Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing since BWE2, and on release I picked Tarnished Coast as my home server, where I’ve been residing ever since. I’ve run a couple of small guilds in the past, but they were never particularly successful, nor did they have much endurance. I wanted to give it another shot in GW2. I’m an RPer, so making an RP guild was a natural choice. We have been successful for six months, but over the course of the last month we went from a very healthy active population to an almost completely inactive population, presumably due to me being much less active due to school.

What follows is some background, skip to the end for the TL;DR and my primary question.

It had a basic historical background, but as a rule I dislike setting up story arcs for guilds ahead of time – I prefer dynamic growth rather than sticking to a fixed path. One thing that I did differently which was very important in setting the tone of the guild was how I handled officers.

In short, there were none. Instead, out of character we were a totally flat organization with task-oriented delegates who handled the various jobs that would ordinarily be for an officer. In other words, we didn’t have a recruitment/administration officer, but we did have someone who enjoyed doing that sort of thing who would do it just because. They were a delegate for that role, and I had other roles as well, such as events coordinators and whatnot.

I think this helped give everyone a sense of camaraderie that is sometimes lacking in guilds with rigid structures. Everyone was on the same level and there was no bickering or drama.

Unfortunately, no matter how many people I recruited, the story was the same: I was only ever able to find two people who were at all willing to actually help out with running the guild. This was baffling to me, because part of our recruitment process was that you had to actually engage with us in a guild event in order to actually join the guild. That meant that you were willing to participate and were at least somewhat invested in the guild.

We’ve had an average of 50 people in the guild at any one time from about October through today. I would periodically cull the people who were inactive for a period of months without warning. If you include those people, and the ones that left of their own accord or the half dozen or so I kicked because they weren’t working out, that means that I recruited something on the order of 80 people or so personally, with about another ten or so being friends brought into the guild by current guildmembers.

Compared to some of the many hundreds of people strong megaguilds out there, those are small numbers, but we didn’t mass recruit. Each of those people was personally contacted by me, or applied to the guild on hearing about us in game or through out of game channels, and then spoken to and vetted by me and the current guild members. They then participated in guild events in order to complete their application.

Because I wasn’t getting any help from the guild, I was forced to do the lion’s share of the work myself. Administration, organization, guild RP events, guild dungeon runs, guild WvW runs. With the exception of a few events which were hosted by guild members, I did everything. I’m in college though, and my workload this semester has been such that I haven’t been able to keep up with my usual two to three RP events a week plus dungeons and so on, and interest in the guild by its members has declined steadily as I’ve become more distant.

When I log in on Friday and Saturday night, instead of seeing ten to fifteen people online with only a couple not representing, I now see eight people tops with no one representing. Even our core members have moved on to other things.

TL;DR: So here’s my question: I’m reasonably certain that if I was able to get some more people to actually help and participate in the day to day running of the guild as well as running events and so on, I would not have this issue of inactivity and the guild evaporating before my eyes while I’m helpless to do anything because of real-life obligations. So how do I find these people? Is there a recruitment tactic I’m unaware of that would give me better odds of finding motivated people to help? Am I just going to have to put up with it and rebuild once summer starts and I’m free again?

Thanks for reading! Your comments and suggestions are all welcome.

This is something that small guilds have to deal with. It’s happened to me, too, where players simply have no initiative and want to be invited, personally, to everything that happens in the guild. Then when I, the guild leader, have to work 40 hour weeks and decide to do something else for a few hours a week instead of GW2, the guild crashes, no one represents except a select few, and it feels like a lot of wasted effort. Even guild benefits and perks don’t keep people representing all the time.

I think the big problem is that there are a lot of these small guilds, and only so many big guilds. The big guilds win by association; they’re seen everywhere, they mass recruit, and if people leave it’s no big deal. They require representation, and if you don’t you get kicked, but they have so many active members that it doesn’t matter. The thing with this mass recruitment strategy is that for every two-dozen worthless sods that join, you can sometimes get one really good member who is willing to put forth the effort. Repeat this process enough, and eventually you have a very strong guild with lots of people taking initiative, and lots of friendships being made.

