Guild Wars 2

First off, I really don’t intend this as a troll post of any kind. I’m not trying to demean or shame anyone, but I just wanted to address a few things I’ve seen or heard being tossed around by various commanders across many, many servers.
 
Is your guild struggling? Participation down? Commanders burnt out?
 
Well you really aren’t alone. Since coming back to this game, I’ve seen a dozen guilds collapse. Guilds that once ran 20+, gvg’d, or even ran havoc are all vanishing.
 
First let me start by saying this, the guild I am in is not immune. I returned to this game around six to eight months ago. I had about 6 players who actually knew what they were doing. The rest were from other games and a maybe half of those had never touched guild wars 2 in their lives. I had just bought HoT 15 minutes into playing Gw2 again and had no idea what a rev or resistance was. We got run the kitten over. A lot.
 
Now, being a guy that is pretty prideful, I was bent out of shape. I don’t like losing, and I sure as hell losing that badly, but it happened… multiple times. What did I do? Two things.
 
First, I found out who was at the top of their game… for open field WvW, GvG (they’re different), etc… and I tried to pick their brains and comps. I also relied on some of the players I had just recruited as well as some of the ex guildies I was in contact with (which were in those top guilds or were now guild leaders themselves).

Many of you are past that step. You at least know how this game works, but here is arguably the most important advice I can give those of you that have declining rosters. Do something about it.
 
Don’t sit on your kitten and hope that people are going to show up. Don’t “call raids” because you don’t have enough people. Time constraints are understandable, but you have to make sure you proactively figure out what is going on and how to fix it, or even how to work around your schedules. Get a back up driver. Coordinate with other guilds on your off days. You can’t fix anything if you’re sitting around whining about it. It takes you, as a driver, tagging up constantly to recruit. EBG is a great place and if you see a tag, just ask if you can tag up instead. There are many servers where the main commanders will let you try your hand. Be vocal, be patient, and get to know those around you. I didn’t judge pugs when I came back. I only tried to point a few things out, and I pulled quite a few SBIers and later TCers into a channel to talk to them about gameplay.
 
So, my roster started growing. Slowly at first, and with people who were pretty new to WvW (I even recruited a few from sPvP). It wasn’t, by any means, a home run, but I kept wvwing every chance I got (which isn’t much sometimes because of school). I also made sure to have a back up driver. Most of these little guilds… No one knows you. Don’t be afraid to wipe as long as you learn something from it. I can’t stress that enough. There is zero burden on your shoulders. Swallow your pride and just keep going out there. The recruits will come.

“But Cid, I run a lot and don’t get any recruits.” Do you try? Are you filling a niche? Is it fun for the people around you? I’ve seen a lot of newer commanders and guilds run into brick walls over and over. I see the same group, week after week and they haven’t changed a single thing. You’re just bags. That’s not fun for anyone. Ask established guilds for builds and see what works. I’m not saying to go full GvG kitten meta, but you need to know what’s going on and the basics. You can’t win unless you try, and if trying isn’t working then use the losses as guidance.
 
There are people out there that are similar to you. They can be taught, and if none of these things work. You should, as a last ditch effort, move servers. Remember there are many special snowflakes out there that can fill your rosters.

Anyway, if you gain anything from this, it’s that you should tag up and try your hand at commanding. If your guild is decaying, you need to do something about it (same concepts for guilds who are starting out). If there is an established commander running and you want to tag up and take the pugs, just whisper him or her. More often than not, they will let you try your hand. There’s a few exceptions, but most of those commanders aren’t very good and will probably log off after they get killed a few times so just be patient.

Cheers

This makes WvW, like, really hard to enjoy;

one needs a lot of time and effort

and it is probably true.

Unless one is bedridden, why would one spend so much time on this?

Maybe the game is just constructed too hard to enjoy.

“Face-to-face social interaction leads to a longer life”,

“Knowing when to turn off your smartphone enriches your life”

and

“Chasing meaning, not happiness, is what really matters”

according an article in the Washington post couple days ago,

“Prioritizing these three things will improve your life — and maybe even save it”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/04/28/prioritizing-these-three-things-will-improve-your-life-and-maybe-even-save-it/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_inspired-prioritizing-1048am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5c76b3648985

Lord of Rings.5371:

This makes WvW, like, really hard to enjoy;

one needs a lot of time and effort

and it is probably true.

