Warhammer Online News

The Guide to the Most Thankless, Stressful and Demanding Role of Life, The Universe and Everything Else, written by Stefano ‘Saxxon’ Cozzi will be an interesting read for all of you guild leaders out there!

• Potential Successful Guild Leader Identifier
• A Responsible Leader’s Rights and Duties
• Doctor Strangewar, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guild
• Tools of the Trade

Potential Successful Guild Leader Identifier

Let’s start with the basic question: what characteristics make someone a great Guild Leader?

First of all you’ve got to face the facts: not everyone is cut out for being a Guild Leader. Yes, it’s a cruel world but this is the truth. Take the following short test to see if you have the necessary qualities:

When you see a purple item on the screen, how do you react?

• You think, “Who needs it most in my Guild?” giving the drop accordingly.
• You are overwhelmed by an uncontrollable urge and you click on the “Need” button with bloodshot eyes, gnashing your teeth and threatening unspeakable consequences for anyone who dares to click “Need” as well.

The Guild Bank is full of Gold and now you can afford…

• To use that money to sponsor the project “Newbie Support” that you’ve supported in the past. The novices of today are tomorrow’s Lieutenants!
• To withdraw all the money, take all the items from the Guild bank, kick everybody out and declare yourself “Supreme Emperor of the Old World,” and spend every day in the Capital Market Square dead drunk, claiming to be Karl Franz’ illegitimate son.

The Guild Roster keeps on shrinking, and today two more people left the Guild to join the “Killer Rabbits”. You realise that…

• You should review the Guild activities, as people are the most important Guild resource and you can’t afford to keep this negative trend.
• They’re just damned traitors; you’ll have their heads. How dare they leave YOUR Guild, after you’ve accepted them when they were just babes in arms? Is this the thanks you get after all you’ve done for them? Going to another Guild just because you’ve asked for a 100% tax rate for two months? This is unbelievable! How are you going to conquer those Keeps on your own without that cheap cannon fodder?

If you’ve answered “B” to all the questions, then welcome to the “Inadequate Guild Leaders’ Club”! If “A” was your choice in most cases, let’s move on to…

A Responsible Leader’s Rights and Duties

The role of a Guild Leader is tough but it gives great satisfaction. Seeing your Guild grow, evolve and reach its objectives one after the other, as well as obtaining your playmates’ respect, is priceless. Nevertheless, you need be committed, and show impartial judgement in every situation: it’s important that you remain a little distanced from the game, so that you can decide your next moves rationally. Then, when you realise that a whole group of people – it doesn’t matter if there are 10 or 500 – are having fun thanks to your efforts, it will be worth more than ten purple objects.

Let’s have a look at the Leader’s basic duties, and what the Guild Members expect from their boss:

Mediation Skills
It doesn’t matter how kind and diplomatic you are, there will always be Guild Members that can’t stand each other. Guess who will have to mediate between the parties and find a compromise for a quiet life? You guessed it… You! Well done. Give yourself a pat on the back!

Everybody is the same in the Guild Leader’s eyes
Is there anything more annoying than a Guild Member you can’t stand? Yes there is: a Leader that shows favouritism. It doesn’t matter if your wife really needs that purple cape when it’s dropped, or if your best friend would really appreciate the favour of letting him “borrow” money from the Guild bank – you are impartial; you’re not going to stoop to that level. Even if it means you’re going to sleep on the couch tonight, yes.

Staying on-track
One of the most important duties of a Guild Leader is making the group distinctive, which means defining the rules, habits and guidelines. Clear and detailed but not oppressive rules will help to avoid disputes and squabbles. Don’t forget to follow your own rules; if you don’t, you can be sure that people will couch their criticism in the Guild chat…

Being able to make a difficult decision
You’ve reached the point where nobody can stand a certain Member of your Guild. No matter how many times you rebuke them, they show great determination in ignoring your words, and they have this amazing ability to annoy their neighbour every time they open their mouth. Even when they’re not playing up, they manage to make everyone hate them within a couple of minutes playing together.

You are expected to be able to do the right thing at the right time, even if this might upset you. This may involve kicking people out of your Guild, and taking unpopular measures for the group’s sake when necessary.

But how can you fulfil all these expectations without having a nervous breakdown and without missing out on the fun of playing?

