A couple personal experiences both as a Co-Leader of a Guild and as an officer watching the Mayhem Behind the Scenes (Both from WoW unfortunately):
(Disclaimer- At work so I can't really peruse the links posts to the WoW Forums)
As a Co-Leader
I Co-Lead one guild with my best friend and room-mate at the time. It was an interesting experience because he had the social aspects and the ability to be an ass when necessary, but I had the ability to organize, plan, and such, as well as keep him from going overboard on the ass aspect. It actually worked quite well, because being real life friends we were able to constantly maintain contact and consult each other even if one of us wasn't online.
The only trouble the guild really had was when we allowed another guild to merge into us. We had their leader join us as a Guild leader, making it a triumverate, and a couple of his class officers filled out the officer spots we still hadn't filled.
The leader, and the officers themselves were fine. The issue was that not all the members that came wanted to be a part of the merger, and one or two decided to be real assholes and act like they had seniority. (Generally all coming from the merger guild, not ours). We had run a fairly tight ship to that point in keeping retards and jackasses out, so when the issues of removing these new problem children arose, there was quite a lot of bullshit flying. In the end though, the merger's-leader was out voted by the two of us and he did submit that the people we were kicking were being asses.
They made it their job after that to try and recruit everyone they could from our guild, and while I think we limped on for another couple months, we hemmoraged ourselves to half of what we had been before the merger. After that, My friend and I were fairly tired of putting up with everything and College Finals were coming, so we talked to the third leader and found out he was quitting all together. In the end, we just passed leadership to the officers and bid them the best of luck.
As an Officer Watching the Chaos:
Among all things to make a successful guild, Communication I believe is the most important aspect. Having served as an officer is about 3 different guilds over the span of several years, I have found that a lack of communication causes resentment, anger, and ultimately splintering of the guild.
Other aspects, as to who leaders, or officer set ups, I find those mostly trivial (Though there do need to be limits. such as officers/leaders not exceeding 10% or so of the guild populace). I've been in a guild where a husband and wife lead it and it was awesome. They were both genuinely cool people and they loved playing and working with everyone in their guild. True, they had their "friends" but they made an effort to play with each member of their guild atleast once a week.
On the flip side, I've been in two guilds lead by husband/wife Duo's that were completely and utterly terrible. The couple themselves never communcated in one of them (you'd ask the wife something, she'd say OK, then the husband would berate you for doing something against his will. Niether one ever knew the other's plans, it was like having one two-faced leader). The other, He was her lapdog and never said or did anything unless someone went against his wife's word, and then by golly you got your ass handed to you on a silver platter. It also didn't help that in the latter one, she was manipulative and that guild had somewhere around 30 officers, 60 officer alts and about 8 guild leaders (in a guild of 250; 130ish distinct?). As such, there was never any consensus or agreement about any guild plans, and every officer told you something different.
I attempted to spur communication in both cases (officer's meetings, discussions with leaders and other officers, officer chat), but niether one felt anything was wrong until the guild around them began to fall apart. Even then, many times they felt it was simply because people like me trying to get people communicating or things moving, or other officers who were trying to help organize the mess those guilds had become were "Bad leaders".
Oricalm on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Far too often guild leadership is filled with slots for people who at the top of the social ladder or are simply friends with the guild masters.
I've been in many guilds where the officer core was filled with incompetence based on this.
I am proud to say that I hold the officers in my guild to extremely high standards, which they meet.
What standards and how do you hold them to them? What is your office churn rate like?
Officer churn rate?
Has your guild been around long enough to have officers step down/burn out/get themselves kicked in a blaze of stupidity? And if so, how often has it happened?
Thomamelas on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Far too often guild leadership is filled with slots for people who at the top of the social ladder or are simply friends with the guild masters.
I've been in many guilds where the officer core was filled with incompetence based on this.
I am proud to say that I hold the officers in my guild to extremely high standards, which they meet.
What standards and how do you hold them to them? What is your office churn rate like?
Officer churn rate?
Has your guild been around long enough to have officers step down/burn out/get themselves kicked in a blaze of stupidity? And if so, how often has it happened?
Never happened, not once. None of them are particularly quick to anger, none are stupid, all excel in the particular classes that they play, all know how to listen and how to avoid drama.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
As far as I know, either Accualt or Scooter just thought about it a bit and came to a number. I'm not in the PA supergroups anymore, but the way The Circle of Jerks does it is just "Run in SG mode until you hit around level 30, then do whatever you want", since SG mode doesn't impact your money gain until 25. Super-conservative base design also means that we pay about a quarter of the rent the PA groups do, since I don't think our base is designed for PvP raiding that probably won't come for a long time.
I set it to what a person on a 2-week trial earned, so that people trying out the game on a trial wouldn't stuff their pockets for shits and giggles and then dissappear.
Of course, since the numbers don't carry over between characters and reset whenever a character leaves the SG, what it mostly comes down to is if they're someone I recognize and if they remember to ask for a promotion.
Scooter on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
My friends guild was basically glued together by himself. When he finally snapped because nobody could think without his input and left the guild the whole thing dissolved within an hour. People logged in, found out he was gone, and left.
Apparently an hour after he left he got invited into the top raiding guild of the server at the time, since that guild he'd made had been put together from scratch and the previous guild we were in and got to 4th rank on the server in advancement within like 3 months.
