Applications

For the Officer

If you run a family guild, you need to screen people who want to join. If you let in just anyone, you're soon going to have a bunch of people who expect a different sort of guild on top of your family players -- players who, if they want a family guild, do not want these people. These people will trample their carefully cultivated social balance, and you're going to have to make a lot of rules to impress on these strangers in your guild that this isn't the guild they're looking for -- or you're going to have to clean up the mess you've made by gkicking a bunch of people and potentially getting yourself on WoW Insider's Guildwatch naughty list.

Also, if you have an automatic invite policy for friends, if you ginvite random people you don't know that well or trust, it means they can auto-invite their friends. And You Do Not Want That.

... As recruitment officer, I was considered The Gateway. I was our defense against people who would ninja the guild bank or use us as a stepping stone to a serious raid guild. I was not a defense for myself but for my guild. And if you love your guild and want the best for it, that is a sacred duty.

More than keeping out people who would ninja the guild bank, I considered it my personal mission to keep out the selfish, people who wouldn't break the rules or be "bad members" per se, but who would use our resources (be it items or people) without giving back. Which was very hard to detect, and I'm sure I sometimes erred on the side of caution.

The hardest part was the social aspect -- trying to decide if people would fit. More than protecting our guild resources, I had to protect our guild soul -- our community essence, which is our most precious resource, beyond anything we own in the guild bank. This meant determining if the player in question would be a surface-level player, someone who would be a decent member but never really invest in us the way we wanted, and thus protect the guild's heart from being broken when they found somewhere they preferred. I also had to try and detect if someone would be socially unstable, another hard-to-anticipate danger that we tried to circumvent by requiring member recommendations.

(Excerpt from my other WoW blog, Letters from Birdfall.)

A decent application is short and to the point. You don't want your best friend's wife to have to jump through hoops. It also covers all the details you're concerned about, particularly the player's expectations on coming into the guild.

We started recruiting raiders at one point and in the end that was a mistake -- they all left. They also had friends with applications I wouldn't have taken if they didn't know someone. For example, we ask in our application: "What do you understand to be the purpose of IVV?"

Wrong: "To share the best of raiding and an environment unoffensive to the modern day WoWhead."

Wrong: "To be a raiding guild that that caters to the needs of serious gamers who also prefer a mature, stress-free raiding environment."

We also had people who came at us from a casual standpoint, but who still made the mistake of calling us a raid guild:

Wrong: "establishing a friendly and caring space for its members, even though it is a raiding guild."

And answers I sighed in appreciation for:

Very Good: "Friendly family orientated guild that likes raiding and talking on the vent till 3 in the morning"

Perfect: "IVV is a family guild that cares about its members and wants to have a fun time progressing through WoW"

If someone has right answers everywhere else but doesn't know what a family guild is, you need to explain it to them. They're walking into a serious commitment and don't know it, and they should. It's as simple as that. If I had known enough, I would have explained to those with wrong answers "We expect you to stay forever if you join us. We aren't a raid guild, we're a family guild, and I know you think that means a TV sitcom where everyone is just more friendly than in other places, but You Are Wrong. We are not 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' We're 'The Godfather.' And if you're not willing to handle that, walk away. You'll be happier in a different guild."

It doesn't mean that we don't raid or that we're not friendly. We're very friendly. But some applicants thought we were just friendly, and that is an incorrect supposition. We love each other. We accept our new members without reservation, they get all of us and all of our hearts. And that's a lot deeper and a lot more binding than just being friendly.

Perhaps (and this is just a stray thought) instead of asking people to define your guild, you should ask them to define a family guild. Because most people applying to us (I finally just ignored the answers to that question, because almost everyone got it wrong, though many turned out to be lovely members anyway) really and honestly didn't know. They either thought "raid guild that tries to be nice" or "nice casual guild that tries to raid." And those are so wrong it hurts.

For the Applicant

As for the applicant, you get the benefit of my experience and my pet peeves.

Research. Know the guild's rules and purpose -- know if it's the right guild for you! I hope you take my advice to officers to heart and understand what you're applying to if you decide to join a family guild. Family guilds are different from each other, since the members are different, and different things will be expected of you. Know those expectations and take it slow and careful when you approach them -- get to know a few members before applying and ask them questions about the guild. Leaving a family guild is hard and it's better to be careful on the way in. It's also easier to get in if members see your app and go "Oh, yeah! He's been talking to me for, like, 3 weeks now! Let him in. :)"

Do it right the first time. Make sure all the application questions are filled in, have someone proofread them, and ask if you're not sure how to answer something. Do not make the person reading your application feel like you're wasting their time. That would make them cranky and cranky people reject you.

