Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 3

So now that we understand that the single most problem guilds have are the players themselves and the revolving door of guild membership we can begin looking at some other details that I feel are important to guilds.

Communication and management of drama's. These two areas are important to have a plan in place before a guild gets to big or these two area's will cause a guild to fail totally. Every guild has varying levels of success with this but for a guild to accomplish their goals and tasks as a group this is a must. Communication is paramount and doesn't necessarily mean guild chat. There must be a medium for sensitive subjects to be discussed without the rest of the guild being privy to such information. Free forum services are ideal for this in that you can easily set one up and then at least have the officers in the guild use it to cover necessary topics. If you can get the entire guild involved that's even better because it becomes a second home for the players to keep up with what is going on. Also these forums can be set up where only certain people have access to some of the threads and not others thus allowing for the guild leadership to have a place that is accessible on to them to discuss more sensitive subjects. This is far better than using in game methods to communicate as it's not dependent upon everyone being online to discuss something.

Guild drama is a beast of it's own and is the #1 guild killer in the game. No one should ever think they are immune or that it's not bad. When it begins it's always innocently enough, and in the best of cases will get to the point where players that are unhappy will just leave the guild. At worst, this drama will cause needless hours wasted in in-game chats trying to resolve problems that have no real life importance or bearing on reality. Actual in game issues seem to somehow resolve themselves fairly easily unless your talking about loot ninja's and people who steal from the guild bank, but these problems are much more manageable than issue's where players expectations are simply not feasible. The guild drama's that kill guilds rarely involve issues that can be fixed by running extra instances and such.

One of the biggest issue's I've come across is when one group of players feel like they can manage a guild better than the current leadership or that they are more capable. This is a problem that revolves around the basic tenant of personality incompatibility where one party (usually the one stirring the pot) refuses to see that they don't fit in a particular guild. During BC I saw this play out in LOST SLEEP in a bad way. One group felt like the officers were not doing enough to keep the players happy and the officers continually asked what these players needed from us to do. Other issues also got thrown not this mix and for a while the waters was murky indeed. In the end, some players left the guild, others were kicked out and the rest of us sighed in relief. In the end a lot of players felt that the officers should be devoting our full time to power-leveling their toons and making sure that they were constantly going into heroics and raids (which we were only just beginning to be prepared for). LOST SLEEP is a casual guild, built along the lines of a family guild, and isn't a "leveling guild," though we know a good number of players who do like to level their toons with us. The guild is more fashioned around the player taking responsibility of his own goals and the rest of us are there to help out when we can.

This is an interesting point, and one that is commonly misunderstood by a lot of players. Unless there is a stated goal officially from the guild, players 'should' be responsible for their own leveling, instances and gearing. Where casual guilds are nice is that there is usually someone around willing to help. This works in some cases but it can be also be frustrating for some players as well. I've heard many times as an officer that a guild doesn't help enough. This leads me to the question; what is enough? This is unfortunately a subjective question that rest solely on the person or player that asks it. Some players think that higher level players should always be available to help where as others feel that they should be able to schedule some sort of help and that it is deemed required that the help is there as scheduled. What this does to a guild is that it sucks up resources fast. When guilds have to ensure that higher level players are immediately available for such requests or that any run that is put on a schedule becomes mandatory, then you are asking players to put aside their own aspirations for the game and their toons in favor of someone else's whims.

This just cannot be done or even enforced. Even in the strictest of raiding guilds, the subject of mandatory schedules is a controversial issue, and they have to have them to some extent to ensure that the guild is able to progress through the content in a quick and efficient manner. This is less necessary today than it has been in the past, and this is probably where some players get the idea that anything that is scheduled should receive precedence over every thing else. The problem in a casual guild is that most players there have no desire to do this, and time to do such things is also a problem. When LOST SLEEP schedules runs, through anything, it is in the hope that enough people sign up as well as show up when it's time. We do attempt to enforce the starting times and if you sign up you'd better be there part, but there is no real consequence for people who don't comply because we're not structured in a way to give and enforce stringent consequences to players like this.

