Breakfast Topic: It's not us, it's you
by Ty Briggs 
Aug 18th 2010 at 8:00AM
My guild had a pretty big blowup recently. After trying for months and months to fill a 25-man core with the people on our backwater server, it became clear that all the talent was either unreliable, taken or unable to make our raid times. We were left with recruiting people from other servers and the opposite faction. Eventually, we picked up a couple of guys who were leaving their current guild, which had stalled in progression and was dying off. They were good, too. Very, very good. Pretty soon, they had recommended that a few of their friends transfer over to join us. Then a few more, then more. Before we knew it, almost a third of our 25-man raid was made up of this little circle of friends.
Then the drama started. As the stress of focused 25-man progression started to build up, so did the insults in Vent, the backstabbing and the painfully obvious divide splitting our guild in two. Officers were flooded every day with whispers about who said what, who should be raiding and who shouldn't, who "stole the healer" from what 10-man team ... It was ugly. Long-standing members started "taking time off," the GM stepped down and transferred away, a couple of officers quit the game entirely and the whole thing culminated into a night of finger pointing, insult throwing and /gkicks. When the dust settled, we had 10 to 15 people left in our 25-man progression guild. The guild, for all practical purposes, was dead. The only thing left for us was to transfer off and rebuild on another server.
It's one thing for a guild to die off due to burnout, disinterest or a lack of attendance. It's quite another to watch it tear itself apart from the inside. If you're one of the people who's been around a while and has come to consider your guildies friends, it's even harder. Do I blame the people we recruited? A little. The drama always seemed to originate from and center around them. Could we have handled things differently? Probably. A lot of it was simply because a few things weren't nipped in the bud before they got out of hand.
We now have a new rogue who's getting on everyone's nerves and is very soon going to feel the full force of our new desire not to put up with garbage. One of my personal rules is that I would rather play pointless, old content with friends than bleeding-edge progression with jerks and idiots.
We've all heard the phrase about "bad apples." Have you ever watched a guild fall apart because of a few people? Is there anyone that you've had to kick simply because he or she was too obnoxious or annoying?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
RetPallyJil Aug 18th 2010 8:04AM
I ran a very nice guild for four years.
Then, an officer I trusted completely pstd me one day to say hihowyadoin, etc. I chatted happily along, until he eventually sent a mistell, intended for another trusted guildie, about how terrible I was and how they were going to swipe the best members for their own guild.
Whoopsie!
then he had the absolute gall to be shocked when I gkicked him. "Whatever did I do to deserve this total breach of trust and affection, O Wonderful Guildmistress?????"
Boof Aug 18th 2010 8:41AM
I have been a witness to these things too many times.
In the new guild I am in, which I created with some good friends, we are social but with a raiding core.
What I have found in many a guild i have been to is that progress-raiding and social do not mix.
People that come in socially want to raid, but cant usually cut it in progress raids, this creates a sour atmosphere when they are declined spots.
Social raiding guilds often run a "sign up and not show for raid is ok" policy..even if their rules say otherwise....after all..they cant gkick their friends??
Best guild I have ever been in was Eternal Gathering, Doomhammer EU.
When I was there it was 1 rule. You were a member because u joined to progress raid. There were no sign ups for raids, meeting up at the designated time, ready to pull was mandatory. I can't remember a raid there never going off at the scheduled time.
Their attitude was awesome....450+ wipes on muru before nerf and they wiped with a smile and a nice "ok lets analyze what we did wrong this time"...then they killed him, and went for KJ..and i was there for KJ.
This kind of attitude is non-existent in social-raiding guilds, simply because in a social raiding guild, you can not force people to show up.
In a social raiding guild, minus dkp dont mean nothing.
So...The way I see it, there are 2 types of guilds.
- Friendly guilds, u are there to play with your friends, to enjoy the game and have fun occationally, no strings attatched.
- Social raiding guilds. I have yet to see a single one that has lasted successfully without drama
- Progress guilds. You have a job. You are there. They expect that you show up for work.
