Good Leaders Bide Their Time
A week ago, the venerated Bear Butt made a post reacting to a blogger speaking about raid guilds struggling this summer. He mentioned in it that he’d like to hear my reactions. Bear’s post can be found here. The Officer’s Quarters post he was reacting to can be found here. Neither are necessary to understand this entry, but both are good reads. Both Bear Butt and Officer’s Quarters speak about two issues, the death of raiding guilds and taking back old members. I’m only going to focus on raiding guild death for this post, as I’ve covered returning members in a previous post.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why are raiding guilds falling apart? We’ve all seen it. I don’t think a single server has escaped the death of a well respected raiding guild, but why is it happening? Have these guilds all been simultaneously mismanaged into oblivion? Are aliens shooting discontent gamer radiation down to the Earth? Is WoW dying? Nope, well maybe, but I leaning towards more mundane causes.
I believe current raiding guild deaths are being caused by a combination of three factors.
- It’s summer
- There is a looming expansion
- There is a significant difficulty and gear gap between Hyjal/Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau
It’s summer - The typical hardcore raiding demographic is college kids. (Statistics gathered by a rigorous process of thinking back on the hardcore raiders I’ve known over the past years) Summer for college kids generally means a job, moving back in with their family, maybe sharing a car, basically less control over their own schedules and availability. Outside of that, summer is the time of barbecues, vacations, day trips to the beach or an amusement park, reconnecting with old friends, etc. In my own guild this has affected us:
- one of our two main tanks is currently on a 3 week vacation to France,
- one of our enhancement shaman just came back from Italy.
- One of my favorite priests has to pick up his sister from work at EXACTLY the start time of our raids.
- The list goes on and on.
In addition to that, some people are working hard to re-arrange their schedules to avoid having it interact with raid time. When raids don’t run silky smooth they may start to question why they’ve made that effort, or feel bitter towards their teammates who haven’t.
There is a looming expansion - With the flood of information about Wrath available, many players have their eyes on the future. They realize that in a few months the purple gear they are wearing will be replaced. For those that raid primarily for gear, they look around and realize they are in a hamster wheel, gear will always be replaced they’ll never “finish.” This can be disconcerting and cause people to wonder why they play or at least why they raid. Even for the less gear focused, they may be looking around wondering what aspects of the game they are missing by focusing on raiding.
Sunwell is hard yo! - Sunwell is significantly harder than Black Temple and Hyjal. The fights are more complex and leave less room for error. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s also. in my opinion, designed gear wise for people who have been farming Illidan for at least 6 weeks, more time than that, if the loot gods look upon your guild with disfavor. So when a raiding guild first sets foot in Sunwell they are either; woefully undergeared or fat and lazy from 6 or more weeks of just farming old content.
All of these challenges taken individually are painful, yet manageable. With their collision though, most guilds don’t have the strength or energy to master them. But fear ye not! I am not here to depress you with bad news of your impending doom. I have suggestions.
First, be it known that my guild, where you mostly hear me spout off a list of positive suggestions and ideas, is not immune to this phenomena. We have struggled. We have not progressed as quickly through raid content as I know we can. We are affected by these things too, and my suggestions are not the end all be all of leading your guild through this time period. They are just one GMs list of stuff that works or doesn’t work. With that lengthy preamble here are my suggestions:
- Turn these challenges into positives
- Publically acknowledge your struggles
- Draw on your strengths
- Ask for help
Turn these challenges into positives - I know I just talked about how all these things suck, but the fact is they are also all AWESOME. It’s summer time, the sun is shining, girls are in bikinis and life is generally good. Capitalize on the good mood that summer brings and capture that in your raids. People’s schedules are erratic, use that as a reason to let people try something new. If that’s respeccing a hybrid or bringing in a well geared alt, at this point in the game most people are very open to doing old content from a new perspective. There’s an expansion looming, people are excited about new class abilities, Death Knights and new raid zones. They are excited about the game again! This can help shake of the dulldromes, but remind them while they have their eyes on the future, the reason most raiders learn about our classes and gear up is to experience the raid content. The time period in which to experience TBC raid content is running out, let’s make the best of that time by focusing our raid time to make sure we get those experiences. Sunwell is hard, but that’s what we play for. I don’t know about you, but I get bored when I’m not challenged. Sunwell is a challenge and a half and it keeps me on my toes. It’s heightened my skills as a healer, raid leader and guild leader. I don’t know about the others, but deep down that’s why I play. Life is complex and situations aren’t always what we chose, but all of these challenges have locked within them the potential to be something that grows and strengths your guild in addition to the challenge they provide. You can’t will them away, but you can capitalize on that.