Unless one is bedridden, why would one spend so much time on this?

Maybe the game is just constructed too hard to enjoy.

“Face-to-face social interaction leads to a longer life”,

“Knowing when to turn off your smartphone enriches your life”

and

“Chasing meaning, not happiness, is what really matters”

according an article in the Washington post couple days ago,

“Prioritizing these three things will improve your life — and maybe even save it”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/04/28/prioritizing-these-three-things-will-improve-your-life-and-maybe-even-save-it/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_inspired-prioritizing-1048am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5c76b3648985

How about instead of referring to some random article written by people who we know nothing about, why not just do whatever the hell you want with your own life? How about we accept that everyone is different and find meaning or fun in different things and if they find this fun and meaningful why not?

ThunderPanda.1872:

Lord of Rings.5371:

…

Maybe the game is just constructed too hard to enjoy.

“Face-to-face social interaction leads to a longer life”,

…

How about instead of referring to some random article written by people who we know nothing about, why not just do whatever the hell you want with your own life? How about we accept that everyone is different and find meaning or fun in different things and if they find this fun and meaningful why not?

I am with you.

What I am saying is that maybe

WvW is structured too hard to enjoy

because it seems requiring a lot of time and effort to learn not been defeated easily.

It is a contest of time and effort where some players just have a lot more than others.

Hopefully no one would be stressed out while playing WvW

or stressed out in real life situations because of less time to deal them.

If WvW is for fun,

then maybe someone just missed the whole point.

Lord of Rings.5371:

If WvW is for fun,

then maybe someone just missed the whole point.

What?

A lot of competitive minded players find it fun to play to win. It sounds though like you are saying they missed the point.

And consider that for the amount of time certain players spend playing WvW without being “hardcore”, they definitely have had the time to invest into learning how to play to not be defeated easily. I don’t believe there’s the clear correlation you’re trying to make about time and effort spent. Time spent doesn’t always translate into results and can even have a negative impact IMHO.

A year ago I joined a guild that then one month later started having trouble with rally attendance. Because rallies were scheduled pretty much every day, there was less focus from members regarding which days they will show up to play. People have real life schedules, etc. That lead to rallies being hit or miss with numbers and group comp which started to frustrate everyone. So as a guild we figured out which days worked best for the most people and reduced the number of rallies: two “esports” and one “theme/fun” night a week. It also reduced the “workload” for officers to review video, see where we could improve, etc. Guild nearly doubled in size after that and is still playing a year later.

This post is just letting people know that it’s possible to start from scratch or come back from the brink. It’s up to people to step up and put up that dorito. Don’t be afraid to jump out there even if you’re wiping. Get to know people and keep at it.

We can pull people into this game mode, and we can make this fun for people. There’s a lot of people grumbling and saying they want to start up a guild or don’t have enough people to wvw, but they’re just sitting around until their guild dies (or never starts up).

No, we were assured small guilds would not be left behind……cue violin.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-new-guild-features-wont-leave-smaller-guilds-behind

Plus its really hard to care what you’re saying when you’re the leader of a known blob guild. Yes, your guild isn’t dying that’s cool and all – but you are part of the problem.

To clarify, it isn’t that we can’t recruit – there is just no viable people to really play against when the opposition is all blobs. Perhaps if others kept their rosters down, then the 20 man guilds would be fine. We all claim to love those small fights, but few restrict recruitment for it.

Angel.6085:

Plus its really hard to care what you’re saying when you’re the leader of a known blob guild. Yes, your guild isn’t dying that’s cool and all – but you are part of the problem.

To clarify, it isn’t that we can’t recruit – there is just no viable people to really play against when the opposition is all blobs. Perhaps if others kept their rosters down, then the 20 man guilds would be fine. We all claim to love those small fights, but few restrict recruitment for it.

Inb4

Anyway …

So the way I see it is, a guild that’s actively recruiting is going to pin up and get people into their squads and their voice communication servers. At times, guilds will be large, and at times that same guild will be small because of the peaks & valleys in WvW participation whether it be matchup related, IRL related, or balance related.

That’s not really the scope of Cid’s post, he’s more or less trying to encourage guilds to be strong and get out there <vs> making x,y,z excuses for their guild failures. Which I’ll agree it is attitude related, but there are still countless issues our friends at ANET are attempting to address and correct that the community has been vocal about.

