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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficers' Quarters: That other guild reputation
by Scott Andrews 
Apr 18th 2011 at 1:00PM
These days, when you say "guild reputation," most people think of the guild rep grind that's required to buy items like the Armadillo Pup and the Dark Phoenix. Cataclysm didn't invent this concept -- the expansion simply turned what already exists into a specific number with some fun rewards attached. As long as there have been guilds, there have been players with an opinion about them, and vice versa. This kind of reputation plays a huge role in a guild's success or failure, particularly when it comes to recruiting. This week, an officer with a rep problem asks how to deal with a handful of former members who are sabotaging the guild's recruiting efforts.
Hey Scott,
So my guild is fairly new (about 3-4 months) we started at the beginning of cataclysm as a guild of friends who wanted to raid on the weekends together. We slowly built up and developed a raider base however it was very difficult to get new players as every other guild on the server was looking for people. We had around 6-7 devoted raiders but those last 3 or so raiding slots left it difficult for us to pug and find members in general who were willing to raid. We went through a variety of members in these slots but most of these people didn't understand the concept of a "raiding guild." Some misunderstandings occurred and over the course of our guilds existence we developed about 4-5 "haters."
These haters are against our guild no matter what and tell all their friends about what a horrible guild we are. It's gotten to the point where when we advertise in trade, people we don't even know will bash us in front of the whole server. These people have spread ridiculous and untrue rumors about our guild to everyone they knew and it's getting to the point where we can't even get more members since people have "heard bad stuff about us" even though non of this stuff is true. I've tried talking to these "haters" but they insist that I'M wrong and they just put me on ignore. Please, I don't know what to do anymore and we are a small 10m raiding guild who desperately needs more raiders for it's second group since only 1 person gone from our main group means disaster. I don't know what to do about these haters!Hi, Stressed. Misunderstandings are a fact of life in online gaming. Veteran players know this, and most of us try not to lose our cool when these sorts of things happen. Unfortunately, some people don't have the maturity or the patience to deal with misunderstandings, and they turn what should have been a regrettable but forgettable incident into a bitter and enduring grudge. It sounds like that's what you're dealing with here. The way I see it, you have a few possible solutions.
Thanks,
Stressed
1. Take them head on. Since they are going out of their way to trash you, you could try fighting back. Talking to them hasn't helped, but if you go on the offensive in public, then perhaps you can win back your guild's reputation with a good old-fashioned verbal confrontation.
Next time you're recruiting in trade chat and someone makes a rude comment, ask them why they hold that opinion. Don't be hostile or aggressive. Stay calm, be reasonable, and refute their statements with the reality of the guild. Cite specific examples of things that you do or specific policies that you have that prove they are wrong. Identify yourself as a guild leader/officer, and offer to answer any questions that people may have about the guild or the false rumors about it.
Don't engage the haters in childish banter. Let their own immaturity work against them and discredit their arguments, and let your own reasonableness in the face of this attack speak for you and your community.
The downside to this, of course, is that no matter what people believe or don't believe, everyone will think your guild is prone to drama if they see this kind of discourse in trade. You'll have to weigh that against what people think about the guild now -- and decide which is worse.
2. Try other recruiting methods. Trade chat is the most direct method, but there are other methods of recruiting at your disposal that aren't so blatantly public. You can ask your own members to reach out to friends in private, you can talk to solid players that you group up with in dungeons or raids about joining, and you can host server events or competitions. The latter method has the additional benefit of providing some positive rep to balance out the bad.
Once everything blows over, you can go back to advertising in trade -- but don't give up on these other methods, either.
3. Change your name. Hey, rebranding worked for Nissan, Philip Morris, and Blackwater -- it can work for you too! Unfortunately, doing so right now will mean you'll have to repurchase your bank vaults, re-earn achievements, and re-grind guild level. It's a steep price to pay, but it has the advantage of a fresh start without changing servers. If you can afford to wait, Blizzard has announced a guild name change service (that will probably cost real-world money).
4. Transfer to a new server. This solution is certainly the most drastic, but you'll solve the issue in one fell swoop. All the same drawbacks apply to changing your name, with the additional risk that not everyone in your guild would be willing to pay to transfer or to leave your current server. You may find yourself even more short-handed in the short term, but hopefully you'll have an easier time recruiting in the long term.
Luckily, Blizzard is also planning to offer a guild transfer service, if you're able to wait for it.
The third and fourth options may feel like giving up or letting the haters win. By all means, if you don't want to let that happen, keep fighting the good fight. Keep those other options on the table, however. You may reach a point where you decide it's not worth the headaches.
Has anyone else encountered this type of problem? How did you resolve it?