I’ve learned from running a guild just like yours that being selective in the application process is totally ineffective unless you’re already a huge enough guild with a good enough player base that losing new incoming players doesn’t hinder you at all. When you’re this small, you need players who are willing to represent to improve the guild. Just getting a starting 50 is a good starting place. The best thing I can suggest, if possible, is to merge with other guilds in similar positions on the same server and try to build up your base.

A lot of this to me indicates a failing in the GW2 guild structure. It gives you the freedom to be in many guilds, but only really care about one of those guilds you’re in at a given time. This means that you, the player, can care about a guild only when the guild cares about you, which puts people into the situation you’re currently in. There’s nothing we can do about the system, all we can do is try to make do with what we have. If only people like you and I could find other people like you and I, we’d all be happy! Unfortunately, people like you and I tend to all want to lead their own guilds, which leaves few of you and I left to join and support those guilds that are made. I’ve met tons of really awesome players who, unfortunately, lead their own guilds and would never join mine as a result. That’s the sort of problem you and I inevitably face, and well, them’s the breaks. We just have to make do.

Good luck.

Firstly, fifty people is a large guild. Secondly, running an RP guild is akin to running a guild and DMing a D&D campaign at the same time.

That’s a lot of workload for a game.

You might do better setting the bar a little lower for yourself, and being a little more selective with your recruiting. My guild commonly sees 6-8 people online on a good day, and “leadership” consists of only myself and a single “officer” and you know what? We’re perfectly happy with that. We all know each other well (mostly because we’ve been playing games together for years) everyone’s input is valuable, and things happen organically. We have fun. We get things accomplished.

Don’t obsess over numbers. When you open recruit, you find this a lot. Players will join easily just to test-drive the experience, but the larger your guild becomes, the less valued your members are. To compensate, operators of large guilds have to provide incentives. That’s not a slight at your leadership abilities, it’s simply the way MMOs work.

Are you more concerned with having a solid core of members to play and RP with, or posting huge membership numbers? Large numbers come with large administrative headaches. It’s a fact. It’s going to be a lot of work. Perhaps you should focus on leveraging your dedicated players and align your guild with a larger roleplaying community. RP guilds tend to be very good about cross-events because it helps to spice things up, and it gives them more people to RP with.

Inactivity is only an “issue” if it bothers you. Maybe in stead of seeing your remaining actives as a problem, you should see them as the few players that are worth being in a guild with, and embrace the naturally operable size of the guild.

His view of his situation isn’t the problem, the problem really is the situation he’s in.

It is important having players represent because it gives people others to talk to and interact with and play with. It’s not as simple as being okay with inactivity or what-have-you, because you need to present your players with an “active enough” user base so that they want to stay active themselves. This critical mass for a guild is important for the sustainability of the guild.

I completely understand your issue though I don’t run a RP guild I’ve been continuously trying to assign officers to share the work load but they always end up not really taking initiative, going inactive etc. I find it near impossible to find people with initiative and loyalty it’s very frustrating.

People just expect someone else to do all the work for them and if the person doing the majority of the work doesn’t pull their weight for a bit it’s instantly evident that people start leaving, going inactive etc. rather than stepping up and organising some things for themselves.

This apathy towards guilds and attitude people seem to have that they are disposable and they can just move on is discouraging. There’s nothing you can really do about it other than hope to be lucky to find someone who does have initiative and a similar view.

I’m in 2 guilds, one just for the site i run and another that my wife is in. My Guild is basically dead and not for lack of trying. My wife’s guild has close to 200 people in it, in which on any given day, the busiest they are is about 40 people online, of which maybe 20% actually talk to each other, let alone play together. It’s not really the fault of the game either, this is been true in every game that’s had guilds or clans, people move on, and play something else. This not to mention how gamers typically don’t tend to want to work, we do enough of that at actual work. It takes work to run a guild, even then it’s a gamble on the type and amount of people you get that stick around.

Rising Dusk.2408:

His view of his situation isn’t the problem, the problem really is the situation he’s in.

