Officers' Quarters: Friends in high places
by Scott Andrews 
Jan 10th 2009 at 2:20PM
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Here's another /facepalm situation to complement the one I wrote about last week. What's the first thing you would do if you were suddenly appointed the leader of your guild? Would you talk to members about the direction they'd like you to take the guild? Maybe smooth things over with the other officers who might be a little stung that they weren't chosen to take over? This week's e-mail comes from a raid leader in a guild whose new GL took an entirely different path.
Hello there. I wanted to share some issues I'm having with my current guild. You see, I happen to be the paladin Class Master, and one of the raid leaders of an originally casual guild that got some interest into raiding.
However, problems started about 2 weeks ago, when our Guild Leader decided to quit the game, due to RL reasons. Since then, one of the other officers took over, being designated by the old GL before he left. The thing is . . . the recruitment policy changed from, you know, applying, getting our "probation" status for a week or so to see how the initiate liked the guild and vice versa, to "Hey, let´s get some of my friends in! They have already cleared Naxx!" (As if it was something like "WOO they beat Sunwell before 3.0!") And not only did they get invited, but also promoted to raider/officer status right away . . .
That ticked me off . . .
However, problems started about 2 weeks ago, when our Guild Leader decided to quit the game, due to RL reasons. Since then, one of the other officers took over, being designated by the old GL before he left. The thing is . . . the recruitment policy changed from, you know, applying, getting our "probation" status for a week or so to see how the initiate liked the guild and vice versa, to "Hey, let´s get some of my friends in! They have already cleared Naxx!" (As if it was something like "WOO they beat Sunwell before 3.0!") And not only did they get invited, but also promoted to raider/officer status right away . . .
That ticked me off . . .
However, I have been having some rough weeks at work, so I decided to take it slow and see if it was just because of stress, but the thing is . . . the "new group" started going to Naxx 10 man, while the morale of the other members went down. I tried to put up LOTS and I mean LOTS of Heroic runs to gear up the members that just dinged 80, and well, you know, get a raid group started, but people just aren't motivated . . . They don't sign up for raids, and if they do they don't show up, not even for Heroics anymore . . . I´m getting tired, bored and yes . . . frustrated. I happen to be thinking about leaving but some people I care for are still there, and I guess the guild morale will go down even further if one of the officers/class masters leaves as well. Any tips?
Yikes.
Way back in May 2007, I wrote a column called How to Destroy Your Guild. It was my second ever post on the site! This was before I realized I couldn't possibly keep up with writing more than one column per week and I managed to squeeze in an extra feature now and then. Why do I bring it up now? Well, my friend, it's because your new guild leader just checked off number 4 on my list: make all your friends officers.
In the original column, I talked more about real-life friends. I'm not sure if it's better or worse to make all your in-game friends officers. At least in this case you already know that they know how to play the game. But there's probably quite a few things you don't know about them, such as, perhaps, how they deal with conflict, or what kinds of personal issues they have going on outside the game, or how they'll manage the mantle of leadership you've suddenly thrust upon them.
Or if they will, for example, take over all the raids and leave your other members high and dry. Just last week I talked about trying to get more people involved in raids. Guilds need to give members who have worked hard to get ready for raids a chance to attend. It's particularly bad in this case because (a) the people hogging the raid slots are brand new members and (b) they're now officers, too!
If your new GL has turned the guild into an organization that exists solely to support his own private club, you are in big trouble. In the long term, this social atmosphere will never work. Members will gradually slip away one by one as they realize they have no future in the guild. Someday it'll be just the GL and his friends, and the rare few who haven't yet discovered what's going on.
And that's assuming nothing else happens. This GL has shown poor judgment so far. Being a good player does does not qualify you to be a good leader. The two things have nothing to do with each other. I've met great players who would be absolute disasters as officers, and I've met mediocre players with excellent leadership skills. (And let me be clear, as the writer of the e-mail has already alluded to this point: clearing Naxx does not make you a great or even a good player. It just means you're probably not a terrible player.) This poor judgment by the GL could come into play in other situations and make matters far worse as time goes on.
