Artimus and The Cult of Personality
From my brain
Contents |
Introduction
Originally posted on the WoW Guild Relations Forum by Cathôde of <Validus Asperitas> (Frostwolf realm) on 05/25/2008 titled "A Tale for Guild Leaders". At first it came off as RP, then it came off as real, but the original poster eventually clarified it as being a work of fiction. It's it's a melodramatic parable at times, but nonetheless, it's a real eye-opener how your own popularity as a guild leader can run rampant.
Definitely something to think about.
The Story
Artimus joined the guild. He was quiet in the Guild Chat, but kept to his duties: He was on time for every KZ raid, he actively studied how to be a good warrior tank, he often remained at the Farm in AB while the others raced toward the Stables, and one time when he had the day off from his job he offered to help a member level their alt seeing that he had some extra free time.
Within three weeks he was a fully accepted and integrated member of the guild.
In his fourth week there, the entire guild went into an uproar. The main tank had suddenly quit the game after he threw a fit on Ventrillo during last night's raid because he was tired of his fellow raiders constantly bickering over loot distribution. One of the main healers in the raid group began to attack the best-geared mage, "It's your fault he left! If you just let other people have some loot once in awhile, every thing would have been fine! Now we don't have a MT! Dumbass!" The mage replied, "dude STFU, we've been over this before, I have, by far, the highest DPS. So it only makes sense that I should get all the new drops first! @###@#!"
The guild officers tried telling people to be nice to each other, but everyone kept pointing fingers and bickering.
Artimus whispered one of the guild officers, "It would be in the guild's best interest to kick that mage."
The mage was kicked from the guild.
"Are you guys #@!@ing stupid? We can't down Kael and Vashj now! We don't have enough DPS anymore!" said a druid.
Artimus finally spoke up, "Progression is but one part of the whole health of the guild. Now that he is gone, other members in your raid may have more loot. His absense does force you to take a break from attempting Kael and Vashj, and does force you to spend more weeks on farm content, but soon, progression will continue, and he won't be an issue, because he is gone for good. While the progression is temporarily slowed, the whole health of the guild is better off now."
Surely enough the guild downed both bosses a few weeks later. The mage was found to be hopping from guild to guild and doing nothing but ganking lowbies.
More weeks passed.
Now that Artimus had geared himself up to off tank in tier 6 content, he was promoted to a guild officer and raid leader.
During one of the Hyjal raids two of the rogues kept going AFK for lengthy time periods. They always gave reasons, "girl friend is calling, i'll brb" and "#!@# i gotta eat dinner real quick, mom is making me, brb"
Artimus kicked them from the raid and took away their raiding privledge for seven days.
"Dude, that's harsh! They have real life obligations man!" said a hunter.
"True, and true. I should add to that that real life obligations are more important than online gaming. However, they are not the only ones among us with real life obligations. Because they are unorganized, we all have to spend more time waiting around in raid zones, meaning we have less time for other areas of play, meaning now our WoW time is coming into conflict with our real life time. By removing them from our raid for a week, I have both given us a week of fast raiding, and given them the time they need for their girlfriends and families. We will both benefit from this week, I assure you."
The one rogue did not get the dagger he had been working hard for, but his relationship with his girlfriend improved. "Hey guys... I think raiding was too much for me afterall. This week really let me see what is important to me. I will be there for back up once in awhile, but you'll need to find a rogue to permanantly replace me. I'll still do BGs with you guys on weekends though!" said the one rogue. The other rogue did not regret his week off either, as his mother was happy to see him skateboarding outside more. Not to mention he also got an A on his physics test.
The guild had progressed well through the raid content and the urge to PvP kept arriving.
"We should do BG premades on the weekends!" one member said.
Artimus had that member schedule the premades each weekend on the guild forum, making sure they had a decent balance between killers and healers, offensive groups and defensive groups.
With their superior tier 6 gear from raiding, they were crushing the BG scrubs in season 1 gear. They almost always 5 capped AB and won 75% of their AV and WSG games.
Artimus told them that they should be fighting with equal gear. He ordered that anyone interested in joining the premade would have to wear their season 1 PvP gear.