Use common sense. Having a good solid knowledge of the guild (research!) will help you tailor your app to fit what they're looking for -- for example, we've had people use foul language in their apps, and one of the questions is "We don't allow foul language in public channels. Comment?" /facepalm

Punctuate. There is a difference between typing fast in an arena and filling out a static form questionnaire. They should not have the same grammar and punctuation mistakes. A business CEO once said, "If you write poorly, you look stupid." If you can't help your grammar, or there's no one to spellcheck for you, feel free to acknowledge it with a note -- sometimes I smile when I see someone apologizing for their grammar, and it helps me overlook it.

Be yourself. Family guilds have great phoniness radars. Being fake is the worst thing you can do -- it will make people feel lied to.

Persuade. This is particularly true if you don't know anyone in the guild. Family guilds judge applications based on an obvious desire to be involved in a close community setting. We want to be assured that we're making a sound emotional investment in you.

Be prepared. Always assume you're going to get the recruitment officer on a bad day. Your application needs to put a smile on their face, not make them feel like it's another chore. Take your time to prepare it instead of slapping down the first answers you think of, and never skip ANYTHING!!! There was a big (private) stink once about me rejecting a guy's army buddy because he didn't answer "have you read our rules?" and caught me on a really bad week -- I had about 10 other applications to run through and just didn't have the time to deal with someone who talked like he expected us to help him level (and later, while trying to talk his way into the guild anyway in whispers, got huffy when I recommended the leveling guide I personally use, after he'd just complained for 5 minutes that he has very little time to play *rips hair from scalp*).

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Styles of Conflict

Whenever there's a problem, it helps to be able to identify how the people around you approach it. Some people move from one style to the next when dealing with a problem, and all are appropriate for certain settings. It's also good to know when your own style of conflict is just making the situation worse.

Collaborating

Problem-solving. Slow discussion, wants to hear everyone out and affirm everyone's point of view. Wants to find the best solution and not just the most obvious. Best when you care about everyone's opinion but also feel strongly on the issue. Worst when things need to be done quickly or when you don't care about the issue.

Example: Teo, our guild leader, is huge on collaboration. When he took the office back up recently, he posted three posts a day with end dates (the days those discussions would be closed and we'd move on to something else) and required that each officer post a response to each topic. He required that everyone have their say, even though it took a significant amount of time, so that we could find solutions that everyone had a hand in.

Compromising

Best for quick decisions and when everyone is willing to give something up to get something now. Tries to split the difference, meet halfway, and let chance decide. Is worst when it's possible for everyone to be more satisfied by working a little longer.

Example: Random loot rolls on emotional loot. Back in Burning Crusade, we were trying to form novelty loot rules (which would have just covered the phoenix mount). I wanted novelty loot rules that favored long-term members who wouldn't leave the guild after getting a rare status piece, because I wanted the phoenix and would have hunted down and killed anyone who had the temerity to grab it and take it to another guild. A now-former member ignored the reasoning for even discussing novelty loot rules and espoused a "Just let everyone roll" philosophy. This might not have been a problem if she hadn't ignored everyone's feelings and voted with the mindset of "I don't care, so why should anyone else?"

Forcing

Controls the argument and discourages disagreement. Forces others to agree, insists on being right. Best when things need to be done quickly or when an issue of conscience is in play. Worst when you want people to feel free to disagree and discuss the issue.

Example: Squelching disagreements in a raid when time is a factor. It's not that rare that people disagree on how a boss should be approached, especially if the current strategy hasn't panned out. Raid leaders need to be able to say "Okay, this is how we're going to do it, no arguments" and make their decision quickly in order for the raid to keep moving. When everyone wants to have a say, a raid grinds to a halt and the leader must take control to start things moving again. A stationary raid is a cranky raid.

Accommodating

Giving in. Refusing to acknowledge your own wants and needs to keep the peace. Deciding that it doesn't matter. Best when you care more about the other person than the issue or you were wrong about something. Worst when you wish you could speak up more.

