In my last post I broke down the structure of my guild’s application. That post was prompted by an application I received that made me shake my head. It’s been about a week since I got the app and I’m still shaking my head over it. So I’ve decided to expand on the last post and share with you some of the best, worst and scariest apps I’ve received in the past few months.

The Good

Why did you allocate your talent points where you did?: I experimented with a couple trees, but mostly influenced by shadowpriest.com for my spec and posts I read there. I feel that it maximizes by ability to mana regen my group and keep misery debuff on mobs. I also think it’s the best spec to maximize my dps with my current gear. As I get gear with better hit, the tree will change slightly.
This answer indicates he’s researched his class, and placed priority on the synergistic qualities of his class and spec.

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: I believe COH priest are the best healers in a raid. We have a wide variety of heals that cater to every situation and also we can put out a large amount of effective healing.
I like to see confidence in applicants, if you don’t think you’re the best then why are you wasting my time? This confident app turned out to be mostly right, he’s an amazing AoE healer and puts out a large amount of effective healing. I, however, remain the best healer in the raid. (Sarcasm intended)

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: The hunter class brings one handy tool to raids which is misdirect, can be very useful in the hands of a skilled hunter to be able to help out keeping healers alive that may be getting whacked on in certain situations or to just help the tank establish a strong aggro base for boss fights. Other than that we’re a high dps class if played well that doesn’t need group synergy with other classes to be able to perform.
What he lacks in sentence structure, he made up for in completely nailing what we expect out of our hunters. I especially like that his answer indicates that he doesn’t rely on a synergy group.

What do you anticipate your raid attendance will be if we were to offer you a raiding position within our guild?: I can attend every raid. This semester, I have a class ending at 6:30 on Thursday, so I may be 5-10 minutes late for the Thursday invites.
Sweet. This tells me he didn’t mindlessly tell us 100% and it’s good information to have.

What do you want out of being in a guild?: Teamwork environment. Raiders that enjoy raiding and are willing to do the work, including wipe, to learn and master the encounters. Being that my balance druid raided balance prior to TBC, open minded on the abilities of the players and classes available to them for an encounter. People with a good sense of humor.
That describes us, without being too generic, though it is still pretty generic answer.

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.: [Name removed]. This question is a struggle as my decision to leave [Name removed] is a personal decision and I don’t want to air “dirty laundry.” All I really want to say is this is based on recent changes in raiding attitudes and behaviors. If you wish more of an explanation, please contact me in game.
I liked the respect this applicant gave her former guild despite having pretty serious personality conflicts with the leadership of that guild.

We ask you to prepare yourself for a new boss encounter, how do you go about this?: Get reagents together, get some gold, get some beer to soften the wipes, load my handgun in case I need to become an hero. Make sure I read up on Bosskillers so I know exactly what not to do.
This single answer got this applicant an initiation opportunity within our guild.

The Bad

Why did you allocate your talent points where you did?: Excellent solo play, and the occasional time I get to group
This is not a solo guild.

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: I bring the best my class can offer, I chose a paladin because it has a higher survivability rate, wearing plate and using shields, meaning I will not be one shoted by a boss like a priest.
This answer scares me, because plate or not, you’re going to get one shotted by a boss. Also how does this guy play that he’s managing to pull aggro as a paladin healer?

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: I believe it will bring DPS, CC is sum cases, and also missdirects.
I hate poor spelling and bad grammar. I don’t want “sum” showing up in my guild chat on a regular basis. Maybe that’s petty, but I’m the GM so what I want sometimes matters, even if it is petty.

Pre-BC raid experience: I ended up reaching Level 60 as soon as BC came out, so I never really went into the instances, just continued up to 70. The thought had crossed my mind but ofcourse my friends would leave me behind if i didn’t continue to level. Yes yes I know.. I said friends… I had some back then *cry
Maybe this was meant to be cute, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

What do you anticipate your raid attendance will be if we were to offer you a raiding position within our guild?:I will be able to make possibly all of the raids, with exceptions of work and school and certain family issues.
Um, duh?

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.: [Name Removed] on Kael’Thas. I entered the guild, started asking simple questions, and was promoted to officer after a few months because I wasn’t a retard. I left because after beating HARDMODE bosses like Solarian, VR, Lurker we were running into walls of shitty healing, shitty tanking and retarded DPS, and a Raid Leader that called for breaks so he could get more stoned. But this isn’t a QQ session, and they’ve since gone on to become a 5/6 3/4 SSC TK + 2/4 MH guild. Whoooo.
While this applicant took me up on my opportunity to make a jerk of himself, the rest of his app was good. I interviewed him and realized this was the product of frustration. This guy is now a contributing member of the guild; he still gets grumpy when he’s frustrated.

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.: [Name Removed] has nice people but i dont like that they raid with DKP , i havnt done DKP since mc , onyx ect feels outdated .
We use a DKP system.

What do you want out of being in a guild?: When I join a guild, I expect people to respect my time and in exchange, I respect theirs. So much fucking time is wasted in wow because people aren’t prepared and/or don’t pay attention during raids. If you join a raid and you don’t know the strategies, you’re wasting 24 peoples time, which is pretty damn selfish.

Also, I enjoy joking around in g-chat, dropping metalocalypse references and frequently linking to southpark clips and lolcats. I like getting to know people and running alts through instances and the like. I also -LOVE- ganking lowbies and camping instance stones, but y’all are on a pve server …You really don’t know what you’re missing
If you like pvp so much, stay on a pvp server. This guy does have some points, but he made a jerk of himself and it wasn’t even the question where he was supposed to.

What do you know about The Guild, and how do you know it?:
they raid ssc and other raiding instances, ive seen them around and played with some of the people in the guild
We don’t raid SSC actually….

What do you know about The Guild, and how do you know it?: From what i have herd they are a great guild and a great raiding guild to be apart of
Did I mention I’m not a fan of poor spelling? I think this is a great raiding guild for you to be apart of (from) too.

The WHAT were you thinking?

Why did you allocate your talent points where you did?: I absolutley LOVE to heal. I play a healing class in all RPGs.
This is not an answer to question I asked.

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: Im a VERY well rounded player ive cleared illidan 100 times on my shaman , i know how to keep things rolling. Totems/ VE/VT my spell rotations are accurate to the notch,.
Wait you have Totems and VE? Also the character linked (A shaman) was Friendly with the Deathsworn Ashtongue.

How long have you been playing WoW?: I started playing wow two years ago with four friends from work, all in the 27+ age group, with one of them being 250lbs, gay, and bald. They are all cool peopel but alas we eventually parted ways. one was into pvp and I started realy playing a lot more. Oh and I don’t have anything against gays , nor am I a homophobe. In fact Im quite into women thank you very much. hence my hot sexy toon
Well I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.

What do you anticipate your raid attendance will be if we were to offer you a raiding position within our guild?:Thursday-Sunday might be able to make Monday and Tuesday on some days.
That’s nice, we raid Sunday to Thursday and require 75% attendance. I’m glad you did your homework before you apped.

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.:
[Name Removed]. I was in the guild for only a few days, and after some stupid forum drama, (some retard accused me of being a “ninja accomplice” <--What the hell is that? Anyway.. They kicked me saying it wasn't worth the chances because they had recently had some ninjas in there guild. So I actually know the GM of [Name Removed] and the whole story ended up being that he’d ninja’d two items. The first time he got a warning because the facts couldn’t be 100% confirmed. The second time he ninja’d an item from an officer of their guild and was removed.

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.: My last guild i was in, was on Rexxar, named [Name Removed]. I was asked to leave because my CL was threatening to kill himself over me. I was told it was over my constantly asking why i would raid for 2 months, then would sit out for 1 month.
Your last class leader wanted to kill himself because of you? I’m not sure I’d advertise that.

What do you want out of being in a guild?: to have fun and raid on my preist and make GOOD friends not fags like the ones ive met in this guild that i xfered my shaman to. I need a new home.
Goodness! That’s a strong word for an application.

Who do you know in The Guild?:Oppomcpuff, corey
This person is not in my guild.

Let me preface this by saying there are LOTS of opinions about guild applications. My opinion is but one of many. However, you’ve chosen to visit my corner of the intarwebz, so mine is the one you get to hear.

I view an application to be a tool for eliminating people I clearly don’t want in my guild, with the least amount of reading possible. Basically when I’m done reading the application I want to be thinking, “Gee I’d like to talk to that person” or “Ewwwww no thanks.” With that goal in mind, I’m going to take you through my guild’s application. Here is a sneak peak into the pitfalls and what I’m really looking for when I read an application to my guild.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We ask that all applicants read our guild policies before applying.
Please use the following template for your application.
This is your warning, make sure you know what you’re signing up for, and fill this stuff out.

Character Name: I do need to know what to call you. Also if your name is Buttfloss or something equally dumb I generally stop reading here.

Class: Yep, this is important too. If you spell your class wrong, I’m not interested.

Armory Link: Sure we could ask for your detailed history OR you could just give me the link. I check this for rep (Don’t tell me you’ve been farming BT for 6 months and have your Deathsworn Ashtongue Rep at Honored.) Did you gem, gear, enchant, or spec in a way that meets our expectations for raiders?

Why did you allocate your talent points where you did?: Defend your choices. If I see the words pvp or solo here I normally stop reading. This is a raiding guild. It’s not a pvp guild and it’s not a let’s go solo guild.

What do you believe your class (and spec) brings to raids?: This is the first question I ask where I’m looking for an insight into the player’s class knowledge and play style. “I pew stuff” indicates a different personality and understanding of a class than “I provide CC, biscuits and high AoE damage.”

How long have you been playing WoW?: I’m honestly not sure why we have this here. I think one of my officers wanted it. As long as the answer is above 4 months or so I’m normally fine with it.

How long have you been playing this character? I want this answer to be over 4 months also.

Pre-BC raiding experience: What did you do before BC? Honestly at this point Naxx isn’t a deciding factor, but it does tell me that you’ve had experience in our type of raiding environment before. With less experienced players you have to determine both if this type of raiding commitment AND if this guild is for them at the same time.

BC raid experience: What do I have to teach you to get you up to speed with our current progression?

What do you anticipate your raid attendance will be if we were to offer you a raiding position within our guild?: I don’t trust 100% I don’t want to hear about well my dog or school comes up sometimes. I want a good guesstimate of how often your real life interferes with your raiding plans. If you tell me 95% and it ends up be 60% imma be pissed.

What do you want out of being in a guild?: This is honestly about your expectations meeting our offerings. If you expect a military style raid that’s not what we offer. If you want us all to be best friends and not care that you have green gems, this is also not the place for you.

Tell us about your last guild and why you are looking for a new home.: This is my “Plays well with others” section, where I give you a chance to make a jerk of yourself. If you trash your old guild as a bunch of jerks who don’t understand, that raises red flags for me. (Especially if I know your old GM.) If you were booted for ninja looting, I’d make up something about not having compatible raid times.

What do you know about The Guild*, and how do you know it?: Have you done your homework about my guild? If you haven’t, how flattering can you be?

Who do you know in The Guild*?: Do you have someone in my guild to vouch for you? If you do, do they actually know and like you?

We ask you to prepare yourself for a new boss encounter, how do you go about this?: This is kind of a give me. Tell me you read strats, get consumables, and/or talk to friends that have done the fight. Just remember, I keep this application if I tag you. So I’m going to remind you that you do these things.