It's possible that he invited his friends to help the guild progress through raids and that he intends to make sure other people get a shot once the more experienced members put the zone on farm. That wouldn't be quite so bad. But the fact that he immediately promoted all these guys hints that this outcome isn't part of the plan.
The best thing you can do here, if you intend to stay, is to try to start up a second raiding group of the original members. If you've been a raid leader for a while, people will trust you to lead good runs. But it's troubling that people aren't showing up for what you're scheduling.
You should talk to a few of the people who haven't been there and try to find out why they're not interested. It could be the guild morale, as you speculate, but it could also be other stuff. You can't know for sure until you ask. Their reasons could actually be fixable on your end, if it's just a scheduling conflict or if they want to play a different class or role.
If you can get another run going every week, it will improve morale considerably. Just make sure your run doesn't conflict with any of your guild leader's runs. You don't want to provoke him. Depending on how your guild operates, it might even be a good idea to get clearance from him before you move forward with it.
However, even a second raid isn't a fix for the leadership crisis. I'm sure you're not the only one who's angry about the promotions. If you decide to leave and join another guild (or form your own), there's a pretty good chance that others may want to follow you, especially if you've been a good raid leader. It's definitely a risk that some of the people you're close to may not want to leave the guild, but that doesn't mean you'll never talk to them again, as long as you stay on the server.
I have to say that, in this particular situation -- and keeping in mind that my information is limited -- it sounds like leaving the guild is your best choice for the long term. And that goes for anyone who isn't part of the new guild leader's inner circle.
/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! For more WoW Insider gameplay columns, click here.Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Liquoid Jan 10th 2009 6:15PM
TBH, i'd leave too
link Jan 10th 2009 6:31PM
I'm in a similar situation. I followed a RL friend from our old semi casual guild to a newer semi raiding guild after our initial casual guild fell apart after wrath came out. Our old GL and officer core essentially stopped playing, and 6 or 8 of us hit 80 and languished for a month without raiding or scheduling in guild heroics. At a certain point, those of us who were still active decided to join a guild with whom we'd been running 10 mans. Now we're in a similar position in the new guild as the one we'd just left. The officer core and a few of us are all as geared as we can be form 10 man's and are pugging 25 man's externally to the guild. Fresh 80's never get to learn in 10 man's and never get invited to our 25 man's for lack of gear. We've discussed within the more geared portion of the guild a variety of solutions, including including a few newer raiders at a time in our badge farming 10 man runs, and running heroics with them, but unfortunately, we're still hemorrhaging fresh ding 80's to guilds that run multiple 10 man's, and fear for our ability to field 25 people for an in guild raid before Ulduar comes out. I'm curious to get some suggestions. So far our game plan is to continue pugging the rest of 25 man's, but trying to bring in guildies as they get gear/skills, and fill needed slots (basically just dps, as we have more than enough tanks and healers already...)
Amaxe Jan 10th 2009 6:41PM
The biggest thing that destroys guilds in my experience is factionalism. I recall on my guild experience back when I was running on Burning Legion, a group (mostly the officers) of our main guild wanted to do a raiding guild while the GL did not have time to devote to it.
I followed my friend (hanging together was why I joined WoW in the first place). It was then that I discovered this was essentially a surprise /gquit and nobody told the GL (I had thought it was going to be an alliance between us and the old guild with different emphases). It seems this was a disgruntled faction that split the guild.
Well, live by the faction, die by the faction. We had a member join who was a major smacktard, spamming the guild channel and continually warned to quit it. Finally after some continual spamming, we officers had a meeting and of the 7 of 9 officers present, 5 voted to gkick. The other two through a tantrum, saying it was unfair. Since one of the dissenters was our main tank, we had to back off.
We would have been better to wave /bye to the tank because this faction began to demand more and more until in disgust, the GL typed /gdisband without warning. Personally I didn't blame him. I was ready to quit, both the guild and WoW.