In a way, these guilds, are the best to be in in my opinion. You follow the rules, you get a pat on the back. In return they expect you to excell at the game. Fuck up once, and its ok, fuck up twice, and they ask What is going on?....Mess up 3 times, and you risk being kicked.
I have played in all of the above kinds of guilds.
First one you play in when u are new to the game.
Second one you play in when you start getting better
third one you play in when you feel you want the challenge structure gives you, and you are willing to give your structure and professionalism back to the guild.
Then you burn out from too much raiding, or your best friend in the guild turns out to be a real dick of unknown proportions, so you leave and go back to social raiding, because u cba doing hardcore anymore...
Eventually social raiding seems blunt, and u tire on the drama in them, and start to drama a bit yourself...then you usually end up quitting the game..
Not because the game sux, but because the mentality of people usually suck and turn to the worse the longer they play the game.
I remember leveling my warrior....level 1-70 was very solo, and loads of drama...then 70 to 80 it was all fun. When I hit 80 I started getting better gear...and I noticed...
The asshole attitude was paralell to the increase in your gearscore. The better gear, the more assholes i met in 5-mans. Do optional bosses?..noway...pull more! gogogo! cba playing this instance! just here for badges!. omg u nubs! *tank leaves*. The better gear, the worse it got.
From what I have seen, wow is mentally an exhausting game to play.
1 out of 500 people are decent people. People you could build a relationship with, not only ingame, but also IRL.
The rest of the 499 players have shit attitudes, and dont play the game for fun, but for badges and gear and acheivements to try and outshine other people...
Where did the FUN in WOW go?
Boof
BlackTiger™ Aug 18th 2010 9:16AM
Current "casual players" are just ... not hardcore enough. They have no spirit.
That's an "ultimate answer". They want everything for nothing, asap.
They are not ready to wipe 450+ times.
Very often current "guild" is just another kind of pug, where "guild raid" is started from "LFM ICCxx need everything" in guild chat channel.
My latest story about current "player":
I was standing near the bank in Dalaran wearing my favorite warlock's T5 set. Suddenly got a whisper - "Why you are wearing level 70 gear at level 80? Do you have a proper level 80 gear?"... And then I understood - "old WoW" is dead, actually...
eggshellsanity Aug 31st 2010 2:30PM
@BOOF
I'd like you to take a look at Two Percent on Uldaman, horde side. Social Raiding guild, no set raid policy. It has been going strong for four straight years, very little problems.
McRaider Aug 18th 2010 9:56AM
The fact that the more you do the instances, the more boring it gets might have something to do with what boof said, but imo 90% of the time it's that the noobs think that they are op when their GS rises.
They gain this thing they call "confidence" and in the end they have waaaaay too much of it. I tend to call it jerkism.
Hoof Aug 18th 2010 10:10AM
I've seen guilds explode a few times now.
Back on Blackhand US, I had a great guild back in vanilla. The people were funny, but a majority of them were a bit of a douche and good at the game. That being said we were small, so we had to form an alliance with other small guilds to raid. We were successful, I was happy, everything was going good until I realized I liked another guild in the alliance better. They were also funny, they didn't come off as jerks at all, and were obviously skilled enough to raid. They were also the first guild of our alliance who managed to complete the timed strat run and ended up dragging several of our alts/mains through that part.
Still, I figured I see them enough every week, I can enjoy our raid times together and continue to make it clear that if they need me for any dungeon run or anything during the week, that I'd gladly be there.
Towards the end of vanilla, I simply had it. I was tired of the small jerk most of the people in my current guild had in them and left the guild for one of the other guilds in the alliance, forming a solid group of 10 players in that guild. My old guild recruited two members shortly afterwards. 4 of the decent people in the old guild had gravitated towards each other naturally, and were the basic building block of a successful dungeon/heroic run in TBC. Had they formed an inner circle? Sure. But they were having fun, they were being successful in their runs, and having a good time, honestly not effecting anyone else. Then the new recruits realized they weren't going on as much dungeon runs as this group was. The guild leader stepped up and said that the group needs to not always bring the same four and let others in. Was it fair? Certainly. I don't blame the guild leader for his choice, but the other four disagreed. They liked what they had. They had a good thing going. Dungeon runs in the guild came to a quick and sudden stop before the four players eventually quit WoW entirely and moved to a different mmo. The guild exploded shortly after.
