Defining Your Guild

When Good Players Act Bad

I really hate drama and people who try to screw with my guild. Usually it's really easy to pick out the recruits or potential recruits that may bring harm to your guild in one way or another. Sometimes it's not as easy.

I am sure there are many Guild Masters that will agree with me when they say there is nothing more disappointing when someone who started out amazing - great personality, great play style, and good contributor - does a 180 and becomes a guild management nightmare.

What do you do when this happens?

The 1 Hour Lower Spire Challenge

Our guild had a problem. Loot Tuesday - as so many guilds call that first night of a fresh lockout - took us 2 1/2 hours to clear. No matter how much we pushed, no matter how much we pleaded we could not get our guildies to go faster through the first 4 bosses of ICC.

Some blamed it on the vast amounts of trash. Some blamed it on afks and other player issues. Either way, we had a problem and the solution that we had originally came up with was to lock out the instance for a week so we can have more raid time working on new bosses.

Some disagreed.

The Penalty Box - How an addon helped me with those /palm moments

So it seems that I have already broken the "I'm going to post more in 2010" resolution... Sigh. I'm back - I had some major work related things happen in the first month of 2010 that left me exhausted to write during lunch hours or after work. Things seem to have calmed down a bit now so I figured I'd finish a post I started literally the second week of January.

So I had a suggestion from a couple of guildies to add a /sigh rank to our roster. This would be for players who you just "sigh" at and need a place to put them in time out for a bit. Although I don't think we will implement something like this, it really isn't my style of leading  We ended up implementing something similar to this called the "Penalty Box" after a couple of "wowzers" and it did remind me that there is this nifty addon that I have used in the past to rework and rearrange the ranks in the guild when I had to add one right in the middle or something.

Day 1-3 - The Decision

I haven't posted in awhile because the game had gotten me down and stressed out to the point where I almost quit the game. After thinking long and hard about the situation I decided to stay and the guild decided to to rally around and transfer for a fresh start. I started to write about the process and will start posting what I wrote over the next few days. After reading back through the posts it almost feels like I went through some "12 steps" program. I hope you enjoy...
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Burned again. I have been on Uldaman for more than 4 years now. I have been leading guilds for about as the same amount of time. Since I have started leading, I have heard it all. Seen it all. And, seem to have been through it all. It hasn't been always a barrel of laughs.

Uldaman is like a small town. Everyone knows everyone else's business. All it takes is one good trolling in trade or the forums and you seem to get blacklisted. The people here never ever forget. Ever. Pugging is horrible, the progression even worse and the trade trolls are the kings of the server and are immortalized. Ranked 175th out of 200 some-odd servers, low rung doesn't even come close to how I feel about this place.

Uldaman has been good to me and it has been bad to me. Uldaman will always remain Uldaman to me; a crappy instance that once done with it no one wants to go back.

Over the 4 years I have struggled against the odds to keep my guilds going. Not once have I disbanded a guild or had a guild fall apart on me for reasons that I could control. I have kept my guilds going until the last physically moment that I could bear. Quitting the game for a year due to pregnancy being the only reason why I have had any previous guild end. 

Having discussed this with my male counterpart GMs on this server, as a female it seems that I carry a heavy load of criticism daily on how I run things. I have done nothing different than any of the other guilds out here, yet I have been called every name in the book the favourite being "Bitch". This really only happens when I put my foot down and assert the rules implemented for the guild. Someone breaks them, they are in the wrong, I am the bitch. Go figure.

Once again, I have been burned. A couple of guildies break a few rules; hey, causing drama, sexual harrassment and abuse of our loot rules is not that bad right? Not in these people's minds it seems. After immediately "laying the law" the bigger issue starts. The offending players are gone, and the rumours start to fly. "Get out while you still can. The guild is falling apart." is whispered to a player on trial status. She immediately gquits. "I hope, naps is taking the high road and not bad mouthing us, that would be unfortunately immature of her."  They were lucky that I didn't tell the guild at first what was done. The gloves came off when the applicants started asking me why I would invite them to a guild that was about to fall apart.

After letting loose, and telling the guild exactly what took place in order to maintain the peace and stop the rumours, I had guildies come to me saying "thank god I don't have to go through this alone now". The stories of sexual harrassment were sickening, the comments made in private that were brought to light were depressing. I am done.

The constant attacks from exguildies. The hate mail from deleted toons. The level one alts whispering me just what they think of me. The rumours from ex guildies meant to destroy what our guild has worked so hard to do. I am done.

