Why Guilds Keep Bad Seeds

I think it's important not just to know how to respond to outside stimuli but also to understand why things happen.

When someone does something like ninja looting, badmouthing, or being overall rude, and you tell their guild leaders, you expect to see something done about it. Right? Sometimes the behavior has been bad enough that you expect nothing less than a gkick.

So why do guilds keep bad seeds?

The Guild Thinks You're Overreacting
They don't see your side because they just don't agree that the infraction was anything more than a situation between two people that should be handled between those two people.

The Guild Doesn't Mind Bad Behavior
Some guilds are bad. To the core. Or bone. Whichever has a catchier tune.

It's None of Your Business
Much like Blizzard's policy of "We'll look into it but you don't get to know the result" when you report stuff, some guilds will take appropriate action but consider it no one's business but their own as to whether punishment is doled out. After all, the last thing they want is a vindictive wounded party dancing around Dalaran and taunting the punished member with "HAHA! You got suspended from raids!"

No Proof
Especially in cases of he said/she said, the leaders' hands are tied in the absence of screenshots. If you're going to punish someone, you need to know they did it first.

They Can't Afford to Lose Members
Struggling and dying guilds can't afford to do anything that will lose even one member, or they'll sink like a stone. If you have 12 people who raid, three infrequently, and the bad seed is one of the reliable raiders, sometimes guilds will weigh the cost of having a bad rep versus the cost of not existing, and survival wins out.

Too Well Connected
Sometimes your bad seed just knows the right people. When a GM's real life BFF is a total jerk, I bet you 99% of his guild wants him gkicked as much as you do but are equally powerless to see it happen.

Too Likable
Some really obnoxious people are extremely likable to their friends and guildmates. They'll make everyone laugh by telling anecdotes of their wacky antics and be just a really great person to the people who matter to them. Then when you have a tale of woe to bring to the guild's attention, the guild sides with the offender because, well, they like that person and they don't know you at all.

Too Emo
Some players are so emo that any punishment from guild leadership will lead them to gquit in a drama-filled huff. From your point of view, this is a good thing. From the leadership's point of view, if the crime doesn't warrant a gkick, and that's the effective result of any punishment they dole out, the lesser evil is to just bury the matter -- sometimes with a mild "Don't do it again," sometimes not.

Too Much Drama
Some guilds just don't want the hassle of having to deal with a disgruntled player, no matter how bad they've been. If you haven't been an officer, you may not know how much of a headache people can be when they're in drama mode. It really makes officers think "Why do I do this again? It's supposed to be a relaxing hobby, for God's sake!"

Too Valuable
If the offender performs some vital role to the guild that no one else is willing or capable to take on, the guild will often choose to keep that resource and take the hit to their rep because losing that player would partially cripple them.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.
She's currently eating blueberries.
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.
Whenever that was.

Keep It Real

Elitists tick me off.

People with superiority complexes do not belong in family guilds. Not because they're ambitious and powerful or because family guilds aren't (power is subjective, but IVV is in about 10th place on our server for raiding atm) but because they're superficial jackasses who don't care about the feelings or interests of others.

Let's take this down a notch. Say it's not a hardcore elitist or jerk but simply someone in your guild who gets along with people in general or does hard work and starts to feel a little . . . important. Powerful. Impressive.

Back when I got the wind knocked out of me, I'd had a feeling of power. Not all-powerful by any means, but as if I had dominion over applicants and the right to weild that power in a responsible way.

I like to think I didn't have any unreasonable pride back then. Just the normal stuff that goes with having a job you take too seriously. So when the emergency popped up and my toes got trampled, I still had my feet and fingers and other bits. I could still function.

Yet it hurt like hell.

So when I say it is unwise to be anything but humble in all aspects of guild life, whether you're an officer or a star raider or just leveling, I say it for your protection. Because I know what it feels like to get knocked down, and if I didn't have much pride and it still hurt that bad, I can't imagine what it would be like for someone who let their pride or superiority or entitlement run away with them. It would probably feel a bit like dying.

These days, I'm trying to stay humble. I do what I can for the guild as a member, and I don't have any duties or position to mess with my head. I found contentment by going more casual, and I'm having more fun (and less stress) in game by simply increasing my focus on the real world.

I said it before, I'll say it again: The game should never become more important than the people. That doesn't just mean gear. Power, position, pride, entitlement -- all are inner demons that you should avoid if you want to be happy.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's currently not packing to move, like she should be.

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

Personality Clashes

There's a woman at my church that I don't like. No real reason, I just don't like her. Maybe it's because we have nothing in common. Maybe it's because I think she'll judge me if she gets to know me, so I feel defensive around her.

