Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

All the great new content in Wrath has brought a number of my guild members back to the game. It's great to see their names lit up in the roster again. But I imagine that, in some guilds, players have come back that no one is particularly happy to see logging in again. This week, one reader wants to know how to handle a member that annoys just about everybody.

Hey Scott!

I'm an officer in a pretty big, casual guild (roughly 100 people). One issue that [. . .] has caused quite a lot of discussion in officer chat and forums alike is a few of our members. These members are disliked by many people in guild, due to their overall behavior, as in repeatedly asking for the same things in chat, and complaining during raids (among other small things, that over time drives people crazy).

Now, this have gone on for a fairly long time, and we have come to the place where most officers just want to get rid of them. Problem is, they have not actually broken any of the rules. They are close to at many times, but they never actually cross that line and do something that is clearly against the rules. We don't have a "no annoying people rule."

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

With every expansion comes a slew of new quests, many of whom have that word at the end that's both aggravating and exciting: (Group). It's exciting because the rewards are generally better. But it's aggravating because now you need a few extra hands on deck to move forward with the questline.

Finding help with these quests is easy when everyone is still leveling. But eventually most of your guild will be 80, and those lagging behind or leveling up secondary characters won't have as much luck finding groups. In a month or two, guild chat across every server will be filled with people asking for assistance. In small, tight-knit guilds, it won't really be an issue. Ironically, it's usually people in the larger guilds who have trouble finding groups -- and we as officers can wind up providing most of the help. This week, one reader wants to know how to prevent this scenario.

Hi Scott. I'm the assistant GM of a guild with over 400 members (225-250 accounts), and an issue that keeps coming up is the lack of response for help, either with instances or quests. The problem I have faced personally is that at one point I went out of my way to help anyone who has asked and eventually had to make an alt to hide on. If I logged onto my main I couldn't accomplish anything that I wanted to do since all I did was help others. This also happened to one of my Officers. Then there are those who won't help anyone at all unless there is something involved that they need.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

It seems like quite a few players are in a hurry these days. They're in a hurry to be the first of their class or race to hit 80, or in a hurry to be the first on their server to clear a raid. They use the most effective method of gaining experience over time, ignoring all other options until they achieve their goal. In this environment, the role-players are definitely a breath of fresh air. This week's e-mail comes from a reader who wants to know whether "IC raiding" -- or raiding in character -- will be possible in this expansion.

Hello, Scott. I'm a long-time reader, long-time guild leader, first-time send-question-in . . .er.

Anyway! I run a . . . not sure what you'd consider 'small,' so let's say small (around 30 people) RP guild on Moon Guard. How feasible would it be for small, semi-unscheduled, IC raids (Naxx10 and other 10-mans) in Wrath? I know it'd be hard to do in fights, but do you think a small(ish) roleplay guild could pull it off?

Thanks much!

--Maciah Banes

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

With Wrath nearly in our hands, it's time for us as officers to go over a mental checklist and make sure we're adequately prepared for this expansion. (Please no Illidan jokes -- poor Arthas has no catchphrase and it only makes him angrier.)

I can't possibly tell you what should be on that checklist -- it all depends on the type of guild you run and what your guild's goals are. You do have goals, right?

However, here are three questions that you should start thinking about -- if you haven't already . . .

1. How will you distribute BOE raid drops?

Epic BOE raid drops aren't new. World bosses in Outland had their loot changed to BOE to encourage guilds to go after them. But it's been a long time since most guilds have had to deal with them on a regular basis -- not since Molten Core, if memory serves. They weren't too difficult to manage back then. With 40 people tagging along, odds are someone in the raid wanted whatever dropped. If not, the drops were all class-specific, so the number of people who could request them was relatively small.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

PvP is a controversial topic in the Warcraft community. For some, it's the only reason they play. With so little PvP content in the game compared to patch after patch of mostly PvE content, they can sometimes feel neglected. Others have zero interest in PvP and resent when their class gets nerfed in the name of competitive balance. As for me, I enjoy PvE far more overall, but I want PvP to be just as fun and rewarding. I'm hopeful that Blizzard will be able to achieve a tighter class balance this time around, even though historical evidence and even Blizzard's own words point to the contrary.

