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Of how i lost my WoW guild to Bob. (rant/vent)
MmoFluff
Member Posts: 12
This is mostly a "vent" thread as this has just happened to me and i am not sure on how to take it on, and i wonder if anyone had a similar experience at some point in their MMO careers.
I am an old vanilla WoW player and after so much time playing the game i was feeling a bit bored and wanted to do something different to the usual progressing, so i decided to tackle a facet i had never considered before: Guild Leading.
I decided to make a guild where all the new/returning players could join to learn the ropes, because i thought it would be fun to help and assist dozens of new players as they followed the path i followed so many years before.
Things went well and a few months into it the guild had grown solid and many players had become friends and wanted to transform the guild into something more, into a raiding guild, to which i agreed, and despite my lack of experience in the leading role, i did my best and we even got a few nice completions and kills.
It was then when this guy, let´s call him "Bob", joined my guild.
Bob was extremely experienced (raidwise), very helpful and had one of those magnetic personalities everyone (me included) seems to love, and a few weeks later and many successful boss kills (with his help) forward everyone wanted for him to become an officer, to which i agreed.
But then things turned sour for me.
Despite the fact i had been helping, supporting and providing for them for over half a year, suddenly everything in the guild was about Bob and it felt like every single decision or activity that mattered was lead and organized by bob.
Since it mostly was good for the guild, i decided not to make a big fuss about it and i simply made myself as helpful as i could be ( as i always had done) but the more i did the less it was appreciated and Bob got the merit for everything.
Fast forward a couple months, and about 70% of the guild "voted" him as the new Guild Master and pretty much pressured me into giving the mantle of leadership to him, and did so til i gave in and made him the leader.
One month later i lost my regular raid position as there were already two guildies with my class/spec that were way better geared than myself and i now find myself sitting in a forgotten corner of the guild i made to help this people, as they fly off to success with Bob, and will probably end up leaving it as there is no longer a place in it for me.
And here i sit, thinking i have lost over half a year of gaming helping a bunch of ingrates.
Comments
seen it happen to other guilds in EQ and EQ2
basically, sounds like your guild was not a serious raid guild and got transformed into one
EQ2 fan sites
You should have stayed guild leader. Sure, you might have lost a large chunk of your members along with Bob, but the 30% or so who remained would be the ones who appreciated your efforts. Even if everybody left, you could've still started fresh.
Running a guild like a democracy doesn't usually end well.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
what the guy above stated. should have stayed leader and let bob and others leave if they wanted. you would have found out who your real friends were and who was just there to leech off you.
edit: sorry this happened to you by the way. guild politics suck.
As soon as a guild makes the switch from 'a helpful group of friends having fun together' to 'raid guild' this tends to happen. I've seen it happen many times in may different games. You get the 'A' team and everyone else becomes subs only needed when one of the big boys can't make it.
Generally it works out better to split the guild. Let the raiders form their own guild and keep the rest together having fun. One can even become a feeder guild to the raid guild. I've seen this done a few times. At one point we even had a feeder guild to the feeder guild (EQ raiding).
I'm sorry this happened to you but if you found the first part fulfilling just do it again and remember what to do if it progresses again. The non-raiders almost certainly appreciated your efforts and you should feel proud of the pre-Bob community you created.
I am sorry but you seem to blame your best officer and 70% of your guild and there's no sign of constructive " Could it be also my fault? " . Be it your personality, your activity or your efforts, guilds don't just turn against people.
If Bob is as great as you say, what you can do is message him and explain how you feel and ask him to give you an officer role.
I'd however like to cheer you up, you were not the only one having such problems in MMOs. Listen to the above song about EVE online.
Mate you built that guild, no matter who comes a long to 'help' you retain leadership of it.
I am not saying you have to be a complete ass, or Drill Instructor Dick, but you need to have a very set goal for your guild, and let nothing push you away from it. If they enjoyed 'bob' so much well then 'bob' can go make his own guild and they can go with him. You built it once, you can do it again, use this as a lesson learned.
