frank Smith Mar 10th 2008 12:49PM
start again at 70. seriously.
and if you want to be a raid giuld, you leadership with a strong sense of direction (as to what they want and when from pve content) and an ability to push people. raiders need that.
if you don't provide it, someone else will.
it's hard to comment on poaching pre-70.
hpavc Mar 10th 2008 12:36PM
WoW's social system sucks, the idea that people have to drop guilds to raid is a throwback to the top down EQ method.
Also there needs to be creativity in the the server to server system. Especially with the huge PvP draw that hits players.
Druid dude Mar 10th 2008 12:40PM
Poaching, to me, is actively recruiting players from another guild. "Hey, wanna join us? We are farther along and you can get more uber leet purples here!" In my experience, that is very rare.
What happens is that a person will simply apply to a guild. That is not poaching, that is someone leaving because they aren't satisifed with where they are at.
So the issue described in the article here is extremely unlikely to have anything to do with poaching. I very seriously doubt their members are getting secretive whispers from guilds "Hey, I see you just turned 70! How about you quit that loser guild and come raid with us!"
The only defense to people leaving is to create an environment that people don't want to leave. And doing that is an entire series of articles in itself.
theRaptor Mar 10th 2008 2:43PM
Yup, especially when the guild in the article isn't even in Kara. People are getting a free ride while levelling and jumping ship for a guild that is already running kara when they get close to 70. I haven't heard of many kara guilds that actually poach completely un-geared characters, you would have to be really desperate for specific classes to do that.
Manatank Mar 10th 2008 5:22PM
I was in a casual guild that was fun and the GL had aspirations of progressing towards end game content. I was an officer and put my heart and soul into helping my fellow guildies gear up and key up to start Kara because I also wanted to begin progression. This was a mistake that ultimately tore the guild in half. We made it into Kara, but only a handful of people had the skill and desire to work at progressing further. We were at an impass, because while we had more than 10 people who could go to Kara, we just weren't making headway because of how casual most of the players were.
Being casual is not a crime, and I wasn't going to make people feel bad that they weren't pulling their weight when it seemed that most of them were only showing up to Kara because the GL was so passionate about her desire to progress. I also wasn't willing to keep wiping on the same easy encounters because the people forced into raiding just didn't seem to have the passion for it. After you make sure everyone has more than sufficient gear to do the job, you offer helpful suggestions when they make mistakes, and it still can't get done, what else can you do? I mean if we couldn't even get 10 people pushed through Kara, how were we ever going to break into 25-mans?
I left for another guild, and the handful of people who had the skill and the passion went along with me (concurrently might be more appropriate as I wasn't leading an exodus, nor was I the reason they left). We had all been exposed to another guild through some joint Kara runs. These were the first full clears that most of us had experienced, and like our current guild these were fun people to hang out with too. We weren't poached, but we had all seen greener pastures and didn't want to go back to wiping on Curator.
When we left, our old GL accused our new GL of poaching, and dragged all of our names through the mud. She was furious that we had "betrayed" her. I don't understand this mentality. I thought we would be missed, but I didn't see our previous guild membership as some kind of obligation (what progress we had made prior to our departure had largely rested on the shoulders of the people who left). She acted as though we were her property and it was immoral for us to leave (we were nearly all officers). She berated the other GL for "stealing" her best people. Where does this sense of entitlement come from? I see traces of it in some of the other posts in this thread from some of the people angry about poaching. She wanted to be the guild leader of a successful raiding guild, but she had not created an environment where that was going to happen.
As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, expectations need to be set for where the guild is going to be moving. If the guild does not move in that direction, do not be surprised if you begin to lose members. They are not your property, and if you want to be a leader you have to be able to deliver on your promises. If you find that your guild is stumbling, do not ignore the issue. Address the problems, and make sure to keep an open dialog with the guild. Be encouraging, but don't set your sights higher than you can reasonably archive. If you consistently over-promise and under-deliver eventually your guild will notice.
