Loot Disputes

Infant guilds by new players often decide to pass out loot based on rolls with no outlining criteria.

This is both lazy and naïve. Though IVV currently has a /roll plan, we struggled through several permutations of loot rules to get to this one and may in time find something that works better.

Individuals Want a System That Favors Them

The hardcore raider will want the system that favors people who play often and come prepared.

The casual raider will want the system that gives them a shot at loot even though they can't put in the same time and effort.

Family guilds want to be fair to both -- in a family guild, the raiding of the hardcores often relies on the whims of the casuals. If you ostrasize either group, you won't have enough people signing to form a raid.

Cover Types of Loot

• Epics
• Novelty Loot
• Legendaries

Each type of loot should have a different parameter of rules. Novelty loot does not help a raid progress, but it's much sought-after and can be a "status" flag for your guild. Legendaries do help a raid and thus should go to the person who will get the most use out of it for your guild.

Cover Types of Spec

• Main Spec
• Off Spec
• Dual Spec

With specs, loot rules become much more complicated. And with dual specs, main spec becomes a lot more subjective. I can't tell you how to handle this because I'm just as intimidated by the subject as anyone. But it will help if you read up on loot systems.

Bonus and Punishment

IVV doesn't have bonus or punishment packages, but rewarding good behavior like being on time and coming prepared to raids.

PuG Raiding

Can your members fill in raids for people outside the guild? Under which circumstances is it okay? Under which is it not?

Settling Disputes

Loot disputes always happen when players start to care more about gear than each other. The key to keeping loot disputes at a minimum is simply to encourage your players to make loot secondary to relationships. While this is impossible with many players in ordinary or hardcore guilds (where the raiding atmosphere is much more competitive), it is vital to the success of a family guild.

No loot system is perfect and none will completely satisfy your members. Rules are simply necessary to guide the guild through loot and prevent anyone from taking advantage.

Loot disputes are the easiest disputes to solve. Whatever your rules say, obey. If they obviously need to change, change them. Let the loot fall where it lies according to your current rules even if nobody likes it, then make provisions in your rules to address what happened and prevent it happening again.

Anyone who cares more about people than loot will stay and try to work through the problem, especially if you listen to them and work to find a fair solution. People who care more about loot than people will continue to be a problem unless they have a change of heart. If they don't change, they will eventually leave for a guild with loot rules that favor them.

As a family guild, your job is to try and keep the members willing to work through differences over those ready to pack up and leave for something as bloodless as loot.

Summary

• Don't break your loot rules, ever.
• Change your rules when they fail to be fair.

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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.
Whenever that was.

Fighting for Peaceful Fighting

The key to conflict management isn't stepping in after a fight has started and fumbling around to stop it.

The real key is creating and maintaining a process to help everyone through their disagreements.

1. Step 1: Have everyone agree on how to solve the problem. Voting, /rolls, mediation, an impartial judge, whatever. Just have everyone involved in the argument agree that they'll accept whatever the outcome is, even if they don't like it. It's just like loot rules, only for relationships -- we hand out loot based on pre-decided methods and we stick to them or everything falls apart. This is the same thing.
   
2. Step 2: Go through the steps you've agreed on to reach a conclusion.
3. Step 3: Everyone accepts the outcome. No recounting the votes, no redos. It's over.
   

If you can't agree on how to end the fight, it will never end. If there are no rules, then players keep changing the rules, keep making up their own rules, and everyone calls foul all over the place. You must gather participants and get them to agree to stick to one path in order to reach a peaceful conclusion.

Common WoW Disputes

• Loot
• Personalities
• Guild Direction
• Guild Structure
• Guild Methods

I've previously written how to attempt to overthrow a corrupt leadership, but most fights are about differences of opinion and vision, not corruption. In such cases, following my advice on overthrowing your leadership is, in itself, immoral. The key to conflict management is fighting clean. It's not about stopping a fight but about ushering it to an honest and fair conclusion, a conclusion all participants have agreed to live with ahead of time.

Over my next few posts, I'll delve deeper into that list of common disputes.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's currently enduring a heat wave.

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

Complaints

IVV hasn't had a lot of complaints at any one time, but we have had a collection of them over the period of our existence. Any guild does and will. One thing I've noticed is that a member who feels dissatisfied about one small thing will often stay quiet until the small thing seems to be guild-wide, and suddenly a problem with this or that situation becomes a flaw in the entire guild.

