the perils of guild building

This may come across as a rant, but its not intended to be.
I am finding it hard to start a new guild with things the way they are in GW now.
I, along with 2 of my old Diablo2 buddies started a guild [BOMB] back in may of '05 when Guildwars first went live. Since that time it has grown to a pretty successful guild in that the 40+members are great folks.

I decided a couple of days ago that I wanted a new adventure so I bowed out of [BOMB] to start a new guild with the hopes of building it up to soon ally with them. The game seems to have changed since the original in that there are few folks who want to do anything other than: Farm faction, GvG, or just play with thier heros.

I spent the better part of the last two days seeking out older/mature people to possibly help me start this guild and get it off of the ground. I had zero luck! Seems like most guilds spam for anyone to join them just to get numbers. I, on the other hand, would prefer to grow slowly and make sure I/we get the best folks out there. I hate to sound like an old geezer, but, i am 35 and prefer to game with an older crowd (18+)

Maybe I am just frustrated with what I have seen the last couple of days, but, there has to be a LOT of folks like me who want to enjoy the game without cursing, arguing, or impatient kids hopped up on sugar

I am a similar age to you, well, I have the edge being 36 and I fully appreciate the difficulties of getting a guild started.

I started my guild at the end of October last year and having tried twice before, I never imagined it to succeed. Yet, not even 3 months later, we are leader of a 7 guild alliance, have fully equipped hall, forum, ts server and the best part......almost 80 fabulous members, the majority of which are active, freindly and a pleasure to be around. The ages range from 14-36 and I can honestly say I have NEVER had a problem with the younger members.

Admittedly, this has come with a LOT of hard work and dedication, but I am now at a stage where I can become very fussy about who I recruit. Infact, a large number of our members are freinds of guildies, so its not very often that we even have to recruit.

When starting a new guild, I think it is difficult enough to get new members, without putting age restrictions on them. When I recruit, I NEVER shout out in a city, I always look for the guildless people and whisper them to find out if they are interested in joining. Yes, MANY people ignore me, but I have found some great members this way Give the younger once a chance, they may surprise you

Anyway, I wish you good luck with your new guild, and DON'T give up If I can do it, anyone can

Expanding Universe Syndrome.

Players are spread out over various Campaigns, levels, Missions and PvP and PvE. This creates an acute social interaction problem for Guild Wars, more so than in other games.

Personally, I haven't given up, but I decided to just create a personal Guild for myself and hope for the best.

Double post FTL!

That is a good point about the expanding universe. When the original game came out it was easy to find people. Now there are 3 chapters which has everyone spread out.

I am not giving up just yet. I just wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing. Just seemed much easier the first go around.

I haven't looked, but have you posted about your guild in the "Introduce Your Guild" thread? It may seem unlikely, but we have gotten quite a few really nice people through that. And you can state your criteria up front without having to do any interrogations.

Welcome to my world of trying to find mature adults as it is getting harder all the time.

Yes I have posted there. I got pretty lucky yesterday and found 2 really good people just by whispering them in the towns as suggested.

I've just started up a guild myself and have gotten it underway by whispering folks as well and by using the spam method of recruiting but when doing that I stress we are a community guild. Most guilds already have their TS, VENT, Hall, ect. its pretty common to see that in any spam recruiting post so most ppl simply ignore it, if your recruit using spam try and make yourself stand out and be different. As mentioned earlier the whispering seems to work best, it will get you in the door by talking to the folks and who knows you may find some nice members this way. Myself I've found three of my own members this way and they have turned out to be great folks. We are still in the recruiting stage ourselves but getting to know your members first is by far the best way.

As far as GW strung over several areas and chapters that is a FACT !!

We've had our ups and down as a guild also and never put an age limit but more of a maturity limit. Exp, keep it clean and respectfull.

But I have seen a huge difference with 3 chapters in the ability to find new members. Alot of players are going henchway and heroway and its very sad to see. I like a sense of community and friendship, if I felt like playing alone I would play a single player game.

I've tried 3 times to start a guild... every time it failed because the active members never stayed for more than a few days, and the ones that did stay, never logged on again after joining. I wondered if it was something I was doing wrong, meh

When recruiting I use both methods, spam and whisper. However I always try to make my spam messages creative and not your usual "Vent, hall, cape, and all the other crap every other guild has".

It's terribly hard to reach "critical mass" when it comes to building a guild...or a friend's list, for that matter.

The game lacks social stability. Guild Wars is a great game when it is shared with active players that are friends in real or virtual life. I would imagine that starting Guild Wars with 4-5 real life would be an ideal situation.

For myself, I find irony in the fact that when I played WoW and we had 15 guildees online, it wasn't an adequate number to do the high level raids/content as a guild. And, now, in Guild Wars, I'd just wish I could find 8.

I spam in towns for recruiting, I ask people at the end of missions, quests, or pvp runs if they want to join, I ask all my members to do the same as often as possible, I sometimes just spend 1k inviting 10 random ppl without guilds and I have a great recruiter who is currently leader while I fix my computer.

Our numbers vary between 80 and 99 - we have a policy of kicking people who have not played in 1 month (very painful but unfortunately necessary). We have about 5-10 core members who are very active in chatting and organising things - the rest are a great bunch of people but are more quiet than the core.

I try to spend as much time as I possibly can helping but to be honest - I am usually tied down within seconds of logging on. I spend 90% of my time just standing in a town and chatting to my guildies, trying to get to know them on a more personal level and I try to help as much as I can. Alot of the guild have a loyalty to me and not the guild, on the occassions I leave to help a friend's guild or to have a bit of space, I get bombarded with whispers by the person I put in charge and other guildies to come back.

Every so often a core group of players will leave the guild taking a large number with them to start a new guild. We have weathered 8-9 such occassions. Usually it is our main pvp team that breaks rank and leaves. Or people that begin to take one particular aspect of the game seriously and no longer want to be in a generalist guild that mixes pve, farming, ab and pvp purely for fun. Sometimes I will stear the guild in a certain direction in order to allow members to gain experience. We have recently just completed another set of serious gvg recruitment and our team ([SNOW]) left to form their own guild [MrT], we are now concentrating for a little on pve and farming while I am fixing my comp, but hopefully when I get finished, I will be aiming for a HA team again to balance the pvp/pve a bit more.

The key is to get to know your members, help them when possible, always speak when you come online (even if you have to wait 10 mins to get out of the lag), try to maintain a balance between pve/pvp, and allow people to try things out for fun. Being rigid and serious on one particular aspect of the game is going to be difficult to maintain - people get bored of doing the same thing all the time - so you need variety and you need some chatter. I love it when we get talkers into the guild - but you need the silent types too.

Recruiting tools include: full hall, vent or ts, website, 80+ members, all officer guild, and an alliance. Chance to do GvG is a bonus but tbh, people always say they want to gvg but they never really do it and even with 99 members you will be lucky to make a guild team 90% of the time. Everyone wants to gvg at different times to each other and take it at different serious levels. Good rank is a good recruiting tool but in order to keep good rank you need to prevent less able players doing gvg and that is not what we are about.

Stability of leadership is also pretty important - if you know that you are not going to be online helping for a while then make someone else leader for a bit. Try and pop on daily even if it is just to say hello, until you are able to play for at least an hour a day again. People leave if the leader is always offline.