As a side note, if you ever find yourself as a GL thinking, "look at all these people in my guild... I feel so important," then you are probably trying to lead a guild for the wrong reasons.
Theserene Mar 10th 2008 12:59PM
In so far as 'advertising' our guild (yes, we recruit all the time) I have a small post on the realm forums and that is it.
Most of our newcomers joined us for a Kara run while in another guild, liked us and jumped to us. What I hear more often is that the guilds they left were only concerned with doing PvP or Arenas, and no-one was interested in the PvE content.
I won't spam /trade with guild adverts but I will take anyone into the guild who wants to join. If people wish to leave my guild then I generally want to know why and if it is something we can improve on. If not, I wish them well. I'd rather not try and hold on to someone who is not happy.
BTW, have seriously reprimanded guild members in the past who have asked people in other guilds 'hey, wanna join our guild?'. It really does not do the guild reputation any good.
kenney Mar 10th 2008 1:18PM
Seeing a new guild title over someone's head a few days after leaving isn't an indicator of them getting "poached". People don't like to stay guildless, and I imagine that before the /gquit ever happens, they have some sense of where they would like to go.
The best advice I can give is to figure out what about your current guild structure is causing you to hemorrhage members. Some loss is natural, but if it is 1 a week, then there is an issue. If you aren't in kara yet, I'm guessing that may be a big part of the issue- that you have a guild that is set up to be good for leveling to 70 in, but doesn't offer anything when you hit 70.
Here's the best advice I can think of:
1) Be consistent. Set up scheduled guild stuffs, keep the schedules, learn from every failure.
2) Nurture a guild culture. If you don't have web forums, get them now. Provide incentive to use them (raid/instance signups are a good start)
3) Be friendly and professional when people leave. Tell them that you have been losing a lot of people lately, and while you wish them well, you would appreciate it if they could give you some advice on how to make your guild more attractive to someone like them.
4) IF it turns out raiding is the issue (and I bet it is a big part), think about guild-seeded kara pugs, and/or an alliance with another small guild to start having a few cracks at gruul.
5) Know what your objectives are, and make sure you run your guild in a way that makes sense for those objectives. If you have a bunch of random pre-70s, and your goal is to be raiding black temple 4 nights a week- there is a serious disconnect between where you are and where you want to go, and you will be lucky to have 1 person in your current membership who wants to commit to the level of dedication required to hit that objective.
I don't know what keeps some people in some guilds, and other guilds fall apart. I think a lot of it has to do with consistency and fairness from the leadership. Whenever I see bitterness about players being "poached", I feel like I see a big part of the problem right there: the guild leadership feels a sense of ownership of its' members.
I think #5 is a really important point. We almost never lose anyone in our guild, and when we do, it is usually because they want to be in a different kind of guild than we are running (usually they leave to join a guild that raids on a more hardcore schedule than we do). I think that when people come to us, they know what they are getting, and we deliver it. It makes it hard to poach from us. I suspect pretty much all of our "raider" statused members already know a number of guilds that would welcome them, but that isn't a bad thing, that just makes them feel good about themselves.
theRaptor Mar 10th 2008 3:02PM
Also don't say you "want to raid kara" or be "a serious end game guild" unless you have already done these things. Very few people are going to stick with you if you have absolutely no end game experience. That pretty much doesn't work unless your guild is mostly your RL friends or from another game.
Ogon Mar 10th 2008 3:23PM
I recently transferred from the server i started on 3 years ago with a real life friend to Medivh, in search of guilds doing 25 man content. Me and my friend got the BEST gear possible, full epics best gems we could get our hands on thousands of gold maxed tradeskills, and headed off prepared for SSC/TK.