Here are a few family guild complaints we've received in the past that either have or haven't been true (they're all debatable):

• Elitist
• Gossipy
• Cliquish
• Unhelpful

Unhelpful will be our jumping-off point, as it's been going on the longest. I've found that members who don't know how to get groups or ask for help often consider IVV unhelpful. For example, a player asking for a tank when only two tank classes are on and both are doing their dailies (and, considering all the new dailies, will be at it for a few hours). Or another player tries to form a group for hours with no tank while someone else gets a group immediately by bringing his own tank.

If you have no clue how to get help, you won't get help. Also, if you have unrealistic expectations about what help you deserve, you will definitely be disappointed with what you get. I've found that the players who are most frustrated and feel most neglected by lack of help are the ones who think they should be helped even in little things.

A guild is usually called Elitist when they don't let everyone in. Elitist has a negative connotation for me, and I'd rather shoot myself than be lumped with all the pompous elitist jackasses of the world. I've heard leaders in our guild argue that "we are elitists, but." I don't think we are. Elitism is about rejecting others based on a sense of superiority, and while we're proud of our guild and think we are an excellent oasis for our members and that everyone should want to be part of us, our rejection of applicants isn't based on "You're not good enough." It's based on protecting the balance of the community and maintaining our core values. And while that may be Idealist, it certainly doesn't ring true as Elitist.

Elitists would have kicked the problem members long ago, would have tossed out the high maintenance cases, and would never have put up with trying to make everyone, even the fringe members, happy. Elitists would reject people for arrogant reasons and not because applicants often have the wrong idea about what we are. We care and will continue to care about every member's inclusion in the guild -- even when they call us Elitist.

Cliquishness is similar to Elitist but carries a little more weight in IVV. Most of IVV would admit we're cliquish, but I'm not so sure. Cliques are, by definition, groups that don't allow others to integrate into them. They're exclusive. So, I prefer to describe IVV as peppered by subgroups, rather than cliques. In fact, the most cliquish current group in IVV is probably my family group, but our group is also the first on the scene when anyone feels neglected. We have Family Instance Time every Sunday, our long-distance version of eating Sunday lunch together, but sometimes what other guildmates see is us playing with each other and not with them.

Perceptions play hard into accusations of cliquishness. For me, I wouldn't invite the whole guild to a Sunday family brunch when I only have seating and flatware for five. Likewise, when it's time for us to play and bond, we're limited to 5 for instances. When someone isn't able to show up, we'll plug their spot with whomever we think doesn't get groups often enough or whomever needs a certain drop, but when your primary reason for playing a game is to keep in touch with certain people, it's unreasonable for others to expect equal time. It doesn't mean we aren't available for everyone else outside of family time, it just means we're closer to each other than the rest of the guild. And except for the inevitable fact that we play less with others, we still play with others, we still talk to and try to help others. A real clique wouldn't.

Gossipy happened more recently in a fit of frustration from someone who'd been an officer. I've mentioned before that we keep records so that we can notice trends in members -- has Beth gotten progressively more frustrated about her raiding schedule over the last year? Address problem before it becomes drama!

I remember member pages from when I was an officer, and they aren't gossip. Gossip is malicious, idle, and has no relevant bearing on any situation. Some guilds may have member pages that just trade frustrations and stories about their members, places to vent and even be cruel. IVV has member pages about what a player has done to improve, sometimes even to the point of offering private kudos among the officers about a member who went the extra mile, and also about potential problems with a member that should be watched or addressed.

The two young members we kicked for being needy, greedy, or even (in one case) taking items from the guild bank for resale were carefully tracked and logged in their member threads. What members need to know is that any move by IVV officers is deliberate and has a specific goal. A new post reminding everyone about guild bank rules means someone probably did something naughty, but the officers don't want to call anyone out publicly.

Member pages are also useful for briefing new officers on what's been happening with X or Y person. Knowing someone's history doesn't give the right to judge them. It's meant to provide context for the future, whether a player is getting better or worse about something we've struggled with them over. Some players become more mature over time. Some become malcontent. But it's important to know which way they've started to swing so you can act to try and help them feel settled and happy.

At the end of the day, accusations and Complaints are, at their heart, an indicator of how happy that member is in your guild. Most complaints (in any guild) aren't something you can fix without changing people. Sometimes it's the complainer who needs to realize that they can't get what they want without changing their habits and expectations. Sometimes you need to push members at large to care more about the people they don't know as well. But at the end of the day, the officers have little control over the actions of the guild, and there's only so much good that can come from a complaint.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer and complains at That Time of the Month.

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

Policy as Litmus

Teo had a similar post on how to tell your family guild's success.

The officers of IVV just opened up discussion of new loot rules, and I had a few things (okay, a lot of things) to say.

