I've seen a lot of guild and raid leaders in my day, ranging from obnoxious geeks to charismatic godheads. Every time, I try to analyze what makes them a good or bad leader. After talking with friends in my guild and others, and a particularly good dialogue with Delheru of Ascent, I thought this would be a good topic for these boards.

Focus: What makes a good guild-leader? What are the most effective examples of leadership you've seen or used? What mistakes have you seen or made? What kind of real-life experience translated well to in-game leadership, or vice versa?

Also:

# How do you motivate your guild?
# How do you deal with laziness and general malaise?
# How do you handle discipline?
# Analyzing your guild policies and raiding habits, do you use any kind of operant conditioning to get your members to do what you want?

For reference:

Being a leader that is flexible and does what is best for his/her current group of people. If it is a hardcore raid with 95% people that are putting in 45-50 hours of gaming a week. Well then you have to be different than having a group where 95% of the group is happy to be clearing MC each time and has no interest in progressing.

A leader that can just guide the policies of the guild in the direction that is best for the majority in the guild is key and knowing that if you need to make the unpopular choice if it is gonna make the guild as a whole better. Not every choice will be popular but as long as you dont have too many times where you go "damn I really fucked up there" and also if you do screw up, fix it ASAP.

The biggest issue I have seen with some GMs is when they think they are right and refuse to back down and tear the guild down around them due to their own pride. A good leader should rarely be noticed and when they are it is when they quell some turmoil of sorts cause yes no matter what you will have little battles in the guild. Overbearing GMs typically just ruin guilds.

The also questions are difficult cause most of them are case by case type of things.

-We have used DKP, extra attendance in certain raids, and even switching up times of raids to help out individuals on occasion.

-Depends on the situation but mixing it up and doing stuff like drunken PVP night always seems to help. Especially after spending 4 hours wiping on the same damn boss.

-Depends alot on the transgression.
From public ridicule :)(usually jokingly) to /gremove

-You cant force people to do what you want. I tend to rely alot on my military training but that is not a good thing with people not use to that type of person. I have found that people will do stuff you want if you make the benefits high enough.

Risking the use of a cliché, it's all about the foundation of the guild.

Include people you know or have played with extensively. Rule with an iron fist for a few months, taking care that no idiots slip through the first few runs of new invites. Then, pretty much let the guild run itself. Keep playstyle expectations to a minimum as well. If you want to raid, form your guild with that in mind. Trying to convert a casual guild into a raiding one won't work.

Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about in reference to EJ. Our guild is literally as perfect as one can get and I challenge anyone in it to figure out why. Having a guild with fantastic people, fantastic chemistry, and fantastic gaming ability is pretty special by itself. But having that coupled with a membership exceeding 150 people is just freaking insane. I knew we had something good when many of us first played together during closed beta, but I would have never thought in a million years it'd turn out the way it has.

What the crap, I sound like a damn teenage girl gushing on about her latest crush on Brad Pitt. Someone shoot me for being so pussy.

We find solidarity in our enjoyment of relentlessly making fun of Kaubel.

Does this happen during or between your frequent retirements?

You need a guild structure that will lend itself to the shared aims of the individual members of your guild. You also need some inherent consistency in those aims. If a 75-person guild has 25 people who want to contend for world firsts and min/max for PvE, 25 people who are PvP fiends and think PvE is a boring means to an end, and 25 people who just want something fun to do in their meager spare time, no leader will make that work.

The topic is far broader than I can adequately address right now, so I'll focus on the issue of how to persuade people to do what you want. I disagree with the Skinner box approach -- it's hollow and ill-suited to an MMO setting. If I could transmit endorphins through the internet, then maybe. But you can't change how people think with DKP rewards the way you might train a rat with food pellets. If people aren't logging on for learning attempts, rewarding them for doing so isn't conditioning them -- it's offering a reward that may shift the cost/benefit calculus of many players sufficiently to induce them to log on. They still hate wiping and just want easy rewards, but they're willing to endure the wiping part if doing otherwise would mean falling too far behind in the loot order. But that's not a recipe for success, and it's not a long-lasting solution. I prefer to try to reason with people, to change their minds, and to promote a culture that fosters the desired attitudes among guildmembers. The key is for people to do something not out of obedience but because they, too, believe it to be the right course of action.

I also employ guilt and sarcasm liberally, but really, it only has any effect because I have a good enough group of people to begin with.

I can't imagine leading a group of purely self-interested actors would be very much fun, though it'd certainly be easy enough.

Since you already have the group of people you want, I'd be interested in hearing the views of other guild-officers on recruitment. Do you recruit strong players? Do you recruit wholely based on class? How do you deal with having a *VERY* limited pool of players interested in end-game on a particular server/faction, split between several guilds?

