Team Liquid is one of the most successful guilds in World of Warcraft of all time. Behind it is a guild culture that is surprisingly harmonious.
Among the major professional guilds like Method, Echo, or Liquid, you mostly hear about them during the “World First” races in World of Warcraft or in the dungeon tournaments. But if you are interested in the “WoW stars,” you can also follow them on their streams. Here they sometimes talk about what life is like as a “WoW pro” or why their guild is so successful.
You can see the latest trailer for the upcoming expansion here:
What kind of conversation is this? The guild leader of Liquid, Maximum, conducted a long interview a few days ago and answered many questions from the viewer Mikkel Agerlin. During this, Maximum also realized why his guild is doing so well.
An important point is how Liquid handles mistakes. If person A has made a clear mistake, such as not “catching” a target circle, that person is not blamed afterwards. People know on their own that they made a mistake — after all, they are all good players. Instead, others step up and say they could have helped, but they also didn’t do it.
This creates a pretty harmonious environment where no one has to “defend themselves to the death” over mistakes, but one can simply admit to errors without severe consequences. It was different back then, as Liquid was made up of many guilds; some players had to be taught this behavior first.
The entire interview is quite interesting and enlightening. If you want to become a successful guild leader, you will surely find some good advice in it:
If you look for mistakes and blame people for 5 minutes after every failed pull – that would be terrible. You need to quickly identify, clarify, resolve mistakes, and then move on.
Arrogant players are hardly found in Liquid, at least Maximum thinks so. There is a difference between being “confident” and “arrogant.” Arrogant players tend to always blame others and therefore would never end up in the top guilds because they would simply be too difficult to work with:
In an environment where 20 people have to work so closely together, someone with such an attitude would be so obstructive that even if there were a significant skill difference, such a person would not be worth the effort. However, I haven’t had much to do with such players. They are usually filtered out before reaching this level. […]
If people from our guild wouldn’t want to play with a certain individual, we would probably get rid of that person.
What is Liquid known for? Basically, Liquid is always right at the front in every major “World First” race. If there’s a first kill to be made, the professional team is there and streams a large part of the raid progress live, so fans can follow the progress live. Only in particularly critical fights, where every little tactical advantage counts, is the stream sometimes paused.
The culture and interaction among each other are quite a big deal in Liquid and contribute significantly to its success. Besides the major professional guilds, there are also a number of other players who have achieved considerable fame in World of Warcraft. We have introduced you to 12 of these special players here.
