Research Project

[SocAnthro]

Hi.
My name is Emil and I’m a social anthropology student at Lund’s University in Sweden. As a part of my masters I’m tasked with doing a shorter research project during the three coming weeks.
I want to look at if there is a connection between guilds & raids and how people experience the social aspects of guilds and raids in WoW? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts about your experiences. If you want to contribute feel no pressure as there are no wrong answers and the following questions are more of a guide or an example.
How big is the guild?
Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?
How would you describe your time in the guild?
Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

Thank you for your time and I hope that you will enjoy writing as I will enjoy reading your stories and thoughts.

[Al Gorefiend]

How big is the guild?

I think between a few dozen people and their alts

Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?

No, my /g has a separate tab I have to click into in the chat box. During downtime ill tab over to it but rarely.

How would you describe your time in the guild?

I had to armory my main to remember the name of the guild he's been in since Zereth Mortis. There are still perks in the game you get for being in one, I think shorter hearthstone CD and cheaper repair bills.

Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

Its an instanced area of the game where challenges that require multiple players need to be overcome through teamwork. I am someone that can only enjoy a raid once or twice before its like watching a rerun, and since most guilds into progressing will see a raid multiple days a week for several months, its not a gameplay style meant for me.

[thesmall001]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your supervisor should have cautioned you against using public forums for data collection. They are hard to validate, subject to myriad distribution biases, and vulnerable to malicious data contribution. If I wanted to do so, I could easily create an account for every reply you get and use AI to flood the thread with my views to counter every shred of anecdotal evidence otherwise offered.

Also you have made no assurance of data security/records, you've offered no resource for experiment debrief, and your ethics committee should've instructed you to provide formal contact details which link back to your institution for safety purposes. I'd expect better from a department in the human sciences, especially in the Nords! (Best of luck with your project and future endeavours.)

Kind regards,
Reviewer 2

[Biomega]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your supervisor should have cautioned you against using public forums for data collection. They are hard to validate, subject to myriad distribution biases, and vulnerable to malicious data contribution. If I wanted to do so, I could easily create an account for every reply you get and use AI to flood the thread with my views to counter every shred of anecdotal evidence otherwise offered.

Also you have made no assurance of data security/records, you've offered no resource for experiment debrief, and your ethics committee should've instructed you to provide formal contact details which link back to your institution for safety purposes. I'd expect better from a department in the human sciences, especially in the Nords! (Best of luck with your project and future endeavours.)

Kind regards,
Reviewer 2

A valid criticism, however depending on the institution, at the MA level this may not be much of an issue because they're not looking for original research - only for demonstration of methodological mastery. So while you're entirely correct about the poor data etc. that need not necessarily matter depending on the frame and chosen methodology. Social sciences will frequently just get responses from random people quite literally off the street, and in numbers far from any kind of statistical significance (at least when it comes to training). Forums are only slightly different from that. In fact, if the biases are properly described and utilized, that may even be an asset to this kind of work. But of course this is all contingent of a particular interpretation of MA-level work; and depending on the institution/supervisor, you may well be entirely right that this kind of data collection is not a good idea. Benefit of the doubt here and all that, but checking in with the thesis supervisor is a good idea, always and for everything.

I've supervised MA theses kind of like this, though of course I'm from literature which is MUCH less data-driven so there's no big emphasis on data collection methods. Nevertheless, one student of mine did something similar with questionnaires on genre readership, and took her work to Reddit (of all places...) with fairly reasonable success. More and more students seem to be incorporating this into their work, and that's not automatically a bad thing. Though of course rife with pitfalls. However, at the PhD level this of course would be a very different scenario, as that is supposed to be original, proper research and the data better be rock solid (as solid can be, depending on the standards of the discipline). But for BA/MA there's less of an emphasis on that because it doesn't necessarily have to produce contributions to the field, just demonstrate understanding of how the field works and operates.

If anything, what I'd criticize here is the scope of the questions. They seem too broad and ill-defined to me. Not necessarily something you couldn't work with, but perhaps more structure and specificity would produce more useful stuff, even to train with. There's formats for this - just something like a Google Form might do wonders for structured responses, without devolving into some 500-point questionnaire. A bit of unsolicited advice, I guess...

