Worth Our Time?

Last week I had that interview for the Massively.com article and one thing I said which seemed to have a bit of a negative response was:

Our first question is, "What is your overall raid-experience?" In some cases, it's also fine if you haven't completed all end-game content, we care more about if you experienced it. We can then gauge where they are in relation to the rest of the guild - It lets me figure out how much to the guild will need to teach them and if that is worth our time.

The flak coming from my last words in the sentence ("Worth our time"). Now I don't feel like I need to defend myself, but it really does make a good point as to what we as guild leaders face. As leaders we need to fulfill the needs of the guild, and in doing so we must think of everyone who is involved, especially the current members.

My comment comes from the simple fact that both I and the person applying are not the only ones in the world. It's as simple as that, but people take it as me meaning a holier than thou meaning. In fact, when you are recruiting for your guild, regardless of what type of guild you may be you are constantly thinking whether or not this person is someone who is "worth the guilds time."

Let me put it this way. Let's say you have a guild of all level 40's who are enjoying their time leveling together and doing the quests and dungeons applicable to your level so you can progress to the next level and so forth. Now let's say you have a level 15 apply to your guild. Sure, you may not have any requirements for the guild but you realize that no one else in your guild is at that low level. At that point you realize that there is no real reason for that person to be in the guild.

My example is pretty basic and there are many different factors that could be involved such as it being a friend of someone or an alt of a highly experienced fast leveler or whatever. But think about this. Possibly you are a person who only gets a few hours a week to play. Is it worth your time to help that person catch up to you or is your time better spent working with your already close leveled guildies in which your time not only helps them but is reciprocated.

Now put this into a larger context where I come from. In end-game raiding you have different levels. Tier 4 leads into Tier 5 and so forth. Having someone who has little experience raiding in general along with no gear from the earlier tiers is like having that lower level person join up while the rest of the guild is at your level.

Sure many guilds have a general member rank in which a person is in your guild but is working themselves into meeting your raiding requirements but in reality these people are better off in a guild which mirrors their own experiences and needs. So when I say "worth our time" I really am talking about both the guilds needs as well as the applicants. It would be selfish of me to accept an applicant who doesn't meet our requirements and either 1) require them to get up to par on their own or 2)always put them on standby when they could be running full time with another guild. And it would be equally selfish of them to require the guild to gear them up to meet the guilds needs or suffer by putting in a lower geared person and essentially dragging them through the instances so that they could finally help the guild progress.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -