Recently there have been many great posts in the blog-o-sphere about why raiding guilds die. If you want more information about why guilds die or struggle, I suggest reading Lume’s post or Jennie Lees of WoW Insider’s post. The fact that they were prompted to make these posts is a sign of the impact of recent increased mortality rate we’re experiencing in raiding guilds. Those two have done a marvelous job explaining the why of guild deaths, so rather than rehash the same topic I’m going to cover the how of guild deaths.

On our server, the number one progression guild recently called it quits. This prompted an almost immediate invasion of drama into our realm forums. To be honest, I avoided the whole thing until one of my friends suggested it might make good post material. The end result, honestly sickened me. Thirteen pages of people pointing fingers, making personal attacks, posting embarrassing pictures, and of course, trolls on alts. The drama was so inflammatory that people who quit the game renewed their accounts just to get a piece of the action.

Emboldened by my previous success taming a troll, I couldn’t help but try my hand at calming this cesspool. I posted the following in our realm forums.

Good luck with rebuilding [Name Removed] and with your fresh start [New Guild].
It’s a sad day to see one of the guilds that has defined Medivh raiding fall. It’s even sadder to see good names dragged through the mud with the finger pointing that follows.
A guild with a strong foundation like [Name Removed] can easily survive just one breaking point, but it’s hard to recover when several points break at once. I’m certain that the truth of the matter lies with a combination of several differing points of view coinciding with real life robbing the guild of the people who had the ability to help these points of view reconcile.
I hope that the strong players in these guilds will spend more energy in creating or finding the environment they want to be in rather than tearing each other down. All of you are too good to waste your time feeding the voyeuristic drama hounds that are eating this up.

After that it seems that the drama quieted. If that’s due to people finally just running out of steam or the possibility that I’ve stumbled upon some sort of magical device anti-troll weapon, we may never know.

Given the intense drama a raiding guild’s death has the potential to cause, what steps can you take when closing your shop to calm the drama?

1) Accept Responsibility - You stepped up as a leader within this guild. Regardless of what other causes there may have been, you were steering the ship when it went down. The quickest way to prevent people from blaming each other is to accept responsibility yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up or allow others to beat you up. It just means saying, “Guys I’m sorry, I know I signed up to lead you through this, but in the end it was more than I could handle.” It’s human nature to want to blame someone else or explain away the guild’s death. The reasonable people in your guild will see what lead to the guild’s downfall. The unreasonable people in your guild, well they are going to be unreasonable no matter what you tell them.

2) Divide the Goods! - The guild’s dead you’re done right? Nah, the guild had stuff and your members are going to want that stuff. A good rule of thumb is to divide the contents of the guild bank equally. If there aren’t enough material goods to be distributed fairly, then take it to the auction house and mail out the gold. If your guild was more than 4 months old, it’s probably fair to exclude any initiates from the distribution of the spoils. While it may be tempting to give a larger percentage of the guild resources to an officer or your friends, this will only fan the flames of drama.

3) Provide closure - Put together a group of screen shots, maybe a movie or just a nice post detailing the things the guild accomplished and highlighting the fun you’ve had together. By focusing people of the positive aspects of your time together, you remind them of the teamwork and good will they’ve built up. This may help to keep your members thinking positive and feeling friendly towards each other, rather than feeling bitter and angry. Offer guild members a way to stay in touch if they choose; either via a mailing list or keeping the website up for a while.

4) Provide guidance - Your guild has looked to you for leadership thus far, now as your final act as GM, do a little scouting for your former guildmates. Let them know what options are available to them on the server. (I.E Raiding Guild X is looking for a druid, 2 warlocks and a shaman who can commit to raiding 16 hours a week. Friendly Guild Y is willing to take in any members who want to focus on 5 mans and pvp) Just a few hours of research can help your former guildmates focus their efforts while they look for an new home, rather than despair over what to do next. People who are focused on the future and are positive about the future spend less time mulling over the past.

5) Rest - Being a leader in a guild is a large responsibility. Removing that responsibility is a major lifestyle change. Take some down time to focus on how much time you want to spend on the game and what you really want out of your raid time before you make a commitment to a new home.