I think some key rules that need to be in place are:
1) The person who is an officer is a person who is reliable and trustworthy, not just a person with high playing skill. It's better to risk losing a skilled slot then to wreck a guild by making a bad leader an officer.
2) If there is friction between two players, one or both of them should not be officers
3) Once an issue is voted on, all the officers need to agree to follow it and not backbite or bitch about it
I'm sure others have their own recommendations based on their bad guild experiences, but those are the ones that wrecked my Burning Legion server's guild.
SkwidSpawn Jan 10th 2009 6:44PM
I'm surprised that talking with the guild leader and expressing your issues to him hasn't been brought up. Obviously he is doing the wrong thing with this guild, and going elsewhere is the best plan. You'd be surprised what a little chat with a guild leader can accomplish sometimes though.
Ian Jan 10th 2009 7:16PM
I was in a similar situation in a nother game.
We wen't from being a casual pve guild, to casual pvp to "pvp is srs bsns". The guild as a whole was fine with this, and we continued to progress, climb the ladder and grow as a pvp guild. But one day the guild leader, without warning, decided to up and quit and hand off the guild to the new member who joined just a few weeks prior to the guild leader's rage quittage.
The member said over guild chat "hey, I've got a few good friends who want in. They're great players and would be a great asset to the team". This was fine and dandy...except that the other officers and myself all got demoted and replaced by the guild leaders new friends. We also didn't get to play unless his friends were absent. On top of that, our overall standing on the pvp ladder took a gigantic hit, because the guild leaders friends were significantly worse than the other players in the guild.
Our Solution: We reformed the guild, with a similar name and climbed the ladder into the top 100. During our climb up the ladder we stepped on them tournament after tournament and drove the original guilds rank down so far that it hit "Rank not Available".
IMO: Karma will rape the guild leader sideways after enough people realize that he's a flaming douche bag :)
Raven115 Jan 11th 2009 2:04AM
Honestly man, it's time to go. I have been in 3 guilds prior to the one I'm in now and I left them all for the same reason... bad guild leadership.
The first guild I was in was a joke for leadership. The guild leader had real life friends, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's dad in officer or co-guild leader positions. Nothing was ever accomplished and it felt more like a playground for them than a guild for everyone. So I left, even transferred to another server.
Joined my brother-in-law's guild. That was probably the shortest time I ever spent in one guild. He started getting a my way or the highway attitude and I was trying my best to keep as many people happy as possible since we had aspirations to be a big raid guild and very few people who could actually raid. Well it degraded into him always yelling at people and acting elitist while all the other leaders wouldn't even voice themselves and had me do it for them since I was the only one who would speak against him. After awhile of that I got completely frustrated and just decided to join someone else. MANY people followed me to the next guild.
This guild started off great and lasted a lot longer for me than the previous. But issues began to arise because the guild leader and the officers never knew when to STOP promoting. Eventually the guild had way too many chiefs and not enough indians. Too many people had a voice. Then the co-guild leaders began developing elitist mentalities when the guild leader and a large portion of officers had to take time off from WoW. In our absence, they ran wild with power and wrecked the guild. By the time the guild leader came back it was me and a handful of officers fighting with upper guild management about their poor treatment of everyone else and their increasingly ridiculous rules. So I finally left and joined the guild I'm in now.
In all 3 of the other guilds I was an officer or a co-guild leader. I always did my best to keep the peace and keep as many people happy as possible and I sense that's what you're trying to do as well. From a former member of three failed guild leaderships I will tell you this, make good for yourself first. If this is something that is truly going ill for you then just leave. If someone values you as a leader, a player, and a person they will follow you. Unless you have developed amazing relationships with these people or you know them in real life, do not believe for any real length of time that they wouldn't bail on you if they saw greener grass.
vexis58 Jan 10th 2009 8:38PM
It's always been my mantra, "If you ever have to ask whether or not you should leave a guild, the answer is always yes."
Clevins Jan 10th 2009 9:05PM
1) Leave.
2) When you say people aren't motivated to signup for heroics etc it sounds like you have a larger issue than the GL. I mean people are being childish if their response to this is "Fine, then I won't run heroics and get gear."
