Igni

Feel free to add whatever comments you'd like, but please answer the two following questions before you do so:

List the three characteristics of officers you were glad to have, in order of their value


List the three characteristics of officers that you regretted choosing, in order of most reliable warning sign to less reliable warning signs

Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.

 

Igni

I saw a person online yesterday that I hadn't seen for ages. Hard core, only person who has more time played on his main than I do. He actually started a guild, built it up quickly, suceeded and then it fell apart due to drama. My first thought was "I should recruit him." And then I thought "well maybe I should do some research first."

But what exactly should I do research on? Besides "plays a lot", what characteristics should I look for and look to avoid when recruiting and selecting officers?

Also, a friend told me that I should avoid selecting people younger than 18 to be officers as they are prone to mistake power in the guild for actual power. Would people agree with that? And if so, are there any other types of people who are prone to make that mistake?

Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.

 

Ragnor

The worst officers are the ones who want to abandon doing existing aq/bwl content as soon as they have all the gear they want from there.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Spades

Good things:

1.) Maturity. They must be able to handle membership disputes well, be respectful and set a good example for the rest of the guild.
2.) Activity. An officer needs to be a fairly active player, either on the website forums (where he can contribute to discussions) or in-game.
3.) "Skill." An officer needs to be good at the game/class he's playing, both to set an example and to lead others.

Bad things:

1.) Short temper is a bad sign. Always look for someone who doesn't blow a fuse quickly, because someone who does isn't going to handle the stresses of leadership very well.
2.) Poor communication skills. Bad typists make bad communicators (usually.) You want to avoid promoting people who do the "hey how u r" deal, and who can't express themselves well on Ventrilo.
3.) And finally, it's unfortunate but you have to consider what the membership will think when you make this new person an officer. Is he well liked? That's good. But if he isn't, you may alienate some people, and then you have to think; is it worthwhile? Maybe not.

To Igni: I think the age generalization is really stupid. There are 15 year olds with more maturity and leadership qualities than people in their 20s or even 30s. Judge a person by how they present themselves and by the criteria listed in this thread, rather than how old they are.

"Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long."
-Rorschach, Watchmen

 

Pyros

Women is a big no
JK ^^

Anyway, usually you should look for people who can discuss with others, have a lot of time to listen to complaints(not just play time) and can make choices for themselves/their class. Also, someone who understands other classes is a good plus, since you'll usually have fights and arguments between classes, because of loot or to find out whose fault it is you just wiped(see healers blaming tanks, tanks blaming healers and dps blaming others ^^). The 18+ is usually a quality when dealing with people and being under pressure because of incoming drama. I'd say most guilds at one point or another will face drama and harships, the only difference wether they get past it or explode is how their officers deal with the problem.

However, judging someone without actually seeing him handle a situation is pretty hard, people can look like they'd make good class officer and crubmel under the responsabilities, or on the other hand they might not look fit for the job and start shining once they get used to it.

 

enshula

People who want to be an officer is probably a bad sign. Maybe look for people that like to do a specific thing, such as recruiting, moderating forums, playing with pretty css, leading raids, teaching people to play, researching new content, managing assist trains amd setting targets for tanks, setting healing assignments and so on.

Heck id almost make lua scripters officers, someone to keep a handle on what mods increase efficiency in raids would be good at any rate.

 

henaki

For a RAID leader:
Loyalty: If a officer bails for higher ground or beacuse he's not feeling good today, that's going to send out a bad message to your members, he's likely going to run away with something, and leaving you lacking in an area (either losing your best raid leader, a shitload of gear or even your guild's assets).

Communication: You need a raid leader that can not only communicate to people, but to multiple people with completely different personalities, and not piss them off. I think this is equally important to loyalty.

Intelligence: Arguably the least important of the three, but it helps. He needs to be able to make good judgement, and everything else he can look up on the internet unless you are cutting edge.

I don't regret choosing a single officer for any specific trait, but rather every mistake I've seen made was due to a brain fart or misunderstanding. They weren't exactly qualified sometimes, but they weren't unqualified due to a character trait.

Gur - Level 64 Undead Warlock on Hellfire

 

Pand

The role each officer in the guild should be well-defined and they must standout as dedicated members. There can't be too many chieftans in the guild and it's better to have more people willing to be indians.