What I realized is this:

If you lean toward DKP in a family guild, you must ask yourself why. Back in Burning Crusade, we used Suicide Kings and I fought for it. Why? Because players who did not invest in IVV had brought friends into the guild I did not know or trust. It was like having a (admittedly polite) pick-up-group attached to the guild.

A good test of a guild's member balance are the policies you feel compelled to make (or support). I felt compelled to protect our loyal and long-standing members through a loot system more approaching DKP than we'd ever had.

Since those raiders left in a minor exodus at the end of BC and we focused on making our core of loyals happy, we've returned to a simpler system of rolls and are discussing bonuses for being on time and prepared for progression runs.

What I realized, in supporting this idea, is that I support it because there is no one left whose rolls I fear, whose guild loyalty is in doubt. I trust that everyone in IVV now has proven themselves as loyal and will continue to do so, and thus deserve the loot gained by the group's effort.

When a fair and non-competitive system worries you, it means your family guild is not properly balanced.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, avid blogger, and cat owner.

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

Attitude Check: Trust

Family Guilds are founded on relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Without trust a family guild cannot function. I’m not talking about the superficial level of trust that most organizations with a common purpose possess. There’s a fundamental level of trust that hopes the Guild Leader won’t ninja the bank, disband the guild, transfer servers and leave everyone out in the cold. There’s a judicial level of trust that believes that loot will be handed out fairly according to the guild’s rules for loot distribution. I’m talking about something deeper – relational trust. Relational trust requires emotional vulnerability; it requires forming human connections with others. This isn’t always easy to create or maintain in a virtual environment where “real” human interaction is not a requirement. It isn’t easy, but it is necessary for those who would be a “family guild” (as opposed to a “raiding” or “PvP” guild).

Trust on the relational level does not come easily. Trust is not bought or demanded, it is earned and nurtured. Trusting someone requires opening up to that person – becoming vulnerable. In a very real sense, this is the definition of the type of trust we’re seeking. Some people trust easily, some with difficulty. It’s important to recognize the difficulties presented by asking people to trust one another in a setting where there is no ultimate accountability. You cannot force someone to be trusting of the guild, its leaders or its members, but there are certain steps you (as a leader or a member) can take to encourage and foster an atmosphere of trust within your guild. The essence of my advice can be summed up thus: “Trust and you will be trusted.”

First, be willing to take the first step. If you show a willingness to make yourself vulnerable to others by reaching out to them in seeking to either establish or develop a personal relationship you will find them far more likely to open up to you. In doing this you lead by example.

Second, keep your word. If you are going to take the first step you MUST be prepared to follow up. Trust is constantly being built and once broken it can be very difficult to fix. The best and most powerful way to foster trust is simply to keep your promises. It’s much easier to trust someone who is reliable and honest.

Third, praise and reward trust in others. Encourage trust among all members not only by being a leader yourself but by pointing out and praising acts of trust and relationship-building in others. Our guild makes a point never to neglect someone who is making a clear attempt to build relationships within the guild. In many cases we could do one better and reward the person’s willingness to reach out by trusting that person with, for example, greater responsibility.

What follows are a few practical suggestions on how IVV has worked to create a community that trusts.

First Name Basis – This came about quite naturally for IVV because our core group knew each other prior to playing WoW together, so “Jon” came more naturally for my brother-in-law than “Manasseh” and the usage of real-life names carried over to other members. This can be a difficult transition for a guild that generally goes by character name, but it’s a policy that helps to foster trust within the guild as a whole. Using “real” names rather than character names to identify a person is humanizing and more intimate (without being uncomfortable). In a virtual world where anonymity is the norm, this is one small but important step toward developing an atmosphere of trust.

Member Pages – IVV has a dedicated forum for people to create an “About Me” page. It’s our own version of MySpace/Facebook (though many members also keep in touch through these social networking sites). We encourage members to talk about their interests/disinterests, their families, their work, their lives and frustrations. The posting of pictures is also strongly encouraged because it provides a whole new level of intimacy which demonstrates an increasing level of comfort and trust.

Responsibility – If you’re going to ask people to trust you (and the guild) you need to be prepared to act on that trust. You might be surprised to find how much there is to be gained by entrusting someone with even a small amount of responsibility. Ask a fellow member to take care of some task or another and let that person know that you’re “counting on them.” Even asking them to assist you with a task you’re undertaking can have the same effect. It’s shocking how much this can mean to someone, especially during those early stages of relationship-building.

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Jon Blevins is an officer of In Vino Veritas.

