Reflection and Reputation

Behave yourself. Don't be a jerk. Don't ninja loot. Don't make fun of the less-geared or less-skilled. Don't camp lowbies just to ruin their enjoyment of the game. Act like a decent human being, because as long as you wear that guild tag under your name your actions reflect on more than just yourself. What you do reflects on me... and I don't want to be known as a jerk.

I understand that a lot of our readers aren't members of my specific guild, but I'm sure you understand my point. Guilds are judged based upon the actions of their individual members. Most players don't have a lot of in-depth interaction with persons outside of their own guild, so when RandomDK of [Guild Name Here] decides to ninja loot in an Archavon PuG, people aren't saying "How did we find the one bad seed in [Guild Name Here]?" They're saying "[Guild Name Here] are ninjas!" It doesn't matter how upstanding, virtuous and friendly the rest of the guild may be... that single act of jerkiness impacts the reputation of the whole.

I shared with you once before that my first character to the level cap was a Warlock that achieved level 70 about halfway through The Burning Crusade expansion. I leveled up with my wife, sister and brothers-in-law. While we were just getting a start in heroics and working to obtain our Karazhan keys (remember when you had to get a key?) a player from a recognizable guild on our server went out of his way to mock and laugh at the leveling greens and instance blues my brother-in-law's Shaman had equipped. My sister called the jerk out on it and soon got a threatening whisper from another member of that same guild, telling her to knock it off because "we own this server." The drama escalated slightly and then was forgotten (like most drama), but the lasting effect of the encounter was this... I strive not to group with or transact business with persons from that guild. I know today for a fact that some (probably most) of their members are good, decent, upstanding persons, but I won't group with them if I can avoid it because I can never be certain I'm not getting one of the bad apples out of the bunch.

Your actions reflect on others, either good or bad. If you care about your family -- your guild -- then act like it when you deal with outsiders.

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Jon Blevins is an officer of In Vino Veritas.
He's a pastor, husband, gamer and lover of seafood.
He lives in Minnesota, where a "Babe" is a blue ox.