There are people in the world, good and reasonable people, who sometimes you just don't get along with. No real reason. They just rub you the wrong way.

First off, you can't gkick them. So stop thinking about it. If they aren't needy, greedy, selfish, or mean, forget about it.

I won't tell you to pull some Disney movie stunts and learn to love them.

I'll tell you what to do when things go rapidly down the toilet.

Avoidance

This is good if both subjects are angry and need a cooling-off period, or if someone is about to gquit in a huff.

Signs of needing a cooling off period:

• You want to say things you can't take back.
• He or she has said things they can't take back.
• You know that one of you is about to do or say something hot-headed and stupid.

How do you arrange a cooling-off period if you're involved in the argument?

Repeat after me: "Dear Level-Headed Officer: Please post the following for me in X discussion. 'I need a few days away from this argument to get my head straight. When I feel steady, I hope we can work this out in a calmer venue.' I request that you lock or delete X thread as it is getting out of hand and we need a fresh place to discuss this." Alternatives include "we need to drop this subject."

Take this time off to think carefully about what you might have done wrong. This part is not about what the other guy did wrong. It is about you. Accepting your own culpability is the first step to getting past a personality clash.

Forcing

For the officer, if both parties remain too angry and irrational to speak to each other without inflicting pain and anger:

1. Lock or delete the thread; ask the members to log off if the fight is in gchat.
2. Let the angry parties know that the discussion is over for the protection of both and you insist they take time away from each other to cool down and think.
3. Do not take a side!
   

Explain in whispers that if they are unable to speak to each other in civil tones, they aren't allowed to speak to each other in guild channels until that changes.

When a situation deteriorates enough to make officers step in, both are in the wrong no matter how it started. Make sure they know you expect them to take a break from each other in whispers/emails/PMs also and that you're willing to help them through their problem later when they're both calm.

This strategy is to quickly stop people when they're just making things worse but requires careful follow-up to make sure the argument is truly ended.

Collaborating/Compromising

If/when both parties are cool and open to reason.

The goal is to get everyone to an acceptable conclusion, not to make everyone like each other.

This is the solution step.

An officer might mediate this step, talking to both parties and getting each side, then urging both to a conclusion if a conclusion is to be had.

If the two parties are ready to talk to each other, insist upon language with no hostility. It's best if you can get both parties to apologize to each other for their behavior, no matter how justified they think it was. Apologies usually help cool lingering resentment.

Encourage them to avoid accusations or defensiveness.

Look at these paragraphs and tell me what differences you see:

(1) I'm sorry you think I'm arrogant, but I'm totally not and you need to stop calling me that. I'm just confident, which a scrub like you wouldn't understand.

(2) I'm sorry if you think I come across as arrogant. I do not see myself this way, but I realize how my self-confidence may be percieved as arrogance. I will try to pay more attention to how I come across to others.

The first invites further argument, has harsh accusatory language with "you think," as well as an insult to the opponent. This gets everyone nowhere.

The second accepts that the opponent's feelings have validity while still respectfully disagreeing with them. It also addresses the opponent's root concerns, where the speaker has agreed to try and correct the negative perception.

(TL;DR -- Don't be a jerk when you're "trying" to patch things up.)

When The Mediator Agrees With One Side

Depends on the argument, really. Unless someone is breaking guild rules or has become destructive on a guildwide scale, I advise not to take a side whether you favor someone or not. If a relationship needs mediation, both people have done something wrong and you don't want to support the wrong attitude even if they have the right motives.

It can help if you tell the person you agree with that you see their side of things but they still didn't handle it correctly. Understanding someone's side can go a long way toward calming them down and making them accept their own errors.

When Things Still Go to Pot

With personality clashes, sometimes the only thing you can do is ask people not to make it worse. You can't enforce your request if they insist on fighting, and the result of escalation is usually a heated gquit.

Also, sometimes individuals just won't take criticism of any sort. We had a member gquit once because of a personality conflict and wounded pride when the officers supposedly sided with someone he didn't like (as someone who wasn't emotionally involved, I know there was no "siding" going on, but I can see how an angry and wounded person would take it as a personal affront).

If you're the angry or injured party in the fight, I have very simple advice: don't shoot yourself in the foot. Shut up if you can't hold your temper and don't gquit to make a point unless you're ready to move to another guild. Angry, irrational people are more likely to get gkicks and less likely to get accepted back. No one wants a drama queen.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's currently eating Starburst instead of lunch.

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

Holding Back the Tide

When your guild gets embroiled in a bit of unpleasantness with a player or another guild, it can be difficult to control the public responses of your members. The best you can do is request that people keep their heads and not sink themselves further into the argument, but if outrage is high and members are slapping out responses before they think, can you really turn the tide back?

