Guild Leaders: How to handle cliques?

[Deleted]

IT

WILL

EXPLODE.

And that explosion will be at the worst possible time and doing the most harm to your guild.

You gut instincts are right. NEVER invite groups. Be aware of those "insider" groups that form. Biggest red flag here is the fact that they don't even hang out on the guild voice comm.

Bottom line, they're using your guild for their own purposes. You and the rest of the guild are merely disposable tools for what they want. Since you mentioned that other guildies have noted the same thing and spoken to you, the damage is already happening.

If you actually do care about the rest of the guild members and the longer term viability of your guild, boot them now and let them go suck the life out of someone else's guild. This is the start of an expansion, there will be lots of players looking for a guild to raid in who can become part of a team, so take a temporary hit to the start of raiding and get rid of them and recruit people who actually DO want to be part of a team.

Cancer needs to be removed.

Sorry but rubbish you can think of guilds like companies. There will be people in the company you like and those you don't but get on with to be professional. You don't invite the latter out for drinks.

[Jingoism]

Get them in voice and tell them all about your concerns! They'll quickly figure out that you're mentally ill and leave the guild on their own.

[Deleted]

See how they do in progression, if they work together with everyone else then fine; If they get all dramatic over one of their clique not getting loot, getting benched, etc. then get rid of them.

I think that is a very valid point. If the rest of them starts acting problematic in case you have to bench one of them during raids etc., it is probably time to take action.

[Lightwysh]

The only problem here is if they exclude people because they don't want to associate with the rest of the guild. If they do include other people, even if infrequently and they are positive members of the guild/raid team, just let them be. Just be aware that if one leaves, the rest will follow, and at that point I'd expect the rest of the guild to implode after seeing a large group leave at once.

So do you want to appease this clique to keep things together, if only for a while, or remove them and likely cause your guild to collapse? Can you endure a large portion of your raid group leaving?

[tj119]

I fail to see the issue here, if they show up to raids and perform then what do you care what they do outside of that. This happens in just about every guild, if this is seriously a bother or issue for you then you have no business running a guild.

[Aggrophobic]

How is this a problem?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Bit shitty that they're loot-sharing with socials of the guild over other raiders I must say, but what can one do? Give them an ultimatum and they might leave, or they'll stay and perhaps feel resentful...

[Zandalarian Paladin]

The phenomenon might be weird to you, but cliques will always exists in guilds. Your job, as a guild leader, is to make sure everyone gets a fair share of everything needed to be ready for raiding. Is the clique preventing that?

If you feel like they don't participate enough with other guild members, then tell them that. Just don't go flailing the accusating finger in their face, that may rebuke them more than anything. And yeah, it's called being mature too - plus you save yourself a lot of drama.

[Video Games]

This is why my gm split us into 6 5 man groups for mythics this week to all help each other get gear. Aside from a few not showing since it was mandatory attendence, it worked out well. You should do something like that.

[Alydael]

You can not stop it. I am an officer in a long running guild (over 8 years), there are always cliques. The players change but there will always be cliques. You won't prevent it. The best thing you can do is try to do guild events that promote unity as a whole guild. The guild interacting as a "whole," will lessen the relevance of the "cliques".

[Freedom]

Bottom line, they're using your guild for their own purposes.

Are they taking consumables or gem handouts? Are they taking anything from the guild? No? Then they're not using the guild for anything. They aren't even using the mumble server most of the time.

To OP: Micromanagement almost never leads to anything productive. I can see being concerned over PUGing in for Mythic dungeon spots before raids, but being concerned over them not "sharing" Heroics, WQs, Suramar content? Huh?

All three of those could just as easily be done solo, and by now if you're playing "seriously" at all Heroics have ceased to be relevant. Chasing Titanforged or a legendary is a super low low chance in Heroic dungeons. AP rewards are piss except for OS artifact upping or if you spam LFD as a tank/healer with satchel up, WQs never needed a group anyways besides the DANGER ones, and there's not a lot in Suramar besides said DANGER style quests that needs other people.

[Christan]

agree that you won't really be able to stop this, all you can do is take em aside in vent, and say its come to your attention but (in an effort not to alienate them) you don't see anything wrong with it, since your friends will be raiding with us?(and leave that hanging as a question)

did they join specifically as social members or are they planning on raiding, but since new aren't part of the clique, core raiding group?
if no don't know for sure, make sure to bring it up to them as when it comes time for raids if they aren't included in the larger clique it will cause some trouble also.
if they aren't coming as raiders, ask them to include others in their runs since locking 2 healers and a possible tank out of runs would hurt the entire guild getting geared up.
(unless they are willing to go back through those mythics with other guild members, though they wont get loot?)

not much of the situation has been said other than that the 2 are new members and previous friends of the WW monk...so just separating my questions

did the monks friends join specifically as non-raiders, or do you now know for sure?

are the other guild members you want to join in on their mythic runs at the same skill level, or are you wanting some friends to break their runs up to...carry, other guild members?

what difficulty are you planning raiding?
if casual, norm, some heroics, maybe a mythic kill or few before next patch, asking them to break it up is a bit presumptuous
if you will be pushing content clearing heroic first week and doing mythic as it unlocks, then you have a legitimate issue with them


one thing to look at with their runs is, most raids, will take 2 tanks, and double the healers, whereas in 5 mans, 1 tank 1 healer...
so getting 2 healers geared up in same mythic runs, can indeed help the guild out, although it technically screws some of the dps from upping their gear pre-raid.

when raid comes and you have 2 tanks / 4 heals / 4 dps, geared from doing runs like that, compared to 2 tanks 2 heals 6 dps,
the extra heals helps out so much more when learning new content than 2 extra dps. (granted only 1 runs gearing 2 healers)

it all depends on if you casual/hardcore, and if his friends want to raid or not.