For instance — I had guild members quit / leave rallies because of a certain match-up we were in because it was an issue for us operating in the borderlands. It was one extreme or another; from nothing to engage, to map queues (with 15-18 people). So we took it outside the BL into the Guild Arena and EOTM to seek alternative solutions to the current issues in our match-up. This was something out of our control, but we found a solution for the short-term and it worked out. We contacted guilds from our current matchup or other matchups and met them elsewhere, everyone was super chill about it.

Now, since the new re-link our members magically appeared back out of the woods and we picked up 3-new-recruits and went from running 15-18 → 20-23; but I know that we’re going to balance out and dip back below 20-members per rally because that’s just the way it goes.

SniffyCube.6107:

This post is just letting people know that it’s possible to start from scratch or come back from the brink. It’s up to people to step up and put up that dorito. Don’t be afraid to jump out there even if you’re wiping. Get to know people and keep at it.

I agree with you, but I’d also like to add an aspect of this that I mentioned in a past post: the game doesn’t really differentiate between or incentivizing players playing WvW together as a guild and players “pugging it”, which IMHO makes for an added barrier for guild recruitment. (Along with the obvious one of mega-server.)

Edit: Look, perfect example. I read this guy after I posted here. Why is he not joining any WvW guilds? Having a WvW guild to lean on would solve half his problems, but game doesn’t clue people in too well about it.

10/10 protips, good post.

Feel like the main issue with recruiting is the pool to recruit from just keeps getting smaller

Chaba.5410:

Lord of Rings.5371:

If WvW is for fun,

then maybe someone just missed the whole point.

What?

If WvW is currently structured for fun,

Why would someone feel the following?

Packit.8576:

Feel like the main issue with recruiting is the pool to recruit from just keeps getting smaller

“Fun” was the whole point missed by Dev as GW2 evolved to its current form;

a lot of stuffs introduced by HOT just wasn’t fun.

SniffyCube.6107:

or don’t have enough people to wvw, but they’re just sitting around until their guild dies (or never starts up).

I’ve never really understood this, there is no pre requisite to join WvW numerically. You can stroll out there with 3 people in your group. How can you not have enough people to WvW? This scenario never actually happens, it’s a player construct.

Granted you will have to scale back your objectives, you wont be hitting SMC or Garri. But thats not to say other things cant be accomplished if your guild is objective driven and needs to be “for the realm”. Or fun to be had if it’s more the casual type guild.

Dying? Wooooah man your guild lasted forever if yours is just going now.

Patch day of HoT killed ours.

Lord of Rings.5371:

If WvW is currently structured for fun,

Why would someone feel the following?

Packit.8576:

Feel like the main issue with recruiting is the pool to recruit from just keeps getting smaller

See this response above: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Is-your-guild-dying/first#post6574398

Yes, 80% of my guild is gone. Mostly because WvWvW getting boring due bad Class Balance (Condis mostly) and very low attention from Anet to bring new content. Secondary there where also people which leaved because Pop Unbalance.

My Guild is a Roaming Guild since 2012 Headstart of Guild Wars 2.

If anything, our guild is slowly growing. People come, people leave. You have to stay up on it.

Cosmos The Cat.2954:

If anything, our guild is slowly growing. People come, people leave. You have to stay up on it.

thats just cos all the other options on your server left

SniffyCube.6107:

First off, I really don’t intend this as a troll post of any kind. I’m not trying to demean or shame anyone, but I just wanted to address a few things I’ve seen or heard being tossed around by various commanders across many, many servers.
 
Is your guild struggling? Participation down? Commanders burnt out?
 
Well you really aren’t alone. Since coming back to this game, I’ve seen a dozen guilds collapse. Guilds that once ran 20+, gvg’d, or even ran havoc are all vanishing.
 
First let me start by saying this, the guild I am in is not immune. I returned to this game around six to eight months ago. I had about 6 players who actually knew what they were doing. The rest were from other games and a maybe half of those had never touched guild wars 2 in their lives. I had just bought HoT 15 minutes into playing Gw2 again and had no idea what a rev or resistance was. We got run the kitten over. A lot.
 
Now, being a guy that is pretty prideful, I was bent out of shape. I don’t like losing, and I sure as hell losing that badly, but it happened… multiple times. What did I do? Two things.
 
