Breakfast Topic: How's the Guild Finder working for you?
by Deb Montague 
Dec 7th 2011 at 8:00AM
When Blizzard first proposed the Looking for Guild tab, I remember talking with my officers about whether we'd have a presence on it. The stated reason for the tab was to help people looking for a guild find one without having to stand in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and hollering, "Level 85 tank LFGuild!" My guild is rather specific in what we do and to whom we would appeal. Our recruiting is generally word of mouth and, I admit, winning one of the last WoW Insider Guilds of the Month titles helped, a lot. But we came to the conclusion that we should have a presence in the Guild Finder interface. You never know who is out there looking for a guild like us.
So I drew up a sales pitch and opened up the interface the first day it was available. Honestly, it's a pretty generic format. We run all content and raid pretty much any day. We don't have class restrictions so if we have more hunters than anything else, well, we have more hunters than anything else and hunters are still welcome to join. The only way to really distinguish yourself was your carefully worded sales pitch at the bottom. Would that be enough for people to find us?
We started with an average of 20 to 25 new names every week for the first couple of months. We always direct people to our website and then they have to go through an interview, so that whittled down the actual applicants to a handful. I would say the Guild Finder brought us 10 new guild members in the first couple of months it was available. My membership officer was scrambling to keep track of who had received introductory letters so we didn't spam them.
Since then, it's tapered off to three to four a week, and we have picked up a new member about once a month from the Guild Finder feature. The bulk of our new members have been friends and family recruited by current guild members. I'm thinking that's probably what it will really be, low-level interest with a couple people curious enough to go to the website. It's been good for us in that it gets our name out there.
What has been your experience with the Guild Finder interface? Have you been able to fill raiding slots, or have you found the interface all smoke and no substance? Is there something you would suggest be changed so you could better emphasize what you do? I'd like buttons for RP, hardcore and casual. Just because we do the occasional roleplaying event does not make us a roleplaying guild. Likewise, we raid but we are not anywhere near hardcore. I'd like to be able to make that distinction.
For those who have used the feature, did you find that perfect guild or are you still wandering about looking for a guild that meets your needs? Did you use this to find a guild, or did you hit your server forum or the WoW recruitment forum, or did you find a guild by word of mouth? If you used it, was it easy to sort through the guilds with posts or are they all saying the same thing?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Rédßèárd Dec 7th 2011 8:15AM
Plain and simple, "Its not working." People who do put apps in either cannot be found online or do not respond to the response emails I send them. Seems the most prudent thing to do is to insert the message,"Do a /who and whisper a member for an invite."
The whole guild recruitment scenario has been frustrating, and leveling the guild has also been frustrating, but 6 of us have managed to get it to level 17 in just under a year's time, maybe by 5.0 we'll be level 25, ....maybe.
jtrack3d Dec 7th 2011 9:29AM
I think the reason you do not find them online or answering their mail is the human nature factor of looking for a NEW guild rather than looking for a guild.
That is, people that are in a guild will never give up what they have until they test the water of a NEW guild with an ALT. Thereby, you get an application from a character that is played less often and only after the main is pimped or expended from main activities. The ALT will only appear at odder hours or later in the patch when the new content is done.
Looking for Guild needs help and more capability to be useful, IMO. It definitely needs the ability to chat with the person if they are on an alt, even if it doesn't let you know the name of the alt.
Fawatam Dec 7th 2011 9:35AM
The finder itself technically works. It's that the issue remains that you are unable to invite someone who is not online on that particular character at that exact moment. On an alt? Tough Luck. Only on in the evenings when I am only on during the days? Too bad. Logged out two seconds before I checked the raid finder (It doesn't give you any notices, so you have to manually check constantly.) Try again next time.
Look, when I approve your application, I want the system to automatically notify you and invite you when you next log on. Why do I have to sit online 24 hours a day, looking at your application, checking every 15 seconds to see if you are online, just so I can actually invite an approved applicant that might never set food on that alt again?
