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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