Sadly, my new guild wasn't going to avoid a similiar disaster. Those of us that hit 70 first started pounding out the dungeons/heroics and it was a while before others finally caught up. A husband/wife duo felt like they weren't liked (which was totally not true) and one day blew up when they saw that five guildies were in a CoT run to get their karazhan key. They were the first five to even be on the chain, they were the farthest along in the chain... it made sense to knock it all out for all of them. But the husband flipped. Demanded he get a spot in the group or else. We didn't want drama, we were deciding who would sit out when he up and gquit. Followed by his wife saying "Sorry guys, husband > guild" and gquitting. Followed by three others who were basically "I can't believe you guys!". Most of the group felt pretty bad about this and eventually stopped logging on. I continued to play, joined a 25 man guild and suffered for a few months before finally deciding I'd had enough. It didn't feel good to down new bosses with people whom I didn't consider my friends. I left WoW.
Then I got an email towards the end of TBC. Free transfers from Blackhand to Ghostlands. Out of curiousity I checked wowarmory and saw very similiar character names that belonged to a bunch of my long time friends on Blackhand. They had moved to Ghostlands, fresh start, and were strictly a friends and family guild focused on 10 man content. Thankfully we've been happy ever since.
Royal Aug 18th 2010 11:26AM
@ Boof
I think you're categorizing things very black and white between social and progression members being in the same guild.
There are blends of grey that work in between the two extremes. My guild is #1 for progression but we have a solid casual/social base.
We run two raid groups. One is the serious raiders with strict attendence rules, high expectations for game play and focused on progression.
Our causals who can't attend the serious progression run have a causal sunday ICC clear run. We even encourage the more serious raiders to enjoy the run with an alt. The loot system is /roll and messing up isn't a big deal.
This allows us to have the best of both worlds. We have friends in guild and get to enjoy a relaxed fun run with them.
Then we have our serious run where the game faces come on and we're here to conquer the hard content.
Our casuals are invite to apply to the serious run if they think they can handle it but they are fully aware that this is a different game play and friendship and social time isn't the goal. If they can't hack it, they are sent back to the casual run and they understand it perfectly.
Anyway my point is have your cake and eat it too! We are able to strike a balance with how we run things and it isn't impossible to pull off.
bennet Aug 18th 2010 12:54PM
@Boof: Never say never :) I've been co-GM with my husband of a four-year-old social guild that made the transition to raiding at the end of BC and has never looked back. The key to our longevity, I think, has been knowing what our players want out of the guild and then exercising extreme care in accepting new members.
We've had a few people who wanted to take the guild to the "next level," be it more structured progression raiding or 25-man content, and we've "gently suggested" that they find a new home. We're a motley mix of players who could easily be accepted in a progression guild, people who have fled progression guilds so they can relax, people who have been told elsewhere that they weren't good enough to raid. We're not going to show up on any world-first lists, but we've lasted, had fun, and seen more of the 10-man content than most of our guildies thought they ever would. So there are at least a few of us out there, doing our thing, drama-free :)
freyal Aug 18th 2010 4:51PM
I think what boof said is pretty much spot on. I started off as a complete noob in a social guild. Everything was fine, and I had lots of fun until I got sick of running heroics and wanted to raid. Getting 10 people on at once was near impossible. And if the Tank felt like being a prima donna and not showing up, or showing up 2 hours late 9 people were stuck waiting around for him.