He was a text book example of centralised leadership via charisma.
Morninglord on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Far too often guild leadership is filled with slots for people who at the top of the social ladder or are simply friends with the guild masters.
I've been in many guilds where the officer core was filled with incompetence based on this.
I am proud to say that I hold the officers in my guild to extremely high standards, which they meet.
What standards and how do you hold them to them? What is your office churn rate like?
Officer churn rate?
Has your guild been around long enough to have officers step down/burn out/get themselves kicked in a blaze of stupidity? And if so, how often has it happened?
Never happened, not once. None of them are particularly quick to anger, none are stupid, all excel in the particular classes that they play, all know how to listen and how to avoid drama.
Man I want into your guild and I don't even play whatever game you play.
Morninglord on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
My friends guild was basically glued together by himself. When he finally snapped because nobody could think without his input and left the guild the whole thing dissolved within an hour. People logged in, found out he was gone, and left.
Apparently an hour after he left he got invited into the top raiding guild of the server at the time, since that guild he'd made had been put together from scratch and the previous guild we were in and got to 4th rank on the server in advancement within like 3 months.
He was a text book example of centralised leadership via charisma.
Did you have any other officer structure or was it all him? Was he RL as well?
Thomamelas on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
My friends guild was basically glued together by himself. When he finally snapped because nobody could think without his input and left the guild the whole thing dissolved within an hour. People logged in, found out he was gone, and left.
Apparently an hour after he left he got invited into the top raiding guild of the server at the time, since that guild he'd made had been put together from scratch and the previous guild we were in and got to 4th rank on the server in advancement within like 3 months.
He was a text book example of centralised leadership via charisma.
Did you have any other officer structure or was it all him? Was he RL as well?
Hmm. We had class officers that were voted into the role by the classes themselves. I was a class leader, but I got voted into that role by the other warlocks.
There were officers higher up than me. The raid main tank, the guild leader (who was a healer) and I (ranged dps class) lived in the same house, but I was too busy/didn't care enough to be a high up officer so didn't get power I didn't need.
Large scale policy decisions were generally suggest on the forum boards first for feedback before being implemented, but not always.
Really, he was just a very charismatic person who was also intelligent, motivated and usually reasonable. He could tell you off and call you an idiot and you would smile because of the way he said it or seriously listen and want to do better. I mean he had a temper, could be extremely harsh (I got booted from the raid once myself for having to do something unexpected in real life before a dungeon door shut me out) but was also extremely competent and got results. People got items, so people stayed.
The trouble was he was the one with all the brilliant ideas, thinking up the solutions to the boss fights, cajoling lazy people into doing their jobs properly, shepherding the group into the right locations during, eg, onyxia runs (this was pre bc) and making sure they did it. he would tell healers they were likely to get too much aggro, warn dpsers they were doing a little too much, or not enough and they should pull their socks up. He just ran everything. If he didn't turn up to the raid for some reason due to real life concerns, sometimes they'd wipe on trash monsters. Maybe kill one boss. Then quit for the night, full of drama and rage.
He was that guild. The main tank didn't really care. He just hit stuff. He had that orange weapon at the time, the lightning one so didn't have to think much to maintain aggro.
I quit before he left due to real life concerns (new girlfriend). He told me about it later.
I remember him wanting to make a guild because he wanted to do that at least once, make a guild and do something with it. So he approached the leadership as something he wanted to do and planned it for a long time. A lot of the core raiders were people he'd raided with in another guild and he used to run australian time slot raids in that american guild. He brought those people over to form the core of the new one and then carefully selected applicants.
For example if a Warlock wanted to join they had to talk to me, I'd talk to them for a while, ask them questions, meet them and check out their gear, maybe do a ten man with them as the other warlock. If I liked them I'd ask for them to run a raid with us and if they kept up their end properly they were in.
I personally had a sub-leader, a very dedicated and skilled warlock who was a bit hot headed and said silly stuff, pissed people off sometimes. But he knew his stuff and we would theory craft for ages and he'd bring a lot of potions and things for the fights. I got him to run for me on a couple of raids I couldn't attend and he did a good job once I got him to realise he had to follow the rules/not talk back during a raid (suggest things after the raid, not during). Otherwise people got confused.
So when I left I suggested him and I guess he took over/got voted in. Hardly anybody else wanted to be the class leader, most of the others were pvping or too busy farming for pve gear.
We had seperate chat channels. I set up a warlock chat channel and made all my warlocks join it, and the other classes had the same. There was a general raid channel too for important things but that was unstructured. If a raid wide thing needed to be said it usually happened over ventrillo and repeated in the channel.
Ventrillo was for the guild leader and main tank to give orders. Class officers rarely spoke unless they had to, but they could speak if they needed to. Non officers weren't really allowed to speak, but it was allowed if things were going swimmingly (or something really needed to be said). You could also social chat in the raid channel.
I gave warlock specific orders in the warlock channel. I made sure that people were watching that channel by requiring them to confirm in the chanel with a y or something. There were more warlocks than we needed too so people who didn't buck up I didn't invite back.
For raid formation, the class leaders got invited, then they invited the class members for that night.
Any big disputes or angry drama got referred to the guild leader. So if I decided a Warlock wasn't up to snuff and should sit out to have a bit of a think and he got snooty, I told the GL about it and he sorted it out.
