Guild Drama #1 or How I Became The Boss

Funny how things work out. One minute you’re a happy little soldier in a very large raiding Guild, the next you’re GM of a very small but committed progression Guild.

So in this first episode of what I am now going to call Guild Drama I’ll explain how the hell it happened.

As I said, just a couple of weeks ago I was happily raiding Ulduar 10 and Naxx 25 with my Guild, Coffee. Things were pretty smooth. But then out of the blue the Guild Master decides to quit World of Warcraft.

He hands over the reins to a very competent but not particularly interested officer and things start to go down hill. This was not the fault of the new GM – he did a good job for the most part, but his choice of officers (and the sheer number of them – I became one just by asking in GChat!) was flawed and one of those officers began to recruit heavily. This had the effect of increasing the number of raids so as to destroy the usefulness of the Calendar and dilute the quality of raiders. Not to mention the utter disaster that became loot allocation.

My little 10-man Ulduar group had, however, been raiding together for a couple of years in another Guild. We only joined Coffee when it was clear that we weren’t going to progress beyond 10-man Naxx and at the time Coffee was well run and we did achieve our goal of clearing Naxx 25 and starting on Ulduar. So with all this drama and nonsense going on around us we became very insular and began discussing what to do.

I even volunteered to Coffee’s new GM to take over from him as he had expressed his unhappiness with the role. And from that moment of madness came a whirlwind weekend during which our Ulduar group, numbering around 15 people (for those days one or more of us isn’t available), quit Coffee and returned to our former Guild, held in reserve by our ALTs. And somehow through all this I ended up as Guild Master!

I’ll be honest, I’m nervous about the role, you hold a lot of people’s expectations in your hands as GM and I want to keep the majority happy. I know I can’t keep everyone happy and, as my Guild will tell you, I am not averse to upsetting people when it’s required. I intend to be firm but fair.

I also intend to maintain the integrity of our raid group (and future raid groups) by very careful recruitment and selection of officers and raid leaders. But maybe that’s another post for Guild Drama. Right now, I’m focussing on getting us up and running with sensible rules that suit the majority.

So it is goodbye to Special Forces(!) Inoperante of Coffee and hello to Guild Master Inoperante of GANK Inc. I’ll let you know how it goes.