[Runicblood]

I have actually been in both extremes - very guild oriented, but also guildless pugger.
I greatly prefer the guild oriented collaboration, but atm i don't have time to keep up. I'll fill out the questions considering my current situation, but also my past ideal setup.


- Part 1 -current, not very active, ultra casual a few hours a week -


How big is the guild?

~50-100 people, majority romanian guild, we have known eachother for years, we come and go, take breaks, join more active guilds, but always find eachother back here sooner or later


Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?
None at all; we are all aware we are old and busy people. As long as you drop by to say hi every now and then we all cool


How would you describe your time in the guild?

Casual. "home base". "the inn". A group of people I can hop onto discord with confortably to share some stories and catch up while doing a casual delve or m+


Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them? <ill describe the current casual view here>

Something quick I try to get out of the way during the first few weeks -month of a patch, to see the story and the content, maybe get a bit of loot. Nothing super serios. have not even stepped into heroic this expansion


_______________
- Part 2 - if I had time to actually game again -
_______________


How big is the guild?

~50 core players


Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?

Yes and no - Raiders must be active and participate; RP / PVP / social people welcome to help fill the chat box with fun topics and non-raid activities


How would you describe your time in the guild?

Invested, but not too sweaty, socially active. Know my role, know what i must do when i must do, but when "serios" time is over, just kick back and chat, do off-raid activities.


Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

The main reason we are here and why we are growing and learning together. We reserve a time slot 1-2-3 times a week to go in and progress together. Expectiations are there - research the fights, know your role, come prepared, learn from mistakes, let's get that boss down.

Most importantly - raiding mindset is - "Gear up to progress the raid", not "raid to gear up". - We get better gear to take on challenging bosses; we're not taking on bosses for you to get closer to BiS.


Sorry for my super polar opposite responses, but I am both of these people, it depends heavily on life..... Ideally I want to be answer 2; currently, due to life being life, I am answer 1.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Raiding guild stories are very common so I am going to try to diversify your feedback by giving my experience in an often overlooked type of guild in WoW, the RP guild (and to a lesser extent, a PvP guild).

During MoP, I was a part of the Kor'Kron Legion RP-PvP guild on Moon Guard led by High Warlord Skullcrusha. I forgot the exact size but IIRC we had a core of 10 to 15, maybe 20 active RPers regularly showing up to events, and additionally others who occasionally popped in but not every night. I think altogether we had 50+ characters tallied in the guild menu but ofcourse many of those were alts. The guild was primarily focused on PvP (both RBGs, and then player organized big battles out in the open world) and RP.

To be a member of the Kor'Kron Legion, you had to invent a persona for your WoW character to roleplay. I was playing a Tauren warrior and decided to reimagine him as being an usually aggressive Tauren who found Garrosh to be favorable due to his warlike and expansionist policies and thus tried to join the Warchief's favored military unit. To join the guild, you had to participate in an RP interview with a guild officer. It is mostly an in universe fluff interview rather than a super serious real life interview to join to guild, basically trying to find if you as a roleplayer would be satisfied by joining the fantasy of this guild or if your character persona is compatible with the fantasy of the guild (if not, then that can be altered on the spot no real biggie if you want, but otherwise you might not be allowed to join). For RP interview (conducted by a goblin death knight in service to the Kor'Kron Legion) was pretty fast and simple and soon enough I was kneeling in front of the Warchief swearing fealty, and then I was in the guild.




For the RP it is encouraged (but not mandatory) to download the MRP (MyRolePlay, now replaced by TRP TotalRolePlay) addon and put in a little bit of text in there. A lot of people go overboard and put in paragraphs of bio, but really the main purpose of MRP is to 1. quickly identify yourself to other RPers that you are into their scene, since they can mouseover you and see that you have the MRP addon installed too. And to 2. quickly identify to others if your character is actually supposed to be something other than what you would assume by just glancing at his model, ie you have the tauren model but you are actually RPing a Yaungol, or you are mechanically classed as a paladin but you are actually RPing a Sunwalker, etc.