1 week ago I was about to delete my toons and quit the game. A game is only a game until someone gets hurt. 1 week ago my officers banded around my to take the brunt of the work off my back and keep the guild going. 3 days ago the show of solidarity of those within the guild was astonishing. I know that for the most part the people in my guild are awesome. The ones who are able to work as a team have remained and we will strive on to reach our goals. Just not on this server.

3 days ago. The majority of my guildies decided they are done with this server and we should leave together. After Midnight is not dead. After Midnight is surviving and transforming into what it should be, into what it deserves. Just not on this server.

The idea came up during an officer meeting. The idea was presented to our core and 17 to 2 voted in favour. We then presented the idea to most of the raiders and so far reaction has been positive. Many of us are finished with this server and are hoping to start fresh somewhere else.

The research for a new home has been arduous. We wanted a PvE realm. We wanted something with better progression, player base, economy, pugging situation and mature population. We found what we are looking for an players wanting to come have unanimously voted in favour. Were going to go.

There are much more planning to do before we do go, but the situation is ripe for change. ICC is at the brink of being released, our DKP is about to reset, our website subcription is up and so is our vent server.

I will be keeping a log of our transfer process here and will most probably post this when we're done. As I am expecting major trolling I will not be disclosing where we are going or what our guild will be called. This is a clean cut. We're ripping off the bandaid in one fell swoop. After Midnight as it is will cease to exist and hopefully we'l be finally left alone.

When Guildies Lie

People who know me know that I hate being lied to. Whether I have known you for years or a few months, by lieing to me you've pretty much lost all credibility and might have cost the friendship in my eyes. Whether it's big or small getting the full truth and nothing but the truth is the way to go to win points with me. Not only does telling the truth win you respect but allows you not to go on anyone's shit lists.

I consider most of the guildies in my guild, if not all, friends. I would hope that all my guildies tell me and my officers the truth when it comes to situations, whether it is why they were not at the raid that night, why they have to leave the raid or why they can't do something during a raid, etc. Egos, for a raiding guild always need to be put aside. While for personal issues you don't need to tell the whole story (Hey, I need to go RL calls right now), making excuses and lying about why you are not able to perform are different.

If your computer is crapping out, you really don't get the fight or for whatever reason you need to be carried because you don't want to be replaced those reasons need to be told. The difference of downing a boss on progression might be the difference between 24 people understanding and performing to having the whole 25. Keeping performance issues to yourself is wrong. Be truthful as to why you can't do something within a raid and you may very well find out someone has a helpful solution to work whatever it is out for you. I have found that some people are so scared to be embarassed that they don't understand the strategy of a fight that they just hope they will blend in with the encounter and mistakes would go unnoticed. People who speak up and do what they can to get it right will just end up performing better once they fully understand.

If you are just not into the raid; your 10 man group is not that appealing to you tonight, you'd much rather go play around on an alt and be left alone. Don't lie to your guildies and say you have company coming over or your house just caught fire. A simple, "hey guys, I'm not into this tonight and sorry I need to bail," goes a really long way. Lieing and getting caught (or in some cases not being good at all at hiding the lie), is very detrimental to your reputation and could possibly cost you much more than a raid spot the next time. Guilds, especially tight knit ones, are full of friends, would you lie to your friends in real life?

What about people who don't show up? I once had my suspicions one of my guildies used to share raid nights with another guild and alternate between the two always showing up for our minimum amount he needed to so he wouldn't lose the raid spot. Upon further investigation, and finding out that was the case, that player immediately lost the raid spot. Being truthful wouldn't have gotten the player booted from the guild.

I have told guildies that have been less than respectful and have lied to me or anyone else for that matter in the guild that this game is played with real people behind those screens. As much as the little chracters might look like NPCs at times, the respect needs to be there for the reality of the players on vent, in front of their computers, sitting at home and very much real.

What are your thoughts? Do you think lieing is just another aspect of MMOs? Or do you think that being truthful in game as in real life is the way to go?

Gear>Progression or Progression>Gear?

That is the question.

Everyone loves getting a fresh shiny new piece of gear. The joy of upping your stats making your toon hit (able to be hit) harder or heal better is very satisfying. But at what point is getting more gear moot for progression in the current content?

