Officers' Quarters: Courtesy counts
by Scott Andrews 
Jan 11th 2010 at 1:00PM
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
The community of WoW is not best known for its courtesy. The bar for what constitutes civil behavior has been set pretty low. We as officers don't expect much from random people, but we'd like to think our members and counterparts are better than the average player. That's why it's always so disappointing when we discover we are wrong.
Dear Scott,
I have been an officer in my guild for quite a while but one thing I am noticing more and more is the lack of courtesy between members. I along with several of the other officers and members think of our guild as a family and it kind of cuts us when we have members leave without any word, explanation, or a simple "goodbye". Just today we had a member (we will call him Bob for simplicity) just up and leave without any word and one of the officers made a hasty remark in the trade channel. Probably 4 hours later Bob gets on an alt still in the guild and starts smarting off which gets others responding likewise (including officers) so much so that I have to step in and stop it.
Unfortunately our GM logs on at that moment and sees the drama going on in gchat and promptly kicks Bob and his other alt. Bob then whispers me and asks why everyone was acting the way they were. I tried to explain the lack of courtesy employed by Bob but he just didn't quite understand. How can I as an officer and member of my guild help to promote courtesy and how do I explain to members/officers they are not being courteous?
Signed,
Man of the Peace
Hi, MotP. First, let's take a moment to lament how the dungeon finder system has affected guilds. As if guilds weren't disposable enough in WoW, it is now entirely possible for a player to gear up to Tier 9 -- and prep themselves for the Wrath equivalent of Sunwell -- in random Heroics alone.
Don't get me wrong: It's great that we are no longer required to run earlier dungeon tiers to gear members up (though it can still be helpful to do so). And I have nothing against making raiding more accessible. However, it's just one less incentive, from a list that's startlingly short, for staying loyal to a guild.
Fortunately, Cataclysm's guild overhaul seems like it could change that. But for now, officers across the board should expect more guild-hopping now than ever before.
I can't say why "Bob" decided to quit, but keep in mind that you can now jump from fresh 80 to endgame raider in a matter of weeks. If your guild doesn't raid or isn't very successful with raiding, you are going to lose players who want to see Icecrown, because they are fully capable of gearing up for it with or without you.
However, I wouldn't say Bob is the most at fault in this situation. Yes, he quit without notice or reason, which is certainly dispiriting to the officers. Even so, making a snarky comment in the Trade channel is only going to make the situation worse.
Passive-aggressive Trade channel remarks (or openly hostile ones) are useful for one thing: starting a fight. If that's what your officer wanted, he or she sure got it. I doubt Bob would have gone on that tirade without provocation, since he seemed to want to slip away quietly.
Officers who want their players to be courteous need to lead by example. That is the most effective way to encourage civil behavior. If your officers have a problem with Bob, the best way to handle the situation would be to speak with him privately about why he left. They shouldn't be confrontational about it. They should talk to him as a human being and try to assess the decision from his point of view.
From the perspective of guild survival, your top priority should be finding out why Bob quit so that you can prevent people, if possible, from leaving for similar reasons.
To address the question you asked, it's difficult when officers are put into the role of the "courtesy police." No one wants to be that person. Sometimes, situations will arise when you must step in. Only you can decide when to do so. When you do, don't respond by insulting or talking down to the players who are involved. Rather, attempt to defuse the situation by mediating the argument. Try to get each person to see the situation from the other person's point of view.
They may not ever agree, but at least you can bring the argument into a civil context and allow for some meaningful dialogue.
We can't teach our members to be courteous. How a person behaves develops from the moment they can interact with other people. If parents, family, and friends haven't succeeded in encouraging someone to be courteous, what chance do we have?
The best we can do is to remind our members that behind every character in the game is a person that deserves respect and consideration. That begins with all of our officers acting accordingly.
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott@wow.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters!Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Knob Jan 11th 2010 1:07PM
I seriously can't wait for Cataclysm. The Guild Advancement system can't come quickly enough. That'll teach people to not treat their guild and their guildies as just a means to an end. Nowadays players seem to treat other players as NPCs whose sole purpose is to gear up their character(s).
Adeany Jan 11th 2010 1:20PM
But will it help? What stops someone from leaving your guild for another one that is higher level and has picked up more talent points, or has their points distributed a different way?
Knob Jan 11th 2010 1:26PM
The hoppers will hop regardless of what the situation is. The Advancement system will at least help people give their guild a second chance during troubled times instead of calling it quits. At least I hope so.