First, I found out who was at the top of their game… for open field WvW, GvG (they’re different), etc… and I tried to pick their brains and comps. I also relied on some of the players I had just recruited as well as some of the ex guildies I was in contact with (which were in those top guilds or were now guild leaders themselves).

Many of you are past that step. You at least know how this game works, but here is arguably the most important advice I can give those of you that have declining rosters. Do something about it.
 
Don’t sit on your kitten and hope that people are going to show up. Don’t “call raids” because you don’t have enough people. Time constraints are understandable, but you have to make sure you proactively figure out what is going on and how to fix it, or even how to work around your schedules. Get a back up driver. Coordinate with other guilds on your off days. You can’t fix anything if you’re sitting around whining about it. It takes you, as a driver, tagging up constantly to recruit. EBG is a great place and if you see a tag, just ask if you can tag up instead. There are many servers where the main commanders will let you try your hand. Be vocal, be patient, and get to know those around you. I didn’t judge pugs when I came back. I only tried to point a few things out, and I pulled quite a few SBIers and later TCers into a channel to talk to them about gameplay.
 
So, my roster started growing. Slowly at first, and with people who were pretty new to WvW (I even recruited a few from sPvP). It wasn’t, by any means, a home run, but I kept wvwing every chance I got (which isn’t much sometimes because of school). I also made sure to have a back up driver. Most of these little guilds… No one knows you. Don’t be afraid to wipe as long as you learn something from it. I can’t stress that enough. There is zero burden on your shoulders. Swallow your pride and just keep going out there. The recruits will come.

“But Cid, I run a lot and don’t get any recruits.” Do you try? Are you filling a niche? Is it fun for the people around you? I’ve seen a lot of newer commanders and guilds run into brick walls over and over. I see the same group, week after week and they haven’t changed a single thing. You’re just bags. That’s not fun for anyone. Ask established guilds for builds and see what works. I’m not saying to go full GvG kitten meta, but you need to know what’s going on and the basics. You can’t win unless you try, and if trying isn’t working then use the losses as guidance.
 
There are people out there that are similar to you. They can be taught, and if none of these things work. You should, as a last ditch effort, move servers. Remember there are many special snowflakes out there that can fill your rosters.

Anyway, if you gain anything from this, it’s that you should tag up and try your hand at commanding. If your guild is decaying, you need to do something about it (same concepts for guilds who are starting out). If there is an established commander running and you want to tag up and take the pugs, just whisper him or her. More often than not, they will let you try your hand. There’s a few exceptions, but most of those commanders aren’t very good and will probably log off after they get killed a few times so just be patient.

Cheers

Commanders “taking a break”

Commanders without experience

No Commanders on any map for 5-8 hours

Choose your poison, WvW is hurting for leadership and players.

henchmen.1856:

Cosmos The Cat.2954:

If anything, our guild is slowly growing. People come, people leave. You have to stay up on it.

thats just cos all the other options on your server left

I’ve seen more people playing since the dust has settled. People quite frankly are having a lot of fun playing right now. But I’ll let you think that.

Cosmos The Cat.2954:

henchmen.1856:

Cosmos The Cat.2954:

If anything, our guild is slowly growing. People come, people leave. You have to stay up on it.

thats just cos all the other options on your server left

I’ve seen more people playing since the dust has settled. People quite frankly are having a lot of fun playing right now. But I’ll let you think that.

So true! It’s up to the leadership and players to have fun in a way that they can… even if it’s with 2-3 people like chorazin said.

Also angel from [DN], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krmLAqeiOPs @ 3:20 labeling a guild as a “blob guild” is often times an attempt at deflection. Let’s please keep this on topic and keep the insults to a minimum. This is all about being constructive.

People come and go, it is part of the game and it is part of a guild.

Running a guild and wanting it to have people to do things with all require certain level of commitments and more from a leader.

I personally don’t think it is hard for inspiring guild leaders to build a WvW guild during prime time. It is a matter of want and do.

If I can build a large PvX guild that always in the risk of drama (backstabbing, poach, etcs.), thievery, etcs while having active wvw, raid, pve and pvp activities and at the same time subject to mockery, defamation and scurrilous attacks from bad individuals of other guilds or origins. I am pretty sure anyone can build and maintain a wvw guild if they really want to.

all my guilds are dead and guilds will continue to die. when the gamemode has had no support/ content except a new map which no one likes since season 2 there’s only so much guilds can do before they give up. less and less drivers want to spend the effort to lead a guild because there is no incentive to, recruiting is a struggle— guilds now just hope for another guild to die so they can pick up their players, metas based off of PvE skill balance, manual glicko adjustments which ruin matchups and opening servers which should be full and closing ones that should be open, and no communication between developer and playerbase. same promises for over a year and nothing has happened.

