leadership Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Rebuilding the Core

Last night I tackled one of the harder aspects of getting a guild back on its feet, at least as far as infrastructure is concerned. Stalwart of course had been trucking along without much of a formal structure, but there were signs of stress as many fractures had formed over the years I had been gone. One of my first steps in trying to right the ship was trying to build a coalition of officers representing different parts of the guild and pulling them together into one team. Essentially I was looking for the players that were already reaching out and engaging other guild members. At the same time I was looking for individuals with keen insight and a level head.

After much consternation about my choices, I finally developed a strategy. Essentially in House Stalwart there are two major raid groups that represent the thrust of where the guild is going. Unfortunately many times these two teams are going in completely opposite directions. My hope was to find a way to represent both forces equally on this officers council of sort that I was building. From Team “Nothing Can Go Wrong” I have tagged Athelia and Arria, both of which are extremely positive forces in the guild. Additionally both have shown a level head and extremely excellent judgment skills. They are constantly engaging other players and the wealth of their game experience is something we can always use.

Then from Team “Leftovers” I brought in Gamad and Shorty. Shorty and I have a long history together, and he has always been one of those players that is willing to give the shirt off his own back to help someone out. Additionally he is a whizkid with the auction house and will be helping liquidate some of our overstuffed guild bank to help buffer our repair money. Gamad is relatively new to the guild, in the grand scheme of things, but in that time I have seen her continued to grow and reach out to new players. She has always been willing to step in and help when help is needed. Additionally I have seen that she is a peacemaker and mediator, and will help out greatly in smoothing over the rough spots.

Finally you have myself and Rylacus the person who so valiantly “kept the lights on” over the last year or so. Together we represent the legacy player, the folks who have been around since vanilla and most of them in House Stalwart since that time or at least Burning Crusade. We are the ones who remember the way things used to be, and have the roadmap to return us to glory. This mix of newer voices and older voices should mesh together to create something greater than the individual parts. There is still a lot more work to be done, but I feel more confident in moving forward now that I have the key pieces in place. There is another one of these “legacy” officers that I still need to talk to, to gauge if they still want to fill that role or not. But last night made me quite a bit more confident about the total outcome of these changes.

Viva La Artisan

Another big change that I am wanting to implement in the next few days is the Artisan rank. At one point I had one of these, but it never really worked out quite like I had wanted it to. Essentially back then I would choose a single crafter for each profession, but that process ended up ignoring a lot of people who want to contribute to the guild. My plan is to make the entire process much more transparent and open this time around. My goal is to create an application process through our forums that allows individuals to sign up to fill the duty of “crafting for the guild”. What I mean by this is that they would have expanded access to the guild crafting coffers, but have the responsibility of filling in the gaps when someone needs gear. The artisan rank would make it clear to identify just who could craft gear for players.

The other major responsibility that comes with the rank is to create a “shop” of sorts on the forums. It will be the responsibility of guild crafters to create a post outlining the major things they can create with their professions. Additionally I expect these Artisans to watch the forums for any item requests and then respond back in a timely fashion as to whether or not they can provide the service. I am going to have to figure out the logistics of this whole program, but over the years I have had more guild members wanting to know how they can help out. Buffering the leveling process by providing new gear, especially as someone reaches the level cap is a massively valuable service. I know Shorty for example already provides new players “care packages” of things like bags… and this has been entirely of his own initiative. I can only imagine what could come of a more organized system.

Bring on the Warband

Finally I am wanting to work out the details of organizing the raid groups within the guild. I am staunchly against a “raider” rank, because singling someone out just because they raid as somehow better just feels morally wrong. What I do want to create however is transparency in who is actually organizing and leading the raids. As a result one of the various guild ranks will be turned into a “Raid Leader” designation. This serves two very simple purposes. Firstly it will control access to the raid materials tab in the guild bank. However more importantly this will clearly identify who a guild member can approach about joining in the raid. Additionally I would like to get someone from each raid to maintain a thread on the forums outlining what the raid does, when they raid, who exactly someone can talk to about joining.

