Real life friends and family, should you take em?

[orcstar]

In my raiding career I've had the "joy" of being witness to two guild-crisises.

Both times it kind of destroyed a guild. The first was a group of 6 very skilled but also real life friends quitting wow all at once.

And the second was about an escalated argument about favoritism where we had 4 relatives in guild, of which 3 were excellent players, 1 a very good raidleader, 1 maintank and 1 hunter CL and their 15 yo brother. Who was a very poor player who was in guild to be there with his brother and nephews. Not as a raider. But in the end he did get taken over other more capable members in BT in blue non-enchanted gear, getting a massive boost which lead eventually to a big argument among officers and the break up of the guild.

Would you take real life friends or in general groups of players in guild? Because at this moment I see it as a liability to the rest because if you have an argument with one, it's an argument with a group. For now I would take "loners" over the people with acquaintances.

What's your stance on this?

[mero12513]

My personal philosophy would be to recruit players based on their abilities. If 4 family members are all qualified, take them all. If one is not, I would say deny that 1. If the whole family leaves, then you have solved the problem before it began. It makes recruiting a little harder, but I think it would reduce those kind of /gdisband.

[Nyd]

We have very simple rules.

1. Any friend or Family is generally open to a "Friends and Family" invite.

2. Our raiding is attendance and skill driven. We have attendance requirements and we base our raid makeup based on the encounter the skill of players and attendance. So while we do offer Friends and Family invites, those folks certainly need to understand that while future opportunities for them to raid do exist - it is up to them to get to the gear and skill levels they need to be at to be assets to our raid force. Be that through pug groups or our offnight raiding activities. There are no favorites and there is no illusion of favorites. Best person for the job with the highest attendance rates get priority every time.

3. We do not take "group applications". We don't do the "me and my 4 buddies want to come to your guild". That's awesome that you do, but each needs to submit their own application and will be weighed on their individual merits. Sadly, we've lost a couple of good applicants due to this - but in the long run your guild will be more stable and you will pull out less hair.

Typically our biggest issue in our environment is not taking the undergeared/skilled/low attendance but trying to figure out which higly geared,skilled and attendance driven people we have to sit out that night. :(

It didn't start that way mind you, it was something we built up over time by being principled, sticking to our charter (rules), and being as fair as possible with those previous two things in mind as we could.

Guild crisis are typically due to improper management more so than anything else. If you lay down a solid foundation and the leadership and officers enforce this in a respectable and consistent manner - a lot of your "guild drama" sorta evaporates.

Hope that helps.