Some caution on this... WoW guild leadership was a good exercise in how to lead volunteers. There is a gulf of difference between leading volunteers and leadi

Some caution on this... WoW guild leadership was a good exercise in how to lead volunteers. There is a gulf of difference between leading volunteers and leading paid people. Yes, there is overlap, too, but it is much harder to motivate volunteers to do tasks they do not feel like doing at the moment. It is a different kind of beast to lead, and Joi Ito certainly deserves respect for learning how to do that effectively. Note I said "was". With Cataclysm's release, Blizzard introduced built-in incentives to do things for the guild. A guild member gets rewarded by the game for working for the guild. This reduces the leadership burden quite a lot and focuses it more on the "getting X number of people together at Y time to raid/PvP" task. Additionally, guild leadership can now check the WoW Armory to see what raids potential guild candidates have completed and how many times; thus, players have incentives to work with guilds to establish their experience/pwning ability. That makes it easier for guild leaders to gather people for raids because people have more incentive to be there. Effectively, members are now paid to work for their guild or to increase their own standing if they want to work for another guild.