For this reason, here is…

Doctor Strangewar, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guild

There is no perfect formula for leading a Guild; since there are so many different situations that it’s impossible to write the perfect recipe to make everything go smoothly.

By way of compensation, I can give you some advice that I consider essential in the successful coordination of a group of players, and will not put your own mental health at risk.

You can’t make everyone happy
Really, you can’t. It’s not your fault. Cheer up. Don’t be sad; it’s not all down to you. People are different and have different requirements, and that’s a fact. It’s mathematically impossible to please every Guild Member – someone will always complain that the Guild is spending too much time sieging Keeps and someone else will say that the Guild is ignoring the RvR side of the game and it’s getting embarrassing. It’s human nature, and as long as you’re not able to genetically modify your Guild Members, there won’t be any easy solution to this problem. At any rate, if this was possible, you would miss the most educational aspects of leading a Guild; learning to understand people and balance their needs.

The right person at the right place
The ability to delegate the right tasks to the right people is one of the characteristics that make a good Leader. Trying to do everything yourself, even if you’re very capable, will lead to a nervous breakdown in the long run or will simply prevent you from managing some of your many tasks.

Don’t forget that the most important resource of your Guild is the people, so don’t be afraid to bring out their qualities and assign tasks accordingly.

You will be surprised by the results. Not only will the people to whom you have assigned a task be committed to not disappointing the other Members, but you’ll also have time to spend on something else (for example, you can actually use it as your own spare time!).

Speak, I’m listening
Successfully leading a Guild also involves conforming to its Members’ needs. To do this, you need to recognise these needs first, and for this you need to be able to listen to people when they speak. That might sound obvious, but if you don’t listen, then, when you end up with only three characters in the Guild, all belonging to the same account… yours… you’ll ask yourself “What went wrong?” or “What did I do wrong?” There will only be pain and sorrow. Tears, bitter tears. As you stand alone on the ruins of what was once a famous and successful Guild, you’ll curse the day you were born for not listening to me. Unable to find peace, you will be condemned to wander for centuries, brooding over your mistakes… but I digress. Listen to your Guild. Believe me.

Step forward, Novice!
Another important aspect that you shouldn’t underestimate is the recruiting process. Every Guild needs new recruits, either because people change Guilds as their expectations are not met, or just because there’s a nice atmosphere. The first step to ensure that people don’t move to another Guild quicker than a Dwarf can drink a pint of beer is choosing the right people. Don’t be afraid to introduce “trial periods” for newcomers, maybe slowly giving them duties and responsibilities. In this way, you will spare the Guild “difficult” elements for the group’s sake. Don’t forget that everyone has different needs and your Guild might not be suitable for everybody: don’t take it personally, that’s just life.

As you’ll probably find out on the battlefield, advice is not enough however. And for this reason WAR will meet your requirements as Guild Leaders, providing you with…

Tools of the Trade

The Guild Interface is a loyal friend; you should know it like the back of your hand, and you need to be able to use each of its features.

This will allow you to organise your time (and as you have probably realised by now, time is a precious resource that you will need to learn to ration), but it will also help you improve your system of delegating tasks, as well as the organisation of meetings and events.

Let’s have a look together at two of the available tools:

The Guild Calendar
Besides showing the in-game Events (in this case, the Night of Murder), you will be able to create Events for your Guild/Alliance.
No more forum posts to remind people when and where the appointments are at! Organising everything with this interface will make sieges and raids in the enemy territory as easy as falling off a log.

NOTE: I, the undersigned, declare that I’m not taking responsibility for the sieges, the raids and the falling off the log. It’s your problem.

The Guild Roster
Do you remember the advice on delegating? This is where you have to put this advice into practice. You can manage different “levels” of access into different Guild functionalities, for example recruiting new forces, accessing the Guild Bank or creating new Events on the Guild Calendar. Feel free to experiment a little: it only takes one click to fix any mistake you’ve made.

That’s all for now! Don’t get scared: leading a Guild is one of the greatest achievements in a video game and I hope that now you have all the tools you need for your success!

See you on the battlefield!

Be sure to check out previously posted guides as well:

• How to sack a city in Warhammer Online
• Roleplaying guide
• Open RvR guide
• Warhammer leveling guide