He's a pastor, husband, gamer and wannabe Jedi Knight.

He lives in Minnesota where the snow comes from.

Loot Wars

I have to admit, I don't understand the obsession with loot. In my world view, there's more than enough to go around. I dare to suggest that loot is unlimited and the only discrepancy is how often you get to try for it.

Guilds get into trouble when they approach touchy situations like "this player died and did nothing for the whole run, this other player rocked the house out and deserves this drop more." If a great piece of loot drops, do you give it to the failure or the success?

I have my own philosophy on that situation -- if the failure was good enough to get into your raid, they're good enough to roll on the loot per your loot rules. You don't get to switch things up just because you don't like how your rules work when you want to be biased. You hate it, then put a few exception clauses into the rules for next time but play fair now.

I really don't understand why guilds don't seem to have special rules for super-rare items. If a legendary drops and Proven Guild Hopper is rolling against Guy Who Formed The Guild, nobody's going to like it, but you don't suddenly say "Well, you helped, but we're not gonna let you roll." Not if the rules clearly state he can roll.

For goodness' sake, just change the rules before this stuff happens. Agree to handle legendary loot with a Loot Council and have done with it. Because that's essentially what people end up debating -- unplanned switch to a loot council for the most-desired items or no? The real issue isn't who deserves it but whether or not you're willing to undergo the stigma of being unethical by breaking your own rules.

And, yes, it's unethical. I'm sorry, but sometimes you have to hurt to learn, even if he really really really didn't deserve that drop.

Back in Burning Crusade, we farmed Gruul regularly and the Dragonspine Trophy (husband told me that this was the best melee dps trinket available) dropped about three times altogether for IVV. The third time, a few months before Wrath, our lowest dps performer (a druid) won the roll.

I felt the groans in officer chat.

"Rogue guy over there could have really used it, he's one of our best dps," my friend moaned and, since he was playing in the same room as husband and me, turned around in his chair and pretended to weep.

But they gave it to the druid because they knew it was important to be fair and treat everyone equally.

It is every guild's responsibility to choose which is more important: the people or the game? When you come to tough loot decisions, that is the call you inevitably make.

IVV believes that by treating the people right, the game will follow. We believe that a guild is only as good as how fair it's willing to be to its members. Fair is not always easy, and sometimes it feels a lot like unfair, and yes, you might be able to get by in spite of your choices, but you'll lose some really great people along the way.

Some guilds are willing to put up with those consequences.

Family guilds don't.

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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.

Power in Guilds

Many guild leaders assume that power is the ability to gkick whomever you want.

This is incorrect. Power is the control that other people give you. For example, to use (or abuse) the power to gkick, you must have people willing to stay in your guild. The natural conclusion is that members give power to the leadership by choosing to remain.

A fundamental flaw in guild management is the inability to remove the leaders through a majority vote. The guild leader watches the officers, but who watches the guild leader? I've heard horror stories of GLs passing leadership to unqualified, selfish friends without even telling anyone, much less asking the guild.

We should have a Mutiny button. Like the French, we should be able to lop off the heads of despotic leaders. Hold them accountable. We should be able to stop people who take the cream of the guild's effort and leave members the bare bones, people who lead by fear and threats and selfish, unjust methods. A guild should always be open to reasonable demands and principles but should never put up with threats or pressure.

Members of a guild do have significant power as a community, though less as individuals. What can a leader do if everyone decides to protest unreasonable decisions or boycott raids or deny the leadership free materials and services in the interest of enacting change?

The worst that can happen is everyone gets gkicked and you form a new guild together with the rules you wanted in the first place. And the old guild leader must start his guild again from scratch -- begging players to join a team or community that no longer exists.

You should make sure your guild has a procedure in place to make decisions and sticks to it -- a basic tenent of conflict management is that the method is more important than the outcome. As long as everyone agrees that the decision will be made a certain way, no one should then protest the final decision.

Now, this does not mean the guild needs to be in on every single administrative decision. That would slow decision-making to a crawl. I'm talking about controversial matters that people in the guild care about and that need to be addressed, not the day-to-day shlub of ideas.

Officers and Guild Leaders should work out the exact extent of their individual authority in each of their areas and pass it by the guild for inspection. How far can an officer go? Can a bank officer deny a member access to the bank because he suspects they're using the materials for an unapproved purpose? Can a recruitment officer deny an application based on a bad feeling about the applicant? Can a raid leader leave someone out of a raid because he thought (but was not certain) they were the cause of two wipes last time?