This is all I can really think of. If you ask more specific questions I might remember more, but this was like 4 years ago now.
Morninglord on
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I'm in the process of getting a guild setup by a group of friends off the ground. They had recruited pretty heavily, but I wear 90% of the list was nothing but alts.
Thanks for the awesome OP.
TheColonel on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
Basic plan of groups as far as I'm concerned? Delegate. Find someone you can trust who is almost as good as you but not quite and foist shit onto him for little reward.
I mean, let him do stuff and tell him he's a good boy.
Hmm, that's still too much asshole.
You get the idea.
If they don't do it, take the responsibilty and the perks away from them and give it to someone else.
Morninglord on
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I'm of the opinion that there is one major thing that kills guilds; at least guilds attempting to facilitate more than just a loose coalition of buddies.
Entitlement is the culprit; this is facilitated by the scenario Munkus described as well as "senior" members or officers who think they deserve something. It should be clear to every single person in the guild that there is a simple equation; if you don't feel the benefit balances the commitment, work in a constructive fashion toward changing it. If you feel entitled to this change without putting in the constructive effort, you can only change the equation by no longer offering your commitment (read: getting the fuck out).
I think this structure is often undermined by said buddies-as-officers and by an impression that a guild is a democracy. When it comes to guilds, I think Plato was right; the masses are too stupid (as a mob, or whole) to handle a true democracy where they are entitled to change based off of opinion, and nothing else. Conversely, guild leadership shouldn't assume the masses agree with them, and need to offer the same level of respect and constructive, documented, proof for decisions and policies.
I prefer to see a benevolent dictatorship; the chain of command is absolute, with the exception of an out-of-chain party who has veto authority over only the GM, on behalf of the bulk of members themselves.
In terms of member-to-leadership (beyond "squad" level leadership, like recruiters or tactical decision makers) ratio, what have you guys seen that works?
Morskittar on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2008
Complicated bureaucracies will fail, usually. It's best to use a very simple guild structure. The most complicated that you should go would be
Guild Leader(s)
Officers (Who are in the sort of management/leadership role)
Class Officers (Who have an excellent grasp of their class and can communicate well)
Regular Members
Recruits
Friends of Members
The way the beasts are set up is like this:
The Triumvirate: Saeris, Sabin, and Myself (The three of us have the last word on guild decisions and we work as a guild leadership team. We have cycled the guild leader role through the three of us, but it's just an informal title. We have the utmost trust in each other)
Sexy Beasts: Officers. Excel in their class role, socially tactful, listen to instructions, not drama-prone, intelligent people, are not power abusers
Beasts: Regular members. People who can listen to instructions, have a desire to improve their abilities, and are not incompetent.
Beastkin: Friends of members.
Survival Hunters: New Recruits.
And as a general rule, you never want to squabble over leadership issues in public. It's just poor form. In public, everyone needs to work together to achieve a unified purpose, and undermining the authority of the other leaders is the last thing that needs to happen. You want to fill your leadership positions with people who will not abuse their power first and foremost.
Munkus Beaver on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I'm of the opinion that there is one major thing that kills guilds; at least guilds attempting to facilitate more than just a loose coalition of buddies.
Entitlement is the culprit; this is facilitated by the scenario Munkus described as well as "senior" members or officers who think they deserve something. It should be clear to every single person in the guild that there is a simple equation; if you don't feel the benefit balances the commitment, work in a constructive fashion toward changing it. If you feel entitled to this change without putting in the constructive effort, you can only change the equation by no longer offering your commitment (read: getting the fuck out).
I think this structure is often undermined by said buddies-as-officers and by an impression that a guild is a democracy. When it comes to guilds, I think Plato was right; the masses are too stupid (as a mob, or whole) to handle a true democracy where they are entitled to change based off of opinion, and nothing else. Conversely, guild leadership shouldn't assume the masses agree with them, and need to offer the same level of respect and constructive, documented, proof for decisions and policies.
I prefer to see a benevolent dictatorship; the chain of command is absolute, with the exception of an out-of-chain party who has veto authority over only the GM, on behalf of the bulk of members themselves.
In terms of member-to-leadership (beyond "squad" level leadership, like recruiters or tactical decision makers) ratio, what have you guys seen that works?
We use structure like this:
Guild Leader: Has Autocratic authority. His word is law, but the word is not given without thought.
Guild council: An advisory group. We also execute executive policy, and speak with our master's voice. In essences our job is to do what needs to be done, from the unpleasant (/gkicks, logistics) to the pleasant. We are subordinate to the guild leader but expected to take what actions are needed and exercise our own judgment.
Class leaders: Responsible for the maintenance of their classes. Class numbers, not completely retarded specs, morale of the class, raid invites and swap outs.
Far too often guild leadership is filled with slots for people who at the top of the social ladder or are simply friends with the guild masters.
I've been in many guilds where the officer core was filled with incompetence based on this.
I am proud to say that I hold the officers in my guild to extremely high standards, which they meet.
This, oh god this.
In my experience, too many chiefs, not enough indians has been a huge problem in the past. ie: There's the Guild Master, the Treasurer, the "dispute resolving guy", the Raid Leader, then you have the NINE class leaders. When you get this huge group of people now apart of the "Officers" group, you basically end up splitting your guild into two social groups, and it can cause huge problems down the line.
you basically end up splitting your guild into two social groups, and it can cause huge problems down the line.