Once in, you were not "required" to attend events. I think just logging in often enough (as in at least once every few weeks) would keep you from getting kicked when they opened the guild membership menu and cleaned out the names they didn't recognize. It was also a PvP guild so you also had people in there just to join the RBG parties when they were forming rather than to do any RP, though most people there were doing RP. The only other major expectation (besides not being an ass) was that you did not take significantly more from the guildbank than you put into it, ofcourse obvious if you have been in MMO guilds before but there are a lot of people online nowadays who don't get that.

For RP events, you show up and you roleplay as some sort of rank and file soldier who obeys the guild officers (who in the RP are actually officers, with ofcourse High Warlord Skullcrusha as the supreme leader both in real life leadership of the guild and in the RP. IIRC He did actually have the High Warlord title from PvPing in WoW). The dress code was that you look "Hordey", which is overall pretty easy to meet. No running around looking like a Dalaran mage. You had to use an appropriately Hordey mount. The vicious saddle PvP mounts were starting to roll out at that time and you were allowed to use them, they became pretty popular because they had Horde flags/banners on them (this was years before the BFA patches introduced a banner/flag toy that you could use on any mount or while dismounted). The Kor'Kron Legion's RP meetups usually began at the barracks in the Valley of Honor, and there would often be a march in two files around the city or out the gates to the docks to an server wide RP event.

When the 5.4 patch dropped, it became common for the guild to use the Underhold in a cleared out Siege of Orgrimmar instance for RP, though the Valley of Honor remained the more popular spot to use because there we were visible to other players who could see us and get interested in RP and join the scene, and we could get visit from other Horde RP guilds that we regularly interacted with.

For the RBG nights, they were overall casual. First come first serve to get into the group. You had to join the Ventrillo server to hear the shotcalling. There was no particular rating or performance requirement (at least have honor gear though, the bare minimum to participate in ranked), helped in that you got the Vicious War Wolf mount for just winning 40 matches rather than being in the top 0.5% or something.

Outside of the RP and PvP events, it was ofcourse common for there to be talking in the chat, sometimes about stuff happening in their lives.



I have been in other RP guilds and they overall follow a similar formula as the above. Some do transmog runs of old raids or help newer members out collecting the Nazjatar tokens they need to get their Horde/Alliance flag toy, etc.

Biggest difference between this type of guild and a raiding guild is that raiding guilds are much more serious. It's like a second job where you need to show up on time because other people are depending upon you. It's not as strict nowadays due to flexible raid size and now the ease of getting some mercenary PUGgers to fill in, but you can't miss several nights in a row and expect to keep your spot. You are also much more at the mercy of other people's agendas, greed, and ego due to the limited amount of loot that has to be distributed, so being in a raiding guild environment can be more anxious. It is also much harder for a raiding guild (or the same team of people) to last in the long term because people typically gain more responsibilities as they grow older and people's schedules change. The limited timegated loot requires commitment, whereas guilds that do not revolve around raiding and limited timegated loot can be much more easygoing and noncommittal.

[casecase89]

Hi.
My name is Emil and I’m a social anthropology student at Lund’s University in Sweden. As a part of my masters I’m tasked with doing a shorter research project during the three coming weeks.
I want to look at if there is a connection between guilds & raids and how people experience the social aspects of guilds and raids in WoW? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts about your experiences. If you want to contribute feel no pressure as there are no wrong answers and the following questions are more of a guide or an example.
How big is the guild?
Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?
How would you describe your time in the guild?
Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

Thank you for your time and I hope that you will enjoy writing as I will enjoy reading your stories and thoughts.

