My brother’s an EVE-aholic, and his corp is run (shockingly) corporate style. They are very much a hierarchical group with a few “head honchos” and a whole lot of “peons” following chain of command. But it’s not militarily enforced it all, it’s a very businesslike structure. As time goes on and the individual strengths of the group members become more apparent they are working toward a situation where everyone leads where they’re most able and follows otherwise. I like that setup… their leaders delegate and everybody wins.

After three months of hardcore raiding through Bastion, Warpblade, LV, and IC sieges every couple days, a lot of our members were fed up. Most of the T4 we have started to play the game for the RvR, and PvE was just not getting em off.

I’ll adjust the statement a bit. We do offer raids, through our alliance. Pretty much any given time, there’s some group in /a that is running one of many different PvE instances. We encourage people to jump into their groups, shut up and follow their lead.

Our top level organized groups tend to go into enemy T4 PvE zones and roam around scouting for kills (6-12 man groups), or hide at choke points in RvR lakes and ambush. We’re a nasty lot, not really interested in Keeps or BO’s (but we take em if they’re nearby), and love watching our enemies scatter to the winds.

I think WAR is always going to be a bit different because of the PvP emphasis. So there’s plenty for people to do in a more casual way if they don’t want to get really hardcore. I know I’ve had a lot of fun running warbands in the past, and the level of organisation you need to make it work isn’t crazily high. And the other big thing is that people who have levelled into T4 should have enough experience in scenarios and PvP to be able to follow simple instructions, so you can be a useful part of the warband without spending hours honing your gaming skills.

So there’s room in your guild for people who want to dick around and there’s plenty for them to do also. They can sign up for casual warbands and go romp around ORvR. I think that’s one of the big strengths of WAR as a game. It’s just a super game for casual players, especially if they have access to a guild with some more dedicated guys/ gals who’ll be around to run the warbands.

Your guild sounds fun. But I think it’s the nature of the game itself that doesn’t demand hardcore organisation for people to experience the content and have fun.

Our top level players are all T4 with at least one toon in lesser wards, use vent, post in our forums, and run organized warbands everywhere. Not to mention, they rock anything that we throw them against. Oh, and they roll out alts to play with the lower ranked/casual guildies too.

Basically, if people wanna get on and dick around, thats cool. If they want something SO much more, we have that as well. Casual players convert when they see pwnage up close and personal.

I’m still not sure I can “get” wanting to be humiliated (no goodies are worth being yelled at by someone cruel), though I do get wanting a disciplined environment that’s STILL fun.

Clearly I am much more dom than sub.

My raiding history is that I used to raid with a fairly hardcore guild who ended up as server 2nd or 3rd at the end of vanilla WoW. We raided about 4 days a week, I was a class officer, it was hard work and pretty stressy, and I loved it. It was kind of military style, but that didn’t stop it being a friendly guild, and we had fun. So I’m not down on hardcore raid guilds at all. (At least, I hope not, it isn’t my intention).

I do think that for every guild that’s capable of busts of intense learning and then settling down to a lightweight ‘farm week’, there are loads which raid heavy schedules for months, with lots of shouting and frustration. And I expect there are a lot of people who aren’t all that happy with it.

/boggle

(Which is why I don’t do it, of course. Horses for courses etc etc.)

Now, my most recent hardcore raid guild was #1 on the server and among the top 10 in the world for WoW. They were very much NOT military and in fact I only had to log in 2-3 days a week. In the beginning of new content, yea it’s 4-6 days a week, but that quickly goes away when you can clear an instance in 3 hours. The more skill you have, the less time it takes, so I think people have a misconception from that as far as hardcore guilds go. They think they *HAVE* to raid 7 days a week, when in reality, we do that for maybe a week or two until we figure out the bosses and can nail the instance in 1-2 days. Then we’re lucky to want to log in 1-2 times a week

So if people feel it’s going to help them get what they want, they’ll do it. But if you routinedly abused people unfairly or for no reason, I presume they’d vote with their feet. Unless they felt it was their only way to raid.

More accessible raids will probably blow these guild models wide open, is my guess. But who knows?

My main /puzzled with regard to some military-style guild is that people put up with abuse and humiliation (which puzzles me in RL military issues as well). The military isn’t *about* abuse, it’s about discipline, and you can very easily have the latter without resorting to the former.

Your post is interestingly synchronous — just the other day I read a Time article about army recruiters (particularly here in Texas) committing suicide in far higher numbers than is even remotely acceptable; as it turned out, they were working in an environment were buillying and humiliation from higher-ups (not to mention obligatory 15-hour days and “mandatory fun”) was the main mode of operation.

I’m a firm believer in positive over negative reinforcement — and smart army types are too. Or corporate, for that matter. As for personality cults… I stay as far away from those as I can. It never ends well.