There has been some guild drama recently in World of Warcraft. I realize some readers might not know what a guild is in World of Warcraft. Simply put it is a collection of players who frequently play a game together and while they are not a necessity, having a guild helps players organize and complete content which requires a lot of people. Some of the more successful guilds become a community of like minded people who are interested in achieving the same set of goals and can end up being good friends. Guilds are in a variety of different games, often MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) and might be called a clan, corporation or something else along those lines. In World of Warcraft I joined a guild called Inspire which was later renamed to Inspired.
I joined Inspire in December 2019 just as I was reaching level 60 with my rogue, Mithril. Since then I have been a fairly active member of the guild, with the exception of about 7 months when real life problems needed fixing and I felt I could no longer find the time to play the game the way I wanted. When I joined Inspire I quickly came to believe that everyone was really nice, helpful and understanding. I was given a lot of help from people and I tried to return the favour whenever I could. The organized raids were fun, people appeared to be happy and for the most part the guild succeeded at whatever goals it set itself which is largely thanks to the leadership of guild officers and the dedication of many of the players. Since December 2019 the guild has changed leadership, changed officers, members have decided to leave and others have joined. I have however never been given cause to think the guild had changed for the worse. Until maybe now.
I first started to notice guild drama just after my last World of Warcraft post. A prominent member was removed from the guild for a variety of reasons. At the time from my point of view it was a sudden move which I did not understand. To help me understand I was given a list of reasons which were discussed by the officers. I didn’t really agree with any of the reasons for removal from the guild without notice with the exception that the member was ‘harassing females in the guild with private messages’. If true this does sounds unacceptable as long as the officers understand the definition of harassment and that the messages weren’t reciprocated in some way. I decided to leave it and move on accepting the decision, I wasn’t even going to write about it until more happened in following weeks.
On the 13th November 4 members decided to leave voluntarily from the guild. Some of the reasons given were they ‘don’t feel appreciated anymore in the guild’ and that they have been a raider for several years in the guild but feel like they can’t perform to the high standards that’s required, adding that ‘loyalty has no value’ and when they log in to the game they feel ‘sad and disappointed’. The person that wrote those reasons happens to be an excellent player (far better than I am) and are among the best that Inspired had to offer, not just in terms of skill but commitment, reliability, resourcefulness and friendliness. I think some of these people felt like Inspired had changed into a guild which didn’t like any aspect of casual, easy going raiding and have become more and more elitist. These people leaving was significant enough for the officers to hold a pre-raid meeting which tried to put everyone at ease that the guild wasn’t taking an elitist path and that there would be better communication. Incidentally nothing discussed in this meeting was shared with anyone who wasn’t there to raid that day.
For a while I hoped that would be the end of it but on the 22nd November another guild member, who had been in the guild since before the launch of the game decided to leave. They didn’t publicly share their reasons for leaving but the following day the officers wanted to explain why this person wanted to leave before a scheduled raid. I attended and heard the officers accuse this person of privately messaging a female guild member inappropriately and decided to leave Inspired because of it. This doesn’t make much sense to me and I really don’t understand what the officers set out to achieve. Later the guild member who left spoke to me after they had learned of the accusation through someone else. They were shocked and upset and explained they had an entirely different reason for leaving but didn’t want to rock the boat or cause upset. I don’t want to publicly share their reason for leaving because they chose not to go public. Suffice to say their reasons are completely different and actually makes much more sense.
Honestly, I don’t know what this means for Inspired, or my place in it. My confidence in at least some of the guild officers has been rattled, not just with what has been written here, but on other things as well. I find myself wondering if more people will be removed from the guild at a moments notice. I feel like I can’t disagree or have a frank conversation without running the risk of being removed from the guild, excluded from guild events or possibly defamed. I no longer believe that there are many people within the guild who are like minded with me. Perhaps there never was, perhaps I am naive. For now at least I will try to enjoy the game and stick to myself, as I did before.
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