It is important having players represent because it gives people others to talk to and interact with and play with. It’s not as simple as being okay with inactivity or what-have-you, because you need to present your players with an “active enough” user base so that they want to stay active themselves. This critical mass for a guild is important for the sustainability of the guild.

I worked incredibly hard over winter break to try and bring up the number of active people so that I could hit that critical mass. Even before that, I always had a mind to try and hit that magic number so that the guild was self sustainable and I wouldn’t have to work so much at it. My reward has been seeing my activity check messages go from high 20’s and 30s for people logging in daily to the single digits. Alas.

I’d invite any of you to join my guild.

Where are people like you all in-game and why can’t I find more? Haha.

I wonder one thing: do you decide as a single person to make a guild and recruit people then or do you have a bunch of friends who want to be together? From my experience it worked out pretty well for us in another game. We were 6 people who wanted to have our own guild. So it war way more easy to find people to share the work because it was our project and not the idea of a single person who wanted to have a guild.

Sadly, I had two friends go into the game with me and they both quit in the first month or so because the game wasn’t for them. One of the first people I recruited was very dedicated to the guild and we were good friends, but he had to stop playing due to getting a new job. I agree that doing it with friends is the way to go, but that wasn’t an option for me.

That is really sad because like it is you kinda depend on luck to find people who share your idea and are willing to do their share. But for example our guild had peek months with many, many people and months with barely someone on. I would try to keep contact to your members and put not to much pressure on yourself that you have to have many active people.

Guilds, Clans whatever form they come in does indeed take work and I can imagine many people don’t want responsibilities of managing people when they’re trying to have a little escape. However, I do think part of the problem is that this game seems to have problems retaining players, yes we can come and go with no subs and that’s great but that takes its toll on a guild roster. Inactive rosters tend to be demoralizing, some will leave, others see this and follow.

Rising Dusk.2408:

His view of his situation isn’t the problem, the problem really is the situation he’s in.

It is important having players represent because it gives people others to talk to and interact with and play with. It’s not as simple as being okay with inactivity or what-have-you, because you need to present your players with an “active enough” user base so that they want to stay active themselves. This critical mass for a guild is important for the sustainability of the guild.

My point is that the “critical mass” is subjective in terms of player expectations. Originally, our guild lives in a PvP siege game called shadowbane where numbers were absolutely crucial to daily survival of the guild and it’s holdings. There was a symbiotic relationship between the game’s systems and recruitment drives. People had an apperant need to be in a guild, and developed attachments to it because it provided security and incentives. We recruited because we had to and held a membership of between 40-70 members. I can honestly say that running it, while fun, was tons of work. I can also say that among the people I still know or remember from that time, the majority are still playing with us, while the rank-and-file soldiers that were recruited for the symbiotic relationship of mutual security I can’t honestly remember. I am not ashamed of this because that’s simply how large guilds work.

In a game like GW2, where the incentives provided by the system itself aren’t something vital to the players, the only reason to remain active in a guild is the social aspect, or to a lesser extent effective large scale WvW. When you have a guild that reaches past a certain size, you’re walking in to the territory of serving a consumer base. In the case of GW2, you’re trying to keep those consumers because they provide influence or WvW numbers. However, in a 50+ member guild you’re not socializing with all of these members regularly. if you’re running a WvW guild, then people are joining specifically for security in numbers. If you’re running any other kind of guild, only a select few are joining in order to socialize. The rest are joining for what you can provide them. For the buffs, for the dungeon runs with competant teammates, for the hard numbers perks. Later, these players may develop relationships, but if you’re not holding a vast empire with expenses, supply lines, and jobs that need to be done to sustain, then you’re running a loosely associated group of cliques.

In GW2 you’re doing none of these things. At best you’re running a single WvW guild tasked with maintaining a single capture point 24/7.

My point is, specifically, why do you need such a large number of members if there’s so much administrative headache for so little payoff to either the members or the organization. What is it you need all these people for? “critical mass?” To sustain what? If your natural sustainable number is in fact eight people… then did you really want those other 42 people in your guild in the first place if you had to prod and coddle them? If so, why?