This was and always has been a huge problem in past guilds I've been in on Guild Wars. Theres basically Guild Leader, Officers then Memebers. The offie's always start running events that are just officer only invites. Not that we don't want the members to come along. But they always seemed to be off on their own.
I felt really strongly about this and I managed to sort out the issue by demoting myself from officer to member and refused to be promoted until all the guild was basicallyo ne huge family. We had a few outings with members and a few offies and we really managed to solve alotta problems.
Then the guild leader and me got into an argument and well things spiralled outa control again >.>;;
imo there shouldn't be any section only events. It just alienates other players and that (in my view at least) is not what a guild is for. If there is a guild event then it should be for everyone.
Have people not seen success with having an arbiter or dispute resolution role?
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
Morskittar on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Have people not seen success with having an arbiter or dispute resolution role?
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
For us it's rolled into the guild council/Guild leader positions. What we do to create the feeling of participation is periodic guild meetings for "State of the guild" addresses/town hall style meetings. People can bring up any issues for public discussion.
Thomamelas on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Have people not seen success with having an arbiter or dispute resolution role?
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
That's the job of the guild leader.
No, you don't need filler roles to make the guild feel empowered. That's the path to destruction. You run a tight ship and only put people in leadership roles as needed.
And as a rule, you don't give power to those who want it.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
If you're going to run an RP/Raid guild, don't try to do both at the same time.
If you're going to run a guild, don't be a drama whore!
Why? Something to discuss. What happened that triggered this statement? This isn't a chat thread, lets let people learn something from this.
Personal experience playing in what tried to present itself as a heavy RP/light raiding guild. It was a huge mess. People wanted to be ready to raid, so nobody except the guild leaders (who had more or less equipped themselves through T1/Ony and the 20-mans by piggybacking with another guild) ever actually RPed, but the raiding aspect rarely if ever occurred (the GMs often couldn't be bother to attend scheduled raids because they were already equipped beyond the rest of the guild, which was more or less up-and-coming). The end result was that it was a heavy RP/light raiding guild that actually did close to zero of both.
The drama whore part? That comes from the part where the GM was unassertive and more or less let the entire guild be run by the second-in-command chick who really had no idea WTF she was doing and only got to her position because the GM crushed on her. She was the uber-emotional hyper-sensitive sort who would take any actual input on guild affairs as personal insults.
All kinds of headache.
I guess it's more like "Don't run a guild if you can't be bothered to run a guild."
Have people not seen success with having an arbiter or dispute resolution role?
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
That's the job of the guild leader.
No, you don't need filler roles to make the guild feel empowered. That's the path to destruction. You run a tight ship and only put people in leadership roles as needed.
And as a rule, you don't give power to those who want it.
Absolutely, on the last.
The guild does need to be empowered to be heard. Any group of people does, otherwise they start trying to undermine the existing power structure. What needs to be clearly defined, though, is how they can best be heard without creating the impression that they're always right, or deserve whatever they feel like.
A formal mouthpiece does seem to be largely useless, as you can eliminate the bureaucracy and have members give their voice directly to leadership in a controlled and public manner.
Morskittar on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Have people not seen success with having an arbiter or dispute resolution role?
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
That's the job of the guild leader.
No, you don't need filler roles to make the guild feel empowered. That's the path to destruction. You run a tight ship and only put people in leadership roles as needed.
And as a rule, you don't give power to those who want it.
That last statement is something to watch for it. Officer positions are a curse, not a blessing.
I don't think I'd call it a curse. More of a distinct and tangible lack of desire for the responsibility and expression of the fact that they're willing to try to do it because no one else will.
Someone who sees it as a curse may grow resentful.
Morskittar on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2008
What? If done correctly, it's more or less a thankless job with a decent amount of responsibility. It should be a curse, being a regular member should be a happy, fun job. The only times where I thought "I really wish I was an officer" where when I thought that there was some amount of incompetence in the leadership that needed fixing. I almost always think I'd make a good officer, but that doesn't mean I'm running campaigns to get me elected. The best leaders view it as an increase in responsibility, not an increase in power. So the people coming into it expecting sunshine and lollipops are the ones that end up being resentful. The ones that view it as a burden that they must bear are the ones that end up doing the best job.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
It's not a binary option though; officerhood or leadership has more to it than a curse or happy fun time. A burden isn't a curse. Responsibility isn't a curse. That doesn't mean it's laid back, relaxing, or even fun most of the time. And it's certianly not power for power's sake. If you want the position, you don't get it and shouldn't pursue it.
A curse though? That's so melodramatic. That's pretty much bullshit and obscures what the actual responsiblity is or could be.
Morskittar on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2008
It's only melodramatic if you make it to be one. It's a fairly accurate description, to me. It's thankless and puts you in tough positions. I know of more than one person who had broken friendships because he chose to do the right thing instead of catering to his buddies. These things are certainly unexpected, but they do happen.
I think the problem here is that you're putting too much semantical weight on the word curse.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
It's not a binary option though; officerhood or leadership has more to it than a curse or happy fun time. A burden isn't a curse. Responsibility isn't a curse. That doesn't mean it's laid back, relaxing, or even fun most of the time. And it's certianly not power for power's sake. If you want the position, you don't get it and shouldn't pursue it.