Raid Leader - Must be a person that has patience and isn't easily demoralized through times of wipes. It is best that he be an intimidating person to listen to over vent and can always be taken seriously, but also isn't someone that everyone is afraid of either. If he is personable enough to keep the raid entertained and motivated, it's also a huge plus. A good way a raid leader can win points for trust and loyalty in the guild is by being unselfish with loot, and especially won't abuse his power.

Officers - Dedication, willingness to put effort towards improving the welfare of the guild, and again won't abuse their power in the guild either.

Class Leaders - Consistant raiders and usually the most talented of their class. Class leaders shouldn't have more power than deciding on who gets to go in the raid from their class. Also, managing the time of their respected classes so that the necessary people sub in-and-out of the raid for looting purposes in times of instance farming.

-----

Choose your officers and class leaders wisely. When starting out a guild, do not deligate power right away to too many people and remember to think of your dedicated members first before going and recruiting too many. Be open minded also when starting to raid and sometimes originally the first raid leader isn't the best person to be raid leading throughout the guilds existance.

 

Exewut

Plus points:

- People who take care of there typing and pronunciation. You want to avoid leet typers that think 'how r u' (as Spades says) is a good English expression. (Why should I believe you will work for the guild if you don't even care enough to take care of your typing?)
- You need to be well informed of the game. Be it by playing alts and knowing the other classes, reading forums, being a min/maxer. Knowing what other classes are supposed to do and how well they should be able to do it is essential.
- Patience. No sudden decisions, everything has to be thought over, thought over again, and then made public
- Being able to make compromises. Something Belgians made into an art if I may say so myself.

Bad points:

- Greedy, ill tempered (speaks for itself really)
- Having a mod fetish. Keeping damage meters running to see who's under performing, using mods like decursive, Cthun warner etc. speed up the progress allot.
- Being friend off ... , being the popular guy in the guild,... basically promoting someone because of his social status or to keep him from moving to another guild.

Most of this is very hard to measure off course, and I must admit I have no leading position in the guild I am in now, I'm just speaking from previous experiences in wow and other mmorpg's.

edit: To clarify, some of these bad/good points are just some things to help you shift the good players from the bad. A person who types bad, because English is his second language for example, is not necessary a bad officer, it's just a warning sign he probably is. In my own oppinion.

Ask me about obscure politicians.

 

TL-Seria

Stubborn

 

Branar

Like Exewu, I think that an important sign of a good officer is someone who can compromise. Especially if you have officers that are representative of different cliques in your guild...one officer unwilling to compromise can really mean "half your guild disagrees with the other half", and that's just the beginning of the end right there.

Along the same lines, I would want my officers to be people who can admit they are wrong and who'll be the first to call themselves out when they fuck up.

No one is perfect, and eventually your officers WILL make mistakes - whether it's on awarding loot, inviting a problem member, or simply wiping a raid - and it says a whole lot to the rest of your guild when they spend a lot of time rationalizing it away, passing the buck, or simply refusing to acknowledge it.

 

◊ Bekah

Good leaders. Pied pipers. People who people will follow just for the sake of following without any use of force or agression. They walk into a room and people generally like them and agree with them. ID 'em and keep them close- they're fantastic at helping keep the guild grounded and all marching along happily. We're lucky to have multiple pied pipers. Be careful though- when a piper leaves they tend to leave a mess behind them or take a lot of people with them. Keep an eye on them and try to solve problems quickly.
Strat Gurus. The people who love nothign more than to troll sites all day and look for something new to theorycraft. They know what's going on when and where. Very very good for speeding you through old content and helping you catch up to new content.
Number crunchers. They design dkp systems in thier sleep and like to puzzle over raid/guild compositions and min maxing the effectivness of X and Y vs Z.

