Tell me about your guild drama
I am an officer of a guild on Icecrown. We have SO MUCH FREAKING DRAMA. It is so frustrating to try to help administer a guild where people are fighting all the time . Does your guild experience a lot of drama? If so, how do you deal with it, especially if you are an officer. Do you find that it "flares up" or that it is a constant amount? Any words of wisdom are appreciated.
Now that, that's out of my system. No, we don't have a lot of drama. And when problems do arise, we try to deal with them quickly and quietly. Whatever comes of it, we try to do what's best for the GUILD. The Core of CoT has been together for 3 years and a few games, and Drama is one thing we've always tried to avoid. A game is suposed to be FUN, not so much work.
Perhaps a guild with less drama would be better suiting to you? Or *gasp* even weeding out a few bad apples that seem to be the cause of this "Drama"?
"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. ~Bradley Millar "
Re: Tell me about your guild drama
*sits next to Luveth on the "I HATE DRAMA" bench*
I am not an officer, thank goodness. I am told that there is guild drama, and the folks who invited me to the guild left because of some guild drama, but I don't see it. I am one of those on the "fringes" of the guild. I can only play at odd times and it seems as if all the drama happens in guild chat, when I am not online. I do frequent our guild message board, but the drama doesn't happen where I can see it.
So I stay in the "ignorance is bliss" corner. If I were an officer, I would be compelled to get involved and do some weeding.
Re: Tell me about your guild drama
I was the leader and am the founder of my guild, I recently resigned the position after four years of office. Why? Because there's so much going on in my personal life as it is, I couldn't balance guild stuff ontop of it.
Let's take Drama #1.
My best friend (only know him online, but I live in such a desolate little down here in Wyoming..), had came to me when my guild (Colonial Marine Force aka CMF) was having a REALLY hard time - he was an officer and someone I needed then more than ever.
He told me he was thinking of leaving to join a big time, end game raiding guild, and the one he mentioned is one who told us if we didn't merge with them we could no longer go to MC with them, (we were allies, we were there when they wiped 10 times on Lucifron and stuck it out. Always on time and never caused a problem. Was bs), this guild had also stolen several of my members, and he was jumping on the band wagon.
He "left" and "joined" said guild about two times, eventually we talked and I smacked him over the head, and I talked to his gf and she sorta smacked him over the head and he finally realized that loot is secondary if not totally forgotten about with this game; it's the people who matter.. He's undergoing the recruit stages of our guild again.
Drama #2
We do joint runs with two other guilds atm, I founded the idea and we call it "Coalition of Shadows", basically an alliance where everyone has say as though it were a single guild.
The other night, it was late and we were all tired and some folks had asked us to stop by the Zul'Gurub entrance so we could buff, now I didn't hear this call, and many others didn't either so we kept riding along in the hopes to kill Venoxis (had been a BAD night, Arlokk wtfowned us =/), and this one lady who I do really like, started getting *really* angry and sounded a bit belitting as we rode off.
So, I retorted, and her husband got pissed and it was, needless to say, a bad moment for all of us.. I didn't act on my best and added to the fire at the start, I admit this.
But man, what a horrible occurence.. I believe her and her husband left the guild after that, not 100% sure if I was the cause.. If I was, well, frankly we shoulda just talked about it.
Anyways, posted an apology publicly and we started talking again, so it got sorta worked out.
Drama #3
I have a small guild, and constantly get people pissed that we don't have more people on.. And well, I can't sit everyone down and go "you have to be online more!", it's not right considering we're really more of a familyish guild, only 6 of us are really active anymore, our Coalition raids happen every Thursday and Saturday, so I fail to see what it is I am supposed to do precisely.. Lotsa folks left after they got bored with the game, I talked some out of it but geeze.
These are total minorities - there's *way* more drama than is probably worth fitting into a single post, or even a multitude of posts.. But I'll add more as I remember them.
Oh, wait! Here's a *spectacular* (wee for spelling?) one.
Drama #4
A guild we'd been allied with was changing servers and asked some of us if we'd also like to make some new characters, we agreed and figured hey, this'll be cool and will help us acheive the raiding stuff while still having CMF small and tidy!
It was going ok, but the one officer.. My lord..
The website.. I am the webmaster and everything that COULD go wrong frigging has gone wrong, from downgrade errors to my entire theme becoming incompatible.. It has been hell, but I've attempted to do my best.
April 12th, one of my dearest friends and my ex-girlfriends BEST friend died in a car accident at the age of 16.. it was a horrific event and I made sure everyone was aware of it.
What happens? Few days later he's getting on my case about certain things being unfinished.. Errr, sorry, RL > WoW any day and any time. I kinda got pissy with him a few times and he has since backed down.