Yeah without the glue, people really don’t stick it out.

There’s a good real world example of groups of people most everyone can relate to. Say you join a group of what you might consider like minded and share common interests and that group is say 50 people, of those 50, how many would you think you’d actually spend time with outside the group or even inside the group events? Not many most likely. Critical mass for a good majority of people is pretty low, having a good group of 8 people you enjoy spending time with I would say is pretty close to average, even in real life situations. When it gets more anonymous, we tend to feel like it should be more, but in reality it rarely ever is.

It’s not officially supported, but consider creating an “alliance” with another RP guild. That way, there is another leader who can take up the slack if the other isn’t able to participate fully. Then it gives an outlet for those players missing their guild leader, to find something to keep them occupied for a while, without having to leave their home guild.

The fact is that a guild master in an RP MMO is pretty much synonymous with being a game master at the table top. Without you, there is no game. But maybe if you had a GM counterpart, you could keep your combined pool of players during those lean times.

PopeUrban.2578:

My point is, specifically, why do you need such a large number of members if there’s so much administrative headache for so little payoff to either the members or the organization. What is it you need all these people for? “critical mass?” To sustain what? If your natural sustainable number is in fact eight people… then did you really want those other 42 people in your guild in the first place if you had to prod and coddle them? If so, why?

Like I mentioned in my OP, we’re an RP guild. In theory, the main reason we’re together is so that we can RP. That’s where a lot of the fun and the glue comes from. We participate in other aspects of the game, naturally, I’m not one of those people that spends all day on a level 20 character hanging out in a tavern. Having a lot of people in the guild means more RP, and more vibrant RP because of the different perspectives. It also means that when we aren’t RPing, there’s more opportunities to do other things in-house.

As for the 50 members – because of the recruitment process I get to know everyone. And because we’re already highly social because of the nature of the guild, I get to know everyone by virtue of that as well. There’s only maybe a dozen people that I’m not too familiar with currently in the guild, and that’s because they’re inactive.

The net result: When there’s no RP to be had, people wander off to find some.

Same here. We don’t use an officer structure any longer. It just seperates people as we learned in previous games. We have one Guild Leader and rest of us are just members. And, since we’re all adults, that suits us just fine. We don’t actively recruit, we just run across the odd player here and there that seems to fit in…and oops..we found another member.

But, also…we don’t try and run scheduled events of any sort. Work schedules and RL just don’t allow for anyone being able to make commitments like that anymore. If groups gel on any given day/ evening..then cool. Otherwise, no biggie.

Perhaps the active event scheduling you were trying to do was making peeps feel pressured to attend things they didn’t have time for?

I don’t think so, because events were never mandatory. Nothing in the guild was, not even attendance or representation. We have the occasional meeting here and there that is strongly encouraged but no one has ever been pressured to my knowledge in any way.

All of the above advice is good, I’ll just throw out my experience.

I am/was in the same position, it started very small and there were a lot leaving etc. The only way I’ve managed to overcome it is by attrition, make bonds with your fellow players and soon enough the ones that stay are the ones you can always rely on. From their you can restructure it all but with the help of the good players that stuck by you. Then you can delegate and share the workload. I for one am always thankful for them helping me because they want to.

I too can’t be online regularly as I’m in college myself, it’s only carrying on because of the amazing help I’ve had. One that I remind them of overtime. Just do the best you can and it’ll mote likely than not improve with pure attrition.

foofad.5162:

PopeUrban.2578:

My point is, specifically, why do you need such a large number of members if there’s so much administrative headache for so little payoff to either the members or the organization. What is it you need all these people for? “critical mass?” To sustain what? If your natural sustainable number is in fact eight people… then did you really want those other 42 people in your guild in the first place if you had to prod and coddle them? If so, why?

