I think someone should make a guild named Baskin Robbins, just so there is a place for all the many flavors of guild drama that develops.

You know, it can be amazing, the amount of drama you get in most any guild with more than 5 people. It shouldn’t be, but it is. If you take a moment to think about it, the larger a guild in WoW becomes, the more like high school it is. And we all know how free of drama your average high school is. Little cliques form, you get some that want to pvp all the time, some that want to be powerleveled by the higher level players, some that want free crafted gear, some that want to raid all the time, and of course those that just want to have fun, and firends to chat with and socialize with.

Heck, let’s have some fun, dissect how your average guild grows up.

You got 4 or 5 friends, maybe you start a guild because you thought up a cool name, and you want to design your own tabard, and that way you get a guild chat channel. That’s cool, now you and your 4 friends are in a guild. But it doesn’t change the game for you that much. Same friends, just easier to chat. It’s the same as getting together after school for some D&D or something. Maybe one of you gets cranky once in a while, but you are still friends. You knew each other before the guild, and if one person gets cranky, they’ll calm down eventually. There was a friendship before the guild, and the guild is only there to ease communications between the players. No more, no less.

But let’s look at even a small guild of 20 people. People that wanted to form a guild NOT because they were all tight friends that wanted a chat channel and a cool name. No, these people all want to play the content that requires groups. And to play group content you can either trust in getting together a group of mostly complete strangers, a group that only lasts as long as it takes to get the shared quests done, or you can try to join a group of people that get together regularly, and you know are pretty good. Or at least hope are pretty good. And this is where the drama comes into play.

Let’s look at how these larger guilds get new members. A wonderful source of drama. Since these guilds are built around the core idea of ‘lets get people together in a guild so I have others to do group content with’, all guilds are going to want to recruit people that will help them meet their goals. Remember, if you just want to play with your friends, or make new friends, then a small social guild is fine. We’re talking about the 15-20+ size guilds.

Some guilds, the hardcore raiders, are led by people that are dedicated to pushing through hard content fast. They want the best loot, they want to win every time, and as soon as they have mastered one instance or challenge, they want to move on to the next.

Death & Taxes is probably one of the most famous WoW guilds for it’s mastery of all end game content… and it is also famous for the many long hours every member is expected to play. To join Death & Taxes is a more rigorous process than nearly any job interview you could name, and a good example of the recruitment techniques of these guilds. They set standards and minimum entrance requirements. They usually require at least one group instance run with a new applicant to test if they can play well with others, and know their character. There may even be a requirement for several group runs to make sure that the player is reliable and committed to the schedule the guild demands. Mandatory attendance to guild raid events 3 or 4 times every week at a minimum is very common, because in an end game raiding guild, the whole point is to take on and advance through the end game content. As soon as one instance is cleared repeatedly, and all members have improved their gear as much as possible from it, it is time to move on to the next challenge. That instance will not be returned to, unless a brand new applicant joins the guild and needs to be ‘geared up’ to bring them up to the same level as the rest of the guild. And this in itself becomes a sticking point, as many of the more advancemetn oreinted guilds will NOT go back over old content jsut to gear up a new recruit. They expect that person to come to the guild ready to step right in, and that means the player had to come from another guild where he advanced very far and got great loot drops… and then chose to quit to join the new raiding guild. For reasons we will soon discuss, this kind of guild hopping leaves many hard feelings among the people in the guild you left behind, who feel that you ’stole’ loot they needed for their own guild advancement.

In this type of guild, it is expected that every member understands that they are not receiving gear for themselves. They are receiving gear expressly to help the entire guild be capable of tackling more difficult content. In a high end raiding guild, you do not earn your gear by simply being there. Gear often goes specifically to the person the guild leaders think will help the guild as a whole advance, and that means that if there are 3 mages on a run and the epic awesome mage helm drops, it is unlikely the three mages will be rolling to see who gets it. Instead, the guild leaders will decide amongst themselves, and will most likely hand it over to the mage that attends the most runs.

If a guild leadership loot system is not used, then most likely a DKP system for loot will be sued isntead. ‘DKP’ (or Dragon Kill Points) systems are ways to make sure loot goes to those with the most deedication to guild advancement. Many hardcore raiders will claim that DKP loot systems are the fairest, or at least most common ways of distributing loot, and the assertion seems to be that if everyone else is using DKP, then it must be fair, right?.

What DKP systems do is ensure that only the people that show up the most to events have enough points to win loot. If an item drops from a boss that multiple members of a run want, they bid on it by spending DKP points they have earned. Whoever bids the most wins the item. These bids are usually blind, and have minimum point costs. In some of them, you spend your points even if you don’t win the item. How do you get points? Why, by taking part in a raid, of course. So the more raids you go on, the more points you accrue… and the greater the likelihood that the gear that drops will only go to the members that play the most and help the guild advance the farthest. Only once every frequent player gets a piece of gear, will the more casual raiders be able to get it, because they will have no competition on the DKP bid. Remember… the point is to encourage players to play in the guild runs as much as possible. The DKP system makes sure that a player in the guild that wants better gear has to play often, and choose between doing something else, or raiding to earn DKP. You would think that the stress of playing like this would bring lots of drama… but you would be wrong. In a high end raiding guild, the people in the guild are there for a reason… and if they can’t measure up or show up, they are either kicked out or leave themselves. There are no misconceptions. Everyone knows that you’re not there to hang with friends, or to grind PvP honor in battlegrounds. You are there to raid, and if you don’t want to do that you’re in the wrong place.

