This came up in guild last night. I've never been in a top endgame raiding guild, but I'm currently working on building such a guild for TBC. Is it possible to remain humble and nice while being elite players? Or does bringing those elite players also bring elite attitudes (which gets reinforced in guild I feel), which means players who have their share of arrogance and such. I know from my previous experiences with raiding while mean players who were skilled annoyed me at times, nothing pissed me off more than the nice guy/gal who wouldn't commit to helping the raid progress and wouldn't pull their weight in the raids. Because with the latter I had no idea how to deal with them.

So from a perspective of building a raiding group, how does one real with recruiting players? Go for the great players, regardless of attitude (well within reason, don't recruit total assholes or people who are trying to sabotage/backstab the guild), go for the nice/committed people, regardless of skill or try to strike a middle ground? We've tried to get the best and nicest players, but that seems to be only a small segment of the population, which has made recruiting very slow.

As well do you think being a top player of an MMO game like WOW correlates to being, sorry to bring a pun an Elitist Jerk?

If your guild is full of skilled players who loathe each other you won't get anywhere. The same can be said about having a guild of tight knit friends who absolutely suck. It's a balancing act.

If someone becomes a jerk because they are good at a video game, just /gkick'm and get it over with. Someone like that isn't worth your time.

It won't usually. the guild falling behind other guilds and losing the good and nice players to recruitment of the new top dogs will kill such a guild.

No more elitist or arrogant than an employer who wants a strong workforce. You HAVE to be elitist if you want a decent rate of progression in this game. If you invited everyone who made an application to the guild, you would be progressing very slowly. Many applications simply don't meet the standards you expect. It feels mean to turn around and tell them "Sorry, buddy, your gear sucks" (we aren't going to keep running MC and BWL so you can gear up) or "You don't have the experience we expect" (we can't be assed to teach you and you sound like an idiot anyway), but ultimately, you only have so many spots you can fill and finding the best and brightest not only benefits your progression because they learn quickly, but people that actually know and understand the game tend to get along better with each other.

Its a good feeling to give someone an important job in a fight and you know full well that it will be done down to the letter without the need to explain things for 20 minutes. You earn each others' trust through your performance and your personality and no raid group would progress faster than one with a bunch of members that trust each other.

Plus, having to stop every 30 seconds and respond to another tell from your new recruit asking you "So, is this talent good? What about this one? How do I enchant my shoulders? What's a Burning Adrenaline? *BOOM!*" gets kind of annoying.

Is that common at all, though? Barring the truly disagreeable (who are rare), mutual respect seems to prevail between two "Elitist Jerks", which usually leads to some level of comraderie if not quite friendship.

I think it is more common than you might think, although probably not an everyday thing. I can think of 2 to 3 guilds Ally side with people like this, my own ( to a very small degree ) included.

I thought this thread was about the sense of camraderie and brotherhood we all enjoy on this forum, a shared sense of triumph and sacrifice which forges us all into a Band of Elitist Jerks.

Not what I thought I guess.

Most people that are really good at something will display a certain amount of elitism towards people that are not on the same level as they are, I think it simply can't be avoided and I don't really think it's such a bad thing. What can be avoided however is getting people in your guild that act egocentrical and arrogant against his own peers. There is no real trick to weeding these people out, other than doing a thorough job at getting to know them when they apply. This includes such basic things as background checks (if they aren't sponsored by a guildmember) and taking them on a run to a 20man or somthing, but also have plenty of casual chats with applicants that are not about their character and application so you can get a feeling for their character.
I guess it's a bit more difficult if you are not an established guild, but generally the best recruitment is done via guildies that know people from something or have experience with them in some other way and sponsor them in their application. Provided that the guildmember that 'knows the guy' is a quality member ofcourse :)

Unfortunately, more than you think. Because even a guild you are relatively anonymous (unless you know each other outside of WoW), being anonyomous seems to act as a bit of a personality amplifier.

In my old guild, there were a few players who were good at their class, as they started getting serverwide recognision for it (in those stupid Realms Forums "Who's the best <insert class> threads) they became unbareable. Lot's of "everyone knows I'm the best <blank> in the server for my gear" crap from them everytime they were asked to do something, complaints about gear, threats to leave because other guilds "begging me to join them".

The funny this is, six months after leaving the guild I met some of them in person and they were the nicest people you can imagine to meet. Something about this game drives some people cookoo it seems. ;)

So being good at a video game can make some people become jerks.

Well Malan I think that is a point as well. If people post here they are the people willing to put in the extra mile, to do some math to determine stuff, to do the most they can to maximize their skill and knowledge in game. It doesn't mean that we are all "nice" people. We have our rough edges I think, and I was wondering that if along with that skill and drive to succeed if that doesn't bring some arrogance and elitism with it. I know of some very humble but skilled players, but imo that is generally dwarfed by the skilled players who are jerks to some degree or other.

Good question..

My guild is on Gluth/Loatheb/Gothik atm, and the vast majority of us are skilled, considerate people who help each other out. We don't post stupid stuff on the forums, talk shit, etc.

Sure we have a few people in the guild with bad ISPs, slow computers, lack the ability to learn and react quickly the first time, etc. Crappy comps or disconnects were fine for most of BWL/MC, but when a sponge group's priest disconnects right before the huhu enrage or if your connection sucks for Heigan...you get the picture.

It comes down to the leadership. Personally I (we) don't have the heart to kick any of these people just because blizzard made the game require more of them and their equipment than it did in the past. I'd much rather progress more slowly and play with the people I've known for 1-2 years than play with people I don't like just because they're skilled.

Can you have a guild full of really nice, awesome people who are also skilled and have great connections/computers? I'm sure it's possible because that describes a good chunk of my guild. I'm sure there are guilds out there that have 90% people like that, but IMO they're quite lucky. It would be exceedingly difficult to build such a guild on purpose....at least at this point in the game. Great people tend to be loyal and bond with their fellow players.

I disagree, these two things are not a balancing act... they're not at war with each other.

If your players are jerks, they're going to be jerks aside from their skill... if they turn out good, they're going to be arrogant pricks... those are the type you don't want around.

We have a tight knit guild who are mostly friends with each other, barring a few exceptions... yet we seem to have plenty of skilled members.

I don't buy the "i'm good therefore I can be a prick" attitude... those people don't deserve anything... even if they are "Good."

Part of being good at this game is fitting in.

Having mature players who don't create drama, and its more than possible to have a tight knit successful extremely skilled guild. Being elitist is mentally bred sometimes being at the top, but its not worse than a leader complex, people just need to keep their ego's in check. Humility is a beautiful thing, hopefully most people learn it sometime in life.

From my experience building up a guild, the most important thing by far is attitude. My worst months in WoW have not been when my guild couldn't put together 10 people to go to ZG, it was when I've had to deal with the assholes and drama whores who were, although skilled, just plain mean and cruel and inconsiderate. For that reason, never again will I let skill be a greater factor for me than attitude in terms of who gets into my guild. It's simply not worth the trouble.

That being said, for building up your raid group two things are equally important--attitude and commitment. People who are committed will also tend to be better, simply because this isn't a very difficult game, and people who are willing to work hard and listen will definitely improve. That's really all that counts.

Maskirovka--are you Russian?

Exactly, this guy sums it up... and being on loatheb/gothik you're not exactly "progressing slowly." You describe a mature guild situation that also is doing extremely well.

I've noticed the ego complex seems to run much deeper with alliance on our server, and notably a few of the top worldwide alliance guilds - but aside from that its quite possible to have a guild that does well that isn't full of assholes.