If you've played in many WoW PUG battlegrounds, you've probably noticed that the person designated as leader of the raid is usually mostly ignored.
Why does this happen? What characteristics does a good leader have to have? How do you develop those yourself?
Two Stories
I was in Wintergrasp, inside the fort, calling out incomings ... the game was at the 20 minute mark or so. "Seiges inc SW," I said over the raid chat.
My whisper chat lit up ... I don't know why he spoke to me ... I guess my callouts were the most obvious talk going on at the time. "This is wrong," the player said, "we should be attacking their workshops."
"Well, that would work," I said. "But what we're doing now is defending the fort until the south team can get the towers down."
"But their tanks can get through our walls," he said. (It could have been a she, but the tone sounded male.) "Your strategy won't work."
"It's not my strategy," I replied. "It's what everyone wants to do. We've won five in a row doing this and they're going to keep on doing it."
Some time went by. An enemy column broke through the south wall and breached the Courtyard. We stopped them. The clock was down to 14 minutes.
"They got in," he said. "They could win this."
"It's a battle," I said. "They always can win it."
More time passed. With 9 minutes to go, a large enemy column came through the hole into the Courtyard. They were on the main steps when the last tower finally fell and we won the battle.
"My way is better," he said. "They would never get this close."
"I agree with you," I replied. "But that's not the point. The raid decides what it wants to do ... not me or you."
And I never heard from him again.
Later that same night, I was back in Wintergrasp ... still defending ... and still following the same plan. At 24 minutes a different player started calling out over the General channel in all caps.
"GET SOUTH YOU LAZY BASTARDS IN THE FORT. WE CAN'T WIN WITH YOU THERE. GET OUT AND TAKE THE WORKSHOPS. IDIOTS."
He kept up with this periodically for awhile, but more and more players began to make snide comments to him and eventually he shut up. We won the game easily ... I don't know if he noticed that or not.
Neither of these guys are leaders. They both have the same basic problem, which is that they don't understand why groups of people behave the way they do. But the first guy has a chance ... he seems genuinely puzzled, and from that position he may eventually learn. The second guy is hopeless ... screaming at people and calling them idiots is pretty much exactly the wrong thing to do.
This section is not about strategy or tactics ... it is about leadership ... which in WoW can be defined as the art of getting a group of people to agree with your assessment of the situation and volunteer to follow your instructions.
What All Leaders Have
All leaders have followers. If no one is willing to follow your lead, then it just doesn't matter if you have the best plan or not. So, if you want to be a leader, you first must be honest with yourself. Do people naturally follow you? If not, then you are not a leader, and pretending otherwise will not change that.
If you are not a natural leader, it is possible to develop leadership skills. But it is not easy. And the first step is to develop a cold, rational way of looking at what's happening around you.
Self-delusion is wide-spread in WoW. I have had numerous conversations with people who say such as "we won six Wintergards in a row following my plan." This is self-delusion. I have played hundreds of WGs and never been in one where everyone or even most of everyone on our side agreed ahead of time on a plan.
This is not to say the WG plans do not evolve ... they certainly do ... as the fight gets going, players make decisions about where they are going to go and what they are going to do. Some of these players are leaders ... they head south to get the towers and others follow ... or they head out to cap a northern workshop, and others follow ... but it is really unusual for the whole WG contingent to follow the instructions of any one person.
Yet there are people who convince themselves that they are being listened to. On the other hand, there are people who just go do what they want, and other people follow. These players are leaders ... though they never seem to think about it, and they don't do anything to try to convince people to follow them.
This is the puzzle of leadership ... it is not a position you can grab ... you have to be voted in. And you don't even need to be nominated, or intend to run for the office. If people follow you ... you're it. If people don't follow you, you're not.
From this there follow two general rules of leadership:
Just do it. Go do what you think is right. If someone questions you, then explain why you think it's right. Don't argue, don't insult, don't harangue ... be the strong, silent type and just do it. You will probably die a lot, but people will see you and it will make some of them think, and in time, some of those may decide to follow you.
Talk softly and be right. Every now and then simply mention the right thing to do. If someone questions you, then explain why you think it's right. Don't argue, don't insult, don't give speeches ... just be a soft voice whispering in the ear of the group. Eventually, your ideas will seep in and some people will begin to pay attention.