Like I mentioned in my OP, we’re an RP guild. In theory, the main reason we’re together is so that we can RP. That’s where a lot of the fun and the glue comes from. We participate in other aspects of the game, naturally, I’m not one of those people that spends all day on a level 20 character hanging out in a tavern. Having a lot of people in the guild means more RP, and more vibrant RP because of the different perspectives. It also means that when we aren’t RPing, there’s more opportunities to do other things in-house.

As for the 50 members – because of the recruitment process I get to know everyone. And because we’re already highly social because of the nature of the guild, I get to know everyone by virtue of that as well. There’s only maybe a dozen people that I’m not too familiar with currently in the guild, and that’s because they’re inactive.

The net result: When there’s no RP to be had, people wander off to find some.

And that’s really the crux of your issue I think. RP requires substantial personal interaction, and it sounds like the situation you’re in has you responsible for things in real life that preclude that kind of a time investment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to “hang it up” but I’m asking, quite honestly, if RP is the focus of the guild and it falls apart when you personally can’t log in, how many of those players are actually using the structure of the RP guild to interact with one another on that level?

More to the point: If they can’t RP without direction, do you really want to have to kick them in the pants? TC has a pretty large RP community, and a lot of it doesn’t share a guild tag. In fact I see a lot of small RP guilds tooling around in the form of various companies, krewes, warbands, etc. Unless there’s some overall RP purpose for which your guild needs a massive membership, why not just scale it back, make some relationships with other RP guilds, and save yourself the headache?

You make a good point.

It’s not so much that they “can’t RP without direction,” though. Rather, I think it’s more like “there’s nothing going on over here, so I’m going to go someplace where there is something going on.” My issue is that I know how much fun these people have together during events and such that I host. They’d have just as much fun if they hosted things themselves, but they won’t do it. I’ve had people straight up tell me they’re afraid their events won’t be entertaining, or they’re afraid of people getting bored. Which is absurd, and I insist that it’s not the case, but they rarely agree and instead continue not doing anything.

Then they wander off. Alas.

What is the issue?

I run a two person guild.. Me and my daughter and we are 100% fine. Just two guildmates grouping is a ton of influence and gold is so simple to land, we can get drinks for the rest.

Plus there is lfg gw2 site for us to run dungeons on..

AND, gasp, we keep an active friends list and see what they are doing when there is grouping needs..

But specifically for the OP, you want to run a roleplaying guild and you are not around much.. Sorry man but you get what you put into it.. a guild like that needs interactions and if the guild leader is offline a ton, it won’t happen..

Lysico.4906:

But specifically for the OP, you want to run a roleplaying guild and you are not around much.. Sorry man but you get what you put into it.. a guild like that needs interactions and if the guild leader is offline a ton, it won’t happen..

>implying I haven’t already dedicated hundreds of hours to the guild

If they had the leadership and initiative abilities to organise an rp event, they would most likely be guild leaders themselves. There will always be different subset of people in a guild, you have the leader(s), the assistants and the followers. Cant expect assistants and followers in your guild to be leaders.

I’ve run a couple of small guilds in the past, but they were never particularly successful, nor did they have much endurance

Sorry OP but it is not GW2 that is the issue…

You got a track record of failure as a GM it appears. That is fine. Does not make you a bad player, gamer etc. So stop trying to be a GM and move on..

If you can’t accept that, then at least look in the mirror and try to improve. If time is your issue and you can’t get more of it , in game, then shelve the idea of GM’ing for now.

/shrug

Lysico.4906:

You got a track record of failure as a GM it appears. That is fine. Does not make you a bad player, gamer etc. So stop trying to be a GM and move on..

Yeah, when I was 14 playing vanilla WoW. Ten years makes a lot of difference.

We’ve been very successful and have been having a lot of fun up until the point at which I could no longer be logged in or run as many events and such.

The main issue I’m looking for solutions on is how to find people willing to be active guild contributors. The general consensus on that seems to be “luck,” which is fine – I haven’t been very lucky in that respect. But I have been lucky in that my guild has had absolutely no drama of any kind in the six months it has been running, we’ve had a lot of events, a meaningful impact on the community, and I’ve made a lot of friends in the process. That didn’t happen because I’m a bad leader.

