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.

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.

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.

Turn the page for more. _PAGE_BREAK_ The core of the issue, it seems, is the role of guild master. As a great guild leader once said, "The buck stops here." Ultimately, the blame for a guild's failure often falls on one man's shoulders. But is that a fair judgment? Or is there possibly another factor at work? Is it possible that the very structure of the guild system at fault? After all, even the title "Guild Master" implies domination, and conjures images of chains, whips, and other kinky items. Is Zed, the troll shaman, simply playing his part in a flawed system? Upon examination of Jeff's case, there is another "D" word at work here; one far more devious, pun absolutely intended: Dictatorship.

Don't You Have A Kingdom To Run?
Thomas Hobbes is said to have been one of the first to write on game theory. His famous concept of the "State of Nature" more or less boils down to the idea that cooperation, such as joining a guild, is in our own best interest. Hobbes would say that to play Warcraft on your own, you are essentially competing against everyone, and that it's worth giving up a little freedom in order to take away the anxiety of being alone in a hostile, dog-eat-dwarf, player vs. player world.

Even the smallest details are similar: "The right is annexed to the sovereignty of hearing and deciding all controversies which may arise concerning law.. ..is annexed to the sovereignty the choosing of all officers.. is annexed the whole power of prescribing the rules." When Hobbes says sovereign, think Guild Master; when he says controversy, think drama; and when he says officers, think, well, officers. See a pattern?

At first it may seem a bit of a reach to compare a simple group in an online game to a full-fledged political contract, but Jeff would disagree. He was expelled from his previous guild after criticizing the GM, even though his leader asked for feedback in the first place. After saddling up for another try, his new guild's "Message of The Day" read: "This Guild Is Not A Democracy". When Jeff asked an officer about the message, the officer replied curtly, "It stays because it's true, and that's the end of it."

Needless to say, Jeff began actively researching new guild options.

Are You Still Touching Me?
As in history, the guilds that flourish under the confines of dictatorship tend to be those with effective leaders. Joel Reisteter, undead warrior, played in just such a guild.

"Everyone who was in the guild joined because we shared the leader's vision of what we were there to do," said Joel, who feels the quality and integrity of a leader makes all the difference. At first his guild was highly selective in recruiting new players, requiring a certain maturity in its inductees that can be rare. Like Hobbes says, a contract for a commonwealth can't be formed without a shared vision between all members, and this strict process is one way guilds attempt to achieve that unanimity.

Also key to a guild's success is a leader who genuinely cares about the interests of his people, rather than his own advancement.

"The founder was charismatic and a shining example of a benevolent dictator," said Joel. Like Augustus Caesar himself, a fair, charismatic leader in Warcraft can unite what would otherwise be a chaotic combination of digitized personalities.

However, over time, recruitment policies in Joel's guild were diluted in order to achieve the greater numbers required to tackle higher-level events. Like the slow, cancerous demise of the Roman Empire, Joel's tight-knit group was being sacrificed for purely economical reasons. And just as Augustus succumbed to death, leaving his fledgling Empire to less capable hands, so too did Joel's leader wane.

"As his schoolwork became more important, he had officers pick up some slack," added Joel. "The guild's decline correlated perfectly with the GM's playtime."

Joel soon moved on, and shortly after the guild disbanded entirely. He feels he's in a better situation now with his new guild, but despite the happy ending, you can't help but detect a slight tinge of sadness in his words as he recalls his once-great guild.

"I missed the fact that there was no real drama," he concluded. "[Our leader] made it work, and everyone loved it. We were a family and he was the nice grandfather."

This Way, No That Way
The one clear advantage over Hobbes that players have at their disposal, beyond modern medicine and better hairstyles, is their freedom to easily leave a guild. In the days before MMOs, the process of obtaining liberty might take year after year of pesky revolution and war. While it's true that leaving a guild can ruffle some feathers, compared to dying in glorious battle, flag in bloody hand, one would most likely prefer the simple patriotism of "/gquit".

This falls in line with the theory of David Hume, in that people should ideally have the freedom and ability to leave a government they don't explicitly consent to. In the real world this is a difficult problem to solve, as social roots and governmental constrictions often make it impossible for people to move when they don't like the political weather. In Warcraft, there are no such restrictions. But wait up there, pilgrim. It's not time for your one-man raid on Karazhan just yet. Out of the ashes of imperfect dictatorships, sometimes better solutions do arise.

Alex--also known as Arkturia, the gnome mage--regularly "casts" his vote in a Warcraft republic. Alex was in a situation similar to Jeff, and when his guild went down in flames, a mass exodus resulted.

"Eventually," said Alex, "people got fed up with the poor officiation, and most of the guild left, to form [a new guild] on the principles of good communication and every member having a say."

Given that the acquisition of loot is the primary reason to cooperate as a guild, a pseudo-democratic approach resembles the thinking of John Locke. Locke, a writer/philosopher/party-machine of the 17th century, had a much more optimistic vision of cooperation than Hobbes. He concluded that people should form representative governments, so that everyone has an equal say when it comes to individual rights. He was especially concerned with property rights, and in Warcraft, if we look at "loot" as our digital property, we can see how Alex's guild has more in common with Lockeian principals than you might guess.