A curse though? That's so melodramatic. That's pretty much bullshit and obscures what the actual responsiblity is or could be.
A great and terrible curse. Responsibility is a curse with a single reward. More responsibility. There is the satisfaction of doing a job well, but a good officer gains nothing from the role.
Hyperbole aside, responsibility is pretty goddamn rewarding. As is the knowledge that you set aside a bit of your own selfishness to achieve something beneficial for more than just you. Just because it's not necessarily fun or easy doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Even when considering the rougher parts, like letting someone go or disappointing a segment of your charges.
I wouldn't use officers losing sleep or feeling burdened as a measure for good leadership. Their achievements and attitude should stand without arbitrary measures based on unhappiness.
Also, I haven't still seen much in the way of numbers for an officer-to-member ratio. Obviously there will be variance depending on the guild, guild purpose, and game, but I'd be curious to hear about actual experiences.
Morskittar on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2008
Well, you can certainly be a great leader in a guild without any drama. The beasts are now drama-free, but it was a bit of a rocky start. People got mad, the officers made a decision, some people left. The people that remained were relatively drama-free. Sustaining a drama-free environment is the easy part, creating it can be hard.
That said, leadership feels that much better when the constituents are good. I'm proud of the MMO forum and the WB forum because the constituents have remained solid. I'm proud of the beasts because they are smart, fun people that make being a leader easier and more enjoyable.
I will say, however, that being a raid leader for serious raids is an entirely different ballgame. Being raid leader is often more difficult than being guild leader.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I'm curious to see how traditional raid techniques end up applying to scenario-based PvP in games like AoC and WAR. Not much to add yet.
As purely hypothetical discussions I suspect your most successful guilds will be ones who adopt a more general staff approach. Over all GM handles logistics, staff under him handle field command. My understanding is that it's fairly common in EvE for that kind of structure.
Absolutely.
Does WoW have "Arena Guilds"?
Yep.
I'm curious, if we have anyone here from one or a more general PvP guild how they structure themselves.
Hypothetically (as in pre-beta/pre-release), similar to how you've described; with "strategic" leaders and "tactical" leaders.
I'll probably go more in-depth on this on the Six Mouths boards, but my old MC guild had a two-tiered officer system, and it caused a pretty significant amount of strife. Now, a large part of that was certainly due to the GL (and his useless, piece of shit lootwhoring idiot bitch of a girlfriend) being huge gaping tools, but there was always a touch of resentment between the class leads and the Council.
I know of more than one person who had broken friendships because he chose to do the right thing instead of catering to his buddies. These things are certainly unexpected, but they do happen.
Yeah I once pretty much single-handedly killed a guild by arguing that we maintain the integrity of the loot system we had in place over giving loot to people who were well-liked but already seventy DKP in the hole. And while I've never had to kick anyone, I have had to take them quietly aside and let them know they weren't doing their jobs, and that if they didn't step it up they wouldn't get a spot; people were not happy. It was unfortunate.
One big thing, and a reason I often desire to be an officer, is communication. Transparency is a huge thing for me. If the officers drop out of guild or raid chat or Vent for five minutes while the rest of us are standing around with our thumbs up our ass, I goddamn want to know why we're wasting my time. When I was a class lead and orders from Council came down from on high that made no apparent sense, I expected the reasoning to be laid out for me. I got testy when it was not. And while certainly you don't want to make it look like it's a democracy, and there's a time and place for said explanations, having an officer say "Because I said so, now shut up and do it" frustrates an awful lot of people to no end.
Salvation122 on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2008
Transparency isn't something that I think is needed. A lot of decisions must be discussed behind a veil of confidentiality in order to be successful. There's a reason why ya'll can't see the mod forum here ;o
But yeah, decisions should always be justifiable.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Some, certainly. But I think that being as transparent as practically possible helps engender trust, so that when you do have to say "Just trust me on this, we did the right thing," people are sure that's the case.
I agreed with you guys on basically everything but the power thing. If you see an issue or situation in your guild that you think you can improve, then I think you damn well better pursue it. All great leaders aren't just handed the reigns to something great that they take over, they usually have to bust their ass to get there.
Does this make them power-mongers? In some cases it may, but I don't think that the former automatically constitutes the latter.
Wavechaser on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited May 2008
a problem we ran into was when we gave Class Leaders access to ochat.
Basically, they started getting uppity. Started questioning decisions on loot that had nothing to do with their class, offering opinions on non-class related matters when not asked for, and basically acting more like officers than class leaders.
So it was taken away.
Dhalphir on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited May 2008
I would also disagree with the being an officer is a curse.
I am, by nature, a person who relishes a leadership role.
By and large, I haven't abused my power, and I feel no desire to do so. Most of the things I have done have been unrelated to being an officer.
The way my personality works is that while I am quite meek and willing to accept authority when I have none of my own, and I tend not to exercise initiative and leadership qualities, but put me in a position of authority and I'll probably do very well. It happened in this guild, it just happened in the workplace when I got made team supervisor, and it will probably continue to happen.