One afternoon I played a string of Arathi Basins. The queue must have been short, because a bunch of the same people showed up time after time. Early on there was one guy attacking the Blacksmith Shop. He'd ride up there alone, and die. In the fourth or fifth battle, I joined him ... we died. By the seventh battle there were five of us going there, and by the end of the day we were taking the BS most of the time. I don't know who the guy was, and I don't know if he cared that anyone was following him ... but he was leading.
Leading in PUGs
You can never be in total command of a PUG, but you can influence its behavior. To do this you first must not drive away any potential followers. Then you must encourage them to join you.
What Drives Followers Away?
If you desire leadership, then the first thing you have to do is NOT drive people away. Here are some firm "don'ts":
Don't insult your teammates. Calling people "idiots" and "noobs" and whatever else comes to mind may be emotionally satisfying, but it almost guarantees that people will ignore you. (In fact, if you insult everyone enough, they will literally click "ignore" and delete you from their chats.) This does not mean that you cannot criticize ... but do it sparingly, and learn to do it in a non-personal way.
Don't say, "You idiots can't hold MT; what's wrong with you noobs?" Say, "OK, we need two towers to win, can we get another one now?"
Don't announce a grand plan. The people who run a macro that says, for example in IOC: "groups 1 and 2 take hanger, groups 3 and 4 take docks, everyone else go workshop, if you die defend the fort" are almost always going to be ignored. The fact that you think you have a plan does not mean that you are qualified to lead the group, and the fact that you are so arrogant as to announce your plan probably means that you cannot lead. (The exception is if the person making the announcement is also the leader of a pre-made group that has joined the raid. It is often useful to play along with such groups as their coordinated actions will likely be beneficial. Still ... I have played with pre-made leaders who gave their opening remarks with such arrogance that the rest of the raid reacted by ignoring them ... an in some cases rejoicing when we lost the match.)
Don't give a flood of orders.
People come to battlegrounds to play ... not to be puppets of an autocratic leader. If you constantly shout out orders, other players will just stop listening. Nor do you need to do this. Anyone with any competence in battlegrounds knows how to read the map and decide where to go. And the incompetents aren't listening to you anyway.
Don't constantly congratulate people on good play. It's one thing to compliment a player on a truly exceptional action ... like an excellent flag run in WSG. It's another thing to give out empty congratulations. You are not mother and father to the raid ... so don't behave like a parent ... it's annoying and it makes it less likely that people will listen to you.
What Brings Followers To You?
There are a number of simple, low key comments that you can make that will help everyone play better. The trick is to speak only occasionally, and to always give information.
Call incoming. Everyone says "call incoming", but a lot of people forget to do it, especially when the enemy is bearing down on them. Often, it is better for your team if you call out "inc lm 4" even if you have to stop fighting to do it. You may die, but people will be coming to help. Get in the habit of always calling an accurate incoming on any spot you are defending. The information is usually welcome, and people will get used to seeing your name in chat.
Suggest, Never Command. Say "maybe we should kill Galv now, he's worth extra honor" ... not "group 3 and 4 to Galv". People may not follow your suggestions, but they will almost certainly not follow your commands.
Don't talk much. The more verbose you are, the fewer listeners you will have. Speak when you have something important to say, and people will begin to associate your messages with urgency.
Know the BG. If you don't know the battleground inside and out, then don't presume to tell people how to play in it. In WSG you should know how the flag carriers debuff works, in AB you should know how long a flag stays grey after it is tapped, in WG you should know what the damage buff is for each of the southern towers. You don't have to know every single detail, but you do have to know all the mechanics. Every battleground is described in detail online ... go to those websites and be sure that you know the ones you want to lead.
The best way to illustrate this is with an example. Here is a conversation that I had with a player in AB. At the start of the game he announced: "group 1 LM, group 2 ST, group 3 GM - cap and defend." When the game started, about eight of us went to BS, six went to LM and one stayed at ST. "You didn't follow the plan," he said in bg chat ... so I opened a personal chat with him.
Why did you pick GM, LM and ST, I said. Why not BS, LM and ST?
-->GM is better. We take 3 and hold them.
Why is GM better than BS?