People just forget way to much that we're playing a dang video game!
I mean, sure, things happen and we get angry.. But geeze, there's lines!
Okay, all for now =)
I'll think about posting my little recent RL events (I know most folks here don't know me, so I don't want to seem like one of those whiny men who goes around crying on every MySpace account about how horrible his life is and whatnot -_-) if anyones interested, you can always shoot me a PM.
Re: Tell me about your guild drama
When people get slighted, they tend to speak out. In turn, people speak back. Due to the nature of the subject matter, certain guild decisions and procedures need to be altered because the obnoxious people need to be handled with kid gloves.
This is drama. It comes in many forms. And I hate it with a passion.
I have only found ONE solution for this. As an officer of my guild, I will ALWAYS base my decisions for the benefit of the guild. Anything detrimental will not be tolerated.
Drama happens when people think they can convince you and other people to see their side for whatever reason. They will do things like disrupt raids, complain constantly, send whispers to people who are trying to concentrate, babble in guild/vent/teamspeak/say/etc with their "woe is me" plight. The longer the individual has been in the guild, the longer this goes on.
Unfortunately, I'm not a nice guy. You talk too much on vent, you're muted. You spew too much crap on any of the chat channels, I /ignore you. You pull any pranks during raids that get people killed, I kick you out and give your drop to the next guy. Keep complaining repeatedly, I kick you from the guild. It's not like we don't have 4-5 applicants dying to take your place.
That's how I handle drama.
More than once I've been told "learn2care". I don't have time. I did not come online to be part of your emotional support group. My response? "...Come to play or don't come at all..."
Re: Tell me about your guild drama
Hate the drama and the ego-kittens! We don't allow it. Luckily I've found a group of like-minded folks who actually believe that mmorpgs are hobbies and the entire purpose of logging in is for enjoyment. We enjoy the people, we enjoy the game, or we don't log in. Ego-kittens get the boot. Yes, we boot 'em.
I've been an officer in CoT with Iuveth/Molley since it's début in 3/2003. We have a leadership system that is really 4 councilors - in the event of drama, they are to have a meeting with those involved and the 4 councilors decide how it ends - their decision, once made is final. We pick our 4 councilors very carefully as people who we know will keep their personal feelings out of it and make the best decision for the guild.
I've found that sometimes you'll get really great members, who, once established in the guild, sometimes even made officers, feel safe to stir things up for whatever reason. In one instance, we had a core member who thought he was above punishment and was instigating things with an initiate. There's more to the story, and some of it only the councilors of that time know, but after all was said and done, the core member was removed from the guild. At the time, it was very weird ousting a founding member and officer for an initiate, but looking back, I can honestly say it was the best decision for the guild.
I think we've only had 2 or 3 councilor meetings in the 3 years we've been a guild. Each time, tough decisions were made, but luckily for the guild the councilors always called upon their loyalty, integrity and logic to decide the best for the guild as a whole.
Unfortunately we are at a point where not enough of us are in the same game. Either RL stuff prohibits us or we're simply not enjoying the same game. So we not really in an mmorpg right now, but we are still keeping in touch through our website and hope to be a guild again when a game interests enough of us.
Oh and I understand about website demands. I do ours and it makes me furious when someone complains that I'm not complying with their request in what they think is a timely manner. I always tell them, "I'll be glad to give you access so that you can do it yourself." That usually stops all complaints and only once has someone actually taken me up on it, and they never finished their design. It's alot of work, and I do enjoy it, but sometimes I have too much going on in my RL or I actually want to play so the website takes a backseat. Sometimes they are great ideas, but big projects that I know I will not keep up with. I figure it this way: I took on the doing the webpage with zero web skills and figured everything out as I went, so other people, if they want their idea done bad enough, can do that too. And if they don’t want to do that, then they don’t really want it. Our website is totally a “if zeli wants to do it, then it gets done when she feels like it” thing. I don’t mean it to be snotty. It’s just that I’m not a techie person so this stuff is difficult for me. I like learning the stuff, but at the same time, if someone skilled actually wanted to do it, I would have no problems handing it over to him or her. I’m sure someone with an ounce of education in web design could do a much better job with our site. It’s one of those situations where it would be better for the guild so I’d gladly step aside. Luckily, aside from me getting annoyed, it’s never caused any drama. And my annoyance subsides when I realize that this person is excited about the guild and our communication with each other and that’s really a good problem to have. We’re a casual guild as well so that benefits me as to not have to have a hardcore information system in place.
I HATE DRAMA!!!!!!!!
Email This To a Friend
Topic Commands
Click to receive email notification of replies 
Click to stop receiving email notification of replies