"That's stupid! We're winning like crazy, who cares if it's 'too easy'!" said a shaman.
The shaman was kicked from the guild. No one demanded an explaination.
Two other members, friends of the shaman, left the guild.
The guild was now down 1 healer but everyone knew that with Artimus they could easily fill in the role with a new member.
There were no complaints and the premade kept fighting.
After two weeks of fighting
...they had noticed that their win/loss ratio had dramatically changed - for the worse. They now only won 33% of their games.
"Dude we're losing too much, this is dumb!" said one of the PvPers.
"Then you do not see what the future holds." said Artimus.
But eventually it began to be easy to see who had simply been riding their gear before, and who really had skill underneath it all. The skilled players broke off and formed their own premade, while the unskilled players went back to fighting with their tier 6 gear.
The unskilled PvPers immediately had a higher score than the skilled players. They appeared to be having more fun too. "Dude we just spanked these Alliance hardcore! lolololol!" But after two months they got bored of winning all the time, got bored of the game, and all quit.
The skilled players were still there, were challenged, but were having a ton of fun playing at their fullest potential, and eventually their scores went higher and higher as they developed strong communication networks and utilized teamwork.
The guild grew to be extremely harmonious and successful over the next year. Players from many different servers flocked to try to join the guild.
Artimus warned his fellow guild officers that their popularity and huge increase in member population would be their downfall, but none listened.
Eventually the guild, once a steady 80 members, grew to be over 300 members strong. For a short period of time, it was regarded as "the best guild evar!"
"This is the perfect guild now!" said the GM. Everyone agreed, except Artimus, "There is no such thing as a perfect guild... You will see."
And within a month all the same issues came back, but this time in greater number. The officers could not handle the load this time. Anomie spread throughout the guild. The GM, frustrated with the situation, quit the game.
One of the new members
...thought it would be a good idea to vote democratically on who the next GM would be. "That's a great idea!" hundreds of the new members yelled, but the veteran members and original crew had a feeling that things would really go downhill now.
The main hipster of the guild, Mclovinsauce, won the vote because he was the most popular. However, he had no clue how to lead the guild. Now that the guild had no direction, and now that Mclovinsauce tried to cater to every single member to keep his popularity polls high, the guild grew stagnant and with it, its members grew rather bored.
However, the guild still had a good reputation from the outside. Players would flock to the guild, but would leave within a month after seeing what a mess it truly was. It became a "revolving door" or "zerg" guild.
Artimus left the guild.
A small group of the guild members invited Artimus to their party. They asked him, "But Artimus, what are we to do for a leader now?"
"One will come along, "said Artimus. "And if he does not, then this guild is old, and must die."
The guild collapsed inward within a matter of months. Within a year, no one on the server remembered the guild. Except one.
Artimus' main healer had really been impressed with the way he ran the guild. She saw that what Artimus was really about was making things work, without turning them into work. He would not be afraid of extreme change, he would not be afraid of high standards and tough lessons, if it all meant that things worked out in the end, if it meant that those who really contributed to the guild had been satisfied, and did not mean caring about the uncontributing majority. She took all that she had learned, and began her own guild. It lasted 3 times as long.
Follow-up from Cathôde
(Edit: Again, just to clarify, this is just a story (fiction) that I wrote a long time ago. Artimus is a fictional character, not a WoW character played by a real person. I don't even support all of Artimus's conduct and decisions.)
If anything, I see this story now as an illustration of Hero Worship or Cult of Personality. Artimus may have been a great guild leader to some extent, but he was not perfect. The intelligent can see Artimus for his hits AND misses and transcend him by being an even better leader. A band I used to listen to in my high school years had a lyric that said, "I hate being famous for my hits and never for my misses." (Edit Me: Turns out this is Fall Out Boy's "I’ve Got A Dark Alley And A Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)". Lyrics, YouTube)
But in the end none of us are perfect and we can only try our best to be true to ourselves and others. "They can take your property, they can ruin your reputation, they can slaughter your family, they can burn you at the stake, but they can never take your honour - only you can take your honour. You may not be the hero now, but you will be remembered... by eternity!"
