As I was chatting with some guildmates in the Butcherblock mountains early Sunday morning (too early, actually), I received a tell from a different guild’s leader asking if I had a moment to speak. I hadn’t actually spoken with this particular guildmaster before, but that was irrelevant.  

You see, when you’re a guildmaster yourself, you get used to receiving tells from other guild’s leaders asking if you have a moment to speak.  Either someone has a complaint about one of your members, or a question about a particular quest or raid encounter, or even just the occasional sharing of general guild frustrations.  There’s not exactly a huge number of guildmasters on each server, so it tends to be a fairly small community.

So, when I received the tell from this particular guildmaster, I immediately responded that of course I had time to talk, and asked him how I could assist him. 

That right there was where the conversation took a new and exciting turn.

At that point, this guildmaster began to attempt to recruit me, pointing out that his guild needed clerics, that gear didn’t really matter, that they’d heard great things about me, and so on. 

What?

I was at once both bemused and incensed.  I couldn’t believe that I was being recruited.  His patter came out quickly and smoothly, and I realized that if it wasn’t macro’d, it was at least rehearsed – as if he’d done this a dozen times.  It wasn’t a conversation, either.  He hit me with a sales pitch about his guild, the targets they were hitting, and how they’d help me get “geared up”.  He ended the spiel with a comment that basically amounted to, I’ll let you be now and you can contact us if interested.  And that was that. 

On a whim, I looked him up on EQ2players and realized I was better outfitted than he was.  So, not only was I being essentially spam marketed, but he hadn’t bothered to so much as look up my profile before sending the first tell.  I realized that, just like platspammers, he was likely pulling up a list of prospective targets and sending out his recruiting message to virtually every level 70 cleric on the server.

In a fit of ettiquette, I responded with my own introduction and thanked him for finally introducing himself.  I let him know that I would be declining his offer and would appreciate it if he’d avoid recruiting my guild’s members in the future (as it was likely a waste of his time, and really just bad form). 

His response floored me.  He states that “It’s only bad form to recruit from guilds hitting the same content”.

Now, I know his guild and he’s not out hitting avatars or clearing Emerald Halls.  Essentially speaking, both of our guilds are in the same general tier as far as weekly targets go.  However, that’s not even the point in my mind at this point, as I’m really just shocked he’s justifying what amounts to cold call headhunting because he essentially considers my guild to be somehow inferior.  In his mind, we’re nothing more than fodder to be farmed when his guild needs a new cleric.

I can think of nothing productive to add to the discussion, so I wish him good day and decide to take a screenshot of the conversation – which I promptly point within my own guild’s forums.  Obviously, my members enjoy a great deal of amusement from the idea that their guildmaster was recruited.  A few other members come forward to say that they received virtually the same tells earlier in the day (confirming my belief that it was spam recruiting).  I deal with good natured ribbing for the rest of the day regarding my prospects, my gear, and the general nature of guild sniping. For us, that’s the end of that.  

At the end of it all, I think it’s a good discussion topic.  Certainly, it comes up often enough on game forums, and usually not in a good way.  Most of the time you see the subject, it’s some heated response to some guild officer shouting in giant red bolded text about so-and-so from such-and-such guild “stealing” his members.  This leads to a nice return volley from members of such-and-such who claim that if the “stolen” member was truly happy where he or she was, they would never have left in the first place.  Overly dramatic hilarity ensues. 

Now, remove all the emotion from the subject and that leaves us with an interesting subject, after all.  I can see points raised on both sides of the issue, and certainly find myself able to both justify or villify the concept with equal ease. 

MMO’s can seem ridiculously large, overwhelming places where individuals can feel lost and outcast.  Having overall communities split into “servers” can greatly alleviate this sense of confusion, by breaking impossibly large playerbase metroplexes into what essentially amounts to suburbs or even neighboorhoods.  Beyond that even, these servers are split again into smaller social networks such as guilds that further divide players into chosen factions – much like neighboorhood bars or local sports leagues. 

These guilds can greatly enhance the gameplay for their memberships.  Many guilds put enormous resources into their individual members, offering experience groups, help with questing, and weekly raiding opportunities. 

If one sees guilds in this way, then it’s almost impossible to imagine soliciting members of other guilds.  To players who feel “guild sniping” is bad ettiquette, there seems to be an almost universal feeling of disgust associated with the process.  Guildmasters who become emotionally attached to their members tend to see such recruiting (even if unsuccessful) as unwelcome meddling. 

