Monday, December 14, 2009

Running a guild without social skills

Science has tried with mixed success to measure the mental capabilities of people. From that research we got the IQ, intelligence quotient, as unit of measure of logical, analytical, and numerical mental capabilities. Lesser known is the EQ, the emotional quotient, defined as measuring your capability "to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups." The two are not correlated, in fact cases of people with high IQ and low EQ are quite common. Being more intelligent than others makes you "different", and being different is a handicap in social situations. That rejection can evoke a response of the intelligent person isolating himself socially ("I don't need the help of these morons, I'm better than them."), and over time withering the social skills.

Now obviously it is hard, if not impossible, to judge a person over the internet, as you only see a small part of him. Nevertheless, if you read enough of what a person writes on the internet, and assume that he is writing from the heart (and brain), and not faking a personality, you can make an educated guess of that persons IQ and EQ.

Based on his writings, I believe that Gevlon has a high IQ and low EQ. Thus I couldn't help but wonder about Gevlon's latest scheme, in which he wants to become the guild leader of a new raiding guild for raiding in blue gear. It is not that I don't believe that a guild consisting of 25 Gevlons in blue gear couldn't raid Naxxramas. Rather the problem is that running any guild requires quite some social skills. Cold, hard logic only gets you so far. Ayn Rand would pretty much suck as a guild leader. Thus, even if Gevlon manages to get the guild together by leveraging the advertising power of his blog (which is a good plan in itself), I do expect the whole thing to spectacularly explode after a short while.

I'd nearly be tempted to join his guild just to see that, but I haven't got the time. But if you are playing on European servers and are interested in Gevlon's concept of a blue gear raiding guild, you are invited to see for yourself. What do you think about Gevlon's plan to become a guild leader?

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