Maltare's tips for starting a guild

I've been reading the forums for a few hours now(not long I know) But there seems to be a general idea floating around that starting a new guild is the next thing to impossible. Well, for most of you that's probably true, but for those who are hardcore about it, here's some tips for you.

My tips come from several years of experience. I was a guild leader for three years on Diablo2. An officer of a guild on EQ for one year and a leader for one year never at one time, so that amounts to around 5-6 years of guild leadership experience. I am currently the Leader of my guild on Guild Wars.

1. You MUST be the most active or very close to it in your guild. As a guild leader you cannot expect any growth in your guild if you're not active. People will get discourage quickly with a guild where the leader has 2 or more days since logged on time consitantly.

2. You must promote activity like crazy. Even when noone else is talking, you may often times be forced to talk to yourself. But if you want to build the community amongst your members you have to be the one to instigate unless you're lucky to find those special members that do it for you.

3. As the guild leader, most of your time must be spent doing one of two things as a general rule.
-Recruiting new member.
-Organizing guild activities.
Don't expect to have much time for yourself to work on quests/building fame/etc. Guild activities can include any number of things; 4v4 Team Arenas, helping a member with a mission, TotPK, GvG, etc.

4. Have(at the minimum)a loosely defined objective or(at the best) a well defined objective. Having a well defined objective for your guild will let recruits know what your guild is about. It will also help in the recruiting process. Most people are looking for something in a guild, and if you can fullfill that something they will want to join you, and if you don't fullfill that something, it helps keep disgruntled members from ever joining your guild in the first place.

5. Keep your roster up to date. Having a long list of inactive members can be subtly discouraging to your members who are active, especially if those who are active are few in numbers.

6. Promote people to officer who will help you. Don't just randomly promote anyone who seems good at the time to an officer position. Promote people who are almost or more active than you are. Inactive officers are almost as discouraging as an inactive guild leader.

7. Use the many communication tools available to you! A guild with a website, teamspeak/ventrillo, message board, etc. has that much more opportunity to stay in touch with its members and grow as a community, of gamers and friends.

8. As your guild grows, keep a decent ratio of officers to guild members. And try to space out your officers online times to fit the member online times. Having any given officer online at any given time a member is on can help tremendously with activity, and overall member morale.

9. Be organized. In everything that you do, be organized about it. Guild events that go poorly because of bad organization is one of the quickest ways to loose members, espeically in Guild Wars, because guild hopping is so easy. Even if it wasn't the best experience, if it was well organized people have hope for the next time.

10. Be humble. Welcome advice, suggestions, comments, from members, and be willing to use them. Your members are there for you just as much as you are there for your members. Most people like to give input to thier guild if they care about it. So be open to suggestions and ask for them often.

11. Settle disputes quickly. Disputes, fights, etc., amongst guild members must be dealt with swiftly in order to create harmony within the guild. There's nothing worse than a long drawn out fight amongst guild members to cause splits and lost members, even those not involved.

12. Finally, set a good example. How you play the game, the things you say, the things you do, will set the tone for the guild on the whole. So, if you're a jerk, often times the guild will become a group of jerks and those that don't generally leave. If you're a considerate nice person, the guild will become a group of considerate nice people, and those that are jerks will either leave or get booted quickly.

I hope this helps those of you out there that are looking to build a guild. Please feel free to add anything to this list. I know there are many guild leaders/officers out there with lots of experience who could probably add things to this.

Take care and good luck.

(added)
13. This tip deals with officers. As I said previously officers are vital to the success of a guild. The most effective way I have found to pick officers, and the method I use in my guild now, is to pick them based on personal skills that they show. We currently have a 3 types of officers, not including our second in command of the guild. Recruitment officers, inner guild relations officers, and leadership officers. Each officer has shown a special talent in one of these three fields and has been assigned to it accordingly. If you would like more detail on what each of these officer types mean, just check out my guilds website, it's in my profile.

(bump)
For someone who posted looking for guild advice

Excellent post. Having been a Guild Leader for several years, it is a hard and often thankless job. The Guild Leader often sacrifices their enjoyment of the game to make sure other's gaming experiences are enhanced. Between organizing events, recruiting, and putting out fires their is little time for personal character building. I have been lucky to have some very good Inner Council members to help me out, but I also remember the times when they were in short supply.

When looking for officers make sure that they are committed to your vision of the guild. Never have disagreements between the Inner Council and yourself out in the public. Disagreements are good for guilds provided they do not cause factions to form. Using a voice chat system is also critical. Not only is it important for PvP and PvE communication, it is also a place for members to hang out and get to know each other. A website/forums is also a good way for the guild to communicate. However there is a lot of time that goes into maintaining and monitoring along with some costs for web/server hosting. It gets frustrating when members do not use those important communication tools, and a lot of time is spent encourage members to use them.

