New guild!

What is one of the quickest ways to kill a new and still pretty small guild? The answer to that is probably one of the easier ones in the entire game of WoW, and that is: Absent guild leader. That is what happened to me recently. Read on to see more.
In a new guild, especially one that is not striving to have many members for say raiding, the guild leader's role is very important. When a new guild forms, unless it is formed by a group of people, sharing power, it is usually the guild leader doing a lot of the footwork, actually recruiting the new members, and setting up guild events, etc. So what ends up happening, is the guild leader is usually busy being the very vocal voice and very visible face of things. Now as this is happening, the guild leader is typically on quite a bit, interacting with the new group formed, getting to know them, and all that fun stuff. While all of this is happening, this period of initial recruitment, refinement and guild definition, everything seems great. People are on, dungeon runs are getting done, and everyone has someone to talk to. Starting guilds all seem to think things are rosy then, and will continue that way.

Fast forward to a time past all of this. The guild now has a roster that is respectable, who play at different times, at different levels, doing different things. PvP is flowing nicely and random dungeons are being run for both emblems and satchels of helpful goods. Your guild leader now steps back, thinking his or her 'work' is done, finally. Time to sit back and enjoy the guild, maybe do some...wait, ive done all of that already, your GL thinks. Eh I have a good roster going now, they can talk to each other, im gonna go play some other games. That is usually the next thought. They also usually assume they're gonna come back and play WoW in about a day, two at most. Before they know it, a week has past, they sign on to check mail, and a few people have left the guild? What the hell happened there? They ask a few questions, maybe talk to the people that left, then sign back off for four days, only to see the problem repeat more and more. Now really one at this point has to wonder, why did these people leave?

The answer usually lies in the guild leader. They did not give the guild enough time to befriend each other. It seems what new guild leaders fail to realize at times is that they are basically befriending every person they go out of their way to recruit into their guild, and when they do that they foster a loyalty not to the guild, but to them. New guild leaders seem to burn out a bit quickly, when they reach a certain size in the guild, something of a comfort zone, where they feel like they can relax. The problem during this period is that they do not show their faces at all, or make sure the guild members are getting along in their absence. What happens at this point is that people tend to cluster off, or go play alts, or stop talking entirely. When any of these happen, it usually spells death for the social aspect of a guild, and it seems a lot, that all three happen. Then what happens is people meet other, friendly people while questing, or hanging out in Undercity, whatever. Point is, they meet these people, and these new people will usually end up finding out about the guild woes, and invite you to join their merry band, at least on an alt, which then leads to one of the three aforementioned problems being perpetuated.

Now note im not saying this happens to all guilds. This has happened to me a few times now, and while I tend to make at least a few friends in every guild ive been in, the problem of absent guild leaders has crept up a few times. It sucks when it happens, but really WoW is a changing game and people coming and going is just a part of it. What I have learned from the experiences of my characters past though is to not let loyalty to a guild turn your WoW experience into a 1-player game.

If you wanna find me now (Which I doubt you do) my Hordies are now in Agents of Chaos on the Earthen Ring server (US).