Transparency isn't something that I think is needed. A lot of decisions must be discussed behind a veil of confidentiality in order to be successful. There's a reason why ya'll can't see the mod forum here ;o
Posts
(Disclaimer- At work so I can't really peruse the links posts to the WoW Forums)
As a Co-Leader
The only trouble the guild really had was when we allowed another guild to merge into us. We had their leader join us as a Guild leader, making it a triumverate, and a couple of his class officers filled out the officer spots we still hadn't filled.
The leader, and the officers themselves were fine. The issue was that not all the members that came wanted to be a part of the merger, and one or two decided to be real assholes and act like they had seniority. (Generally all coming from the merger guild, not ours). We had run a fairly tight ship to that point in keeping retards and jackasses out, so when the issues of removing these new problem children arose, there was quite a lot of bullshit flying. In the end though, the merger's-leader was out voted by the two of us and he did submit that the people we were kicking were being asses.
They made it their job after that to try and recruit everyone they could from our guild, and while I think we limped on for another couple months, we hemmoraged ourselves to half of what we had been before the merger. After that, My friend and I were fairly tired of putting up with everything and College Finals were coming, so we talked to the third leader and found out he was quitting all together. In the end, we just passed leadership to the officers and bid them the best of luck.
As an Officer Watching the Chaos:
Other aspects, as to who leaders, or officer set ups, I find those mostly trivial (Though there do need to be limits. such as officers/leaders not exceeding 10% or so of the guild populace). I've been in a guild where a husband and wife lead it and it was awesome. They were both genuinely cool people and they loved playing and working with everyone in their guild. True, they had their "friends" but they made an effort to play with each member of their guild atleast once a week.
On the flip side, I've been in two guilds lead by husband/wife Duo's that were completely and utterly terrible. The couple themselves never communcated in one of them (you'd ask the wife something, she'd say OK, then the husband would berate you for doing something against his will. Niether one ever knew the other's plans, it was like having one two-faced leader). The other, He was her lapdog and never said or did anything unless someone went against his wife's word, and then by golly you got your ass handed to you on a silver platter. It also didn't help that in the latter one, she was manipulative and that guild had somewhere around 30 officers, 60 officer alts and about 8 guild leaders (in a guild of 250; 130ish distinct?). As such, there was never any consensus or agreement about any guild plans, and every officer told you something different.
I attempted to spur communication in both cases (officer's meetings, discussions with leaders and other officers, officer chat), but niether one felt anything was wrong until the guild around them began to fall apart. Even then, many times they felt it was simply because people like me trying to get people communicating or things moving, or other officers who were trying to help organize the mess those guilds had become were "Bad leaders".
Officer churn rate?
Has your guild been around long enough to have officers step down/burn out/get themselves kicked in a blaze of stupidity? And if so, how often has it happened?
Never happened, not once. None of them are particularly quick to anger, none are stupid, all excel in the particular classes that they play, all know how to listen and how to avoid drama.
I set it to what a person on a 2-week trial earned, so that people trying out the game on a trial wouldn't stuff their pockets for shits and giggles and then dissappear.
Of course, since the numbers don't carry over between characters and reset whenever a character leaves the SG, what it mostly comes down to is if they're someone I recognize and if they remember to ask for a promotion.
Apparently an hour after he left he got invited into the top raiding guild of the server at the time, since that guild he'd made had been put together from scratch and the previous guild we were in and got to 4th rank on the server in advancement within like 3 months.
He was a text book example of centralised leadership via charisma.
Man I want into your guild and I don't even play whatever game you play.
Did you have any other officer structure or was it all him? Was he RL as well?
Hmm. We had class officers that were voted into the role by the classes themselves. I was a class leader, but I got voted into that role by the other warlocks.
There were officers higher up than me. The raid main tank, the guild leader (who was a healer) and I (ranged dps class) lived in the same house, but I was too busy/didn't care enough to be a high up officer so didn't get power I didn't need.
Large scale policy decisions were generally suggest on the forum boards first for feedback before being implemented, but not always.
Really, he was just a very charismatic person who was also intelligent, motivated and usually reasonable. He could tell you off and call you an idiot and you would smile because of the way he said it or seriously listen and want to do better. I mean he had a temper, could be extremely harsh (I got booted from the raid once myself for having to do something unexpected in real life before a dungeon door shut me out) but was also extremely competent and got results. People got items, so people stayed.
The trouble was he was the one with all the brilliant ideas, thinking up the solutions to the boss fights, cajoling lazy people into doing their jobs properly, shepherding the group into the right locations during, eg, onyxia runs (this was pre bc) and making sure they did it. he would tell healers they were likely to get too much aggro, warn dpsers they were doing a little too much, or not enough and they should pull their socks up. He just ran everything. If he didn't turn up to the raid for some reason due to real life concerns, sometimes they'd wipe on trash monsters. Maybe kill one boss. Then quit for the night, full of drama and rage.
He was that guild. The main tank didn't really care. He just hit stuff. He had that orange weapon at the time, the lightning one so didn't have to think much to maintain aggro.
I quit before he left due to real life concerns (new girlfriend). He told me about it later.
I remember him wanting to make a guild because he wanted to do that at least once, make a guild and do something with it. So he approached the leadership as something he wanted to do and planned it for a long time. A lot of the core raiders were people he'd raided with in another guild and he used to run australian time slot raids in that american guild. He brought those people over to form the core of the new one and then carefully selected applicants.
