Dealing With Guild Drama
Guild drama is a factor in every single guild, from casual leveling guilds to hardcore raiding guilds, you can’t absolutely escape the drama. It is how a guild deals with drama that sets them apart from the thousands of other guilds out there, and how you can minimize the effect of drama on your guild members that keeps guilds together.
Introduction
We all have heard stories of guilds breaking up, and angry players taking out all their friends from a guild to join another. Personally, when I left my old guild to form <iRaid>, I indirectly took almost 20 people (by indirectly I mean I only asked two people to come with me, the rest all whispered me when they saw I gquit). To a raiding guild, even the loss of just a few core raiders can be a huge push back in progression raiding, unless the guild is prepared to deal with it and can recuperate in a timely fashion.
Last Night’s Guild Drama
My guild had a good bit of drama last night, probably more drama last night than the guild had in the entire 4 months we have been a guild. Here’s what happened, feel free to skip to the next section if you don’t like personal updates:
I wasn’t the official GM of my guild until yesterday. When I formed the guild, my coworker, aka Darkleaf, said he wanted to be a GM, and since he had been GM of previous guilds and is more mature than me, I readily agreed. Last night, partially based on medical advice and high stress levels, he decided to quit the game (for the most part), and pass me GM.
Regardless, we ran into Ulduar25 last night full force, started 30 minutes early, and had almost 10 people on the bench waiting to get in. We were blazing through, doing record times and 1 shotting most bosses (because I wanted to clear up to Yogg on our first raid night), but we eventually started losing steam. After wiping on Thorim for 3 times, one of our officers, a beast resto druid healer, decided he was “going to PvP, tired of wiping”. Knowing full-well he would gquit the guild if I demoted him to a regular raider (he has a large ego), I demoted said player and he instantly gquit, eventually taking with him most of his RL friends (none of whom which I actually cared about particularly).
Not only that, I had a holy pally recruit qq’ing all night about our BoE policy. My guild takes all BoE drops (that aren’t BIS), and sells them to fund guild repairs. We asked our starting raiders when we formed the guild if they preferred to have guild-funded repairs or access to BoEs, and the decision was unanimous. Said pally would not quit qq’ing (he was even an app, completely ineligible for loot, and I still gave him 2 pieces of loot since he was the only holy pally), telling people to “farm your own gold for repairs”, and I had to eventually Gkick him. That was the first person I had ever gkicked.
What Can You Learn About Guild Drama?
There are a few things you can learn from hearing about my guild drama, which hopefully will save your guild from collapsing when stuff like this happens. My guild isn’t going anywhere, no one even said anything in guild chat when like 5 people gquit the guild. Here are some key points:
- Know the type of players you want in your guild. With our new guild recruitment policies, we keep players for 1-2 weeks in a rank called “iApp”, where they are ineligible for loot or guild repairs. It has taken a bit of trial-and-error to know by now what type of players we are looking to recruit.
- Attitude is half of the fight. There are players who think they are better than everyone in your guild, and you usually do not want these players. They are usually the players that will show up on farm nights, avoid the progression nights, and ninja log when the wiping starts. These players are counter-productive to any progression-based guild, and usually hurt the morale of the rest of the players.
- Choose your officers wisely. We made a mistake one time of making one of the most immature players I’ve ever met in my life (he server transferred months ago and still trolls our recruitment threads) an officer when we first started the guild. Officers, Role Leaders, Class Leaders, etc, should all epitomize the type of players you are looking for in your guild. For example, my officers are always usually present for all raids, and consistently out-performing the rest of the raid.
- Everyone is replaceable. When someone leaves your guild, don’t make the mistake of trying to get them back in. Gquitting is usually permanent, and no matter how good a player was, you should always retain a sense of pride for you and your guild. You can bet your pants that a player that is willing to leave the guild for petty drama would probably have left somewhere down the road anyways, so he is just saving you the time.
- Cut your losses. Removing players that you know for a fact are going to gquit somewhere down the road or aren’t a good fit for what you are striving for in your guild is a viable plan. There is no reason to continue to bring a player you don’t like to your raids, and continue to give them loot.