Puntable Dec 7th 2011 9:56AM
There is a mod that helps. Guild Applicant Online Alert. When someone on your guild's finder comes online, You get a chat and audio message. No longer clicking names on the list has saved my sanity.
Mordok Dec 7th 2011 10:40AM
I oh so agree. When we try and find someone they can not be found. We have even taken to sending messages through the in game mail to no avail. We can not be on line 24/7 but it appears people who are looking for guilds do not understand that.
Common sense tells us that we do not blindly invite someone without talking to them a bit. So fellow players who are looking for a guild please remember, we want you, so make yourself available so the guild folk can talk to you. Please, at least answer the in game mail you get and let the guild know if your still interested.
LynMars Dec 7th 2011 10:53AM
Many can't read instructions in the guild finder to go to the website and follow our actual application process there. We require people to come RP with us for a time and read our website materials, as we're a RP guild with a specific theme; some characters (and players) simply will not fit. We don't allow DK's in the guild for IC reasons (though several of us have DK alts in related guilds and we'll RP with some DKs), or warlocks who IC summon demons (there are a few who use the demons as OOC).
It's in the brief space allowed by the Finder. It's in letters I send to people who use our finder before I remove them from it. I'm very clear that we don't recruit from it, we want to meet them in game to chat and RP, and see a detailed IC app on our forum before we do our IC interview (it's an organization, so kinda like a job interview, with less pressure, and not that many details required, and people love our IC interview process). It's a lot about patience and showing you can follow simple directions by just reading and comprehending what people try to explain. Much more likely to get along if you can listen to others in the group as we play together.
Even if someone doesn't have the best spelling or is that strong on their lore, if they can follow those instructions from the guild finder/my letters to the forum and work with us, I'll take them any day over someone who refuses to read our IC and OOC policies and is just asking for a ginvite. I also make it clear the guild itself isn't a raid guild; we run with a sister guild for instances and raiding, and we're only glvl 14. Keeps a lot of people looking for more progression than RP away.
roland Dec 8th 2011 8:10AM
We have the same problem. Not a single applicant seem to have been online after the applied to join the guild. I refuse to believe that every single one put in a application and then stop playing.
Also it seems that it is only our GM that can see the applications and respond to them, officers that are allowed to invite should also be able to see applications, maybe that will improve the chances to catch applicant online:-)
lexic0n Dec 7th 2011 9:30AM
I tried it on various alts. Seems like most of the guild adverts say the same thing. A little helpful to see if a guild a a raiding one or more casual, but that's about it.
And I've never received a single response to my requests. All alts I was trying to get in guilds got in the old-fashioned way - by waiting for someone to announce a guild that sounded like a good fit on Trade chat in one of the cities.
Asynchronous invites and accepts would be a good addition to how the system works right now.
Zoquara Dec 7th 2011 8:49AM
"And I've never received a single response to my requests."
Part of the problem is, as a guild leader/officer, there is NO announcement that you have a person looking to become a new member, short of downloading a mod, and then the mod gets danged annoying. It's easy to forget to go check the notices on a regular basis.
LynMars Dec 7th 2011 10:58AM
I've taken to trying to check our finder every couple days and sending letters to people--even though we say in the Finder that we don't recruit from it, go to our website for info. It's there to tell people we exist more than anything.
Borayar Dec 7th 2011 8:32AM
Recruitment and administration can be intensive, and it - as well as real life - does take its toll. It may be a good tool on fairly young realms, but I would expect that there is little activity on realms that are "seasoned" or "full".
Our own guild is down to about 8 "core diehards", who have raised our guild level to 24 over a long time - mostly through guild challenges and creations of additional characters to bolster out range of classes and races.
The launch of 4.3 has given us a fresh start on the last leg to guild level 25, but I doubt that we will add too many more members unless they happen to be real life friends and family.