Turn the page for more. _PAGE_BREAK_ Locke specifically outlines that a "legislative, or any part of it, be made up of representatives chosen for that time by the people," and how "the preservation of property [is] the end of government, and that for which men enter into society." He would say that the primary purpose of a guild administration is to protect the loot that you gain, or more specifically, to create a fair process of loot distribution.

50 DKP Minus: What does that even mean?
A "DKP" system, or "Dragon Killing Points" system, uses simple mathematics and game theory in its attempt to level the playing field, and bring sanity to a treasure-hungry populace.

These systems are difficult to classify. If anything they seem to fall under the broad definition of a social market economy, a sort of cross between capitalism and socialism. Guilds often create their own variations on the basic design, but it's no great secret that DKP systems are the most popular solution to loot distribution.

Unfortunately, they're not perfect. If someone with enough points wants the same item as you, an impromptu auction is held. Remember how you felt when you got outbid on that unopened copy of Chrono Trigger on Ebay? Now imagine having to get along with the winning bidder after the fact. Under some systems, members of the same class can also collude in order fix prices during class-specific auctions. And in all versions, you can end up spending hours of your time to clear a dungeon, only to not have enough points to claim a single reward.

In the end, DKP is a governmental program enacted to bring fairness to a harsh world of unjust die rolls and insidious group members. It's an innovative solution that takes some heat off of the leaders, and sinks it into mathematics--something anyone who's been through primary school can appreciate.

Initially, Alex's guild leader was given very little power over the guild's legislative voting process. The head of state in a republic usually takes the form of an executive with fairly limited power--at least when compared to a dictator.

This balance can fluctuate throughout the years however, as in the United States, where the power of the president has vastly increased since the founding of the country. When I asked whether things had changed since the guild's inception, Alex revealed a rather surprising turn of events: "A recent vote actually gave him significantly more power, to the point where he can pass final judgment on loot decision protocol with regards to our loot council."

Though his guild struggled with the same controversies over executive power that real-world republics often do, Alex admitted that veto power rarely turned into a problem in their case. "Most people realize that you have to give some and take some," he continued, "and that since we're all reasonable adults, the majority opinion is generally the correct one for us."

While Alex's guild is a fascinating, albeit rare example of an attempt at fair treasure distribution, a much more radical arrangement exists in Azeroth.

Stop Rocking The Boat
Given the inherent challenges in adapting imperfect political systems to a video game, some would-be guilds find the very idea of rules to be an unnecessary drag. The game is supposed to be about fun, right? For most people, politics and fun go together like Toejam and Earl; and by that I mean, only in co-op mode. Blurgle, an active player on a role-playing server, was serious about keeping the game enjoyable, and as he explains, his guild's solution was to throw out the government altogether.

"Ranks really didn't mean anything," said Blurgle. "A lot of stuff when it came to ranks was done simply on a whim, with plenty of demotions, promotions, kicks and re-invites done on a whim and for comedy."

Since the guild master role is hard-coded into the game, it's impossible to have a guild without one, but from what Blurgle tells me, it was more of a puppet government than anything. For instance, the one time force was ever exercised was in order to keep the spirit of fun alive. "I was very pointed that I would /gkick before I let guild chat get polluted with that [drama]," he added.

As far as loot issues went in Blurgle's guild, the members ran all their raids in "free-for-all" mode, which means anyone can pick up any loot, at any time. Most Warcraft players consider this to be unnaturally dangerous, as a dishonest person might "accidentally" pick up something before it was determined who needed it. But as Blurgle explains, "Whoever needed an item would speak up, we would discuss, and then we would give it to the assigned person." And just like that, we have anarchy in Azeroth.

It's probably no coincidence that Blurgle's guild role-plays a band of pirates. This kind of trust and improvisational cooperation amongst members is admirable, especially considering the risk. But does it actually work? "Contrary to what you might think, there was NEVER a problem with this," added Blurgle with a certain satisfaction.

Blurgle attests to this: "I think that we were lucky in that we had the best [players] possible who quickly understood we were just there to have a good time. I truly think [my guild] was an anomaly."

While not a true anarchy, it seems Blurgle's guild is as close as it can get beneath the shadow of the Warcraft leviathan.

Join The Army They Said
Throughout my own journey through the World of Warcraft, one thing has remained constant: the real need for social interaction. The vast majority of your time in Azeroth is spent running from one end of the world to the other, or waiting around to join a raiding party, or performing such exciting tasks as virtual fishing. Sometimes you meet some fantastic people in your character's downtime, but during your journey towards heroic fame and fortune, there's always that one guy that gets under your skin.

The fellow who stole the item you needed and ran, or the jokester who made fun of you for wearing a dress (yes, we know, it's a "robe"). Much like life, political law defines the way we react to these miscreants. The next time you get ready to join a guild, take a moment to consider your options. And remember to have fun. You may not be able to physically hurt that guy, but unlike reality, dueling doesn't end with him in a pool of blood, and you in jail. World of Warcraft: it takes a bite out of crime!