Clear criteria for officers is imperative if you don't want them overstepping their bounds. People are capable of doing things in the interest of the guild that the guild would not approve of. When I rejected the real life friend of a member, at least one officer and probably several members at that time thought I didn't have the authority to do so. I assumed I had the authority to protect the integrity of the application process by enforcing the rules I had put in ("Blank questions equal auto-no"), but others assumed that "real life friend" overruled everything else.

This is why you must be clear with each other. The officers should feel free to create their own limitations and guidelines, but the guild should always be asked to approve those limitations. At the end of the day, it is the guild that the leadership serves. The populace should have the opportunity to accept or reject the power level of leaders. And this hearkens back to decision-making methods. The simplest way to approve or reject the powers given an officer is a poll, but it also doesn't allow for feedback or bias.

With bias, some members are naturally more powerful than others. This is often a form of reputation, where the member has proven him or herself to be a leader or thinker. Some people's opinions, for good or bad, matter more than others. This is a distribution of power in the membership that arises naturally, often by a member proving him or herself to be of value in various ways -- in this case, having helpful problem-solving ideas for leadership. (Unfortunately, having an opinion does not automatically make feedback useful -- such as the Compromiser who wanted random rolls for very rare novelty loot and ignored the issue being discussed: that rare status pieces should go to someone IVV trusted not to gquit the next day.)

On Monday, I'll cover empowerment, disempowerment, and how you can force unwilling leaders to change the way a guild is run.

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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.

The Chain Link Effect

I might have been a little harsh last post, so let me explain why I sound so frustrated. This is a warning tale, something I hope members and officers alike can learn from. The point is protecting relationships, and it happened middle of 2008.

When a situation begins to spiral, a chain of events occur. People are links in the chain, and some are helpless after their role. Others are not. But any link can break the chain when it gets to them.

Link 1: Me
Link 2: Applicant
Link 3: Henry*
Link 4: Mora*
Link 5: Officer A
Link 6: Officers B & C
Link 7: Guild Leader**

*Names changed.
**So you don't get confused, this is the non-Teo GL, a very good friend who served most of 2008.

The chain began when I rejected Applicant, Henry's real life friend.

I was tired, overworked, and didn't love his app. He left the "Did you read our rules?" blank, I'd posted on the website "Blank answers equal auto-no," and even though I would have overlooked it if it'd been a different question left blank or he'd been better connected . . . he wasn't. Henry was brother-in-law to Officer A but very new to the guild and neither he nor his wife had pushed to get to know us at that point. Henry also didn't leave a recommendation for Applicant that I found . . . well, sufficient. It was more of an acknowledgment that they knew each other than a recommendation to the guild.

So I gave Applicant a chance to fill in the two empty questions.

At the end of three days with no reply, I sent him a rejection notice and told him he could try again.

(The same week, I auto-rejected a second real life friend of Henry's, a kid who hadn't filled out even half of the required fields, including how he knew Henry. Had I left the application up long enough for Henry to recommend, I might have given that kid the option to reapply as I had the other friend. He's a lesser detail in the story and not a link in the chain.)

Henry spoke to me and understood my reasoning for rejecting both.

Applicant spoke to me and tried to talk his way into the guild by answering the questions directly. "Yes, I read the rules," he said. During the conversation, I explained and assumed he understood that he'd have to fill out another application and our chat wouldn't change that fact.

I lost little love for him in our conversation because he said several times that he had no time to play the game and became petulant when I suggested Jame's Leveling Guide ("If you don't want me in your guild just say so"), a guide which I myself find very useful to maximize game time. From his conversation, I believed that he thought other people helping him level was the fastest way to go. Ignoring the fact that he was completely mistaken, that level of neediness was exactly the kind of thing I tried to protect IVV from.

At this point, from a normal guild point of view, you might say "I wouldn't even have let him reapply! Geez, suck it up Applicant, QQ." While I find this mode of thought comforting for my own part, it is not the way we do things in a family guild. We give second chances, and we don't resent giving them.

The problem was that he turned down his second chance to get in the guild, citing no time to fill out a second application. It might have ended with that, but Henry was compelled (whether through his own will or Applicant's badgering, I don't know) to gquit in order to play with Applicant and rejected kid.

This also might not have been a problem if Henry had not left a wife behind in the guild. Mora.

Mora, of course, is the link after Henry. She could have handled the situation by grabbing her husband by his virtual short hairs and tearing into him the way only a wife can.