I've been in just about every type of raiding guild there is. Very casual to hardcore. A very long time ago there used to be, or at least for me, a certain loyalty to ones guild. You are expected to put the guild before yourself, the team before yourself, and in general, the well being of the guild itself, before yourself. For me, that died out once the game became seasonal. Most players tend to play for themselves outside of those who want to be GMs and their friend who support them. Those are the ones who craft flasks and consumables out of pocket for the guild because people will not otherwise show up with consumables themselves. You have other players who will donate gold or feasts and other materials aimlessly, but the general player in a raiding guild plays for themselves, especially if its a group of people with no ties in real life. I've been part of strong guilds that had 4 dps and a healer leave, which then caused a flood of other players to leave until there were only the bones left of the real life people and the guild supporters. Many raiders are fair weather and if you threaten 1 or 2 of their lockouts or vaults, they will leave. As I mentioned earlier, way back in the day raiding guilds were different. They were much more social. For most low guilds, there was endless progression because they were never doing the current tier's content and were working on the previous. This sorta helped guilds stay together because there never became a "down season" for a majority of players. There was always harder content to do and there were always players doing it. People didn't just play 2 months a take a break. At least as often as they do now.

My current guild is basically dead. We were a raiding guild, but everyone is on break for the season and im one of the only ones still playing because i am a major goblin and im making great gold still. When it gets hard to make gold ill stop playing, but until then, i will log on. I am the type of player that falls into 2 categories. I will raid and M+ semi hardcore while the season is hot and then i shift into a very casual gold making mode in the down season. Finding a guild that survives a whole season and stays active is hard because raiding guilds dont normally take in a bunch of casuals, and casual guilds are just assortments of randomly spammed people who most likely wont log back in that toon or stay in guild any meaningful amount of time. These are generally social guilds and them even putting together a successful or unpainful heroic run is highly unlikely as nobody is vetted and they generally just invite whoever. This is fine for people who want to just dip their toes in raiding, but not for someone like me who expects to clear the raid in a meaningful amount of time ( generally 5 or 6 weeks is my expected AOTC ) and if a guild isn't aiming for around that, our goals do not align and i dont stay in guild. But the guilds i aim to be in... generally die out mid season. So its hit and miss with what you want to be in. And this all ties back to there used to be guild loyalties. I am the type of player now who will find a new raid group every season. A lot of times raid guilds dont stay together for multiple seasons due to life changes and such, so i at least dont get attached to people or guilds or anything. I just raid, get my AoTC, KSM, and then make millions of gold.

[Kilpi]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your supervisor should have cautioned you against using public forums for data collection. They are hard to validate, subject to myriad distribution biases, and vulnerable to malicious data contribution. If I wanted to do so, I could easily create an account for every reply you get and use AI to flood the thread with my views to counter every shred of anecdotal evidence otherwise offered.

Also you have made no assurance of data security/records, you've offered no resource for experiment debrief, and your ethics committee should've instructed you to provide formal contact details which link back to your institution for safety purposes. I'd expect better from a department in the human sciences, especially in the Nords! (Best of luck with your project and future endeavours.)

Kind regards,
Reviewer 2

I don't think 3 week research project part of a course is that big of a deal.

[Darsithis]

Hi.
My name is Emil and I’m a social anthropology student at Lund’s University in Sweden. As a part of my masters I’m tasked with doing a shorter research project during the three coming weeks.
I want to look at if there is a connection between guilds & raids and how people experience the social aspects of guilds and raids in WoW? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts about your experiences. If you want to contribute feel no pressure as there are no wrong answers and the following questions are more of a guide or an example.

How big is the guild?

We have 400+ toons, but those are spread across maybe 50 or 60 total people, with about anywhere from 5-20 of them active

Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?

No expectations, but we do raid. We're, in fact, part of a collective of guilds in the area that share members for raids.

How would you describe your time in the guild?

It's been about 12 years now at this point, been raiding with many of the same people. We've seen some people pass, some people quit, but overall a tight core of us are still here, still raiding.

Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

It's usually laid back and easy-going. We do expect to progress, and will sit someone if we're hammering our heads for weeks due to their mistakes, but that's incredibly rare. We have a good time. We laugh a lot, poke fun at each other - easy to do after raiding together for so long.

