Friday, April 25, 2008

Guild Drama: Stopping it before it happens

This will be a frank post, that is to say I will speak my mind, share what happened, & expect the nuclear strike from readers who will be enraged by my observations. Others may agree with me but will lack the courage to speak their minds. I'm talking about the silent killer in WOW: Guild Drama.
Originally this post was going to be about my success in stopping it from occurring in my current guild, I began to think about Guild Drama with a clearer mind. Specifically how does it relate to real world interpersonal conflicts? Can you identify the types of Guild Drama & the Real World counter part. Because after all WOW is an MMO & what makes it special isn't the story as much as the players & how they interact w the virtual environment. Also I've noticed that WOW seems to have built in filters to resolve guild drama. The further you progress in end-game content, the less guild drama can exist since the instances require 100% co-operation. A guild that is cliquey & full of catty members cannot progress to the Eye, they will not have the cohesion and teamwork to handle the boss fights.
So Far I've identified the following types of guild drama:

1.) Nepotism\Cronyism: This type of guild drama occurs when guild members give preferential treatment to their real world family or real world friends. They get first pick @ gear & loot. The downside of this Guild Drama is that it's prevalent with the 5 man instances & 10 man raids (I recall on guild on Fenris 'since-disbanded' that was leading the progression through Kara. It's leaders were all brothers & their friends, so they got their tier tokens before anyone else. This however cannot progress past the 5 man \ 10 man instances since the requirements of the 25 man raids demand some system be put in place to distribute loot fairly.

2.) Cliquishness\Exclusion:
This guild drama occurs when specific members of the guild become a clique & determine who can come to guild runs & who can't because of interpersonal differences, not because of requirements. Ergo, your one of the best healers in the guild, we're running gruul's but since you & I don't like each other, I had the raid leader who's a buddy of mine not invite you. This drama can progress to the 25man content, but it gets stopped @ Tier 4 content since you need specific classes for the Tier 5 & 6 boss fights.
This occured to me in my current guild about a month ago (it's been resolved since!) One of the raid leaders felt my character offered nothing to the raids so if he was doing the invites he'd never invite me. This climaxed with a Gruul's pug run where I didn't tank ziggler the crazed, Which raised the attention of three other guild officers & the guild master. He was summarily told to start inviting classes that he had dismissed as ineffective, or he would be gkicked.

3.) Sex\Cattiness: In other words Vaginal Aggro.
This was the topic that I was most concerned writing about because I never know if someone is going to flame me about my opinion. In general I find that women cause the most time consuming drama in the game. Since playing wow I've seen the following.
Women using sex (real-life or chat) to
get gear\gold
dominate guild politics
Get preferential treatment with guild runs
(we can't run until she's back from the grocery sorry ppl!)
Have guild members kicked\stripped of rank
Have gear that guild members found through grinding\non-guild runs be given to them through intimidation.
- This one strikes a chord w me, In my previous guild I found a BOE 280 JC recipe & was told to give it to WomanX since she was a JC. However the alchemy world drop that she found was put on AH & I was told that she didn't know I was a Elixir master & that she really needed the money for her epic mount.

So there's the Sex Aspect. On top of that they're the cattiness between women. As I've mentioned before about my pet chinchilla's, we like to joke in my house how female chins act like human females, plotting scheming & willing to kill a woman who's not in the tribe.
This also extends to WOW. If all the women in the guild get along, I heartily recommend that you never ever leave that guild. This means they're all friends & the rank structure has been hammered out. If you get a women who decides that she wants to be queen bee, flee that guild! unless the GM steps in (and mark my words it takes a tough GM to be willing to go into that fray.) it will turn ugly & nasty & no guild progression will occur until the other woman nip her back into place.

This leads me to the title of my post stopping guild drama before it happens. Last week I noticed on of my ex-guildies (specifically the one who caused all the vaginal aggro in my old guild) on my guild vent. I asked the guy running the 10 man kara run & he said yes, she's running w us tonight. Faced w the possibility of her joining my guild I proceeded to inform every female guild member who she was & what she did in my old guild. I also made it clear to the female guild officer that I would gquit on the spot if she was accepted. I then contacted another old guildie, who was a woman & had to deal w her antic's. She informed me that she was blacklisted from the top raiding guilds (except ours) because she would pull her vaginal aggro during 25man's.
Since this occurred I haven't seen her sniffing around.
Thank God

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