In any dispute, there's always the threat that members will ignore leaders and go off half-cocked into the fight. This makes things worse instead of better by escalating the drama and even giving credence to people who don't deserve to be acknowledged.

In IVV right now, a single player master looted an item that he'd lost the roll for from a 25-man and then taunted and harassed the involved players for trying to seek justice through GMs. Several of his guildmates joined in abusing IVV.

The question for a guild when you fail to see justice in a situation such as this is how to act. On the one hand, individuals may want to strike out to appease their own anger. On the other, the group as a whole is implicated by an individual's actions and leaders want to keep members in check.

This rule -- that a guild can be tainted by the inappropriate actions of a member -- is obvious in our discussions of how to interact with the ninja's guild from now on, since they chose to keep him and (several of them) defend him.

The reining agreement in IVV is to avoid his guild, Pure Insanity, but not to harass them. One of our best players, recently returned from a tenure in a top US raiding guild (and even left behind a Gladiator title and frostwyrm on his alliance toon), says he'll ask any group he joins with a PI member to drop either them or him. He won't group with them. And he's sure to have a solid reputation as a player on our server just like his last.

The actions of a few taint the whole. Perhaps on a small server like ours, you can't afford to get rid of bad people even if it ruins your credibility as a guild because there's no one to take that person's place. Or perhaps Pure Insanity just doesn't care if members reflect badly on the guild.

Either way, when it comes to your guild, public relations demands that you keep player behavior in check whether you possess the offender or the victim. I don't care how connected a person is or how many friends he or she will take -- if a member is willing to soil your guild's name, and if they know they can get away with it without punishment, they will never be worth keeping.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's currently working on her writing.

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

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.

Playing Favorites

As often as possible, IVV strives for fairness. We distribute loot based on random rolls, we rotate the undergeared for the overgeared just to make sure everyone gets a chance to play, we work to maintain a safe and enjoyable gaming atmosphere for all our members – from the most hardcore to the most casual. Sometimes this emphasis on fairness in the administrative aspects of the guild imposes itself upon the social aspects of the guild, most often in the form of this complaint: “People don’t spend as much time with other guild members as they do their friends/family.”

The fairness principle that our guild operates on mandates that everyone be treated with equal respect and consideration. While we believe this is a good and proper approach to administration, it can only be taken so far in relationships. The idea that a person ought to share his time equally among all members of a group is preposterous. It’s impossible, in fact. The very idea is framed by an arbitrary concept of fairness. Families don’t operate on the “fairness principle.”

Growing up, I had a “Granny” who lavished me with affection, praised my accomplishments and went out of her way to cook my favorite foods. I also had a “Grandma” who criticized me, made me feel unwelcome and gave preference to my older cousins. Is it any wonder that I preferred “Granny” to my austere “Grandma”? It oughtn’t be. I cared more for Granny and sought to avoid Grandma because of the way they responded to me… the way they made me feel about myself.

Likewise, when “Guildie” offers help, asks politely when he wants our assistance and strikes up conversations for no other reason than to find out how our day has been while “Guildmate” takes advantage of us, begs and whines and refuses to communicate clearly or effectively, we’re going to prefer one to the other. That’s normal. It’s not a matter of prejudice – which means to “judge beforehand” – but a matter of judiciousness – judging based upon evidence. We make choices on how to spend our time based upon the known, not the unknown.

I’ve said before that it’s right and proper for people to spend time with their friends and family. It’s appropriate for them to spend more time with this group than other people they aren’t as familiar with. Being comfortable with a group is no excuse for not reaching out, but being outside the group is no excuse for not reaching in either. It may sound stupid for me to say, but I feel compelled to state the obvious: People like likeable people.

The fatal flaw in the complaint levied by so many is that the moment someone begins receiving as much of someone’s time and energy as that person’s friends and family, that person has by definition become part of that “friends and family” group. The accusation is a moving target. Speaking only for myself, I’ve greatly broadened my social circle within the guild since I first joined and continue to expand that circle… not by embracing every individual member and burning myself out trying to equally be friends with everyone, but by reaching out to one person at a time.

The complaint that spurred this article assumes that I owe something to the speaker. As a fellow member of my guild, that person automatically has my respect, consideration and assistance. That is to say, I regard the person highly, always give them preference over non-members and help them any way I reasonably can to achieve their in-game goals. This does not mean that I owe them the time, attention and affection I offer my wife or my closest friends. Some things are given freely, others are earned.

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Jon Blevins is an officer of In Vino Veritas.
He's a pastor, husband, gamer and prefers Coke to Pepsi.
He lives in Minnesota, land of ice and... more ice.

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.