For example if a Warlock wanted to join they had to talk to me, I'd talk to them for a while, ask them questions, meet them and check out their gear, maybe do a ten man with them as the other warlock. If I liked them I'd ask for them to run a raid with us and if they kept up their end properly they were in.
I personally had a sub-leader, a very dedicated and skilled warlock who was a bit hot headed and said silly stuff, pissed people off sometimes. But he knew his stuff and we would theory craft for ages and he'd bring a lot of potions and things for the fights. I got him to run for me on a couple of raids I couldn't attend and he did a good job once I got him to realise he had to follow the rules/not talk back during a raid (suggest things after the raid, not during). Otherwise people got confused.
So when I left I suggested him and I guess he took over/got voted in. Hardly anybody else wanted to be the class leader, most of the others were pvping or too busy farming for pve gear.
We had seperate chat channels. I set up a warlock chat channel and made all my warlocks join it, and the other classes had the same. There was a general raid channel too for important things but that was unstructured. If a raid wide thing needed to be said it usually happened over ventrillo and repeated in the channel.
Ventrillo was for the guild leader and main tank to give orders. Class officers rarely spoke unless they had to, but they could speak if they needed to. Non officers weren't really allowed to speak, but it was allowed if things were going swimmingly (or something really needed to be said). You could also social chat in the raid channel.
I gave warlock specific orders in the warlock channel. I made sure that people were watching that channel by requiring them to confirm in the chanel with a y or something. There were more warlocks than we needed too so people who didn't buck up I didn't invite back.
For raid formation, the class leaders got invited, then they invited the class members for that night.
Any big disputes or angry drama got referred to the guild leader. So if I decided a Warlock wasn't up to snuff and should sit out to have a bit of a think and he got snooty, I told the GL about it and he sorted it out.
This is all I can really think of. If you ask more specific questions I might remember more, but this was like 4 years ago now.
Thanks for the awesome OP.
I mean, let him do stuff and tell him he's a good boy.
Hmm, that's still too much asshole.
You get the idea.
If they don't do it, take the responsibilty and the perks away from them and give it to someone else.
Entitlement is the culprit; this is facilitated by the scenario Munkus described as well as "senior" members or officers who think they deserve something. It should be clear to every single person in the guild that there is a simple equation; if you don't feel the benefit balances the commitment, work in a constructive fashion toward changing it. If you feel entitled to this change without putting in the constructive effort, you can only change the equation by no longer offering your commitment (read: getting the fuck out).
I think this structure is often undermined by said buddies-as-officers and by an impression that a guild is a democracy. When it comes to guilds, I think Plato was right; the masses are too stupid (as a mob, or whole) to handle a true democracy where they are entitled to change based off of opinion, and nothing else. Conversely, guild leadership shouldn't assume the masses agree with them, and need to offer the same level of respect and constructive, documented, proof for decisions and policies.
I prefer to see a benevolent dictatorship; the chain of command is absolute, with the exception of an out-of-chain party who has veto authority over only the GM, on behalf of the bulk of members themselves.
In terms of member-to-leadership (beyond "squad" level leadership, like recruiters or tactical decision makers) ratio, what have you guys seen that works?
Guild Leader(s)
Officers (Who are in the sort of management/leadership role)
Class Officers (Who have an excellent grasp of their class and can communicate well)
Regular Members
Recruits
Friends of Members
The way the beasts are set up is like this:
The Triumvirate: Saeris, Sabin, and Myself (The three of us have the last word on guild decisions and we work as a guild leadership team. We have cycled the guild leader role through the three of us, but it's just an informal title. We have the utmost trust in each other)
Sexy Beasts: Officers. Excel in their class role, socially tactful, listen to instructions, not drama-prone, intelligent people, are not power abusers
Beasts: Regular members. People who can listen to instructions, have a desire to improve their abilities, and are not incompetent.
Beastkin: Friends of members.
Survival Hunters: New Recruits.
And as a general rule, you never want to squabble over leadership issues in public. It's just poor form. In public, everyone needs to work together to achieve a unified purpose, and undermining the authority of the other leaders is the last thing that needs to happen. You want to fill your leadership positions with people who will not abuse their power first and foremost.
We use structure like this:
Guild Leader: Has Autocratic authority. His word is law, but the word is not given without thought.
Guild council: An advisory group. We also execute executive policy, and speak with our master's voice. In essences our job is to do what needs to be done, from the unpleasant (/gkicks, logistics) to the pleasant. We are subordinate to the guild leader but expected to take what actions are needed and exercise our own judgment.
Class leaders: Responsible for the maintenance of their classes. Class numbers, not completely retarded specs, morale of the class, raid invites and swap outs.
General membership.
This, oh god this.
In my experience, too many chiefs, not enough indians has been a huge problem in the past. ie: There's the Guild Master, the Treasurer, the "dispute resolving guy", the Raid Leader, then you have the NINE class leaders. When you get this huge group of people now apart of the "Officers" group, you basically end up splitting your guild into two social groups, and it can cause huge problems down the line.
This was and always has been a huge problem in past guilds I've been in on Guild Wars. Theres basically Guild Leader, Officers then Memebers. The offie's always start running events that are just officer only invites. Not that we don't want the members to come along. But they always seemed to be off on their own.