Please allow us up to 3 days after acknowledging receipt of your application to review your application and post an update before you contact us and ask for an update.
Don’t pester my officers 20 minutes after you apply.

If your contact requests that you get in touch with them and you fail to do so within a week, your application will be considered withdrawn and no longer considered.
Don’t make us go looking for you.

Unless otherwise stated, officers are not available to discuss applications during TD’s raid hours. We’re all an active part of the leadership of raids and it’s unfair to our guildmates, our applicants and ourselves to attempt to give both your application and the raid the attention they deserve at the same time.
Don’t pester my officers during a raid; they are raiding.

Please delete the instructional portions of this form before submitting your application.
This is my idiot check. I don’t need to read my instructions to evaluate your app, however, if you’ve deleted my instructions, then I know that you have read them. If you don’t follow directions on your application, you probably won’t follow them in raids either.

*Name changed to confused the truly obtuse.

Warning opinions expressed in this post are mainly from the perspective of a raiding guild and may not apply to other types of guilds.

So recruiting a new raider is always an interesting experience. But what happens when someone who has already raided with you applies as a raider a second time?

On the positive side, you’ve raided with this person. You know what to expect from their attendance, attitude, raid preparation, comprehension and consumable use. Sure apps tell you what to expect, but everyone knows the right answer and reality don’t always match. Additionally your team knows them, and integration into the guild should take less time.

On the negative side, it didn’t work out once. Like I’m fond of counseling one of my friends “There is a reason he’s your ex.” Unlike an app, this player carries baggage from their previous experience with your guild.

Generally when I’m considering a previous raider as an applicant, I focus most heavily on why and how they ceased raiding with us. Was it a philosophical difference or a lifestyle change? When they ceased raiding how did they treat their peers and the leadership core? Did they disappear overnight or did they take time to talk about what was going on?

If the player left for a philosophical difference, what has changed? If your policies haven’t changed and their perspective hasn’t changed, then I believe tagging the player again will only lead you back to the same place. If your guild’s policy changed or the person’s perspective changed you should still do an inventory, are these changes sufficient to prevent further friction?

If the player left because of a lifestyle change, how permanent is this change? Are they likely to have real life obligations pull them away again or are they now able to make a stable commitment to your guild. If their lifestyle is not stable, the raider may fall into a yo-yo pattern of commitment and flakiness that cause your more stable raiders to question why they are stable when this player’s mercurial nature is tolerated. While I will occasionally give this type of applicant a second chance, I won’t give them a third.

How was this player’s attitude when they left? If they said unpleasant things to other team mates or leaders, those people may be hesitant to allow this person to integrate back into the guild. If your other raiders are opposed to this player’s return then you are probably better off bringing in a player without that baggage.

Finally, how well did this player communicate with the leadership the last time they left? When people have to leave a guild, the way they chose to communicate and how much they chose to communicate tells you a great deal about their level of respect for the commitment they made to your guild. If they didn’t bother to talk to you the last time they were in your guild, I wouldn’t give them a second chance.

Auz, you didn’t discuss what happens if you removed a player. Yeah I didn’t. Generally I won’t remove a raider unless I feel there is absolutely no hope that this player will integrate in the way I need them to. Because of this, I won’t generally consider a player I’ve removed from a raiding position.

Long Boring Intro:
I have a secret. A long time ago, I was a “casual” player. For about a year I had a real life priority that took enough of my time to prevent me from raiding with any regularity. In that time I was part of a pvp team (where I met my partner in crime! Mikedabutcha) and then part of a real life friend guild. (You had to know someone in real life who was in the guild, A la Kevin Bacon). Once my real life priority had passed, I found myself too bored to play casually and sought out a raiding home, but I’ve always stayed in touch with that real life group of friends. Recently one of those members e-mailed me and let me know they were considering “raiding” and wanted advice. What is “raiding” and where might they find a good home? I e-mailed them back a specific response, and then upon re-reading it decided some of the advice I’d given him could be generalized and may be interesting to others.
The better player myth:
Intrinsically, dedicated raiders aren’t any better or worse than their casual counterparts. Rather than a reflection of skill, dedicated raiding is reflection of effort. Most people do become better with time and effort, but I’ve seen some really terrible players in some really good gear. In fact, in some cases I’ve been responsible for putting some good gear on bad players.

