World of Warcraft Skills--Part 2

I got a little sidetracked by the Steam winter sale, but am going to finish my thoughts about the real-life skills that could be gained by playing World of Warcraft.  You may scoff, but I swear that situations I dealt with in that gaming environment were dead ringers for things that can and have
occurred in real-life.

Your guild.  Source of fun...and drama.

1.) Effectively Managing Resources
To be successful at raiding you have to be prepared.  A large part of that preparation means that your individual members are ready to go with all the consumables they need to complete a raid.  In the good ol' days of WoW you could chug potions with reckless abandon, so it was pretty much required that you packed along massive quantities of potions.  Now, you can only pop one per fight...much less resource demanding, which, as a former guild master who fought the fight of trying to make sure everyone was ready to go, is probably a good thing.  In order to make sure this preparation happened you generally needed to make sure there was a steady stream of materials and crafters ready to pop out a bulk of potions and flasks.  Sometimes this meant assigning people to gather mats or taking the time yourself to gather them when there was no one else to do it.

2.) Bank Management
Along with resource management comes the need to manage the guild bank.  Whether this simply means purchasing new tabs, designating tabs, or being in charge of doling out bank items really depends on the rules within your guild.  You're the one who has to decide how the bank is run and take care of any abuses.  Successful managers are usually able to acquire a large stock of crafting and other items for guild use.

3.) Counseling and mediating
To me this was the worst part of the experience.  As guild leader it is your responsibility to quash any drama before it boils over into all out mutiny or general craziness.  This could mean having private conversations with people in an effort to work out problems or coming to compromises.  Nine times out of ten these problems will be related to loot.  Having a good guild loot policy in place before you start is a must unless you plan on listening to everyone complain all the time.  If there are other problems you might have to play mediator or peacekeeper between parties.

I'm sure there are a lot more that I just haven't thought about.  I really think that someone could claim many of these skills to be legitimately tied to real-life work environments.  I don't think I'll be putting them on my resume any time soon, but if you were creative enough to do it I would definitely applaud you.