Running a guild is a lot like a massive social experiment. In many conversations people have said that the act of playing an MMO is not the actual addicting part, its the social aspects, its the reputation that’s built and further to the point its recognition that one might never receive in their 9-5 job. It lets the individual feel like the hero they portray. There are several different aspects to running a guild and its not nearly as easy as one might think. I ran a guild, a successful guild, in World of Warcraft for several months and it was one of the most interesting social experiences I have had since college. Running a guild consists of managing resources, players, ranks and progression. Keep in mind that even though the guild I ran was in fact a WoW guild these observations hold true to any grouping of people who play an abhorrent amount of online games. Since I am drawing from my experiences, I will be using terms and examples of Intellectual Property created and solely owned by Blizzard Entertainment. With that out of the way, lets discuss running a guild.
Resources are of course things that are gathered in game and kept in a bank. There are several different versions of this depending on what game you play. In WoW its called a guild bank. Once you assign access based on rank you have to either assign someone to watch the bank and make sure that there are no thieves. A thief in the early stages of ranking may not be a huge deal since they will only be stealing basically useless things. If you don’t catch that thief right away and you promote him then of course the theft becomes larger and you may not notice it because you trust them not to steal. Should you charge your guild dues or have someone in charge of selling off items that are excess you will end up with a tidy sum of gold. This gold can dwindle rather quickly if you are not careful with it. Repairs can be drawn from the bank on a per day basis. If you grant everyone repair access at an early stage in the guilds career then you may want to revise that later on. For instance, when you guild was 10 people you may allow a 15g allowance for repairs a day. Not a great deal really but better then nothing. That means on any given day you could lose 150g to repairs. If that guild grows to 100 people then you may lose 1500g per day. A significant difference unless your a gold farming guild.
Ranks are often chosen many different ways. I chose to have very military ranks. Some people choose crazy names. Its your prerogative and it should fit your guild feel, there really is no right and wrong way to make guild ranks. The thing that you have to pay attention to is who you put where. The smallest promotion can cause mass conflict in the guild and not recognizing someone for their contributions will do the same thing. Ranks usually directly relate to the level of trust that the guild master has for someone else. To develop that is really just to have a good feeling. I sit here writing this and laugh when i write words like trust. Is it impossible to trust someone online? No. Is it the same thing as trusting someone in real life? No. Regardless of the facts, you have to promote someone and hope for the best. For the first month of active Guild Leadership, I did everything. Absolutely everything. I would leave my computer feeling frustrated and almost used. I later discovered that my second in commands. The people I deemed my officers could actually, when distributed properly bare the entire load. In the end I had them in charge of everything and all I had to do is deal with the people.
Progression, for those who don’t know, means a number of things. In World of Warcraft it means moving on and getting better gear (armor and weapons) as well as defeating harder bosses and eventually being the best. This sounds like something that would really just take care of itself but it doesn’t. Its very easy to get stuck in a rut and run the same thing over and over again in sheer complacency. The raid leader, or in this case me, had to know how the fights were fought and how much DPS or Damage per second, had to come from the group in order to down the bosses. Some of them had different game mechanics that would create a harder situation. Some of the bosses would have an enrage timer, for example, if we don’t kill them in 5 minutes then he would enrage and kill our group in a series of insane death knells no one character could sustain. Knowing all these tips and tricks required a lot of time and effort. It required doing homework and watching videos. It requires being able to explain the fights to your fellow guildees without confusing them or yourself. Of course progression doesn’t solely rely on the shoulders of the guild leader. It also heavily relies on the ambition of the players as well. If the players are excited to come raid then the raid often is very successful, but if you don’t know what your doing as a leader they can become restless and lose ambition so its usually best to just keep pushing them. Make the raids harder and more challenging by running them faster. Or moving to the next level.
I left “people” for last because I feel its the most complex of the 4 subjects. The guild is comprised of characters. The characters are played by real people. These people have feelings they, have ambitions they have real dreams and they have real lives. Video games are often an escapist activity. Denying that is to be a victim. People are not playing so that they can join a guild were you yell at them incessantly and tell them what kind of a worthless so and so they are. If they wanted to hear it I am sure that someone in their lives would jump on the opportunity. Everyone has someone like that. These feeling and emotions are also something that a Guild Leader, or Guild master has to take into account. If you fail to recognize that you fail completely. Does that mean you have to be nice to everyone? No. There is a line. A successful guild master will know that line. I have encountered situations where I have met someone and they seem to be a genuinely nice person whom the rest of the guild steps on. In everyday life they must have the same issues. They most likely don’t have too many friends and often have people walk right over them. They might not be out spoken and seem rather intelligent. These people can be diamonds in the rough. I give them a little power and see what happens. Usually what happens is people flourish. People grow and become something they were not before. This simple mechanic which really means nothing to me, means the world to them. They are no longer Joe Smith of Smalltown USA who works at the Walmart part time and is a senior at high school, they are no longer Jane Doe who has 3 children and a husband who came home from Iraq a little different than he went there, they are now a trusted Officer of a guild and responsible for 100 people who look up to them. The feeling of accomplishment I spoke of earlier becomes very evident here. Other situations are people who are simply lonely, or perhaps socially inept, They are looking for acceptance and approval. They find it in a guild. I suppose in many ways it can be likened to gang psychology. In the end I often referred to my core guild members as family. My WoW family. It sort of felt that way. People had quirks, lives, went to school, had significant others, real life problems, and came from all over the world.
These people, regardless of who they were, all entrusted a great deal of their gaming experience to me. They didn’t have to, they chose to. Sure, I made mistakes, I wasn’t infallible. After 4 or 5 months of sheer success we all fell apart. The conditions of our fall from grace are inconsequential. The reality is I learned a lot. I learned a lot of about people and group mentality. I learned a lot about how to talk to people and how to explain things in a way that were clear and easy to understand. I learned that the game was being played and that everyone around me were as real as I was. They all deserved the respect that I commanded. I had a lot of fun running my guild. I know my WoW family enjoyed playing with me because even now in the middle of battle I will see a whisper come onto my chat screen and see a familiar name. It makes me smile because I know that they had fun, and isn’t that the real reason we play?
Merin on 
Captain Z on 
Benton Sartore on 
