Virtual worlds like World of Warcraft have long been known to mirror certain aspects of real life. It has often been supposed that people play games like World of Warcraft exactly because of that fact; some elements are so comfortably similar to real life that it makes the gameplay experience a lot easier to adapt to.

A game that is completely foreign to gamers would have a very limited appeal. We can embrace and enjoy the known, with a small amount of unknown thrown in to spice things up. The inverse is often quite disturbing — it’s hard to enjoy ourselves if we can’t predict with some kind of certainty what our future holds.

While there are many facets of online games that I could look at, I’m going to look at one that I’m very intimate with: social and power structures. With Patch 3.1 and Ulduar fast approaching, and the promise of some taxing content, it would definitely make sense to ensure your guild is structured in a way to support strong progress and a thriving community. From guild leader through to the grunts and peons of the guild, I’ll try to break down what makes the difference between a good guild and a truly great guild.

The structure of a guild

WoW, like real life, has a very well defined social structure. While there is an over-arching hierarchy for an entire server, I’ll be focusing more on the structure inside a guild.

What real life structure does a guild most represent? A large solely owned company, or perhaps even a small autocratic country. There is often a single leader, a board of executives or advisors, department chiefs and then the workers or citizens themselves. These real life roles map perfectly to the ‘common’ ranks you will find in a guild.

The Guild Leader

Real world equivalent: Tyrant, Dictator, Monarch, Pope, President.

At the top of every guild or society you will have an ultimate leader. In rare cases this can be a title without the attached powers or responsibilities (such as a ‘token monarch’ in Britain or Sweden), but almost always this will be the the primary decision-maker in the guild. Guilds are very much like smaller autocratic states in that there are often other roles filled out — executives and advisors — but the leader always has the power to veto any decisions made, and to enact new rules (laws) as his fancy and whim dictate.

As I touched upon briefly in other articles, some guilds might have more than one leader — there might be 2, 3 or more if formed out of a group of real life friends. In almost all guilds this is a single figure, though. Many people play games like WoW for the power it gives them over other humans…!

Primary Tasks

• Decision maker — I’ve discussed it in previous articles, but the primary role of the leader is simply to make decisions. Good, bad or ugly, the decisions have to be made in a timely, and hopefully fair fashion.
• Chief justice — The guild leader plays the arbiter and justice maker in almost every argument that raises above normal every-day strife.

If you are interested in the other roles of the guild leader, just read some of my collected writings — that’s what this blog is all about!

Assistant Guild Leaders

Real world equivalent: Vice President, Home Secretary, Joint Military Chiefs, Secret Police Chief.

Behind every great leader there are great advisors. Even in fully autocratic states leaders know that they simply can’t govern an entire country (guild) on their own. They can’t keep track of everything that’s going on. They can’t keep abreast of every eventuality or developing situation; there is simply so much to do, so much going on.

While a guild, being a small subset of real life, is relatively restricted in what actually goes on, it can still be very hard for a guild leader to keep his finger in every pie. Factions might develop amongst nationalities, or perhaps a raider harbours resentment that he refuses to tell the guild leader about. This is where your assistant guild leaders — your most trusted advisors — step into the fray. They are distant enough from the leadership that they can see situations from a different angle, and discuss problems with members of the guild that the guild leader might normally have difficulties with.

Primary Tasks

• Secret police — There’s a lot of stigma attached to such a phrase, but it does best suit their role of ‘information gatherer’. Assistant leaders can get into places that the guild leader can only dream of. They can play the good cop to the guild leader’s bad cop. They are the guild’s rottweiler!
• Decision making — In the guild leader’s absence the assistant guild leader inherits the mantle of decision making. You’re not expected to be as competent as the guild leader, but they should certainly try to limit the number of people that leave the guild during their temporary reign!
• Management — It’s common for assistant guild leaders to get lumped with tasks like DKP management, or recruitment. It will vary though, from guild to guild, guild leader to guild leader, and the size of the guild.