I find that a lot of players in GW want to be the leader or an officer, but they lack the understanding of the sacrifice and skill that go into an effective leader. I think from my professional background, I have been able to do a decent job of balancing out my Inner Council, to include people who can be good organizers, good field commanders, and good recruiters. I do not excel in any of those areas but what works for me is I am the glue that holds the core together.

I must admit that GW's by far is the hardest game, I have seen for recruitment. Games with open PvP forces players to group together for survival, thus making small guilds or clans not viable. But in reality this game does require teamwork and players that play regularly and that's why so many in the small guilds are feeling the frustration of not having people on regularly.

I am confident in time that I will be able to get the GW chapter of KoA up and running like we have been able to do in every other MMORPG game we are involved in, but I must say this one by far is a challenge.

Indeed, this is good advice that I have applied to the "clans" that I've run in FPS games (I've run 3 previously and currently running one for Day of Defeat) - although I'm finding it hard to form one in Guild Wars. One of these reasons can be attributed to popularity and the location of the server. With FPSes, servers tend to be localised making it easier to find people online that are of similar ping to you and on at the same time. Not so easy when you're an Australian playing on a US server so already there's a bias towards guilds that are situated in the US, Europe and Korea. However, having said that, there are some large Australian guilds so it *is* possible - just harder in Guild Wars.

Anyway, even though it discourages me sometimes that I'm unable to get members, I do realise that I've already advertised for the sort of members I want and that they are indeed rare - so the influx of potential recruits is going to be low .

So what am I trying to say? Hmmm I dunno, I guess I'm just rambling but in general, this advice is good and perhaps deserves to be stickied! However, note that if you put your standards too high, don't expect to be getting any members anytime soon .

Great advice, The one thing you dint cover is the bad seed. This the saddest part of being a Guild leader. When the time comes that you have to say goodbye to a teamate. I have already had to do this inthis game. It is the hardest part about being a guild leader.

Now the officer to member ratio, I currently use the 5 to 1 rule ( every five members I have one officer). I have a High Council chairman who helps me oversee the guild. Do you think this is a good start point?

I also believe that each guild should have a posted coc for the guild and officers as it makes each member accountable for their actions.

Let our actions speak louder than our words.

Sir Hawke, dealing with a "bad seed" is difficult, but sometimes for the good of the guild you have to cut ties with players who are not "rowing in the same direction" so to speak. The founder and community leader of KoA, taught me that a guild leader has to make tough decisions sometimes that might cause some mebers to leave, but to be a leader that changes with the wind can also cause more problems.

As far as ratio, it's always good to make sure your not adding officers too quickly. I never paid attention to numbers as much as I paid attention to responsibilities. Some players are great recruiters, they know what to say to attract members, some players are good field commanders that can call targets and keep the group working together, and then there are great organizers who have a way with spreading the word out about guild events and activities.

The "Golden Years" of KoA in UO was a perfect example. Our PvPers werwe a well oiled machine on the field of battle and our organizers planned some awesome shard wide events that players from many many guilds participated. From scavenger hunts to PvP tournies. And our recruiters were so good that we had more applicants then ever to sort through. My best advice is make officers people whom you really trust and who have a knack at something. This way the guild leader does not have to be so overwhelmed.

I added a section to my tips that I feel is very important that I forgot to cover, its about officers....

The points that I would like to add are:

Sometimes you have to be a jerk to maintain the direction of the guild. If you have clear goals and certain expectations/requirements, you have to hold EVERYONE accountable to them, even yourself. I know sometimes a real life friend will want a little easier treatment, or not be expected to meet at required times, and just be able to slide by. You have to be ready to lay the smack down and tell everyone how it is. Listen to your members, but don't start slacking from your own goals that you had set when you started up.

DELEGATE! Find out what your weaknesses are and be honest about them. Look for someone else that can fill those roles. For example, I can fill the roles needed for PvP, but usually as a monk, I'm focused on healing people, so calling targets is not my best attribute. I have certain people run the PvP matches. I can't always be actively recruiting because I work some weird hours. Officers are always on the ball. I make the most of my time, updating the website, maintaining our TS servers, keeping tabs on the database for all of the recruits, and running with newer recruits. I try to take on all the roles that nobody wants.

This is what works for me, but don't forget, as guild leader, don't be afraid to lead. Too many leaders get intimidated too easily. Do what you feel is right.

Great POST!

Exactly, guild leaders need to make some unpopular decisions soemtimes, but if you are organized and have a guild charter or vision statement, (which I highly recommend for guilds) then it is important that the leader and officers do everything to keep the guild moving in that direction. Otherwise your members will not have faith in you or your officers.