Good luck, I am sorry this happened, but use this to help you grow as a leader, don't let it run you away.
Bounce out of this guild, build a new one, and have fun.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
So you got upset that someone else was more popular than you?
That was your initial response?
You can't think of a single reason why that might not be what a 'normal person who is all about helping other people' response would be?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I don't understand why you would ever consider giving up your leader position. It's your guild.
If they don't like how you lead they can fo.
Did you read the post? No, that is not the theme of his complaint at all. Posting before you know what you are talking about really makes you sound stupid. Good job.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
While i appreciate everyone´s input on the matter, i would like to single you out and thank you since your replies are probably the most impartial and direct i could have asked for.
I guess i just feel they were ungrateful because i truly did help them a lot before we switched to raiding so i expected at least some respect even when asking for Bob to lead, rather than the "gtfo, we dont want you in there" situation i found myself into.
I guess it´s not so much what happened as how it happened, that bothered me the most.
and Kratier...
1- you didnt stand up for yourself = This is somewhat true.
2- you werent geared but were a guild leader? = I said was less geared, not that i wasnt geared at all, and remember "bob" had been leading progress for a while already when i lost my spot.
3-"old vanilla WoW player" - no, you are fucking not. = And you base yourself in what, to claim i am not?
There is also no need to be so downright offensive when expressing your opinions.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
By the way, it´s not that i am claiming i did nothing wrong, and i do acknowledge i should have been more proactive and fought way harder to protect my interests, i simply needed to vent because whichever the case is, it still sucks and is not a pleasant pill to swallow.
I have learned from the experience though.
Ye, that's for the best. Remember that this is just a game. As mentioned before, this will happen again and again. Especially in real life where the consequences can be more devastating. Most people are dicks and only look out for themselves. Better to learn it over some game then let life itself be your teacher. Remember that people will always be friendly to you when you feed them. You will only know who truly care for you if you have fallen.
The problem was that you had no vision or if you had you did not stick to it. You made it a raid guild because people wanted to. At that point you should have stood you ground and have said "No I want my guild to be this and this". Something like this happend to me as well. However I never lost my position because the two co-founder where good friends of mine.
However I did lose grip of the guild (one of the biggest guild on the server in WAR at that point). Simply because we did not stick to the vision we wanted. I tried to still stand for it, but we lost and the guild merged with an other guild. The problem here as well was that we had a vision, but did not stick to it.
We became to big for our own good. I however on the other hand did enjoy it. The politics and all (we had a bob like figure in our guild) . You enjoyed yourself in those 6 months I assume? If so then you did not waste 6 month, if you did not then being removed as a guild leader is a good thing for you. It should be fun.
Well i would not really say this was your fault and certainly would not blame Bob.
There are different types of players that have played WoW since the beginning, not all are hard core, not all care about end game, to some fishing, completing quests failing in instance runs but having fun laughing about it is what they are about. To some WoW is just a game, not serious stuff.
Anyway, you made a casual leveling guild, after a while some of your members said they want to raid (happens in every guild) and you agreed,. Then after completing some runs and being successful things started to change. as time goes on new members came in and the next thing you know the guild has become a serious raiding guild and the serious members wanted the guy that led them there to become the new guild leader..
I do not think Bob came into the guild expecting this, i do think as the guild progressed your raiders just wanted the guy that was actually leading the guild in this to run things, so votes happened and you went wit it.
You did not do anything wrong except lose your focus/vision of your guild, you wanted a casual lvling guild but for what ever reason you decided to change your guilds mission. When you started to raid had you made it clear you wanted to keep it light and drama free you could have kept it as a casual and light guild. The guys that wanted to be serious about raiding would have moved on to other guilds that offered what they wanted.
So, whats done is done and now you know more of what you want your game to be like, what you do from here is up to you, Time to just put it behind you and move on.
And?
You made a successful guild and it out grew you.
