In my previous entry I spoke about WoW itself. Hopefully drew an illustrative picture of the most successful multiplayer game of all time (and probably for the next decade, or until Blizzard’s next-generation MMO is released). It’s quite important that you understand just what WoW is before you can hope to ‘conquer’ it. You need to know what makes the game (and gamers) tick; you need to know what keeps people subscribing, month after month.

‘What does this have to do with leading guilds?’ I hear you ask. Everything! Almost everyone that plays WoW belongs to a guild! Ultimately, whether the players like it or not, it’s the guild leaders that have their finger on the button. It’s really is entirely up to guild leaders to make the game enjoyable for the players. Sure, Blizzard also has a commitment to make the game playable and fun, but without the glorious, omnipotent guild leader not much would ever get done.

So, leading on from there, I’ll try to outline the basic role of the guild leader: what a guild leader has to know, and do, to keep his guild heading in the right direction — be it onwards and upwards to #1 in the world, or just to provide a safe, fun environment for raiding and questing.

As a guild leader, you need to know why your guildies continue to play the game. Is it out of loyalty? A sense of competition? Are they playing because of real life friends, or family? Perhaps it’s a mix of all of these elements — or perhaps it’s just to escape from real life. The escapists tend to be the ones not in guilds though; they’re lone wolves, just trying to play their own little removed-from-real-life game, they won’t be discussed in this entry (escapism should be talked about at length in its own entry).

It varies from guild to guild (depending on their purpose), but each and every guild will have a distinct drive, that in turn dictates why its members continue to play and stay active. When that drive is lost, for whatever reason, a guild leader needs to be able to react quickly. He might have just a few minutes or hours to gauge the current feelings and emotions in the guild, analyse the situation and think of a solution before someone leaves the guild — and as you might all know, or have guessed, when one person walks out it can start an unstoppable avalanche.

So what makes various types of guild tick? What gives the members of a given type of guild the urge to play and win? I’ll try to put my finger on the nub. I’ll try to define the characteristics of each type of guild, and what their players require — and desire — to keep them interested and active.

The Hardcore Progressive Guild (HPG)

The HPG makes up for the tiniest percentage of WoW’s player base. A lot of people might perceive themselves as a hardcore raider, but the fact of the matter is that only about 2% of guilds clear all of WoW’s content in a timely fashion — sometimes even lower for ‘end bosses’ like Kil’jaeden and Kel’thuzad. This is the bracket that describes most of the world top 100 or so — Nihilum, Method, SK Gaming — HPGs are the only guilds even approaching ‘celebrity’ status.

HPG Member Traits

• Very high activity — 30 to 40 hours a week is not unusual. 60 hours a week is not as rare as you might think.
• Competitive nature — they are usually playing at this level because they think they are, or want to be, the ‘best’ of their class on a given server, or even in a territory (EU, US, etc.). These guys are playing to WIN; not second, or third place — first.
• Generally young adults — 18-25 is the usual age-group here. Students at university. Students that have dropped out of university. You can occasionally get a younger gamer, if they manage their homework effectively! You might see some ‘real adults’ with jobs, but they are quite rare. These players are often quite happy with five 4-hour raids a week.
• Impatient – generally they are impatient. They want to be moving now. They don’t want to wait for the next raid! We should be raiding ALL the time! If you’re not moving, another guild might be catching up! While they might be impatient, that doens’t mean they lack focus — they can often focus on performing the same repetitive tasks for hours and hours.

The guild leader of a Hardcore Progressive Guild really has the worst ‘job’ in WoW. You know it’s bad because it’s actually referred to as a ‘job’ (some top guilds have been known to hire professionals to manage their guild logistics). There is little pleasure derived from leading a HPG, other than that warm feeling inside when you’ve moved up another rank in the world, or you’ve beaten the competition on your server. It’s a thankless task, unpaid and with minimal rewards. By far the most common reason most guilds of this type disband is because the guild leader goes on a holiday, never to return. Or he just quits. Or he gets a girlfriend. So how does this poor bastard keep a HPG happy?

• Progress – Progress of any kind. Even stating there is progress when there might not actually be any: ‘Hey guys, we got one more mob down than last time!’, or ‘Hey, we did this in one raid less than our competition!’ Really, anything to make it look like you’re working well, and progressing. Of course, if you’re making real progress that’s the one sure-fire way of keeping your guild active and healthy.
• Move quickly – Don’t spend time waiting for people that are AFK (Away From Keyboard). In fact, remove constant-AFKers from the guild (or raid team). They are awful for progress, the raid’s morale and they simply waste everyone’s time. Moving between instances in a timely fashion is also a good practice. Keeping the pace up through a raid is probably the most important thing you can do, as a guild and raid leader; kicking a slow person from your raid is likely to guarantee you the love and adoration of everyone else.
• Know how to handle people – You are generally dealing with emotional young adults. You will often find yourself dealing with people lacking in social skills. Hardcore players are normally quite a handful — they don’t get out a whole lot, so their social skills can be underdeveloped. Often they struggle to put logical arguments together. This is another subject for another day though!
• Fairness — Almost everyone in a HPG wants to be the best. They want their hands on those shiny, epic loots when they drop, before everyone else. A fair loot distribution system is key (and again, another topic for another day).Being even-handed as a guild leader is always important (for every kind of guild). The problem is, everyone on the Internet thinks they have a valid opinion. It’s your job to play arbiter — High Lord Justice — in almost every argument that pops up in a HPG. You are probably the only person that every player in the guild fears and respects at the same time, and thus it’s really your job to make sure everyone feels like they have a place in the guild. A surefire way to lose members is to make someone feel like their opinions and input are inconsequential to the guild’s progress and well being.