Blacksheep Jan 11th 2010 1:27PM
+1 million to that comment.
I'm a high level officer in my guild and in the last two months we experienced a massive outflux of people that we had all taken on raids and geared both their mains and their alts, none said why, one even knew an officer in RL! We are a decent raiding guild, maybe semi-casual as we only raid 2-3 times a week, but we can get most stuff done. Our only problem was/is being slightly behind the curve i.e. it takes us a few weeks to get to new content, not the day it's released then it takes a few weeks to get through that content once we get to it, but I think that's balanced by the fact we are all nice and don't berate people on vent for one mistake. Everyone gets gear from end game raids eventually, but as we near having a 25 man group each new month (we run 10s due to the losses with mixes of different people), people seem to leave in packs, putting us right back to 10 mans only.
We've not found a solution or reason why yet? We ask people after they leave sometimes and get no, or generic responses or things that seem like outright lies. I feel like we are used as a cash machine/gear machine as we are dynamite at training/gearing people to 5K+ gear scores and 4K+ DPS, who then up and leave to join the elitest of the elite raiding guild, or whatever else it is the others do?
Kragragh Jan 11th 2010 1:27PM
A guild is what YOU make of it, the people involved. If it sucks, there's bad leadership or bad members. Everyone's wishing for something to come along (Cata guild enhancements, for one) to make being in a guild better, and frankly, my guild is awesome because of the people involved and the way we help each other.
BubblePriest Jan 11th 2010 1:32PM
@ Adeany
It will most likely hurt new guilds significantly because of the reasons you listed. However, it will theoretically benefit *most* guilds in that they will have an easier time hanging on to members.
Currently, unless you are in a very high end progression guild that successfully completes hardmodes, your guild does not have anything tangible to offer that your guild members couldn't get by being guildless.
However, incentivizing anti-social players who see guilds as a means to an end is not necessarily the best thing I can imagine for guilds. I mean, when push comes to shove, do you REALLY want those players? Sure, they may be great at playing the game, but is killing that boss as satisfying when you do it surrounded by people that you couldn't care less if they dropped dead tomorrow?
Nordithus Jan 11th 2010 2:38PM
I was just thinking about this yesterday. It seems like, with the advent of the DF system, that WoW has become much more impersonal. The...I don't know, call it "ambience" is missing. It's all about heroics and gearing up, and in my guild at least, if you're not geared up to ICC levels, they pretty much don't want anything to do with you, like, say, running guild raids on Naxx or Ulduar to help gear people up. "Run heroics and gear up, then come talk to us," they say. What happened to the community? What happened to guildies helping guildies? (To be fair, some guildies do help - but it sure seems to me that a guild's leadership should be addressing the needs of lower-geared guildies and not just the top tier.)
Vaylie Jan 11th 2010 4:56PM
@Blacksheep - As someone who recently left a casual raiding guild for a more serious one, I think it's not as simple as people only seeing the guild as a way for loot. Obviously, those players exist. There's not much you can do about them short of turning them away during their application/recruitment phase. Me, personally, I enjoyed the company of my guildies, and I honestly didn't care that we weren't making realm-firsts or progressing as fast as possible, but the 'casual' aspect of the guild meant that friends of the raid leader got preferential treatment, and players who consistently did badly were never called on their mistakes. This led to situations where we took people doing 2k dps into ICC-25 (hai friends of the RL still in Naxx gear), dps who refused to dps adds on deathwhisper or to dps the bone spikes, and a RL who did nothing to try and change that.
What you see as being nice and not berating someone over vent for making a mistake, can be very frustrating to your fellow raiders who spend the night wiping endlessly because people refuse to do what they're supposed to do. I'm not saying that you should be screaming at vent anytime someone slips up, but if the raid has spent 3 hours in ulduar wiping the entire raid in p1 Yogg because one person can't stay out of the clouds, then maybe it's time to say something instead of forcing the raid to repeatedly wipe and wasting 24 other people's times. There's the 'good' kind of wiping where you're actually learning the content and improving. And then there's the pointless kind of wiping where you're not meeting enrage timers or just failing because of the actions of a few.
In the end, it's about what's important to the player. Some players prefer a guild of friends who raid, where they wipe and progress slowly than to exclude anyone from raid content (even if they clearly aren't ready for it) or to criticize people for making mistakes. Other players will prefer a raiding guild that happens to be friends, where people are held to certain standards.