Example: Acquiescing to someone's constant begging. A trial member begged constantly for help. My friend gave in once to help him get a hunter pet but insisted he kill the mobs himself. Though the trial member continued to beg that my friend kill the mobs, my friend refused to do more than physically guide him to his destination. That trial member continued to beg and people continued to give in; I eventually gave him a warning and then failed his trial membership for so much begging -- because our members would keep giving in, get frustrated, and never complain (so that we would never know action needed to be taken).

Avoiding

Leaving. Running away. Refusing to deal with the problem. Best when someone needs to cool off, you don't care much about the issue, or the situation is physically dangerous. Worst when you care but refuse (or are afraid) to face the problem.

Example: Gquit when things go wrong. One of our members took a lot of his alts out of the guild because he couldn't choose a "main" and didn't want to make a stink about it. The officer core could have gladly found a way to work the problem out, but he avoided mentioning it for so long (even lying about his alts, saying he took them out because he didn't play them anymore) that running away became the only option he considered viable.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Rocking the Boat

If the officer core doesn't know a member has a problem, they cannot address it. This idea falls in with Teo's post on Tuesday about communication and openness but also brings in some conflict management.

There are two types of problems in a guild -- the kind that are nobody's business and the kind that can be fixed. If something has any possibility of affecting the guild, your placement in the guild, or the people around you, you have a responsibility to let the officers know something (at the very least) is going on. And if it can be fixed, a few simple (if uncomfortable) conversations are a very cheap price to pay for a pleasant coexistence.

A lot of people think "Well, I don't want to rock the boat, and it really just affects me..."

"It just affects me" is a lie. If you are unhappy with any part of your guild, and that part isn't going to magically go away, you are going to keep getting more and more miserable about it until you gquit.

And that does affect other people. Especially in family guilds! A gquit hurts people deeply. And if you asked anyone in my guild "Would you rather someone complain about stuff or wait until it gets to be too much?" they would say "I would rather they deal with it now. Anything to keep them from leaving!"

There is a very basic tenant of conflict management, and I'm talking particularly to people who hate confrontation, like me: If you don't deal with problems when they're small, they will get bigger, and then they'll explode on you.

You don't think you like dealing with little problems? Yeah, just wait. Not talking about it is going to make it grow until it's a monster, and it will eat you alive. It will cause guild drama, it will make you a focus of unpleasant attention, and it will rip your poor unsuspecting fellow players an orifice they never wanted.

So consider. Do you want to deal with very small problems as they surface and nip them in the bud with some discomfort but no hard feelings? Or do you want to wait until everyone will resent you for bringing the drama hammer down on the guild? Or even leave a guild you enjoy because you're too scared to be honest with people? That's no way to live! That is no way to live, constantly running away from things that are good just because you're afraid of confrontation, of conflict.

Boats rock. It's natural, it's part of life. But if you ignore the little waves, you're setting everyone in that boat to be tipped over by a monsoon. During my months in the officer core, I never ever saw anyone get mad about a simple request reasonably stated. You aren't going to get eaten alive by addressing things that honestly bother you, not unless the people around you are morons (in which case, find a new guild). But I have seen people let things fester because they're too afraid to upset others, and it's always a lot more painful for everyone than it otherwise could have been. Should have been.

One of my professors once said, "It's the shy who have it hardest in this world. We must try harder, discomfit ourselves more often, to be heard among the noisy throng."

We were given the short end of the stick. I'm not arguing that. But if we don't try, we'll never be comfortable in our own guilds. And we need to at least be comfortable.

Don't you think?

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

When It's Time to Step Down

Image from Nataliedee.com

It might be that Sims 3 is coming out next month, or that I've started to think my new position isn't necessary as an officer position, or that I'm feeling especially pressured in my real life. But when the only thing keeping you in the officer core is the camaraderie and the thrill of seeing how guild drama is handled in the officer sections, then, folks, it's time to move on.

My husband managed recruitment for a few months, and he knew it was time to quit when he started to feel drained instead of satisfied. I got recruitment after him and worked at it passionately because I felt a duty to keep the guild happy and healthy. I loved being involved in discussions and brainstorming sessions, and particularly enjoyed being part of the private decision-making when problems broke out. I'm always thrilled to be able to bring my conflict management lessons to the fore and try to dissect delicate social situations. I guess that's just the writer in me. I love trying to understand complicated relationships.