Each of these topics will most likely have to be broken-down in future entries, but as I’m a hardcore progressive guild leader myself with a lot of experience, that shouldn’t be a problem.

The Raiding Guild

This is your standard raiding guild. This could be a group of real life friends, or a casual guild thath as finally decided to take the step up to 25-man raiding content. This is a large group of players — about 30-40% of all WoW subscribers. These players might not have started the game to raid, but Blizzard’s continued efforts to make all of the facets of the game approachable and easy mean that almost everyone has tried raiding. Most continue to raid once they’ve had a taste of the loot and glory that comes with it!

Raiding Guild Member Traits

• High activity — While not as active as the HPG members, raiding guild members still play the game an awful lot. They might not play for as many hours in one sitting, or they might have a time constraint on when they can play, but they still play a lot — 30 hours or more a week.
• Less competitive — These guys tend to raid because it’s a natural progression of their gaming experience. They’ve cleared all of the 5-man dungeons, so now it’s time to clear the 10 and 25-man content. They don’t care much about when they finish it, they would just like to finish it… some time.
• Less-defined age range – You are more likely to find school kids and people that work full-time jobs here, though guilds tend to be centered around one age group or the other though. It’s quite common to find guilds that raid later at night, to cater for those with jobs — or run early evening raids, for kids that have to go to bed early. Of course, the largest gamer demographic (18-25) is still prevalent here, perhaps they’re less competitive, or just gearing up ready to move to a more hardcore guild. Or maybe they are trying desperately to not fail their degree!
• Quite patient — These guys are actually pretty patient. They’re quite happy to wait for AFK players, especially if it’s a guild made up of real life friends. There’s no real rush — they’ve had to struggle through 5-man dungeons with a slew of disconnectors and AFKers. They might get sick of it one day and step down from raiding, though.
• Not so loyal – These guilds tend to be filled up with people that are just looking for somewhere to raid, or somewhere with some green guild text. There’s nearly always some guild on a server looking to recruit; sadly, players picked out of the trade channel don’t tend to be the most loyal guild members. Players in this category will often drop their guild very quickly if offered a place in a hardcore guild (even if it often turns out to be a bad decision).

Being a guild leader for a standard raiding guild is a lot easier. Players tend to manage things themselves — those that want to farm a little extra will do so on their own, without your intervention. Conversely, in this category there will be those that won’t farm for raiding consumables no matter how hard you shout at them. Disputes are often sorted out quickly with an /ignore, or someone leaving the guild. What are the best ways for a guild leader to manage a raiding guild?

• Patience is a virtue — Progress isn’t quick in a standard raiding guild. It comes eventually, after many long, arduous raids. You need to be able to keep your cool for long periods of time.
• Be nice — You aren’t dealing with highly-competitive people that can deal with constructive criticism. Many players simply don’t care if they aren’t very good. You really won’t gain anything by telling them that they’re shit. Your best bet here is to do some hand-holding: ‘Watch how I do it…’, or perhaps compile some links of ‘how to play X class’ and put them on a forum.
• You’re not God – raiding guilds don’t often become spiritual communities (a very tight-knight group where your fellow guild mates feel more like family members than online buddies) like their hardcore brethren. You can stamp your foot and shout like a madman all you like, but people are very unlikely to actually pay any attention to you. It’s better to lead by example, or just try to moderate guild chat. Or draw up some nice rules for guild behaviour on the forum.The rare exception is when you have an ‘ex hardcore guild’ that has fallen fromgrace, and the top rankings, but the guild leader still thinks he is a force to be reckoned with. This is the disgruntled emperor that has lost his empire; the kind of guy that beheads people just for fun, to prove he’s still Got It.
• Fairness — The same rules as the Hardcore Progressive Guild applies here. You need to be really damn fair, especially when distributing loot. You might even have to be more fair because loot means even much more to the member of a raiding guild. Those lovely little blocks of pixels aren’t quite as common in a raiding guild, so they have a higher value! While it would be quite rare to see someone quit over loot in a HPG, assigning an item to the wrong person in a normal raiding guild can result in all sorts of trouble. A good DKP system is a requirement.

