Long post incoming....

When WotLK hit, I joined a late night raiding guild (10pm PST to 130AM) to balance WoW and RL. We progressed fairly well and as of August were 6/9 in Ulduar and was very close to clearing Northrend Beasts in ToGC25 before the guild imploded. There were 6 officers including myself as the hunter lead.

The GM and 2 of the officers server transferred together and the other 2 left together to another server as well. That left me holding the bag and I knew practically nothing about leading a guild. To top it all off, most of our core raiders also gquit. I reformed the guild to give those of us who have limited availability a place to continue to raid.

I consider myself a solid raider. I know my class and I know the fights. The trouble is, outside of the hunter class (which I didn't start until well after TBC was released), I know very little about WoW. I played a DK for a few levels and actually leveled a priest to 54 and I've just started a druid but my knowledge of other class abilities is almost non-existent because I was never required to know them.

I knew I would not be able to handle it all by myself so I spoke w/ 2 others (one of our main tanks and one of our main healers) about becoming officers. The tank agreed to lead raids, the healer would do healing assignments and help with raids and I would be more "administrative" (website, recruiting, handling guild drama,etc).

I've since added 1 more officer to handle the casters and I have another server transfer to help as a raid leader.

I guess after my lengthy intro, my question to the GMs out there...what responsibilities do you have in your guild? Do you lead the raids? Do you handle the recruiting? I'm trying to get a handle on things (reading up on the fights more extensively, learning what I can about other classes) but I can still only do so much.

People told me being a GM is a thankless job and boy were they right.

Use your seat of power to delegate duties to others.

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

You have to trust your officers and delegate accordingly. If you don't trust them, you're probably going to be doing their work anyways and it's going to become too much.

That was the biggest problem in the last guild I led. Some of the officers had to leave the game for RL stuff and I wasn't able to promote new ones. There were people interested but I didn't trust them and I didn't want to cause more issues. Eventually it was just me and another officer and it became too much between leading, leading raids, recruiting, looking up strats, etc. I was spending 14 hours a day on or about WoW and I burnt out quickly (Yes I know I had no life).

Best of luck though. Sounds like you have a good core of people right under you.

Cut the dead wood. Run 10 mans forever with people you like, instead of 24 people you tolerate.

i was going to write something lengthy but yeah, G's right.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

Wow, that is the essence of running a guild right there.

Life would have been so much easier if you could do everything in EQ with 10 people. A monkey can manage ten people. Hell, most monkeys could manage 24 people.

I wouldn't think to manage 24 people and the raids they can do you would need that many officers, but I haven't played WoW in years either. You're probably best off following Givin and Sola's advice.

managing 24 people is easy.

putting up with their shit is not. I agree with Givin, raid with 9 people you like playing with versus 24 people you tolerate.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Is it really GM now and not GL? I thought this was gonna be a post about some sploit he found...

Guildmaster, Guild Leader, same shit.

I agree Vana that putting up with people's shit is a pain, especially given the average level of intelligence and maturity I saw while playing WoW.

What's goin on Xan, how's the family?

The problem is what Givin and I call the lowest common denominator factor. WoW has enabled this type of player to emerge because of how accessible everything is in the game. When we played EQ we knew who sucked, because the GL's and officers while not always getting along, always talked. The community was tighter than a gnats ass, while you could run The Titanic through the WoW communitys asshole.

Unless you've got a name on you, such as EJ, Goon Squad, et al. You're a nobody, period. People don't give a fuck who you are or what you did, or how you run your guild because they can take what they want and leave at the drop of a hat and find some loot train, rinse and repeat until they find a guild that doesn't try to make them a better player, or doesn't have to listen to advice.

I got 10 bros to play with that have been friends of mine for years that I'm finally enjoying playing again. I'm a GL in name only becuase it's always been mine. Who cares about the i level of your gear if you want to see the game ya know? The way they are going now you'll get what you want, just not right away.

I could go on, but you get my drift. Even if they are friends, putting up with 24 other people is just not worth the hassle anymore.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

Is running a WoW guild really that hard? 25 man, not 40, ease of gearing up with marks, not camping rare spawns. They basically need a pulse since Blizz dumbs down encounters after a couple weeks of release.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of stupid folks in WoW, but also lots of 24/7 teens.

90% of the WoW population has ADD. 90% of those are completely EMO, and blow up in your face when you tell them doing 4k DPS on XT is bad and here's how to fix it. Remember our old shit list? It's almost like the players on that list taught the mass population how to play WoW.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I guess I didn't answer your question. Running the raids is not hard; this game is not hard, it's managing the actual people's ego and putting up with their whiney asses that is difficult.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

The fact that you call it managing amuses me Sola. I call it babysitting.

Well, I do the same thing at work, the only difference is I can't farm gold while sitting at work. =)

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

You make it sound like you want to farm gold at work lol...

People still farm gold?

I do think that people overblow the idiot factor in WoW's population a little bit. It's more a matter of the idiots being the loudest, most visible people than everyone being an idiot.

Shut up, idiot.




j/k

90% of the WoW population are the loudest and most visible.

It's not an exaggeration, at least not on the server I was on. Maybe they're perfectly capable, intelligent people in other places, but it sure wasn't WoW. I don't know how many people we asked who could make our raid schedules and end up not even being able to attend half the time. Or people who claimed they could pull over 6k DPS and struggle to do 3k. Or how many people I had to point in the right direction on how to play, and still fail to improve. Those people who actually took advice were a little more rare than the people who got angry at being told how to play.

As probably predicted by some, the guild disbanded. Most of the asshats/problems reformed their own guild. I server transferred and am now getting together a steady 10man group instead.

The guild I joined said he would build a 25man raid for us (late night players) but even if that doesn't fly at least I can see content in a 10man setting.

I don't think you want to try and build a 25 man raiding team, that's like herding EMO cats. Instead find someone else doing it and support them. MW on Onyxia can field an occasional 10 man, and we've aligned with another guild to run their 25 mans. We bring in 2-6 good players and fill their holes. In vent I mute the EMO's who can't stop talking about themselves.

Take me off mute Azzi, or I start cutting.

They're bad, not funny like Givin or some of the more memorable raid chatters. It's a 16 yr old kid, who is afk, sucks at healing, trying to tell all healers on the raid what to do. His voice was like his testicles hadn't dropped yet, this shrill high pitched whiney sound.

I did chuckle when his guild would slot me over him, but now we've moved on to another partial raid guild filling their holes.

We function much like a raid helper, cause we're old and usually patient. I do laugh when miz or les get pissy, it takes a lot to annoy them.

I ran a few 16 year olds out of guilds I was in. It caused a division in some cases because the older players, some former EQ vets, would get mad at me. But I draw the line at people trying to give advice to a kid who talks about being abused, and as a parent, I can't really tolerate a child in-game reading some of the things that go on in guild chat.

I would love it if there were a new server type with age requirements. It wouldn't be fool-proof, but it would do the job.

I think the youngest person in the guild I'm currently in is around 20.