Knowing when to step back

Initially after the appearance of doubt about us being able to run Kill Frenzy in both RIFT and WAR, things went a bit ropey. With KF-WAR down to about 3 people, I made the decision to close the guild in WAR and we focussed on RIFT. Since then as you know I have returned to WAR and KF-WAR is very much back, growing in strength and entertainment value. However the KF-RIFT guild is still extremely active. I’m only playing RIFT a little bit myself, but the guild is solid, continues to grow and the guys have started on the 10man raid scene, but are also focussed on getting everyone the Tier 2 expert gear they need to progress. As an aside, the key to success in PvE is in the preparation. Get people geared and while you should never order people to spec certain ways (unless you’re one of those prick ego guilds with no life or grip on reality) make sure that the specs/classes/roles in the raid have some synergy. Uhm, yeah… stopping this tangent before I go off on one.

The key to us keeping both guilds going was in me acknowledging that I was no longer in a position where it made sense for me to lead our KF-RIFT chapter. To progress in a PvE game you need a leader who is online a lot, is organising events and actively driving the guild forward. It takes more time and effort than I’ve got spare for RIFT. So I stepped back to my arch-overlord of the KF community role, focussed myself more on WAR and promoted an utter retard and morally suspect git called Filthiusia to guild leader of KF-RIFT, whilst giving him the support of the very keen and progress driven Lowtwo in an officer role. Of course alongside the existing KF-RIFT officers. With a bunch of old school KFers putting the time in at the helm, things are working out ok.

Giving up control can be a tough choice to make for a guild leader; you’re always worried about things drifting away from your core ideals or just the whole thing collapsing. Yet, in exactly the same way as management out in the real working world, if successful an organisation will grow to a point where it’s owner/MD/CEO/whatever’s time becomes sparse and for them to try and to run everything is to invite disaster. You have to know when and what to delegate. The when and what is often quite easy to recognise, the hardest bit is really in the act of handing things over.

Of course there is one other huge thing… who you choose to delegate to. As anyone that follows football (soccer, for those of you in hats), the result of that choice is the hardest bit to reliably predict. There are no foregone conclusions there, no matter what anyone says. That’s where as a guild leader you have to make a leap of faith.

Guildie willdie stuffie wuff

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this post, but I felt like talking about guilds a little. So if I ramble, you have my humble apologies.

First off as you may have heard, my guild Kill Frenzy is quitting WAR and transferring to RIFT. Yeah, I know I said we’d run factions in both and yeah I know that was predicted to fail, but we have done that sort of thing before without any real issues. The difference this time is quite suddenly pretty much everyone decided that WAR has just gone too far towards PvGear, has become too grindy, changed too much and they wanted to play RIFT instead. Not necessarily because we see RIFT as God’s gift to gaming (it isn’t), but more because WAR isn’t right at the moment and RIFT is a change of scenery. A change of scenery that runs extremely well and isn’t ridden with bugs… Obviously my little borderline rage quit didn’t help and I can only apologise for that, but shit happens, sorry lads and lasses.

One of the guys that that joined KF in WAR made a comment about every guild he’s been in eventually folding or being absorbed. We’ve pointed out that’s not what is happening here, the guild remains, just the game changes. And I suppose those are all the options for any MMO guild. They will have to at some point either:

1. Move to a different game.
2. Disband totally.
3. Be absorbed.

MMOs don’t have unlimited lifespans, at some point they will come to an end and whilst at the moment those stalwart veterans of MMOing like Ultima Online and Everquest are still around, they won’t always be and are most definitely too stale or dated for a lot of gamers. So every guild that played those or any other MMO will at some point have to choose one of those options and that’s before you take in any other factors that impact a guild’s status. Assuming you can keep your guild together, you either evolve or die. Hmmm, an online community going through Darwin’s evolution via the mediums of pixels and voice comms. Trippy.

