Exclusive clubs
Hi! Still surviving tech week here, but the rehearsals every night are getting to us a bit. Just one tough weekend ahead of us and then we get a bit of time off.
I have gone personally through several dramatic upheavals in a club-based game in the last few months and realized recently that I don't think I ever livejournaled about it. I don't want to say anything specific about these experiences, but I do have some general stuff I'd like to share.
First, WoW and many other MMORPGs SUCK when it comes to people management. They invite drama and problems with their requirement that guilds be exclusive. Characters can only belong to one guild at a time and they get certain abilities then that they lack with other people they play with. Some MMORPGS even go so far as to basically let you only join one guild per server. Having such an "exclusive club" setup will invariably lead to people treating the guilds as exclusive clubs and people feeling left out.
All guilds/clubs start small. Usually they are a very small group of people or one person's idea and then they grow either naturally (friends of friends joining) or by requirement (necessary for the club's existence and/or healthiness). These small clubs are usually communistic or a benevolent dictatorship which since everyone is friends are the same thing typically. But with growth will *always* come conflict! There will always be people who are rude, selfish, inflexible, loud, demanding, etc. New people will typically demand the same power as the old people and want to change things. The old people will be put off by this: "we invited you to join our club, not change it." When everyone is friends and willing to compromise, all of these issues SHOULD be able to be worked out without too much drama or too many people leaving in a huff.
People think they can avoid conflict by specifying the club's identity at the beginning: "Oh, this is going to be an awesome PVP oriented guild that will grow large and make me famous." I guarantee there will still be at least 2 sources of conflict still. The first will come when there are more new people than old people, when it's time for the government of the guild to change and adapt, when the leader suddenly finds that the majority of the guild doesn't want him to be a dictator and run things anymore for example. The second will be the inevitable conflicts caused by a large number of different acquaintances interacting a lot. Don't underestimate this; it will happen. People will be rude on forums, arguments will erupt in raids, etc.
I'm jaded now about friends and games; I think the guilds most likely to survive perpetually have to be strictly rule-based, impersonal democracies. They have to be based on a singular goal typically and be relatively large. I personally have little interest in such a club unless I truly believe in that goal (and in such a limiting MMORPG, am willing to give up on any other goals) and can find a nice niche of friends, a guild within a guild in essence.
Personally, I failed in almost every one of these paragraphs/topics and my goal was very simple with my guild (to play a game with friends, in part so I could keep in touch from Maryland), but there's only so much you can do about other people. (My fix-it, hard-working personality just doesn't take the "Accept what I cannot change" philosophy very easily.)
I'm actually reading a good fiction novel right now (I don't read enough fiction at all) about a guy named Sam who's got a LOT in common with me. Man, if you want to understand me better, read this book (ask me to borrow it)!! He is so much me, in thoughts, worries and feelings. Tonight, I read a section where several of the guild dramas I was involved in got re-enacted in the book (metaphorically of course, the book's not about video games). Crazy, right?
I have gone personally through several dramatic upheavals in a club-based game in the last few months and realized recently that I don't think I ever livejournaled about it. I don't want to say anything specific about these experiences, but I do have some general stuff I'd like to share.
First, WoW and many other MMORPGs SUCK when it comes to people management. They invite drama and problems with their requirement that guilds be exclusive. Characters can only belong to one guild at a time and they get certain abilities then that they lack with other people they play with. Some MMORPGS even go so far as to basically let you only join one guild per server. Having such an "exclusive club" setup will invariably lead to people treating the guilds as exclusive clubs and people feeling left out.
All guilds/clubs start small. Usually they are a very small group of people or one person's idea and then they grow either naturally (friends of friends joining) or by requirement (necessary for the club's existence and/or healthiness). These small clubs are usually communistic or a benevolent dictatorship which since everyone is friends are the same thing typically. But with growth will *always* come conflict! There will always be people who are rude, selfish, inflexible, loud, demanding, etc. New people will typically demand the same power as the old people and want to change things. The old people will be put off by this: "we invited you to join our club, not change it." When everyone is friends and willing to compromise, all of these issues SHOULD be able to be worked out without too much drama or too many people leaving in a huff.
People think they can avoid conflict by specifying the club's identity at the beginning: "Oh, this is going to be an awesome PVP oriented guild that will grow large and make me famous." I guarantee there will still be at least 2 sources of conflict still. The first will come when there are more new people than old people, when it's time for the government of the guild to change and adapt, when the leader suddenly finds that the majority of the guild doesn't want him to be a dictator and run things anymore for example. The second will be the inevitable conflicts caused by a large number of different acquaintances interacting a lot. Don't underestimate this; it will happen. People will be rude on forums, arguments will erupt in raids, etc.
I'm jaded now about friends and games; I think the guilds most likely to survive perpetually have to be strictly rule-based, impersonal democracies. They have to be based on a singular goal typically and be relatively large. I personally have little interest in such a club unless I truly believe in that goal (and in such a limiting MMORPG, am willing to give up on any other goals) and can find a nice niche of friends, a guild within a guild in essence.
Personally, I failed in almost every one of these paragraphs/topics and my goal was very simple with my guild (to play a game with friends, in part so I could keep in touch from Maryland), but there's only so much you can do about other people. (My fix-it, hard-working personality just doesn't take the "Accept what I cannot change" philosophy very easily.)
I'm actually reading a good fiction novel right now (I don't read enough fiction at all) about a guy named Sam who's got a LOT in common with me. Man, if you want to understand me better, read this book (ask me to borrow it)!! He is so much me, in thoughts, worries and feelings. Tonight, I read a section where several of the guild dramas I was involved in got re-enacted in the book (metaphorically of course, the book's not about video games). Crazy, right?