Last time, I talked about how I got a guild started in World of Warcraft, and a little bit of what made us different from other guilds. This time, I'll be finishing that conversation, and talking about how it all fell apart.
As we grew in numbers and took on more Big Kid activities, some members thought we should leverage our size and cohesion to break into the PvP or raiding scene. I answered every such suggestion with a flat and unwavering No, in a conversation that usually went like this:
Them: We should totally become a raiding guild.
Me: Absolutely not.
Them: Aww, c'mon - you should at least think about it.
Me: I have, and the answer is No. Why do you think we should become a raiding guild?
Them: Look at how unified we are as a group! If you just gave the order, we could bring that to the raiding scene and make a big splash!
Me: We're unified as a group because I don't give orders of that kind - introducing a whole new set of rules and structures for the sake of a few high-level players would be hugely alienating to those who joined for literally any other reason, and I'm not willing to do that.
Them: Well, you'd lose a few people, sure - but those left would be the most dedicated, which would make us even more focused! We could be doing so much more!
Me: So much more in raiding, but so much less in every other area. Helll, I'm not interested in raiding - I'm not even max level! [Note: I took an absurdly long time to hit the level cap, because running a good guild is a full-time job and I also had an actual full-time job.] The point of [this guild] is to be a community where people can enjoy the game however they want. Raiding is just one way to enjoy the game, I'm not going to shift [this guild]'s entire focus to it.
Them: Sure, not now - but what are you gonna do at the cap?
Me: Same thing I do now: run the guild, roleplay, and explore the world at my own pace.
Them: But that gets old.
Me: So does raiding. You're welcome to raid all you like, but [this guild] won't become a raiding guild.
Them: But if I raid with other guilds, I don't get as many DKP [Dragon Kill Points - a popular raiding score system for determining each player's contribution to a raid and deciding who gets what loot at the end.] as the members.
Me: You can join another guild if you want, there's nothing stopping you.
Them: Are you kicking me out?
Me: Of course not. [In our first two years, I think we had maybe two boots from the guild - people left for other reasons, but we very rarely booted people.] I'm saying that if you want to be in a guild that's structured differently, then you can join a guild that's structured that way.
Them: But if I join one now, then I'll be at the bottom, and new members do barely better than non-members. I have seniority here.
Me: Ah, I see. OK, couple things: first, seniority doesn't mean anything here. Once you're initiated, you're one of us, period. Second, I don't track anyone's seniority, so no you don't. Third, a system that exploits new members for the sake of established members is the exact opposite of the kind of guild I want to run, and it's the kind of guild most of our members are here to avoid. What you are suggesting is that I completely reverse the [this guild] philosophy, betraying almost all of our members in the process, and adopt a system that most of us prefer to avoid, all so a few people who remain can be top of the new tiny pile? No, thank you.
I heard stories about other guild leaders who tried this - recruit a pile of casuals for funsies, get greedy, try to become a hardcore raiding guild overnight, and lose everyone. Lots of those people came to my guild, and would have died inside to see it happen all over again. I made sure these discussions were public, too - I wanted them to see me visibly defending our longstanding values and turning down short-sighted greed. We did eventually develop some dedicated PvP and raiding divisions who wanted to be in my guild but work closely with other guilds - I hashed out terms with the other guilds' leaders, which always came down to something equitable and low-maintenance. Over time, this broad spread of activity earned us a reputation as a guild that did a little bit of everything and did it all well, as my people were loyal and wanted to represent our guild favorably. We also filled in when other guilds needed to make up head counts, which gave us a reputation for reliability. And being highly visible at clutch moments in such fashion turned us into a household name.
Then there came a day when another guild approached my second-in-command, proposing a "merger." I was initially opposed, but my second-in-command assured me that they had talked guild philosophy and our visions just about exactly overlapped. I said that was fine but they should then know that they're welcome to join as individuals, but we won't take the whole group carte blanche. My second-in-command shot back that he had raised this exact point, and the response was that they were willing to be interviewed as individuals but they were sticking together as a group, whether we accepted them or not.
Of course. They wanted to keep the family together.
After a brief conversation between leaders, we agreed that this wasn't a merger, but they were joining us. They wanted a bigger community and more robust activities for the harder-core among them - they offered numbers, which we were still getting on our own anyway. I wasn't trying to play hardball or anything, but I also wasn't willing to bring in a bunch of people if they wouldn't all agree to abide by our rules (fast growth and compromising values? No, thanks). I dispensed with the interviews - the guild leader and I were on the same wavelength, he vouched for his people, and was willing to take cues from the other guild officers for a couple months before making his own decisions, so I made him an officer and welcomed the rest of them. That weekend, we had the biggest initiation ceremony ever, there was IRL drinking and in-game fireworks and fun times had by all.
However, this pattern - batch invite and automatic authority - ultimately set us on the path to destruction.
The Crashing End
But not for a while! In fact, things went really well for another couple of years. As we continued to grow, we managed to stick to our values (engagement, respect, permissiveness, and what I would eventually come to know as pluralism & inclusivity). This further cemented our reputation as good people, and those who joined us came to embrace and reflect our values - or they got booted, which sadly began to happen more as we began taking on other guilds. We didn't do this will-ye, nil-ye - we turned down more guilds than we took in. But once word got out that guilds could come to us as a unit, and enjoy Liberty, Equality, Camaraderie, and decide their own level of involvement rather than need to "pay dues" first thing in the door, and all with the promise of a larger worldwide community at the low, low price of a couple slightly different rules? We... kinda became the place to be.