Publically acknowledge your struggles - Your guild looks to it’s leaders the most when things are rough. Don’t hide the fact that the summer and other factors have rocked your world. It may seem counterintuitive but by acknowledging these struggles you improve morale. You send a message to your guild that you are aware of the challenges and working to make them better. You can also help people articulate what they are feeling but don’t know how to express. Sometimes people feel a general sense of discontentment, but don’t always know why. By helping them identify why they are discontent, you can help them find a solution. Finally, but publically acknowledging your struggles, you get your guild focused on them which can lead to some brilliant solutions you didn’t think of. Some of the best solutions my guild has had, weren’t my idea. I’m not here to have all the great ideas, I’m here to make sure the great ideas turn into great solutions.
Draw on your strengths - This may seem like fairly obvious advice, but you’d be surprised how many people miss it. Your guild has different strengths and weaknesses than mine. It has to, it has different people in it. When you’re looking for solutions, it’s great to talk to other people, but remember you’re looking for a solution for your guild. Think about your guild’s strengths and find ways to capitalize on those strengths. If you have an amazing graphical artist, then maybe have them draw diagrams of bosses you’re struggling on. If you have a guild full of friend ranks maybe help organize them into a support crew that helps farm consumables for the raiders and in return hand out some of those yellow and green epic gems you have piling up for their pvp gear.
Ask for help - The worst thing that can happen to a struggling raid guild is leader burn out. When the guild is dissatisfied that creates a lot of pressure on you. It also generally makes some of your members feel helpless to change the dissatisfaction that surrounds them. By asking for help you do two things, you take the pressure off of you and you empower your member. Not ever member feels this way, but sometimes just knowing they are doing something to contribute makes a raider feel content. Don’t be afraid to ask for help on the routine things in order to free you up to focus on the things only you can do. Do make sure to give people thank yous and credit when they’ve agreed to help you.
I’ve said before that what defines you as a leader isn’t always keeping your guild running smoothly, it’s what you do when your guild isn’t running smoothly. I hope these things will give you food for thought, or help you in some ways. If you are the leader of a struggling raiding guild; take a deep breath, remember you aren’t alone in facing these challenges, know that these challenges will pass and your guild will be stronger for it.
Loading ...
July 29th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
We have seen several top raiding guilds on our server fold in the last couple months as well. In the middle of it, our guild is the strongest we’ve ever been and continuing to gather momentum. We’re currently full across the board with waiting lists to get in for a couple classes.
While we’re far from cutting edge raiders, we’re in position to have BT cleared and be in SWP before WotLK arrives. We’re making steady progress of about one new boss a week.
Looking at the list of reasons, I can see part of why we’re different.
Summer - Many of our key raiders are in their 30’s or 40’s. We have several married couples that raid together. We also manage burn-out partly by sticking to a modest raiding schedule of T/T/Sun 8:30-12 and keeping required attendance low.
Looming Expansion - While we’re all looking forward to it, our members are achievement oriented and view gear as just a means to an end. Also, we still have the big goal of killing Illidan ahead of us rather than being in a BT farming mode already. I think part of the problem with SWP beyond the difficulty is that it also seems anti-climatic after defeating Illidan.