Kicking people is hard (especially if they're not doing anything wrong, just generally disliked)

I also host a "Help Night" in my guild every wednesday where myself and my 8 officers help the other 30-something guild members get s the skills and do the quests that we normally wouldn't help them with. Goes over GREAT.

The best help thread I've seen here, hands down. Not much to say, as it's already all been said Good work guys, this should be stickied IMO.

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In terms of guild mergers; always be on the lookout for them. The merge process starts with a simple conversation, and leads to a powerful meld of groups. When you finally achieve good relations with a group, and have scouted the possiblilty for a merge - get to the point. Let it be known that the idea is out there, and persue that route often. You'll need to overcome the initial feeling on independence, this can be done through the assurence nothing will chage in a negative way. If at first you don't have success, keep trying - it usually takes a few different approtches to hit home. Be humble, intelligent, sharp, and show good leadership.

As a general rule, the smaller guilds are always inbound to the larger guild. It's usually a given that the ex-leaders are officers, out of respect - but also out of experience. Ex-leaders have the key experience of running their own guild, they know how much work is invovled. This is a key factor, and very important.

Good luck with your guilds! Happy hunting,

-Ascension

Hmm, that would be nice if it could be stickied. I really want this to be shared with anyone new that comes as well, and as it stands, the only way to do that is to post here every now and then to keep it up.

Hmmm, i'd say i can do all of those except be the most active once school hits=(
However, how i plan to cover that certain weakness of mine by having very active officers to be there when i can't. Do you guys think that would work out?

Yes it should most definately work. I would reccomend to all guild leaders to create thier guild in such a way that if they left the guild, it would run completely normal without him/her.

Yup, can't make the guild solely dependent on me.
However, recently, i've been reading posts about how the leader is the only that can do the GvG matches?
If that's so, we can probably only have GvG matches 2 or 3 times a week... I think some people are looking for almost daily GvG??
Hehe, just have to find those good officers before school hits ^^

*Edit* Also, i pasted your two posts about being a good leader and member in our forums... I gave you the credit for writing it (you can see how i did it at http://s12.invisionfree.com/Tyrian_Vanguard/ because i'm not exactly sure how i did it either), but if you don't your writing in my forum, please tell me so i can delete the posts.

How about some tips are getting members into the guild? There are numerous guilds out there that are looking for that one type of person for their guild. Spamming nonsense in the chat window about how such and such guild is now recruiting... we have a guild hall, capes... can't remember who said it in the forums but you're not a good guild if you advertise.

What kind of scanning progress did you go through when starting. I originally started my guild with the impression that several of my friends were going to be buying the game shortly after and we would form a guild. But now, they haven't and I already got a guild hall and feel like I've done too much to just abandon it all.

Often I meet people in game and they seem like great people, but I would feel wrong about asking them to leave their guild to join mine when I have no members. At the same time I don't feel like waiting for people to say "Is your guild recruiting at the moment" since I had it only happen once (and that person is now on my ignore list... don't ask how that happened).

All and all... when I get some members those tips will be bookmarked for daily reference.

Hmm, i do the advertising thing, i just say we're looking for members and people are welcome to apply. However, i do have a screening process, so i filter our the bad people =)
What's wrong with a guild that recruits in like an outpost? =(

My guild was basically built off of spamming tombs channels. Anymore that isn't the mainstay of how we get members. But that's how we started. When you spam, be as specific as you can, and always end with, whisper for details or something like that. This is what I always spam.

The Last Horadrim(TLH) is now recruiting. Looking for active players interested in GvG, HoH, and 4v4. PST for details

What that does, is get people who are going to fit our basic setup to respond. People who are intersted in pvp. Also, it forces people to work a little to find out what the guild has set up already. That helps right there to keep people who are lazy out of your guild.

The next and most important thing to do is talk to them for a bit. Ask them questions, have them ask you questions, keep a conversation going for about 5 minuets if you can. That will usually let you know if you even want this person in your guild due to maturity, and character. If you're building a guild free of cursing, you can usually figure out whether someone is going to fit in after 5 mins. If you're trying to build a guild free of those who are condescending or sarcastic, you can usually pick out whether that person is going to be that way or not.

Make sure they can meet the requirements of your guild. If you're a pvp guild, make sure they pvp regularly. If you're a pve guild, make sure they can play at high end areas or are close to it. If you're relaxed guild, make sure that person isn't high strung about doing x amount of runs a day or something like that.

To recruit this way you really have to be a good judge of character, and have the ability to turn people away, and also be willing to kick people out quickly who turn out not to be what they first seemed at times.

That's really the best advice I can give you when it comes to that. And as far as time, we're talking a good 3 hours of recruiting a day. I'm kindof tired, so I hope this made sense. Take it easy.

(Note: It's fine that it's in your forums)

Alrighty, thanks!

bump (just to re-share)