This is the issue that the new raid lockout extension has brought about. For example, After Midnight is able to clear Ulduar right through to Yogg-Saron now within 2 raid days should we stay focused and not run anything else such as VoA or ToC to interrupt our timelines. As long as everyone is able to stay on track and we don't have to switch people in an out this is not a problem. However, we still haven't downed Yogg yet, something I attribute to never having the same team of players each night and having to re-teach the encounter constantly. The majority of the guild would like to see the SOB go down, turned on his back floating in his own filth no matter how many times we attempt it.

Here's where the lockout extension comes in; we can now have those multiple attempts past the original lockout to work on Yogg WITHOUT having to re-clear the instance. This means more nights to work on him, more nights to get his health percentage lower and lower and less chance the guild will get rusty as time passes between attempts. Locking out may mean that a progression kill may be had with the little extra time we were able to get but it also means that it is a whole week without new gear drops. Something which excites most guildies who are progression minded and upsets those that lose out on a week to get a potential upgrade.

According to imba.hu our guildies have the necessary stats/gear to down any encounter in Ulduar, and although having best-in-slot everywhere sure adds a slight pack to the punch, we should be able to easily down the Yogg-Saron encounter in our current situation. Yet, some players still argue that if we had more gear we would down it. The complaining from a vocal few (very few) makes me believe that they would rather have those grapey goodness drop like candy from the sky rather than spend the time for the thrill of a first kill.

This leads us back to our first question, what is more important for a raiding guild, encounter progression or gear progression?

In my honest opinion, and according to the goals listed in our guild rules, it is to see the content and conquer it no matter what the stakes. Having a gear level appropriate for the content is key, surpassing it is not necessary. I think the raid lockout is a great way for a guild on the cusp on downing a new boss to have the extra time to do so before a raid week reset. There is so much content in the game now that the guild can be doing to still receive their new upgrades; through the heroic 5 mans and 10 man instances. Badges are acquirable anywhere, from any instance, the heroic dailies now even spew forth the new Emblems of Triumph should you pick up the required quest first.

My advice to players upset with guilds extending raid lockouts for an additional week in the name of progress is the same to anyone who is not happy with their current guild; if the grass is greener elsewhere, no one is going to hold it against you if you go. Think about your priorities in game and find a place that is appropriate to them and stick with it. Most Guild Masters' are happy to accommodate their players as much as they can, but if a player's personal goal or ambition varies greatly from that of the guild's manifesto, it may be time to look for another guild lest your Guild Master asks you first.

Gut Feelings: Part Deux

So as promised, I did some soul searching and polling of a few of my friends, officers and coworkers about how to deal with gut feelings about a situation or someone when you don't have any proof to confirm what your gut is telling you.

It seems to me that gut feelings are just a precursor to investigating what is the root cause behind why it is you feel that way. Are you having a bad day? Are you being particularly paranoid? Are you noticing subtle trends regarding something that your subconscious is picking up before your conscious?

Let me give you an example of how I took care of my uneasy stomach this week with the advice I was given:

I suspected for awhile that one of my long standing guildies was unhappy. However when approached all responses were "I'm ok." So I let it go. I also, from keeping my eyes open recently saw indications of another guild (that recruited some of our notable drama laden ex-guildies) were trying to get this guildie to leave and join their new guild.

With that scenario painted, here are the steps I took to figure out if my gut feelings were justifiable.

1. Weigh the Evidence

As with most of my long standing guildies, I have set up communications outside the guild to keep up on day to day news whether it is MSN, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I noticed that statuses and conversation that had subtle undertones to it, which probably gave me my first warning that something was up. That, combined with prodding comments from said ex-guildies probably solidified the gut feeling that some poaching was going on. Add a little late night private vent channel discussions with said players and you got yourself a very suspicious situation.

2. Discuss the Situation...

...In confidence, with someone you trust.

I spent a good while talking about my thoughts and feelings with a trusted officer who gave me a little perspective on the situation and compared with me his views and feeling on the subject. It helped get my thoughts in order and find out if others might be seeing the same thing I was.

3. Confront with an open mind

The last step I took was to bring the guildie into a private vent channel with the officer I had my discussion with, and had a no-bullshit, guild related only conversation with the player. I laid my suspicions flat out on the table, and asked flat out if it was true. In fact, the guildie confirmed indeed they were thinking of leaving to join the guild I had suspected. That yes they have been unhappy for awhile but haven't done anything because they have been in the guild for quite a long time and thought maybe it was just a passing feeling. Although, the guildie couldn’t give us any direct point of which to work on to make their situation in the guild better, it still opened the lines of communication that seemed to not be there before. I believe if you are very direct with the player it prompts the player in return to be very direct with you.