Alanid Jan 10th 2009 10:45PM
Actually the others morale will be shattered from just the GL and his friends having a awesome time - the others will just think, well whats the point? im not going anywhere in this guild, etc. So eventually they will either quit the guild, change server, or come to worse even stop playing the game. All because of one stupid person.
Dbooker Jan 11th 2009 12:36AM
I was in a similar situation myself back before Wrath hit.
The guild I was in was small and didn't have the numbers to progress past Kara, so we ended up merging in with another, larger guild. We took their name and their GL but our former GL and one of the main officers were made officer in the new guild so that there was still some measure of control and input. Well, as the months went by we managed to work through most of TK, SSC and some of Hyjal, doing very well, and feeling very good about things, but then about a month before 3.0 hit, there was some info handed down that the guilds raid style would be changing when wrath hit.
There was this sub-group within the guild that did their own additional raid on friday nights of ZA... this group always ran with the same group of 10 people, and 3 alternates for those fights that required certain setups, their over-arching goal being "Phat Lewts, Bear Mounts." When I attempted to apply for the run one week, my name was removed from the raid planning mod we used, and I was told (not asked, told) by the leader of that run "Don't apply for that run, we don't need you." It was about a week after that, the GL made his announcement, and I learned that the whole time the GL had been breaking down raid attendance to "X 'guild A'ers" and "Y 'guild B'ers" in each run.
I feel the pain of this poster, because I had made some good friends as a result of the merger, but it was ultimately for the best that I and most of the people from the original guild broke back off. Some from us stayed there, some from them came with us.
patrick Jan 11th 2009 1:29AM
It's just a bloody guild. Why do people worry so much? I know wow is like crack and we want to hang with people in the comfort zone but why all this angst? It's clear the guild now belongs to the new guy and he's running it his way. It might be rubbish but why stay?
I blame these stupid titles like 'class leader' or 'raid leader' that people copied from the professional guilds like Nihilum or SKS. Mate, being the 'paladin class leader' means nothing. It's a title given to you to make you feel better but at the end of the day you are nothing to the guild. The pallies don't care who is their 'class leader' and the fact you have no input means you aren't really an officer.
If you really were officer material you would have quit by now, set up your own guild with your mates from the old guild and started running things your way. All this angst is just pathetic.
I've been in 3 guilds now. My first was a levelling guild and I rose to 2ic before all the other officers and a number of players started complaining to me that we seemed to be raiding solely for the benefit of the GM, her husband, his brother and 2 other original members. I agreed, confronted them in an officer meeting and when they didn't agree to change we all left and went to another guild. The next guild was massive and we made our own way but when my little bunch of chums and I started out gearing the officers (another original group of friends) and asked to lead our own raids rather than be 2nd reserve backups to the main ones, I got kicked and my little faction left.
Once bitten, twice shy, and now we run our own raiding guild and have recruited 40 players who enjoy our style and are now clearing content. We've never been happier. Only some of the original group are officers (most aren't suited) and a couple of people outside the original group are officers as well as they showed the skills needed and all have a major say in how we do things.
It's early days and I'm sure we'll have drama, hissy fits and all the usual stuff. But if it screws up we can say it was our fault and nobody elses. And we won't be whining to wowinsider about it either.
Whining about some dude ruining your guild is pathetic. Just prove you are an 'officer' (and I hate that term as I am an army officer and a wow guild officer sounds so much more impressive than it is) and do something for yourself. Your guild is now the new GMs play thing. If you don't like it, then sod off and make your own. Vent and website hosting are dirt cheap and it's easy to recruit, trust me on that.
patrick Jan 11th 2009 2:36AM
talk about eating humble pie....
look I stick to the comments I made above but a raid experience tonight has given me another perspective.
As background, I was kicked from the last guild for the reasons stated above. All my friends, and new ones I made in the guild came with me and for that I'm grateful to them.
