Reading the guild management forums or sitting in trade for more than 3 seconds both give the same impression; people just love to make new guilds! Why is this? Why do people insist on forming guilds when there are so many around in the first place? And why, above all, are they so bad at it?
Your new guild will in all likelihood be disbanded by this time next month. Don’t you have any shame?
Guild Success Guidelines
Have an actual good reason to form in the first place
“We’re a raiding guild, but we’re also a close-knit team!”
It’s been done a million times, get over yourself and go join one that’s already out there.
“My last guild wouldn’t give me any loot when I was a trial member, my guild will be much fairer”
You had to wait a week or so for purplz and left? Well, I already want you to be in charge.
“What makes us different? We have the experience”
Oh well, you’re obviously way more skilled than anyone else on the server because you transferred to Tarren Mill for a week and stood next to someone from Ensidia in the AH.
“We’re open to people with lives and families, and won’t enforce raid attendance”
See close-knit team.
“I’ll show you, in 2 weeks we’ll clear all of the available content and then you’ll be sorry”
Good for you. Once you have a couple of wipes on a single boss and all your new members /ragequit, we’ll talk.
Grow slowly
Note this one doesn’t apply if you actually want a guild where nobody knows whotf that hunter who just logged in is, and guild chat is generally either about the next raid, or silence, or spam.
A new member should be integrated into the team, and that means not taking on too many at once and freaking out your existing members. If you are going to take on a load all at once, make sure your members know about it in advance and are ok with it.
Get a goddamn website
Once upon a time in a land far, far away (Al’Akir) I was minding my own business in Durotar when I spied a guild recruitment macro in general chat. I asked for the website (guild websites are my pr0n), and was told the following: “We’re a raiding guild, why would we need a website?”. Hmm, let’s see…
- To allow members to participate in the community while afk
- To organise big guild events without everyone having to be online at the same time
- To display your guild rules and leave nobody with the excuse that they didn’t see them
- To keep people up to speed with changes to those guild rules
- To help your members get to know each other, particularly important for new guilds/members
- To track DKP/EPGP/whatever
- To provide information on the guild and an application form for potential joiners
- Etc
I replied with that list of very good reasons to have a site, earning me applause from the other lowbies around and a “stfu” from the recruiter. I’m sure that guild will still be going strong now….or not.
Quit spamming trade
That’s what /guildrecruitment is for, and let’s face it we all know the sort of people who hang out in /trade *pointed look at Tethane*. In fact, your new shiny website that you definitely have because you’re not an idiot will be bringing in a trickle of applicants anyway, so you shouldn’t need to spam anywhere too much.
Disclaimer
There are exceptions to every rule, I realise this. I also know that every guild needs to start somewhere, and I have no problem when people are genuinely trying to make it work. My problem is with the endless multitude of interchangeable guild “leaders” who have no clue what they want, except to be in charge. Bob was one of these guild leaders, his guild went away after he spent thousands of his own gold on bank tabs. Don’t be like Bob.
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Totally agree with this, all these new guilds make is really hard for the established ones to recruit, I don’t spam trade! Except for blog adverts and thats a good thing isn’t it! That aside we have recently decided that we will start to advertise on trade just because the footfall of the forums seems painfully low, although I haven’t actually done it yet.
Partially corect.
I respect leveling guilds – and usually they’re the ones spamming trade. They provide some little amount of help and insight to people who just came to the game and know nothing about it. Was one of them some 2years and something ago and i know the feeling.
“Raiding” guilds advertising on /1 or /2 it’s a completely different story. Tbh i don’t know of many who lasted more than a few months. You could still consider them the equivalent of the leveling guilds for entry level raiders. Everybody gotta start somewhere :3
I also respect levelling guilds, and tried my best to keep Fighting Mongooses as one for the longest time possible. That said, we still didn’t spam.
If your guild aims to help newbies, get yourself to the newcomers forum. Hang around in Westfall and talk to people asking questions in general chat.
Advertising in trade is basically laziness.
True. But if you’ll look around you’ll see that all advertising is in the end what we call “spam”. It’s about finding the way that requires the minimum effort and supplies the maximum benefits.
Why pick another, harder way? :3
(u gotta remember i come from the horde side, we only get like 2 spams every half hour in a quiet day) I susspect the Alliance trade is like a teleshoping channel :p
Indeed it is
For the love of God can somebody explain to me whether a tabard or guild bank is the deciding factor when looking for a guild? All the new guilds I have seen that have advertised in /2 always and I mean always end with, “We have a tabard and a guild bank tab” I have ranted about this on occasion in g/chat just my pet peeve recently.
The one month grace period before everyone throws there towel seems accurate. Before I went away on holiday there were quite a few of these new “raiding guilds” on Horde and now they nowhere to be seen and all sorts of new on trade.
Whether you should include it in your recruitment spam depends entirely on how stylish the tabard in question is, I reckon.
LOL the thing is they dont even Link the Tabard! At least advertise the unique product properly!
in advertising there is something called the “unique product benefit” (like: “our toothpaste is coming in 3 colors”)
For a WoW newbie a tabbard and 2 bank slots is better than none. I remember we raised money to buy a tabbard in my first guild (the excitment!). I used that tabbard more than i wear one now. People have different objectives during ther real or virtual life. When i was little i desired a toy, now i desire more time. In 30 years i’ll desire a good back. XD
* Unique Selling Point
aye, that was the bugger :3 Anyway, was not entirely wrong, best USP is to advertise the unique product benefit…
and it should be Unique Selling Proposition … ha!
I have also noticed alot of new guilds starting up recently but the slow growth advice is good, and key if you want to form a stable guild.
I have always wanted to set up a guild called the Thundercats but thats was for fun, and I would only allow 10people in with appropriately named characters, that flopped cause someone has already taken Lion-O even though its been at level 4 for the last 3yrs grrrrrr .
Also Fighting Mongoose squashed squirrel tabard is awesome!
Quit spamming trade
That’s what /guildrecruitment is for, and let’s face it we all know the sort of people who hang out in /trade
what about the people that hangout in /trade?!
/trade is cool you know ^^ and spamming there is even cooler
ps. spamming forums is my new part-time hobby since I have no access to wow on my work, enjoy!
It seems to me that the plethora of new guilds has 2 origins. Established players ho are creating a guild for fun – like creating a bank exlcusively for your bank alt (or maybe your banker alt plus a few friends) or creating a guild to get what you want.
The former is good fun and pssibly even a positive thing.
The latter explains, in itself, why most are doomed to failure. Objective of a guild is to bring people together for a common good, not to give the people who create the guild what they want. Sure, the guild leadership will benefit but not without sacrifice.
It takes about 1 month for the members to realise they aren’t getting what they expected and the leadership to realise that it’s not as easy as just signing up a few dozen random characters.
Disclaimer: Yes, there are always exceptions – all the ‘established’ guilds once consisted of no more than a few names with an idea.
Hmmm… Maybe that’s just saying everything Shell said! Perhaps I should shorten this to “I agree”.
Heh Vossie, how the heck have u found this blog XD
Hard not to given the amount of links to it on our forum
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Fighting Mongooses, Emerald Dreamers. Emerald Dreamers said: The Soapbox: More New Guilds http://is.gd/6EOHD [...]
He got here before the links were posted on our forums
I indeed got it off our TF forum, 1st post about it was made by Nec and I clicked it.
So any of my spam here is Nec’s fault.
But ofc Im so pro I time-warped myself a few days back when I saw the post so I could be the first here!
okay nvm
yay my avatar is working
I think it looks pretty okayish
IRevilBelf! mwuahha :>