The officer and I did not get angry, did not give ultimatums, kept an open mind, stayed professional and open to anything that was said; I believe that to be one of best things to do when confronting suspicions. You just don't know what the actual situation is and can't yet form an opinion about it without actualizing what is going on with the person in question.

In the end, my gut feeling was confirmed and my uneasiness with the situation calmed by now having the flat out facts. By taking these steps, I avoided days or weeks of agonizing supposing or speculation and embarrassment if my suspicions were wrong. By doing less internalization and more communication (which is key in any organization whether it be a workplace or a guild) we were able to pinpoint the problem (or in other situations lack thereof,) and come to a conclusion or understanding about it.

Gut Feelings and Drama

I'm an Aquarius III (born in the 3 quadrant of the month), and a characteristic of my sign is having a strong empathy and intuition about things. I tend to feel when something is not right or if there is a negative energy surrounding someone. At the risk of equating myself to my dog, Bailey, it's the same as when salespeople come knocking at our door; he wags his tail and want to be pet by one visitor but, the next visitor he's growling and snarling trying to get the person to go away. He has a great sense of a person's personality and tries to protect our home.

In real life, I tend to steer away from people who cause me to have that pang of doubt in my stomach about their intentions. I have been known to remove people from my life who have caused drama or pain. In game, as GM I believe it is important to stay objective. Like a workplace, sometimes you have to work with the personalities you have and even though you get the feeling something is wrong with someone, you almost have to ignore it and base opinions on actions rather than feelings.

But at what point do stop ignoring gut instinct?

There have been several times in the past few years I have had my "spidey senses" tingle about a situation or person in relation to the guild, that I have ignored and treated my decisions based on actions, only to have an immense amount of drama happen within days or weeks of the feeling.

Now, I cannot arbitrarily go around removing players from the guild that I get bad vibes from, nor can I go around paranoid about every situation that goes on, but at what point do you act upon those primal urges to remove the problem outright without a concrete action to base it upon?

Everytime I run into a situation that could have been stopped by acting upon my feeling right away, I tell myself, "Next time I am going on gut, forget objectiveness!" But how does that align myself with being the fair and just guild leader that I am/try to be?

I'm hoping to make a guide post about this soon, but I am looking for input. How do you deal with your gut feelings and drama in your lives or guilds?

After Midnight the After Math

So I haven't written in a few days, that is mainly because I haven't had much time. Work has been crazy and the "behind the scenes" work Forth, the officers and I have been putting into the guild has been a long arduous but rewarding task.

When I last wrote we were trying to find ways to rebuild/revamp the guild while staying on our server, Uldaman. I have to say so far so good.

After much soul searching and discussions with the officers, we felt it was unfair not to outline what we expected of our raiders in specific during-raid rules. One day (usually farm days) we would let loose on vent and on progression days we would command silence. Those that have been raiding with us for a long time might have known the reasons but newer players might view that as bi-polar.

So we implemented much regimented and very straightforward rules and expectations, in writing and published on our website so all could see. Our goal is to make sure our players feel comfortable knowing the limits they have within our raiding environment and never have to be paranoid with not knowing what is expected of them.

We fully expected some players to not be happy with the new implementation and style of leading we were setting forth; in fact we had a couple of players leave outright the next night. Two with minimal drama, one with a slightly over the top post on our forums due to sitting for one night, only due to min/max reasons of setting up out raid and not agreeing with how we wanted to go about the changes in the guild.

It's hard for me to accept that you cannot please everyone, so the over the top posting was hard for me to objectively handle; mainly due to my personality and I'm sure something a lot of women struggle with in society in general. Gender issues within the game though will be something I will touch on in a later post.

In order to properly ease the guild into the new way of doing things, we held our regular monthly guild meeting on Wednesday but rather than having a complete open forum with any topic that came to mind at the time we asked for 15-20 minutes silence on vent while we went through the changes to be implemented. Then instead of a complete open forum, we had each class leader (and one officer for those classes that we do not have class leads for) take their teams into separate vent channels to discuss concerns without the GMs present. One by one Forth and myself "visited" each group, elaborating for anyone who had questions, asking players to voice their concerns and giving them a task of coming up with evaluation benchmarks (on specific boss fight and on training dummies) for their class for any future newcomers to the guild.

All in all it was a very positive experience. Forth and I were very aware there were people hesitant or unhappy after the meeting but were not willing to say so; but we also knew there were lots of people who felt more at ease and actually appreciated the direction. We also knew that some were waiting to see the outcome of our labour within the raid environment.

