Guild Wars 2

Hello GW2 community! A little over a month ago, myself and two friends started a guild known as the Neat Conglomerate. Diving into the game barely knowing anything about it, I knew before I even started I wanted to lead my own guild. I was wondering if anyone had any advice of things I need to know, things I should probably know, or any sort of advice at all on running a guild. I’m not interested in joining another guild (I played in Eve Online corporations for years, and I want to do my own thing now), so if you’re advice is “you can’t, you suck, join an already established guild” your advice will be discarded into my “stupid comments” box. Thanks in advance for any advice ya’ll can give me!

Good going and welcome to GW2!

I started a small guild a few months ago and now we are at 80 strong best advice i can give is don’t be too kitten your guildies, have fun and don’t make it a 2nd job.

I know it can be hard at the start to build up the guild along with the upgrades when you are a smaller guild but stick with it you won’t regret it. Also if you need any help setting up Guild missions or have any questions please feel free to mail me in game.

Good Luck!!

Yeah I haven’t actually been able to look into guild missions much because we don’t have that many members, and since I only know 2 of them in RL it’s hard to find a time when most of us are online.

I’ve been in small guilds that drifted apart, I’ve been in large guilds that imploded. I’m sure many others have as well. So this is my perspective on guilds.

There is a guild structure with ranks and privileges to edit. Have a long think about how to use that. If you have a few friends in the guild you can go right ahead at the outset to make them officers. However, as you go along make sure you bring in other players into the officers’ rank otherwise you’ll end up with an officer’s clique that can breed resentment.

Reward ppl when they do stuff for the guild, whether it be a random gift a promotion. For example, I rented a TS for my guild. My guild leader made me an officer even though I had only been with the guild a week at that point. I’ve now been with the guild over 15 months. Don’t let new members languish in the lowest rank for the too long. Set some sort of mental requirement for promotion and stick to it. Some guilds have time based promotion, others rate it by attendance at events.

As soon as you are able to start running guild missions like bounty training or rush. These really bind a guild together because you all have to cooperate to get through, particularly bounties. If you can establish a time when the majority of your guildies are on set that as your regular time for events. Bounty training isn’t limited like full bounties are so you can do them a few times a week if you want. For the small cost in influence, you bring in more influence. Don’t be too eager to do too much at the outset.

IMO, you should run dungeons or do events with prospective guildies to kitten whether they suit your guild. Randomly inviting people is very hit and miss.

Don’t discriminate against newbies, we were all newbies once and as veterans we should be patient with newbies without giving them a hard time. Another officer and I ran 2 newbies through fractals and it was very frustrating to see them die so much, but I kept in mind that I was no better when I started out and didn’t berate them. We eventually got through it and they’re now eager to hit more fractals.

Never ignore a guildie’s request for help. We all want to be doing our own thing but nothing drives guilds apart the faster than members realising that other members don’t care about them. If someone posts a question or asks for help in guild chat, take the time to see what you can do to help. This is particularly important for the higher ranks.

Presence is incredibly important. It’s reassuring to guildies when they see officers and their leader around. If you can’t be around, you can always leave a quick message on the guild msg board. If a guild looks leaderless for too long, members will think it’s dead and move on. During my guild’s lowest ebb, I was the only officer on until I promoted a couple others. Recruitment was zero and we were lucky to see more than 5 members on at any one time. But thanks to the release of SW and DT, and also HoT coming up, the other officers have returned and our leader is regularly on. So at prime times we can usually muster about 10-15 members and we’ve seen new blood coming in to revitalise the guild.

Make use of the guild announcement window. Once guildies get the hang of checking it out, it’s a useful communication tool for events and stuff.

I recommend starting by thinking about what you want from a guild.

The answer can be (almost) anything: from wanting to be sure that no matter when you log on you’ll find an entertaining conversation going in guild chat, to wanting a small elite group of dungeon experts to perfect speed runs with, or a really good role-play group, or simply people you know well (online or off) and get along with. The important thing is to know what you want from your guild.

Then find people who share that vision and recruit them.

It will be hard early on, especially if what you want relies on a lot of people and you have to persuade people to join and stick around on the basis that the guild is going to become what they want it to be. You’ll need to put a lot of time and effort in to not just recruiting but making sure your existing members are on board and happy with being in the guild. To further complicate things you don’t want it to be simply a group of people who are there for you, encourage them to do things together without you so they get to know each other as well.

On a more practical note if finding time to all be online is a problem you might want to consider a Facebook group or website. There’s a lot of free web hosting services which include forums, calendars and other tools you can use to coordinate.

I don’t know how to set up my own website to be honest. It’d be neat, but I don’t really have the time personally to do that. Regardless thank you so much for the advice you guys! It’s really helpful. I’ll have to start getting some guild mechanics down, but besides that I’m stoked and ready to do this! Thanks again! If anyone else has anything to say please do as well!