If they're 1-2 people short to run a dungeon, they rarely ask if anyone wants to go, they just pug it

that is the only actual problem i see from OP's post, the others can be dealt with especially if his friends want to get into raiding

[Taeldorian]

@Trapped I would usually say kick them as it will lead to something bad down the road but it's so close to raids being released it'll really hurt the rest of your raid team. If this was a few weeks ago it would've been fine but I'd say do what's in the best interest for your raid team if that's what matters to you right now.

[Ealyssa]

My guild is formed out of 2 cliques that I am the mediator between. Cliques in a guild work fine as long as you have a mediator who is able to communicate with everyone.

This, my guild currently has 3 "cliques". And it create no problems. We raid fine, we play fine. But obviously friendship happen and you want to play with friends.

It may be a probleme in guilds full of teens. But in a guild with mostly 30+ can't see how it may one day "explode" as some people here expect.

But hey, lets agree with the social knowledge of akward teens

[Low Hanging Fruit]

First of all this is very common at the start of expansions. Not that uncommon for normal selfish behaviors to skyrocket a bit. What matters most is in the next week or two does it die down a bit and my guess is that it will. For a few reasons. One is you and they will start raiding together and suddenly that becomes the gearing path. So people whining about not getting into to groups deminishes when seeing them in the raid and the isolation factor gets sliced out along with gear distribution is amongst more of the guild via raids. I have no doubts however that they will end up as a mythic plus group and that's just some you are going to have to accept. Unless of course you plan to control that aspect completely as well.. but that seems pretty reachy imo. In fact I am willing to bet that's their plan.

Now if this extends much past the first week or so after the raids AND they are the cause of major negitivity then you don't have much of a choice but to kick them. Or it will poison the shit out of the guild. But I have made it a rule not to get between groups of friends that enjoy the game together unless it's a negitivity circle that does nothing but bitch about who is bad, officers suck, and loot should have got to me type of bands that I have see 2 or 3 times in my GM time. But just playing together and preferred company of others in off hours? Not a good idea to fuck with that. I understand that maybe the guild would be slightly more prepared if they made the choice to help more but odds are if a few extra heroic runs are your breaking point your broke already. But it's also why I GM as a Druid and have all 4 specs on hot standby to help out as much as possible. It's why I selected my officers to have the same attitude and one of them is s pally and another a monk all with 3 specs ready to go. I also remember who put in that helpful work for the raid those first couple weeks when I and my officers are on the loot council as long as they are sucking it up in raids. But by no means does it mean I shit on the loners either. It's just a factor in a long list of them.

[Deleted]

Doing things together is not a problem, but isolating themselves from the rest of the guild is. Tell them they must use the guild mumble for group activities. It will help to socialise with other members. If they keep using their own personal voice com, kick them. They will only bring more problems down the line if they aren't willing to "play along".
Though this kind of situation is always especially bad as they will hold some power within the raid team with wich to blackmail. If you see this becoming a recurrent problem, kick them. It's not worth the hassle and stress it will pull the others through.

[General Junos]

99.999999999% of the time, you can't do a damned thing about it. As a GM or officer off and on through my years of playing WoW since Vanilla, I always seen them. It's either keep them together, or kick them. That's it.

The true test: Raid. If it disrupts your raid in any way or fashion, get rid of the cancer before it spreads. I've had multiple guilds pretty much crumble because we didn't get rid of the clique (who happened to be the worst players...) ASAP. A real scenario for you:

Officer 1: We need to sit Raider A. He's not performing well, and he's holding us back.
Officer 2: We can't do that. If we sit him, we'll lose Raider B, C, D.
Officer 1: We won't down this boss without sitting people.
Officer 2: Well, we're not sitting people.
Officers 3-5 + GM then take sides, eventually nothing is done.

This has happened so many times, it just blows my mind. Makes me want to hit things.

Personally? Let them do whatever for now. Raids aren't out. If they wanna' help people, they'll help. If they don't, they won't. Can't do much else about that right -now-. However, once raids are out, keep an eye on them. Things they may say or so might start to cause some friction. -That's- when you take a good look and decide to do something.

[Deleted]

1. Keep recruiting ( as stopping to do so is the death of your guild anyway.)

2. swap out a member of the clique for someone else.

3. swap out a different member of the clique for someone else.

4. keep recruiting.

5. swap out 2-3 different members of the clique bringing in new recruits.

6. breath a sigh of relief as the clique can be completely swapped out with new people and they eventually leave.

Give it a few lockouts.

[Littlepwny]

The only problem I see with what you describe is that they prefer to find random rather than people form the guild. Raiders should be expected to get geared on their own rather than forcing people to carry others to victory; anyone that complained about that is almost certainly lazy to find their own group/make their own guild groups or they are just bad and want to be carried.

Let them do their thing.

However, you would not be out of line asking them to try to ask in guild chat before finding randoms for their Mythics. Be careful though, if they are not asking because the rest of the guild is significantly undergeared, you will piss them off if you force them and rightly so. Mythics are not a "guild" activity.

Edit: In general for non super-hardcore guilds, disallowing people to do the (joke-difficulty) Mythics and possibly Mythic+ runs with social members and friends will only lead to the good raiders leaving.

[kamuimac]

i honestly think you people are overthingking it - they clearly found themeselves devoted 5-6 man team for mythic + dungeons but eveyrbody is over analyzing it to sky while gm is jealous because he is to bad and didnt make the cut to their group - its my bet on this situation