What needs improvement is inspiring other people to contribute in kind, and I’m out of ideas there, at least until I can spend some more meaningful time on it, when I’m less busy.

The most successful guilds (and social organizations in general) I see are the ones built around a core nucleus of tight-knit people. If you have at least one solid group of active, fun-having people, a guild will practically run itself. If that nucleus is mostly just you acting as the host of a party, people will naturally float away when the drinks and activities die down. Parties are about the people; all the booze and music are just excuses for them to come together.

My post might sound useless (you need help finding loyal, active people? Well, get some loyal, active people!) but perhaps your goal shouldn’t be about inspiring people to contribute to events and activities as much as it is building up a group of friends who are there because they like to hang around with each other. The rest is purely magnetic.

If you have that already and your guild is still floundering… yeah, I guess that comes down to luck. Presumably, that core group will also feel some responsibility toward the livelihood of the guild and help fill out your hosting/leadership needs just as a natural extension of group loyalty. But I guess sometimes that isn’t true.

It is hard to build a guild from the ground, but doable if you keep fighting for it. I did it once in Rift while my old-guildies were still playing WoW. In the end they moved over and this time we moved together.

I just don’t understand one thing. Why not reward people who put in extra effort already? I mean, if they contribute to your guild by creating events or take care of the website etc. (just examples) why have them on the same level membership as the rest? It seems natural for them to put in some extra effort compared to others. I understand that in your and mine view everyone is equal in a guild as a guild needs its members as much as a guild leader. However, by recognizing the effort put in and promoting them to an officer or veteran or whatever you want to call it rank they are more likely to keep doing it. It also makes it visible for the members who they can turn to when they have questions as those people seem to know the guild quite well. That way the organisation in your guild grows organically. It is what I did when I build up a guild from the ground.

As a “new” small guild you will have a lot of people coming and leaving, no matter what your purpose is. During this phase when events don’t keep running due to lack of the guild master the guild will die. Try to be able to delegate tasks and have people who can take over when you are busy as early as possible to keep it as steady as you possibly can. I understand you have a difficulty finding those people, but I think they might already be there if you have a group of 50 members. It is just a matter of recognizing their efforst and “rewarding” them for it with a rank and the chance becomes bigger for them to step up and do it. You can also give them more buttons to click in the guild (like inviting, kicking etc.) so that when you are not around the group can still be managed. They might be hesitant to do this, so it is a good idea if they can reach you (via mail?) to discuss things they see with you while you don’t have to be in the game all the time. And if you run a website you might consider promoting them there to moderator or administrator depending on your needs.

Next to that I discuss guild issues with our members. When they are aware of the direction I want the guild to be heading and what is expected of them, they will have more patience and some might step up as it is more clear to them how they can contribute.

I hope this will help you getting the guild going. Sounds like you had/have a nice guild and are willing to let others have an impact on it. Just not sure on how to go around it. My proposal might also not be your way of doing things, but it is meant as an option to be considered.

The “problem” with this game is that you do not require to be in a guild to have access to the “best” content in the game.

In a more traditional MMO, like WoW, you needed a guild to do raids. Seldom would players pug raids and if they did, they usually were the easiest ones. So in the process of doing raids and stuff, players would interact with each other and then they would make friends.

GW2 tried to solve the accessibility of the “best” content by getting rid of trinity, no raids, homogenized classes, personal loot table, and dungeons made easier and pug friendly.

The “problem” this caused was that now everyone can do everything. The “solution” Anet came up with was Fractals. Players just cannot pug high level fractals. If they did, it would take a while and with a lower success rate than if you were in a specialized grp inside of a guild. The “problem” to this solution is that, for some unknown reason to me, 90% of players (some made up statistic made by me, merely to mean the “majority”) do NOT like running dungeons of any kind.

So their “fix” created more problems as it is tied to ascended gear.

In summery, Guilds are useless to the current meta game. Its quite ironic as this game is called “GUILD Wars 2”. Give us harder content (GW1 missions come to mind, maybe some GvG pvp?), and mark my words, guilds will suddenly become important again. Until then, they will be nothing more than a “nice to have because I get buffs” thing.