I should add that not all raiding guild members are disloyal. They won’t all leave the moment an opportunity for easy epics arises. There are many strong raiding guilds that never stepped up to the hardcore plate — often they are formed of online communities that pre-date World of Warcraft, or they are just groups of friends that picked up the game to play with each other. Some players really are just very loyal. No matter how likely the ship is going to sink, some players will really stick by the guild until it finally disbands.

The Casual Guild

Finally, we have what represents about 50% of the WoW playerbase — casuals. This is a phrase that’s commonly used by hardcore raiders in a derogatory fashion (’Oh, he’s logging out after only 4 hours… what a casual!’), but I use it here to describe the players that are casual gamers. These are the players that can only play an hour a day, or perhaps a few hours on weekends. They are married, have large work commitments, or they just don’t enjoy sitting in front of a computer for hours on end.

Leading a casual guild is a bit of a misnomer: you don’t so much lead as… guide. And recruit. Some casual guilds are so large that they won’t even know who their guild leader is — you as the guild leader might only play a few hours each week!

Casual Guild Member Traits

• Low activity — Casual gamers tend to play from zero to 10 hours a week. 1-2 hours an evening, or an occasional weekend binge, if the significant other is out of town.
• Their time is sacred – Just because they don’t play much, doesn’t mean they don’t care! They normally want to get a lot done in their small time online and so they really have no patience for timewasters, or timewasting. It’s kind of ironic though, as they are the most likely kind of player to disconnect without warning if  ’someone knocked on the door’, or ’sorry, important phonecall’.
• Every age group – Almost anyone from any walk of life can be a casual gamer, but they do tend to be either very young, or old (over 40 — I know it’s not actually old, but it is for the sake of gaming!). There’s normally a caring parent metering the amount of hours they can spend playing, or they are married and not ‘allowed’ to play more than a certain number of hours a week. Unless the significant other is out of town… then all Hell can break loose. What they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?
• Loyalty? What’s that? – For these players, a guild is just somewhere to hang out, chat, and pick up players for 5-man dungeons. If someone accidentally rolls on your item, you’re more than likely going to leave the guild. The exception is if a casual guild grows towards a casual raiding guild (1 raid a week, often on weekends) — then the players are likely to be very loyal to the hand that feeds them epic items. Casual raiding guilds very rarely work out though; it’s just too hard to keep it together especially with casual officers.

You’ve probably gathered that you can’t really lead a guild of casuals. They come, they go. You can’t reliably predict when they’ll be online, so you can’t really plan any kind of guild event. There are however a few things you can do to grow the community and keep everyone happy:

• Recruit — The key to a casual raiding guild is the size of its roster. You need enough players online so that there’s always enough people on at each level range to find questing/dungeon-crawling groups! Casual guilds are often ‘levelling up’ guilds, so you need a vast number of players to hope to have 5 characters of any given level.
• Make some rules – It’s very easy to just have a free-for-all guild where anything goes, but you might find you receive a position reaction from your guild members if there are basic ground rules. No swearing, as there are kids in the guild? Each person gets 1 item of loot from a dungeon? No ganking of lowbies? Don’t be rude to other players? Rules like that can generate a good reputation for your guild — it can create a guild that casuals aspire to be in.
• You can be picky – As I said earlier, casual gamers make up the biggest portion of players in WoW. There’s no shortage of people that you can recruit into your guild, so it doesn’t hurt to choose who you invite! Pick up the people that put some effort into speaking like a human being. Recruit the players that stop and help you with whatever you’re doing. Invite the players that offer to pay you for a service, instead of demanding it for free. You are trying to build a guild that is fairly autonomous, as you probably won’t play the game a lot — the best way to do that is to invite other responsible, helpful players; the kinds of players that always ‘have time’ for other people.
• Get a forum – This goes without saying for every type of guild, but it can be especially useful for building a successful community out of players that don’t otherwise interact with each other a lot. You could have threads that allow people to share ‘the best places to level’, or ‘good addons to use while levelling’, or ‘your class role in a dungeon’. Anything that encourages people to interact and share their views on a topic is a good thing.

There’s Lots More

I’ve touched on a lot of topics that will need to be fully explored at a later date: community building, DKP systems, how to survive when the ‘going gets tough’, and generally ‘coping’ as a guild leader — it’s hard to not be afflicted and aborbed by a God complex if nothing else! There’s also a gap between the Hardcore Progressive Guild and the standard Raiding Guild — the guild that is trying to become hardcore. They all deserve seperate entries though, so stay tuned!

If you have any questions about the issues raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

If you are more interested in the players found in hardcore guilds, you might find this article more interesting.

Following on from my article on who plays in hardcore guilds, I’m now going to discuss the kinds of players you will find in a normal, World of Warcraft raiding guild. I’ve discussed tips and tricks for pushing a raiding guild’s progress, and I’ve also touched on what it’s like being a guild leader of a raiding guild, but now I’m going to try and get inside the heads of raiders. Not the hardcore, very-little-going-on-in-real-life raiders — the normal raiders. The raiders with jobs, or lots of school work to do, or even kids to care for.