Additionally I want there to be a clear “you must be this tall” line drawn for each group. Item level is a double edged razor, but with it you can size up some basic requirements as to how well geared someone needs to be to be able to compete in the content. I am by no means saying that there needs to be an automatic system of entry. I do not want to get into the business of determining who can raid and who can not. I do however want the raid groups within House Stalwart to be much more transparent on how one gains entry. Additionally I feel as though if you enter one of the raid groups in good faith that you should remain loyal to that team.

There has been some bad blood in the past as various individuals have transitioned between the teams without adequately informing the leadership of their previous team. I want this to stop, we are one guild with a shared mission of trying to make the game a better place for all of us. My hope is that by exposing the raid groups and the processes for entry, that it will be extremely clear how transitions should work. Additionally I would like to see rosters posted of the current members of each raid, that way there can be no doubt in when someone is encroaching on the domain of the other raid. I am not saying there can be no transfers of lineup… I just want the entire process to work more transparently.

And Then I Actually Played…

I won’t lie… most of my night last night was spent dealing with various guild business in trying to create this new vision. Additionally I spent more than a bit of my time counseling players and trying to smooth over rough spots. Shortly after I had talked to Arria and brought him into he council he designed to run a heroic scenario. I took a break from leveling Gloam to do so, as my Paladin still had not finished the quest that guarantees a 500+ epic of some sort. The biggest struggle in gearing my alts has been on trying to get a weapon. I had heard from many friends that weapons DO actually drop from the loot bag you get from your daily heroic scenario. Problem is so far in all of the scenarios I had run I had not actually seen this happen.

So I went into the run expecting to get a few valor points, but not really expecting much from it. I am so thankful I took the break from my rogue because I walked out with a shiny Immaculate Pandaren Hammer of the Earthshaker. This actually is about the ideal weapon for a retribution Paladin, so I can finally stop sucking it up with my 450 weapon in LFR. It was a fun little run but I failed miserably at tanking the pirate boss with the saber. I had never actually used it, and I was trying to move out of the fire while hitting the cooldown and just got oneshot. On my deathknight I never use the saber and simply move out of range. So we missed the bonus by a few seconds, and I feel bad about it… but everyone that was with me was fine with it. They were happy to see I managed to pull a weapon. Now I just need to get the same success with my shaman… twice.

The Founding

Back in 2004 House Stalwart was born out of a bunch of friends getting together and planning a community for the launch of the newest up and coming MMO… the World of Warcraft. Over those years we’ve had a somewhat bumpy and often storied past, but at the core the guild remained based on a few core tenets and a shared sense of ethics. It was a set of values that spanned from game to game, and some of my proudest moments were when one of my random guild members would do something awesome out in the world… and news of it would get back to me. I had built a really awesome thing, and people were happy in it.

The problem was that at the time I was not really happy in the game any longer. The yoke of leadership was chafing, and towards the tail end of Wrath of the Lich King, the guild pretty much went on autopilot. With the release of Cataclysm we went through a lot of major changes, as the shift of focus went away from a non guild based raid, to actually raiding as a guild. In the process we gobbled up four or five different guilds that had been feeding the Duranub Raiding Company. As a result of this upheaval was a lot of social strife, as various groups that were not entirely used to sharing the same guild had to cohabitate.

The Fracture

As this happened I got more distant myself, because I simply was not enjoying the game anymore. When I got into the beta of a game called Rift I grabbed on with both hands, and tried my damnedest to recreate the magic of House Stalwart over there as well. There was a big leaving as folks flaked off to join me in Rift. It didn’t last of course, but it was enough to pull a good number of people away form the WoW guild. When Star Wars the Old Republic released another big chunk of players flaked away, and each time something new came out the cycle would happen again. I had set the events in motion and it had left the guild in a state of chaos.

In many ways House Stalwart was somewhat of a failed state when I returned for my brief stint during the launch of Mists of Pandaria. Guild chat was deathly quiet, there was a significant fracture in the guild forming that I talked about the other day, and as a whole the entire place was filled with people that did not know who I was. The number of things I would need to do to fix what was wrong with the guild just felt staggering. I did a few minor adjustments, but for the most part I assumed that since the guild was running itself, that this must be what the players had come to expect. The place no longer felt like home, so after a few months of personally getting bored with WoW again… I left.