Caramel Ham.4891:

In summery, Guilds are useless to the current meta game. Its quite ironic as this game is called “GUILD Wars 2”. Give us harder content (GW1 missions come to mind, maybe some GvG pvp?), and mark my words, guilds will suddenly become important again. Until then, they will be nothing more than a “nice to have because I get buffs” thing.

You bring up the lack of a need for a guild and then you try to use GW1 as a counter example?
Have you played GW1 since Nightfall? GW1 can pretty much be played as a single player game.

Rising Dusk.2408:

A lot of this to me indicates a failing in the GW2 guild structure. It gives you the freedom to be in many guilds, but only really care about one of those guilds you’re in at a given time. This means that you, the player, can care about a guild only when the guild cares about you, which puts people into the situation you’re currently in. There’s nothing we can do about the system, all we can do is try to make do with what we have. If only people like you and I could find other people like you and I, we’d all be happy!

Unfortunately, people like you and I tend to all want to lead their own guilds, which leaves few of you and I left to join and support those guilds that are made.

I’ve met tons of really awesome players who, unfortunately, lead their own guilds and would never join mine as a result. That’s the sort of problem you and I inevitably face, and well, them’s the breaks. We just have to make do.

Good luck.

Read the sentences above.

It’s about people like you, who believe they have everything it takes to be a successful guild leader – but don’t – and are running a failing/failed guild and bemoan the fact…. but won’t join another guild and be a good member instead.

It’s a failing of pride.

Right now it’s less of a guild leader issue and more of a people not playing issue, least it is for me. I’ve ran successful guilds in many games (success being measured by regular participation and not sheer size), but GW2 really does lack the glue for both holding players attention long enough and making a guild beneficial enough to be in. Part of it too is just the sheer amount of games available to play as competition.

I pretty much focus on one game for as long as i feel good about playing it. A lot of my guildies/friends bounce around from game to game and really don’t like to commit a bunch of time to the scope of an MMO.

None of these are excuses, they are just facts based around my perception of the people I’ve know for awhile. I could do more, but than it becomes even more work that i really don’t have time to do, which is also part of it, but a lot less so.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Good news, everyone! We’ve got a bunch of guild content coming up in the February update:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/february-2013/

Sounds interesting, but why use yet another token system? What was wrong with influence?

I’ll remain in a state of moderate contempt until the minimum number of guildees needed and whether or not the Guild Leader needs to be present.

Hopefully the “special rewards” are something better than blues/greens/ugly skins

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Influence is still in use, however, it can be earned through relatively unremarkable actions such as simply logging in. Completing the new guild content will require the skill and coordination of your guild, so we have made special rewards deserving of that feat.

Also, influence is a shared currency, whereas the merits are earned both on the guild and personal level. There will be more information soon.

I hope one person guilds like myself won’t be penalized by able to get/share in the all the new things coming.

The point of the new update is for guilds to work together. Something they have to work together to do. One person guilds already have content they can do.

That patch ad is very disappointing. Nothing to do with WvW…

AstralDusk.1670:

The most successful guilds (and social organizations in general) I see are the ones built around a core nucleus of tight-knit people. If you have at least one solid group of active, fun-having people, a guild will practically run itself. If that nucleus is mostly just you acting as the host of a party, people will naturally float away when the drinks and activities die down. Parties are about the people; all the booze and music are just excuses for them to come together.

My post might sound useless (you need help finding loyal, active people? Well, get some loyal, active people!) but perhaps your goal shouldn’t be about inspiring people to contribute to events and activities as much as it is building up a group of friends who are there because they like to hang around with each other. The rest is purely magnetic.

If you have that already and your guild is still floundering… yeah, I guess that comes down to luck. Presumably, that core group will also feel some responsibility toward the livelihood of the guild and help fill out your hosting/leadership needs just as a natural extension of group loyalty. But I guess sometimes that isn’t true.

Words of Wisdom.

