With me back on one of my favorite games of all time, World of Warcraft, I would have thought that I would be having a ton of fun by now. However, due to the ever rising agony of guild drama, a few emo members, the fact that I am a control freak and nothing was happening, I took over Guild Master for my guild, Pandoras Mighty Soldiers, on Scilla. It is not a job I wanted, but there’s not one person that I feel could actually do everything that needs to be done, as well as treat people with dignity.  I am a hot-head myself, but I would never purposely disrespect someone, pick arguments, or give them the elitist cold shoulder.

I have lead many divisions in various games in the past, but this one is by far the most intense and stressful division ever. The nature of MMO’s is one that will eat you alive, especially when you are implementing hardcore raiding schedules and expectations. I’m drowning in a mixture of different people, trying to sort through the rubble to see who will float to the top and get those coveted raid spots - it’s killing me. With 4 bosses down in SSC, people are crawling out of the woodwork to get in, and eventually it is going to be the people that I care about most that let me down.

I am probably going to lose some IRL friends on this game due to trying to get my guild in order, and that is something that is really hurting me. Why would losing IRL friends ever take precedence over a game, you ask? It’s when they think they have what it takes to be a hardcore raider, but don’t. Or when they think they can treat others any way they want to, and they can’t.  I will never back those that I feel are wrong, and will always be consistent, no matter who they are. But frankly, I am shocked how MMO’s seem to generally change people.

Part of my psychology background likes to have fun and classify people’s personality traits, so here are some characterizations of players that I have come up with. I give you:

THE WOW PLAYERS:

The Social Player - This is the person that just likes to screw around in the game and have fun. They have no expectations of a guild other than it to be active with a few entertaining people.  They have not a care in the world and just love to explore and learn new things while hanging out with friends. They will help anyone they can, but expect the same in return. The only thing that will make a social person not have fun is a dead guild chat, and people not responding to them.

The Loot Whore - The people that cry when they don’t get awarded gear, bitch when they don’t have priority on an item, and ninja log if the going gets tough or they lose an item roll.  As they are generally motivated by loot, they are also unstable raiders depending on progression: i.e. they crawl out from under the table when bosses are going down…

The Elitist - To me, this is the worse type of player. This is a person that could do so much good for a guild if they just weren’t just plain mean. They know all there is to know about anything in the game, research everything that comes up, and will have all the facts on spec’s, items, and encounters. Unfortunately, this person also thinks their knowledge gives them the right to disrespect others and mock them for not knowing every detail there is to know. They can kill a guild, and will eventually start a huge fight during a raid… just bide your time.

The Achiever - These are highly competitive people who wear the fat purples, and take raiding/pvp very seriously. They can usually be counted on to show up. They have high expectations of themselves and others when working with teams. These are the ones that realize the fact that there are countless others relying on them, and do what needs to be done no matter what is happening around them. They make the perfect raiders. Make up the perfect PvP teams.

The Spiteful - These are the people that will use two hours of the day to gank someone, or corpse camp people for whatever minute-reason pissed them off. Childish, immature, and the perfect example of someone forgetting there is a RL person behind that avatar. This characterization is usually combined with any of the above.