Drama Mamas: Are guild perks worth putting up with a bad guild leader?
by Robin Torres 
Apr 29th 2011 at 4:00PM
We've edited the following letter for language and length, but I think we've successfully preserved the passion and relevant details.
Several days ago our guild pretty much fell apart. Our guild leader, as far as we could tell, had been getting into an online relationship with one of our guildies, which by itself was bad enough. Online relationships don't often lead to good results, and this one was near-scandalous; our leader was easily in his 40s and the girl in question always dodged any question regarding her age; but we've heard her speak, and we suspect she was probably underage.
Back to the issue. He was starting to drift away from the guild more and more over the past few months. He never responded to anyone's inquiries, procrastinated from actually addressing any problems that cropped up, and never gave anyone officership, even from active members such as myself who wanted to help contribute more to the guild. Near the end, many of our regulars had quit he game due to his lackluster leadership (some of which were his personal friends) and the entire guild was being run by the only two officers he had left.
So the other night there was a huge fallout over gear drops (which I unfortunately was not on to witness, but from what I understand was entirely from his end) and, long story short, he emptied our ENTIRE guild bank of ALL it's contents, took EVERY last gold piece we had been saving (near 50,000 gold), and handed the guild over to a total pundit who never contributed anything to the guild (and, incidentally, refuses to hand control over to anyone who actually wants to help it recover.) He then jumped server, but not before he and his girlfriend / partner-in-crime claimed WE were the ones who stole everything. [...]
I've talked with the GMs about it, and they said it was something we "had to resolve as a Guild.", which is, unfortunately in this scenario, a euphemism for "Looks like you guys are screwed." I understand that the GMs' hands are tied when it comes to player-to-player interaction such as this, but this one guy, this ONE idiot, completely undermined ALL our hard work [...]. He reacted to get back at a few and ended up hurting everyone in the guild (including the vast majority that had absolutely no say in the guild politics) and ruining our game experience. Most of our main members (myself included) were forced to leave and start up an entirely new guild so we could continue making any progress at all with raids and whatnot, but we were forced to leave behind a fully functioning Lv18 guild [...], with all its achievements, awards and perks that ALL of us as a guild of us had rightfully earned. [...]
I know it's probably just thoughts of vengeance running through my head, but I feel like this HAS to be a breach of SOMETHING in the EULA. There has to be some way of nailing this guy. It's not right that this jackass can pull this kind of thing and get away with it. I'm not the kind of guy who holds grudges, but to me this is entirely unforgivable. It's personal to me, because I value my time rather highly; I only have so much of it. And I feel he just robbed ME of four months of my time and efforts. Four months I'm not likely to get back. And I just feel lost as to what to do about it. I know all I can do is move forward and help make our new guild better than the last, but I'm still having trouble moving on.
What are your thoughts on this?
--Grim Prospects
Drama Mama Robin: Grim Prospects sounds like an excellent guild name -- one based in the Undercity, maybe. Anyway ... Before Cataclysm, leaving a guild wasn't quite so big of a deal. Sure, there was the guild bank and whatever you contributed to it, as well as any loot system, but the introduction of guild perks has made a guild a real investment. I hear tales of guilds that did mass invites only to jettison most of the members after the guilds hit level 25. These tales remind me of the Backyardigans episode where the bad guy steals everyone's ping-pong paddles -- only to discover that if no one else has a paddle, there is no one to play ping-pong with.Grim, let go of your anger. Do not give in to the dark side. Revenge is not the way of the happy player. You and your fellow exiles should make use of the new guild finder to try to find a new home on your realm. You all seem to have marketable raiding skills that an established guild with perks would probably welcome. Yes, you'll have to spend time building up guild rep, but at least you wouldn't have to start from scratch as you are now.
I can't let your comment pass about the hopefully-not-minor girlfriend. My voice is sometimes mistaken for a child's by telemarketers, and I'm definitely more gnomish-sounding than tauren. I am hoping this girl has the same issue. If you have more evidence than her voice, however, our previous column on romance and minors may help.
Regardless, you and your guildies are much better off without your old guild leader and cohort. Here are a few of the warning signs to look for in future guilds, so that you get out before the drama happens. These are quotes from you (that may or may not have made it into the edited letter above):
- He was starting to drift away from the guild more and more over the past few months ...
- He never responded to anyone's inquiries ...
- ... procrastinated from actually addressing any problems that cropped up ...