Normal raiders make up about 40% of WoW’s subscription base, so obviously it’s going to be quite hard to boil down just a few player types — but I’ll try my best. Hopefully you’ll be able to spot yourself, but don’t worry if you can’t — there are always exceptions!

As with my my other article on hardcore raiders, I’ll be utilising Bartle’s player type system to give more abstract classifications of each type. I’ll also be using David Kolb’s research (further studied by Peter Honey and Alfred Mumford) into ‘Learning Style‘ — the way in which certain people learn in different ways — either through theorycrafting, wiping, or a mix of the two! Due to the less specific nature of raiding guilds (almost anyone can be in a raiding guild) some of the classifications might be a little lacking.

Enough preamble — let’s get right into the kinds of players in raiding guilds!

The 4 player types found in raiding guilds

Raiding guilds, being made  up a much larger percentage of the player base, tend to contain a huge variety of gamers. Unlike hardcore guilds, raiding guilds can contain any kind of player. The actual playing of WoW raiding content is very easy — the hard bit is the logistics and continued, 5-raids-a-week effort.  Raiding guilds consist of what’s left after you remove everyone capable of raiding in a hardcore capacity, which means you’re not generally left with very good gamers! Luckily, you don’t need to excel to progress; you just need a loyal bunch of players, and some perseverance!

What are the 4 player types? Let’s start with the most despised:

The Visitor

I thought I would leap right in there with the most hated and reviled of all raiding player types: the player that’s only hanging around for a while. The player that thinks he’s way too good to be in your pokey, up-and-coming raiding guild — you’re merely a stepping stone for the Visitor, he’s on his way to the top baby!

• Bartle Player Type: Opportunists, with a few Planners thrown in (the more intelligent ones). Maybe one or two Networkers (but they are rare, and would probably already be in a hardcore guild).
• Kolb Learning Style: Being such a variety of types, it’s hard to pigeon-hole The Visitor into a learning style. In theory, they could be any of the hardcore raiding types, just waiting for their moment to come!

The Visitor is an odd ball. They are likely to be your best gamers, as they are looking to be ’spotted’ by top guilds; but at the same time, any investment you make into a Visitor is most likely going to be a waste (in the long run!) It’s not uncommon for a Visitor to constantly remind you that he’s only in the guild while he looks for a ‘better guild’ more suited to his awesome abilities. Visitors will sometimes be complete underachievers, knowing that their efforts feel wasted on a normal raiding guild.They are probably of the opinion that they can do more damage than the next player with one hand behind their back.

What To Avoid

Visitors are likely to be prima donnas — they want special treatment for being a cut above the rest of your guild. Sadly, you probably should give them special treatment. It really depends on how keen on progress you are — Visitors could provide a quick boost in progress, but then a drop in progress and morale when they ultimately leave. Visitors are likely to be the best damage dealers in your raid (much like the Killer in a hardcore raid) — but in the vast majority of cases, there’s a reason they’re still not in a hardcore guild. If you treat a Visitor with respect, and make sure they get the loot that’s rightfully theirs, they might just hang around! They might leave and rejoin a few times, but that’s just part of the ‘experience’ in a normal raiding guild.

The Loyal Soldier

These are the raiding guild’s equivalent of the Silent But Deadly hardcore guild member — your stalwart members that have been in the guild since the start, and won’t depart until the guild disbands. If you need someone to boost you through a low-level instance on an alt, the Loyal Soldier is the player most likely to help you;  if you need some kind of old reagent, they most likely have a stockpile on one of their many, many alts.

• Bartle Player Type: Again, a large split between Scientists, Friends and Networkers — the implicit types. These are generally quiet, reclusive types that you will rarely notice causing a fuss in general chat.
• Kolb Learning Style: Likely to be Divergers. They might not raid a lot, so they spend more time thinking about their raiding experience. Reading strategies might be very dull to them, though.

We are talking here about players that joined a guild back when they were low-level and running around The Barrens. Perhaps they are real life friends of the guild leader, or they have some other emotional tie to the guild — either way, they are likely only playing the game because of the guild. Raiding is probably a relatively new thing for them — they are likely to be incredibly experienced with ‘old world’ content and dungeoneering.

What To Avoid

While loyal, don’t expect Loyal Soldiers to be the best raiders. They are likely to be ’slow and steady’, preferring to try things a few times, and then digest what just happened. They don’t want to wipe and wipe for 4 hours — they would rather crack open a beer, have a laugh with their old friends, and try to kill something by the end of the raid.

The only real risk is that their gradual accumlation of gear and experience make these quite prized by hardcore guilds. If a Loyal Soldier suddenly has the plan to join a hardcore guild, there could be trouble. They will very rarely leave, but if they do it could be very bad for guild morale — and the huge loss of experience and gear is obviously detrimental too.