[WowIsDead64]

Hi.
My name is Emil and I’m a social anthropology student at Lund’s University in Sweden. As a part of my masters I’m tasked with doing a shorter research project during the three coming weeks.
I want to look at if there is a connection between guilds & raids and how people experience the social aspects of guilds and raids in WoW? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts about your experiences. If you want to contribute feel no pressure as there are no wrong answers and the following questions are more of a guide or an example.
How big is the guild?
Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?
How would you describe your time in the guild?
Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

Thank you for your time and I hope that you will enjoy writing as I will enjoy reading your stories and thoughts.

I just wonder. Does your university really accept unofficial Wow fan sites as official source of data for your research? Would you really mention "WowIsDead64's MMO-Champion post" as source in your project?

Last time, when I was part of guild - was WotLK. I tried to find casual guild, but then realized, why they were always in process of non-stop recruiting. Because casual guild = low discipline. What I realized: if you want higher discipline guild - you should also become more disciplined and join more hardcore guild then. If you don't want - then don't ask others to do it. And then casual raiding died in Cata anyway, so I had to switch to other content. Yeah. It's story of my Wow's career. Blizzard kill casual content => it dies => you have to switch to even more casual-friendly one. So, guild raiding => PUG raiding => random dungeons => dailies/WQs => leveling alts => quitting game due to nothing else to do.

[mbit2]

Guilds used to get gold for member activity, so people used to invite lots of random players to generate passive income.
When it stopped people didn't kick everyone out, so guilds retained a lot of random members due financial incentives given by the game.
We would first invite irl friends, then static raid members and finally fill rest with randoms.

Outside raiding there were also pure pvp guilds around rated battlegrounds (10 vs 10 player pvp), worked same as raids, from casual observation i would however say pvp players were less available to play. I'm using past tense cause the rbg scene pretty much collapsed over 2 xpacs.

Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?

If you signup for raiding in a static guild raid then that's a scheduled team event no different to playing in a sports club irl.
Guilds used website calendars to make schedules based on when everyone could play to ensure the whole static group was available for raid time.

Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

"hopefully our 2 noobs can finally play the mechanic in the next attempt so we can finish today."
The game has mechanics where everyone has to do it right or the whole raid fails. This means the weakest link held the entire group back.
Same time this is the sole reason having a static group had value - if everyone is good it becomes far more enjoyable as you clear fast without issues.

[xskarma]

Hi.
How big is the guild?
Is there any expectations in partaking in raids or being active in general?
How would you describe your time in the guild?
Could you describe a raid and what feelings surround them?

My guild hovers between 850 and 1000 toons in the guild. I have no idea how many actual people though, since many of the mainstays have up to 5 allowed toons in the guild, while there's also many people that join on 1 toon, are actively part of the guild for a week or 2, and then never log in again.

There's no rules about partaking in activities, but there is a rule about being active. If you have not logged into the toon in the guild in 6 months AND have not left a message with the officers about why you will be AFK, then the toon is kicked from the guild. This means there's some churn at the end of the guild roster with once a month or so there being a clean up of toons that need to go, and a slow drip of toons joining the guild.

I have a lovely time in my guild. I like the people in it and the chill atmosphere. I know I can rely on the GM and officer team to take care of issues that arise, since the guild has existed for some 12 years now. The GM is a very active player himself and there's a constant update to the officer team, replacing players who have burnt out with the duties. The guild holds monthly Guild Meetings on Discord, where anyone can bring up any subject to put it up for discussion, and the officers delegated to various aspects of the guild (raid team, event team, pvp team etc etc) do a short report on how things are going in their corner of the guild. The guild has several nights dedicated to several raids, 1 for a team that has some rules about joining, and a twice weekly run for literally just about anyone who wants to come (very light gear requirments). There's 2 PvP nights too, and every so often, usually around a real world holiday or the guild's anniversary, there's social events where anyone in the guild and anyone who is still part of the discord community (which is larger than the actual guild) is invited to join and do something fun that's been set up for that occasion. Discord is an important part of the guild structure, as it is used to socialize outside of the game, and as a voice chat option during raids and events and PvP. The discord is also home to some of the other games people in the guild play, as well as a section where some of the guild play D&D together. There's also more directly game related channels about future content, crafting questions/orders, and tactics discussion for Raids.

A raid, to me personally, is a get together of people you enjoy playing with, to kill some bosses, which requires coordination and team work.

