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Fond Memories: My First Guild Drama

Again?!

It seems like a most appropriate time to reveal to all my first experience with quality guild drama.  You see the guild I've been running with since Warriors of Faith went in to administration mode died over the weekend.  It wasn't until yesterday that I managed to get one side of the story.  According to my informant, the former GM was fed up with the guild, snagged all sorts of materials and gold and gquit.  Your basic ninja scenario.

Instead of flocking to some random guild I've decided to split my chances between my characters.  Solidsamm will be joining the guild that a large portion of Smooth Criminal's officers and members have moved to.  Solidsagart has already moved to a guild run by a friend from the "good ole days" of WoW.  She'll reside there for the foreseeable future, gearing up and possibly even raiding with them.

Hot on the heels of the collapse of Smooth Criminals, I bring to you a tale of woe, back room deals and intrigue.

Since the abandonment of 40-man content I've always felt that guilds have become a far more fleeting endeavor.  The social aspects haven't changed, but the difficulty of finding 40 competent people, and the more challenging raid content in general, lead to guilds and members remaining together longer.  Knowing those facts, you can imagine my old guild's shock and dismay when word came out that a few core members were thinking about forming their own crew.  A rumor of that caliber, which happened to involve three officers and the main tank, crushes moral, to say the least.  An even worse case, it could easily fracture a guild.

Not the stuff of legends; a simple exodus of the executives you say?  Here's the kicker, the rumor started during the second All That Remains party.  As it spread like wildfire through the 30 or so people roaming my apartment the situation went completely nuts.  It became an elaborate game of telephone mixed with the too many cooks in the kitchen issue.  Everyone heard different things, tried to interject their opinions and create a plan of attack.  Personal feelings were used as facts, and players with conflicts of interest started writing guild policy.  It was a mess.

Oh, the second kicker (would that be the placement kicker?), this all went down while the people in question were in transit to their domiciles from the party.  A party where they spent a weekend hanging out and having fun like everyone else.  Didn't matter, they were unceremoniously kicked before being confronted.  I bet they were surprised when they logged in!

In the end the guild lost a few members, but ATR remained as the premiere guild on Matheridon-US.  The members were kicked, their new guild dreams died shortly after, and they joined another guild.  With the help of our ousted members the other guild became the #2 guild on the server, even grabbing server first kills for a good stretch of time.

Friendships were tested, the guild hit a wall in raiding as it recovered, but worst of all feelings were hurt.  All because of a stupid rumor's ability to take on a life of its own, and cause once level-headed people to act on impulse instead of logic.  It pains me to even discuss the stupidity at how the whole debacle was handled.  At least everyone lived...

What's the craziest bit of guild drama you've ever been tied up in?

Reader Comments (11)

I think you meant "crushes morale"...unless you've crushed the moral of the story or something like that, but that's probably not what you meant.

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterPatrickD

Craziest guild drama I've seen is a guild on Daggerspine that kicked one of their raiding members because she wanted to level up her druid instead of having to use her hunter all the time. Short version is that they gkicked her and all her alts because they didn't want her using "guild time" and "guild resources" to level characters. ...even though the guild leaders were doing this themselves and she had only wanted two, maybe three, max level characters...not 10 or something.

...at least that's how I understand the story.

WTF? The guild leaders don't want more variety in available raiders and dictate what class you need to play? That's balls.

I'm still in the guild, but will likely gquit once I hit 80.

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterPatrickD

The first guild I was ever in...

We had recently gotten a guy from a big guild to help us out with raiding and whip us into shape. He was very militaristic and some people didn't like it. One girl left and he tried to apologize to her. Her husband kicked said militaristic guy from the guild in anger. His friends started leaving and there was a lot of confusion. Everyone was up in arms and bombarded the guild leader when he signed on. Poor guy had just found out his mom had cancer and was not up to deal with it. He left over the next couple of days and rerolled horde on another server.

I was away on vacation through most of it so I came back to fun stories.

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterSara

My guild had a terrible 10 man run, a mix of poor heals and uncoorperative off tanks would be the politest way of describing the issues.
I wasn't there for the run, I logged on a few hours after when in vent the GM was talking smack about the pally healer and how the off tanks refused to pick up adds, unbeknownst to her the player in question (the pally) logged in and heard much of the ranting and it kicked off.

That and a returning player was chewed out 15 minutes after rejoining and being told that all is forgiven about how he left the first time... he left again shortly after. The guy had apparently joined, ran a number of raids which geared him up and left. The GM was taking credit for the level of kit he had and wouldn't drop it even after she said all was forgiven!