- ... never gave anyone officership ...
- Many of our regulars had quit the game due to his lackluster leadership ...
- ... entire guild was being run by the only two officers he had left ...
Drama Mama Lisa: Moving on stinks. All that baggage, all those nailed-up crates full of resentment and anger ... Still, you know you gotta do it -- and we're glad to offer so many shoulders for you to pour your heart out to and clear the air. Let it all out, Grim. We're here for you!As far as moving forward, I don't know that I would suggest trying to join another guild, as Robin suggests. You've got so much emotional investment here! If you're still having trouble getting control of the guild back to your officers, though, I suspect you might enjoy taking on herding a new guild of your own. It'll definitely sting to abandon the old group with all those ranks and perks, but think of it as an opportunity to do things right from the ground up. Then do exactly that. Robin offers a great reminder of danger signs to watch out for; I think experience will most definitely be your guide.
Let us know how it goes!
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with a little help and insight from the Drama Mamas. Remember, your mama wouldn't want to see your name on any drama. Play nice ... and when in doubt, ask the Drama Mamas at robin@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Revynn Apr 29th 2011 4:13PM
Short answer: No. Guild perks are nice, but they're fairly minor if you step back and look at all of them. You're also not going to lose access to your new heirlooms or mount if you leave.
Sunaseni Apr 29th 2011 4:14PM
In the guild I was in previously, this happened (minus the whole relationship thing). It sucks, but the GMs say that once put into the bank, everything belongs to the guild, and the guild belongs to the guild leader, meaning he can take all that he wants unless he purposely ran a scam to get people's gold.
It'll be hard, but you've got no choice but to move on. It sounds like you've got a solid core this time around, so consider it all merely a setback. After all, it's the people that make the guild, not the items in the bank, right? If you have strong progression, you'll make plenty of cash back with BOEs and stuff like that.
Mortenebra Apr 29th 2011 5:00PM
This is spot on. I tend to get really invested in thing so I have a hard time following this bit of advice, but I'll say it anyway: It's just a game. The stuff in the bank is just pixels. The gold is not real currency.
I don't mean any of that in the standard condescending, "Your situation and feelings don't matter and are invalidated," way. I mean that as a way of taking a breath and gaining some perspective. It all boils down to one thing, which the letter-writer already mentioned: a total waste of time and effort.
When I read the letter, I got flashbacks to the first time I encountered a brazen ninja, a jerk of a party/guildmember, etc-- in short, people who seem to get their rocks off on causing other people a headache. And I remember being told afterward by well-meaning people that it was all "just a game" and the loot that was ninja'd will drop again and, after all, it's just pixels, all that. Being pissed off and rather irrational at the time, I retorted that it was a waste of my time and effort; how can such people exist, anyway?
The kicker was when someone mentioned I was exerting further effort and wasting even more time by complaining about that jackass and this asshole and everyone who has offended me since. As hokey as this sounds, the hate and anger and resentment you're feeling only hurts one person: yourself. As much as you'd love to see some sort of retribution wrought upon the bad guy, some sign that justice exists, it's just not worth it. Even if you were to track down your former GM and give him a piece of your mind, at best you may be met with a "So what? What are you going to do about it?" and you're still frustrated at the end.
As Sunaseni points out, it sounds like you've found a core group of people in along the journey and they seem to be good, like-minded individuals. With your former guild, it's a harsh lesson learned but you'll never give yourself the chance to move on from it (and apply what you've learned) if you keep agonizing over it. You will be much happier and much better off in the long run.
Best of luck.
gamerunknown Apr 29th 2011 5:45PM
I have serious issue with this response on several fronts. The first of which is very easy to convey: "time is money, friend" (As Basil points out often in his column). Even the way we choose to spend our time on leisure activities can be quantified monetarily and saving a few g at the expense of several hours is a huge opportunity cost. In other words, if you had dedicated those countless hours helping out with the guild to farming gold instead and then selling it illegally you would probably have in excess of $100.