PeeWee Dec 7th 2011 8:33AM
The spam in /trade goes on as usual, so I guess "not at all" is the most correct answer for most people/guilds.
gewalt Dec 7th 2011 8:36AM
I have successfully used it to find instant guild perks on low level toons rolled on a new server.
honestly, I cant think of anything else it would be good for besides that. but it works awesome for that.
Gniver Dec 7th 2011 8:43AM
It does not work that well.
I run a levelling guild, and as such my guild and the people who would like to join a levelling guild ought to get great mileage form LFG… but it mostly just amount to me clicking through the ten or so applicants to discover that they are not online. It is like a daily without reward or purpose. I bet those applicants are just as frustrated and don't understand why they are never invited.
Noyou Dec 7th 2011 11:03AM
Worked just fine for my guild. When Cata dropped we were 38 accounts and around 120 toons or so. Now we are 179 accounts and 375 toons. We have a lot of alts but we are social/leveling guild. We went from 1-10 in probably the first 2 months of Cata. About 5-6 weeks ago we hit lvl 25. The vast majority of our members have come from guild finder. Is it great? No. But we have some really cool people we never would have got if it wasn't for it. I used to get ticked that the people applying were never online. Then I realized that these people never play. So does it really matter? I would be nice if there was a notification, but then again the person applying could contact someone that is on too.
razion Dec 7th 2011 8:44AM
The Guild Finder just seems to me to be one of those things you set up and forget. Which is good, don't get me wrong--for people who don't like the prospect of actively searching for a guild, this is nothing short of a god-send. For those of us who prefer the old way of looking through the realm, we can still do so. I like how the Guild Finder isn't being forced on anyone. It's not a big point, but it's a nice one for the feature.
There is a certain drawback, to the feature, however. In my experience the system seems to only be used by either brand-new guilds (who just want people mostly to bring in repair money), or used by the one-tenth-of-a-realm-sized-guilds (where they recruit literally anyone at any opportunity). I kinda wish there was a way to skip over guilds that have literally everything selected, or maybe specify guild levels for what you're looking for (you can already tell a guild's level, currently, but you cannot specify what appears in the list). I think that sort of thing would be useful for people who actually want to find and invest in new guilds, or maybe find a guild that's been around for a long time already and seems stable.
tl;dr:
There's a lot that can be done for the system, but it seems to be doing its job well enough. Unfortunately, I don't think it's being used by as many guilds as it could be.
Zoquara Dec 7th 2011 8:46AM
Most of my guild's applicants come from recruiting through trade. We got a few through the guild finder the first few months, but most resented having to do an interview or anything. We're a level 25 guild (and have been for awhile), so we get a lot of people who just want to soak up the benefits, but we want active members, not ghosts in the corner. I'd say that it's "not working" as well.
paulmewis Dec 7th 2011 8:48AM
It would be a lot better if it announced in guild chat to the officers of the guild (or whoever has invite rights) that someone has requested membership of the guild. As an officer in my guild I check it weekly at most.
dezzieleloup Dec 7th 2011 9:00AM
I check my guild finder requests daily. If people submit a request with nothing but their name, i automatically delete. I weed through those that type something, and choose the ones that i think may be a good fit based on what they wrote. Then, I send them an in game mail to contact me in game to discuss our guild further. Usually 1 out of 10 does. If they've gone as far to type something about themselves, and contact me, they're worth talking to. From there, i probably take 1 of 5 into our guild. We usually end up with 1-3 new members a month from the guild finder. With a guild that maxes at 100 and has been on the server for more than 5 years, with most members being in the guild for at least 2 years...this is a good amount.
Sqtsquish Dec 7th 2011 9:13AM
Blizz dropped the ball with this tool- it was supposed to be that guilds were the best and most suggested way to play wow and that this tool was how you accomplished that. You shouldn't be nudged into playing with a guild for the 'guild perks', but for the people. Having a group of people to work together with and socialize with has always been the optimum way to enjoy any MMO.