So I quit. I joined a "raiding" guild. I thought because they had lots of people and raided Kara and ZA every week they were cool. I stuck with them for 9 months. In that time I saw so many people come and go. And I started to realize that the guild was in essence a revolving door. People came in, got geared up and left for better progressed guilds. Because we couldn't hold people, we were constantly in an endless cycle of helping people get geared enough to raid the content we wanted to. I felt pressured to stay even though I had way better offers by people I had become "Friends" with. Finally I left one day, and those friends who said they understood .. stopped talking to me. Some friends.
I joined a 10 man guild for a while and we managed to make some headway into uludar when it first came out, but I always felt like the odd man out. I never could quite get into the guild "cliques" and I felt out of place socially in the guild. Around that time I started a horde alt.
Eventually I formed a guild on my horde alt. Somehow I wound up GM. Being a GM became basically a full time job for me. I stopped really going on my Ally main at all any more. The horde became my home.
Over time we recruited enough people for tens in my social leveling guild and we gave raiding a try. But getting 10 people on at the same time became hard. People got frustrated. I got sick of grinding the same 5 heroics for badges for people, when I'd already geared myself to be able to raid tier 8-9 content, through just heroic farming alone (this was pre-nerf so you can imagine how many months I spent doing the heroic grind!)
Eventually I got sick of trying to pug 2-3 people every week, and our stunted, unsuccessful attempts to raid the 10 man dungeons. So eventually when people stopped coming online almost entirely I left the guild and joined a different one -- this caused an undo amount of drama.
The new guild I joined was not raiding hardmodes, or anything but they were making progress in ICC 25 -- I started farming gold, getting the 264 crafted pieces made, and started to work really hard to pick up my game to get me "up to speed" with the rest of the guild in 25's. Eventually though, I not only significantly out geared my guild, but I got frustrated when my skill level began to out shine theirs. I started to get frustrated at not being able to be in control anything that happened, and how lax the attendance policy was. I started to want to push for hardmodes -- and the guild management had an attitude of "not in this guild".
So I quit and joined a hardcore raiding guild. For about 3-4 months I raided in a hard core raiding guild. We plowed through content my old guild couldn't dream of downing. We'd spend an entire night wiping on a hardmode, sometimes multiple nights. Everyone lived in fear of being kicked. No one got complimented -- at least not very loudly about a job well done. It was always "Why couldn't we have done this better". I was never talked to about my performance, but the healing team was cut throat. Snide comments here and there, totally undermined my sense of skill and power.
Eventually I couldn't take the stress of raiding 3 nights a week at 4 hours a pop plus 2 additional nights for tens on the weekend. I began missing my not as progressed but more social guild. Between wipes, or when I was sitting out of a raid for the night, waiting at the instance portal for whichever fight they might need me for, I began to feel lonely. I was raiding, and living the hardmode life so to speak. My gear score was through the roof but I felt really empty inside.
I realized that hardmode raiding was probably not for me. When I left my more social guild to join the hardmode guild though I'd been told by my departing guild leaders that I wasn't good enough to heal in a 25 man hardmode guild, and that I wasn't cut out for one.
Determined to prove them wrong, I hung in there. Skillwise I was fine. Better than fine, I actually improved by leaps and bounds as a player. The stress and the demands they put on me, left me no choice but to step up or step off. And I had stepped up. Emotionally I felt like the hardcore raiding had eatten me up and chewed me out.
I can remember logging on to level 1-2 characters on my old server just to cry on the shoulder of a friend in my old guild. On a long enough time line I think I might of chosen to leave my hardcore guild and gone back to a social guild. I think I'd of felt happy for about 2 weeks, enjoying being able to be social again before the need for my social guild to not suck so much skillwise would of reared it's ugly head.
My real life circumstances have forced me to quit the game for a time. While I've been gone, my hardcore guild somehow self destructed. The GM left .. people transferred factions, servers.
When and if I come back to the game in a few months, I'm not really sure what to do with myself. Likely, Cata will be launched before I come back. The world I come back to will be completely different. No guild, no real friendships, or allegiances. All new skills to learn, as the healing game is changing entirely.
Even now .. even though I miss the game many times .. there are so many things I don't miss about the game. I don't miss the effort and pressure hardcore raiding has left in my mouth. The idea of ever again playing a game for fun like it's a part time job has no appeal to me.