The second is that humans have an innate tendency towards retribution. It is an evolutionary stable system and the one that humans have happened to adopt as a majority. The individual rules and morality don't matter as much as that when someone does something that detracts from the general welfare of the people, we feel they should be punished. There are scales of this too: those afflicted with a "Just World" or "Strict Father" outlook are inclined to believe that someone living in poverty is lazy, or that someone who got into a road accident was inattentive, or that a country afflicted by a natural disaster had an unusual preponderance of homosexuals... While the bleeding hearts campaign for nuclear disarmament, spending more money on preventing the causes of crime and animal rights or whatnot. The overall phenomenon of attributing blame can be seen in the personification of technology when it goes wrong: yelling "stupid computer" or "($*%ing Blizz!" doesn't help much but it does make us feel better. Then of course there are the despots who punish the slightest perceived insult and the psychopaths who contravene the system entirely... At any rate, there's some psychic dissonance felt whenever a bad deed goes unpunished.
But luckily, I recall reading on WoW Insider that Blizzard has taken steps to reimburse guild banks in the event of ninjaing before. If anyone could find the link to the article you could use it as a precedent for Blizz and go straight to the court of appeals... Or something.
One thing they've pointed out at great pains in the latest Meet the Devs is that they wont punish abuses by the guild masters. I think a system of checks and balances revolving around the officer core would neatly illustrate the superiority of a democratic system. That way important decisions like gdisbands would have to be ratified by a large percentage of currently active officers. Guilds could choose to opt into such systems so it wouldn't cause complications for alt guilds but if you were joining a leveling guild you'd feel more secure in one that made democratic decisions. Our guild doesn't have anything formal like that but we tend towards it with decisions such as transferring guild leadership.
zubbiefish Apr 30th 2011 7:15AM
The fact that a GL can empty out a guild bank, is one of the biggest reasons that I don't put anything "valuable" in the guild bank. Similarly, I don't use my guild's bank for repairs, and I buy anything out of it at the market rate. I try to be as self-sufficient as I can. I provide feasts for my raid, help the alchemist with mats for cauldrons, and keep myself in raid-ready shape.
That said, when I was an officer of a guild, and had some say on the policies, I advocated for providing those services for the members. I also put my time, gold, and mats into the bank. Not everyone is as diligent as I am when it comes to being prepared, so it's good for the guild as a whole to have a healthy bank.
Maitri Apr 30th 2011 11:16AM
@ Gamerunknown
You mentioned ESS's (evolutionary stable systems). /hug
You win.
Alberto Apr 29th 2011 4:36PM
SNSD - Run Devil Run
best k-pop song ever
lols
Verine Apr 29th 2011 5:22PM
Here I thought it was going to be based off "Run Lola Run". That would have been something.
Sleutel Apr 29th 2011 7:05PM
A year or two ago I was in a guild where about half the raiders were obsessed with Girls' Generation. I happened to think of them the other day, and spent the night my guild was working on 10-man Heroic Chimaeron looping "Gee" over and over from YouTube. So that I wouldn't stab people in the face. Though the internet. For making us wipe over and over.
And whaddaya know, we killed the boss, and I didn't kill anybody!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7mPqycQ0tQ
Saeadame Apr 30th 2011 3:39AM
I dunno... Mr. Taxi's looking pretty awesome.
"Mr. Taxi, Taxi, Taxi soutou jeukshi jeukshi jeukshi..."
PV's pretty cheap but meh....
threesixteen Apr 29th 2011 4:39PM
i don't think pundit means what the letter writer thinks it means; tho many pundits are in fact feckless wonders which i suspect is closer to the meaning the author intended.
dhyuns Apr 29th 2011 4:39PM
snsd!
Magma Apr 29th 2011 4:46PM
Times like this is when it's a shame there isn't a button you and your guildies can press to give someone an emergency kick in the balls.
Mummrah Apr 29th 2011 8:48PM
or the ovaries
zubbiefish Apr 30th 2011 7:19AM
Ow, my pancreas!
Twilytgardnaery Apr 29th 2011 4:47PM
Heh. Reminds me of something a former GM pulled, thankfully pre-Cata, when he suddenly decided that running a social/raiding guild wasn't getting him what he wanted. Two successive walls of text in gchat, followed by /gdisband. The contents of the bank (which were not minor, we were a large guild and had had H Naxx on farm for quite some time when he pulled this) were all mailed off to him, as happens when a guild is disbanded, and no one was allowed an opportunity to reclaim an iota of it.
It's something I still get uppity about on occasion. I hope that Grim Prospects can channel the energy from being so flagrantly disrespected into dedication to create a communicative, respectful environment for hirself and hir fellow gamers.