Highly agressive. He was great for the immediate(lots of bosses killed early one- good raid leader)- but hard as hell on the long term(People were getting seriously discouraged at being talked down to and yelled at and having your raid leader quit the guild in the middle of a raid yelling about how everyone there were pussies... well it didn't help). The rest of the officership was much more laid back and generally mellow- but we promoted a great raid leader who was simply too out there from the rest of us.
Highly passive. He was great at rubber stamping proposals. He wanted officer chat and the nifty title but otherwise he didn't play much, didn't care at all, and while a great guy... just bleh as an officer. Beware of the extremely mellow... they sometimes lack the drive to get anything done =( Gone by the time we set up councils.
Wrong vision. We wanted progress, he wanted stability and farmed content. Great guy for setting up a working system, but he and the rest of us realized fairly quickly that he wasn't in it for the same tings we were and it was going to be a constant fight if he kept trying to change things against the majority. Very hard to track at the beginning- some people don't know what they want until they see it slipping away =(

The Dreary Stuff
1) People willing to analyze. DKP costs, guild bank, determining raid balance- all these things fall under the same category. An officer not helping analyze stuff probably isn't pulling his or her weight.
2) Someone with basic website/database management skills is pretty critical- all the better if they're willing to shoulder the costs of the site/trilo server and deal with the techs when there are problems. There's only so much copy and past you can get away with.
3) Someone with basic photo manipulation skills is a nice bonus. You can get away without it, but someone handy to process kill shots, make guild banners, and generally have a basic knowledge of lighting/color wheels (we're not talking art school here) and how it all goes together can give you a nice boost on things like the guild website and possibly videos. Presentation isn't everything- but it certainly helps. Make sure this person knows what you're aiming for heh... otherwise you might wind up with flamingos in inappropriate places. (We decided on a subdued look in muted colors to let the screeshots stand out- and we tried to get it as clean and sharp as possible in terms of layout)
4) A writer. Someone who's willing to spend an hour of thier day typing up the junk that needs to be said, and who can do it semi coherently.

People Skillz
1) People with good to decent people/leadership skills. You want your officership approachable from all angles. Don't recruit out of just one clique if you can avoid it. Make your officership represenative as much as possible even if you are running a dictatorship. Even absolute rule is tempered by a well liked leadership. That said, don't take people jsut to have a class balance if they're not suited to officership. I think I'd like another melee officer (3paladins,1druid,1priest,1mage,1warrior)- but we havn't had a name jsut stand out to us who seemed to be willing and/or have the interest in offer-type things.
2) Accessability. Ghost chairs populated by people who are never online or are permanantly afk are of no use. At the very least a willingess to be around an hour or two before and/or after raids to deal with the prime time population and to be acessable by the other officers for informaiton sharing.
3) The ability to police themselves. Lets face it, we're the parents of the guild in many ways. We hold authority and power and with that comes a very large dose of responsibility. I can't go totally batshit on a player because they've pissed me off. I shouldn't take out my bad day/week/year/life on the guild because I need a whipping boy. I have to be above rumor mongering or people won't come to me with thier problems. I need to be beyond lying about the little stuff or my guild mates won't come to me for important answers. You can rule by fear, trust, or adoration. Fear is very very shaky ground psychologically, adoration is difficult to achieve (muchless maintain) so a good helping of trust is key. Don't abuse your authority- eventually it won't be there anymore.
4) Preperation/Pulling weight. Officers should set a good example when it all comes down to the line. Minimal afk's. Putting out good to high numbers for thier specs. Showing up with the relevant consumables. People should be able to look at your buffs and judge what buffs THEY should be using. If you want everyone flasked- flask yourself. Don't ask anyone to farm more than you're willing to farm. (This goes back to accessability)
5) Outside connections. You want, if possible, for your officers to be cruising places like this (Hi guys!) spending time reading up on other guilds- getting out there and knowing where to go for information. A good officer can point you in a direction if they can't help you themselves. This goes back to analysis- people with the analytical curriosity will be naturally drawn to places with other people theorycrafting =P

There probably isn't a paragon of officership waiting for you to call thier name. In fact, historically, our best officers have been folks who didn't want the job but took it because they wanted it to be taken care of. (Not people who protest that they don't want it... but really do and don't want to be considered power hungry..... Sometimes that's a hard judgement call to make. And not people who didn't want it and took it because they felt forced into it) They're not going to be perfect. I'm pretty bad about mingling and while I'm approachable, my guildmates don't really get buddy buddy with me. One of our officers has a tendancy to blurt things out with less tact than others would use. We've all got little flaws, but they're generally made up for by someone else in the officership. My 2 abuse council mates are both very outgoing, but one has a tendancy to space out totally and miss tells, while I always catch them.