But I don't know if I would ever be able to go back to not playing at a serious level. It's no wonder so many former hardcore raiders just quit, rather than continue on.
Raydex Aug 18th 2010 8:09PM
I've been mainly in four guilds in three years (Alliance-side, anyhow) - not a bad score, but I don't raid much. At first, I was in a guild called . The guild did a merge. I hadn't ever felt welcome there, so I left. Being a noob, I decided to see what starting a giuld would be like. lasted a few months, but it was lonely. A few friends quit. I sighed, queried around. Looked for a social, nice guild.
I joined . My best experience in guilds, ever. This was the guild I hit 80 in. A lot of other members did too...and the active members are transferred off to different guilds, raiding guilds. The guild master stopped ever coming online. We were gutted, no one left. Eventually, I joined one of the semi-casual (ICC) raiding guilds my friends went on as a casual bystander-type. was its name. It's not as warm and friendly as The Art Of Running Away, but I do get the opportunity to talk to the friends I made there.
I've found raiding too tedious and full of jerks for me.
Darque Aug 19th 2010 7:40AM
@Boof
I find more fun levelling alts than playing endgame any more. You're right...social raiding guilds rarely exist, and when they do, they tend to implode. I like being in guilds with friends, but when it comes to raiding, I need something more serious (which is why I tend to go on GDKP runs on my server for raiding. Run by very serious raiders who get the job done)
I've ended up discontinuing my sub to WoW...hoping to find the fun again when Cata comes out. Otherwise...it's really not worth spending $15/month just to hear people prating about the almighty grail of GS. There's more to the game that GS.
Tink Aug 18th 2010 8:14AM
It's purely an issue of maturity. It's already hard enough to find good talented committed focused players, but to add maturity to that list it becomes like finding a few needles in a very large field of haystacks.
Skorfen Aug 18th 2010 8:15AM
This one hits a note with me because it's happened not once, but twice with the same guild. I was away for a single weekend and suddenly it seemed that half of the guild had quit including a few people that I really got on well with. We rebuilt though and a few months later some of the old crowd who had left came back. Not long after it happened again.
Now I sit alone with a guild bank wondering whether it's time for me to move on as well.
Jake Aug 18th 2010 8:17AM
I used to run with a very fun, close group of people. We had fun raiding, but didn't do hardmodes, the goal was to spend a few hours a week with friends doing something together. A few people had to leave for RL reasons, so our guild master and officers decided to merge the guild with another one on our very low population realm. The guild master of the guild that merged with us took over. He took any loot he wanted, starting removing our members to make room for his, and yelling at people for messing up. We stopped raiding progression, and all the core started leaving and transferring one by one. The new GM quit as soon things got rough, and went to another new guild on the server. At this point, I had transferred off with the core to a new server. I wish we had never merged into the slow decline.
Funkysocks Aug 18th 2010 8:22AM
We had a pretty solid raiding group in TBC. It started off as a 10-man karazhan guild and after about 3 weeks we were progressing in SSC and TK. Our leader was one hard-to-the-bone GM who knew how to dish out dicipline. This went really well for about 2 months, then it became obvious that the rest of the guild was not as hardcore for the raiding as the leader was. The GM had to chill down on his wow career to focus on school, and a new GM stepped up. Suddenly half the guild was gone overnight.
The new GM was a really great guy. Very fair on loot rules and who get's to raid. Pretty soon we had cleared out ssc and TK, and progressing in hyjal and BT.
Then there was something about a healer in the guild who was kind of a douche. I am unsure of the detailes, but it ended with said healer and his friends changed guild, and even got their new guild on their side. Then followed a month or two with said guild sending hate mail and whispers to our GM and his wife. Things got pretty bad, and the Gm and his wife left the server. The guild stood without it's main tank and it's main healer.
