Officer’s Quarters: How many officers do you need?

Guild structure is a fluid thing in World of Warcraft. As a guild leader, deciding whether to go it alone or add people to help you is a decision only you can make. Answering the officer number question depends upon the answers to a few other questions. How many people do you envision being in your guild? What kind of guild are you creating — casual, progression, hard-core, or some permutation of these? Will your members be limited to family and friends only, or are you going to recruit from the WoW population?

Define your guild

If your guild is just family and friends — even if you are progression minded — and you are not going to recruit anyone outside your immediate family and friends circle, you possibly don’t need officers other than yourself. This is especially true if you are a small guild. For definition purposes, I consider “small” guilds to have fewer than 10 distinct accounts. With that many, by yourself you can handle things like the bank, decide on ranks and who is in them, and who might — when you aren’t online — be able to invite someone into the guild.

If you are looking to be progression-focused or evolve into a hard-core raiding guild, you’ll be looking to recruit players with whom you have no connection outside of the game. Maybe you want 20 to 30 dedicated raiders. A guild leader can quickly get overwhelmed with all the things needed to keep this kind of guild going — and what happens when you aren’t online? Deciding what kind of guild you want to be is the first step in deciding how many officers you’ll have.

Officer Roles

Thinking of guild structure, these duties may need a designated officer to handle.

• Bank.  Someone to keep it neat and organized along defined tabs. They remove and sell items. They can also be tasked with assessing need — say, for raiding materials — or watching for strange withdrawals.
• Raiding.  Someone to lead your raids. There are pluses and minuses to the guild leader being the raid leader. If you choose to have someone — or more — to be raid leader(s), they need to learn strats for all raids you are likely to do. They need to know what items will help — potions, flasks, food, etc.
• Membership/Recruiting.  Someone who oversees invites into your guild. Their duties can include reading applications; conducting interviews; and approving or denying applications. They could also be the person who keeps your recruiting messages current and broadcast in a variety of ways.
• Dungeons.  Someone to lead your dungeon events. This would include all levels from normal to mythic plus. They would organize groups and would need to know which quests go where. They will also need to learn the strategies of the various dungeons.
• PVP, if your guild does PVP.  Someone needs to know the strategies of all the battlegrounds. They should be adept at Warmode. If you have a dedicated Arena crew, that could fall under this officer’s duties.
• External media.   Someone should be in charge of maintaining your guild’s web site. They could be responsible for your Twitter and other social media accounts. If you stream, they could be responsible for maintaining this.

Larger guilds have larger needs

Larger guilds — I define these as having 20+ distinctive players who log on at any given time — may need to have class officers. These people provide help to a specific slice of the guild make up. If you are large enough, you could have tank, healer, or dps officer — even going so far as to break dps into ranged and melee. Very large guilds can have an officer for each class.

People in these roles know the class totally. They are entrusted to look at logs of raids and assist others of their class in maximizing their output during raids. Some guilds consider these people full-fledged officers, with all officer duties. Some guilds consider them junior officers with limited officer abilities. How you structure these is up to you.

How many officers then?

I feel it comes down to one fundamental fact. Running a guild means keeping multiple balls in the air, so to speak, and you should never juggle all those balls yourself when running a guild. You should do only those tasks you want to do and can be effective in doing. Officers help you with the mechanics of guild leadership. Sometimes, there is a vacancy and you need to cover that officer’s duties, but — and I need to stress this again — you shouldn’t be doing everything unless your guild is small. Even then, doing everything is a recipe for burn-out. Break down the tasks of running your guild, using my categories as a guide.

I feel a medium-sized guild should have these officers at minimum.

• Raiding
• Dungeon
• Membership/Recruiting and
• PVP, if you do this.

A large guild probably has all the roles — as well as class roles — filled. They may even have officers I haven’t thought of.

I hope this helps with organizational structure. The key is to not do everything yourself. Figure out what tasks you can delegate. Create the position and ask for help. Officers make running any size guild easier and that makes playing the game more fun for you.