Class/Role Officers

Real world equivalent: Department of Defence, Education Secretary, Senator.

At the bottom of the leadership pyramid we have the class and role officers. Varying form guild to guild, you might have one per class (Hunter, Priest, Warlock…), or perhaps only one per role (Damage Dealing, Healing, Tanking…) although I propose that class officers are a better way to go about it.

These are more of your ‘every day’ officers. Unlike their real-world counterparts, they will have quite limited responsibilities — their class, or role. A hunter class leader might purely be in charge of making sure hunters operate well during raids. The most an officer at this level would do would be the management of recruitment for his class. It is through close contact with class officers that a guild leader can best judge how upcoming raids might be — if there might be a shortage of players, or how recent changes made to the game might impact the guild.

Primary Tasks

• Know your class/role — It’s rather obvious, but a class or role officer must be the master of his job. He becomes the authority for a sizable fraction of the guild so he better be damn good at what he does. The class officer definitely needs be on top of all the latest developments, macros and strategies.
• The guild/raid leader’s crutch — During raids their primary role is the support of the guild or raid leader. When discussing strategies for new bosses it’s their job to suggest better methods of execution. It’s their job to say what is and is not possible for your class. Can we reach those DPS requirements? Do we have a working healing strategy? Are the tanks mitigating as much damage as possible? It is their job to support the leader’s knowledge of your class — it’s impossible for the leader to know everything, that is why he has officers!
• Recruitment — Many guilds use their class/role officers to manage recruitment. Normally this will involve the guild leader saying ‘We need more of X class!’, and the respective class leader running off to find more awesome players. As the authority of their class/role in the guild, they are obviously best suited to finding more good players!

Members/Raiders

While at the bottom of the pile, members and raiders are by no means the least important people in the guild. They make up the majority of the guild or group; they are the civilians and the soldiers. Canon fodder! A good leadership is nothing without a happy, loyal gang of followers. You can craft a fantastic DKP system and install a great forum, but without an actual group of players to do the healing, the DPSing and the tanking… you have nothing!

Luckily, a member’s list of obligations is short and sweet:

Primary Tasks

• Don’t quit – ‘Huh?’ Yeah — the worst thing you can do to a guild is quitting; either the game, or leaving to another guild (which is even worse!). A member/raider is an investment to the guild — the leadership is investing in you by gearing you up and teaching you strategies. You might feel like you own the gear on your character, but just like in real life, there’s always someone that thinks they own you. It would be like training to be a doctor in your home country, and then seeking work in another country. It is for this reason that loyalty is probably the most valued trait of for a member — of any group.
• Know your role — Your primary role in the guild is often defined by the grounds of your recruitment. If you were recruited to be a great tank, it is obviously your responsibility to become a great tank! You need to research what must be done to perform your role successfully. Members should also maintain very good communication with their class/role officer.

A real example — a successful WoW guild

Like my other articles, I am talking entirely from experience. While I do have some degree-level education on the topics of sociology, anthropology and gamer psychology I am going to stick to real, applicable proof for this example. This section is going to focus on what I have found to be workable and true in the leading, success and ongoing survival of my guild over the past 4 years.

There have been many iterations of our guild structure, but the past 2 years have seen it remain virtual static. Those same 2 years, with a combination of strong leadership, durable structure and an environment in which a community can thrive, have seen a rise from 600th to 30th in the world.