Yet another GM stepped up. He is still the GM and the guild is doing fine in Icecrown these days. But i have honestly lost track of how many times we have "remade" the guild
xSchwarzerWindx Aug 18th 2010 8:21AM
Yes, and I'm still kicking them as they rear their heads. It seems every time we made progression enough to get people out of doing Heroics and begin 10 man content (small guild with far more casual people, think 100, than people who wanted to "do more", think just 12 or less at any one time), something would happen and we'd go from finally having a group to "need about one/two more committed people to start".
First it was the healers who could do no wrong, and would make demands on who they ran with, who they would not run with and have profanity-filled rants in PMs about other guildmates or the guild leaders themselves. This also spilled out into guild chat frequently.
Then the tanks were just simply too leet to run with us. Rather than being in a guild where their spots were guaranteed and not threatened by other tanks, we instead got told we were too backwater for their time after so many weeks.
DPS got in on it too, starting problems and annoying the living piss out of everyone.
Recently even, we had a junior officer take things out of the officer tab (blues, purples and hard to find items that only trusted officers are allowed access to, to give out to members who NEED them) and go and sell them in the auction house to pad his funds for his dual spec on his alt druid.
In the end, I came to many of the same conclusions. I'd rather run older content and help long-time members level alts than spend any amount of the free time I spend in WoW playing with total gaping buttholes.
Currently in the Beta, I see now the pains Blizzard is taking to fix so many problems WoW has had over the years, and hopefully make WoW a game that griefers and arses will not be attracted to anymore.
In the meantime, all you can do is keep the good people and get rid of the bad, and listen to them cuss you all the way out the door (as bad people are prone to do). Sure, progression has ground to a halt amidst the population drop server-wide and we mostly log on and chat and do odd / fun things before Cataclysm comes, but it's a lot more serene.
minimagicman Aug 18th 2010 8:22AM
I was a member of a nice, fun social guild for a few years during BC raiding. It eventually exploded from the inside, and as I look back I think it was due to one small problem: We were a small group of people (10-15) that started doing really well in raids. Back then all the major content was 25, so we had to start requiting new members. These members were "raiders" and joined the guild for the wrong reasons, and as the differences between the two types of games started emerging the quality of the guild went down-hill fast. After a few changes of leadership, to loot rules that favored those with gkick abilities, the guild eventually died just a month into WOTLK.
Long live psychopathic tendancies ~ Madoran
ps, if your a social guild that wants to raid keep in mind which is more important to your current guildies please.
xSchwarzerWindx Aug 18th 2010 8:28AM
Amen to that.
As you said, be very careful about who you're bringing in if you're a small guild.
Isen Aug 18th 2010 8:46AM
It had nothin' to do with loot rules mini. It was all the childish, antagonistic activity that was driving wedges between guild members, and the management finally had enough of the crying, complaining and backstabbing. I'm not gonna name names, because I'm pretty sure that's not allowed here.
But yes, may PT live on in our hearts.
Velaxis Aug 18th 2010 8:26AM
We've had a similar situation happen a couple of times in our guild, which has existed for about five years now, with one name change. Both times it occurred was when we'd lost players for various reasons, and recruited new ones for raiding purposes, who then asked if their friends could join. On both occasions it ended up with these new people trying to take over, and in one case, actively trying to create a 'coup' and get rid of the existing officers. Luckily on both occasions we got rid of the dodgy element, through both /gkicks and them 'voluntarily' leaving and our guild survived. We've had to take stock and rebuild a couple of times, but with patience, and a core group of loyal members, it's possible to ride out these storms without too much trouble.
We realised that although actively recruiting people to increase the size of the guild means you have more chance of people being around to raid, a lot of the time you only end up with jerks, psychos and people who just drive the regulars nuts. We've accepted it's better to keep small and selective, play the gaqme with people whose company we actually enjoy and don't just recruit out of desperation. Eventually, good people come our way through some strange, mystical means, lol. Well, we've kept going for years this way. OK sometimes our raiding suffers and we struggle to get enough online at the same time, but as long as people don't flounce off because of that, it's not that great a problem and eventually things change for the better.