Guild Officers

I guess there are many things I should have considered about 10 months ago when the guild started. I guess I kinda' sorta' did but recent events have given me cause to rethink things.

This is mostly directed at other guild leaders/officers...
I'm wondering if you layout specific rolls for your officers and how many officers you have i.e. ratio of officers to members...

Also how do you go about selecting officer material (application process etc?)...

Thanks

in my guild, we have ~monthly meetings where all the GMs (we have 3 right now), officers (i think we have maybe 6 officers, I am one of them), and veterans (member and initiate are our only other ranks) get together (attendance is not mandatory) to discuss promotions within the guild. mostly we focus on which initiates have shown themselves worthy of becoming full members of the guild, but we also nominate members for veteran status, which we discuss and as long as there isn't any serious objection, promote them. we probably won't need any more officers for a while, but as far as how we decided officers up to this point, it started out in a much more laid back manner, where the 2 GMs at that time went out to the guild asking for volunteers to take on some responsibility in administering the guild. I became an officer by volunteering to run the "guild bank" before guild vaults were implemented by blizzard. as time went on, that task got real boring and consumed too much of my limited play time to be worth it to me, but as i'm one of the longest standing members of the guild, i was allowed to keep my officer status. this is basically how we got half of our current officers. the rest were basically chosen due to the amount of time they play per day/week/whatever, how long they've been in the guild (i think once you get past a certain point, the longer you stay in a guild the less likely you are to leave, external circumstances aside), and how helpful they are to fellow guildies.

at this point, our officers aren't really responsible for any particular duty, but there's almost always one on to help out with whatever needs to be done, whether it's organize a kara key run, help provide materials for some tradeskill recipe, or whatever, really.

sorry, this is kinda rambling....my point is, in my experience, the best candidates for officers (or any position of power, in or out of the game) are the people who aren't actively seeking those positions. especially IN the game, where anonymity can tempt someone you've known for a year and a half to suddenly rob your guild bank blind and /gquit just because they got pissed over a small thing, people who WANT to become officers, generally aren't nearly as good at it as the people who your entire GUILD sees as fair, helpful, committed leaders. i'd say have a guild meeting, nominate some people, have a vote...don't let people campaign, or try to sway people one way or the other, just pick the people who ALREADY make you wonder why anyone would ever want to leave such a fun happy gaming family. once that's done, make sure you don't give your officers too much crap to do. if any of your officers have so much responsibility that logging on feels more like going to work to them than playing a game, you need more officers.

Its certainly not rambling and for me reading the response is the most valuable use of my short work day breaks that means I get more play time and general time @ home without having to find answer to the questions. I do appreciate the responses.

From the creation of the guild there had always been three officers, although I am guild leader I pretty much shared responsibility equally with the other two and focused on our strengths and the reason we enjoy the game. For me it was the theroycraft, lore and then guild website etc... my wife very much enjoys helping folks and as such became the event organizer for "help days", instance runs and that sort of thing. The third person enjoyed the social aspect and meeting new people and thus focused on recruiting new members.

As the guild grew we acquired one more officer to help with inter-guild affairs and finally a fifth to act as raid leader. Unfortunately one of the original three (not I or my wife) to an unannounced leave of absence for 6 months and the officers decided after 3 months to remove his privileges and down rank him (basically in case his account was hacked or something). We found a replacement officer basically in the fashion you suggested above by asking for volunteers and things were good again...

When the guild swelled to almost 80 accounts (numerous alts) we decided that an additional hand was needed to energize the guild, organize additional events and set up a second raid (so we are now the later part of last year about to start Kara). We asked again for volunteers and found another shortly after promoting him the absentee officer returned (to find he was no longer an officer). We made the decision not to re-rank him immediately but to let things play out with the current officers.

And here is where it gets messy... as anyone who is reading these forums has probably linked we started to have loyalty concerns and ultimately 3 of the then 6 officers (who happened to be the most geared for the guilds efforts) left within a month of each other, decided that progression wasn't happening as fast as they wanted... and thus the rest of the guild questioned the looting procedure and started to ask how come the they got geared and left... and of course leaving the three remaining officers heads spinning over the loyalty issues...

The guild is still in tact and rallying to ensure that it continues to stay that way but are again looking for officers... but certainly thinking hard about who and how to promote...

Its funny, I've always liked to think of us as a drama free guild, but this last month and a half have been a headache, still we managed a good run drama free before it started and hopefully we'll have another spell now its out of the way...

it sounds very similar to what happened to my guild, really. we had one person who sort of became a "quasi-officer" because he was urging (and helping) people get organized to move towards end-game content. he failed to realize that we didn't build the guild around that idea, though, so he kept pushing, and the guild began pushing back against him, and before we could really sort through all the passive-aggressive BS, he left and took a good chunk of our guild vault with him. He even forced us to kick his mother (a very nice woman) out of the guild because he was using her account to steal from our guild bank after he left.

since then, things have calmed down significantly, but organizing runs for people who want to move towards kara has become more difficult. we've been working at it, and it's happening now, at a rather slow pace. some people will undoubtedly get sick of the pace and move on, but we've settled into a pace that suits most of the people working on it. i think it's like any other leadership role: you can't please all the people all the time, and you just have to hope they feel the other rewards they get from being in the guild (socially, PvP maybe, or whatever else) outweigh the cost of them progressing at a rate slower than what they want. if you sense it's getting to a tipping point, where there'll be a dramabomb or something, you've got to have a team of officers/GMs who will do something about it before it starts to affect the whole guild. easier said than done, i know, since i was aware of this advice before and during our own trouble. it's sometimes impossible to tell what people are feeling/thinking when all you see is what they type.

anyhow, this is more conjecture than solution, but i feel your pain, and good luck...

Unfortunately there isn't really a solution...

As you say its impossible to tell what people are feeling/thinking... and there is very little to tie anyone to any particular place, other than trying to give them the opportunity to feel like they are invested in the guild itself...

Having said that we did have one member who was long standing, great player, all around nice guy... pay for vent for a year for the guild (just by adding funds to the already started account) and then 2 weeks later leave the guild.

Which is funny because whenever the idea of a merger comes up one of my reasons for not giving it serious consideration is the investment of money and time in the vent system, website etc. not to mention guild vault... 4 bags... whats that like 2000G.. I could have had my epic mount already!

Hey pad8, i don't really have any advise i could give you, but only a favor to ask. i have been playing for a while as an undead Warlock and the guild i am in has gone through quite a bit of what you speak of. I currently have no real high position in the guild and i can start to see it crumbling away, i fear it will not last much longer. But in any event, i am looking for a change of pace and a new start. if it would not be to much to ask, would you link me your server and what faction you are fighting for. In addition it would be a great honer to help at my vary best to add what i can to your guild.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and have a great day.

Oh i almost forgot, if you could add in your Toon's name that would be great.

Well the guild seems to have pulled together from a particularly low spot. In fact we had one of the best ever Kara runs this last Saturday just 5 hours to complete barring the dragon fights which we haven't really got into yet. We ended up having to PUG 3 people but that wasn't so bad... apart from the perpetually na-sayers in the LookingForGroup channel...

The Realm is US Ravenholdt a RPPVP server, although honestly RP seems a bit hap-hazard at best. Generally a good server, friendly folks (mostly) with limited drama (although the Abhorrent Taboo Guild did shake that up for a while).

The guild is Leviathan - website here and I can currently be found mostly on a toon named "Daghorian" (leveling a shadow priest to add another utility character to our raid make up).

Oh and "For the Horde"!...