Conclusion
Drama happens to every guild out there, and it can (and will) slow your guilds progression if you let it hit you unprepared. Even people you have geared to the teeth and been nice to can eventually turn on you and even bash the guild later on. To minimize your guild’s drama, you should know how to effectively deal with it without seeming like an awful dictator, while at the same time maintaining the respect your position of authority merits.
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7 Responses to “Dealing With Guild Drama”
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June 17th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Wow, this comes less than a week after drama tore my guild asunder. (I’m not GM, but I am an officer.) I’d actually like to get your opinion on how the matter was handled.
So a little bit of background. Ulduar was being hyped up for weeks before it came out. I was pressing the then-GM to hold a guild meeting (or at least an officer meeting) to set a schedule for once Ulduar was released. (We normally do 25-mans on friday and saturday evenings.) Well, we didn’t hold the meeting and had nothing planned for the week Ulduar was released, so many of our assertive players who were interested in entering the new dungeon did a 10-man, started during the week. I applauded them for doing so, even though I opted out, and we eventually promoted to officer rank one particular player who organised it. That friday, we ran Naxx-25 and all were content. That saturday, we didn’t have enough to get a 25-man run together because nothing was scheduled. So a group of players, including most (all?) of the officers decided to do Uld-10. Some drama ensued, as apparently the other group felt slighted. That drama seemed to dissipate in time.
Fast-forward a couple weeks and I’m told by the leader of the weekday 10-man that people were complaining that members of the weekend 10-man were talking down to members of his group. We worked to resolve it, to try to get on the same page, and it appeared that we were successful — that there were some misunderstandings on both sides, and both groups promised to be more understanding of each other.
This past weekend, we were running Uld-10 and were on Thorim when 9 members of the other group entered our Vent channel. It’s not uncommon for one or two members to hang out in Vent with the other group. Both groups had entertained guests before, and always had guests been respectful and it had only ever been 1 or 2 guests at a time. Well, as it turns out, 9 people joining your Vent channel and spamming ” has joined the channel” can be annoying at best and somewhat distracting. Mid-cast, I alt-tabbed to Vent, switched out of the channel, and alt-tabbed back to WoW. After the fight, the raid leader instructed (in raid chat) everyone else to move down to join me.
Immediately, one of the players (a skilled resto shaman who was known to talk himself up in comparison with others) joined the new channel and started complaining about us leaving the channel, claiming that we were being hypocritical because some of us had joined them in Vent in the past. I tried to explain to him that there’s a difference between one person joining a channel and nine people joining a channel during a boss fight. Apparently, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear because he muttered some expletives in guild chat and gquit.
If that’s where it ended, I’d be perfectly okay with it. But then the raid leader of our 10-man decided to add his remarks in guild chat, implying that he had been carried (which was simply untrue, said raid leader was just getting frustrated with the departed shaman’s arrogance). That prompted a couple of others to leave, eventually ending with the leader of the other group who was also an officer. He claimed that he was in “an awkward situation” because he wanted to “keep his 10-man team together”. I personally think that of everyone in the guild, he had complete power at that moment. If he had simply said “I’m staying”, far fewer people would have left, and he could probably have gained a lot more influence with the entire guild.
All counted, it was somewhere around 7-10 people who left, essentially relegating us from a 25-man guild to 2 10-man guilds. But, yeah, curious how you think that was handled (probably not very well).
In other news, I’m gonna wait out this week, but I’ll probably be looking for a new home in the near future. *sigh*
[Reply]
Xiera Reply:
June 17th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Oh, I left a couple things out (hard to believe, I know). The two players who made comments after the shaman left were not disciplined in any way. (If it was me, I would have publicly denounced their statements/taunts, and considered demoting them, while explaining my reasoning to them via Vent.)
[Reply]
Ulduar Reply:
June 17th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Wow. Tricky situation, seems like most people are overreacting. It seems like you have a couple of drama queens on your hands, stuff like this wouldn’t happen on my guild’s vent.
We have apparently successfully hammered into our raiders heads that vent during raid times are really only to be used wholly for important raid discussion; we actually don’t even let people call out for buffs on vent.
