Cold Comfort

Guild Management and Leadership in WoW

Posts Tagged behaviour

Trying to Solve the World’s Problems

Jan 28

Posted by Karatheya in Guild Management | 3 Comments

sbPuzzled Trying to Solve the Worlds Problems

One of the things that has dogged me whenever I’ve been a guild leader is a desire to solve every problem that I am made aware of.  Even outside of a leadership position, I tend to internalize every little thing that goes wrong.

I have high standards for myself, and when I find myself playing with people who don’t share those standards, I get frustrated.  That’s bad enough in itself, but taking it a step further and trying to “fix” those people is completely futile.  I’m rarely going to be successful, and when my attempts fail, I’ll just get more frustrated.

Of course, I can’t take a completely laid back position – even if my personality would allow for it, there are some problems that guild leadership should address.  There are valid performance and behavioural issues that leaders should raise and address when the see them.  The skill lies in knowing what the scope of leadership covers, and what is not your problem to solve, even if you think you can help.

The core problem is a theme that’s come up before – trying to assert control over others.  Too little leads to chaos, while too much leads to a guild nobody wants to be a part of.  If you’ve ever felt that your guild was “slipping out of control”, you may be facing a mismatch between how much you want to control and how much you can.

Sometimes, the frustration with that gap gets turned inwards.  Rather than the problem being unrealistic expectations, you see the problem as an inability to maintain order.  At that point, the thing you enjoy becomes a chore.

The solution is to get realistic about what is and what isn’t the responsibility of guild leadership.  From the pile of things that are the responsibility of the guild, figure out what you are capable of doing and what needs to be delegated.  Don’t get pulled into things that aren’t the guild’s problems.

Simple advice, but if it were so obvious and easy to follow, I’d have no reason to write this post.  So let’s take a look at some of the issues that you might encounter as a guild leader:

Retention

You can’t expect to keep every one of your members forever.  Guilds are by definition a collection of like-minded but not identically minded individuals.  Everyone sacrifices a few ideals when they join a guild in exchange for the benefits that the guild offers them.

Some people will, against their better judgement, give up more than they really want to, and allow this to fester over time.  Over time, subtle things in the guild may change, or a new policy may be introduced which push them past their breaking point – when the sacrifice seems too much.

So long as you aren’t actively making policies to antagonize specific people, or going out of your way to alienate members, this isn’t your fault.  Some people will be happier elsewhere, and the best thing to do is part company on a friendly note in case they come to regret their decision and you need their class/spec.

(more) Infighting...

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The Service of Officers

Jan 25

Posted by Karatheya in Best Practices, Guild Management | 1 Comment

In scrounging the US and EU guild relations forums for inspiration, I came across this post on abuse within the officer ranks.  I haven’t quite got enough to say on that particular subject at the moment, but one thing the OP said jumped out at me:

All I got in response was him arguing with me for two hours saying that I’d turned his [sic] back on him, and stolen his glory

I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that the “glory” referred to is the glory of being an officer within the guild.

*blink* *blink*

I would hope that I’m not the only guild leader who is surprised to hear the role of officer as being glorious.  At best, it can be frustrating and a source of additional work.  In a fair guild, I’d think that the most reward you could expect to get out of being an officer is an increased chance at being part of a raid, but only for mechanical reasons like needing a loot master – not just because you’re an officer.

I know I’m being a bit naïve here.  The guild relation forums and plenty of blogs are replete with examples of people who have abused their power as an officer.  Offenses range anywhere from ego-tripping to guild bank theft to outright sexual harassment.  But I doubt that this corruption stems from the position of being an officer.  Rather, these are examples of selfish, broken people who would press any advantage they were given.  WoW, and the anonymity it provides, just provides an outlet.  Think of it as an extension of Gabe’s G.I.F.T theorem (warning: NSFW).

The point I’m trying to make is that when you’re doing it right, being a part of guild leadership is a service to the members of your guild, not really a position of power.  It may not have the strict delineations of something like participatory politics, but you’re supposed to be facilitating the operation of the guild – not for reward but because you want to see the guild prosper.

Learning From Others – if That’s Possible

The problem then becomes one of finding people who agree with this sentiment to be your officers.  Obviously it’s not that easy based upon the reports of abuse.  I would like to dismiss these (numerous as they are) as being big on profile but not on significance.  Guilds don’t post on the guild relations forum or write on blogs when everything is going swimmingly.  Nobody keeps statistics on things like guild lifetime or officer and member turnover, so it’s hard for us to look at “the most successful guilds” and emulate their ways.

To the larger WoW community, success equals progression, but there’s no evidence to suggest that top progression guilds have the best leadership practices.  It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that most top progression guilds have a harsher leadership regime than many of us would be comfortable with – but that the members know that when they join and agree to fall in line because it gives the desired result.

I’m going to whip out the wide brush and paint guilds one of three colors:

  • guilds whose officers are the friends of the guild leader
  • guilds whose officers are simply the people willing to do the job
  • guilds whose officers are picked for their ability to do the job

There’s obviously some overlap here.  Just because you’re the friend of the guild leader doesn’t mean that you’re not capable of being a good officer and willing to put the extra time in.  Just because your guild leader doesn’t put much thought into who becomes an officer doesn’t mean that they won’t end up with a few good people in that role.  However, if you don’t take the third approach to selecting officers, then the experience for your members will be inconsistent at best.