So, for a casual guild, this sets the stage for a whole slew of drama's from players. All of them are survivable, the GM only has to decide if he sides with personalities or principals. GM's who side on the side of personalities will eventually have their guilds ripped apart because of these kinds of dramas. But the GM's that side on the side of principals will walk through these events and come out on the other side, smarter and stronger. Tomaryke, LOST SLEEP's guild master, is probably one of the longest standing GM's on Gilneas in this guild and it show's when things are challenging or difficult for the guild. He'll always work to ensure that every player has a chance to have fun with the guild, but he won't go out of his way to meet some players selfish requests, nor will he tolerate players that become unreasonable or disruptive to the guild. Most of his officers have been with the guild for a really long time, and some of them since the guilds inception. This gives LOST SLEEP a tremendous amount of experience to draw from, and that does not include a number of players that have years of hardcore raiding experience and such who belong to the guild.

The point here is, every guild needs to have a clearly defined mission and goal. They need to recruit players who tend to match those goals and values. And they need to be willing to let the players come and go, for this will slowly build their reputation. LOST SLEEP has been on the server now for so long that there are quite a few guilds now on Gilneas that are trying to emulate us in one fashion or another. We have a good reputation on the server for being willing help other guilds as well as helping our own. We didn't ask for this reputation or emulation, but it is flattering to see that so many are trying to copy what we have done. We've never been a great raiding guild, but we have raided, we're not gods of PVP, but our presence has definitely been felt and seen in the BG's and Arena's. And on a good night, a member of LOST SLEEP can be seen almost anywhere in the game.

Malice is much like this guild in it's younger years. I feel that Malice, if it stays it's current course will slowly evolve into a guild very similar to LOST SLEEP. And that would be a great benefit to the server.

Ever Closer

So, Dhargaul has now hit the lofty level of 77 and has purchased his Cold Weather flying. Now that the regular flying mounts fly even faster since patch 3.2 has landed this week, this means he'll have a much better time accessing a lot of quests as well as more flexibility in getting around to do his quests. Now all I need to do is to raise the 1k in gold so he can dual spec. I also like the buffed stamina that shaman have gotten from the patch, though Dhargual is still a long way away from the 16k in Health that Zuluki has. Gear wise these two toons are looking for similiar gear so you would think that they would very similiar health stats, and when Dhargaul get to level 80 I hope this is true. I'm also beginning to really like to new totem bar addition for shaman. I'm still playing with it so it's not as refined as I would like, but I really like hitting one button and seeing my favorite 4 totems landing on the ground. This will make the harder fights go much smoother since I won't be missing cooldowns due to refreshing all my totems or having to drop them individually. Since I don't macro my totems or put them on my action bars, that means I'm using the mouse to drop them and clicking them one at a time alwasy slows down what I'm doing.

On another note, Zuluki is sitting very pretty at level 79 and only 4 bubbles away from 80. I fully plan on finishing her run on this by the end of next week. She's beginning her rep grinds now too for gear, as well as getting prepared to craft out her beginning epics. I am really excited about being this close to 80 with her and I have to admit she's my favorite toon right now.

Mohg, and Yrkoon are also getting some attention but not as much as my two main characters. Though it may not be the most optimal build, I'm really ready to get Mohg back to Combat Daggers as that seems to be the funnest build and playstyle for me, all I need to do now is to find 2 new daggers for his and he'll be set for a while. Yrkoon is in the same position as Dhar in that I'm now just waiting to have the funds so that he can dual spec Ret/Holy. I'm really eager to get dual specced before he hits Outlands so that I can begin building decent sets of gear for him.

All in all, I feel good about my characters and the state of the game right now. So hopefully his trend will conitnue. :D

Happy hunter all
Dhargaul.

Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 2

Player retention is a double edged sword that does not allow for a win-win situation. Guilds of all sorts have this problem and the biggest reason why is the player himself. Players will not stay where they feel unwanted, unchallenged, and unrewarded if they feel the guild will not help them to achieve their own personal goals. For these reasons and many more, this means that GM's will never resolve this issue. Even the most dedicated and tightly knit raiding guilds have difficulties with this issue. Here the most common mistake GM's make is trying to keep everyone happy.

I remember reading some time back that the GM for Nihilum (the world's #1 raiding guild who are now operating under a different name) said that his job was to insure he had the right person for the job in each of his raiding slots. Given that the guild only had 50 members, this is still a daunting task. While he considered gear important, he considered experience and the ability to fully play a class even more so. He knew that if every player was an expert at playing their class he could take them through any raid instance successfully regardless of how the guild was geared (for the most part.). Yet, like any other guild, players came and went, though with less frequency. He stated on the official EU forums once that he made no bones about keeping people happy, he just didn't do that. Success was his driving goal and everyone had to be on board with that goal or they couldn't be in the guild.