The Troll

First of all, apologies to our blue-and-green skinned friends the trolls (did they have a run-in with nuclear waste or something?) I am talking here about Trolls; internet trolls. These are the equivalent of the hardcore ‘Dramatic’ player type… but unfortunately they don’t have hardcore raiding to focus their attention on. Their excess energy inevitably leaks out as trolling. Forum trolling, general chat trolling, guild chat trolling — you name it, the Troll probably spends more time talking crap than anythinig else.

• Bartle Player Type: Griefers and Politicians. Their time is probably equally spent between ganking lowbies and holding court in a major city, or gneeral chat.
• Kolb Learning Style: Raiding is a bit of a joke for a Troll — the learning style is thus a bit hard to pin down.

Sadly (or happily, if you can keep them in check!) every guild has a few of these, with raiding guilds likely to have more than their fare share. Trolling is normally a sure sign of chronic underachieving. Chances are they were once a  failed hardcore raider and had to give up, perhaps due to not having time, or simply not being good enough. Some trolls are ‘home bred’ though — they are just the cocky, social types that treat WoW more as a big, shiny soap box than a video game.

What To Avoid

Raiding guilds don’t tend to have as stringent recruiting policies as hardcore raiding guilds, so inevitably a few Trolls will sneak into your ranks. In some cases though, they are disaffected Visitors or Loyal Soldiers — bored with the game, or upset with Blizzard for some reason. Trolls are likely to be return customers — coming and going, quitting and resubscribing. Trolls aren’t a happy bunch — you probably want to avoid keeping Trolls in your raid group, incase  their sadness spreads. They might be funny for a while, but eventually they’ll get on the nerves of the other members!

The Newbie

Making up the rest of a raiding guild’s ranks are the newbies. Undergeared and inexperienced, the Newbie is a lovely blank slate, tabula rasa, just ready to be scrawled all over by the guild leader, and anyone else in the guild that likes creating an impression.

• Bartle Player Type: Let’s say their player type is as-yet undefined. They might have some tendencies, but Newbies, nowadays, are probably first-time MMORPG players, still discovering their likes and dislikes.
• Kolb Learning Style: Could be any of the four… you’ll find out in time!

A Newbie is very much what you make of him or her. WoW is an incredibly easy game, so a Newbie could easily flourish into a beautiful young raider and almost certainly into a Loyal Soldier, given time.

What To Avoid

Newbies need guidance — lots of it! Obviously it’s very much a mixed bag; you might be nuturing a Troll or Visitor, but there’s no real way to tell at this early stage. You want to avoid bringing them into contact with Trolls or Visitors, lest the early seeds of destruction are planted. Encourage the guild to communicate well with Newbies — answer their questions, help them gear up. There’s a chance they will fly the nest when they grow up, but that’s a risk you’ll always have to take in raiding guilds.

The fate of the raiding guild

Unfortunately, as the intermediate step between casual and hardcore guilds, a raiding guild is likely to be treated as a stepping stone. It’s a sad fate for the guild leader and his Loyal Soldiers, but it’s something, as time goes by, that you will come to terms with. A new instance is released; you’ll lose players. Have a large argument with a player? He’ll leave. Other than Loyal Soldiers, raiding guilds do not have great player retention — the grass is always greener on the other side, remember?

So the key, then, to surviving as a raiding guild is to convert your players into Loyal Soldiers. I have seen some raiding guilds survive successfully since WoW’s release by keeping an active core of Loyal Soldiers and steadily subverting Newbies into the loyal and adoring fold.

How best then to go about making the most of your guild and its players?

• Visitors will make up a sizable portion of your guild and must be looked after. If you are a new guild, there’s a chance your entire guild will be made of Visitors — if that’s the case, it’s the guild leader’s sole responsibility to convert these to Loyal Soldiers. In older guilds you should have a strong enough feeling of comraderie and loyalty that Visitors are either converted automatically, or they ultimately flee. Sadly, they are likely to be your best raiders — so if you wish to progress quickly, you are going to have to gear them up, and pray.
• Loyal Soldiers might be either rare, or make up almost your entire guild. When the other 3 types have quit, this is what you’re left with — a slow and plodding core of loyal members. Loyal Soldiers don’t make the greatest raiders, but they do make good officers. They are ideal at converting Newbies into future Loyal Soldiers, and as such are perfectly suited to being class leaders, or recruitment officers.
• Trolls are thankfully quite rare (because you’ve kicked them all, right?!) and merely serve as comic relief. While they’re on your side (and trolling other guilds/players) it can be great to keep 1 or 2 in the guild or raid. They are often quite smart, and won’t be awful at the game (they are quite experienced, don’t forget!) — they just find trolling more interesting than doing lots of damage, or healing properly. The moment they turn inwards and start trolling guild chat or festering discontent and spreading FUD… it’s time to cut your losses and remove them.
• Ah, Newbies… Fresh like the morning, dewy grass. Unsullied and pure, a blank slate, just waiting for a charismatic leader or Loyal Soldier to come along and teach them some tricks. Newbies are the lifeblood of your raiding guild; they must be recruited regularly! Meet a nice, new player while in a 5-man dungeon? Recruit! As I said earlier, WoW is very easy, and almost anyone with half a brain can raid successfully — they just need to be taught how to raid and what their role is. An easy-going and understanding nature will help nuture these Newbies into loyal, life-long members of your guild. The risk with Newbies is that if you don’t get to them first, someone else might — a Troll, or a rival guild. There needs to be lots of hand-holding, like with a child!