Furthermore, when a guild first forms, it's not a guild 90% of the time. It's a group of people who came together to get loot, and maybe clear some content. It's essentially a PUG.

At some point, ideally, that situation transforms, and players who were previously hangers-on "mature" into individuals who can contribute to the raid as a whole in a way above and beyond 'average". How do you promote this transformation, and is there any way to accelerate it? Is there any way to predict it in applicants?

If there is not much interest in end-game in your guild, but it is spread between a few guilds, try to make a new Guild to encourage these interested Players into one pool.


There is a EJ sticky post that says that don't recruit dated in November 2005, so they must have a good pool of players that continue to play to this day.

Not at all applicable to my situation, but personally, if I were recruiting to form a raid guild, my primary criteria would be maturity, competitiveness, and an analytical bent, in that order. Given those three, everything else that's relevant will follow in short order.

We recruit based on class needs, but won't take someone just because of their class. We've turned down the almighty dwarf priest applicant a fair number of times now, simply because we didn't like the player.

Sadly (IMO), we won't recruit a strong player if we don't have a current need for that class. We lost out on one of the better rogues on our server because of this.

Eldre'thalas really doesn't have the "very limited" population problem anymore; we're not a huge server like a Medivh, but we have enough people to support the end-game guilds that exist, more or less. You'd have to ask one of the smaller guilds who are trying to make the 20->40 step to get an answer to that.

I can only speak for rogues, but if they listen to me, odds are they'll turn from a loot sponge into someone capable of contributing. Yeah, that sounds arrogant, but seriously: I am a good rogue. Being a good rogue is teachable. I can teach it; I have several, er, proteges as proof of that. Honestly, in terms of raiding, a willingness to listen to and take advantage of good advice is the best predictor for whether someone is capable of "maturing". I realize that you're asking about the next step; the ability to take that information and apply it in a fashion not already laid out for them, to produce original thought, but I'm not at all sure there's any way to predict that. The best you can do is recruit the ones who are capable of being solid, and hope that they can develop into something more than that over time.

And dont make the mistake too many groups do and just recruit hoping that enough arrows stick cause those that dont will pull your guild down. Be controlled on your recruiting. If you create a solid situation where people like being there they will give the guild more chances before leaving.

Oh crap, I only have one of those three.

We still don't and probably never will. That doesn't mean we don't take new people though.

In my experience, which spans 10 solid years of online gaming, good players tend to be those you just come across when you're not really looking. Actively recruiting people is the equivalent of trolling the bottom of a shallow gene pool. A good friend of mine whom I met online a long time ago had a saying that I still take to heart. He said, "Before playing online, you should automatically assume that 90% of the people you'll come across are going to be assholes. Keep that in mind and you'll have fun regardless of what happens."

Hopefully we've learned from certain past mistakes in that regard.

We're also having trouble keeping members on our server, rather than in our guild, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

Thus far we've lost a Priest to Medivh Alliance, a Priest to Alleria Alliance, and two warriors (one of which was an MT) and a hunter to Spinebreaker Alliance.

Maybe those aren't the type of players we would want anyway, given that they're obviously not willing to put the work in to problem solve instead of going to farm-status content, but it still did hurt the guild to a certain extent.

I always find this topic funny, seeing as DnT basically operates without a guild leader. Our leader played sparingly at the beginning of retail (when I wasn't in the guild), and continued on playing when he could, raiding with us once every week or so, and generally logging on whenever, until a few months ago when he went completely inactive due to RL. We can still contact him on aim, and a select few have his info, but basically our guild runs on anarchy.

We've found the most useful solution to the various topics you posted is raid slot pressure. Recruit such that no one person, or group of people is essential to your raid. This forces everyone to bring their best every time or *gasp* you don't get to raid. It also gives you flexibility, and versatility. We never stop raiding because X tank, or priest didn't show up. Someone else does the job, and the raid progresses as usual.

Even though I know the answer to this question based on DnTs track record, doesn't this type of motivation bring a very negative atmosphere to the guild? I'd imagine a lot of people end up raiding for themselves rather than the guild, using this system.

Edit: Seperate question: A thing I'm personally very curious about is what attributes guild officers in charge of recruitment look for. By having had BWL and MC on farm for quite a while now, we have the luxury of recruiting based on eagerness to learn, commitment and (unique to european servers I guess) the ability to speak English, rather than based on gear and previous raiding experience.

It's my personal belief that a good player who's never raided can become a good raider in two weeks, but a bad player who's been raiding for a year will never really become a good raider.