Guild Building?

you could be evil and make it sound like a really good "membership" thing, and make them pay.

Mainly, you will know when people want to join your guild, and they will stay.

As a guild leader, I like the 100g fee. There are literally thousands of guilds out there. Far more than there needs to be. That fee serves two purposes. It minimizes invite spamming and it creates a barrier for people who probably have no business starting a guild (yet). That said, if you really, really want to make a guild, you're going to want to do whatever you can to ensure its success. First, try to find something unique or special you can offer as a guild. You're going to need something to set you apart from the rest. Other than that, you need to be dedicated, knowledgeable, skilled, and have enough gold for the necessities (invites, cape, and a hall). If you don't have all of that, it's still not impossible for you to be successful, but you'll have the odds against you and your dedication will have to outweigh everything else. It's a lot of work to get a guild going and the more you have going for you, the better. Good luck...

I'm sorry to say it, but if 100 gold is really a cripple on your play style I don't think you should be in the position of leading a guild. I'm pretty sure even PvP focussed guilds have gold reserves in case of some awkward situation.

If you're making a suggestion against the fact, I would post it in the Sardelac Sanitarium.

I agree with the sending of the invitiation which is subsequently declined, I think you should only have to pay if the player actually joins.

I also think that members must pay 100g to LEAVE!..

so many times I have been convinced to invite someone, for them to leave 20 minutes later!.. c'mon ARENANET, this isnt fair... the member hasnt given the guild a chance at all and is obviously being a nuisance.. paying 100 gold to leave would discourage this, at least make people think twice about doing it on purpose!!

also,

this will stop spy's.. yes people will infiltrate your guild to check you out discover your builds, ask for money items, or they will even get friendly with other members in order to try and convince them to join another guild!... or even another game!!

this has happened to our guild so many times, I often log on but set my status to away, I've caught several members doing this!

As for building up members who will stay, well.. again it depends on what type of guild you are... do you pvp?.. or just pve.. if pve do you take interest in where they are, what help they need? have you got set days for doing certain things?.. if your pvp.. how often do you play, is there a set time?..

The only other thing I would say is be VERY carefull with the questions you ask someone before you invite them... people expect a few questions before an invite, how old are they, how often do they play guildwars, where they are from, the answers to these questions will give YOU an idea if you really want them, or even if they would be suitable for the guild.

I've learnt the hardway, invited LOADS of members just to get more members! half of them are just junk. you need quality members.

Now I only recruit UK members, we get on better with these people as most of the guild are from UK, no communication problems, and they are most likley to be online when you are, and not at odd times.. I now only recruit people who PvP.

These restriction really DO limit the choice of people for me to invite, and maybe my guild has shrunk from 50odd to 30odd, however, we regularly have quality members on every evening.. they come on teamspeak too which helps the bonding.

you must talk to the members you invite, entertain them, get to know them.. its EASY to leave a guild of strangers but its very hard to leave a guild full of friends!

I do the majority of recruiting for my guild. We get a couple new applicants a day and I talk to each of them before I decide to invite them. Although we have a pretty liberal acceptance policy, I try to make sure that we are a good fit with what people want. In addition, since we have several different divisions now (three that do GvG, one that focuses on Tombs, and a new one that is for PvE folks) I try to figure out which one people want to go into. Needless to say I have spent tens of thousands of gold pieces inviting folks to our guild, as well as on guest invites between the divisions.

What I find though is that for people that are a good fit with us, once they get in and see how large and active we are - they are hooked and tell all their friends. For people that are not a good fit, well after a few days they probably leave for some place that is better for them. Sometimes people have certain expectations that are maybe unrealistic even for a big active guild like ours. For example, our guild is comprised mostly of working adults in North America. Consequently we don' have a lot of folks on during normal U.S. work hours. If that is when you play, well you won't have a lot of company. Also until recently our focus was almost purely on PvP, and specifically GvG. If you wanted to do Tombs all the time, you would have been unhappy (though now we have a tombs division of 40+ people that are all on in any given 24 hour period). So it doesn't bother me if people leave, as long as they were informed as to what we are about and it at least seemed like a good fit at first.

Vent and TS keeps a guild fun.