The one man guild

We have all come across the deluded GM, the power crazy one, the one with no RL, the kind who has all the qualities of a great dictator.

Well I have only come across one. His ideas were great, they were unique and the potential was there for a fantastic guild.

All this began to crumble, when we all discovered the hard way, that we couldn’t have a life.
He’s spout on about how he had so much respect for people with children and jobs, and could still manage to play, but he didn’t put any of his talk into practice. No! Quite the contrary.

This particulary GM, of the guild that may never be mentioned, required to know the colour of the underwear you were wearing. Ok, that is not true, but it was close enough. RL stuff took a back seat where he was concerned.

Nobody ever managed to leave the guild gracefully. If you weren’t kicked, then the best thing to do would be to /gquit if you wanted to avoid the sharp end of his tongue. If you did this without firstly deleting his battletag, then he turned into a stalker of MI5 proportions.

He would stalk people to see if they were playing on other realms, playing with friends, checking out other guild websites. Then when you unknowingly logged into WoW the dreaded pink whisper window would open, and you would be required to explain your actions.

Not playing for a while was also a reason to be kicked, so you couldn’t be sick, or just take a rest from playing.

Teamspeak became like his own little radio show. He would ramble on about his activities even if they weren’t guild related, and put on a live show when playing in random dungeons or battlegrounds, while we spent our time fishing. Not using teamspeak made you “unsocial."

He asked for help here and there, but nobody could actually do anything to help this poor chap. He had taken on a workload that he wasn’t able to handle. He became paranoid about people not liking him. He believed that everyone was looking for other guilds. He asked for a co-GM and got 2 offers, but within a week of this the guild was gone. It’s members had no say. It’s members had no option to continue on even if he stepped down. He removed himself from our battletag friends list and facebook. He was punishing us for nothing. Truth was, everyone felt sorry for him, and could see the pressure he was under.

In the end, we all logged into our website, to find we were no longer members. Our guild bank access was for deposit only, and a message to say that the guild was being disbanded.

We are a resilient bunch though, and the longer term members got together to form another guild, leaving the door open for the other guild refugees to come along, if they wish a more democratic environment.

This my dear readers is the story of a one man guild.