From top to bottom then:

• Guild Leaders — We run two guild leaders of equal power, much like an ancient Roman Duumvirate. Historically, one would be a military leader and the other a civic leader. The idea here is that both leaders have the power of veto — nothing can occur unless both leaders agree. This small amount of bureaucracy has saved us a lot of pain over the years. If one leader steps out of line, the other can quickly move in to rectify things. If members are afraid to talk to one leader, the other can do the listening. You would be correct in relating this as the famous ‘good cop, bad cop’ setup.
• Assistant Guild Leaders — We run three assistant guild leaders. A neat number that brings us up to a council of five, for any decisions that might impact the whole guild. Assistant guild leaders have all of the powers of a guild leader, but obviously can’t veto a guild leader’s decision. Our assistant guild leaders play advisory roles:
  • DKP Advisor — I told you DKP and loot distribution were important! One assistant guild leader focuses almost entirely on our loot distribution system, with a side-interest in making sure consumables are prepared for raids. This is the guild’s ‘economic advisor’.
  • Casual Advisor — We’re a large guild, so having someone that can keep in touch with the casual players and alert the other guild leaders about any pertinent issues is vital.
  • Political Advisor — Or as we like to call it… ’secret police’: the rottweiler of the guild. The vicious dog that tears things apart until he can see what’s within. He has a good sense of smell; very good at picking up on problems that might arise in the immediate future.
• Class Leader — 1 officer for each class in the guild. While their role might include the overall well being of his class in the guild, each of these officers are also hardcore raiders. They know their class very well, and are in charge of recruiting. They must be very active players, always looking for new and better ways to play their class, and of course keeping an eye out for possible recruits!
• Raiders — This rank is split into two: ‘pro raiders’, and just ‘raiders’. The titles are just that though — titles. If a raider maintains almost perfect attendance and is the true paragon of raiding, they can be promoted to ‘pro raider’. We try to maintain 3 or 4 raiders of each class, for per 25-man raid. I will discuss building successful raid groups in a future article!
• Member — Everyone else in the guild falls into this rank. Casual raiders, casual players, friends and family — they’re all mixed up here. Raiders that have also let their attendance drop, or can’t raid due to real life problems also find themselves at this rank.

The ranks worth noting here are the officers — guild leaders, assistants and class leaders. Every guild has the member rank (obviously!), but I’ve seen a huge variation in the actual leadership structure in guilds. Some have only 3 or 4 officers, and some have assistant class leaders, PVP officers, profession officers… sometimes as much as half the guild!

I’m not saying that they are necessarily bad structures, but they do have some inherent weaknesses that our guild structure avoids. In my previous writings you’ll note that I put a lot of emphasis on fairness and communication, and that’s what our structure provides. There’s always someone for a member or raider to talk to. There’s always someone for a class leader to talk to. And then at the top, there’s 5 people that always try to reach a consensus so that when changes are made they never have a negative impact on any aspect of the guild.

The only real weakness of our setup is that it requires a lot of good people. There’s certainly a lot of bureaucracy built into our system, which means most changes happen incredibly slowly. One of the two guild leaders can always change something quickly if there’s some urgency, though. We’ve found that ’slow and steady’ has served us well over the years. Radical leaps have normally not gone down very well and normally destabilise the core of the guild — and at the end of the day, progress in earnest, year after year, can only come with a stable guild.

Notes

The guild structure we use is actually very similar (if not identical) to the system used in the early Roman Republic: Consul -> Praetor -> Quaestor. This system is also used, albeit with different naming, in almost every republic today. The only difference we made was the dual leadership, rather than one primary leader. We felt that given the ‘egoistic escapist’ nature of online games that two leaders could keep each other balanced and focused.  Online, with very few checks and balances, the power one wields in a large guild can grow out of control; and that’s where the second leader steps in to sweep up the mess.

Something should also be said about purely autocratic, tyrannical guilds — guilds with only one real officer, with perhaps 1 or 2 of his ‘chosen’ playing minor roles in his leadership. History has shown fairly authoritatively that autocratic states rarely have much long-term stability. Guilds lead in a similar fashion normally suffer the same fate. They never quite reach the state required to drive a healthy community, and thus progress. They might do very well in the short term, with the entire guild membership unified and polarised, whipped up into a fervor behind the guild leader’s vision, but it’s very much a temporary high.