Instead, she went to her brother, Officer A, in a frenzy of worry about having to follow her husband out of the guild. While brothers are reasonable and acceptable sources of comfort (I've always leaned on Jon), her going to him instead of her husband put him in the middle of a marital issue, where he could (at best) be only a mediator. Were there reasons for high levels of turmoil on Mora's part? Yes. Henry did not live at home -- a soldier, he was stationed away from his wife and kids with the cheerful prospect of being deployed in Iraq in the foreseeable future. Mora was taking care of their children by herself and very stressed. (Knowing this made me angrier at Henry. You do not leave your single mom wife stranded in a guild so you can play with an army buddy.)

But was this an excuse for dragging her brother into it? No. She was a grown woman. A good explanation is not a good excuse.

Her panic reacted sharply off of Officer A, who did not want to leave IVV but saw no choice if his sister left. While he is the last person I want to blame for any part in the situation, as he is more a victim than the rest of us at this point in the story, his stress and confusion did more damage than Mora's, as he was a vital guild asset and very good friend.

Still, had he approached the situation from a "We can get her back in the guild when things calm down" point rather than believing he had to go with her (and could never come back), his worry might not have fused him to the next link:

Officers B and C. They were the only others online when all of this went down and, like Officer A, they got swept up in the panic and pressure of the situation. I was told afterward that they did the right thing at the time, and I believed it. But now . . . no. There was no excuse for bending to the will of people blinded by fear, except that they were blinded themselves. No one considered that we could work out the situation and get them back even if Officer A left.

They, in a joint decision, brought everyone back in the guild. Henry, Applicant, and the kid who hadn't even filled out his application. They even promised to accept another of Henry's friends without his having to apply when he got the game.

Since, at the time, I considered myself to have more authority over applications than I actually possessed, this stripped not only that imagined authority from me but the little I actually did possess. It hurt my pride, it denuded my job to a paperwork monkey, and it completely infuriated me. Moreso because Applicant had been arrogant and even a little patronizing to me, and because the kid wasn't even a part of the issue and his application was so incomplete, it didn't exist.

But they still got guild invites.

It was an emergency action to protect Officer A though part was, I truly believe, because men don't know how to deal with hysterical women.

(You slap them. For reference. And I'm not being mean -- I truly believe a good verbal wake-up call is necessary for anyone too scared to see clearly, especially if their actions are harming or frightening the people around them.)

But the problem wasn't just that I was angry, though angry is a pale reference to my helpless, insulted rage. It was that I never got to resolve the issue. Because everyone took the easy way out, the way that was most obvious to them without thinking about the consequences or negative effects it would have on other people, I got left holding a fury I could do nothing about. I couldn't even talk to any of the first few links, because I wasn't sure I could be civil. And, really, what was there to talk about? "I'm furious and only barely managing to keep from gkicking your friends and gquitting in a petulant childish huff"?

Yeah. Real mature.

The final link sealed the situation into a ball of unapproachable, unresolved issue: The guild leader tried to calm everyone down. He affirmed everyone's actions as correct, when everyone's actions were completely wrong. The only excuse I can offer him is that he didn't see the whole situation as the chain it was, just as I didn't, and wanted everyone to be happy again.

One of Teo's recent posts mentions that it's bad to assign no blame if blame is needed. In that situation, everyone was to blame and no one was blamed. For me, it was personal. For them, it was disaster averted. At different points, I was mad at each individual link in the chain without understanding the overall effect of everyone's bad decisions. And it was easy to talk me down from wanting to gkick and claw eyes out because I don't like being angry at people I care about. I ended up thinking "Well, I could have avoided this by letting the patronizing jerk into the guild in the first place." Like it was all my fault, since I didn't want to blame my friends or Officer A's sister or a man who was about to be deployed to Iraq.

I ended up deciding it was the applicants' faults. I didn't want them in my guild, they shouldn't have gotten in that way, and the kid turned out to be a needy, greedy brat who gquit a week later with the statement "nobody ever helps me" -- and who afterward badmouthed us to other guilds. (Think of all the badmouthing he'd have added if he'd known the wild, triumphant cheer I let out when he left. XD It was one of the most joyful moments of my officer career, just as good as a well-placed "I told you so.")

The older Applicant stopped playing shortly after joining, a fact I'm relieved about even now. I don't think I could have hidden my dislike, and I don't like confrontation.

I'm not sure what moral I should attach here. I think there are a few, like "Think before you act," but it's all a bunch of cliches.

Your intentions can be unquestionable, your motives sympathetic, and your position defensible -- but your actions can still make everything worse. In these situations, it takes multiple people to flush everything into a headlong spiral and wrap it all off with a nice unresolved bow.