Notes

Raiding guilds have an awful lot of caveats attached to them. Raiding guilds can be groups of real life friends, or they can be formed by a lot of spam in general chat. This wide gamut of roots means that your raiding guild might be made up of completely different types to the ones listed here. What I’ve tried to do is illustrate what a standard raiding guild might contain. A guild that’s levelled together, and started raiding, or perhaps a group of friends that have recruited a few more players to do some raiding content.

Raiding guilds, due to their wildly varying roots and nature, tend to be quite a ‘hands on’ experience to lead. While a hardcore guild is generally self-governed by players that all have the same purpose — to be number one! — a raiding guild isn’t quite so lucky. Raiding guilds will lose players to other raiding guilds, and they will lose a lot of experienced and geared Visitors to hardcore guilds.

The good news is — and really, it’s good news — in a raiding guild it’s the spirit and fun of the game that keeps people playing and not the progress! Your Loyal Soldiers aren’t going to leave you if you fail to kill a boss. Your Newbies won’t be any the wiser. Your Trolls will continue to laugh and bicker, no matter how far you progress.

If you lose a player, that’s generally a good thing. It means they didn’t want to be a part of your guild and community. Do you really want a player like that in your guild? Remember, WoW is easy — in a raiding guild, everyone is replaceable! Go and find someone nicer to replace them with!

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

If you liked reading this, there is more to read about WoW, guilds and raiding in the archive!

There is one common trait among all guilds, of every size and all descriptions: players quit. They can suffer burnout, or perhaps start a new job that prevents them from playing, but at the end of the day the result is the same: you’ve lost a member of the community, and perhaps the raid team too. In this article, I’ll try to explain the main cause of players quitting, and how to prevent it from happening in the first place!

Obviously, you can’t prevent players from ever quitting (though that would be nice!). The only way to counteract such losses is through recruitment (at least until we can have virtual children…) The method of recruitment will vary from guild to guild and server to server, but I hope to cover most of the basics in this article; I’ll even try to throw in a few ‘veteran tips’ that might give your guild a slight advantage over the rest!

Quitters

Eventually, everyone quits. Awfully philosophical, I know. At some stage, whether it’s tomorrow, or 50 years from now, the game ceases to be a game, and you quit. Humans aren’t very good at playing ‘non games’ for long: there has to be some kind of tangible improvement, some kind of fun. Without a game, what’s the point? Without some kind of competition, or some end goal to strive towards, why bother?

The real life equivalent would probably be suicide, which thankfully isn’t as prevalent as people quitting an online game: Interpersonal ties, those ties that keep you going and striving for success, are much stronger when you see and talk to someone face-to-face. There are also a much larger abundance of games to play in real life; a much vaster range of challenges and aspirations that you might one day achieve.

This is where MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, suffer: they have a finite number of games; a limited number of possibilities. In the case of WoW, the world might be very large indeed, with a lot of possible developer- and player-created games, but at the end of the day you are still bound to the world created by Blizzard. In real life, there are almost no limitations — if you see the top of a mountain, you can almost certainly go there, even if it takes years of training. In a game, you can only go there if the designer hasn’t placed an invisible wall in the way. Ultimately, you have to play the game they want you to play.

Inevitably, when all of the content is exhausted (or you have exhausted everything that is fun), you quit.

You’re not going to stop everyone from quitting, but there are certainly some steps you can take to lessen the chances of it happening.

You must have fun

This is to both the players, and the guild leaders. You, as a player, must find the game fun. You, you grumpy, tyrannical guild leader, must make the game fun for the members of your guild! When the game stops being fun, you can guarantee that people will start quitting. It might be a slow trickle at first, but without any significant changes, that trickle will fast become a torrent of quitters.

MMOs in general, and WoW in specific tend to be fun — they are games after all! The problems normally arise when you’ve cleared all of the content and you’re eagerly awaiting the next patch from the developer. Sometimes, though, fun can be destroyed simply by wiping too much on a boss, or being demoted too many times by a power mad guild leader. I’ll break down the most common ways of destroying fun:

• Wiping is bad — I’m sure this comes as no surprise to any of you. Wiping is awfully testing on morale. As humans, we don’t mind repetitive actions, but there has to be observable progress over a span of a few wipes, or in the case of harder bosses, a few raids. Depending on the kind of guild or raid group, the average player tolerance to wipes will vary a lot, but in general wiping is very, very bad.
• Stagnation is bad – In the same vein as wiping repetitively without progress, stagnation is another huge cause of discontent. When the guild or raid is so static, so devoid of progress or simply without communication, it stagnates. People stop logging in, guild chat becomes quiet, and raids become just ‘yet another farm run’. Stagnation in itself isn’t entirely crippling, but it just happens to be the breeding ground of the next fun-destroying element:
• Drama – One of the most-used phrases thrown around in MMORPGs today is ‘drama’. Drama, in online games, is usually defined as the ‘aggravation of a situation’ and it’s often pointless, baseless aggravation too. As I was saying, stagnation is normally the cause of drama: dramatic players thrive in a stagnated (or simply stressed) guild environment. If you imagine a dark, lifeless pond, and then stir it around with a stick… that’s what drama often feels like in a guild. Smelly and nasty — and you can’t help but feel it was better to leave the pond unstirred.