Some people will naturally fall into some roles. Let them! Anything they enjoy doing for the officership is one less thing you have to convince someone less willing to do. I love managing the bank, working on the "look" of the website (although anias does all the programming), and typing. They don't generally put me on heavy analysis jobs that I'm not so good at, and I take care of things that others would find tedious or inconsequential (By the same token I can't understand the obsession with analyzing raid balance when TBC is incoming- that's probably why I'm not doing it lol). I'm happy, they're happy. Happy officers are more productive. Happy officers don't quit or lead rebellions.

On that note, you have to be strong enough to back up whatever leadership role/style you take. If you are the benevolant dictator- you cannot allow mini dictators to form from within your officership just waiting for the coup. If you're a council head you have to be willing to be the glue between the different councils. One way of achieving this is to be a dominant leader and steamroll the opposition naturally. If you are NOT a strong leader naturally- you may not be able to lead a strong willed group of wildly different officers, so you'd want to pick people who could work with YOU even if they have other minor faults. There's a balance in finding the right people to follow your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses.

 

Schnappi

1) If you are in a multi-language guild, like most European guilds: someone who can speak/write English at a decent level.
2) An active person, in-game and during officer meetings.
3.1) A skilled player. Accepting orders and ideas from someone who constantly wipes you is hard for most people.
3.2) Social skills. Someone who can explain certain decisions to members who dont like that particular idea, and listens to their concerns. (this is mainly loot priority in "medium" guilds, from my own experience)

 

Dakous

Did not want to lead (self sacrifice as opposed to greed)
Did something about problems (initiative)
Just wants the job done

Taking in stray dogs. There's a reason those rabid monsters are out in the cold in the first place.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

◊ Double-Neg

<title>Best Practices: How to Get a Reputation on the EJ boards</title>

<body>Make a series of threads asking every question that you could possibly ever need to know the answer to doing something</body>

That aside I think these threads have good ideas in them, and ask some valid questions. But I'm just thinking that it all could have been one thread, or at least more spaced out time wise.

Not on IRC?

 

Shik

Can I suggest that EJ mods to grab some of the best posts on each topic and preserve them in something a little less rambling. There are a lot of valuable contributions, esp by people like Bekah, but wading though all of Igni's threads is a good way to get lost.

 

Omentuva

Quoted for truth.. You'll want people who can hold their own in a discussion, but are not afraid to admit their own mistakes. They are people too and as such they can make mistakes at times. You do not want people who are prone to being arrogant and are suddenly acting like they own the guild. (Actually, we got a tiny problem with someone like that now.) And keep them remembered that, though they might be the leadership of the guild, the normal members are NOT proles and are not stupid in any way. (Barring ofcourse, some things.) Keeping an open mind helps a lot.

 

Z-Factor

I've made a lot of mistakes and a lot of terrible decisions in the past 18 months. Yet remarkably we're the only guild on the server that has been around since day one with the same guild leadership and structure. The first guild to kill nefarian on Ravenholdt passed away last night, leaving only 2 others in BWL (we're joining them in a week) one horde and one alliance respectively. The great thing we have going for us as a guild is that the three 'guildleaders' completely complement each others leadership styles. You've got me, an arrogant asshole who retired from the top of the raiding game just as Nax was released but who has been drawn back into it, Khalan (who i mention by name only because you might have seen him posting on these boards) who is an incredibly determined guy, who has come from having absolutely 0 level 60 experiance when ravenholdt was launched in April to one of the most knowledgebale players regarding game mechanics and leadership qualities i have ever met, and finally Rissy (who you won't have seen) who has a far more diplomatic and gentile approach to guild leadership, ironing out any arguments that if i myself got involved in would result in a lot of pain and spilt blood before a resolution.

Admittedly this 3 way leadership set-up only works because we've known each other for well over 3 years now and know each other incredibly well, and as such the firebrand natures of myself and Khalan rarely lead to super-sized drama as we know exactly what the other is thinking. I occaisionally feel sorry for the arrogant prick who gets decapitated for trying to wreck what the guilds got going, as we don't take community shit like that, but our success as a guild has already been recognised by blizzard (mainly for our roleplaying innovations) and we're just hoping TBC allows us to compete at the very top of the PvE ladder, as it is well documented how badly RP servers suffer from a lack of a creative player pool (something which has severely hampered our progress and has forced us to stop trying BWL for over a month now).