Don’t forget, power corrupts!

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.

Since the start of this series of ‘Life as a guild leader‘ articles I’ve received quite a variety of questions both here on the site and via email. With a little break from the norm, I’m going to answer these questions publically, so that hopefully everyone can learn from the trials and tribulations of other guild leaders.

I’ve removed any incriminating and identifiable data so don’t worry, if you’re one of the people that sent me a question!

I have questions from very hardcore through to casual ‘we met in The Barrens and are currently working our way through Wailing Caverns’ guilds, but first I’m going to answer some raiding-oriented questions:

My guild is at that stage where we’re not quite sure if we’re hardcore, and we’re not quite sure if we’re regular raiders. The serious players are pulling us towards the hardcore side of things, but we have a lot of ‘oldies’ that would rather remain a normal raiding guild. What should we do?

One of the questions that plagues the membership of almost every WoW raiding guild: Are we hardcore? Do we want to be hardcore? There’s unfortunately no simple answer to this one. It will probably come down to one thing though:  does your guild leader have the time and energy to propel your guild from regular raiding through to hardcore progressive raiding. Obviously active class leaders can help a lot with the transition, but at the end of the day it’s the drive of one person putting in hour after hour to ensure you have a stable platform for hardcore raiding that will make the difference between success, or failure.

Someone has to set up a good website, a DKP system, a set of rules — this is nearly always the guild leader! If you want to make that step-up from server 10th to the top 3, someone has to put in the hours. Whether a group agreement is made by the officers, or the guild leader agrees to put in a lot of extra effort, one thing is certain: a lot of labour goes into building a hardcore guild. I’ve written some other articles on the topic of leading a hardcore guild, which you can find in the archive.

If you think you have the balls and the time to make a hardcore guild, the next question to ask is: Do we have the players? It is certainly guaranteed that you will lose your casual players if you become a hardcore guild. Likewise if you remain a regular guild, you will lose your hardcore players to hardcore guilds! As World of Warcraft is an easy game, it’s not normally hard to find raiders, but it does require rigorous recruitment to find raiders that can play unhindered and unmolested for 4 hours a night, 5 days a week.

If you have the players, and someone that’s willing to put in the effort of recruitment and logistics (making sure people turn up for raids is hard), you simply need a good DKP system and you’re ready to rock!

Is it better to lead a guild with an iron fist, or to take a more laid-back position? Should I ween out the weaklings myself, or should I let natural evolution take care of it for me?

This likely comes down to how your guild was formed. If you are a relatively new guild where the power structures are weak, with nonexistant or newbie class leaders, leading with an iron fist is probably the only way to go. Someone has to grab the reins and dig their spurs into the guild to drive it forward — and that person is the guild leader. As the structure of the guild develops and a successful hierarchy forms, a more laid-back position can be assumed. Issues will bubble up through class leaders and perhaps to assistant guild leaders before they finally get to you. In mature guilds problems tend to solve themselves through discussion and peer-pressure — just like communities in real life — and it’s likely you’ll only have to step in with your fist of iron if things get really out of hand.

If you lead a developed guild with an unwavering, unerring view on things, you might find that your guild becomes stale and lifeless. Tyranny is generally very poor for the development of society or culture — you want your members to be able to voice their opinions and feel at home! A community is only as strong as its members…!

What’s the best way to judge if you have enough raiders to raid successfully over a period of time? Is there an ideal number of each class that prevents burn-out, but also limits drama when people don’t get invited?