These are the common causes of a drop in morale, the following discontent, and ultimately quitters. As with most things, it falls to the guild leader (or officers) to try and avoid such situations. The solutions are fairly simple:

• Reduce the impact of wipe-fests – Probably the best way to prevent player burnout is by making the hours spent wiping slightly less painful. You could introduce breaks every two hours, or you could promise only one wipe raid a week. Most guilds now provide repair funds and consumables for their raiders which reduces the strain of raiding by a huge amount. The only real cause of burnout today is ‘hard’ bosses — but if you play WoW, it sure seems Blizzard are trying to prevent the effect C’thun and Kael’thas had on hardcore raiding guilds. This article of mine has more detailed information on the topic of raiding, wiping and progressing.
• Stir things up before the drama queens can — In my previous example of a stagnated, dead pond being stirred, it was a dramatic player doing the stirring. They were adding their own bias to situations, and perhaps catching you, the guild leader, off-balance. The key here is to stir things up before the guild stagnates. Change the raiding schedule, or remove some of the raiders that have been holding you back! Perhaps organise a raid as level 1 gnomes on another server, or arrange a foot-race from Undercity to Booty Bay? It is nearly always the job of the guild leader to keep things fresh and interesting, so do it!
• Control the drama – Drama isn’t always bad! The wrong drama, at the wrong time, is bad. A bit of good drama never did a strong guild any harm, though! Depending on the ‘community level‘ of your guild, it might vary from guild to guild what you can actually get away with, but inspiring the members of your guild to discuss interesting topics can do a lot to develop the community, and at the same time is fun! Be careful with censorship too; obviously heavy anti-guild sentiment might need to be controlled, but also you might find that the rest of the guild gangs up on the drama queen — and there’s almost nothing more fun than coming together as a community to play ‘defeat the anti-guild forum troll’!Worth noting is that drama involving other guilds is always a good thing. If you heard about another guild having problems with a particular encounter, or with a troublesome raider, tell your guild! It’ll be great for morale, especially if you’ve been wiping on a boss for hours.

If you take these steps to make the game fun again — or even prevent the game from becoming boring in the first place! — you should have a lot less problems with quitters, which means you won’t need the next section quite so much!

Recruitment

Whether you’re a casual, raiding or hardcore guild, the bread and butter of your survival is recruitment. Recruitment is the only way you will continue to have fun and progress, and as such it is vital you understand how to control the ‘newbie hose’ of recruitment. You need to know which direction to spray it in, and when turn it on, or off.

It isn’t purely the role of the guild leader or officers to manage recruitment: it is something for every member to keep in mind. When your guild needs a replacement, before next week, chances are someone in the guild knows a suitable replacement. Of course, it’s ideal if each class leader knows every possible recruit, but that rarely happens (if you have a class leader that does know every possible recruit, look after them!)

Let’s start with the basics of recruitment.

When should you recruit?

Most guilds make the big mistake of waiting until too late to recruit; waiting one more day might make the difference between the life and death of your guild! Whether you’re a casual or raiding guild, it’s important to recruit before you lose the ‘critical mass’ of players — whatever that number of players might be!

A casual guild is probably even more fickle than their raiding or hardcore counterparts. If shit hits the fan in a casual guild, there’s usually very little to prevent players from just jumping ship and heading to another guild. In raiding-oriented guilds there is usually the soft, velvet-gloved, addictive allure of epics that keeps players hanging on for a little longer — but rest assured, people will pack their bags and run away; they’ll run very fast indeed if they think the guild has begun its dying throes.

When is it best to recruit then? Early.Very, very early. I’ve already written a bit on the size and attendance of raiding groups, and the best way to manage recruitment is to keep a very close eye on attendance. As soon as a player starts dipping below the desired percentage (80%) you should be looking for possible replacements. You should be incredibly cautious of ‘repeat offenders’ — those players that, seemingly by magic, skip raids over and over (usually due to real life commitments). These players will likely never be reliable, and in serious raiding guilds should be replaced!

In general, recruitment is a lot about gut instinct. After a while, you should be able to predict the ebb and flow of players: the inevitable loss of a few players after you finish an instance; the handful of players that you will always lose after the summer holiday. The start of the school year is another common event which will force you to recruit — but no matter the occasion, do it sooner, rather than later! If you’ve had to cancel a few raids, you were too slow!

