Guild Wars 2

Plain and simple, I have no idea how to make a promising guild.

I’m the only member right now because nobody wants to join when I advertise in chat.
I need some serious pointers because I can’t get a single person to join even though there’s like TONS of people in the zone reading it. I’ve even whispered people.

Simple question:
Why should they join your guild? What do you have, that other players couldn’t get in other guilds? What is your “selling point”?

How do I get to that point if nobody is interested in joining in the first place? I can only fit so much in the advertisement. Here’s what I have so far:

<Fates Legion> is recruiting exceptional players to join it’s ranks. We are a new guild looking to expand in all aspects of the game. Loyalty and honor is within our name. PST if you’re interested

… even then, nobody is interested.

The first thing you mention is wanting exceptional players. So you aim for the top 1%. How realistic is it to find top players, who don’t have a guild they call home already? New players (the ones who are most likely to seek a new guild) are cut off, since they need to learn the game first.

You want to do all aspects, so you don’t have a niche guild for special occasions (e.g. I want to do sPvP, but I cannot find five players in my main guild, so I switch over to the PVP guild and ask there).

You have a new guild, so the buffs bought via the influence system aren’t currently there.

Why don’t you join another guild, instead of making your own one?

Why not join an existing guild yourself?

You have no defined purpose in having a guild. “Expand in all aspects of the game” – what does that mean? I get the impression that you’re a new player who just wanted to try out the guild feature and hopefully find someone to assist you in the game.

What is a guild? A guild could be made for chat between real life friends. It could be made for regular WvW raids, sPvP tournaments or Dungeon running for example.

Well first off, stop spamming people as soon as you meet them. If people just get a random invite from someone they’re probably just going to ignore it. I know I do.

People are also extremely unlikely to join a guild with very low membership. That’s just how it is. Guilds are places where people go to do content with the same people (gameplay wise), and if a guild as a low membership, then it’s really a waste of time. Most of the big guilds started in other games and just brought 100+ people with them when the game started which gives them a huge joining incentive. Someone will always be there to play with.

Starting a guild from scratch is a real pain because it takes so long to do. You’re not going to get it done in a week. But there are some ways to do it.

1. Start outside the game: Tell your friends about GW2 and get them to join. Your friends already enjoy doing things with you, so why not enjoy a video game together. This also allows you to set up a system of guild standards right away ie how guild members should approach the game and interact with each other. Most groups of friends already have an unspoken system of standards when they interact with each other. This is just putting it down on paper. Remember, guilds that aren’t social won’t have high retention rates.

2. Friends list: Play the game with random people. If you both enjoyed the experience, add each other to your friends lists and, this part is key, STAY IN CONTACT WITH THEM!!!!!! Also, try to remember little things they let slip in chat like where they work, birth dates, marital status, personal likes……People are more prone to spend time with people that remember little things about them. Make a spreadsheet if you have to(yeah it’s creepy, but it helps) Once you have a large enough friends list, see how many would be interested in joining a guild. They already enjoy playing with you, why not make it a permanent thing.

3. PHP forums: Spend time on the players helping players forums. Posting helpful tips to new players is a good way to get noticed by them. Some guilds are against this kind of recruitment(noobs suck!!!!) but having a group of people that aren’t very experienced but teachable makes for a better experience. It just takes a little more input from officers.

4. sPvP: This one’s a little bit hard but have people in your guild do sPvP. Decent rankings attract people to a guild. Just be warned that a lot of people who join because of this may suffer from excessive PvP rage and may not work in your guild structure.

5. Flair: Simply put, have a forum page for your guild and vent. These do cost money, so you may want to wait till you have enough members to justify the investment.

Just remember that you’re not going to have instant successes in creating a guild from scratch. It will take time and effort.

Okay, I can change it up.

I don’t want to join a guild because this is the only MMORPG in which I think that I might actually be able to create a guild without it being shunned by a million others (EX: WoW or other long-term released MMO’s).

Like many have said, I personally would advertising guild recruitment is one of the worse things to do. It not only angers others generally as it prevents from questions asked in map chat that could be answered and generally the map chat can be used for something more productive other seeing the guild advertisement.

Just get out there first!
To even attempt to create a guild you need people, what better may is to start off with a friendship. After that go help them on quests, or just chat and KEEP that connection!

Only then can you consider starting to think about properly forming your guild.
Like many have also stated the BIG guilds are due to other fan bases which come from all sort of backgrounds, _they have already established themselves and already have a following so recruitment is not a problem for these sorts.

