Comments on: This Guild Has Been Rated NC-17!

By: Tamarind

Tamarind — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:32:32 +0000

Seem to be creeping through your back posts, but they are interesting and I have work I should be doing so it’s a lethal combination.

I don’t have much experience of guild politics myself, but i hear things, oh I hear things. Age-bias is probably more defensible than gender-bias in that, as you say, it’s maturity one recruits for, not actual number of years lived per se, and the only sensible way of doing that is to impose an age restriction.

Gender-restriction, however, is horribly complex. It’s weird because I think one naturally interprets “female-only” spaces as a perfectly understandable need to get away from men being idiots whereas “male-only” seems hostile to women, and more than borderline offensive. I suppose one cannot escape centuries of exclusion and restriction, even in virtual spaces.

I understand from my reading around that the main reason there are male-only guilds is not because girls have the lurgy or cannot play games (lol) but because the male of species simply can’t be trusted to behave in a sensible fashion while operating in close proximity to members of the opposite sex, and this is bad for raiding (and sanity).

Ultimately, this is a horrible horrible twilight zone of doom. I often find myself deploring the way men treat women on the internet (and, for that matter, the rest of the time), and sometimes I find myself deploring the way women treat men.

I was talking about this with m’pocket tank not so long ago and found myself coming perilously close to advocating “don’t ask don’t tell” which is kind of the opposite to a solution.

We should all just be trees and solve the problem.

By: sofandtree

sofandtree — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:15:22 +0000

I’m a girl, but when I first started WoW everyone always automatically presumed I was a bloke and I took pleasure in stating “no SHE is the healer, actually” or something of that ilk when in a PuG.
I’ve been in two female led guilds and one male led guild. After having one negative female experience and one positive, I think that age is the big factor.
The badly led guild was led by a girl of just 19 – who was a fine player and I’m sure a lovely woman, but she didn’t have the maturity to lead a guild. The well led guild was led by a woman in her 30s, who had the real life experiences of management and leadership that made her guild fabulously well run.
The male led guild is where I was before and have returned to, and is very well led, so I couldn’t really comment on that.
I do think gender therefore doesn’t make that much difference and shouldn’t be used as a deciding factor on recruitment, because the maturity of a person is more important than their sex.
However I can understand that there might be a desire for a female only or male only guild like the ones you talked about in your post.
I think recruitment on the basis of age is fine. I again have been in both an over 18s and an any-age guild, and enjoyed the freedom that came with the over 18s, the fact if I accidentally swore on vent it wasn’t a big deal, and the fact that the guild chat and conversation was occasionally flirtatious (for want of a better word) was amusing and funny, that freedom was nice.
Great post, as usual by the way
Sofx

By: Kae

Kae — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:24:39 +0000

2/3 of the Vortex officership is female roughly 40% of the guild is female, and we have a question on our app made specifically to see whether or not the applicant would get along okay in a guild that has a heavy dose of estrogen.

As for age, I believe maturity is not dependent on age. There are some pretty immature adults out there, and some very mature “kids.” As long as the personality fit is there and they can meet our raid schedule, I’ve never seen any reason to deny someone just because they’re “underage.” We do give warning though that guild chat can tend towards adult themes/jokes, and we don’t cut our cursing when we feel a curse is appropriate!

We also see a lot of our adults having to switch up their raid times because of volleyball, kickball, martial arts, etc. We like to encourage our raiders to get exercise, and a late-night raid schedule allows most of us to get our after-work activities done before the raids start

By: Beruthiel

Beruthiel — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:49:50 +0000

@Aertimus – yea, I have the same sort of feelings about the whole gender issue. I’m not sure why anyone would want to create a gender specific raiding guild, and I would imagine that it would be very difficult. I never even thought about ethinic minority only guilds, honestly. But you are right, it isn’t a far reach from gender only guilds.

Those channels you have in LOKI are a GREAT idea! We have a monosports channel so that we don’t have to listen to “TOUCHDOWN” constantly…although I don’t think anyone really uses it =)

@Averna – I agree, under 18 members can cause a lot of scheduling conflicts! Those moms are so mean! OMG YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE!!! (I joke!).

I am also not sure why people would want to exclude on gender in a general raiding guild. I think it is only OK to do that if you are trying to create a bachelor party/hens club type environment…I’m just not sure that you could do that and build the best raiding guild. You’d be missing out on SO many skilled players! So, I guess maybe I’m more OK with it on a pure social level?

By: Averna

Averna — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:11:51 +0000

Age: Our guild has a 18+ age requirement for all applicants. This isn’t so much about “omg you aren’t mature enough” (because there are certainly people under 18 who are mature, and on the flip side, people over 18 who AREN’T mature), but more to reduce “mom-aggro” – like you said, it’s not good to say halfway through a raid “my mom says I need to get offline, finish my homework and go to bed.”

In terms of gender… I think it’s all about WHY you choose to exclude the opposite gender. If you exclude women because their gender can’t play well – well, yeah, that’s bad. If you exclude women because you wanna bro out with your homeboys, well, I think that’s ok.

By: Aertimus

Aertimus — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:12:06 +0000

We have two minors in our guild. Both of there father’s raid with us. I don’t know if we would have excluded them based on age only if their dad’s didn’t play too, but it is nice to know one of their parental units knows EXACTLY whats going on. One of the minors is young enough that we keep vent a little cleaner when he is on, not because anyone has asked, but because he has asked for explanations on sexual comments he doesn’t understand. But yeah – minors are minors, they can’t call their own shots. So unless you have an aokay from a parent that they know EXACTLY what their kid is getting into I think it is FINE to exclude them.

As for gender only… we have a lokiwomen and a lokidudes channel for exactly that. I’ve got an alt in an all female guild. But a RAIDING guild that excludes completely… I don’t know… I don’t see the point in that. What would be next, ethnic minority only guilds?