While this is easy to accomplish within a raid guild since your focus can be more narrowed, accomplishing this in a casual guild is much harder. The vast majority of casual players will only stick to a guild if they have friends there; otherwise they jump from guild to guild a lot looking for a good match. Then you have the players that could care less about the guild and only care about what they can get from the guild. Other players look for certain kinds of guild while leveling and a different kind of guild when they hit the cap. In all of this, the GM really has not say or influence over what will happen, he can only hope players will like his guild and stay.

The key here, I believe for any GM, is to let the players come and go but to try and get to know every person that comes through the guild. This way you can learn who is most compatible to your guild and the guilds goals. This way it will be easier to encourage these players to stick around and more of the will likely do this. While this process takes longer, it does slowly grow a solid core of players to work with as more and more of them hit the level cap. The thing to remember is that casual guilds will either grow slowly with a good measure of quality in the guild or you can go on a recruit ‘anyone’ binges to build your numbers quickly and then deal with the fallout later.

One last thought about player retention. Some players need to be doing things to feel a part of the guild, other’s need to see active players on the ‘who’ list and in chat, while others just need the title above their head. Whether or not guild activities are a presence in the guild seems irrelevant. I’ve been in large casual guilds that maintained a high number of players from all levels mainly due to the fact that the leadership was constantly planning guild events and such. This is a lot of fun and does build a significant community. I’ve also seen guilds who only scheduled dungeon runs and instances only that were successful as well. The key for the GM and officers is to have a presence, regardless of how that presence is carried out. And all of these people need to be actively looking for more likeminded individuals at all times.

Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 1

Every so often I find myself in the position of watching issues in a guild play out and different results stem from those issues. Every time I see a guild go through these growing pains, I'm always curious to see how it affects the officers and guild master as that is a certain way to define the character of a guild. Guild drama is a given as is the response of the guild in handling it. In the alliance guild LOST SLEEP on Gilneas I've server as a Sr. Officer for around 2 years and been witness to a good amount of evolution within a guild. So it has been interesting to see my horde guild, Malice, experience one of the truths of casual guilds which is having a revolving door regarding membership.

Having tried to be a Guild Master of 2 guilds since beginning to play WoW 3 years ago, I can say that the job of the game masters of these two guilds is a full time job of sorts. Talks with both of them have shown me that these guild masters are the right guys for the job. My principle reason for saying this is; both of them want to have fun and share that fun with like minded individuals. So I'm going to share some of my thoughts from my own experiences.

One of the hardest things to do as a guild master, I believe, is to define the goal of the guild. If the GM decides to keep the guild casual then this is a lot easier to do, though end game concerns do complicate this at some point in the guilds existance. If a GM decides that raiding of PVP is his goal, then the goal is less burdensome but guild management increases a lot. Regardless of the guilds goal though, the GM should have a clear picture of the goal and how the guild should be achieving it, otherwise the guild will never grow or become anything other than a name over your head with a tabard.

Casual guilds are the easiest to manange in that a GM's primary concern is to ensure there are people in the guild and that they are like minded enough to want to stay in the guild and hopefully have fun. And this where the easy part ends. A lot of casual guild end up being more leveling guilds where people come to when they are low level and then leave when they hit the level cap. For all casual guilds this will be a constant, regardless of the guilds goal if the membership is large enough to keep the guild active. If the membership in the guild is small then the casual guild becomes more like a family guild. The larger casual guilds also have the pleasure of becoming casual raiding guilds, and here management of players and resources is key to their survival.
Survival, for a casual guild, is dependent upon a very active GM or a close and active group of officers. I think that there is a misconception on this though about the definition of being active. Active, I feel, means being involved enough in the guild to ensure that the GM and officers presence felt and seen. This does not necessarily mean that a GM of officer needs to be online every night and playing. The GM and officers do need to be active in making sure that they players are having their in game needs met as best as they can. The challenge here though is for the GM and officers to know what is a need and a want. Trying to resolve and/or meet every players wants is impossible and will drive GM's and officers away from helping players. Having a fairly well defined goal will help in resolving what is a need and a want within the guild.