Chris Apr 29th 2011 4:55PM
I really wish Blizzard would develop some system to create guild bylaws or something that could establish some very basic rules that even a guild leader couldn't break. There is certainly room for improvement that doesn't involved massive regulations or complete hands off either.
Simple things like how to pass of a guild to other members if a leader doesn't log in for a long period of time. Or not allowing a guild leader to leave a guild for x number of days after looting the bank for more than 20% of it's gold or items.
It doesn't have to be these exact ideas. I just gave some examples of basic rules that could be very easy to enforce and would only really capture the truly outrageous acts by guild leaders.
Kuro Apr 29th 2011 4:56PM
"I hear tales of guilds that did mass invites only to jettison most of the members after the guilds hit level 25." -- What they're doing is mass inviting to level the guild into the 20's then selling it for a tidy profit. They're selling the ping-pong paddles that they stole.
Been through it with a different situation and ending. It's one of my biggest beefs with the new Guild Leveling system.
In the post-cataclysm world folks need to be very careful about where they invest their time and efforts. Bliz has make it VERY difficult to start up a new guild or to move a guild from server to server. (Guild rep, however, is mostly fluff -- losing it means you've maybe lost or have delayed access to pets and mounts.)
If you have a group of people who's willing to put in the work -- then go for it. Hopefully it will be easier now with the Guild Challenges raising the rep gains / caps.
If you go to a new server/guild and try to integrate a raid into an exisitng guild.... that can be a mess. Personality classes, sniping your raid members, fears that you will snipe their raid members, concerns over the culture of their guild, etc.. I'd suggest joining into a "mega" guild that already has a number of raiding groups. If you were trying to do this. It may be more impersonal, but they're likely to be more stable.
Another option is to keep an alt in the old guild and, if the new guild leader gets bored with out anyone to play ping-pong with and request leadership if he goes AWOL for 30 days.
wow Apr 29th 2011 5:03PM
After being in two guilds, on two different realms, that have fallen apart, and crying over lost Gold and such, I decided to start my own Guild. We are a small Casual/RP/Occasional Raiding Guild and we have fun enjoying the game, whatever we decide to do, we do.
Granted most of our members are mostly alts, we are discussing using the new Guild finder to recruit new members, but our main concern is that the game remains fun and entertaining.
In the previous two guilds I was part of the Guild Leader(s) pug'd the entire Guild Bank and Items, generally just pissing all of us off coz I had devoted a great deal of farming time in helping the GB build Gold for new Storage Tabs. My friends and I decided to just create a new guild on our current realm and let anyone who wants to join, join.
I wish Blizz would do something for Guild EXP for guilds like ours, but we have fun in the game now and not worrying to much about bad blood with other guilds or anything like that. The rule for my guild is simple: "Be courteous to others in the game, including fellow Guild Members. Don't be rude and mean, despite what others do to you. Report it to a GM and move on. Life is too short and WoW is more fun without loudmouthed Fun-suckers."
I guess this rant was really only to say one thing: WoW is a great game with lots of good and friendly players. Just drop the anger and move on. You'll find the game is as fun as it was when you first started playing WoW.
Sorry about the loooonngg rant.
Shinanji
LynMars Apr 29th 2011 5:12PM
The perks and rewards aren't worth the stress or holding onto anger, Grim. They didn't exist before Cataclysm, and most players were sill spending the same amount of time doing the same things. Now there's just a noticeable tracking of that time, and minor benefits for spending it that we were perfectly happy without prior to 4.0.
This is why I dislike the new Guild Leveling and Perks system. I understand what Blizz was trying to do with it--it makes some people think twice before guild-hopping because of one bad progression weekend or something--but it causes situations like the ones mentioned here where people feel like they can't leave a bad situation because OMG, the -perks- and the -rewards- and -time- (that I would have spent anyway a year ago)...
No, they are not required for gameplay, or very powerful. But let's face it: you give players a reward that's even just handy, and they -want it-. My main RP guild is only lvl 8, we have a hard time attracting new players that aren't simply RP alts (my other guild, that can raid and regularly instance, is lvl 18, so it's not like I'm "missing out" on perks for some of my alts). Other niche guilds, or trying to start guilds, have a hard time recruiting because people want levels and perks already handed to them when they join.
I'm glad the tabards have been implemented to help raise guild rep; that was needed, and can make the idea of changing guilds a little easier for some. But the level and perks system, I'm just not sure it's the best way to draw the focus of the game to more social guild based aspects when it causes this sort of anxiety in players.