Clique forming in guild. Need help!!

[Varjo410]

The people saying "if they get better gear, they are helping the guild" are so full of shit. That kind of player is only in for itself and are in no way concerned with the progression of the guild. They'll advance as far as they can where they are and then leave first chance they see to better themselves.

Let them do their runs, but insist/ask nicely they give everybody interested in the guild the chance to join. If they ignore that, get rid of the toxic apples.
But, on the other side of things, if you've got really underperforming people (like dps doing 7k or so) you need to deal with that as well.

[slime]

Well if you figure it out let the whole of WoW know, because this happens all the time. I'd say just bow down to your clique masters they are tired of carrying your dead weight.

[iceberg265]

The group of players that have sort of split off still come to regular raid nights, and run their mini group on off nights. It's not so much that they're not willing to help the raid team as much as they're excluding other members from their particular clique. Basically, while their run doesn't negatively effect the guild in itself, I refuse to have a group of players who think themselves as a group within a group. This is one guild, not the "goods" and the "bads" having to coexist.

Stop trying to control what people do on off nights.

[Dejablue]

If you can influence the influencers, you can grow the organization.




You also need to assess who you are recruiting (you recruit who you are and you cannot recruit past where you are or have been) and at what level you are at with each of your raiders.



If you can't influence the leader(s) of this clique then it may be best to part ways. If you can get them on board, perhaps have those leader(s) lead the raids, and invest into the guild, then you will have something to grow. Either way you have to personally invest into each of these players. The proficient and the novice players alike.

There is nothing wrong with being the GM and having a separate raid leader. You will gain loyalty and raise your individual level of leadership with each individual, by helping them with their rotations and gearing, assisting the raid leaders with the raid and organization, etc.

Get these leader(s) involved. Have them go through parses with you. Have them constructively critique individual performances.

Your goal is not to have them simply do what you ask but to get them to invest into the organization. You have the same problem on both sides of this situation; players that are not investing into the organization.

You have a clique that is going of on their own, not investing.

You have poor performers not investing into themselves and thus the organization.

Get both sides excited. Rally them to the cause of the guild. It is difficult but if you take an individual approach you will get players invested. You will most certainly lose some along the way, but keep at it and those that are like minded, that you have invested into, and those that have invested into the guild will stay loyal not just to you but the guild.

It is not your guild (not that you said it was). It is their guild from the moment they put on that tag and tabard.

Set the standard of investment and inclusion and you will find loyal followers.

[Mirishka]

Went through a bit of this in Cataclysm. Had a little group of 5-6 people who did as much as they could by themselves, and all but ignored the rest of the guild. I tolerated it for a while, but it reached a point where I was no longer the only one noticing it. So, I kicked the 2 most troublesome (a douchebag shaman and his wife) and the other 3, predictably, left of their own accord.

Less than a week later we were back to raiding without incident, and most people were glad to see them gone.

[Chaoslux]

You can't expect everyone to like everyone. This group running on off nights are more dedicated than the others. This is not a bad thing. This is not because of the new raid lockouts. The entirety of WotLK worked like this with the 10 and 25 split lockouts - there was 25 guild raids and 1 core group running 10m hard modes. Of course they said we should form a 2nd 10man group but it was hard because group 1 was all the officers, the 2 main tanks, and the best 1-2 healers.

The 25man guild I was in during Wrath actually died roughly a month after to make a 2nd 10man group and "equalize" them. So every group had 1 good and 1 bank tank. 1 good and 2 bad healers. (Or if lucky, you had the group with 2 good and 1 bad healer) and 2 good and 3 bad dps.

Before that change, the "10man core group" was basically on the mentality that it wasnt that bad to have some bads in their 25man because it still gave them 25man gear that they wouldnt have access otherwise so basically, there was some "They should get better because they suck" but it was pretty tame. But after the lead decided to split the groups, nights started to become more and more intolerable as the core started to despise the lesser skilled players for ruining their nights and that they had no business doing 10man heroic because their asses couldnt be carried similar to 25man.

[Miley]

The 25man guild I was in during Wrath actually died roughly a month after to make a 2nd 10man group and "equalize" them. So every group had 1 good and 1 bank tank. 1 good and 2 bad healers. (Or if lucky, you had the group with 2 good and 1 bad healer) and 2 good and 3 bad dps.

Before that change, the "10man core group" was basically on the mentality that it wasnt that bad to have some bads in their 25man because it still gave them 25man gear that they wouldnt have access otherwise so basically, there was some "They should get better because they suck" but it was pretty tame. But after the lead decided to split the groups, nights started to become more and more intolerable as the core started to despise the lesser skilled players for ruining their nights and that they had no business doing 10man heroic because their asses couldnt be carried similar to 25man.