With Blizard’s new ‘bring the player, not the class’ initiative, it’s hard to pick exact numbers. Assuming Blizzard continue to provide a ‘fair’ experience for each class (i.e. encounters that favour each kind of tank, DPS and healer), you can’t go far wrong with the following numbers, broken down into class and role, and starting with the tank classes:

• 3 warriors — 1 tank, 2 DPS/tanking hybrids
• 4 paladins — 1 tank, 3 DPS/healing hybrids
• 3 death knights -- 1 tank, 2 DPS/tanking hybrids
• 4 druids — 1 tank, 3 DPS/healing hybrids

With this setup you have 4 available ‘main tanks’ — a number you require, assuming each raider maintains 75% attendance. Three tanks is the ’standard’ 25-man raid tank alotment, according to Blizzard — you have plenty of hybrids if you need to fill in an off-tanking role for whatever reason, though

Moving onto the pure DPSers (Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks and Mages), it’s fairly straightforward: 3 of each DPS class.

This leaves just the shaman and priests — 4 of each is a good target. Shaman, with so many juicy buffs, tend to do a lot of respeccing. Priests, as the jack of all trades (well, except for tanking…) can fill any remaining gaps nicely. It’s not uncommon to see a guild with 5 priests, or with 0, depending on the strength of their other healers!

This gives you a total pool of 34 players, which assuming raiders maintain 75% attendance is about 26 players online at any given time! In reality though, you will tend to have either too few or too many people online — that’s when a rota system can come in handy! If you have 4 raids a week, 1 druid can skip a single raid each week — as long as the other 3 promise to turn up!

In general, with these kinds of numbers, assuming 75% attendance, you will be able to maintain healthy raids with a minimum of ‘invite time’ drama. An attendance closer to 80 or 85% is obviously more desirable on ‘progress raids’ where you might want to make switches — but hopefully with Blizzard’s new initiative that won’t be a requirement!

One last question:

Morale’s really low in our guild at the moment. We never really recovered from the complete cock-block of the later bosses in Sunwell Plataeu, and now this easy-mode grind has taken us in the other direction — now we’re done with things in one night, everyone logs out, and we don’t see each other until next week. I’m worried that when Ulduar comes we won’t have the teamwork we once had. Help!

This is a remarkably common problem, especially amongst guilds that didn’t quite become a hardcore progressive guild (i.e. number 1 on the server, or close to it). You’ve pushed incredibly hard, often to the point of breaking and eventually giving up; or going on a  ‘raiding break’ as some guild leaders like to diplomatically call it. It often happens on pre-nerf instance end bosses — C’thun at 60 and Kael’thas/M’uru  at 70 — where only the very top guilds will have the skills, endurance and reserves of morale to get the kill. We’re talking tiny numbers here: about 150 guilds killed Kil’jaeden — maybe 4,500 people out of a few million.

Quite simply, if you haven’t quite got what it takes, your guild will at the very least lose a bunch of players to burn out. At the very worst, enough people won’t turn up at the end of the raiding break and the guild will fold. So then, how best to prevent that burn out? It’s remarkbly simple: don’t push it beyond breaking point. The only problem is knowing where that breaking point is! Normally it’s when people start turning up late, or you begin wiping more rather than less. If you find yourself bringing new people to the raid each time, that’s a good sign too.

Ultimately you have to judge how strong the guild feels. Is Ventrilo becoming a graveyard during raids? Are people losing their temper at the tiniest and inconsequential mistakes? Are people making more and more odd excuses in the raid-skip forum thread? Any and all of these are signs that you’re pushing it beyond the threshold of your raid group. Just remember that those pre-nerf bosses are only meant to be done by the very top guilds — Blizzard always nerf them at a later date for everyone else to do them! If you haven’t got what it takes, don’t push it. Wait for the nerf! Even if you’re not #1, at least you’ll have a guild and your community at the end of it!

The second half of the question, regarding the dumbing-down of content in Wrath of the Lich King, is slightly harder to answer. You could embrace your inner casual (Blizzard certainly seems to encourage it), or you could encourage the guild to level alts together. PVPing is always good, both arenas and battlegrounds; they keep people talking to each other, and it’s a whole lot more ‘reactive’ than the current content available to us. The other option is to play other games! Left 4 Dead and DOTA are the two current favourites of my guild: both require a lot of teamwork and communication, and both are excellent time-sinks if you are looking for cooperative games like WoW, but don’t require 25 people!