I would take a close look at the atmosphere of your raids (when you wipe, why does that happen? What do you do to improve the next attempt? How much time do you waste waiting for people to log on/be prepared? Does every player who gets seated pull their weight?) and decide if there's something you'd like to change to retain more raiders. If it's nothing wrong with your actual raiding atmosphere, then I'd be a bit more picky about recruitment and try to weed out the obvious loot whores, maybe by seeing their reactions to loot distribution during a raid for a trial period.
Sevin7x70 Jan 11th 2010 1:10PM
I just try to remeber that there people im talking to, and if they treat me unfairly in game then they must act similer in realy life, so you reap what you sow. I let the universe work it self out and just be as nice as I can be.
Bronwyn Jan 11th 2010 1:38PM
Actually you'd be really surprised how many people are total dickwads in game but would never dream of being that unfair in real life. Well, they might *dream* of it but fear keeps them from doing it. No such mitigation on the internets.
jtrack3d Jan 11th 2010 1:13PM
"lament how the dungeon finder system has affected guilds"
So true. WoW needs more things to make players feel guild loyalty. All we can do now is try to make our guilds civil and happy places to chat. Tanks can do DPS favors by queuing more often to let DPS guildies get through their dailies with less pain.... not sure what else.
SithLlenniuq Jan 11th 2010 1:14PM
When did Officers Quarters become Drama Mama's?
Angus Jan 11th 2010 1:57PM
It's always been about dealing with guild drama.
Drama mamas tends towards the other stuff.
catharsis80 Jan 11th 2010 1:14PM
"Officers who want their players to be courteous need to lead by example."
Amen, amen, amen. It's so irritating to see someone being a jerk, only to have officers gang up on that person IN GUILD CHAT and hammer them constantly for 5 to 10 minutes straight about it. The officers are being completely foolish at that point. They don't want reconciliation at that point; they want punishment and public humiliation. They claim they don't want drama, and yet they can be the biggest producers of it.
A. Nonymous Jan 11th 2010 1:23PM
Wow! Nice article. I'd like to show this to a guild leader I know, who just gkicked a friend of mine, without warning, and put them on ignore so they couldn't ask why. It turned out to be a personality clash. Lovely example of how NOT to do things. Don't talk, just kick and ignore. I ended up gquitting in protest. Any guild with that kind of leadership doesn't belong in my book.
"The best we can do is to remind our members that behind every character in the game is a person that deserves respect and consideration. That begins with all of our officers acting accordingly."
Indeed.
Kia Jan 11th 2010 1:56PM
That is -exactly- what happened with both Salvation and Veritas over on Moon Guard. Stay far, far away from both!
iamwarrior! Jan 11th 2010 3:05PM
@Kia
Whaaaa? I'm not very active in Veritas anymore (playing Horde now
mostly) but I still keep in touch with people and as far as I know
they are not booting members out and not telling them why. I only
ever remember 1 person getting booted out and they spent like 3 days
talking to officers getting explanations over and over. People were
very patient with this person. And that was months ago.
I'm guessing you were this person, or a friend of this person, but
just because she didn't like the explanation of why she was booted
doesn't mean that there wasn't an explanation given. So don't talk
trash about my alliance buddies.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand, all the guilds I'm in have seen
a recent trend of people just up and leaving without saying anything.
Since I've drifted away and started playing Horde, I guess I'm sort
of guilty of the same thing, although I never actually full quit. So
maybe the whole faction change option is helping this trend as well?
People can just run off to the other side of the world and then your
old guildmates can't even talk to you if they wanted to.
Nishan Jan 11th 2010 1:15PM
why is it that the screen shot used for this looks soo much better than other wow screenshots i've seen?
Kevin Jan 11th 2010 1:24PM
It is something that truly annoys me as well!
About 3 years ago, I had my own guild and we raided in classic and the start of TBC. People logged on, 99% of them said hi, after which just about everyone only greeted them. People went offline? They said goodbye. You could always find an instance group or a good chat right there in /g.
Now I returned to the game after quite a while and I couldn't stand the thought of being guildless, so I hit up an old friend that still played and has a guild. It took me about 2 hours to realize that the helpful, let's-be-marry-together-as-a-guild feeling is gone. Everyone pretty much does their own thing.
I think it's sad, and as quite a few people said before, I can't wait for the new Cata guild system!
Kragragh Jan 11th 2010 1:25PM
If someone up and leaves over a comment, it wasn't because of the comment; that was just what broke the camel's back. They've had problems in the past and that was the last straw.