The Daily Grind: Have you ever led a guild?

@Tsume Shiro guild name is Frozen Wolves. Comment system did not like my side arrows like the game has...

@Chiren Ahahahha, so true, so damn true.

It might even be pick one :/

@Chiren
Yeah that's very true in my experience as well.

Wise words indeed.

@Erithtotl I agree with you that the Guild Lead job can be thankless at times. But, it's also up to that GM to demand a level of "stfu" from the members of the guild. If you demand respect, but treat your members with respect in kind, the flow of the guild and the events you participate in goes much smoother.

Also, finding people with specific personality qualities that you may not have to help lead the guild is a great thing. Always have redundancy in leadership, but also have more than one personality type.

@Bottleskup said: "I pride myself on understanding mechanics and really optimising my playing of whatever class i choose, and my fierce dedication to whatever guild I choose, unless it isnt what i was looking for (read: doesnt raid) and i guess that helps for officer selection."

This is what gets me in trouble in MMOs when I join guilds I haven't created - because I like to research both the game mechanics and the lore (an "Explorer" type according to Richard Bartle's MMO/MUD player classifications), and because when I play an MMO I tend to be on almost every evening, I soon get recognised as a knowledgeable player people can depend on.

Knowledge and reliability breeds respect and trust - most players can't be bothered to research things, so they like to have a player who is always around they can just ask advice from - so before I know it I'm in a an officer position because the leader and other guild members come to value my advice.

Not long after I'm the right-hand man of the guild leader, often the one he confides in when he wants to complain about his other officers, lol - and tbh this is my preferred role: The power behind the throne, chief advisor, call it what you will - I like having power, I just don't want to be the target of all the guild drama and scheming when things go badly :p .

Then, knowing my luck, something happens to the guild leader and I'm back in the top seat again, having done absolutely zero canvassing or Machiavellian scheming to get there - it just lands in my lap - that has happened to me three times in the last decade. And sometimes it happens so quickly and easily that I fool myself that things are going to run smoothly this time.

That's usually when you realise that people start to resent guild leaders who have all the answers and seemed to reach their position with no effort whatsoever (from being a founder or inheriting it, rather than being voted in). Just because people really liked you as an officer doesn't mean they'll really like you as their guild leader - it takes different skillsets and imho a different personality - the leader should be more of a people-manager than a system-administrator or the kinds of drillmasters who make good raid leaders. I think it can be pretty fatal to have your guild-leader being your main raid-leader as well - even though I've done both jobs at the same time - because disagreements about raid decisions can soon spread to become guild-wide disaffection - you need the compartmentalisation of different officers being responsible for different parts of a guild's agenda, and all of them having the trust and support of the leader.

In my experience popular guild leaders are the ones who are very personable, but who by all appearances are humble and perhaps even flawed by being ever so slightly ineffectual, so they don't appear superior to the rest of the guild. Popular guild leaders have that "cult of personality" thing going on to hold people together as a guild, but none of the "killer instinct" that could turn it into something really efficient and perhaps slightly sinister (like a dictatorship) and possibly divide the guild into cliques by being too binary in their decisions. They're the kinds of guild leaders who don't take on too much responsibility and have to rely heavily on their officers (and admittedly they struggle if they don't have good officers, or worse have overly ambitious officers who want to replace them), but because of that they can appear fairly blameless when one of their officers mishandle something. A leader who is more of a figurehead than a tyrant (e.g. the "mother hen" type of leader like you see in casual family-type guilds a lot) can ensure the longevity of the guild (as long as they stick around), because they personify the soul of the guild.

Imho those kinds of leaders can work really well (my best EQ1 guild experience had a leader like that - he leaned on me heavily for advice :p ) when backed by some really efficient officers who work well together. They make it clear to members that the guild is being run by multiple people playing to their own strengths, not by one person with a god complex, and that the guild can accommodate all sorts of different people.

Still, I'd much rather be in charge myself than have someone indecisive, power-crazy, stupid or ineffectual person doing the job. Like they say, if you want a job done well you might as well do it yourself :p But you can't take on all of the power yourself without sharing it - or soon the tag of tyrant is being thrown in your direction and your days in charge are numbered.