I was moved to Social Events coordination after we stopped recruitment last month in favor of a system where members give their own friends our private application and send it to the officers to discuss as a panel. Though I had planned social events in the past, before my job move, I found that I was more relaxed when I planned things for the fun of it and because I cared about it myself, and not because I had a job to do.

I don't know the exact cause of my . . . I hesitate to call it burnout . . . but I feel myself yearning toward the uncomplicated responsibilities of being just a member for a while, someone who can disappear during the Sims 3 craze in February or when the writing bug hits me and not worry about responsibilities left untended.

In IVV, there's an unspoken policy that anyone who used to be an officer is entirely welcome to petition the core if they get the itch to return. So I know that if they want more hands, and I feel like jumping back into the morass of officership, they'd consider me.

But for now, I think I'd like to be just plain Beth.

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Beth Blevins is (no longer) an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Officer Qualities

This topic has been covered with more panache and publicity than I'll be able to manage, but I think it's important to keep reiterating certain things, as repetition is often the key to making people remember stuff they don't want to.

Or so I've heard.

So here's my little list of officer qualities, in no particular order:

• Stable
• Honest
• Sincere
• Capable
• Tough
• Discerning
• Giving

Some guilds get by without some of these qualities because the officer has other qualities that make him or her valuable, often in the form of being able to perform a job with an unusual level of efficiency.

For example, we have one really tough officer. He's our enforcer and the primary raid leader. Although he's a teddy-bear outside of raids, and I (a very sensitive soul) am not intimidated by him in the least even with his Big Boy voice on, he knows how to keep people in line. He's tough enough to do it.

On the other hand, another raid leader is his exact opposite. He doesn't have the personality to subdue the frolicking raid populace, and that results in a general lack of enforcement in his immediate area. But it's not because he's easy to walk all over. It's because he just doesn't get ruffled over anything. He remains in such a complete state of equilibrium at all times that he would have to seriously exert himself to try to even appear upset. While this isn't helpful in taking a hard line when one is needed, this trait is still valuable in him as an officer because he can calm other officers down and help them see both sides of an upsetting issue. It's also nice to have someone around who can make a tense situation light.

This officer is also discerning enough to know when to shut up and let someone else handle it and when to offer his opinion. He's mostly content to sit back and watch and let other officers make the decisions and offer his light touch if someone seems to be going too far toward the strict side of things.

It's particularly important to have a discerning and tough person in the guild leader position and in recruitment -- though in these cases, tough just means able to perform some difficult aspects of the job, such as letting people know when they fail the trial member period. I handled recruitment for a good chunk of our time as a guild and am not too modest to admit that I have a particular ability to dissect arguments and social interactions and find clues to the motives of the people around me. This sort of ability, which I believe our guild leader Teo also possesses to some degree, is important if you can find it in potential officers because it helps to have that kind of eye on explosive issues.

Of course, if the discerning person is prone to bouts of anger, favoritism, or instability, that would be bad. It's vital that your officers, people who are involved in important decisions about your guild and its future, are emotionally stable. While this does include problems like depression, bipolar disorder, and anger management issues, I'm also talking about people with their own agenda. You do not want someone in your officer core who cares more about his or her own needs than the guild's. That person will press for unfair and unbalanced decisions that will undermine the leadership's credibility.

Honesty is also good, though in a person with anger problems or who dislikes the people around him or herself, honesty can be used to tear people down. Honesty tempered with kindness and sincerity makes for the best mix. When I say sincere, I mean people who invest themselves into their beliefs and actions, people who would be hurt by dishonesty and the mistreating of others and who would seek to remove that sort of thing from the guild.

Sincere people, when they have a strong attachment to their guild, will fight for the rights of members like nobody else. And I would like to say that it's important for officers to care about everyone but, to be truthful, all you really need is a person who will act for the good of the members. They don't have to be best friends with (or even like) everyone to do that.

Officers give of their time, skill, and sometimes goods for the betterment of the guild, but I do want to note a warning -- you do not want someone too giving. It is very easy for officers to get worn down by the idea that we have a duty to give more of ourselves to groups and runs and gank protection than regular members. This is true only to a point -- it is important that we, as fellow guildmates, help each other, but it is most important that officers find a decent balance of time for the guild and time for ourselves. Members rarely realize how much work goes into a guild behind the scenes, and when you log on intent to grind rep for that raid enchant, sometimes the best thing you can do for your guild is to go /DND. Help is always needed, but helping too much will burn you out and make you useless.