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Anonymous Apr 18th 2011 6:03PM
My guild once experienced some bad-mouthing due to some drama I won't really go into. We pretty much followed your first suggestion: when they started drama and bad-mouthing in our recruitment posts, we responding logically and reasonably, and they ended up looking like drama queens. Probably no one from that group or people close-knit with that group would ever like our guild, but uninvolved people seemed to discount them. The trouble makers saw we weren't engaging on their terms and gave up after not too long.
Vyosher Apr 18th 2011 6:24PM
I was a guild officer of one of the most... colorful guilds on our server. It was a guild that had server transferred specifically to escape it's bad reputation- which followed it.
What you have to look at very, very carefully is one thing: Does your guild deserve -any- of what is being said? Are you cliquish? Have you had trouble with being nasty to members in the past? Was a previous officer or GM corrupt or did they have the appearance of being corrupt? Does your guild have known Trade trolls or ninjas in it because 'they're really nice to us!!'? Really examine your guild. Examine your place as officer in it. If the harassment is completely unfounded and entirely based on sour grapes, or (the more probable option) it's based on some policy that your guild has looked at and changed for the better - like clarified raiding requirements, loot rules, or maybe a new RL- then advertise that your guild is 'improved'. Acknowledge that there are bad rumors about your guild- and make a point to show how your group has risen above them or has done what they could to make those rumors moot.
And -don't- advertise in Trade. Use your realm forums, the WoW recruitment forum, GuildRecruitment Channel or word-of-mouth. Trade chat is -useless-. If the guys keep following you, keep bashing you, absolutely report them- do it on both the forums and in the game if they try to bash you on both.
The key is: don't ever, ever rise to the bait. Show how far above those people you are. It'll help you recruit members that may have been drawn by the drama but stay for the maturity level.
Oh, and from experience- make sure your GM or other officers AREN'T actually doing all the things that the trade trolls accuse them of. If they are- RUN!
BladedDingo Apr 18th 2011 7:43PM
I'd recomend against trying to refute their claims in chat. It'l just devolve into a flame war. Only thing i can suggest is have the officers recruit by word of mouth and via pugging those extra slots.
After a loot mishap on my server, the resident trade troll took it upon himself to slander my guild over the actions of a single guildy. ( a pug went afk during a roll and the loot was already handed to the winner of the roll, who went afk after he won the peice. The looser rage quit the raid before the afk winner of the roll came back.)
The troll also host a free aerver wide vent and advertised it in his trade spame. He added a line to his macro insulting the guild and calling us all ninjas over a loot mistake he didn't even have anything to do with.
I petitioned a gm about guild slander and he stopped putting the macro in trade. If he got bored, or gm gave him a warning i dont know.
But we, prior to that had a great rep on the servr, we got most of oir recruits from pugs who raided with us. Had fun, and most importantly was given fair game on any loot that dropped. Anything. Give them a taste and they'll want more.
So pug more, itl take a while to get filled with new guildies, but your rep will stay intact and chances are that most pugs wont even reconize your name until they raid with you. And you dont really want to invite the people who' ll insult you anyway.
I'd also take a chance on less geared people, people who are eager to raid, but dont have the experiance.
Be patient with them and guide them toward raiding.
On my old horde server. A guild took a chance on a crappy heroic geared alt of mine and i wound up their top geaded healer and was there for every raid.
That can help boost your rep because soon you'll hage loyal guildies ready to raid anytime cause you are an awesome guild.
Sally Bowls Apr 18th 2011 9:04PM
I think the refute/confront them strategy is at least as likely to make the situation worse as to make it better.
Because if the haters were so bad, what does it say that they were in your guild? In a he said/she said drama, the safest thing for outsiders to do is just back away slowly and avoid the mess.
Vinna Apr 18th 2011 11:32PM
I totally disagree with #1 "take them head on"
Don't stoop to their level, they are doing it to get a rise out of you. If you don't respond they may stop because they aren't getting a reaction. If they don't stop submit a ticket and report them for harassment. The first couple of times a gm will probably just tell you "they will look into it" but the more it happens and the more tickets on the matter the log of complaints will begin to show a pattern. Quite a while back the guild I was in had someone who would do this in trade to our guild. We'd submit the tickets, instead on responding to the bashing in trade.
If they are really into bashing you and your guild, check out your realm forums as well, our basher would trash talk on there as well. I don't know how far it went but I do know he got at least a 48 hour ban from the game. Upon his return he and his friends kept to themselves.
hannah Apr 19th 2011 10:14AM
This is somewhat off topic from dealing with reputation-slandering, but I have some advice for the letter writer that might help them with their raid group and recruitment in general.
This jumped out at me in the letter:
"...we are a small 10m raiding guild who desperately needs more raiders for it's second group since only 1 person gone from our main group means disaster..."
This makes it seem as though you are recruiting for a second 10 man, which you then poach from to fill absences in your first 10 man. However, given that you can't keep a consistent main group, I am wondering why you are working on a second group at all.