Then I realised every raiding guild on Medivh works like a company. Every guild interested in me told me to "Go to their boards, and fill out an application". So, I would spend 30 minutes at a time filling these things out, only to hear "Thank you Ogon, we will get in touch with you when we have the time!" and when i wait for a few days and then go to them myself they tell me their busy, and will talk to me at a later date. What the fuck am i applying for a job or something?
isamu619 Mar 10th 2008 3:31PM
I'm a recruitment officer to a BT/Hyjal guild and we have strict policies against poaching. We do not however restrict anyone from app'ing with us. It just means we don't actively recruit members who have a guild tag.
For example, we've been told by friends of a potential app that they are interested in app'ing with us. But if they are tagged, we will not make first contact. If someone contacts us and asks us information on the guild, we are more than happy to talk to them.
However, since we built this guild from the ground up with pugs, I definitely understand the difficulties with bleeding players to larger, more progressed guilds. The transition from casual -> raiding, or 10 -> 25 man or even from T5 -> T6 are extremely difficult and require a ton of organization and planning, and a fair amount of luck quite honestly.
We started on a large server and had to constantly compete with larger, more progressed guilds for players. We lost quite a few and almost reached a point where we couldn't raid 25man anymore. So we took our core raiders and transferred to a medium pop server and though it took 5 months, we're now the #1 alliance guild on the server.
The trick really is to make your guild a place people want to be, through good times and bad. Be fair, be organized and be consistent in how you run things. Make sure you get people who are great players and even better people. If you want it to last, look at more than an armory link. Ask them hard questions and trust your instincts on people.
Every single app we get has to go through a very lengthy app process which includes an hour interview on vent. And our decline rate is extremely high, even for well geared players. Basically if we get any red flags that they might mess with what we have, we pass. It's safer in the long run.
isamu619 Mar 10th 2008 3:37PM
@Ogon
You're applying for a position in a guild where in all likelihood you'll spend upwards of 20+ hours with these people. So in a way, it is like applying for a job.
How would you handle it if you were in their position I'm curious?
We had an guy who refused to fill out an app for the same reason you just echoed, it wasn't a job. So we respectfully told him our policy is that all people fill out apps (no exceptions) and we would pass on him. He's still looking for an end game raiding guild the last I checked.
You would be hard press to find a serious end game raiding guild that didn't use apps. Guilds deal with a lot of apps, we need ways to pre-screen people. Our time is precious as well. If a person doesn't have the dedication and patience to fill out an app, I'm sorry to say you probably don't want them in your raid as you spend 2-3 weeks wiping on Kael.
Nick S Mar 10th 2008 9:52PM
this could be my guild... people want end-game, basically, and a small guild isn't the fastest way to get there. ironically, this very problem is part of the reason small guilds stay small and get "stuck."
npm Mar 10th 2008 4:37PM
I think a few things can lead to member retention. One is that if members actually like each other and have bonded, they're not going to abandon each other. I had a group of people I ran instances with all the time and we had a great team, I wouldn't have left them for anything. But the team broke up as people got busy in RL and had to play less. So our guild merged with another and that didn't work out at all. The new guild didn't ever make any attempt to get to know us. No bonds formed. Most of us eventually left.
So I decided it was time to move on. Fortunately I found an awesome new guild. My new guild is keeping my loyalty by keeping me busy with raids and progression. They're nice folks too.
I can respect the difficulty small guilds face in getting enough people to progress. I think the task is probably nearly insurmountable for most small guilds. It takes a huge effort to get beyond that. And most members aren't going to be satisfied to wait for months or possibly longer for it to happen.
Ardent Mar 10th 2008 5:10PM
Several times I've been asked to leave a current guild for another one. Every time I have politely declined. When the guild I'm in collapses out from under me, I find that the reputation I've developed as a solid individual who doesn't casually abandon a guild for progression serves to keep doors open for me even long after they've been closed for others.
Of course, being one of the best geared Tankadins on the server helps, but I've even been asked to come into guilds that already have a Tankadin because my Ret and Holy sets are decent too.
RetPallyJil Apr 23rd 2008 11:16PM
The most I'll do is tell someone, "If there is ever a problem with your guild, we'd love to have you."
And I don't even do that very often.