I am a killer of guilds
by Anne Stickney 
Jan 30th 2012 at 3:00PM
I have a confession to make: I'm a guild killer.
I don't do it deliberately, I swear. See, back in vanilla, my raid guild lost pretty much all of its officers to EverQuest II right around the time Ahn'Qiraj-40 was coming into play. So the officers who were left (and the new guild leader) decided I should also be an officer -- and I agreed, which was probably the worst decision I've made in my life. Two weeks later, the guild was belly up and I was off trying out a roleplaying server for the first time, since I now had loads of free time to play an alt.
I figured it was simply the lack of leadership experience that had ultimately killed the old guild. The officers who had been promoted weren't really officer material, myself wholeheartedly included. After losing most of our officer corps, the wind had gone right out of the guild's sails, so to speak.
But see ... the trait of guild killing followed me after that. I couldn't help it. And I began to wonder if maybe I am just a terrible, terrible choice for an officer.
I don't do it deliberately, I swear. See, back in vanilla, my raid guild lost pretty much all of its officers to EverQuest II right around the time Ahn'Qiraj-40 was coming into play. So the officers who were left (and the new guild leader) decided I should also be an officer -- and I agreed, which was probably the worst decision I've made in my life. Two weeks later, the guild was belly up and I was off trying out a roleplaying server for the first time, since I now had loads of free time to play an alt.
I figured it was simply the lack of leadership experience that had ultimately killed the old guild. The officers who had been promoted weren't really officer material, myself wholeheartedly included. After losing most of our officer corps, the wind had gone right out of the guild's sails, so to speak.
But see ... the trait of guild killing followed me after that. I couldn't help it. And I began to wonder if maybe I am just a terrible, terrible choice for an officer.
Miri over at Guarded By the Light put together an excellent, insightful look about what it takes to run a guild -- and let me tell you from personal experience, it's a lot harder than it looks. If you take a look at Miri's post, you'll see what is just one small fraction of the everyday life of managing a guild. Miri's got the right of it, though -- running a guild is very much like running a business. And really, that's what struck a chord with me when I read it.
I am not a business leader. I am not a manager, and I am not a supervisor. At least, I'm not any of those things when I play a video game. For me, playing the game is about having fun playing the game, not time management and orchestrating events and figuring out who gets what loot drop. And there are lots and lots of people out there just like me -- people who want to play simply to play. But here's the thing -- everyone's got their own unique idea of fun.
I've been puzzled more than once at the antics of Auction House players, largely because I just don't understand what's fun about selling things on the AH. I think maybe, in the end, guild leadership is kind of the same thing. Miri's post illustrates just a little of what goes on in guild management, and Officer's Quarters talks about it every week as well. I'm guessing that as far as guild leadership is concerned, it's along the same lines as the Auction House -- either you really get it and you get the fun out of it, or you're like me, simply mystified by the process and not quite sure why anyone would call it fun.
Maybe I'm not quite a guild killer; maybe I'm just the one who wants to stay behind, make sure the building is cleared out, lock the door and turn out the lights. It's not the most pleasant of tasks, but there's something cathartic about that final /gquit. I'm not really a bad officer; I'm just not cut out for the task. But ... I think I'm still going to avoid any officer positions from here on out. Just in case.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Cerrena Jan 30th 2012 3:06PM
My dryer is the killer of guilds. I've gone though two heart breaking guild breakups both while my dryer was on the fritz. I've gotten pretty superstitious about dryer maintenance.
Xeevus Jan 30th 2012 10:14PM
ALWAYS clean your lint trap...always. Bewaaaaare!
Duts Jan 31st 2012 2:21PM
You're pathetic Permanent Press cycle will betraaaaaaaay you!
kabshiel Jan 30th 2012 3:11PM
I am an executive IRL and the absolute last thing I want to do when I get home from work is to manage a guild. I just want to sit back and let someone else take charge for once. Every time I've been placed in a leadership position in a guild, I've run it into the ground with my lack of effort.
From my experience, the best guild masters I've ever had have been teachers.
Niv Jan 30th 2012 3:33PM
I could see the teacher thing, but in my experience, the best guild leaders are moms.
threesixteen Jan 30th 2012 3:33PM
great point!
often the perception is that in order to lead, you have to be authoritative, demanding and dictatorial, but in fact those traits are usually short-term leadership qualities. teaching (without patronizing) has the bonus of establishing an authority, while also creating dialogue and encouraging questions. the best teams are the teams that don't point fingers but instead have each person aware of the fact they did *something* wrong and asking for help identifying what it was.
this is not to be mistaken for encouraging anyone to 'tell someone how to play their toon" (nothing annoys me more than when someone tries to tell me how to push buttons) but rather to draw the camera back to illustrate what was happening at the macro level and allowing a player to assert their own role and see where they messed up or missed out.
arming people with the knowledge of an encounter to encourage create problem solving is a supremely subtle and difficult task; but that's why being a leader is so hard. it's thankless and lonely and many times what you are trying to do longterm is, in the short term, misunderstood.
add to this the requirements of marking attendance, settling emo arguments, competing individual agendas, and one realizes that patience is, in the end, the ultimate two-edged weapon of a leader.
othragon Jan 30th 2012 4:01PM
Damn right! My guild leader's an adorable middle aged mom, whose family is pretty much all into wow. They run a tight ship, we got Realm first lvl 25 guild thanks to a coordinated effort from all guildies!
mibu.work1 Jan 30th 2012 10:49PM
@ niv
The problems with Moms are that they have children. Not just small children whom they wish to play with, but teen children, adult children whom they communicate with via Warcraft. This is an issue in that you have now joined a guild with a family dynamic, which means that at least two raid slots are permanently filled, expressing a concern to one member will reach all of them, and family disputes can ruin a guild's raiding instantly.