RIP game.

Malerian.8435:

BAHAHA w/e y’all were not good enough to win fights in T1. Making excuses and going to the Guild Arena or EOTM simply means you need to get good!

no matchup threads please

Malerian.8435:

Haematic.4913:

Angel.6085:

Plus its really hard to care what you’re saying when you’re the leader of a known blob guild. Yes, your guild isn’t dying that’s cool and all – but you are part of the problem.

To clarify, it isn’t that we can’t recruit – there is just no viable people to really play against when the opposition is all blobs. Perhaps if others kept their rosters down, then the 20 man guilds would be fine. We all claim to love those small fights, but few restrict recruitment for it.

Inb4

Anyway …

So the way I see it is, a guild that’s actively recruiting is going to pin up and get people into their squads and their voice communication servers. At times, guilds will be large, and at times that same guild will be small because of the peaks & valleys in WvW participation whether it be matchup related, IRL related, or balance related.

That’s not really the scope of Cid’s post, he’s more or less trying to encourage guilds to be strong and get out there <vs> making x,y,z excuses for their guild failures. Which I’ll agree it is attitude related, but there are still countless issues our friends at ANET are attempting to address and correct that the community has been vocal about.

For instance — I had guild members quit / leave rallies because of a certain match-up we were in because it was an issue for us operating in the borderlands. It was one extreme or another; from nothing to engage, to map queues (with 15-18 people). So we took it outside the BL into the Guild Arena and EOTM to seek alternative solutions to the current issues in our match-up. This was something out of our control, but we found a solution for the short-term and it worked out. We contacted guilds from our current matchup or other matchups and met them elsewhere, everyone was super chill about it.

Now, since the new re-link our members magically appeared back out of the woods and we picked up 3-new-recruits and went from running 15-18 -> 20-23; but I know that we’re going to balance out and dip back below 20-members per rally because that’s just the way it goes.

BAHAHA w/e y’all were not good enough to win fights in T1. Making excuses and going to the Guild Arena or EOTM simply means you need to get good!

I don’t think you understand how the current meta works.

There’s no real reason for people to join guilds anymore imo. They could work really hard with some guild trying to make the latest and greatest variation of the melee ball. Or they could just transfer to Maguuma and have a great time pugging.

ANet needs to quickly address the Commanders Tag price and features.

Currently, is just too expensive with no benefits or positive features at all. Pure gold sink…

What i have seen is these smaller guilds fixating on the win and refusing to build up their own communities. Instead they have a limited pool of already competent players that they only want to recruit. As a result, some of the newcomer friendly guilds have been getting larger and larger, with their cores knowing what builds to run, they have become more difficult to kill.

If these guilds instead focused on building up the community side of the guild, rather than be elitists, they would be attracting some of these new players who can turn into competent WvWers with a bit of work. Way back when guilds actually fought eachother without blobs, that was how they built members up.

The newcomers are still there to be recruited, its just many of these fight centric guilds make themselves very unapproachable that they only attract the players no one really wants in their community. Also a hint of advice, gameplay video as a recruitment requirement is just stupid, you guilds deserve to dwindle away who push for that. Those days are done.

Even the fighters are casuals now, they have aged, got lives and jobs (well some do), and your core of 15 is lucky to have 8 show up now. Your 30-40 man roster to support the 15 man raids need to increase almost two-fold to make up for the casualness. You wont get your comp every time, and when you dont, you need to adapt and play regardless. if you call your raids early because only those 8 people show up, then you deserve to lose your guild. If your main driver isn’t on, make up a squad and just play without a tag, you dont need to be coordinated, the main thing is to play with your guildmates to keep people coming back to the game mode. In the end it comes down to player laziness being at an all time high.

Guilds rarely reach out to one another anymore, or even respect eachother anymore. Back in the day you would have guilds map hopping, even with queues, to get the right kind of players on the map. Instead now you have people popping EWPs and giving false scouting reports just to get into their prefered map, and when they do want in a different map thats full, they expect the other guilds to hop off asap to let their people in. These antics do not promote the gamemode well, they make new players leave it.