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.

Time and time again I see driven and excited people come together as a guild or clan, progress well but ultimately fizzle out and die.

Whether it’s because of loot drama or a tyrannical guild leader, the main thing stopping a guild from becoming successful is survival. As I’ve touched on before, World of Warcraft is an easy game. The thing holding you back from that elusive Server First is not player skills; it’s teamwork and logistics.

Now, teamwork and logistics are huge topics for another day. What I want to talk about today is something that you will need to develop and foster while your raid team or guild starts to coalesce. Alongside the implementation of a DKP system and a good raid schedule, you must also develop your community.

A good community is perhaps the main thing that holds back many new guilds. Many old guilds also take it for granted, letting it gradually waste away; a community can not be just left to hang, it must be gently cultivated, nurtured and looked after!

So, perhaps we should start with the definition of the term, and go from there:

What is a community?

A community is often defined as a group of people living in the same locality, governed by the same laws or rules. It could be as small as a group of friends that meet up at the same place and have their own ‘house rules’, or it could be as large as international ‘gaming community’ (although communities that span the globe don’t tend to have the same rules as localised ones). For the sake of this article I’m going to be talking about community sizes you often find in contemporary online games and virtual worlds; in clans, guilds and corporations.

Online communities tend to consist of 5 to 100 people. While some communities are larger, they often splinter into ‘cliques’ – groups of friends that stick very much together and don’t really add anything to the community itself. Generally, I wouldn’t recommend trying to run a online community that has more than 100 members, but if you’ve successfully grown a community and you see no reason to stop… see what you can do!

A community, then, in an online game, is a group of gamers that come together in the same place (albeit virtual, it’s still a place!) and live by the same rules, as laid down by the leader of the community (at the start, anyway!)

Creating a place for the community to exist

For an online community to come together, the members need somewhere to hang out! For an online game it’s obviously guild chat or a forum. For smaller clans it might be an IRC room, or a mailing list. As I already said, these are virtual places, but they are still places; places where thoughts and emotions can exist and run wild. A community needs a place where its members can be. It is vitally important if a thought needs sharing, or a question posed, that a place exists for that interchange.

Creating a place for the community to exist is as simple as creating a guild or chat room. A forum is also incredibly useful for the sharing of thoughts in larger communities (I’ve listed a few free forum providers at the end of this article).

The rules of the community

Once you’ve created a place, the next step is to define some common rules that everyone adheres to. I’m not talking here about draconian commandments, but I am talking about rules that add flavour, or define who you are. Perhaps a roleplaying guild might require all of its members to stay ‘in character’. Maybe you’re a player-killing clan that only has one rule: kill anything that breathes. It might just be as simple as ‘play your best and aim for server number one’.

It’s these rules that will bring your community together. Through common rites, rules and goals you will begin to trust each other; it’s only with that implicit trust and security that the community can continue its growth and become a ‘true community’.

The levels of community

M. Scott Peck was an American psychologist that had a huge body of work, but most importantly for this article, he focused a lot on communities, their characteristics, and how the phases they go through in their development.

He proposes 4 distinct stages that a community goes through (hopefully they make it to the end!):

• Pseudocommunity – As the name suggests, this isn’t really a community. Members often cover up their differences, for the sake of survival, or a common goal. This is very much a community of ’survival’; a group of players see an opportunity to improve their survival, so they group up!
• Chaos – When the psuedocommunity ultimately fails (and it will, given enough drama), the members start to go to each other for help, or guidance, or to vent their differences or grievances. This is the first stage of bonding, and trust-building! It goes beyond plain survival here — the members are trying to improve their survival!
• Emptiness – Eventually, differences are laid aside. Egos, or ego-related issues are suppressed. This is where the strong individual urges are destroyed and the community is actually born.
• True community – After making it through all of the previous stages, the members of the community are in complete empathy with one another. Arguments will arise, but they will be settled in a timely fashion without things becoming too heated. Motives are never called into question in a true community – it’s way beyond that point! – any members of the community that made it to this point are in it for the long run, perhaps until the day they die (or quit!)