Other than those I don't have any stories.

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterEthan

I can relate. I'd joined a more recently formed guild, so we weren't doing major content yet. However, after 3 weeks of going through 10-man Naxx with no boss wipes, things were shaping up nicely.

Unfortunately, our guild's MT decided to attempt a 3-drake OS run. I wasn't present for it, but from what I learned he basically kicked half the guild when it didn't succeed, quitting himself. Everyone else who was online at the time apparently quit in disgust.

And thus I wound up logging on and finding myself the only remaining guild member. XD;;;

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterSpifftastic

We loved our guild, and our GM who was the glue. She and the main tank we're a great yin and yang team, he with the raid lead experience and knowledge of fights, and she with the willingness and ability to talk and listen to people with opinions and concerns.

She hadn't been playing long, and after about a year, decided she wanted to go to a "high-end" raiding guild. (We may go at a slower pace, but I'm happy for no DKP and the ability to take a night or weekend off) She left the server, main tank in charge, who kept the guild together for months without her. Unfortunately we lost too many members and decided to merge with another guild.

That was a horrible mistake.

To try and wrap it up, we, the old guild members were left out of "their" guild runs only brought in if needed, everyone was pissed and thinking about quitting, and then our old GM came back! She didn't like the faster pace, or the new people who didn't have fun raiding, so decided to reform the original guild and was stunned to find the flood of people who returned to her. Now we're restarting and did our first 25m Naxx run last weekend. Happy endings!

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterKaydince

I've probibly been in over 10 guilds, all broken up due to drama >.> I'm a vet of guild drama.

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterTaskun

I can't say I've actually had much superbad drama, considering I'm the leader of a small social guild. Being purely social, with a coupel raids here and there, you'd think it'd be ripe with drama, but it isn't. We all love each other, we're family. I like them, they like me.

For the most part. We do get petty arguements once in a blue moon. One of the few went like this:

Officers teased lower ranked member about a guy hitting on her and calling his thing "a pickle". As unappropriate as it was, it was funny, so they laughed and made pickle jokes.

She asked them to stop, and when they continued to do it, she left the guild, and put EVERYONE on ignore, including me, and I wasn't the one teasing her. Using another one of the officers as a mouthpiece, she said she'll come back with apologies. Well, since we're on ignore, we couldn't exactly apologize. She simply said, well find a way.

It was stupid and immature, I've never seen anyone have a heart attack over pickle jokes. She's since rejoined the guild, but people's opinions of her dropped drastically.

On the other hand, the officers should have stopped after she asked them too. /shrug

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterZreena

well according to my guild i have a big nose and dont know how to keep it out of peoples busness i honnostly still dont know what i was doing wrong what is so wrong about speaking your opiniion? they say its my tone of voice but i dont know anyhow after loging on to vent i tryed to talk to some of my guild members i assumed something was wrong with my mic since thier was no responce but i was informed that i was muted for reason i didnt understand so i got into a big argument with the guild after the storm blew over ( as in no one responing to my comments anymore) later that night the GM promised to ummute if i was a "good boy" i just went along with it the next day the same thing happen but this time everyone on then muted me we got into another argument i ended up loging of i was afraid of waht i might say to perminatly ruin my relationship with the guild i was really pissed at am i been forced to grind the emblems from heriocs to get my gear because their wasnt enough room for thier raids and here they are cursing ne if treating me like thier own persinal bitch a few hours i cooled of and back on after i was on for some time i heard the guild master mimmick his phrase from the day before and all the other jumped in making a few joke but i didnt say a word on vent for the rest of the night thats how it is with my guild as soon as it beggins it ends

October 7, 2009 | Unregistered Commentercocopuff

Can't comment....

Wounds.... still..... too fresh.

/sniff

October 9, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterRhev (Koopa's ex-GM)

So way back when outlands was still new I joined a guild of close friends. These where the kinda friends who got together and had guild parties and generally took care of each other.

I have always been really slow at leveling. It took me a while to get a level 70 toon. Once that happened I was burning through heroics. I was a healer. I was not the best but I was the best in our little guild. That is what started the trouble.

My little healer had started to underminded the leader of the guild. SHE was the healer and no one else could be it. Not a big deal really that would be fixable but what the guildleader did instead was beyound fixing. Since we all knew each other in real life the guildleader desided to start rumors and not little ones either. The one lie that really got me was when she said I had called social services on my friend because I thought she had poor care for her children. Total lies.

After that I was done I /gquit and with in a day the whole guild was gone. The guildleader was only left with the man she cheated on her husdand with. Sad really.

October 9, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterRedaurora

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