“The most successful guilds (and social organizations in general) I see are the ones built around a core nucleus of tight-knit people. If you have at least one solid group of active, fun-having people, a guild will practically run itself.”

Take the words above and incorporate them into your guild as a CANON.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Influence is still in use, however, it can be earned through relatively unremarkable actions such as simply logging in. Completing the new guild content will require the skill and coordination of your guild, so we have made special rewards deserving of that feat.

Also, influence is a shared currency, whereas the merits are earned both on the guild and personal level. There will be more information soon.

This is very intriguing. Also, a bit frightening. I love the idea of more guild activities, but I don’t really love the idea of yet another currency. Influence, at least as it works right now, isn’t a great thing. It doesn’t actually contribute toward the guild, it contributes toward each server. When I spend my influence on what is supposed to be a guild wide bonus only the members on my particular server benefit. But I do love that the acquisition of influence is mostly invisible on the guild’s main server. No one can accuse any member of not producing enough influence, because no one knows who has or hasn’t been productive. That’s a good thing, and helps keep drama to a minimum.

Will upgrades/perks purchased with Guild Merits benefit every guild member regardless of their server? Will Merits become the new Faction, inspiring OCD type guild leaders to require that each member earn some number of Merits each week or be kicked? Will Guild Merits inspire members to leave guilds they were previously happy to be in?

Going back to the original post, the topics raised are still going to be an issue for some guilds. Guilds are social organizations and can’t be supported by in-game mechanics alone.

• If you want an active guild, then organize activities that members want to participate in.
• If you want shared leadership, then delegate responsibility to people who are already showing signs of leadership.
• If you want to recruit like-minded people, set up your recruiting to be similar to how things actually work in your guild. For chatty guilds, you want your recruiters to chat a lot in /map and see who responds. For raiders, invite PUGs from gw2lfg.com and see who blends well with your style (e.g. speedclear vs kill everything). For WvW, invite people to join supply-camp raids or defend/attack objectives together.

All of the above turns out to be far more important than any of the in-game mechanics. Adding personal+shared rewards to activities might help farming guilds, but only for those people who love farming. For people who like the shared effort, the increased amount of shinies will be a bonus, not the reason to join.

Aye.8392:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Influence is still in use, however, it can be earned through relatively unremarkable actions such as simply logging in. Completing the new guild content will require the skill and coordination of your guild, so we have made special rewards deserving of that feat.

Also, influence is a shared currency, whereas the merits are earned both on the guild and personal level. There will be more information soon.

This is very intriguing. Also, a bit frightening. I love the idea of more guild activities, but I don’t really love the idea of yet another currency. Influence, at least as it works right now, isn’t a great thing. It doesn’t actually contribute toward the guild, it contributes toward each server. When I spend my influence on what is supposed to be a guild wide bonus only the members on my particular server benefit. But I do love that the acquisition of influence is mostly invisible on the guild’s main server. No one can accuse any member of not producing enough influence, because no one knows who has or hasn’t been productive. That’s a good thing, and helps keep drama to a minimum.

Will upgrades/perks purchased with Guild Merits benefit every guild member regardless of their server? Will Merits become the new Faction, inspiring OCD type guild leaders to require that each member earn some number of Merits each week or be kicked? Will Guild Merits inspire members to leave guilds they were previously happy to be in?

Guilds, and the entire social meta of GW2 is built around the idea that you choose a server as a “home” and stick with it. This is why WvW is locked to your server, and why guilds are upgraded per server. It’s also why guesting is considered… well… guesting.

Bascially, the way the whole thing is set up, you’re not really intended to have multi-server guilds. I don’t honestly see a problem with it. If the point of guilds is to play the game together, what benefit is there to having a guild with a presence on multiple servers?

As for the merits-as-faction system, it’s a valid concern, but if merits are as useless as faction was I don’t see people caring much. If you’re in a guild with “merit requirements” type of leadership, chances are you’re already used to that sort of high demand in terms of required attendance or inf quotas or something already from such people. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me, but for the people in such guilds already I doubt much would change.