Sunwell - Not an issue for us yet, although we are in there farming trash on off-nights on occasion (Goggle Patterns, Leather Chest Patterns, Throwing Weapons, Gems etc)
July 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
The main thing I thought about when I saw the topic title was that patience has rewarded my guild more times than I can count. We started small and grew slowly, but we’re constantly moving forward at a slow and steady pace, and anyone who stays with us through the trying parts gets to appreciate the leaps and bounds. I can’t count how many times we’ve gone through a particularly boring slump (such as summer) just to pull together and bounce back with amazing results (like 1-shotting the first 2 Hyjal bosses on the first try). If we had the kind of people who jumped ship because it took too long to get to things, we would never have made it out of Karazhan.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:40 am
I’ve been in two different guilds over the course of two summers. One guild, my first guild, wasn’t known for it’s leadership. And when summer rolled around, the inevitable happened, and we nearly fell apart (it just so happened we were also at the pre-patch Kael cockblock). It was terrible, but oh-so-expected.
In my new guild, we knew this would happen. So what did we do? We simply talked to people. We asked who’s planning on doing what for summer, how long, etc. We told people to just let us know - we won’t judge. We also said that we’ll be recruiting depending on what people tell us to keep from falling into a pit, but in no way were we recruiting over them because they were taking a vacation - we made everyone feel comfortable in saying, “yeah I’m taking 2 weeks off soon.” Basically, it was ok to take a break and have some RL. Because one thing is that, during the school year, it’s easier to feel tied to the game and it’s responsibilities. But during the summer, the overall air of freedom and fun interferes, but people keep pushing themselves in front of the computer for “the good of the guild,” but then they get burned out and disappear.
Then, we recruited a minimum but sufficient amount to account for major absences: a druid wanted to take the summer casual, so we got another druid…a pally took a month and a half in Europe, so we got another pally. Everyone else would take a shorter vacation at various points, but we knew about everything, and we planned for it.
And for the fruits of our efforts? Serious progression - including the “hardest” fight of Sunwell, and about halfway from the end of the last fight of said instance. There -was- a sketchy point or two, but what did we do instead? Raided Ironforge. And honestly, it wasn’t a bad change of pace, and it sure renewed interest and got us back in with a fresh outlook to kick Muru’s butt. We always acknowledged any issues going on - the guild knew our every move, so it felt like they were more immersed in our decisions.
As for other guilds? The longtime #1 alliance guild (finished naxx pre-BC with time to farm) is teetering, and has been for a month or so, and looking fairly dead; we beat them out for server first Muru. My old guild, the one I was in the summer before, is also apparently having recruting trouble, and the longtime #2 guild on that server recently died too (together since MC).
As for expansion…so far, so good, knock on wood. No one has quit yet with the expansion excuse, though we’ve still got a few (hopefully!) months of Sunwell farming ahead, and everything could change in a second.
Unfortunately, summer doldrums and expansion excuses start chain reactions, so like the little dutch boy, it’s 150% harder to stop them after they’ve started than to plan ahead.
As alays, great work Auz! All of it is very very true, and hopefully it’ll prevent guild deaths in the future.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:31 am
[...] To add to the frustrations caused by the encounter itself, you also have to consider the problems that have come with the general situation permeating the raiding community. Quite simply, if you don’t yet have Kil’jaedeon down, you’re not going to get a whole lot of applications. And this has actually been true even if you do have Kil’jaeden dead, because some people have decided to simply bide their time before Wrath of the Lich King hits the shelves. Another reason is that it’s summer, when many college students find jobs that temporarily keep them from raiding, when many business professionals decide it’s time to take a vacation and relax, and when many people decide to make shifts in their real life situations that can affect the amount of time they have to raid. And these lie on top of the usual guild issues. This is something Auzara has covered in one of her recent articles. [...]