But I have raided at Mythic level, and at some point certain people and certain guilds start prioritizing the boss kills and the performance over the social aspects. And that's where I have found I stop being interested in raiding. It needs to have a social aspect where the goal is killing stuff together, as a team. Not killing the bosses with no regard for who it is that is helping you just as long as the goal is met. I want to have some fun and chat with my guildies between fights, about the game, but about nonsense too. What use is it killing bosses if I don't even know or actively dislike half the people I am raiding with, and I'm not having fun? It's supposed to be a fun distraction, a hobby. Not a part time job no one is getting paid for.

I think if you want to draw a connection between the social aspects of the game and raids and guilds, I think the raids are both the poison and the cure. When people are social and enjoy each other's company and prioritize the people over the killing of pixels, things are at their best. And as guilds and people move further away from the social aspects to satisfy competitive needs, the connection dies. This is the main reason why so many people eventually burn out from raiding. When the social aspect of having fun with people you like, gets traded for a competitive goal, where the group is based on who does the best at a given job, and that failure to do your job correctly or at a high enough level, means being removed from the raid, and often the guild.

There's a grey area between those extremes obviously. Not every social guild only looks at being social and not every competitive guild prevents social bonds, but as you get further towards either end, the social aspects tend to grow or decrease.

[SocAnthro]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your supervisor should have cautioned you against using public forums for data collection. They are hard to validate, subject to myriad distribution biases, and vulnerable to malicious data contribution. If I wanted to do so, I could easily create an account for every reply you get and use AI to flood the thread with my views to counter every shred of anecdotal evidence otherwise offered.

Also you have made no assurance of data security/records, you've offered no resource for experiment debrief, and your ethics committee should've instructed you to provide formal contact details which link back to your institution for safety purposes. I'd expect better from a department in the human sciences, especially in the Nords! (Best of luck with your project and future endeavours.)

Kind regards,
Reviewer 2

Thank you for your concern. There is no problem with using public forums since biases within my chosen field is nothing we can avoid, and within this "soft science" it is accounted for. As this is a smaller assignment and this as a public platform there is no need for me to dox my self. If this though would be a part of my master thesis, you concern/critics would be well grounded.

Kind Regards
Emil

- - - Updated - - -

A bit of unsolicited advice, I guess...

I thank you for the advice. A google Form would be a way, though I feel it leaves out the possibility for those who choose to partake to use their own words to describe their experience. Which is what I'm after. Concerning the broad question I agree wholeheartedly, operationalizing is one of my weaknesses and is a work in progress.

Kind regards
Emil

[loras]

Thank you for your concern. There is no problem with using public forums since biases within my chosen field is nothing we can avoid, and within this "soft science" it is accounted for. As this is a smaller assignment and this as a public platform there is no need for me to dox my self. If this though would be a part of my master thesis, you concern/critics would be well grounded.

Kind Regards
Emil

Not to be a party pooper but you already did dox yourself with the given info, if i were motivated to do so i would have your details in 30 minutes tops.
(as such i'd alter any accurate info in your posts if i were you, ethics be damned)

But more to the point:
Many people here have probably been playing the game for a long time and may have had many guilds, have you given thought to how much you'd like to know? And keep in mind that with time even living memory deteriorates.

[SocAnthro]

I just wonder. Does your university really accept unofficial Wow fan sites as official source of data for your research? Would you really mention "WowIsDead64's MMO-Champion post" as source in your project?

Thank you for the question and for your response. The short answer is: Yes. As part of the social sciences there is really no problem with this being a unofficial site nor that usernames are used instead for real names.

Kind Regards
Emil

- - - Updated - - -

Many people here have probably been playing the game for a long time and may have had many guilds, have you given thought to how much you'd like to know? And keep in mind that with time even living memory deteriorates.

I would like to know as much as possible when it comes to guilds and raids. I would not mind to read someones life-storry/WoW-career, though I doubt anyone would bother with typing that out. As for the memory-part I'm well aware and do not think it as a problem, since it is the lived experience I would look at and how we rembember that is a part of it.