So what about PvP guilds? Why aren't there more of them? This week, one reader wants to know if a PvP guild can survive despite Warcraft's raid-focused endgame.

Dear Scott,

I recently went looking through your past articles, and I'm in need of some help. I'm looking to start my own guild -- specifically, a PvP guild. I know, that seems quite contrary to the majority of guild related issues you discuss, but a guild is a guild, right?

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Raids after 3.0.2 are far less difficult than they once were. My server has pick-up groups forming for everything up to and including Black Temple. Seeing content these days isn't so much about being in the right guild as it is being online at the right time. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that many high-end raiders are looking more closely at which guilds to join, choosing them more for who their members are than what tier they're farming.

This week, one officer is wondering whether or not to relax his application standards for a few well-geared players who want to join. Is it worth the risk?

Scott,

I'm the GM of a casual to, what I like to call, medium core (that really sounds way to much like mediocre) raiding guild. Before the last patch we had Kara on farm as well as Gruul's and Mags. We were farming the first 2 bosses of ZA and Void Reaver in TK. Many of us want to begin serious raiding when WotLK hits in a few weeks but we don't quite have the numbers for consistent 25 man raids now.

I was hanging out grinding up inscription on my druid when I got a bunch of whispers from different people asking for guild invites and information.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Sometimes I get an e-mail describing to me a guild leader who fails for so many reasons that I am simply at a loss for words. However, words are all I have to work with here, along with my trusty Picard ASCII (courtesy of Blizzard poster Datth), so I will do my best. I warn you that this e-mail is a very long read. But those of you who want some insight into exactly what not to do as a guild leader, read on!

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

This is it, ladies and gentlemen. In exactly one month, Wrath of the Lich King will be on store shelves. So for all of us raiders out there, the next few resets are all that we'll have to hit Burning Crusade content one last time. As one particular reader expresses, this last month presents quite a dilemma. Do you keep moving forward, scale back, return to old bosses that you skipped, or just take a break entirely?

Dear Scott,

I'm currently an officer of a guild that has been progressing since forming from Kara all the way to BT, Hyjal. However with the coming expansion there's been a severe split in the guild's opinions towards raiding. It's come down to 4 differences. One, many would like to continue pushing content in BT and Hyjal till Wrath. Others would like to push towards downing Kael and Vashj before Wrath (which we skipped on our way to BT Hyjal). Then there are people would like to cut our raiding days from 5 down to 3 for many reasons to have more casual time before Wrath and the eventual push to 80 and continued progression. And finally there is the group that wouldn't mind stopping completely till Wrath hits to have some time to rest up.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Starting up a new raiding guild is never easy. There's a lot to think about and plenty of competition for those raid-quality players. It's not easy even under ordinary circumstances. Now try doing it while you're on deployment in the U.S. military! That's what this week's reader is facing.

Dear Scott,

I've been playing since about a year prior to the release of BC and been through many guilds which time and time again failed to meet my expectations of what a raiding guild should be, mostly centered around the lack of motivation. I'm in the military and 6 months ago was put on deployment so I've been "WoWless" for the last 6 months or so. While out here I made friends with some fellow players and after a few conversations I asked if anyone was interested in starting a guild. They liked the idea but no one wanted to spearhead it, well this sounded like opportunity knocking.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

It's the constant dilemma of the casual guild member. You love the people in the guild, but you know you're going to miss all or most of the raiding experience. It's a particularly poignant decision when you're an officer in a casual guild. That's what one reader is facing this week.

Hi, Scott.

I have been in a wonderful casual guild for almost a year now. And have been promoted to an officer. I love all of officers/people in my guild and generally have a good time with them and try to organize casual events and things to do. We have been attempting Kara recently, but I don't think we will progress past the 2nd boss before Wrath comes out; however, we are not a raiding guild by any means and I can't really stress that enough.

