It's hard to treat World of Warcraft like any other game. With nine million players worldwide and growing, it's a phenomenon. The average server, or instance of the game, has a population of thousands online at any one time. With so many people packed into the same world, cooperation offers a clear advantage to those who seek virtual success.

When a new server is first opened, players quickly move to form social groups, like nervous sixth graders before the first day of recess. While some massively multiplayer games place less of an emphasis on group play, the development team at Blizzard have perfected a guild-dependent system. Much of the higher-end dungeons in the game were designed to require a high degree of skill and coordination that cannot be achieved through casual "pick up" games. Players are all but required to band together in order to continue "raiding" past a certain point.

To facilitate this, Blizzard has implemented a "guild" system that is incorporated directly into the user interface of the game. Everyone who plays has the ability to easily charter their own private club; all it takes is a witty name, a paltry 10 silver, and a dream. But as Daikatana taught us, one man's dream is another man's nightmare. What happens when you force this kind of social interaction on gamers? How do they cope with having to cooperate, often for the simple sake of greed, within a game that is inherently competitive in nature?

Tell Me What To Do
So it's a few hours later and you've killed a few rats, unraveled the mystery that is the "/dance" command, and finally suckered some unwitting people into joining your band of others. Now what? For starters, the built-in guild hierarchy supports up to 10 different rankings for your members. The important distinctions separate your guild members into 3 classes: the big boss man (no relation), his officer henchmen, and the powerless underlings.

As you can see, it's a lot like the TV show The Sopranos, but with orcs. All members are able to promote and demote ranks that are below their own. For instance, the guild master can promote someone to officer, but the officers can only pick on the peons themselves, unable to add to their own ranks. The game also gives the guild leader and his officers the ability to invite and kick members from the guild--although officers have no way of removing their leader from power, making a Warcraft coup d'etat virtually impossible.

Some guilds make this system work. Many others succumb to the dreaded "D" word. Settle down, Scruff McGruff; we're talking about drama. Drama works for a television show, but for a video game, it can drain whatever fun you were having faster than a warlock drains your hit-points. Elven drama is available in many flavors: treasure disputes, problems with guild policies, every-day arguments between members, and licorice (this is the worst flavor). When it comes time to deal with a conflict, players tend to look to their guild leader to sort things out. This has varying results. On the internet, where anonymity is the name of the game, some people can and do play out their fantasies; for better, and for worse.

Stop Touching Me
"The problem I see with guild leadership is that it brings out the worst in some people; mostly those who would want to seize and hold on to any little bit of power they can," said Jeff Buchwald, a World of Warcraft player since the beta phase. Jeff enjoys raiding with the rest of his guild, but finds their leader to be unnecessarily controlling. Because the leader has total control over the guild, that power can affect the way they interact with other players--even though, on the other side of the screen, everyone is an equal.

"It seems as though WoW is the one outlet [the leader of my guild] can control, where he can exude dominance and flex his proverbial muscle," Jeff laments. His case is one of many examples of a guild member playing see-saw with the administration, rocking back and forth between a mutual benefit and a necessary annoyance.

Once a guild is assembled, the leader is essentially named Dictator for Life. The only way to escape a problematic leader--outside of convincing him to relinquish his command--is by disbanding entirely and forming anew. This can be a tumultuous process even if all of the members are in agreement. In the case that they are not, it can be downright painful.

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