We ended the night with pulling everyone back into the ventrilo lobby and handed out promotions to initiates and instated our new raid leader we were looking for.

Thursday night was "show-time" so to speak. It was our first raid night after the guild meeting, with a new raid leader and new raid rules. After the whole gquit drama at the beginning of the raid, everyone seemed to fall into a comfortable rhythm; players were able to focus when needed, knew the limits of speaking in vent and joking around and were able to keep a comfortable medium doing so. Trash went faster, we one shotted bosses, people laughed, joked and had fun. It was nice to see the guild turning into a happy family again, albeit even for this one night and hoping for repeats. By buckling down, keeping a positive attitude, applying the new rules right away which corrected any (minor) problems last night evenly and without bias we were able to set ourselves up for a complete weekend of progression attempts on General Vezax with only spending 2 raid nights on farm content. This is something we have not been able to do since Ulduar came out.

I'm hoping for a repeat again tonight on the progression attempts. Our new raid-leader seems to have the calming "Aura of Command" (I love this term which is stolen from Matt of http://www.worldofmatticus.com/) and I hope the guildies continue to respect him as under his delegation and organization we seemed to thrive last night.

So through the storm the guild seems to be finding their light, I guess change is not a bad thing after all.

Pruning the bad apples… How to go about it?

We’ve come at a quasi roadblock for After Midnight. Due to the way some of our core is used to raiding with a “laissez-faire” attitude we’re about to lose a handful of people. Because of the lack of “focus” of some of our raiders those that need the focus in order to play, lose it as well.

This raiding week has been horrendous. Not only because I think I caught the swine flu (there were 4 cases in my office alone over the past month), but because even though last week we were working on Mimiron (downed him) and had attempts on General Vezax by this time. We have wiped too many time this week on Hodir and I blame part of the reason to dps not reading strategies (again) and players who underperformed I’m sure because they were watching tv at the same time.

So what do we do? Uldaman is considered a medium pop server but in my and several other eyes it may as well be a low pop considering how everyone knows each other. Depending on what we do choose we can pull off a “pruning” in one of two ways, either it goes off without a hitch slowly and behind the scenes or we cut ties fast with those causing problems and suffer a month of drama like any other guild who seems to try to go back to basics to rebuild on this server.

There are a good handful of us who feel we won’t be able to recoup on this server and we’re thinking of a possible re-roll on a higher population server. After this week’s raids and the applicants that we have been getting from the server I’m starting to think having a guild transfer may be the best bet. However, this is our home. And people are asking us to get rid of the players who are not pulling their weight and rebuild on the server itself before we all jump ship.

Here’s what I am thinking of doing below.

Mama’s Clean Slate Ideas:

Reread and redo our raid rules.

I was looking over our raiding rules and although the requirements to raid are very clear I noticed our “during raid” rules are almost non-existent. I’m going to go back with a handful of players and set up reasonable raid rules to guide our raids by. For example, we have 3 players who disconnect constantly on fights which have sometimes wiped us since one is a tank and 2 are healers. We’ll be implementing the 3 disconnect rule. Disconnect 3 times on any boss fight and you will be replaced since being disconnected doesn’t help the raid much at all.

Enforce raid attendance

We have always been relaxed with our attendance rules which I think has come back and bitten us in the virtual ass. We’re now facing players having more time in the summer than anticipated. Usually players stop playing or reduce play time during the summer; we seem to have people coming back to the game and now have many players sitting on the sidelines.

Implement a 3 strike rule during raids

In reference to my first idea, 3 strikes for anything that detriments the raid, you’re out. No consumables? Haven’t read the strategy? Do that more than 3 times you’ll need to sit. I’m sure if players sit enough they will get the point and start coming prepared or focus up. If not, they’ll probably leave or we will ask them to leave.

Weed out the players causing distraction or problems

Unfortunately, we have some players who do distract other members while raiding. Although they might be able to focus and still talk, joke, watch tv etc., others can’t when they pay more attention to these people than the raid. If players can’t accept that they need to focus and keep silent just as much as everyone else, I think it’s time to remove them.

Also, After Midnight has a low tolerance for bad attitudes, or usually does. I think its time we confront players who are on the cusp of hitting that guild kick for attitude level and find out if they are truly happy here or just here cause they have no other place to go.


It’s going to be a long hard road but I think we’re going to be headed on the right path again soon to getting our guild be where we had originally intended it to be.