I felt really strongly about this and I managed to sort out the issue by demoting myself from officer to member and refused to be promoted until all the guild was basicallyo ne huge family. We had a few outings with members and a few offies and we really managed to solve alotta problems.
Then the guild leader and me got into an argument and well things spiralled outa control again >.>;;
Honestly, it could easily be just a figurehead to make members feel more empowered than they are; leadership who take valid opinions into account could likely achieve the same.
For us it's rolled into the guild council/Guild leader positions. What we do to create the feeling of participation is periodic guild meetings for "State of the guild" addresses/town hall style meetings. People can bring up any issues for public discussion.
That's the job of the guild leader.
No, you don't need filler roles to make the guild feel empowered. That's the path to destruction. You run a tight ship and only put people in leadership roles as needed.
And as a rule, you don't give power to those who want it.
Personal experience playing in what tried to present itself as a heavy RP/light raiding guild. It was a huge mess. People wanted to be ready to raid, so nobody except the guild leaders (who had more or less equipped themselves through T1/Ony and the 20-mans by piggybacking with another guild) ever actually RPed, but the raiding aspect rarely if ever occurred (the GMs often couldn't be bother to attend scheduled raids because they were already equipped beyond the rest of the guild, which was more or less up-and-coming). The end result was that it was a heavy RP/light raiding guild that actually did close to zero of both.
The drama whore part? That comes from the part where the GM was unassertive and more or less let the entire guild be run by the second-in-command chick who really had no idea WTF she was doing and only got to her position because the GM crushed on her. She was the uber-emotional hyper-sensitive sort who would take any actual input on guild affairs as personal insults.
All kinds of headache.
I guess it's more like "Don't run a guild if you can't be bothered to run a guild."
edit: if it's not clear, this was pre-BC.
Absolutely, on the last.
The guild does need to be empowered to be heard. Any group of people does, otherwise they start trying to undermine the existing power structure. What needs to be clearly defined, though, is how they can best be heard without creating the impression that they're always right, or deserve whatever they feel like.
A formal mouthpiece does seem to be largely useless, as you can eliminate the bureaucracy and have members give their voice directly to leadership in a controlled and public manner.
That last statement is something to watch for it. Officer positions are a curse, not a blessing.
Someone who sees it as a curse may grow resentful.
A curse though? That's so melodramatic. That's pretty much bullshit and obscures what the actual responsiblity is or could be.
I think the problem here is that you're putting too much semantical weight on the word curse.
It's sure as hell not happy fun time. Doesn't mean it's any less (and not vastly more) rewarding.
A great and terrible curse. Responsibility is a curse with a single reward. More responsibility. There is the satisfaction of doing a job well, but a good officer gains nothing from the role.
Hyperbole aside, responsibility is pretty goddamn rewarding. As is the knowledge that you set aside a bit of your own selfishness to achieve something beneficial for more than just you. Just because it's not necessarily fun or easy doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Even when considering the rougher parts, like letting someone go or disappointing a segment of your charges.
I wouldn't use officers losing sleep or feeling burdened as a measure for good leadership. Their achievements and attitude should stand without arbitrary measures based on unhappiness.
Also, I haven't still seen much in the way of numbers for an officer-to-member ratio. Obviously there will be variance depending on the guild, guild purpose, and game, but I'd be curious to hear about actual experiences.
That said, leadership feels that much better when the constituents are good. I'm proud of the MMO forum and the WB forum because the constituents have remained solid. I'm proud of the beasts because they are smart, fun people that make being a leader easier and more enjoyable.
I will say, however, that being a raid leader for serious raids is an entirely different ballgame. Being raid leader is often more difficult than being guild leader.
I'll probably go more in-depth on this on the Six Mouths boards, but my old MC guild had a two-tiered officer system, and it caused a pretty significant amount of strife. Now, a large part of that was certainly due to the GL (and his useless, piece of shit lootwhoring idiot bitch of a girlfriend) being huge gaping tools, but there was always a touch of resentment between the class leads and the Council.
One big thing, and a reason I often desire to be an officer, is communication. Transparency is a huge thing for me. If the officers drop out of guild or raid chat or Vent for five minutes while the rest of us are standing around with our thumbs up our ass, I goddamn want to know why we're wasting my time. When I was a class lead and orders from Council came down from on high that made no apparent sense, I expected the reasoning to be laid out for me. I got testy when it was not. And while certainly you don't want to make it look like it's a democracy, and there's a time and place for said explanations, having an officer say "Because I said so, now shut up and do it" frustrates an awful lot of people to no end.
But yeah, decisions should always be justifiable.
Does this make them power-mongers? In some cases it may, but I don't think that the former automatically constitutes the latter.
Basically, they started getting uppity. Started questioning decisions on loot that had nothing to do with their class, offering opinions on non-class related matters when not asked for, and basically acting more like officers than class leaders.
So it was taken away.
I am, by nature, a person who relishes a leadership role.
By and large, I haven't abused my power, and I feel no desire to do so. Most of the things I have done have been unrelated to being an officer.
The way my personality works is that while I am quite meek and willing to accept authority when I have none of my own, and I tend not to exercise initiative and leadership qualities, but put me in a position of authority and I'll probably do very well. It happened in this guild, it just happened in the workplace when I got made team supervisor, and it will probably continue to happen.
This.