And, finally, it's important that officers be capable. All the honesty and good will and knowledge in the world can't make up for a recruitment officer who goes to starting zones and starts ginviting everyone. If a person is not able to do their job, that person is better off giving their feedback from the member side of things. For example, even when Teo stepped down from being guild leader and was a member for a few months, the officer core messaged him several times for his help on touchy (and private) guild issues. So just because the most discerning or stable member of your guild doesn't have the time or the ability to be an officer doesn't mean you can't go to them when you want their help.

So, in the end, when I think of a really great officer, I think of someone fair and even-handed, able to understand what's going on and not overreact, willing to disagree, able to step aside, knows his or her own limits, and finds it important that everyone be treated with respect.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Conflict and Communication

If you have more than one person in your guild, you will have conflict. It's the way life is.

Plenty of people believe that communication is the key to successfully resolving conflict, that everyone would agree with each other if they could only understand each other.

This is false.

People have conflict because, at their core, people are different. Though communication is necessary to reach understanding, sometimes people understand each other perfectly and they still fight -- because understanding someone is not the same thing as agreeing with them.

Still, it is an important part of managing (and preventing) conflict to have successful channels of communication for your members. Large businesses who don't provide places for employees to comfortably give feedback or suggestions (who essentially ignore their workers), in the very worst scenarios, are the ones who have disgruntled people coming in with shotguns.

So, if you don't want your members coming at you with the proverbial crazy, make sure to provide them with plenty of opportunity and different ways to give you feedback.

Some people are only comfortable going to a specific officer with their problems. Some don't care who knows. Others would prefer to remain anonymous. You might consider this as the difference between A) going to your boss and laying all your problems on the table, B) yelling it across a row of cubicles, and C) dropping an unsigned note in a box when no one is looking. A Warcraft difference might be whispering someone, saying it in gchat, or dropping feedback in a website form that keeps the sender anonymous.

Whatever you do, just make sure to provide easy-to-access ways for your members to tell you what they're thinking. Because the more you know about what's going on with them, the more problems you can anticipate and try to prevent.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Simplicity

When I first joined IVV, one of the five founders said "My last guild had pages and pages of very strict rules. I don't want to do that here. For one thing, it would be impossible to enforce."

Guild rules all boil down to respect. In some guilds, the screening of applicants is so brief that too few rules allow members to run amuck without giving the officers the power to check them. In other guilds, there are so many rules that the officer core has to be significantly broadened in order to be able to enforce everything.

There's also the issue of getting members to read your rules. No matter how lovingly you put them together, no matter how short and to the point they are, you'll still have a segment of players who just assume that if they behave (more or less), they'll be fine, and another segment of players who are the opposite -- this segment makes sure the rules are enforced, no matter what.

I believe that any guild can function more or less on the following rule:

Thou shalt respect thy fellow guildies and thy guild.

Most of the time, this means not ninja looting, showing up unprepared, or being a total jerk. In a family guild, it goes deeper to include interpersonal relationships. They request that members not do or say anything that will make someone else uncomfortable, which in our case means a language restriction in public channels.

The beauty of simple, flexible rules is that officers can make judgments of a situation without being bound to dole out harsh punishment. If, for example, a member with a sterling reputation ninja loots something and claims it was an accident. If the guild has a "no ninja loot" policy and the group is crying for his/her head, the officers are required to punish the offender. In the same instance, with a flexible policy, the officers can offer lenience to people who have earned their trust through prior actions.

In the same way, the officers could take a harsher stance with someone who has a less trustworthy reputation.

Reputation should not be mistaken for favoritism. Some guilds use members to achieve goals for the core. This sort of guild structure is unstable, full of people acquiring unfair advantages.

Reputation, on the other hand, is subtle and widespread. Rather than a few people enjoying perks that disrespect the time, effort, and feelings of the people around them, a good reputation often goes unnoticed by the bearer and can sometimes be mistaken for favoritism by people who have lesser reputations. People with good reputations often get invited to more groups, conversations, and have better or closer relationships with the people around them.

In most guilds, a good reputation means being able to keep your head down and do your job, not causing conflict, and giving to the guild bank. In family guilds as well as social guilds, it relies a great deal on getting to know the people around you and investing your time, effort, and emotion in them. An unhealthy guild might have cliques that people find it impossible to break into, but a healthy guild will try its best to include anyone who makes an effort. Gaining "reputation points" in a family guild is not about (or should not be about) material goods. It is about investing oneself into other members.