The Hope

When I came back recently something had changed, either in me or in the guild itself. I saw a glimmer of the greatness we once had. Additionally I saw a lot of problems that I thought could be fixed. I was reluctant to take back the yoke of leadership, because quite simply I was not sure if I would be around for long. I expected this stint in the game to go much like the last, with me getting tired of it all and going elsewhere. I had daily conversations with Rylacus the steward I had placed over the guild after my return during Pandaria, and almost always they ended up with some discussion of me taking back the leadership. To be truthful when he handed back the highest rank on Monday I was still very reluctant to do so.

When Rylacus agreed to take over, it was to keep the lights on and things moving forward. We had an agreement that if any of the heavy lifting needed to be done, or any drama arose that it would be me that dealt with it. Over the year of him at the helm, he did a phenomenal job of maintaining the status quo and keeping the guild moving forward. I would honestly say that the guild itself experienced a bit of a renaissance with his hands off approach, and we are more active now than I have seen in years. However as a guild on autopilot for over two years, there has also been a lot of discord and resentment that had set in.

The Problem

The other night a long time guild member sent me a tell in game and wanted to talk to me, as the founder about the guild policies. He said that he wondered about the recruitment policy, and whether or not we ever looked back and reflected upon whether or not an invite was a good one. I spouted off the well rehearsed lines I have always said, but as I was saying them… I realized that no really we did not any more. Then he hit me with a statement that cut through to my heart like a razor. He wanted to talk to me about the “falling guild standards”, and I guess I had realized this was happening but until he came to me and talked to me about it… I was in a bit of a state of denial. Things were in fact far worse than I had let myself believe.

In particularly a lot of the recent strife has centered around a recent invite, the nephew of a long time member. Generally what happens in this case is that I bring up the issue with the sponsor, and if they cannot deal with it we remove the person from the guild. I had gotten lax to be honest, and without that guild master tag… I imagined that it is no longer my duty to police the guild. The reason why I took up the tag in the first place all those years ago, is because no one else was going to create the type of guild I wanted to exist in. As I sat there over the weekend, I realized that once again… no one was going to step in to fix the wrongs in the guild if I did not step up and do it myself.

The Solution

After much soul searching, I accepted the guild leadership of House Stalwart in World of Warcraft on Monday night. I had originally intended to ease my reforms into the guild, but last night things reached a crescendo ending with the quitting of a long time member. I managed to talk the member back from the brink and they rejoined… but as a result my first act was to lock down a few of the functions in the guild at least temporarily, and to remove the most negative of the influences from the guild. Over the coming weeks I will be identifying every single one of our 869 current members. I want to know who they are, where they came from, who they are connected to… and most importantly if they are a positive influence in the guild.

I had already been working hard with mixed results on trying to bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots, but I feel like there is a lot more work to be done on that front. I am trying to exist in both worlds and get the two sides talking and interacting regularly… and in some ways this is working, but in others… there is still a lot of resentment to work through. When I kicked the questionable member from the guild last night, I had a chorus of private messages thanking me. Many of the members simply thought that no one cared about that sort of thing anymore. No one had been complaining about anything to myself or Rylacus until that one brave member stood up and said “this is a problem” and shook me back to reality.

The Rebirth

My ultimate hope is that we can turn the tide and bring back House Stalwart to its glory days. The chapters in the various other games that I have founded have clung tightly to the original tenets, but the original guild strayed from the path. My biggest hope is that in writing this, and reaching out to the members… is that they now know that I do care, and I do want things to be better. I want players to interact and communicate regularly filling my screen with happy green spam. I think last night I took the first steps along a long path that will usher several positive changes. I hope that folks now realize that my door is always open, and if they have any issue… be it game related or otherwise that they can talk to me at any time.

We used to jokingly call ourselves the “Little Guild that Could”, and over the years that “Little” part changed drastically, but I feel that spirit remained in place. It felt like as a whole we were pulling towards some shared goal. This is the magic that I want to revitalize in the guild, the fact that we are not just a tag to wear over our heads but instead a large extended family. This tapestry is woven out of so many different personalities and play styles… but together we have always been something more. I am back, because I love these people and I have missed them. I want to be the leader I used to be, the leader they deserve. I played WoW for over 7 years without fail… and after two years of wandering around nomadic… I have simply gotten tired of all the jumping. I feel like I have come home, but there is going to be a lot of work to return the guild to the home I want it to be for us all.