If you have exactly 10 people in your primary group, and you have people who can't maintain 100% attendance, then you need more people in your main group. Recruiting people to fill out a secondary 10 man won't help, and if you are only doing it to keep a pool of fill-ins, this is a recipe for drama.
Nobody wants to be in the "reject" 10 man, sitting around to wonder if that week they will be needed in the "good" 10 man or not. Also, what does it do to the second 10 man when you need to take members from it to save to your main groups run? Do they just not run that night? Or do you force them into pugging from trade? If they aren't running regularly, then why call it a secondary 10 man instead of calling it what it is: the bench?
Here is my advice to you, as someone who runs a small semi-casual progression 10 man raid group: a good size for a 10 man raiding group is 12-13 people. Be open and transparent about this. Let the raid group know you want to have 12-13 people in the group, that are full-time members. Make sure none of them are bench members, unless they actively want to be (sometimes you get skilled players who are students or something that just want to raid time to time but can't commit to a full schedule, and they make absolutely wonderful fill-ins).
Every raid night, invite all members of the raid group that are online. For farm content, work people in and out on a boss-by-boss basis based off of who needs drops. Give people the opportunity to volunteer to sit for individual bosses, and if no one is willing to do so, then rotate people in and out based off of raid composition and then fairness (don't keep benching That One Guy unless he really ought to be a bench-only member--in which case be honest with him about his role in the group).
Most nights you will find that you only have 10-11 of these people available, and between latency issues and whatnot, the raid group usually forms itself. Some nights you may have the full 13 on and wanting to raid, but as long as you are very open in your communication about it, it is very easy to form a raid group from there with no drama. Just make sure you are crediting kills to even those sitting for it, and that you go back and get kills/achievements for anyone who may have missed out.
This will give you a lot more flexibility in your raid group and in my mind is the ideal set up for any casual or semi-casual raid group where attendance can be inconsistent. If your goal is a set up more like this, it should help with preventing stagnancy in progression and bring up group morale in general, and these things do more for recruiting steady raid members than spamming trade ever will (seriously, take it to the realm forums and report any off-topic or bashing replies--they will be deleted post-haste).
Best of luck!
Trisnics Apr 19th 2011 10:15AM
My guild had an amazing reputation. Then one day, as happens to many guilds, we just got too large and about a third of the guild split off. The problem was that there was some drama behind the split and a large amount of lies told. The other problem was that many who left were younger, quite immature and were prone to doing things like trolling trade.
After that we got bashed in trade quite a bit by some of those who left. It happened once on the forums too and that was reported and quickly erased, but it happened a lot more in trade.
Our rep isn't absolutely terrible but it's not where it was. Most of our quality apps come from real life friends or people who have grouped with us. We get comments such as everyone who I have seen from your guild has been polite and stuff like that, which is a good thing.
For the question writer I would recommend reporting harassment if it's that bad. You can report more than once if it continues.
On top of that since you need raiders:
- If you haven't done so strongly encourage people to talk to their friends, this has gotten us through rough patches.
- Recruit on the forums if you are not
- PuG, show people that your guild is made up of good people.
- Run server wide events where a large prize is given out (sand of the vials for example), this can be specifically for PR purposes.
Trade chat is a crap shoot as it is, there are other ways to go about getting raiders that fit. I can think of some guilds that I do not respect at all on my server but that is because they are known ninja looters who have done it many times etc. If it is just a minor issue your server can get over it but it will take some work.
MrDrew Apr 19th 2011 5:28PM
People are idiots put the haters on ignore and just push through the BS they put in trade. I left a guild due to stupidity in the officer core and made my own guild and when I started recruiting, people in the old guild would spam saying it was filled with ninja's, a GM on a power trip, the co-GM was a moody bitch, blah blah blah and the guild only had 3 people in it, me my wife and my alt. We eventually just pulled through and the BS died down and we made a solid 10/20 man group for Ulduar and ToC (pugging the last 5 was always a pain though).
Nosnum Apr 21st 2011 1:16PM
Our guild has had a much smaller version of this problem, although it has had zero impact on our recruiting. A former member behaved inappropriately, was asked to apologize or leave, did neither, and was kicked. His three friends immediately quit in loyalty. At that point, I had no problem with any of his friends leaving - they had stopped raiding with us anyway as they didn't care for our pace of progression (we're casual and only raid Tue/Thu with a hard cutoff at 10PM server), and were naturally being loyal to their friend. However, one of these former guildies has become obsessed with us for some reason; stalking the GM, trolling chat whenever they see us trying to pug a slot for anything. As I mentioned it hasn't really impacted us simply because his comments in trade either display obvious ignorance or look like stalking to other observers. And I agree with the previous poster that people recruited from trade are of dubious quality, at least at max level. Our best members have been recruited by having a pug in a raid, letting them see how we operate and behave, and making their decision based on their own observations rather than trade drivel by an obviously unbalanced individual who appears to be off their meds.