The “raider” mindset:
In another post, I’ve already talked about how the commitment to raiding, alters a players view of the game, so I won’t rehash that here. The advantage of this mindset is that you feel more involved in the game, you are able to see more things and the encounters do challenge you to master your class. The disadvantages are the you have to make raiding a priority in your life, you may end up playing with people you don’t necessarily enjoy outside of raids, and gaming time becomes a little more stressful.

Defining your commitment:
Often times in discussions we’ll put players into boxes: “Casual,” “Hardcore,” “Elitist,” “Scrub.” But in reality it’s not that simple. Rather than black or white there is a grayscale of levels of commitment to raiding and ability. So while considering raiding, consider realistically how much time do you want to spend playing this game? How much time can you spare from your everyday lifestyle? Remember that you are committing to more than just raiding, but also to being prepared for raids. A good rule of thumb to consider is that you’ll need about 15 minutes of preparation time for every hour of time you spend in a raid.

Finding a guild that matches your expectations:
This isn’t always easy. In fact, it was so hard for me that I ended up making my own guild. One of the easiest tricks to finding a guild that raids when you want to is to just type “/who Serpentshrine Cavern” (Or whatever zone you’re interested in raiding) and note the guilds of the people who are in that zone. Do that for a few days and make a list of the guild names you see. Once you have your list, do a search on the internet for “GuildName WoW Servername” or ask a member for the guild’s website. The first thing you should check is that their raid expectations match up to what you want to commit. Second, check their available information and see if their culture seems like the kind of culture you want from a guild.

Impressing the guild you want to join:
Once you’ve decided you want to join them, you have to explain to them why they should want you. Take a look at their raiders who play the same class/spec that you are playing in the armory and see how they have gemmed or enchanted their gear. Take a moment to evaluate your own character and used the “find upgrades” button to see if there is something easy you can do to make your character stronger. If this guild is killing bosses you haven’t seen yet, read information about those bosses. Remember in an interview, the recruiter is checking you to see if it’s worth making a time investment in you. The more things you can do to show them that you are investing time in yourself and your own progression, the more likely they are to feel that time invested in you and your progression is worthwhile.

If you get enough people together, drama is an eventual byproduct. This week it happened to our guild. I’m sharing it with you because A) this is probably the only place I can vent where it reflects on me and not my guild and B) I hope someone can learn from our drama or at least be entertained.

So a few days ago I was summoned from my book writing via a MSN message from a guildmate “Check the realm forums.” I yawn, stretch, and direct my browser to the realm forums. To discover this gem.

It’s posted by a level 12 alt, but the genius was intelligent enough to use an alt tagged with the same guild as his main. So it was easy to identify the poster as a hunter we’d given an initiate opportunity to but decided not to retain as a member. The post was clearly bait and the realm community had already responded with some additional trolling but mostly skepticism. I asked my raiders not to respond however the request missed a few of our non-raiding members.

Sidenote: Who starts a flame thread with “I know everyone else like you guys.”

So Operation ignore the troll was put into place and we ignored him through this post:

But I’m afraid one of my soldiers broke ranks and posted a response on an unguilded alt prompting this response:

I haven’t figured out which member it was, and to be honest I haven’t tried too hard, but I suspect it was one of mine because the information shared wouldn’t have been public knowledge. I think raising to the bait does reflect poorly on my guild in some ways, however it is at this point that he moves from the slightly sophomoric to the absolutely absurd, conveniently diverting attention away from my errant member’s misbehavior.