Who should you recruit?

If we’re being WoW-specific, this question is quite easy to answer: you can recruit almost anyone. Other games might be harder (in fact, they’re probably all harder than WoW), so the recruitment criteria might be a little more stringent. With WoW though,  you should almost always recruit first and consider their actual abilities afterward.

The following is the order of importance for desirable traits in new recruits:

1. Not a dick
2. Can attend your guild’s raiding schedule (or whatever kind of schedule your guild has)
3. Relevant experience
4. Gear (or whether they have the right tools for the task)

Top guilds will obviously be a lot more choosy in who they pick up, but they also have a huge pool of possible recruits available to them. Most guilds can not pick and choose; they just have to take what they’re given. Most guilds should stick to recruiting friends of other members, which is often a sure-fire way to find non-dicky players and also work on the feeling of community and inclusion the same time. It’s not uncommon for top guilds to be made up entirely of groups of real life friends for this reason! Personal recommendation goes a long way; not having to rely on relatively-unknown forum applicants is highly desirable.

As I’ve said quite a few times now, WoW is an easy game. The number one reason for not succeeding, progressing or surviving is: not having enough players. Don’t fall into the same trap that so many other guilds have tried to work around in vain. You really can recruit just about anyone — as long as they’re not a dick!

Finally, how do you recruit?

This is the step that most guilds stumble on. You know you’re struggling and you can feel progress and morale slipping away. You know what kind of player would fit into your guild, but… there are no applications! Why aren’t people APPLYING? Don’t people know that we need a new mage? Don’t people know that we could be the best guild on the server if we just picked up the right tank?

Fortunately, all of these questions are probably caused by the same, easily-fixed problem: you are unknown. Yep, that’s why no one has applied to your awesome guild — no one knows that you’re recruiting. Rectifying this rather sizable issue is thankfully very simple: spam.

I know, I know, everyone hates trade-channel spam, but it really is your best tool to get the word out there that you need recruits. Make some macros and use them regularly (a few times an hour is enough!) For extra potency, send the macros to other people in your guild too! Assuming you have a good reputation, you should quickly notice a burst of fresh applications. (The exception to this rule is congested or dead servers, but I won’t go into that here.)

If the idea of spamming trade chat doesn’t appeal (and some guilds might fancy themselves slightly more ‘upper class’), you could also encourage all of your guild members to talk to their friends and poke them to join. If talking and poking isn’t enough, get them to start emotionally blackmailing those same friends — eventually they’ll crack and apply, trust me!

Posting on your realm’s forum is also a good idea (but I’m sure you’ve already done that, right?) Make sure to include all of the perks that members of your guild get, such as repair funds, raiding consumables, a forum, voice communications… and whether you have a tabard or not!

Tips & Tricks

Consider this section as ‘extra reading’, or a ‘bonus feature’. Either way, what you’ve read so far is more than enough to keep a casual or raiding guild alive and healthy. What follows is a few tips that might be of use to hardcore guilds, or for guild leaders that enjoy the politics of the game as much as, or more, than the actual raiding. These are also almost entirely for guild leaders, and probably won’t be very useful to the members of a guild.

• Maintain friends in other guilds – Being inherently social games, most MMORPG players like to make friends: buddies they can talk to when the going gets rough, or ask for advice on particular encounters. There’s no reason for your friends to all be from your own guild! Make friends with the officers and raiders of other guilds — or even other guild leaders!
• Similarly, keep communication channels open – Always keep your ear to the ground. Listen to what your guild members have to say, no matter how mundane it might seem to be. The web of player interconnections in MMOs like WoW  is so vast that most players are only ever 2 degrees of separation apart. This means that there is a strong chance that even if you are not friends with a possible recruit, someone in your guild probably is. Utilise and leverage those relationships to get the right players into your guild.
• Politics, and the knife in the back – I’m starting to get into territory that will no doubt cause a little uneasiness, which is no surprise as I am now talking about the wholesale slaughter of other guilds! Turning one guild’s misfortune into your own fortuitous windfall! I am of course talking about poaching important players from other guilds.Poaching itself is nothing special — almost everyone you recruit will be from another guild! — but I’m talking here about poaching a key player in another guild: their main tank, or perhaps an important social figure.  This requires a combination of having good friends, keeping an eye on ‘current affairs’, and being charismatic enough to lure someone into your guild; someone that is likely very loyal to their current guild.I’m not going to go into the details of poaching as it’s a topic best-suited to an article on the sociological and psychological stresses on the denizens of virtual worlds, and how to manipulate them.

At the end of the day, you must remember that as a guild leader, you are in a unique position. You are at the top of a pyramid: the end-point of all activity and communication below you. It is your job as guild leader to sift through the thousands of pieces of data available to you and find the important bits; it’s your job to differentiate between the pimples of harmless whining, and those little blackheads that will eventually develop into nasty, pussy spots that’ll make your life hell.

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.