Crash and Burn

My short attempts at guild leadership of the World of Warcraft chapter of the Order of the Rose Croix on Runetotem ended with a crash and burn, me leaving that guild after having been with them since EQ2, and playing WoW with them since the European servers opened.

Now telling this story is going to get me into further trouble, I've been already been told in the past to not discuss guild business in a public place. Especially since I "tell the story only from my point of view". Well, that kind of is the definition of a blog. I'll try to tell this story as balanced as I can. I need to write it, as writing helps me to deal with the stress and unpleasantness. But don't be surprised if you find some nasty flames in the comments section.

The Order of the Rose Croix is much older than my participation in it, having started in Dark Age of Camelot. It is a multi-game guild, currently present in several major games. But given the market share of World of Warcraft it isn't surprising that most of the forum activity is about WoW. When WoW started the guild leadership was already in place. The guild founder isn't playing any more, but Wivelrod, the previous second in command managed the guild. I have the greatest respect for Wiv, he is a very intelligent and nice person, and spent a lot of his personal time setting up the guild website and forums.

Getting along with the other guild officers at the time was less easy, they are a rougher bunch, and they have a different view of the game than I have. The Order of the Rose Croix was set up, by the guild charter and the people that got invited, to be a "relaxed, fun, and casual guild". That suited me just fine, but it turned out that the officers evolved into liking the raid game more than the casual style. That lead to them leaving for a big raiding guild on the same server, Borderland Legion.

The Order of the Rose Croix recovered from that, with new officers inviting new people, and getting a range of activities running, including raiding. As the server got older, more and more people became mainly interested in the raid game. But there were still lots of casual players, so turning ORC into a raid guild would obviously not work. So an amicable guild split was organized, setting up a raiding guild and a casual guild, with a common chat channel. During this reorganization I offered to become officer in the casual half, and ended up as guild master of that half. At that point I got access to the officers forum on the website.

Now due to the split our recruitment rules and application forum was in a bit of a mess. So I spent half a day writing a set of instructions on how to apply to join the Order of the Rose Croix in WoW, for the casual half. During this writeup I omitted putting in a rule we had, that applicants need to quit their own guild before even writing an application. I didn't find that rule very important, but although it is impossible for me to prove intent, I didn't conciously leave it out, it just got lost in the shuffle. So when somebody still in a guild applied, another officer pointed out that this rule existed, but wasn't in the text. So I put up a post in the officers forum saying "my bad, but before I put the rule back into the text, can we discuss whether we really need it?".

I got some sensible replies to that, on why we would need that rule, because it showed the commitment of the applicant. I proposed a formulation, the others agreed, and I amended the text in the application forum. But then I got a nasty text in that same officers forum, saying that I had omitted the rule intentionally, and that I was trying to play boss, changing the rules on my own, without consulting the officers. The strange thing was that this post was from one of the officers who had left the guild last year. So I got upset and basically told him that he didn't have any business in that, him not being in the guild any more. This lead to the inevitable flame war, with me and another WoW ORC officer on one side, some moderates in the middle, and several ex-officers of ORC now with a Borderland Legion guild tag on the other side. I was basically told that I didn't have the right to change any guild rules. So I said that I couldn't be guild master if I wasn't allowed to do anything, with contant interference from people with a different guild tag, and offered my resignation.

Then something strange happened, and I don't know who is behind it. Suddenly a previously invisible section of the guild forums was visible to me. It turned out that there always was an "officers club" forum, visible and accessible only to section of people calling themselves "guild officers", in which all of the ex-officers of ORC were hanging out. People like me and most of the other "chapter officers" didn't have access to that forum. On the forum was a sensible post by Wivelrod, asking the others to take the flames out of the visible officers forum, and to discuss the matter in the privacy of the secret forum. Believing that only they could read it, the ex-officers didn't mince their words. Them being British, I considerably expanded my vocabulary of British slang. I did understand most terms, like "wanker", but am still a bit unsure about the exact meaning of "tosser", not that I suspect it is a polite term. The most polite comment was that I should be allowed to stay because nobody else was willing to take the job.

So that was it. I found my guild had a bizarre leadership structure, with a secret "officers club" of people thinking they were still running things, in spite of having left WoW, or having switched to Borderland Legion. And obviously the name-calling from them was pretty hurtful. I'm sure I hurt these guys as well, with my comments, but you know my writing style, it might be acidic, but I don't generally use swear words as a means to get my point across. Being pretty sure that Dagoon and Cravex would continue to harass and insult me if I stayed, I transfered the GM title of the ORC WoW chapter to another officer with his agreement, sent him the contents of the guild bank, and quit the guild with all my characters. That was hard, because I do like the people that are actually in the guild, I'm just at odds with some of those who left, or rather didn't really leave. There is a subtle irony behind the fight starting with the discussion whether somebody with a foreign guild tag was committed enough for being invited, and the people shooting me down for it having a foreign guild tag.

For the time being I'll stay unguilded for a while. Maybe it is even time to take a break from WoW, such guild drama sure removes the fun from the game. I'd still be curious to find out how it came that I suddenly had access to the secret officers club forum. Was the access there since some time, and I hadn't seen it? Had Wivelrod slipped up when distributing access rights? Or is Wiv a more clever politician than I gave him credit for, giving me access on purpose and starting that thread so I could see what really was going on in the background, with me leaving the inevitable consequence? Or was it somebody else? I'll probably never will know.