Anyways i could go on for longer, TL;DR = people are lazy, you deserve your dead guilds.

Packit.8576:

Feel like the main issue with recruiting is the pool to recruit from just keeps getting smaller

I find it condescending some of these long running guilds spew out community, server, and build your guild! But you’ll often see their true side when they lose fights and start attacking players in map/team and teamspeak about how “the pugs” caused this and it’s all their fault instead of offering them help. Why would new players stick around in wvw?

But you are right packit, getting tougher and tougher.

Malerian.8435:

Chaba.5410:

Malerian.8435:

Haematic.4913:

Angel.6085:

Plus its really hard to care what you’re saying when you’re the leader of a known blob guild. Yes, your guild isn’t dying that’s cool and all – but you are part of the problem.

To clarify, it isn’t that we can’t recruit – there is just no viable people to really play against when the opposition is all blobs. Perhaps if others kept their rosters down, then the 20 man guilds would be fine. We all claim to love those small fights, but few restrict recruitment for it.

Inb4

Anyway …

So the way I see it is, a guild that’s actively recruiting is going to pin up and get people into their squads and their voice communication servers. At times, guilds will be large, and at times that same guild will be small because of the peaks & valleys in WvW participation whether it be matchup related, IRL related, or balance related.

That’s not really the scope of Cid’s post, he’s more or less trying to encourage guilds to be strong and get out there <vs> making x,y,z excuses for their guild failures. Which I’ll agree it is attitude related, but there are still countless issues our friends at ANET are attempting to address and correct that the community has been vocal about.

For instance — I had guild members quit / leave rallies because of a certain match-up we were in because it was an issue for us operating in the borderlands. It was one extreme or another; from nothing to engage, to map queues (with 15-18 people). So we took it outside the BL into the Guild Arena and EOTM to seek alternative solutions to the current issues in our match-up. This was something out of our control, but we found a solution for the short-term and it worked out. We contacted guilds from our current matchup or other matchups and met them elsewhere, everyone was super chill about it.

Now, since the new re-link our members magically appeared back out of the woods and we picked up 3-new-recruits and went from running 15-18 -> 20-23; but I know that we’re going to balance out and dip back below 20-members per rally because that’s just the way it goes.

BAHAHA w/e y’all were not good enough to win fights in T1. Making excuses and going to the Guild Arena or EOTM simply means you need to get good!

I don’t think you understand how the current meta works.

Chaba…. I understand far more than you will ever! I have been playing since launch. I do not use what you would call “metta” as it is complete crap for all but maybe 1-2 classes. I am in a fight guild, and we have very little issues with whatever tier we are in. And we do not call a 7 man group that wipes a 20 man group a zerg….

Obviously y’all are salty as you have no clue how to fight against the current “metta”.

Now you’re just trolling.

This thread isn’t to measure kittens or anything. I’m just encouraging guild leaders to look at what’s going on. Maybe this thread can even motivate someone or help a new commander get ideas on what to do to create his/her own guild.

Something that I’ve found is making videos has helped our recruitment, especially early.

We started with videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-oPFQK1f50 and shared them with our server. We then started making WvW only videos and that seemed to spike recruitment for us. The first vids were pretty smallscale stuff but then grew.

Our guy that makes videos is TBT ruggs and he uses shadowplay to record. Most people have it if they possess and Nvidia graphics card. From there, you can grab a video editing program for pretty cheap.

Recording also helps A LOT when it comes to seeing who is out of position etc because you CAN’T always look 360 around you all the time in order to see what’s going on (as a commander).

SniffyCube.6107:

This thread isn’t to measure kittens or anything. I’m just encouraging guild leaders to look at what’s going on. Maybe this thread can even motivate someone or help a new commander get ideas on what to do to create his/her own guild.

Something that I’ve found is making videos has helped our recruitment, especially early.

We started with videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-oPFQK1f50 and shared them with our server. We then started making WvW only videos and that seemed to spike recruitment for us. The first vids were pretty smallscale stuff but then grew.

Our guy that makes videos is TBT ruggs and he uses shadowplay to record. Most people have it if they possess and Nvidia graphics card. From there, you can grab a video editing program for pretty cheap.

Recording also helps A LOT when it comes to seeing who is out of position etc because you CAN’T always look 360 around you all the time in order to see what’s going on (as a commander).