Members who are needy, greedy, distant, or insecure will have the hardest time gaining a good reputation in a family guild. I've found that of two members who recently vented about being on the outskirts of IVV, one had never read a single member page, where members post details about themselves, and so didn't know about the most obvious relationships: like how one of the earliest guild members is my brother or that his wife's little brother is a raid leader; and the other member suffered from massive insecurity and always assumed nobody liked her, which couldn't have been further from the truth. But once we convinced them to post their own member pages and read ours, essentially starting the "getting to know you" process, they've been getting more conversation and group invites, more of those "perks" that they used to think was favoritism. In fact, it's just familiarity.

When people are comfortable with you, they include you more. It's a simple and inevitable truth. It also makes the task of enforcing rules easier, because as familiarity brings people together, they gain respect for each other. And a guild functioning with respect is a guild that will last.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Definition of a Family Guild

Raiding guilds take your time, energy, and focus. Social guilds take your conversation and company.

Family guilds take your firstborn.

It might seem a little offbeat, but it's an accurate description. A family guild isn't a place to sit around and hang out -- it's a legacy. Members are expected to tie themselves to the guild and bring in the people they care about, and when a member's child is old enough to start playing, we expect that kid to start playing with us.

Plenty of people confuse family guilds with social guilds. In social guilds, it's often perfectly all right to skip out of the guild without notice, come back, and just hang. Social guilds are very relaxed about member policies (you just have to be nice and not cause a ruckus) and focus more on social events or leveling than endgame.

Family guilds are never casual about who joins. It's like breaking into the mob. And it can be just as hard to break out. This is why family guilds often have very strict application processes and are wary of random recruits. Yes, that guy might be the best tank on the server, but how loyal is he? What does he need as a player, and what does he expect from us?

If a player expects to offer a family guild anything other than long-term commitment, possibly for the rest of his existence in the game, neither he nor the guild will find satisfaction together.

But family guilds, by their loyal and steadfast nature, and if emotionally healthy and possessing of a competent leadership, are the most stable guilds in the game. Their foundation is based not just on how well the guild does in a raid or how entertaining the other players are, but on a basic intense loyalty and trust that no matter what happens, no matter the slow raid progress or personal drama, guild members remain loyal to each other. Individuals may stop playing or fall away, but the guild itself will always remain. It is a rock to which members may cling when times are rough. It is a safe haven.

The best family guilds are forgiving, trusting, and unfailingly fair to members. The member base is made up by people with strong, unbreakable ties: family members, real life friends, and friends made through the game itself. That base slowly broadens as new members bring friends and family in. Sometimes sections break away. Sometimes they don't. But the guild always keeps a steady base that never panics because even if everyone new leaves, they will still have a fun game to play with the people they love.

And that's what it's all about. Playing a game with the people you love.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Feedback

The Family Business wants you to give us feedback!

We hope that we never pretend that we've got it all figured out. We most certainly don't.

Have a thought about how to efficiently run a family guild? A question about why we do something a certain way? Think this is the most absurd idea you've ever heard?

It doesn't matter who you are or what you want to say; we want to hear from you, so drop us a line!

What is... The Family Business

"Whatya gonna do? Nice college boy, eh? Don't wanna get mixed up in the family business? Now you wanna gun down a police captain because he slapped you in the face a little bit, huh? Whataya think this is, the Army, where you shoot 'em a mile away? You gotta get up close like this... badaBING! you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. C'mere... you're taking this very personal."

- Sonny Corleone in The Godfather

There are guilds, and then there are guilds. Guilds in the World of Warcraft are typically built around accomplishing certain goals: PvP, PvE, achievements, and so on. They are communities only by convenience and common interest. Then there's the family guild. Family guilds seek to accomplish these same goals, but they won't do so at the expense of members. They are like family (at least, functional ones) and who succeed, and fail, together.

The Family Business is a resource for people who are looking to be in guilds that won't dissipate at the first sign of trouble, that will survive way beyond the lifespan of any game, and that will foster friendships that last a life time.

Join us as we explore the highs and lows of guild leadership, person management, conflict resolution, and help us as we re-shape the WoW community into one that treats all with respect and dignity.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college. Whenever that was.