The guild has undergone a recent heavy swing towards raiding simply because the team is being managed by a dedicated leadership team and also because the team is running 3 nights per week which takes up more of each raid members’ time.
We often find that some of the most dedicated players happen to be raiders and as such, we see them online a lot. The guild also has an extensive community of players who are not considered part of the progression team roster but nevertheless provide great depth and character to the guild overall. These people are crucial in that they add the balance to the pendulum of our guild which would otherwise become a pure raiding guild.
I’m talking about people who for whatever reason don’t or cannot commit to a specific schedule and the dedication needed to perform at progression level. People like Grim, Pocahunter, Yukfu, Shethehunter etc. These Dambusters stalwarts are just as important to this guild as the Idioms, Spyrot, Jolts etc. because without them, all influence would surely levitate towards raiding.
The primary motivation for my own determination to maintain this structure for the Dambusters is fear. Fear that we become just another raiding guild. Fear that the raid leaders decide they want to be the GM so take the team and create a new guild. Fear that the guys who don’t raid get stuck in a guild who doesn’t care about them since they can’t raid. Fear of raid drama causing guild implosion…
We have all seen guilds ‘merge’ together, guilds blow apart and guilds slowly die and I would guess that in almost all of these occurrences, the GM could have prevented the chaos by being clear as to the aims of the guild, the format of play the guild desires and by ensuring the people of the guild are compatible with that vision and further, they follow that vision enough in the sense that the essence of the guild is never lost. I suspect a large number of guilds who disband do so also because their GM goes AWOL, proving that they don’t care about their guild enough to even bother planning how it will operate in their absence.
Too many GMs play for their own self interest. They see the guild as a vehicle for their own personal raiding advancement, or for their own monetary (in game gold ofc) benefit or indeed just to satisfy their own ego. The latter may be acceptable as long as the GM is fair and relays his message to the guild clearly and sticks to his/her ideals without wholesale changing of guild direction on a whim. Twisting a guild’s direction constantly will lead to a crisis of identity and people will leave.
The way we operate as a community, we are massively enhanced by the raiding team’s outward appearance on the server leaderboards and inwardly appealing to members of the team itself. The guild benefits from having good players who are also good people that care about being here. Often the best of whom become officers and are asked to set examples to the rest of the guild. Some maybe should be officers but due to the way we manage the guild, not everyone can be an officer. Some Dambusters are here only for certain reasons and have really no intention of becoming part of the family. That’s fine but you won’t see me encouraging this attitude and they certainly will not be leading the guild as officers.
To caveat the obvious benefits of having an organised raid team, guilds are ever reliant on the happiness of that team and particularly it’s leadership. For me, that is a potential bombshell which is only in my control to a limited degree. It is my job to keep the entire guild happy and secure but other people’s individual happiness is something I have no real influence over. If a critical guild member became embroiled in a situation leading to an unpleasant exit from the guild, they could well attempt to drag other members out with them. This is something a raid team in particular can bring because raid teams have players who inevitably enjoy the challenge and want to be the best. If they see another team doing something they want to be doing, they leave and to compound their decision they will often tell others why they should follow and the very human nature of it will mean they are at pains to prove their decision was right. Thankfully although this situation may be commonplace among raiding communities, it hasn’t been a factor in the Dambusters very often save for maybe very few isolated cases.
These concerns are what drive me to look after the ‘little guy’ in the community. The player who is just so happy to be here. Here’s a shortened example of one particular recent message I received:-
“Just wanna thank you for what you’ve done for the guild these 6 years. I really hope that you’ll stay as Guild Leader for as long as possible, this year has been fabulous. I’ve been in a few guilds, and this guild beats the others by lightyears! I also wanna say that what you do for the guild, you do it more then great, you always try to make sure that everybody can be (involved) with no matter what it is. The Whatsapp group is a positive thing, you get to know about things that isn’t in the guild calendar like that one (impromptu) HC BRF raid where I eventually got 4 pieces of gear. I finally wanna say once again, thank you for all the things you do for the guild!”
How can a GM not be moved by such a heartfelt statement? These testimonies are surprisingly regular and they serve to reinforce my stance that the whole of our community deserves my full attention regards overall guild leadership. I would suggest other guild leaders should be doing all they can to follow my example. In addition to this type of stimulus for sticking to my guns, the toxicity out there in the wider community strengthens my resolve even further to provide a safer guild environment not only for the social community members but also for our raiding players. All Dambusters are a family and although the balance and keeping everyone happy is an everlasting struggle and test of our leadership skills, it is a very worthy cause evidenced by our relatively happy member base.
I appreciate all the help I get from my guildies and from my officers in particular. They are aware of the difficult balance we aim to achieve here and are understanding of the decisions I make which maintain that balance. It means provisions are made that don’t necessarily point to raid team benefit nor do they aim directly at benefitting non-raiding events but if we can manage to get more fun runs and more activities like some of the stuff we done last Saturday at the Anniversary event then we are on a very sure footing as a community.
/Salute
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