I think that you’re somewhere in the middle of the WvW guild lifespan arc.

I don’t know what the life stages of a WvW guild are but after you start using video for recruitment you move to using video to improve your play.

This leads a guild to become serious and more exclusive because winning is fun and fun is winning.

This eventually leads to burnout and the eventual breakup of the guild. If the commander is the one who burns out the guild dies.

“Soon enough a group of 40 people is taking down a group of 200”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bd0UWUr6l0

lol……….

Rambitshouse.8712:

“Soon enough a group of 40 people is taking down a group of 200”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bd0UWUr6l0

lol……….

Knowledge could be dangerous.

After Dev learned WvW could be so much fun, they were went to work on HOT.

“WvW was so much fun, and

these players are enjoying WvW so much;

Let’s give them something new and bigger.

Surely, they would put up with little distractions.

Just a little distraction,

like experiencing something new,

navigating a new map,

building a new and expansive guild system

and maybe do some PvE."

What happened?

When the excited players came to the new map and expected to repeat the fun,

some were lost.

Where are the fights?

Upper level? Lower?

Hopefully, the HOT could be a constructive experience for the next expansion.

Factions, the first expansion to GW was sort of like HOT, featuring more of a 3D type of maps with levels. The next expansion, Night Fall has a different style of maps, more flat.

Let’s wish the best for the next expansion.

Woah, woah, wait… What is “recruitment”?

it’s when you’re running around aimlessly with a cool ranch dorito above your head and eventually you start talking to people and they want to join your guild

Guilds are as much the problem as they are the solution. WvW was intended to be army vs army not guild vs guild. They should have thought that through better pre-launch, though, because they advertised it that way but didn’t really firm up the mechanics for it. What they ended up with is neither one thing nor the other.

Tiny Doom.4380:

WvW was intended to be army vs army not guild vs guild.

I’m not really sure what you mean. Armies have divisions and specializations.

To be fair, each guild is different. Taking my own guild as an example – there was a pretty extended period of time where we ran 15-20 every night, training new players, theorycrafting builds etc. It wasn’t sustainable. It required too much effort for the leaders in the guild to maintain recruitment, show up for raids etc. and it was affecting my own RL (to the point where I had to extract myself from video gaming for a good month).

We recently moved servers and restructured the guild. We now run with 3-7 a night, but we have more fun, are more relaxed and actually enjoy WvWing a couple hours a night, a couple nights a week, compared to when we were on our previous server (a server all of us still consider “home”), where we were literally getting flamed in team and map chat every time we formed up, just because we wanted to do our own thing once in a while.

Have we found any new recruits from our new server? Nope. Doesn’t really bother me. Our guild is tighter than it has ever been before and we now chat with each other more outside of the game than inside. That, to me, is a bigger sign of success than just pure numbers.

Of course, there are other guilds that mass recruit, build up a massive community and carry the server from there (Tidal Legion comes to mind), but those are far and few in between. Most people don’t have the time and energy to maintain such a massive guild. It’s seriously a full time job. I was putting 7-9 hours a day into maintaining the guild when we were running 15-20 with a 80-90 man roster. Looking back on it, it’s just stupid how much time I’ve put into this game without enjoying it.

Reverence has an incredibly good point. It’s also why there are casual guilds in WvW, and PvX guilds, and guild that aren’t interested in being hardcore or the absolute best. Because there are other priorities in life outside of gaming.

WvW has space for many types of guilds, if we let it.

Ermm….

I believe the point of OP is to highlight the fact that if you want to build a guild, it isn’t all that difficult. It isn’t rocket science and for most part, a guild shouldn’t be run by a single person though finding appropriate helpers can be difficult at times.

I have played a lot of mmo and honestly speaking, running a guild in gw2 is very taxing because of how fundamentally gw2 is designed to undermine the ways of a guild and how gw2 promote a different kind of mentality towards guild.

In other mmorpgs, I could run a 100-men guild with 50% online rate at prime time while not having to invest hardcore level of time. At the same time in some mmo, having the opportunities to command up to 200 people in a war, again not having to invest hardcore level of time. However, it is twice or maybe thrice the difficulty to do the same in gw2. Still, getting a consistent 20-men isn’t impossible and pretty much require some luck to get the right players of the right mentality.