We hit the headcount limit - at the time, 500 members. This had an easy fix, at first: put all the people who've been offline for more than a month into a spreadsheet, send them a message on the forum letting them know they have two weeks to reply if they want to stay in the guild because we need to free up space, and boot the non-responders after sending an in-game letter explaining that they're welcome back with open arms if they start playing again. This worked remarkably well - people knew what was happening, had an explanation to hand if they didn't, and all it took was a little bit more than the bare minimum of effort on our part (i.e. a forum announcement and shit else).
The thing about doing something, is that you get better at it. And when you get better at something, you get a little cocky and take risks. Then you screw up, it's all part of the learning process, and you learn from the mistake and carry on.
Unless, of course, you die.
After about two or three years, I was getting burned out on WoW. I had made arrangements to hand off the reins to my second-in-command, who performed admirably for another good year or two. We continued to grow our active member community, and kept taking on new guilds, and the two of us kept in touch over AIM while I was busy with work and college and a bustling new social life now that I was living in a college town. In game, my character "died," there was a funeral and everything. I was still around on my alternate characters ("alts" - I was what's called an "altoholic"), and my voice carried significant weight - I was even called on to weigh in and even resolve a few major disputes - but I was no longer in charge. I played less and less, until one day I just kinda stopped.
Other guilds were also burning out - some came to us with their remnants, most left for other more active guilds or left the game entirely, but all the familiar guild names had disappeared or been absorbed by us over time. The last of them, a long-running PvP guild famous for crashing servers because of the huge Alliance attention they attracted wherever they went, finally folded one day, and then we were suddenly both the largest and longest-running guild on the server. I really can't stress enough how much the fact that this was a roleplaying server makes this kind of unremarkable in the greater scheme of things - but it was still our unremarkable corner of the greater scheme of things.
Months later, I got the message that there had been a major crisis. I logged in and asked what was going on, which turned out to be a fuckload of drama. We had taken on a hardcore raiding guild, one of the oldest and most respected on the server, but my second-in-command had caved on some negotiations and decided that having them was worth compromising one of our core merging principles: no automatic authority. Occasionally, a really good guild leader would get a probationary officer status to see if they were a good fit - but this guild wanted their leadership to have equal status to our leadership.
I would never have agreed to this - if you're coming to us, then we're not equals. You want in, and we're not sure. You need to prove yourselves to us, because our way is better - after all, we're not the ones trying to gain entry into another guild. However, my second-in-command, now the guild leader, had talked it over with the rest of the current leadership - and they all agreed there were strongly mitigating circumstances. First and foremost, we would be getting something out of the deal: the veteran raiders brought knowledge and skill matched by only half a dozen of ours, but in the dozens themselves. Second, those veteran raiders were mostly geared up with best-in-slot items, meaning that our guild would get pretty much all the high end loot (and gearing up our members would be more or less their new raison d'être). Third, their officers were all experienced leaders with strong conflict resolution skills and anti-drama philosophy. Finally, the influx of high-level players would provide strong mentoring and support for our low-level players. Sure, they were a very different guild, but they'd see soon enough that our way was better and they'd come on board - just like literally everyone else had.
I honestly can't say what I would've done if my entire leadership crew went against me. I might have stuck to my guns and said, "No, they have to earn their place like everyone else." I might have relented and allowed the group to decide. Had I chosen the former, I could have split the guild in a bitter rift and ruined everything; but as they chose the latter, that very thing ended up happening anyway.
You see, not too long after the merger, an expansion dropped. Suddenly, there was a load of new content, and with it came a rush for server firsts and other high-status and usually dramatic bullshit. Staying out of that, except at an individual level, is largely the thing to which I credit our success - we weren't run like a corporation or a PMC, with a unifying purpose and booting those who don't make the cut; we were run like a family where everyone was allowed to pursue their own interests and still came together for family reasons.
In "peacetime," when everyone's mostly at the cap and has done what they want to do and is basically staving off boredom, this increasingly social aspect keeps a guild together. But in "wartime," when there's new content and server firsts to be achieved, everyone's in it for themselves and dominance/submission dynamics are pretty much the only way to settle the drama. And here we were with a large cohort of leadership who didn't share our specific leadership philosophy, hadn't seen it in action for a long time, and really didn't have any reason for conflict to arise; yet sharing equal status with our longest-running leaders who didn't much care about anything more than the long-term wellbeing of the family.
I don't remember the specifics, just that it was about loot. On some first-time run of some damn thing, some rare shiny thing dropped, and WoW expansions take a quantum leap past the stats of each previous installment so it was a very significant upgrade. There wasn't a disagreement over who should get it - there was disagreement over how it should be decided who gets it. And when loot is being rolled for, everyone's under a time-crunch to make a decision, and the item is bind-on-pickup so it can't be traded later after everyone's had a chance to cool their heads.
A one-off, high-stakes, irreversible event is a powerful psychological motivator, so the party got in a fight. The fight was escalated to leadership (hell, leadership might have even been the very people fighting, I don't realy remember). Leadership couldn't come to a consensus. At some level, there was an overall "old/new" split in opinion, but peacetime loyalties are strained under wartime conditions, and these weird alliances started popping up, with opinions on who should do what or what was owed to whom. All over a piece of motherfucking loot.
The guild split in a huff, a huge pile of people left, more left due to the drama, and the rest were extraordinarily disheartened that loot had come between family. And then I came in. I spent hours talking to people about what had just happened, how it had gotten to that point, why they did what they did and what could be done to make things right and not just leave these bridges burned. Nobody wanted to make peace, everyone was up in arms. I went to the guild leader and said I didn't see what I could realistically do about this - the damage was already done, and it came from decisions that had been made a while ago. I considered explaining how this was inevitable given the foregoing events, but didn't see the point. It was over.
I was gonna put a bottom line here, but I'm kinda sad all over again and don't really feel like it, so that's The End.
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