To the members of many of these guilds, sniping is seen as an attempt to break up friendships, or even families.  When successful, the feeling of loss is exacerbated by the feeling of betrayal.  Hearing the tales of such sniping after the fact is like listening to the heartbroken ramblings of a jilted lover.  After all, didn’t we spend hours helping him out?  Weren’t we always there for her?  Didn’t he care about us?  Why did she leave us?

There’s a very real emotional cost involved with such “break-ups”, for players on both sides of the process.  There’s some real baggage that can follow such an action, leading often to months or even years of in-game hostility and repurcussions.  Groups may exlude members of the other guild.  Unnecessary words will be spent defending the action against an upset former guild.  Hurtful phrases will be uttered, and yes, friendships are invariably injured or severed. 

On the other side of the coin, couldn’t it be argued that the quality of such members is invariably suspect.  After all, how is a guild strengthened through recruiting tactics often seen as shady or dirty.  Is it worth the hit to a guild’s reputation just to pick up a member that has, by the very process, proven an inherent lack of loyalty?  If a potential applicant has been swayed by promises of gear or raids, what then keeps the member happy with membership in the new guild once gear or raids starts to dry up. 

In other words, is this really a good long term solution for recruiting, or a short term workaround – a finger in the dike, so to speak. 

On the other hand, without a magical tree covered in the budding fruit of unguilded high end raiders, it’s not exactly easy to find new level 70’s ready to jump in and help your guild out 4-6 nights a week.  What, exactly, is a guild leader to do once a guild’s raids start to suffer due to a lack of warm bodies?  It’s not as if this is a first resort for many guild leaders, and often times desperate acts call for similar measures.

Put yourself in such a position for a moment.  Put on the shoes of a raid leader who’s suddenly finding raid forces lacking.  Oh, sure, you remember turning away potential raiders night after night, but it’s been months since the last expansion was released and you’ve got a good half a year or more till the next expansion, and in the meantime you’ve got a guild to keep together.  You’ve hit the forums, and spent time in chat channels looking for potential members, but you’re simply not finding the right applicant. 

What would you do?

Would you avoid speaking to members of other guilds simply because it’s not right?  Is it more right to let your own guild fall apart because you can’t successfully (or at least easily) hit targets your guild used to hit with ease?  How do you keep a guild together when you can’t bring in new high end members?

It’s not as cut and dry as many players would like to think.  The problem comes, I think, from many players avoiding the subject altogether.  Players who hate what they know as “sniping” see the purveyors of such techniques as snake oil salesmen, coming in the night to steal away their “best” members, whereas officers who recruit from other guilds are simply looking for good members to fill their own ranks. 

The bottom line?  It’s going to happen.  Deal with it head on and hope you’re running a good guild yourself.  If you are, then you’ll find that you aren’t really worried when you hear about it happening to your own members.  Open a dialogue within your guild about it, and find out if anyone isn’t really happy within your guild.  If they aren’t, find out if it can be fixed.  If not, and they happen to leave your guild, wish them well and remind the rest of your members that you don’t want to get in the habit of forcing members to stay where they aren’t happy in the first place.

It’s a game, and sometimes that means changing teams.  It’s not life or death, and all of your friends are still just a tell away.  You don’t need guildchat to secure groups, and a guild banner shouldn’t be a political border preventing open discussion. 

Above all, don’t fall into the drama trap.  When it happens – and it’s going to happen – don’t rush to the forums to tap out an angry letter to the server warning them about the evils of so-and-so the guild sniper.  Nothing good will come of it, and a whole lot of good people will say things they really don’t mean before the situation calms down.  Keep your head and refrain from angry posts.  Period.

No one likes to have members recruited out from under them.  It never gets easier to deal with, because as many guildmasters won’t really admit, it feels personal – like a refection upon their leadership skills.  It isn’t personal (well, not always), and even if it is, get over it.  You’ve got the rest of your membership to spend your resources on.  Do what you can to keep what you’ve got, instead of spending all your efforts worrying about what you’ve lost.

Because all you can do is try to build a solid guild that members enjoy belonging to.  Just like any other relationship, once the wandering eyes start, it’s usually best to just cut your losses and maintain your dignity.  No one wins in a mudslinging contest – everyone gets messy once the dirt starts to fly. 

So, chalk it up as inevitable, and crack a few jokes about it within guildchat.  Then, get back to the business of running your guild.