Needs generally follow along the lines of completing class quests, having access to excess materials for use in developing professions in the guild (i.e. guild banks), the potential for non-PUG groups, and comraderie. Everything else is pretty much a want. Some guilds may add more to this, but for a casual guild this is pretty much it. Here though, it needs to be said that access to guild banks and groups for instances are not definites, players just should be allowed limited access or the ability to ask the guild first in these matters.
Regarding larger casual guilds, especially ones with a fairly good number of level capped players, good GM's will slowly delegate out some of the guild responsibilities. In my alliance guild LOST SLEEP, our GM is just that, the GM. Among the officers we're divided up along these lines of responsibilities; Guild Bank Officer, Raid Master, PVP Officer, Assistant GM, Guild Photographer, Guild Reporter, and so on. I am under the impression that several of the other larger casual guilds on Gilneas are set up similiarly. This has helped LOST SLEEP a lot in that it's not up to our GM to toil away his days working on ways to keep the guild members happy about end game content.

The main issue I see over and over with larger casual guilds in player retention. So many players are so fucused on getting the best gear they can and this usually means that the casual guilds lose a lot of players when they hit the level cap. In some ways this isn't a bad thing for casual guilds in that they will gain a reputation of being a good leveling guild and a lot of people will want to leve through while in the guild. The advantage of this is that the guild will see more new faces and will be able to add some of these players to the guilds more permanent roster when they find players that fit in well with the guild.

Musing's on Balance

So Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra are where Mohg is plying this stealthy trade. As I've been getting back into the swing of playing him again, I've been pouring through the internet looking for rescources on playing rogues, gear, talent builds and general insight. Unfortunately most of the best sights I used to visit are no longer active. This seems to be epidemic in the Twisted Nether of blog land. All the people that used to maintain really solid, active blogs have stopped blogging and some have even stopped playing.
There is a good and a sad side to a lot of this. A lot of these players seemed to have set aside their families and real lives to play and share their experiences with us. They have slowed way down or stopped to go back to RL and their families. Who can blame them? It's never a good thing when a game replaces real life and real people.

The part of this experience that I got somewhat involved in last year, especially on my other WoW related blog Zuluparadise, is the communication about the experimentation that was happening then. People would actually discuss fairly fully the cause and effect process that was happening and the results were pretty interesting. The blogging community, I believe at the time was actually coming to a point where I would prefer to get the specifics for the classes I play there, rather than heading over to Elitist Jerks and having to deal with their arrogance. The information gained this was was also good because you would hear a lot more than "that's just the best way to do it."

So now, I have ideas about specific things that I cannot bounce off others who may have already been there so I have to rely on my own testing and watching other players on my server go, "your an idiot, newb." Ah well, things will work out fine, I just have to get there to really start playing the way I want to.

So...... Life in Azeroth

[Zuluki] Last week Zuluki nailed level 79 and is taking a short rest from slaughtering gorilla's by the thousands for their leather. She passed 440 in Leatherworking so she can now craft anything she has the recipe for. Epics here I come!

[Mohg] In the mean time, Mohg has decided that Howling Fjord is his playground for now. He hit level 71 this morning and is well on his way towards level 72. He's going to stay in the Fjord for a while knocking out quests like a madman. I've respecced him back to Combat Daggers/Fists. I like this better than swords, I need one more fist weapon for my main hand and life will be good. Slowly but surely he's making his climb to 80. Happy days.

[Dhargaul] Dhar is taking a break, though not needed. I really am shooting to generate enough funds for Dhar to get dual specced (Enhancement/Restoration) so until then he's not getting much play. Hopefully by the end of the summer he'll be there.

[Pallasathena] Not seeing much play.

[Helstorm] Not seeing much play except for the occasional dungeon run for loot.

[Yrkoon] Taking a short break before finishing the memorable STV!

The Rework of this Blog

So, I"ve decided to combine my attention hopefully into a single blog. I'll be maintianing my blog for Zuluki for a while longer before I decide to retire it and move all my convertations and thoughts to this blog. From here on out readers will hear of my exploits as I play all my different toons. So keep tuned as I'll also get on my soap box from time to time ranting about game related issues.

Feel free to leave comments.

Dhargaul.

Coming Back

Hey all, I"ve been gone for a long time. I'm still around slowly leveling, though I do have to admit that I've been leveling other toons more often then I've been playing here on my shaman. So without much further ado, I'll break into what has been happening in the last 6 months here in the next few days. :D

Dhargaul