However sorry to put it bluntly, you are not one of them (if I am not mistaken)
You and me, we first have to make some friends, some people that share similar ideals. Create a close knit group and then you can start to form a guild.

Note:
1. Make an effort to talk to people on a 1 to 1 basis
2. Keep a connection and do not ignore your new friends
3. Ask for their opinions on forming a guild, they have to be WILLING to join such a group
4. Only then can you suggest recruitment into your guild
5. Do NOT give up!

If you care to drop by my topic titled: Helping New Players/Helping Players With Dungeons you can find some people that maybe on the same server who would love for you to drop in and say hello

Electroflux,

I’m in a trio guild. We all know each other IRL and often will have dinner together about once every couple of weeks to catch up with other. All of our own guild efforts are due to the fact that the other two aren’t very socially out going and we’re all a bit permanently burnt out from large guild politics. As a trio guild, we’ve found that we’re able to level the guild’s Influence up at a decent through logging in multiple alts every day (and then consistently playing a character for that day).

We don’t advertise. While we have no objections to adding a stranger into our guild, we aren’t actively seeking out other players. Every once in a while, one of us gets a random PM from someone seeking a guild. When we respond that we’re a 3 player guild, the stranger instantly responds that they’re not interested. It doesn’t matter that we’ve got every crafting class covered or that we’re rather generous with our guildies when it comes to resources. People seeking out guilds want at least a player roster of 20+ members.

I frankly don’t agree with the large guild mentality. In my mind, it would be much better to be with 5 other players that I trust implicitly. When you get into too large of a group, there are just too many shady or unreliable people. However many people have the exact opposite of my view. These are the people that you’re trying to recruit.

What’s the moral of my story? Like others have said, you either need to form a small guild between people that you know / trust (which could potentially grow into a mega guild over time) or you need to join a mega guild. Keep in mind that you could always join a mega guild on your main and have your stable of alts listed as Representing your own private guild. This would let you level up your own guild slowly while still having access to a big guild.

I agree with glitch. Be helpfull, try to make newfriends by playing the game and be helpfull. In the last few months of GW1 I was in a solo guild (had taken a detour to lotro for a while) and I didn’t had the intention to build it. I made some guides bout gw1 and posted them on fan fora. Got some pm’s from people with additional info and in two months time I had a guild of 4 people instead of solo while I wasn’t even planning on making a real guild.

So bottom line: start finding friends instead of guildmembers. They might turn out to be friends and guildmembers in the future

+1 Win! Awarded to Wiser With Age

What Wiser With Age points out is extremely valid and I recommend that you really take this into consideration.

What type of guild do you want what sort of mentality do you want in your group?

If you want an uber mega guild with lots of people it will not happen over night. However tbh it seems most of the filler is from players who just want to say they are part of the 1337 guild #104 for boasting rights however from my experience the players are not very dedicated to actually helping the guild. The player base may be big but it isn’t what I would want my guild to turn into imo.

Like Wiser With Age I’d rather have trust, honesty and loyalty then members.

A lot of others have already offered some great advice that echoes what I can offer. I’m still going to toss my 2cp out there, though. I been a member of and founded many guilds in many games over the years.

History lesson: In the before time, back in the dark ages of online gaming, we didn’t have friend lists or voice chat or ny of these fancy-shmancy techno-whoosits that you kids today use. We didn’t even have official forums. We needed guilds to organize ourselves. We needed guilds because if you wanted to grind exp you needed a group, and a capable one at that.

Ever since then, guild organization has been a big selling point. It is on the decline, especially in GW2. We don’t need guilds the same way we used to. I can level to 80 solo and get full top-end gear without anybody else helping me. Aside from WvW, I only need 4 others to do anything I could imagine—this is a far cry from the 60+ that used to do Lady Vox.

So why do we need guilds anymore? Influence-purchased buffs and extended friends list management is about it.

With 5 members (4 active) in my primary guild, we earn enough influence to regularly purchase various effects. Our recruitment policy effectively says “Don’t” but I will drop a set of banners when we’re working together in an area, and invite others to tag them as well—with a little plug advertising that “these buffs were brought to you courtesy of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade (est 2005).”
These banners can be a recruitment tactic—it certainly differentiates us from guilds that are just looking for people, it immediately tells prospective members what we can do for them.
As we’ve started doing some WvW content, I’ve looked into adding a few of the Art of War buffs to our stockpile. I’ll do the same in WvW, claiming a tower and advertising the buffs and such. If I wanted to recruit people, this would be a great intoduction.

