Posts with tag breakups

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook

Dear Scott,

First off let me say I'm a fan of your column, every time I'm asked for help by an officer or friend I point them to your posts first and my guild even has your blog in our officer handbook. But let me get to the point of this letter, I'm currently an advisor for a small guild of players that moved over from our old guild when they had a fallout with the new guild master (and co-gm). Things have been going well if not great (2 heroic kills ...). However issues relating to guild members dating has often resulted in one of them leaving the guild because the other isn't taking the break up well.

Up until the latest one I haven't been around to talk to the member leaving (player A). Sadly I wasn't successful and he still left however I did find that the other guild member (player 1) wasn't taking the break up well and player A just didn't feel conformable in the guild any more. I don't know what to do, I don't want to lose player 1 if I confront her but I don't want lose player A as well.

Kre

We all choose how to react to the world around us. Nobody's exempt -- we're so much more than the sum of our knee-jerk reactions to life. Yet it's also true that harnessing raging emotions is hard, especially when things hurt, and sometimes we're just not up to the task.

When continued pain seems inevitable, sometimes treating ourselves with respect means making a measured retreat. The trick is knowing which situations merit dogged perseverance and which deserve said measured retreat.

Hey Drama Mamas

I am a raid leader for my guild, I handle guild progression and the GM handles farming and alt runs, After a long struggle we finally are all set up to make some serious momentum in Mists of Pandaria after using DS to bolster our ranks. Furthermore about 2 years ago I brought my girlfriend into the game and guild.

Recently one of the guild members we picked up in dragon soul started raiding heavily with us. He quit his other guild where he had lots of friends to join us. I am a tank and for our progression I asked him to be my Co-tank. We did arenas together for a while and became fairly close. Then the other day my girlfriend (also on the progression team) and I broke up. If that was not enough, she then started dating my Co-tank. I found out that the two of them had been in contact ever since they first raided together.

Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

It happens. It's a tale as old as Hogger. In the growth and progression of a raid group, there eventually comes a time where no amount of coaching or communication can possibly hold it together and keep it going. It's not even a matter of whether or not people are right or wrong, skilled or unskilled. It's just that when you put enough years behind a raid, the people who make up that raid can grow apart.

It sounds like a horrible break up letter doesn't it? "Look," the raid leader says. "It's not you. It's us. We want different things. I think it's best if we go and raid with different people. You know. As a trial. See how it goes." And then all of a sudden, half the existing raid group has suddenly swapped off to a different server, and the other half is left to wonder what the heck happened.

So I just joined a great guild two weeks ago (as my warrior is getting ready to start raiding), and today I saw a sight many of you have probably seen before: the guild's first officer has apparently been having problems with a few people whose "names he won't mention," and posted a fairly polite /gquit message on the guild's message boards. So I did what most people in that situation would do: I grabbed the popcorn. I doubt this guild will break up (it's got a fairly solid background and lots of members), but if it does, it'll be a sight to see.

And then I notice that Relmstein has today posted a nice article about this very subject. He says there's two reasons guilds break up: Either the guild leader decides to quit and take everybody down with him (or her), or guild drama creates a big enough rift in the membership that eventually everyone wants out.

In the first scenario ("death by self destruct"), there's one leader who's convinced there's nothing that should happen in the guild without their say. Weird decisions are made, and ideas or help are refused by the leader. Eventually they decide it's all over, and a few /gkicks later, it's all over but the crying.

In the second ("death by divide"), one or two members of the guild gets angry about something that happens, and starts fracturing the guild apart (usually by gaining power and then abusing it in the eyes of the leader). This one is much more fun-- there's usually a few spirited in-game conversations, a few long rants on the message boards, and eventually everyone /gquits away, as Relm says, "quietly in the early morning."

Is there any way to stop it? Relmstein doesn't give any answers to that one, and in my experience it's completely true that most disbands fall along one or both of these lines. But maybe that isn't so bad-- a guild isn't really a family or a job, even though it has qualities of both. It's just a voluntary grouping of people with the same interests in game. One guild breaks up, another comes along. And either way, it's always fun to watch.