I'm saying this after being in three 'family guilds' in a row, and each one has been wonderful in its own way, but at the same time the most stressful experience I've had in-game. It's not for everyone, and I've learned it's not for me. Your guild are your friends, don't make them your family unless you can be sure that the family that plays together stays together.
Doanld Jan 31st 2012 7:11AM
agreed, mom's and teachers work as GM's cause we all act like kids in the game. LOL
My GM is a grandmom and a teacher, and she boxes, Batteries Not Included love ya Perse
Domintal Jan 30th 2012 3:15PM
Every single previous guild I have been in died within a month of me joining or leaving. All of them. Sometimes because I left, but mainly it had nothing to do with me, it just died. Me and my friends think I have some sort of guild curse.
Actually, now that I think about it, the guild (11th or so >.>) I am in now just died a week ago due to SWtOR. 0.o
almoderate Jan 30th 2012 3:18PM
My husband refers to me as the "canary in a coal mine" where guilds are concerned. If I leave, it's bad. It's really bad. And stuff is about to go down. It's never failed. I leave a guild, and within a month or two it implodes. Two of those guilds have since been able to rebuild, but that's rare, and they're both a mere shell of the guilds they were when I joined.
DC Jan 30th 2012 3:50PM
I am fine when simply floating around in a guild, but I will never, ever, ever, never again lead one or be an officer in one. I used to run a 300+ member guild back in the day, including raiding, and the time, effort and stress was entirely too much. It got to the point where I dreaded even logging on because of the awful whine-fests I had to moderate. I finally ended up appointing an officer to handle all concerns, and I literally had a "no contact" policy in game when I was online. Since that is entirely the opposite point of leading a guild, I eventually handed off lead and just dropped guilds altogether.
Caz Jan 30th 2012 3:23PM
I'm an Officer in my guild.
Though I don't know why.
I just recently noticed the promotion, but I have no assigned duties.
Prelimar Jan 30th 2012 3:36PM
me too. other than being around when the guild was formed, and being one of the signers of the charter, i have no definitely responsibility (unless being a mage IS my responsibility). NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING : )
OrloChavez Jan 30th 2012 3:33PM
I think this is the first time I've ever heard of a WoW guild being killed by EQ2. Ever. Are you sure it was EQ2? Maybe it was Kingdom Hearts 2. The timing's about right.
Anne Stickney Jan 30th 2012 4:19PM
Yep, it was EQ2 - they quit the original EQ to play WoW, and when EQ2 was in beta, they got passes for it. Decided they wanted to go back to playing Everquest. XD
OrloChavez Jan 30th 2012 4:26PM
I'm not trying to make this a gotcha or anything, but EQ2 came out a month (maybe less) before WoW. I quit EQ2 for WoW. By the time AQ was out, EQ2 was well on its way to being a dried-up has been. That's why the concept is so weird for me. That'd be like an entire guild quitting for Age of Conan today.
It's also weird because EQ2 was terrible.
Anne Stickney Jan 30th 2012 4:36PM
It was most definitely EQ2. We ALL got beta passes while we were doing BWL, courtesy of our guild leader. I remember trying it out, too! I made a little mouse chick, logged into the game itself, and promptly getting motion sick any time I had to walk anywhere. Totally not the game for me. But the guild leaders liked it, played the beta on their off nights, and finally decided to just quit WoW to start playing EQ2 again. Familiarity, I suppose!
Pyromelter Jan 30th 2012 5:34PM
I am completely unfamiliar with how betas work for EQ2, but EQ2 has had a lot of expansions over the years. Might have been a beta key for an expansion test server?
Also, I may be completely botching this, but if I recall rightly, EQ2 when it first came out was panned pretty harshly. Over time it's become a much better game. Since it's now free to play, I recently rolled an elf mage and started playing around, and it's pretty darn good. I've messed around with a lot of other MMO's recently (mostly f2p ones, not swtor), and EQ2 was definitely the best one. Very nice graphics/beautiful environment, battle system seemed smooth. Took me a minute to get used to the way you interface with NPC's, and I wasn't a fan of the bag/inventory system, but overall the game reminded me of a very polished wow-type experience.
I didn't really level up though so I have no idea what it's like at level-cap, and for any MMO to be successful, it has to be fun at level cap, so I couldn't grade the game overall, but I had a very good impression of it when just trying it out for a bit.
musicchan Jan 30th 2012 7:06PM
Apparently EQ2 came out about half a month before WoW: November 8, 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_II
I'm not siding with anyone here. Just linking the facts.