I suggested we join another raiding guild but they were keen for me to set one up so we could run it ourselves and I went for it. We started with 8 members and as they were all the gang I made them all officers. Along the way I've demoted one as he never plays and another was encouraged to leave as they had tagged on with us due to an infatuation with my 2ic which inevitably went pear shaped and she missed a number of raids and spent most of her time on her alt with her other friends.
So we started recruiting. I have 7 officers now. One is my wife (in charge of guild banking), my 2ic who is an ingame friend, 3 friends from the orginal guild (2 are brothers), a good mate of our 2ic and a guy we recruited who fitted in so well and helped out a lot in raids.
Its been going well, we have 45 members and are clearing the 10 man content before going to 25 when more people gear up. I've tended to run the raids but have tried to have the other officers participate more so that the learn, act as officers and take the burden off me (I got a job and a life after all).
But my account got hacked on Friday and I had to have my 2ic and one of the officers run our weekend raids.
In short .....a disaster.
I watched from my wife's screen and listened on vent. The 'raid leader' is a tank and he's become lazy due to being better geared than everyone else. He didn't explain anything well at all and didn't maintain aggro like he should have. He was just plain lazy and crap. The 2ic (who is best mates with him and nominated him to lead the raid) kept butting in and confusing things. One of the other officers kept afk'ing for 10+ minutes and another one, the OT kept messing up despite knowing the fights well.
2 of the younger members of the raid started acting up and criticising the tanks after a number of stupid wipes. One of them has history with the tank (an arena team gone wrong) and both of them started acting like kids. After another stupid wipe on an easy boss the younger guys started calling people noobs, the 2ic had words and they both logged off. Later one of the healers whispered me and said he's leaving because he doesn't want to spend 5+ hours clearing 4 bosses in Naxx.
So I talked him into giving us another chance and gave some blunt feedback to the officers in vent (just us) and hopefully now I'm back I can fix things.
But you know what? I'm not going to demote or kick any of the officers even though they were at fault. They didn't prepare, they were arrogant and didn't play well, they were offensive in just going afk for 10 minutes at a time during a raid and they brought out personal vendettas to mistreat 2 junior members (who are not blameless either). By rights I should demote 2 of them and not let the others lead raids until they lift their game.
But I'm not going to do that am I? I'll probably lose 3 guildies in the coming days because I won't do what is right.
I'm not going to insist I lead all raids just to keep a healer and if the bad blood between the officers and the 2 members continues it will be them that go and not the officers. As I said above, I blame the officers for a piss poor performance and I think much of the blame for our first crap raid is down to them. But what I will do is try to change and improve them. I won't sacrifice them for anyone else.
Why? Because they stuck by me and I've known them longer than the other members. I'm going to put personal connections to my small clique ahead of the good of the guild.
Now in my head I know that's bullshit. The other guys aren't to blame and I'm favouring friends before the overall good of the guild. And my wife shouldn't really be an officer as she just participates, is our lead enchanter, and managed the guild bank. It's blatant favouritism and it's wrong...but she's my wife....and they are my friends. I like our new members but I haven't known them as long or developed the same connections.
So I'm sure people will eventually leave our guild and in the long run it will be for the benefit of my friends how I run the guild, not the guild. But I at least am aware of it and will do my best to reduce it's impact.
So I'm a crap GM but I bet I'm just the same as 90% of the rest out there. I just hope I'm more honest about it.
But, to summarise, at the end of the day, a guild is all about a small core of friends and human nature means it always will be no matter what anyone says.
If you aren't a member of the core, sooner or later you will leave and maybe like me set up your own core. But to pretend that any online grouping like a guild can always be fair, balanced, democratic and for the greater good is wrong and living in fantasy land.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Jan 12th 2009 2:49PM
So from what I can understand, you’re given warning bells on what will happen in the future if your officers don’t shape up and take things seriously and instead of listening you’re taking the attitude, “It’s one person F- them!” How contemptible. If I had to be in a guild where people were seriously messing up just because they could and there were no consequences, then I would leave. Actually, I have left guilds that pulled bullshit like that. Doubt they cared to see me go, but... then again I think they were more upset that a bunch of people g-quit after I left. Apparently, people tend to notice when others are leaving and also jump the ship before it starts to sink. (Almost flattering to have that sort of effect though, I leave, say nothing to anyone else because I don’t care what they do with their time... and others just follow because they want to.)