Couple things:
- You can’t demand raid attendance. People will ultimately leave your guild, if they can’t come and go as they please. Plus, your raid nights might not work out for everyone. They might be able to make 1-2, but not 2-3.
- Stop server hopping. Yeah, yer lookin for fights, but if your goal is to hop servers every 1-2 months, then people who joined your guild, who are dedicated to the server they play on, aren’t going to want to stick with you
- Its all about the dailies. Not everyone plays for the gratification of smashing n00bs to the ground. Each player has goals; get stuff, have fun, etc. If you are all about the fights, and nothing but the fights, then those people who want their dailies, while working with your WvW raid, are just going to step out, roam for the their WvW dailies, and move on.
- Fight guilds need to be more pronounce about their intentions. If all they do is fight, then your comments to new recruits and etc should be, “You won’t get many in-game resources from raiding with us, but you might possibly get alot of bags, if we do well…and of course, if we aren’t getting repeatedly destroyed by raids twice our size…which does happen quite frequently.” I’m sure there is just as many people who would not join you, once this realization is made.

slamfunction.7462:

Couple things:
- You can’t demand raid attendance. People will ultimately leave your guild, if they can’t come and go as they please. Plus, your raid nights might not work out for everyone. They might be able to make 1-2, but not 2-3.
- Stop server hopping. Yeah, yer lookin for fights, but if your goal is to hop servers every 1-2 months, then people who joined your guild, who are dedicated to the server they play on, aren’t going to want to stick with you
- Its all about the dailies. Not everyone plays for the gratification of smashing n00bs to the ground. Each player has goals; get stuff, have fun, etc. If you are all about the fights, and nothing but the fights, then those people who want their dailies, while working with your WvW raid, are just going to step out, roam for the their WvW dailies, and move on.
- Fight guilds need to be more pronounce about their intentions. If all they do is fight, then your comments to new recruits and etc should be, “You won’t get many in-game resources from raiding with us, but you might possibly get alot of bags, if we do well…and of course, if we aren’t getting repeatedly destroyed by raids twice our size…which does happen quite frequently.” I’m sure there is just as many people who would not join you, once this realization is made.

then dont join a fight guild… everything you listed is what fight guilds are not. fight guilds play for fights and wvw exclusively. if you join a fight guild expect to raid a lot (although most fight guilds now raid 3 days a week, cause wvw is dead).

most guilds if you ask the commander to they will do a daily but ofc its up to the leader

Packit.8576:

Feel like the main issue with recruiting is the pool to recruit from just keeps getting smaller

I agree on the shrinking recruitment pool. Additionally, there’s not much incentive to necessarily join a guild of the type that Sniffy is describing as players can just pug along with a blob (comms optional).

It’s not really about guilds dying, but more that the wvw game has changed and the community along with it. Guilds and players have had to make decisions on whether they are going to change themselves and how they play, or not. While I personally think HoT had a very negative impact on the way I enjoyed playing wvw, I recognize that wvw is the most causal-friendly its been since launch.

slamfunction.7462:

Couple things:
- You can’t demand raid attendance. People will ultimately leave your guild, if they can’t come and go as they please. Plus, your raid nights might not work out for everyone. They might be able to make 1-2, but not 2-3.
- Stop server hopping. Yeah, yer lookin for fights, but if your goal is to hop servers every 1-2 months, then people who joined your guild, who are dedicated to the server they play on, aren’t going to want to stick with you
- Its all about the dailies. Not everyone plays for the gratification of smashing n00bs to the ground. Each player has goals; get stuff, have fun, etc. If you are all about the fights, and nothing but the fights, then those people who want their dailies, while working with your WvW raid, are just going to step out, roam for the their WvW dailies, and move on.
- Fight guilds need to be more pronounce about their intentions. If all they do is fight, then your comments to new recruits and etc should be, “You won’t get many in-game resources from raiding with us, but you might possibly get alot of bags, if we do well…and of course, if we aren’t getting repeatedly destroyed by raids twice our size…which does happen quite frequently.” I’m sure there is just as many people who would not join you, once this realization is made.

I require almost all of this of my members and they prefer it thay way to maintain the type of play that they like. I don’t MAKE people attend raid x number of days, but they know they are expected to show their face every week. They police themselves. We make it very apparent up front what type of guild we are :P DN is a fight guild, we also get our dailies done because its so stupid easy.

Only this man can revitalize wvw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWcAek5_JE

No.
My guild of 1 is still kicking kitten,and going strong.