In the past, I’ve run large guilds. I started one of the largest guilds on a new server in an established game. We grew to over 500 members by the time the server was 36 hours old. It wasn’t a good thing. The guild folded by the end of week 2. Lessons learned (from that and others):

• To some people, a guild is just a place to hang out. These people are easy to please simply by having an active membership.
• To some people, a guild must provide them with stuff. This can be as simple as the buffs, but oftentimes becomes far more material. Not just scheduled events, but more prominent members are expected to give equipment to lower level members and so on. These people are impossible to please forever, and you will have a lot of turnover in your membership with these sorts. They are, however, the easiest to recruit—just promise them rwards or bribe them.
• The more people you have in a guild, the more likely petty squabbles will break out and the more likely you will have to play parent to your members. I’ve sat on tribunals (that was fun, actually), settled sibling rivalries, mediated debates, and even once negotiated the return of an abducted pet (seriously—some people are messed up). I don’t need the drama at this stage in my life, and you have to be there 24/7 to support your members, if that is what your guild offers them. If it doesn’t, be ready with the gkick key when things start getting bad, otherwise these things porgress like cancer.
• On a related ntoe… in one guild, I once got to help a member face down and accept the reality of a terminal cancer diagnosis. When you are a leader, people expect you to be one, and not necessarily in the ways you expect.
• Never merge guilds. You will destroy both in the process.
• Membership either means something, or it doesn’t. If the requirement to enter your guild is “whisper me” then when I want to go do something, all I can expect to get from the guild ranks is warm bodies. This can be fine, but if I’m looking for speed clears, or WvW, I’ll look elsewhere. Now, if your guild requires all members to complete a speed-clear, with some carefully staged “accidents” along the way to gauge their capability, I know that the members are up to the task and I will look to them when I want to do speed clears.

So in short, if you want a stable guild, and you want it to grow, start with friends, and add good people. Don’t worry if they are in other guilds and don’t represent yours—membership is step one. You will need to offer them something to get them to come over to hang out and represent yours—and bring some friends with them. Trying to force a guild to grow means you will give up control—people will bring expectations in with them and, if they are not met, leave with others in tow. Take it slow and make calculated steps towards your goal—you should have a goal.

Great post, Fildy! (I’d give you a +1 if the forums were offering them atm.) I love the banner idea, especially. Your sig is particularly amusing. Just curious: Were you involved with the Fluffy Bunnies of Siel in Aion?

I did play Aion, but I don’t think I set up a guild there (I only played for a month immediately after release).

Creating is only half the job too. Keeping one up and going on a daily basis takes a heap of effort.

We never advertise for players. We meet them in game, play together, chat and if we all like each other ask if they are interested in joining. Or I meet them here in the forums…and get a conversation going about what they want and what we have.

I think you are really asking for trouble taking in anyone that comes along. Speaking from past experience. Running a guild can take the fun out of a game sometimes. Its just kitten amazing how adults can regress to childhood in the middle of a big guild argument.

If I could offer you a single piece of advice….Only have 1 Guild Leader (yourself)

I love that in GW2 you can be in multiple guilds for the simple reason that my friends and family can be both in our social guild and then can join another that does whatever activity they want to do.

Before we made our guild in gw2 it was agreed that it would be a social, no stress, no pressure, friends, friends of friends, and family guild. I was an officer in a very popular guild in gw1 and believe me it can become a no fun second job with no pay nightmare.

I agree with what was said here, its good advice. Fildydarie was right on target.

I would never join a guild from an advertisement in Map chat, from a random whisper, or from a random invite. If I were looking for a guild, I would most likely be interested in one based on questing with someone. If they seemed the sort of person that I would like to be in a guild with, I would ask about the focus of their guild, the types of people in it, and if they were recruiting.

If you are serious about leading a guild, I suggest you decide on the focus or type of guild it will be and what type of people you want in your guild. Then you need to go and help people with the type of content you want to recruit people to do.
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Hi Raf! (Are you the same Raf from EQ2?)

Hey Katz,

Yep, its me. Guessing you’re the same Katz too

How are you liking the game?

Raf.1078:

Hey Katz,

Yep, its me. Guessing you’re the same Katz too

How are you liking the game?

Loving it. Afraid I haven’t logged into EQ2 since I started playing GW2. It’s good to see a familiar name here.

Me neither, Katz. I bought this game with every intention of playing both and I have no desire whatsoever to sign back on to the old one.

Sorry Op…not trying to steal your thread. Just ran into someone…back to guild mgmt talk, lol.