I can see that being a problem. The gm and an officer were both rogues in group 1 with another officer hunter so there was never a spot, for me skilled enough or not. In ICC we had a pretty successful group 2 since there was more 3 tank fights in 25man so we had a real tank for our group.


Back to op- ok if these players are loot locking themselves to bosses before you kill them as a guild it will cause the guild to get less loot per boss as it will scale only 2 drops for only 10 of the 20 players being eligible (if using group loot not personal). From what op posted it just sounds like these 10 go back Monday before the reset when the guild 100% was not going to kill the last 2 bosses for the week and just kills them as 10. This is not an issue and you should be actively replacing the bad players not letting your guild exist with a good and bad group. My guild already does this where Monday night we do not invite the lowest dps players so we can have a serious shot that night. We had a rogue gquit after being kicked last Monday but he was holding us back by not running out and taking the orb shield from koragh when it was assigned to ranged.

[WarpKnight]

This is probably the most accurate answer in the thread. Essentially all paths lead to kicking the bads or losing the goods.

yeah... can you tell I've been in something very similar to OP's situation before (except as officer not as gm)? haha..

[Bosen]

Heya everyone,

I’m having an issue with a clique starting to form in my guild, and don’t know how to handle it effectively. We had always been a small group of raiders in 10 man content, and now that we’ve been forced to 20 we had to recruit hard to get up to size. I’m in the process of weeding out weaker players and recruiting trials to take their place, but it’s slow going. If I’m being honest with myself, we have about 14-16 really strong raiders, and 9-11 that are not as strong.

We’ve been running an extra cleanup night to get any kills we weren’t able to get to during the regular week, and I’ve been finding that these stronger players have been running in their own, smaller group to get the kills instead of working with the whole guild. It’s understandable that they want a guaranteed kill vs having the weaker players there, but I also feel like it’s creating a rift that could get out of control very quickly.

Here’s my dilemma… If I demand that they include all of our guildies, then I run the risk of them leaving for greener pastures. On the other hand, if I continue to allow them to do their own runs the clique will eventually destroy the guild. I just don’t know how to handle it effectively.

Any thoughts?

Have a guild discussion over voice chat. Tell them how you'd like the guild structured and see what they think and if they'll follow your format.

The less skilled players can benefit from the better ones if the better players want to lead. You could also help people get better by showing them the resources and guides they need.

Let the less skilled players know your expectations as well.

You all are a team- remember that.

[Deleted]

Welcome to world of accessible content. Only Mythic guilds can lock their raids to a group. The flex pug friendly system is no longer a "guild friendly" raid system.

I would have a word about it. Say they are actually hurting the grander overall progress and making the problem worse (they will gear up more, they will be easier to heal, better dps, better healers, just generally better understand of the mechanics which will help more than gear in a lot of cases) whilst the less able players will stay scrub. Try and paint a bigger picture of the future of guild raiding and moving into Blackrock foundry in new year. Tell them they might need the other players for those raids as its never certain what will happen in 3 or 4 months. Other than that they will probably gear, split from you into a more capable group and start content they find a challenge.

[Vargur]

You have no right to demand anything of them. I know if I was in a guild and I was told I couldn't play how I wanted I would leave.

Pretty much it. It's not on raid time, so bugger off GM.

[lurkinz]

Obviously they're sleeping with your parents.

I'd probably vote the best being finding whoever is leading this other run and talk to them one on one if possible..

What they said. Seconded.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

We had this happen at the start of Cataclysm and the way it was resolved was by making sure those not participating in the team game were removed.
It was REALLY rocky for a while, and many people disagreed with kicking some of the people I did.

But realize that if the GM and the officers are a "clique" it means the guild is operated correctly.
When people outside the leadership are forming their own ideas, its time to intervene.

It is difficult to do, but over the years, I've grown to be closer and closer with people in my guild. Now we are in a situation where all 20-25 equally respect each other.
Everyone understands that the leadership is the leadership, but that we emphasize each player having an open voice.
This is reinforced with strong vocal leadership.
And unfortunately, looking back, I realized that the lack of vocal leadership was the reason these infectious pockets of players were forming. It happened twice, and ever since then, I've become much more vocal and demanding of player's attention.
It prevents anyone from thinking their own "clique" can form without my or the guild's consent, but is a stressful job to maintain.

You must realize though, that this is leadership. Its probably even worse in an actual job, because there you will have people that genuinely don't care about the job they do. At least in a wow guild, 99 percent of the people raiding are doing so because they enjoy it.

ALSO: Another way to prevent this is by never allowing people with pre-exisiting relationships to join together. Looking back, this was really how it was solved. We recruited two groups of 4-5 people that had already raided and played together, and all it did was cause problems.
This is the sole root of the issue, and its very rare that these preexisting groups ever proper assimilate into the new one.