It takes just one to stop it. Any one link, at the time they were called to make a decision, could have done something differently. I could have talked to Henry before rejecting his friend and found out it was a gquit issue. Applicant could have accepted my offer to reapply. Henry could have stayed in the guild and still played with his friends. Mora could have unleashed her freakout on her husband instead of her brother. Officer A could have told his sister to sit tight and calm down until the officers could mediate. Officers B and C could have done the same. And the guild leader could have called everyone to account.

Eight people can make quite a mess. One link, acting wisely, could have cleaned it up.

The fact that no one had the foresight to do so is an excuse to some extent, but it still doesn't make up for damaged relationships. The situation was full of Accommodating when it should have been handled with Collaborating. Accommodating is good when something doesn't matter, but it mattered to me. Collaborating is much slower but could have gotten everyone out with their relationships intact.

And that is the point. My relationships were damaged. Wounded. Scarred. It's been months. I'm not holding grudges as much as acknowledging that my feelings about people changed because they made selfish decisions (Applicant, Henry, and Mora particularly -- though this event does not permit anyone, including me, to make judgments on their marriage, they obviously had no communication about this and it yanked all of the officers into their problem).

If there is a way to preserve relationships, you must fight for it with all your strength. I tried. I really tried. Not coherently, and perhaps that's why I failed, and perhaps because no one realized that this would leave a permanent mark not just on my pride but on my relationships. But the truth is, if the other officers had not Accommodated, we could have come to a decision that let me look even Applicant in the eye with some level of respect.

While my guild has changed since then, and policy would not allow the same thing to happen today, I still feel it vital to press this thought on you, the reader:

Relationships must be preserved and protected.

And that is what I want to convince you of today. Not "Oh, woe is me, everyone was mean and I'm such a victim." Yes, I realize I'm still angry and I need to get over myself. I also realize I've been pretty snarky in this post and it could hurt feelings. My only defense is . . . I've been honest.

But my goal is to convince you of the simple idea that you need to be aware when relationships are in danger so that you can work to protect them.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's necessary.

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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.

Accepting and Rejecting Applications

In most guilds, a poorly filled application means the recruitment officer first laughs at you and then deletes your app without a moment's hesitation.

I've gotten applications where the applicant only answered 9/25 questions, where they left important things like "Did you read our rules?" blank, where raid experience is "none," and where people really and truly don't know how to:

• Read.
• Spell.
• Form a sentence.
• Form a word.
• All of the above.
  

I got A's in school, I'm a professional writer, and while I understand that some people have zero grammar skills (and that's okay), that does not mean that they are unable to read the question and think about their answer. Lack of writing skill does not mean lack of mental function, as so many people seem insistent to impress upon recruitment officers.

Sometimes with applications, even people I accepted into IVV, I felt like I was grading tests from a 5th grade class that just Did Not Care, and I was too tired and fed up to fail them.

In the real world, this is unacceptable.

If you bring a resume to a job you want and it's handwritten on notebook paper in pink pen with your qualifications squeezed together to fit on the front, you will go in the trash without a second thought. They are busy. They do not have time for idiocy.

Officers are busy. We do not have time for bad applications.

Unless we're Family Guild officers.

The sad and frustrating truth is that Family Guilds do not shunt people aside for having a less than pristine application, as most guilds do. Most guilds say "Someone makes the game harder to play, gkick them" or "An app bores you, reject it" and "Who cares? It's just a game."

But that attitude goes against everything a Family Guild stands for. We do not gkick, reject, or throw a slovenly amount of ennui over a situation as an excuse to make things easier for ourselves. We take the hard road.

We take the annoying road.

In a family guild, getting an application from someone with connections is like getting a job application from your boss's nephew. His resume might be in crayon, but if he doesn't drool on himself or pee in your trashcan, you give him the job.

This makes it very hard to adhere to any sort of standard for applications. You can't punish people for slovenly work, no matter how much you want to, because it might cause drama.

And drama is bad.

Very very bad.

Still, you might think "I'm a recruitment officer, I have a right to enforce some standard."

Yes and no. Mostly no. You're hoping that people assume you can and that fear of rejection will make them pay attention to the application. But the honest truth is that you're going to be overlooking a lot. And you don't have a choice about it.

If you reject the wrong person, it could get very very ugly. I'm not joking. People in IVV love each other and would never knowingly hurt each other, but GOOD GOD I got ripped a new one by people who weren't even angry and had no clue what they were doing.

Weak, emotional people + influence over your friends or superiors + you rejected their friend = "Kill me, please."