Ah, but what if you want to be in a guild, and maybe do some runs in instances and stuff, but don’t have the time or energy to make WoW a second job? What if you just want to be with your friends, and also get some isntance runs in?

You get guilds that advertise themselves as ‘casual’. These guilds are also formed, the same as the raiding guilds, around the core concept of having more people online at any given time to group with. they may start at teh ‘friends only’ stage, but at some point the members decided to bring in mroe poeple to do more stuff they couldn’t do alone. In these guilds, the drama flows like wine at a wake.

Some casual guilds will also have an application process, hoping to weed out poor players, but this is mostly aimed at trying to prevent loot ninjas and antisocial types from joining. Invites will usually be given out based on how well a person played and how nice or friendly they were in a pick up group, or because they have been recommended by a person already in the guild.

In general, when deciding whether or not to join a casual guild, keep in mind that the easier it is for YOU to join a guild, the greater the likelihood that immature or selfish players will also be members, and the greater the probability of guild drama.

Ah yes, lets get to the drama.

As long as a guild is at the ‘friend only’ level, everything is cool. Maybe 10, even 15 members, it’s all good. Past that point, and the guild is starting to be seen around a lot… and is getting recognized as a fairly large or active guild. And that’s both good and bad.

Good, because a large guild represents stability, and many casual players, players that are very good and mature, want to be in a guild where the roster doesn’t change every two days. Where friends that they will get to know are still playing two weeks later. And most importantly, where the guild can begin to feel like a home, full of welcome and cheer every time they log in.

And then there is the bad. There are many players that want to get the end game loot, and raid, but for one reason or another can’t get into an end game raiding guild.

Some of them don’t like the rules of more strict guilds, and some of them simply can’t play as often as hardcore raiders and as such get tired of never earning loot no matter how often they can play. They aren’t bad players, but they will be joining what they see as a large active guild, with the express expectation that there will be many opportunities for them to raid. They will be pushing the pace towards raiding as often as they can, and may begin sending constant streams of requests and then demands for more frequent guild raids. The more casual players will certainly feel pressured by this, esepcially if every time they log in they are instantly greeted by tells requestnig themt o run something o other that represents a time commitment of 2 or 3 hours. For a casual player, who may be just logging in to check the AH or their mail or to say hi to guildies while dinner is cooking, this will add stress… because how many people like to tell their friends no?

And if a player is constantly faced with the decision to either log in and have to tell someone that no, they don’t have time to help in heroic Sethekk Halls, or to simply not log in at all, or maybe just play an unguilded alt, well… thats one player in the guild that, even though they aren’t saying anything or adding vocal drama, is still drawing away from the guild.

And then there are those that… well… simply suck. Loot ninjas, people that want others to run them through content to powerlevel them up fast, and see a large guild as being a place where there are lots of bodies to get them what they want. Selfish and immature players that float from guild to guild and may even delight at adding drama. Many of them take pride in being guild trolls and seeing what they can stir up.

And so the drama begins, as a small group of friends will reach the end game levels… and will be having fun tackling 5 man instance content at their own pace. But maybe there are too few of them to run often. They will struggle for a while juggling schedules, and instead of leaving their small friend guild and joining another guild as the new people, the outsiders, they will decide to invite just a couple more players into the guild, and if they are the ones inviting others in, why, then they can keep control. And so they will invite a few more, trying to find players that have character classes the guild lacks. And maybe things will go well for awhile.

But then some players will start playing their alts more and will be gone for long periods, or school will start and some will be playing even less, and more players will need to be recruited. And then they will realize that they need ten steady players to play in Karazhan, and will recruit a few more. And now, the guild is a ‘Kara raiding guild’, and will be justifiably proud of that fact. But when they look for a few more members to fill out the ranks, because they are aloways short on healers or tanks, some will be joining because they want to make new friends, and some will be joining specifically to be carried into Kara for epic loot. And the founders will have their inner clique and will want to play mostly with each other, and toss out invites to run content to those that have classes they lack. Some players will sign up for a spot on a raid, and if they are bumped in favor of another guildie, one that maybe is in the inner circle, drama will certainly explode.

One of the worst signs of sickness in a guild, that I have seen, is when the same core group of players, usually single students that have large consistent blocks of time to play, begin running with each other, and only interact with other guild members when they happen to need a person to fill out an instance run that they want to complete, but remain silent whenever any other guild member asks for help with a group quest, or info on a mob, or simply how to find someone or do something in game.

I have found that, when you see the same 10 people sending out tells for ‘need tank for sethekk halls’, ‘need healer for heroic mech’, and that they are always running instances, but those same people never reply to the questions or requests for group from other people in the guild, that guild drama, hurt feelings, isolation and /gquits are not far behind.

In the end, every player has to decide what they want from the game, and from a guild. If you joined a guild and had a lot of fun, and you find that the character of the guild has changed over time into something you don’t like, especially if you find yourself dreading logging in because of what may be waiting to greet you in guild chat….

Don’t be afraid to go unguilded, or create a small guild just for you and your friends’ alts, so you can recapture that feeling of just being friends and bagning around the world.

When it comes to having fun, really having fun, then how powerful the character is doesn’t matter. All that matters is having that small group of friends that it’s fun to hang with as you get owned in Deadmines just one more time.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 10:13 am and is filed under Soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.