After becoming a guild leader I found that I had taken on a second full time job. Creating a nice website was a pain and was time consuming. Then came trying to plan raids that the people in our guild could all attend (too much variation in levels), trying to keep people interested, recruiting new people. It was way too much work. [EQ2, M, 31]

The single toughest thing about running a guild is managing people. It can quickly turn into a serious job. You have to referee disputes, come up with events, loot rules, and organizational structure, recruiting. In short, running a guild is a lot of work, just like managing people in a real life position. [WoW, M, 37]

Being a guild leader is a bit more responsibility than I enjoy in a game. If I wanted responsibility I wouldn't be hiding from the real world ;). It may also that I work as a PR professional and being a guild leader feels a little bit too much like I'm at work. [WoW, M, 25]

The toughest thing about being a guild leader is finding the middle ground between all the members, and being able to keep the group entertained at the same time. Being a guild leader is like being a manager at work, only without the paycheck. It's frustrating but rewarding to lead a group and see it function and grow, but it's a pain in the rear more often than not to get it to that point. [EQ2, M, 33]

I do not regret it at all although I doubt I will do it again anytime soon: during that time, I was leading 10-12 guilds (via an alliance) which meant I was indirectly touching over 500 people, maybe up to 7-800 if you count the not-so-active people. I was definitely having an impact on the server as I always brought up conflicts and difficult situations that players might encounter while playing at the meetings, to make sure our alliance roughly shared similar policies, and obviously, so many people roughly sharing the same rules would have an impact on the other 1500-2000 people on that server. The toughest thing about being a guild leader is that it is really a job, managing all the conflicts and it takes huge amount of time and you receive no thanks for it. [DAoC, F, 38]