-->Because the Horde always goes BS. So we can take 3 and they only have 2.
Maybe they go there for a reason. Maybe we should try to take it first.
-->No, they're all the same.
At this point I said, "KK - good luck" and signed off. Now, in my battlegroup the Horde wins much more than half the time. So the fact that they always attack the BS first in AB should have been a signal to this guy. And, if he had read any of the analyses of AB on the internet he would have known that the BS is unique among the five bases and definitely worth holding. The reality was that if the Horde got to keep the BS, we were probably going to lose ... whereas if we could take the BS at step one, we had a chance. The guy was clueless, and any good bg player could see it.
Know the tactics that go with your strategy. The guy in the previous example had a strategy without tactics. He knew he wanted us to "take three and hold", but he didn't know how we were going to accomplish that. Many delusional pseudo-leaders have this trait. They know what they want done, but they can't tell you how to go about getting it done.
When it comes down to it, the WoW battlegrounds are all pretty simple. WSG - get the flag and kill the efc. AB - cap more bases than your opponent. AV - kill the boss. EoS - get three towers. And so on. The difficulty comes with trying to accomplish these goals against an opponent who is doing the same. This means that any opening strategy implies the need for certain tactics. You may know what you want to accomplish, but you also have to be able to tell your team how to go about it.
Deal in Reality. You need to know the situation and be honest about it. If you're in EotS and your side has one tower and is behind by 700 points, then you might as well go join the melee. You have no reasonable expectation of winning, and continuing to make suggestions about tactics is just a waste of time.
I can give hundreds of examples, but you encounter them every time you play. When someone gives a command, what you should do is evaluate the command and see if it makes sense. Check your map. Look at where your teammates are. Think about where you know the enemy is. Will the command help your side win?
As you do this, you will begin to develop your own battle analysis skills. Your first goal is to be able to separate the bad commands from the good. Eventually, you want to be able to look at the map and figure out your own commands ... and hopefully, most of them will be good ones.
What If the Current Leader is Wrong
Proving that the current leader is an idiot doesn't make you the leader ... it just doubles the number of idiots in the room. So relax, play the game, get some kills, and wait for the next battle. Good leadership is a long, slow process. Learn, do, show ... and eventually others may follow.
Charisma
Some people are natural leaders, and people will follow them even when they're wrong. So it goes. If that's not you, then it's not you. Charisma is a talent. You either have it or you don't ... you can't develop it through practice. Even if you are a good leader, there are times when you have to follow. This may be one of them.
Leading in Groups You Have Been Asked to Lead
I call these PRO groups ... to distinguish them from PUGs. They can be guild teams, pre-mades, ranked BG teams, or whatever. The key is that they are a group of players who have agreed that you will be the leader.
Don't do any of the "don'ts" listed above ... except that it's OK to give your players kudos when they do something good. Since you are going to have to criticize them occasionally in order to show them what you want done, it's good to balance things out with some praise.
Do all the things in the "do" list ... except ... you can give orders instead of suggestions. Even so, there are times when suggestions are better. If you absolutely want something done, then give a command. On the other hand, it's almost always better to give your players room to use their own initiative ... for one thing it makes the game more fun for them. So, if possible, make a suggestion, or just comment on something.
Command: grp 2 take BET
Suggestion: maybe we should take BET now
Comment: there's not much D at BET
But never confuse your team by saying one thing when you mean another. If you want and need to give an order, then speak it as a command. Never say it as a suggestion and then get angry if people don't do it.
Take the time to outline your plan before the battle starts. This is useless and annoying with a PUG group, but with a PRO group getting everyone on the same page is a good way to start.
Applaud initiative. Even on a PRO team, the players want and need freedom to maneuver. Compliment people if they do something useful. Encourage everyone to read the map, make decisions and think on their feet. It's more fun that way, and you will win more often, too.
Criticize softly and only to teach. It's a game, and people are playing to have fun. The last thing they want is to be yelled at, and they won't put up with it for long. Besides, if you can't deal with a little adversity, maybe you should go do something less stressful. If the team chose you to lead because they want to learn how to get better, then you have to explain what's going wrong ... and sometimes this will seem like criticism. So be nice about it, and make sure that everyone understands that you are just trying to show them how to improve.