Your Guild: High School All Over…. June 28, 2007
Posted by Kendricke in Guilds.trackback
Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you’ve been a member of a guild for any significant amount of time, you’ve come across the dreaded “clique”. Maybe a few members joined your guild at the same time. Perhaps you have a group of real-world friends who play with each other. Maybe you’ve had a guild merger along the way. Couples or family members can be just as exclusive with their online time.
So, how do you fight cliques within your guild?
The short answer: You don’t.
That’s right. I learned a long time ago not to fight the concept of cliques. Unfortunately, a lot of guild officers I know of haven’t picked up on this simple, yet critical lesson yet. It’s leading to stress, tension, drama, and if approaches to the subject aren’t modified, it’s going to result in lost members – groups at a time.
Too many guild officers see cliques as a destructive force. Groups of players who spend all their time together are often seen as anti-social – even anti-guild. Officers sometimes resort to efforts designed to break up such cliques, perhaps by separating couples during raids, or even during suggested (or assigned) nightly groupings.
Cliques exist for a reason. Players naturally gravitate towards other players for any number of reasons. I’ve seen cliques based around family ties, real world geography, and even in-game classes or races. Whatever the reason, accept that these cliques formed for a reason and you’ll save yourself all manner of stress and tension in the long run. Cliques aren’t just some artificial group dynamic – these are very real relationships between people, and just as you need to tread carefully when criticizing your friends romantic choices in the real world, you need to be careful when trying to disrupt relationships that your members have formed within your guild.
This advice flies in the face of convential wisdom. After all, most guild leaders “know” that cliques are generally bad; that they erode at team morale, and lead to eventual drama. What most guild leaders don’t recognize within their own logic is the fact that this erosion of morale and increase in drama are often reactions to attempts to disrupt the cliques.
In short, it’s best not to try to disrupt these cliques. Accept them, and even encourage them. Identify the likely influential leaders of such cliques within your guild and directly engage them in conversations on how you’d like them to better help the guild overall. Ask their advice on ways you can do things better, and suggest ways they could set up grouping nights with their friends and family (i.e., “cliques”). Make certain you do what you can to convey this desire through other officers as well.
Cliques are a fact of guild life. Every guild has them. Every guild gets them. Fight them and you’ll lose, pretty much every time. You’ll increase your own personal stress and raise the tension within your ranks.
Instead, work with your guild’s internal influencers, instead of against them. When possible, work to have those internal groups together as often as possible. Have them put together static group nights. See if you can get them working on quests together. Even encourage friendly rivalries between different groups within the guild.
When properly harnessed, internal cliques can be some of the best ways your guild can accomplish overall goals. Delegate out responsibilities, and when appropriate, promote leaders of various cliques to officer positions to further strengthen the ties between the sub-group and the guild as a whole. Envelop and encourage the cliques to continue working together, and you’ll be amazed at the complexity of diversity this can bring to your guild’s overall nightly dynamics.
While I agree that clique’s are part of society, ingame and real life interaction, I don’t necessarily think they are good or bad, unless people in them are being negative toward the guild. Then obviously, they need to leave if they are not happy. I’ve been in groups of like people, married or just couples, 3 sets of us about the same or the same level ingame, that hang out certain hours of the day due to our time zones being close to each other, etc. Is it wrong to play with those same players most of the time? It is not the 6 of us in that case that are shutting out anyone, as groups are limited to 6 in EQ2. I would gladly group with others regularly, but they aren’t on the same times of the day, or as often. It is just simple human nature for people to look to satisfy their needs in my opinion. Should that be punished, not at all. Sometimes it works out to the advantage. In several cases in our guild, folks that play alot have leveled several characters to the level cap in order to play different characters during groups or raids, just so they are more flexible to help out. I myself have several high level characters to keep the game interesting, benefit myself and the guild by having a variety of roles I can fill and can help out with whichever during a person or groups time of need.
While most people don’t want to revisit older zones while mentored, I don’t mind, on occasion doing so. I said on occasion and I meant it, yes. I have worked hard, in groups and out of groups at times, to get my characters where they are in level, questlines, etc. I don’t have any obligations to help people 40 levels lower than I every day. I do have an obligation to promote others around the same level to get together, share the knowledge I have about what they are doing at the time, group with them on occasion and mentor them to help them through a zone, quest, etc. and promote guild spirits whenever possible.
I’m not perfect, so I don’t always do these things as efficiently as I could, but I always try to keep them in my scope of gameplay for myself and my guild. I care about each and every one of my guildmates. Some more than others because I know them better, or they have been around longer, etc., but nonetheless, I do care about them and I hope that they tell me or another leader when they are happy or not happy. If I can do something about it, I will. If I can’t, I’ll tell them I can’t, or can’t right this second, but can soon or on a specific date.
I really feel it’s all about being honest with everyone. I don’t play this or any game to make others happy, but while I’m in game, I sure try my best as a leader to make them as happy as I possibly can.
I try to compare it to my family.
You have moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandmas, grandpas, sons and daughters all in one big mess called a guild. I don’t expect that anyone will be 100% effective at making each and every one of those people happy 100% of the time. I know I could never do that in my family. But, if you make an effort, get other leaders and other officers, and other members to make that same effort to have fun and achieve goals, then I believe that is how you make a successful guild in general. If no one has fun anymore, then why play? That’s doesn’t mean throw in the towel, it means mention it to a leader or someone you feel safe talking to about it and find out how you can make it more of a challenge, or more fun, or more entertaining, etc. If that don’t work… I would honestly have to move on to another guild or game, or stop gaming. I would hope that doesn’t happen to many folks, but I’m sure it’s a possibility.
[...] I guess that as long as I keep vigilant and aware of the possibility, then we might avoid becoming that clique in a negative sense. Never forgetting that behind each Avatar is a real person. It is something I have tried to keep in mind and often recall this post from Kendricke. [...]