So with help from fellow KFers we’re about to drag ourselves through the primordial soup of another MMO launch. Delicate, fraught with issues and potentially an evolutionary dead end, oooh the drama! I reckon we’ll be fine, again. Fingers crossed :D

Blagged myself a quality guild again

I was reminiscing recently with some of my old cronies about our past MMOs, which got me thinking about how much our guild has evolved over the many years and the factors that shaped its current form in WAR. The guild has changed with each game, but there’s a group of us that have moved together since Ultima Online. Anyways I’m gonna ramble a bit now about how my guild evolved, so you have been warned ;)

My first experience of MMO guilds was in Ultima Online, just before the 2nd age hit. In my first few days of UO I got talking to people from a guild called The Eternal Knights of the Circle (EKC). The EKC was an awesome guild, it had its own city, fought the good fight against PKs (players that had gone “red” from murdering so many other players), was very well structured internally and had a strong moral code. You simply could not be an arsehole and stay in EKC, it was all about a community of sound people. Interestingly it used a Monarchy system, no guild council or democratic malarkey, the king was the king, end of story.
I could write a whole article just about EKC, it really was the best guild I’ve ever been in (technically I’m still a member) and was where I cut my teeth in guild management as I moved up the ranks. It’s fair to say that EKC formed the foundation for everything I’ve done with or wanted out of guilds since. Just without the roleplaying bit…

I dabbled with loads of other MMOs, but the next one to get a grip was Dark Age of Camelot. Whilst playing on the beta, with a real life friend of mine “Filthius” and bunch of other ex-EKC, we started grouping with a collection of new people regularly. This naturally led to us deciding to form our own guild at launch. Soon as the game went live we got the cash together and formed the Legion of Darkness (LoD). We decided on Filth as guild master, with myself as co-GM. Filth was the main man for the in game leading, where as I focused on guild admin work and sorting out structure. With our EKC past we knew we wanted a guild that was again about the people, not the l337ness, we sure as hell didn’t want a guild full of wankers. Which led us to the development of guild rule no1 “No wankers”.
This simple, yet effective rule helped us form a great guild, which went on to become a fairly big player in the whole RvR scene. Obviously what qualifies someone as a wanker is totally subjective, but if you want a guild of likeminded individuals, then not taking in people that you would consider wankers does the job for you.
As ever with MMOs, you move on. With a new born daughter I didn’t have much spare time for running guild stuff and the temptation of dabbling with other new MMOs teased me away from DaoC. This eventually led to Filth and I jumping ship and surfing the new sea of MMOs.

Filth and I again ended up leading a guild, this time in World of Warcraft and once again with the “no wankers rule”. Yet again we had a friendly and fun guild. Over time WoW taught me a lot about running guilds, particularly as the MMO world became obsessed with loot. What a bloody nightmare, we had to write loads of sodding rules or risk watching turd hit spinny things. Like most guilds we had to make the move to a DKP variant and all the hideousness that entails.
As WoW changed more and more into Animal Crossing, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the game. The co-GM thing was no longer perfect, Filth and I as ever got on perfectly (we’ve been RL friends for like 15+ years), but at times our guild policies could lack clarity, as it depended on which one of us you spoke to.
In the last few months before WAR I decided I’d had enough. I stepped down from my co-GM position. WAR was approaching; I was pissed off with WoW, bored and only logging in to chat with my mates.

I’d decided with WAR that I’d set up a new guild as sole GM with a small number of rules (8), tightly controlled recruitment and suffering no fools. I had my core players from Blazing Phoenix coming along with us and this time I got the website, structure and everything sorted out well in advance. Filth of course would be on my officer team ;) Blood Pact was created on launch day with everything in place. Rule no1, was of course set in stone.

Since then Blood Pact has grown to become one of the premier Destruction guilds on our server, in size, activity and most importantly, quality. We’ve had 4 other guilds merge into us, all being ones where we knew them beforehand and we were certain of the quality of their members. The guild has a great atmosphere and it’s on its way to building another awesome online community. I imagine its more luck than judgement on my part tbh, but assuming I did something right in the last 10 years of guild management, here’s 7 things that I think might have helped…

1) Don’t recruit wankers. If any get in, kick them.
2) Democracy is over rated. A strong but fair leader means swift, decisive action. Plus the existence of rule 1 means if your leader is a wanker they have to kick themselves. :P
3) More than 10 main guild rules are too many. People won’t remember them, if they even bother to read them.
4) A nice website, clever charter and fancy uniform are all good and well, but it’s your guild member’s actions that define how your guild is actually perceived.
5) Don’t take on everything yourself; share your workload with a balanced officer team.
6) Officer ranks should have clear roles and responsibilities identified. If officers don’t fulfil their role, demote them, even if they’re your best mate.
7) Quality > Quantity. Always.