I try to reprimand people calling others out, and if I don’t call them out, I call out an instance where the player talking crap has messed up in the past. For example, when we were putting attempts in Yogg last week, the first 10 attempts were Phase 1 wipes since my tanks kept spawning extra adds. Finally, they seemed to have learned, but I brought in my DK tank to replace another tank (he is more geared). Obviously, he was fresh to the encounter, and although he read some strats, he pulled an extra mob by kiting through the green cloud. Immediately about 4 people started to pick on him and be kind of rude, when those people themselves had taken almost 10 attempts to learn the fight. People easily forget the mistakes they have made and are quick to bash others.
So, what seems to have happened is the combination of a couple of things:
- Your Vent seems to have been laid back, which isn’t a bad thing, but is nice to have it quiet during raids.
- Lack of organization to setup Ulduar raids is probably a good indication that other things weren’t organized, but I don’t know enough to go into details.
- From the sound of it though, I don’t think you guys really needed the players that gquit, and the players currently in your guild need to learn to respect people or keep it in whispers.
Also in other news, if you needed a guild I could give you a spot in mine
[Reply]
Xiera Reply:
June 18th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Yeah, a lot of guildies on both sides of the mess tend to overreact. And others just tend not to think before they say something.
There were a few things that really bothered me about it though.
Firstly, the guild leader said nothing while this was happening. He didn’t discipline those who were making comments about the dissenters and he didn’t speak out for or against the actions of either side. It doesn’t seem like that’s proper behaviour for a guild leader. Even if he was trying to be diplomatic, sitting idly while the guild falls apart doesn’t exact reveal strength or conviction.
Secondly, the two people (the only two people) who were talking trash about the departed players were both officers, and they were doing it in guild chat. I really don’t think those actions reflect positively on the guild.
Thirdly, the other two officers — myself and the one who left — also remained mostly silent about it, or at least we remained quiet in guild chat. We’re probably the two officers who are more level-headed, so I’m not sure if our absence was a good thing. Should I have stepped up when our guild leader did not? Should he and I have worked together immediately to try to mend the tear? What would you have expected from your officers if you faced a similar situation?
In all honesty, maybe this had to happen. Tension was building, to be sure, and you could see the factioning becoming more prevalent. Several of us tried to breach that, but apparently it wasn’t enough. Is this kind of thing common for guilds who are running multiple successful 10-mans yet experiencing limited success in 25-man? I guess I’m just trying to get a feel for how this could have been prevented, in case I see the warning signs again in the future.
Ulduar Reply:
June 18th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Yeah. Your GM should have done *something* in this situation. Letting it try and play itself out isn’t really a good course of action.
Any officers badmouthing other players for no particular reason, or taking rivalry (some rivalry is okay) to the next level is unacceptable, and not officer material. I would probably have demoted them or had a serious talk with my officers.
There is one thing different in my guild, and its that most of my officers are co-workers (3 of the 5 officers I have). I do have 1 Officer who is an absolute maniac, tells people he hates them all the time, but most of the time he is kidding. I sometimes tell him to chill out, but that’s about it.
But yes, if I wasn’t online, I would expect my officers to handle the situation in the same way I would, and step up and crush any arguments. As a matter of fact, we have a rank called iKappa (long story), where the member can’t even talk in guild chat.
If people are typing in guild chat during a raid (that are in the raid), or being excessively derogatory towards each other (we are a litte laid back with insults and stuff), they are demoted to that rank.
To be sincere, I’m not sure if this is common with your type of guild — I usually don’t even bother running 10 mans, and back in BC when we had like 4 Kara groups we really only had friendly tips for each other.
IMO – in the future, if you see things happening similarly to this, I would address it directly, and probably swap members from each of the runs to balance it out a little bit.
Best of luck though bro,
Macbook
June 17th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
[...] job, reapplying for college (OMG), raiding 12 hours/week, managing two blogs, and all my recent guild drama, its been hard to write good stuff. If you care to see what my guilds been up to recently, most [...]
June 19th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Only if my old GM read this before my old guild would have lived on…
[Reply]