These stages are very easily mapped onto online communities. Using World of Wacraft guilds as a base for the examples:

• Stage 1 – A guild forms. The leader has normally chosen a purpose for the guild’s existence, but that’s the only thing keeping the guild together. ‘A place to farm easy epics!’ or ‘Become number one on the server!’ are two common goals for a guild at this stage
• Stage 2 – It’s the guild leader’s job to get the guild to this stage as soon as possible! Stage 1 is quite destructive (and some guilds never leave it), and real progress and melding as a group can only occur once there is discourse and argument about how best to do things. Most WoW guilds that get to this stage can survive for a long time; simply getting the members to care enough and discuss issues or boss strategies is an achievement!
• Stage 3 – Once the rampant egos have been squashed, or removed, a guild might make it to this stage. This is when people start sharing real life issues and empathy starts popping up. People earnestly care for each other. It’s around this stage that people start turning up for every raid – and if they don’t, they’re very apologetic about it. Being let down by a member of the community is rare at this stage.
• Stage 4 – Often referred to as ‘spiritual community’, this is a stage that very few guilds will reach. This is where you start finishing each other’s sentences. There is an overwhelming feeling of inclusivity, commitment and consensus in a true community. A single leader also becomes less important at this stage; the community tends to govern itself through rational discussion that can only occur in a truly safe environment.

Peck defines true community with lots of shiny, happy terms, but the key values of a true community are: a safe place, a spirit (shared wisdom/love), and a place where everyone feels involved and included, without the fear that their feelings will be ignored, or attacked by other members.

Obviously, if an online community can reach the 4th and final stage, they’re going to be around for a long time, and perhaps span multiple games. The community transcends individual games; it becomes a lot more about the forum, voice coms, or even real-life meets!

Most guilds will only ever reach Stage 2 or 3 though, which is generally fine. A lot of progress will appear when people lay down their differences and egos, and focus on actually working together. If a community never progresses from Stage 1, you are in for a short, wild ride. There might be some progress, but it will be fleeting. Many flash-in-the-pan guilds recruit heavily, get bullied around by a guild leader, progress a bit, and ultimately dissipate to other guilds — these guilds serve a purpose though… they gear up people for other guilds with strong communities!

How to build a community — an example

Let me give you an example of a community that’s started from scratch. This could be a tiny fledgling guild started in The Barrens, or it could be a clan of Counter Strike players that bumped into each other in a random free-for-all game.

The first step is obviously to create a place to exist. This might be a forum, or a chat room, or just guild chat. It’s not hard to create a place! As long as the tools are there to facilitate communication, that’s all that matters. In general, though, a forum is the best solution for almost every kind of community — it allows real-time communication, and also threads of thought that can be answered at a later date. A forum also acts as a ‘group consciousness’, storing information from the past for future generations! Freedom of information is very important!

Once you have a place, you need some rules. This is the great part of online communities: your set of laws and rules can be incredibly flimsy, or very restrictive — whatever works! You might choose to have an almost non-existant rule set (our guild only has one rule, for example: ‘Don’t be an asshat’), or you might have a huge charter that lays down what you can and can’t do while in that community. I’ve seen roleplay guilds that have entire ‘rules of engagement’ laid out, that everyone must follow!

The most important thing is that these rules must be inclusive. Freedom of speech, as is the freedom of information. You are building a community not a tyranny. The members of the community must be able to speak their minds; they must be able to share their passions and concerns. It is only through concensus of opinion and inclusion that a community can grow upwards through the 4 stages!