Over the last few months I have started to out-gear a lot of people in the guild and have been considering moving just my 70 to a guild that only raids on weekends so I have a chance to explore some new content before it becomes obsolete. Recently I filled a gap in a Kara guild and after the run was asked to join. This guild would only really need me for weekend Kara runs and maybe Mags.

Is it fair for one of my alts (which I am trying to level for Wrath) to take over my officer position in my guild and only use my current 70 for raiding in the new guild, and to help out when needed?

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Guild leaders aren't always the most popular people in a guild. Sometimes they have to make the tough choices for the good of the organization, and that can lead to hard feelings. But then there is the guild leader that members hate for just about every reason you can hate someone. One reader wants to know how to get rid of this guy once and for all.

Hey, Scott,

I joined a great casual raiding guild about 2 months ago at the point where we were putting Kara on farm and moving on to Mags, Gruul and places beyond. Now we're 2/6 SSC and 2/4 TK, I'm class lead for my class, have full T4 and one piece of T5, and we're progressing steadily.

But.

The GM is a [penis].

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

The Tank Shortage of 2008 -- is it worse than the Tank Shortage of 2007? Over the past two years, few guilds haven't felt the sting of being shorthanded on the front lines. Blizzard's response has been to give us the Death Knight, a class that supposedly will be able to tank with any talent tree. And while many of us are enjoying them on the beta servers, everyone in live is still struggling. As more and more players take a break from WoW prior to the expansion, it's a problem that's only getting worse.

In these desperate times, it seems like raiding guilds are taking anybody that can equip a shield or go bear. But even today, some tanks are so terrible that it's just not worth keeping them on the roster. One reader wants to know how to let a bad tank go.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

It's no secret that the game we all know and love is in a period of transition. Many basic assumptions of Warcraft are changing, from the way loot is itemized, to the way buffs work, to the very nature of raiding. Amidst all this change, I decided to update the document my guild wrote to define our basic principles and guidelines. Written in 2005, it was astonishingly outdated. I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised. Someone who stopped playing back when Blackwing Lair was the endgame would barely recognize WoW if they rolled a premade 80 on the beta servers today.

We call this document our guild's philosophy. Many guilds call it their charter. However you label it, right now is a great time to reevaluate exactly what your guild is all about and what your basic rules and beliefs will be going into the next expansion.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

There's only so much a blogger can take before he has to set the record straight! Two of my August columns -- and, oddly enough, even some columns I wrote back in January -- all managed to stir up a bit of controversy last month. Some of my readers made very good points, some were flat out wrong, and some grossly misunderstood my intent. I'd like to address them one by one.

First up is Auz from the excellent blog ChickGM.com. She respectfully disagreed -- albeit vehemently! -- about my columns from early in the year about what to look for in a potential officer and what types of people to avoid promoting. Here's what she had to say about my criteria in a nutshell:

Don't create strict rules or boxes for your leadership. Some of the best leadership is done outside of conventional thinking and wisdom. To quote myself; "If you do what everyone else is doing, you'll end up where everyone else is."

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

It's a question on many officers' minds right now: is 10 greater than 25? It's a question that would send any math teacher into a rage-fueled lecture about integers and number lines. But as we know, leading a guild isn't always about quantity -- quality is important, too. With the ability in Wrath to see all of the expansion's raiding content alongside just 9 other people, this question of numbers has become a legitimate issue. Some guilds who had success at the 25-player level may opt to keep it smaller this time around. One reader wants to know how to make the switch.

Scott, I am an officer in what has been a fairly successful guild. We built a great team and led it from Kara, through SSC and most of TK, and into Hyjal and BT over the past several months. But the intense effort that it took to go so far in such a short time completely exhausted me and the other officers. Along those lines, we read with great interest Blizzard's announcement to create a 10-man raiding scene. (I also note, although it might be inappropriate to do so on wowinsider, that a forum poll on mmo-champion about 10 vs 25 raiding resulted in many more people saying they were interested in the 10-man option, with lots of comments from leaders about similar burn-out!)