Unfortunately for the poster, he’s now entirely lost the crowd prompting this next gem:

Now thus far it’s been easy for me. Ignore the poster as he slowly digs his hole. I know, if left alone, he’ll dig his own grave and eventually tire out. I know that nothing I say to him will calm him down. But now he’s growing hostile towards my server mates, and he’s told his first complete untruth. Everything else has just been his interpretation of the events that do have some base in reality, twisted as his perception of that reality may seem to me. I know better, I really do, but at this point I feel compelled to make an attempt to reach him, resulting in:

I’m not sure if I reached him or not, but it’s 7 hours since I posted and he’s yet to respond. The “Drama” thread has derailed into a Monty Python sketch. Yes, I did try to recruit in the drama thread. What can I say, I’m shameless.

So that’s my drama story. I hope you’ve been entertained, but I also hope that you and I can learn something from this example. While examining this situation or any unpleasant situation I don’t care to repeat, I try to look at the following things:

Prevention: The drama in this event comes from an initiate who was not granted member status. Unfortunately the purpose of an initiation period is to determine if a player is a good fit a guild and the guild is a good fit for the initiate. If there was a way to ensure a player and a guild will work well together there would be no need for initiation phases. I would say the conversation in which I informed the initiate that he would not be offered a member position within our guild could have been smoother, but honestly that conversation was as pleasant as that kind of conversation can be. We parted on amicable terms and allowed him to remain in our guild on a non raiding rank until his server-transfer cool down was up. (He chose to return to his previous raiding guild, despite my offer of assistance finding a new guild on our server.) Frankly, I was quite surprised to see his post in the forums. That being said, we’ve previously relied on the interview process to inform cross-server applicants that we make no guarantee they will be invited to member status. I believe that due to this event we’ll add this information to our application, so we’ll have documentation this information was provided.

Room for Improvement: The post made with information only known to members of our raider core, should not have been made. Once it’s all said and done I’ll have to track down who and have a heart to heart about why that post, while cathartic, was probably not in the best interest of our guild. As a guild leader, I’m not a tyrant, I’m not capable of nor do I desire to control the actions of my members. That being said, I don’t make requests idly. By explaining the rational of radio silence, I could have gotten higher buy in. Also we did a good job letting our raiders know we preferred they not post, but we did not get to our friend rank members in time to prevent a few of them from making comments. An outside observer doesn’t know the difference between the girl friend of a raider who logs in once a month and a core member of our guild from their forum posts. I’m considering adding information to friend rank induction reminding friends of this fact and asking them to consider how their posts will reflect on our community before posting.

Gold Star: I probably shouldn’t have responded to the thread, but given that I did, I think the response was professional and did not take the bait to indulge in mud slinging with him. I was tempted and could have cited that:

• In our raids he did an average of 400 dps less than he promised in his interview.
• He caused wipes on fights he claimed to understand.
• His ability to follow directions regarding when to misdirect was so bad that we had to create a safety word to be his cue to pull.
• His interpretation of the events of his initiation period was suspect to be generous.

I didn’t (but I must say, it is nice to get that list off my chest in my own personal corner of the interwebz) take the bait, instead I focused my comments productive things that did not lend themselves to debate. I reminded him that I was available to speak with him one on one to clarify and address any outstanding issues he may have. I expressed my regret at his dissatisfaction, without taking accountability for that dissatisfaction. While it may have been in poor taste, I used the free publicity to highlight my guild’s recruitment needs (and to my amusement have had two potential applicants get in touch with me as a direct result). Finally the reaction of the server including the lack of people to jump on the bandwagon with their perceived slights, leaves me to believe that all in all our interactions with our server mates have been fairly strong.

Damage Control: When all is said and done, there isn’t a lot of damage control to be done. Should the thread continue, I may need to re-evaluate, but I feel like in it’s current state this has been more of a nuisance than anything else.