The exception here is when someone (often the leader, although it could be by group agreement too) oversteps the line and needs correction, or removal. Racism is a common example of ‘excessive’ freedom of speech, as is misogyny in a community that includes girls. Religion might also be a sensitive subject in some cultures. Basically, any avenue of conversation that might push people out, rather than include. If a community reaches Stage 4 — true community — most codes of conduct are self-governing; it’s the early stages of a community that need the most hand-holding and guidance.

Once you have a place, and some rules, the community will begin to flourish. A little guidance might be necessary though! A community is nothing if it’s not used. What good is a forum, chat room or guild chat if no one actually uses it? I’ve seen WoW guilds with maybe 1 or 2 new forum posts every week; needless to say, their communities were incredibly weak — they just exist to raid, and never get past Stage 1.

It is someone’s (or everyone’s!) job to make sure the community grows. Encourage people to log into the forum and ask questions. Expect other people to assist you during your travels. If someone asks a question — answer it in a timely fashion!

You are trying to develop a group where everyone feels included, where you can put your entire soul into it without the fear that your investment won’t be returned. A community is only as strong as its members make it — if there is some rule, or some person (a tyrant!) that prevents people from dedicating themselves fully, your community may never get past Stage 1 or 2.

Notes

As with everything I’ve written, there’s always some exclusions or special cases that need mentioning. The common factor of Stage 3 and 4 communities is that they don’t have a tyrant leader — they have a shared leadership, with the members defining the rules and delivering justice. In fact, once a community progresses out of Stage 2, a leader might find himself with very little to do; problems seem to get solved on their own, and eventually problems just don’t arise!

Unfortunately, many online guilds tend to have tyrannical leaders. I’ve seen many guilds on the cusp of Stage 3 crushed by a tyrannical guild leader that’s afraid to lose his grip on control of the community. Some leaders are perhaps only playing to lead, rather than create a great and thriving community.

This isn’t to say that a leader has no place in Stage 3 or 4 communities! Their role tends to become more of a ’spiritual father’ (for want of a better term), guiding the community in times of unrest. As online communities are nearly always recruiting to replace quitters, it is also the leader’s job is to remove new members that don’t gel with the rest of the community; although the members themselves might force new people out, if they don’t fit.

I said I would provide a list of good, free forum providers, so here they are:

Free Forums/Guild Portals

• Guild Portal
• Guildomatic
• GamerDNA
• GuildLaunch

If on the other hand you are a smaller clan, how about getting an IRC room on QuakeNet? (It’s a very comprehensive guide!)

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.

By now, you’ve probably realised that ‘big’ thoughts find their way into my head. Once there they spin and ricochet, collide and merge — or smash and sunder. Eventually though, in one form or another, they find their way back into the real world. Sometimes to my friends in emails, or in a long-winded monologues to my mother in the kitchen — and more often than not, they also find their way to my blog.

But occasionally… I just can’t get my head around some things. They’re too gnarled, too complex. Often they’re related to fields that I have little experience in. And so what better way to get more experience than to ask the world what it thinks? The ‘world’ is you, by the way!

With that said here’s one that I’ve been thinkin’ about recently:

Would equal, same-for-all income tax be a good thing? If every adult paid the same amount of tax — not a percentage, a flat figure — would that be a good thing? Would it encourage slackers to work harder, to meet the tax requirement? Would it encourage millionaires to work less, or would they work more?

Or is this just akin to communism? In fact, is everyone being treated the same a bad thing? Does everyone deserve to be treated equally?

Bits I haven’t really worked out: would it be a large amount, or small amount? $5,000 — or $20,000 a year? Would a small tax mean it’s a capitalist system? To meet the required amount, would low-wage workers have to be paid more? Is there only a ‘finite’ amount of money in a country which prevents cleaners from being paid more? Or surely, if it encourages everyone to work harder, wouldn’t a country make more trade goods, and thus money?

There, that’s a fairly meaty one. One that I need to know the answer to, before I rule the world.