A Family Guild recruitment officer only has as much power as the guild gives you. If you need to reject someone with connections, do it carefully. It's possible, but you need to be able to defend your reasoning, and even then half the guild will assume "Real Life Friend = Auto Invite."

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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.

Driving Unsuitables Out

If you're in the position I warned against in the application and recruitment posts, the position of having members who really and sincerely don't fit with your members or plans, sometimes the nicest thing you can do for everyone is get rid of them.

I'm not talking about gkicking. Nor am I talking about ostracization, where you cut people off from the resources, events, and society of the rest of the guild.

I'm talking about being honest with them and yourselves. In IVV, when Teo returned to guild leadership right before Wrath, he sat all of the officers down and had a little chat with us. Some members wanted or expected IVV to be things it just wasn't. And Teo told us that we needed to stop trying to cater to those people, the ones who didn't quite fit in, who wanted us for raiding more than friendship, who made conscious decisions to keep their personal feelings out of the guild.

I'll call them Unsuitables. They would be excellent members to most guilds, but they would never be good family guild members, as long as they chose to keep us at arms length.

I realized as Teo talked that by catering to the Unsuitables, by spending energy and resources fighting to keep them happy, we ignored the beating heart of our guild. We overlooked the people who deserved our attention.

Teo led the officers to reroute our time and energy toward the members who wanted us for who we were, people we might have trouble satisfying but who could be satisfied by our focusing on their emotional lives in the guild. These members didn't care how many raids they got in as long as they got a fair shake and the chance to play with their friends.

We needed to focus on pleasing the members who wanted us for ourselves, not for our goals.

Part of this plan included a focus on 10-man raiding. It was not a clever diversion to beat out Unsuitables with a stick. It was an intelligent, reachable plan that served the needs of members who'd had trouble making raid times. Most importantly, the plan managed to express who we were in a visible way. We did not lie or trick or badger. We just decided to go a more friends-and-family viable way with the guild. We refocused.

And the result was that Unsuitables who wanted something else from us trickled away. No hard feelings, no drama. But by being who we were, we drove them out.

---------------------------

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.

Recruitment

... if you trust everyone and let them in, someone will mess with your guild. If you trust no one and let no one in, you cannot grow or make new friends.

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

I covered applications last week, but recruitment is different. There's one rule that you need to be aware of, even considering all my warnings about random recruits:

You will be surprised by people.

We've had quite a few very good surprises -- people who had no connections and came in and loved us, loved what we were and how we functioned and who would never consider going back to raid guilds or casual guilds. They've thrown themselves into the guild so fast and so hard that it's like they've been with us since the beginning.

We've also had people who were highly recommended by members but who gquit a week later. Most of those were people who joined just to raid, and whose friends/contacts in the guild were just there to raid. We had a minor exodus close to Wrath because we recruited for raiding but we aren't a raid guild at heart, and we weren't what those people wanted.

So the second rule of recruiting would have to be: Recruit for what you are, not what you want to become.

Family guilds cannot pretend to be anything but family guilds. Yes, IVV raids, but there was a point where we were trying to recruit so we could have stronger raids and that was a recipe for disaster. I hold very strongly now to the idea that you must first find people who want to be in a family guild and the endgame goals will follow. You cannot ignore the family aspect of the guild or try to keep them separate when you recruit -- members in IVV welcome new people with their whole hearts and if those people aren't willing to invest themselves back, they belong in a normal raid guild. We may have wanted to be stronger raiders, but that did not mean that we had the atmosphere or resources to satisfy "real" raiders. It ended up hurting our family members instead of satisfying our raid team.

The third rule of recruiting is: Never stop growing.

Family guilds, like social guilds, are notorious for members taking random hiatuses. Though in a purely social setting, this might not be a huge problem, if you're trying to raid and those members are some of your regular raiders, it puts a wrench in the works.

When IVV started and we only invited close friends of members (a policy we've returned to after the raider debacle), I had a vision. IVV started with about 10 people, 5 at the level cap and then my family group racing upwards. And I knew that as long as we continued to nag our own personal friends into the guild, and they nagged their friends, we would grow. It would be slow, but it would be steady and safe. Want 25's? Keep moving and have patience. We might only grow a little here or there, but we have the unheard-of benefit of not shrinking. Except for the exodus we should have expected, people just don't leave. It's like a profit chart with a line slanting straight toward the top.

I firmly believe that any guild willing to put in the time and patience to slowly grow with quality recruits can succeed at anything, because if your players love the guild, they will stay.

So if you keep moving, keep meeting people, keep encouraging friends and family to join, you cannot lose. Only win.

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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.

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.