You may have a really good recruiting officer who finds good candidates, answers all their questions before they apply, and helps shepherd them through the trial period.  Then they ask a question of the loot officer, who turns around and acts like a total tool.  Or perhaps the loot officer isn’t around, so they act another officer who doesn’t quite know all the ins and outs of the system.  They get bad information that leads them to make a mistake while in a raid.

(more) The minimum role of an officer

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Selfishness

Jan 14

Posted by Karatheya in Off-Topic, Ranting | 22 Comments

selfishness Selfishness

Warning: rant incoming.  It’s been a while since the last, and the commentary on the time-to-emblems post pushed me over the line.

I’m calling out everyone who’s become a selfish, self-centered “me first” jerk since patch 3.3 was introduced and the Dungeon Finder became the best and worst thing to happen to WoW in recent memory.

I’m specifically talking about anyone who:

  • drops group without saying a word (at the start of the run or otherwise)
  • complains when a group member’s gear is vastly beyond what is required for heroics just because it’s not equivalent to their own
  • complains about someone’s DPS without giving any constructive advice at all
  • queues as a group leader but doesn’t do anything that can be called “leadership”
  • doesn’t bother to check if the group is ready / in the right spec / buffed before they start pulling
  • pulls when they’re not the tank
  • pulls when the healer is out of line of sight
  • pushes the group to at an unreasonable pace (i.e. “gogogogogogo”)
  • skips bosses without checking what the majority of the group wants to do

If you’re one of the 80% of people I’ve run with who make my dungeon runs enjoyable, this post is not for you (though you may get a laugh out of it).

Here’s the problem I have with people who do one or all of the above: you don’t care if your actions inconvenience other people.

Now, there are always going to be some percentage of people that are jerks, but since patch 3.3, something has changed.  It’s not that I’m encountering more jerks – this was to be expected.  I’m running more dungeons, so given a stable percentage of jerks in the community, I’ll run into more of them.

Jerk Pride

What surprises me is that the “selfish jerk pride” I’m seeing in party chat, trade channels, official forums, and even in the comments to my posts.  Not only do they not care that they’re screwing other people over – they’re standing up and defending their selfish behaviour as if they think that there is a logical argument to be won here.

In real life, shame acts as a limiting factor to jerk behaviour.  If you have an explosion of asshattery among your friends, they’re going to call you on it.  Your desire to not face that and to maintain your friendships might prevent you from acting like a jerk in the first place.

Even among people that you don’t know, there are certain societal norms that discourage you from doing whatever you want.  When you know that you’ll be held to account, you may change the way you act.

The virtual world of WoW removes that shame factor, and these people seem to be missing the gene that self-regulates behaviour in such situations.

(more) Exploiting Anonymity...

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Sweating the Small Stuff

Nov 19

Posted by Karatheya in Off-Topic, Raiding, Ranting | 5 Comments

bang head here Sweating the Small Stuff

Let’s talk some more about pickup groups.  Every time I run them, I’m on the lookout for people who might be a good fit for the guild.  At the very least, I like to keep track of people who know what they’re doing so I can group with them again.  There’s no 5-man heroic content that should really pose a challenge these days – you can start doing heroic with far better gear than was possible when WotLK launched thanks to Trial of the Crusader normal, and very shortly thereafter you should be pulling in tier 8.5 / 9 emblem rewards.

Skill is the only thing that can really screw up a heroic these days, and even then you have to be very lacking in it to cause a wipe.

There is however a middle ground in performance between able to get through a heroic without causing your group members undue stress and this person is someone I’d group with again without question that I see regularly.  This is the my gear level means that I don’t have to care about the small stuff zone, and people who live there drive me nuts.

Failure 101

How many times have you been in a heroic where someone:

  • stands in the Ticking Time Bomb in Utgardge Keep
  • gets hit by Impale on Anub’arak in Azjol-Nerub
  • stands in the Mojo Puddle fighting the Drakkari Colossus
  • doesn’t bother to interrupt the Spell Flinger’s Shadow Blast in Ahn’Kehat
  • gets hit by Shadow Crash cast by the faceless ones guarding Herald Voljaz in Ahn’Kehat
  • as melee dps, stands on top of the tank during the Anub’arak fight in Azjol-Nerub and get one-shotted when he chooses them as the target of Pound
  • doesn’t cleanse debuffs that they are exclusively capable of removing (e.g. a Paladin tank failing to cleanse magic from themselves when paired with a Shaman healer)

These are all little things, and most of them won’t wipe a group.  Some of them directly translate into things you need to know in raids (see my article “FFS, You’ve Been Trained for This!“), but most just piss off your healer.

Still, I like to run heroics like I did when WotLK first launched.

A year ago when tanks had 22k HP and DPS were barely scratching 13 or 14k, you couldn’t afford to be hit by a shadow crash for 12.5k damage.  Today, gear levels allow you to make a few mistakes and still survive, though the danger of others hasn’t changed.  Did you know that Shadow Blast hits for 80% of your maximum HP?  If you have a new 80 healing a well-geared tank, it’s actually harder to heal Shadow Blast today than it was a year ago.

(more) The Reason for the Behaviour...

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