Master Musings: Members

The musings of a guild leader are always full of drama. I wouldn't deny that my own musings aren't free of the dreaded drama bug, but we're all human. It's just that guild leaders are more exposed to those sort of things. What makes you different though, is your ability to come back from cloud nine to the people you love.


Regardless of what everyone says, a guild is a guild because of its members, not its leadership. Although guild leaders and vices are symbols of the guild, the actual guild member population outnumbers the central circle of leadership, much like modern day politics and the fundamentals of society. When you think of it in that way, guilds are mini communities that have their own way of diplomacy. There's some that do it better than others, but the key factor that dictates their success is the happiness of the guild members.

So, what is the key to making guild members happy? There's tons of different ways you can make guild members happy individually. Giving them power, giving them material rewards, giving them LaTale related aid, the sorts. But does that initial happiness actually stay? Power can be easily taken away under certain circumstances. Material rewards can be used, but the supply of such material rewards can be ended. And you can only help so much with LaTale related affairs, I mean, you can only do a quest three times before it disappears and the recipient asks for more that you are unsure you can provide.

That being said, there's something psychologists call operant conditioning. It's where a behavior is promoted through a variety of stimulus. By giving someone a positive stimulus (power, material rewards, short term help), you are promoting a behavior of happiness and gratitude. This is called positive reinforcement. It sounds good and righteous at first, but you start thinking about the big picture. There's another thing called classical conditioning, where you associate a behavior with a stimulus through a complicated process that those who are not familiar with it should not undergo. The major gist of it is if you associate the positive stimulus with the behavior of happiness and gratitude, it would just be as simple as teasing the positive stimulus before your guild members to give them the illusion of happiness and gratitude.

Is that really the key to making your guild members happy? For some guilds, it is. But not for mine. Rewarding my guild members with a positive stimulus is always good, but there's always something deeper that I must penetrate. Subjectively, my guild members need more than power, material rewards and LaTale related aid. There's a person behind every 100 or so faces that is in my guild and I make sure that they have someone to count on for their problems. You don't need to be a psychologist to do it; we were all born with a set of eyes and ears and a brain full of personal experiences. It's not hard to be there for a friend, you just need to be able to listen.

Is that always the key to making your guild members happy? Meh, not really depending on the objectives of the guild, but it sure works for us.

But I'll save that for another day.