No offense, but it sounds like you're way too much of a pushover.
There's nothing wrong with being the nice guy, but you should not let that make you forget the things you want. For starters, you should never have given him guild lead, unless u were planning on stepping down anyway. It should not have even gotten far enough to be put to a vote.
This type of situation isn't unique to raiding, guilds, or Warcraft. This situation happens often, and will likely not be the last time you run into such a situation in life if you find yourself in leadership roles. Anytime you are a position of power / importance, there will be people who will want to take that from you.
In short you need to stand up for yourself. Take control of the situation. It's great that you are letting people help, but be aware of the social situation. If someone starts over stepping their boundaries, than put your foot down. You are (were) the guild leader after all.
As long as you are someone who is consistently being friendly & helpful to others, you will have people that will stand by you.
I used to run some guilds a few years back (before I decided it was too much time), and I always made my stance clear from the start. It was my guild, anyone who didn't like the guild's direction was free to leave, but I was open to suggestions & ideas from it's members. I had people who thought they knew better than me, and I told them they were free to leave if they weren't happy. Some did, some didn't. At the end of the day all that mattered were that people were having fun, and things were running smoothly. You can't let the 'Bob's run the show. It's entirely up to you.
If your guildies made it into a raid guild when you didn't even want to, it means you never had a direction for the guild. You didn't lose it, because you never had it.
Think about it, you probably never were the leader of anyone, but Bob was. Now it just shows in-game rather than being a convention. It was always the same though, probably.
Sad story, although I confess to being the "Bob" in your story way back when I played WoW and was in a sleepy little guild that wanted to go raiding. I led them to ZG, AQ20 and MC and became so popular for it that the leader was always on my case, whining about how people liked me more than her and ignored her all the time. I didn't try to edge her out though, I just enjoyed having a fan base :P
It's true you didn't stand up for yourself, and you didn't play politics. The moral in this story is that nice guys (like yourself) don't make successful leaders because they bend too easily to public opinion and don't watch their backs.
Hey man i understand exactly what you must feel right now.. the burn and the sting of being pushed out of something you created is going to take some time. I started a very popular guild back in cata on WOW (which i havent played since partly cause of the guild thing/game changes) .. I wont name the guild but it was a RP-PVP guild on WRA that has since become very popular and is still active today i believe its been three years now.. but anyway.. same idea.. i started this new idea... it took off.. got some people in.. one of the people, i actually GAVE her lead to the guild because I was in college at the time and my schedule did not allow me to GM anymore. I choose her because of how helpful she was to the guild.
The guild was happy with us both sort of "co leading", but the problem was..the more i started being away for school stuff.. more things changed. i had implemented a lot of ideas and the new GM was changing those ideas to something else causing a split in the guild.. the drama that happened because of this was one of the reasons i quit the game. I went from playing everyday for hours to only about 2-3 days a week for maybe 2 hour sessions..
I did not expect to be pushed into a corner of the guild either as the GM slowly got rid of "my supporters" one by one.. till it was only me vs "her people" and once that happened i realized my time was up.
I check the guild site from time to time (once every 12 months or so) and they recently celebrated a three year anniversary.. go figure! im glad the guild is still alive and kicking but if i were to return I would more than likely switch servers and go Horde. I dont think I could return to guild even after all this time. Its too taxing.
My advice to you is to just cut your losses.. accept what has happened and learn from it.. move on.. its going to bother you to see the guild in game im sure it is..because you created it.. the best thing to do is to take a break from the game, change servers, switch sides do anything like that but whatever you do dont sit around thinking about what couldve been or thinking about how bad you think you were treated.. at the end of the day its not going to change the fact that you arent wanted or needed anymore in the guild. Just try to move on.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
As much as they like to deny it the hardcore players crave leadership.
Casuals want a friend but when you switched to raiding they wanted a leader. And apparently that just isnt you.
Also democracy is dumb, rule like a tyrant ;V