Best part is I wouldn’t even tell you, I’d just find a quiet morning when next to no one is on and just g-quit. Seriously if you’re just wasting my time when I’m limited due to work hours and sleep - I rather find another place where my game time is appreciated. Of course guild leadership are built by people who are close to each other, but turning a blind eye to people you recruit suggests one thing: Users.
Personally, I don’t also cater to the mentality of being threatened by one person but I also don’t like wasting my time in runs or raids when people should be doing things right the first time around(or seconds if the timing was just bad on boss). If your runs are a seriously waste of time and someone honestly raises objections to what has happened and you ignore them, the loser is you. You watched a useless run, you belted them out about it afterwards (NOT DURING), but then take the stance “the officers stuck with me, and I’m not ditching them.” Erm. First of all, you don’t have ditch them... but the fact that you mention this makes me suspicious. Have complaints often been made about them? Obviously, I don’t believe this is a one time event.
doki-chan Jan 11th 2009 3:40AM
I have a few friends who are in a raiding guild solely because they are wanting (and enjoy) to raid/progress thru content (and being low Horde population server, not many High end guilds ready for Naxx).
Myself and husband and other friends do not have this time due to RL, but we keep in touch by setting up a different channel and arrange boosts and small group content that way...
It works out _usually_ (pre-WLK) but while we have been trying to catch up we have barely hung out together as they are already 80 and hitting Naxx.
Good for them on Naxx, but they are sometimes unhappy in the way that the GL seems to assign posts to yesmen that massage her ego or RL _very_ (and I mean _very_ *ahem*) close friends, not to ppl who can do the job properly (as a result they have to brute force instances by being over-geared and not by skill)
It's sad that the only way some people have in keeping interest in the game at 80 is to stick with a guild large enough to see content (at least they have some friends in there to talk to) but have to put up with poor man management to do so.
Pass around word of mouth a "friends only" channel of ppl you can trust (even change it like a password if you have probs) and arrange stuff via that so you can make either 10-mans more easily or arrange a proper ultimatum/cede-from-guild-en-masse without having to /w everyone??
Julio Biason Jan 11th 2009 5:03AM
I'm kinda surprised by the way people select officers. Our guild (Desperate Hordewives on Firetree -- famous by the "AV premades", lead by Optimos) seems to select officers by seniority. Even when the original GL had to quit (he's an army officer and went on duty to Iraq, IIRC), the new GL was appointed by seniority.
Ok, it's kinda surprising. I was surprise when *I* was appointed as guild officer.
k Jan 20th 2009 4:00PM
My guild recruited several new players, immediately made them officers, formed a group for hyjal, bt, took all officers and relatives with a few alternating players thrown into that core group. The rest of us formed our own 25 man and started raiding also, but when needed the first group would take our players. So when wolk came out the rl of that group started another group, taking mostly same people, but using the rest of guild as a bank of players to pull from. The rest of us would attempt to get several 10's or a 25 man going and have members sign up for the week, log on to find 2 or 3 would be in their group as their members had not shown. The argument was they were progression team. Those same officers had made rules that if their core members did not show they would cancel their run. What they actually did was make the substitutes core raiders and just keep them on the sidelines for when they needed them again. So in effect we permanently kept losing our players. Now that progression group has naxx on farm and they are waiting for the new raid dungeon to come out, and I know the same thing will repeat. They have been scouting our 25 man, that we just got working and will start pulling our guys again even though we need them to finish naxx. Our team has been labeled social. I know our guys dont need to go but they see the progression label and think , oh wow, I can be on the big team. So basically we keep getting new players while experienced players go to their team. This is not a small guild, we have maybe 200 people, and the progression team keeps 40 or so sitting on sidelines all the time. Those of us that keep trying to form our own 25 man get frustrated cause just as we almost finish the 25 man content a new raid opens up and the progression team does this all over again.