The Art of Diplomacy
I kind of lost track in my last blog concerning my discussion about how the social structure of Anonymous works. But what I was hoping to show was just how complicated a single online community can be in how it manages a power structure and deals with its members. In the case of Anonymous, you had a group of people who shared all glories and failures. The choice to stand out was both a threat and a challenge to the rule and would lead to becoming not just an outsider, but an enemy to the group. I learned how this group functioned simply by staying on the sidelines, however, I would like to regail you with some war stories about my first-hand experiences with online communities
The World of Warcraft is probably the best place to start, there was enough political intrigue in the relationships between players to create a fantasy novel that even Tom Clancy would be impressed by. After Teeth of the Tiger, however, I would question if senility has robbed him of the ability to read, we already know it took his ability to write, but I digress. I decided I would start from the beginning of my WoW experience, with my first character and first taste of guild politics. In the future I hope to tell more of these little war stories from both WoW and other community platforms.
Guilds are very important in WoW. For one, it is a network for players to find others that they can trust to go on quests together with, further, it provides the basic framework from which more difficult content can be accessed at the third act of the game. Functioning as gangs within the overall community that is the realm (server), these are the people most likely to stick with you during an argument and often, you come to know many of the members. I counted several as very good friends during my time in the game.
On the first realm I was involved in two major events when dealing with guilds in the game. The first one, whose name has been forgotten, I’m afraid, was a group that my first and possibly best friend ever in WoW, Zae, was a part of. I ended up joining thanks to Zae’s recommendation not only of my trustworthiness and loyalty, but also that I was damn good at playing a warrior. After some time in the group, it became clear that the leader of the group hadn’t been online for a very long time, and those that were closest to the guild leader didn’t have an explanation for his abscence. After about three weeks, it was pretty clear that our guildmaster had given up.
Prior to that point, I had been making a long discussion with one individual who was preparing a guild called Dissension. I had first met this leader after a particularly lucrative trade agreement involving a copious amount of copper ingots that I had hoarded and found that I no longer needed. Anyway, it was clear that he was interested in having some descent players join, knowing that several members of my current guild fit the bill, I ended up working my way up the social ladder within the guild until I had enough clout to suggest an exodus of the active members of the current guild into this new guild, on the honour that this new leader was on the level. Thus I lead my first exodus of fellow players to Disenssion to be under new leadership.
To be frank, when i first started the game, I was a keener. I was playing a lot during my Christmas break, and just as much during the end of the day after classes. Being that your prestige on the Internet is a matter of the amount of time you are actively online, it was little wonder that I quickly became one of the trusted lieutenants of the Dissension guild master. My activity in the guild, my efforts to improve the gameplay for everyone in the guild, and my competency as an adventurer quickly gained me as much if not more adoration than even the guild master had. Around April of that year, so long ago, did things start falling apart.
Our guild master had taken a vacation and had chosen to let one of his friends play his characters while he was gone. Not only, did this go against the liscence agreement set down by the game developer, but it was also a slap in the face for all of Dissension and so mutiny was the recourse. For an entire weekend, the former members of Dissension deliberated in the human city of Stormwind, determining who would be the new leader of the guild. There were three candidates in all. Myself, the adored general; Hawk, the former guildmaster’s second in command; and Silver, a schmuck with charisma coupled with delusions of adequacy. This little campaign took the lion’s share of three days, with Hawk and I constantly putting down Silver, while being very gentile with each other, but very forward in our mutual wish to become the master. The problem was that although I had the charisma, the will, and the support to be leader, Hawk had experience, having practically ran the guild for the majority of our former guild master’s scandal played out. Furthermore, he had the organizational skills necessary to allow the guild to continue to more advanced content.
On Sunday morning, I logged on to find a message from Hawk asking to speak with me personally. Taking to one of the less popular nooks of Stormwind, simply to avoid interruption by new players or tormentors, Hawk discussed his concerns and wanted me to privately back down from candidacy, but not just the candicacy, but also to simply take those who followed me in the guild and start my own. As Hawk explained it, I had the charisma to lead and people would want me to be leader, however, Hawk and several other members of the guild would not be keen on being led by someone who was less experienced than they were. It was also clear in Hawk’s mind that both my leading method and his would be in constant conflict, and that could lead to more damage to the guild rather than making a clean split.
This got me to thinking and the realization that I was being rather self-absorbed and near-sighted with my want to become the leader of the guild. I realized I was more in it for the sake of my ego than the sake of the guild, and also that I did indeed lack the experience that was so very important. Not to mention the fact that my time in the game would be rather limited because I would be working over the summer and likely taking shifts that were set in the evenings, so I wouldn’t have the time to be a leader.
That evening, with those thoughts in mind, I confided to closer compatriots and explained what Hawk had told me and my response to it. It was best that I simply chose to leave the guild and seek out greener pastures. I couldn’t promise the same level of commitment I had during the college months and so I wished my friends the best of luck in the end game content while I would go solo. I went into self-imposed exile. The beloved general.
I persisted for about another month or two before I finally gave up on my first character. Having built him for team play, he wasn’t doing very well in soloing, and I was too reliant on my old skills to ever try and change on this one character. I needed a fresh start, and I my two roommates from last year wanted me to join them on another realm since they were planning to start new characters as well. I happily oblidged them and left behind the realm upon which, Dissension had existed.
Last I heard from my compatriots in the guild was that everything fell apart after I had left. Hawk failed to prove himself as an able leader. The members had been cast to the wind, joining more or less serious guilds. Ones that did not want or need one of my calibur. Dissenssion had been my first family in the World of Warcraft, in fact, they were the first group of people I had ever stuck closely too since my time with the players of Devil’s Tear (A cooperative narrations game,) and Final Fantasy RPG (which I had mentioned in a previous blog). I will always miss those friends that I lost, but I always figured it was a great story to tell.
I’m getting the urge to resubscribe. I think I’ll need to lie down until it passes.
