Relieving Power

Recently in World of Warcraft, I’ve began leading a casual guild. I’ve always wanted to do something like this, beginning with TBC and attempting to create a giveaway guild. My ambitions with TBC didn’t last long and only attracting those who wanted free things brought in the wrong kind of crowd, mostly in the form of players who never logged in again. I guess those who work for their things tend to play longer?

Our casual guild has been growing rapidly. I joined when it was around 100 or so members? It currently is at 700+ members. One of the first guild expansions was absorbing another leveling guild. Afterwards, a few members began mass inviting, gaining us 50+ members at a day. It was startling seeing twenty people joining our guild at the same time. This inevitably led to some collateral damage.

I’ve never been in such a large guild. One of the first things that starts to fall apart is guild chat, as everyone by default has access to this. Since it’s a casual guild, it feels strange to create a timeout rank for chatters, who can see guild chat but cannot participate in it. We currently have not implemented this, so our current solution is to speak with trouble makers and then to boot them on further offenses. I suppose other guilds do this the same and it’s much easier with smaller communities and with vetted invites.

Aside from toxic chat, there’s the possibility of officer drama and vision misalignment. When we absorbed another leveling guild, we also took in their officers. I was not a part of this exchange and I did not bear witness to the transfer of power. All I can say is that from my perspective, our guild was the same but simply larger. Looking back, the people who were most eager to mass invite and mass promote were from the merging guild, making it a vision misalignment and miscommunication.

Mass inviting and mass promoting are not inherently bad. However, without limit, scope, or guidance, volume just becomes noise. As we grew more and more members, it became more and more important to weed out bad actors and to stunt undesirable growth as quickly as possible. There was one point in which officers could promote others to a rank with access to guild invitations, causing the invites to open up exponentially.

Stripping players of their power is typically not a good exchange. It relieves pressure from the guild management, but rarely does the other side take it well. With two people to talk to, both of which had been previously messaged by another officer, both did not take their punishment well. It came to them as a surprise that they would lose their powers. I’m not sure what exactly they expected. From my perspective, if undesirable behavior continued, there was only one solution for a guild. Perhaps they believed their actions were so noble that they could override our conversations. I’m not sure if those people are used to working with others or used to having restrictions.

Relieving power comes with reinstating that power somewhere else or at least another time. I am fine with having more people recruit and more people promoting. The two players response to losing their power and having a conversation about said interaction revealed to me that it was their way or the highway, as both shortly left the guild afterwards. Perhaps it wasn’t clear to them that their powers would be reinstated at a later time with some communication or compliance. Perhaps any resistance was too much for them at all.

Having both been the relieved and the reliever, it takes just a small conversation to smooth out rough edges. There are a few types of exchanges. Thank you and you’re welcome is an uneven exchange. Thank you and thank you is an even exchange. This is happening and I don’t know why is an uneven exchange. This is happening and I know why is an even exchange. Perhaps we misled those two and miscommunicated with them for too long. Or maybe they failed to understand us. Regardless, we both have moved on and power has been relieved.