Officers' Quarters: When your guild won't recruit
by Scott Andrews 
Jan 2nd 2012 at 9:00AM
While WoW continues to bleed subs, guild leaders and officers everywhere are having a tough time recruiting quality players. In this environment, guilds sometimes find themselves in a permanent state of open recruitment. This week, however, we're looking at the opposite problem: a guild that is permanently closed to new players. A concerned officer wants to know what he can do to change this mentality.
Hello Scott,
I hope you had a great holiday season. I am an officer in a small guild of around sixty people... Of the sixty members many are alts or inactive with only a handful of active people (around ten). I came to the guild looking for an escape from the sheer number of people I had to deal with in my last two guilds that had 400+ members.
For a while everything worked just fine, but in the last few weeks some members have began making requests for recruitment. With the small amount of active players being on at odd hours some new members feel a bit alone and put off and end up leaving. We have a strong desire to make a 10 man raid team but don't have enough geared/leveled/interested people. We are just short of the perfect storm needed to raid with our current members so recruitment seems to be the only answer. The issue is that while I may be all for it, the other active players have issues with recruitment.
Hi, Clueless.Some feel that the guild will grow too large and it will lose the small family-like feeling it has now. Some people like the small size because they don't have to worry about many of the problems that some larger guilds do and don't want to risk spoiling their "utopian paradise". The guild leader says he wants to recruit, but he has a lot of real life obligations to fulfill and can't make the time commitment needed to recruit himself. I offered to take on that responsibility myself, but there always seems to be an excuse not to from other officers, or the GM himself.
The simple question everyone is going to ask is, "If you are unhappy then why not just leave?" The answer isn't as simple as the question itself. I have a strong loyalty to any guild I join. I don't leave just because I might be a little unhappy, or things might be a little hard. I feel that I am slightly obligated to stay based on my responsibility as an officer. I also feel that before I came along the guild didn't do anything other than dailies and after I drug the guild into dungeons with them kicking and screaming the whole way they discovered a new part of the game. I feel like I injected a little bit of life into a lethargic guild and if I were to leave I feel like it would cause the guild to collapse, the GM has told me the same exact thing. So I guess my question is how can I help the guild grow with all of these potential landmines? I like my guild and the friends I've made there, but I feel that there is so much potential that isn't going to be realized without some serious help.
Thanks,
Cluless
I hear about it all the time in these situations: Change frightens people, and people in a group will often form a herd mentality to oppose it if they can, even if it's good for them. Like anything else, a specific change can be good or bad depending on how it plays out. Either way, you have to respect the opinions of those involved. It's their guild as much as yours.
Assess your roster
The first step I would recommend is to approach your guild leader about removing inactive toons from the roster. The guild will look and feel a lot smaller to the remaining players. The hope here is that it's a reality check for people when they see how few toons are actually left.
It's a good idea to do this regardless. Inactive accounts can get hacked and cause problems down the road. Also, it's always helpful to have an accurate idea of how many active players your guild actually has.
Guilds that never recruit eventually stagnate, wither, and die as people leave or quit the game. Fresh blood keeps them going. Once you've culled the inactive toons, make your case then. People may be more receptive when they see only 20 or so names in the guild window.
Raiding options
The way I see it, you have two options here. One is to campaign for organized guild raiding with the players you currently have. You managed to get them to run dungeons, so it's not unthinkable that you could sway them to give raiding a shot. Round up some people who are on the fence and give the Raid Finder a try. Maybe experiencing some of the bosses in Dragon Soul will convince them.
Or, a low-pressure approach would be to simply organize a Raid Finder night and take anyone who shows up for it. Hope that enough interest eventually builds up to form a guild raiding team.
Another option would be to assess exactly how many players you would need to field a raid team. If that number is two or three, it doesn't seem unreasonable to add that many players to the roster. Perhaps if you quantify it like that, you'll gain support from the other officers and the guild at large.
Make it clear that anyone you recruit would be added to the roster on a trial basis only. If they aren't a good fit for the guild, you won't keep them around.
Sometimes leaving is best
In the end, the guild leader and the majority of the guild may remain staunchly opposed to recruitment, and organized raiding will not be possible. If that's what you have your heart set on, there is no shame in leaving to pursue your preferred playstyle. Sometimes it's better to walk away than to change the guild you're in too much to suit your own preferences.
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
gewalt Jan 2nd 2012 9:11AM
If you want to raid, go join a raiding guild. Trying to make a social guild raid cause a few people want to always results in discontent.
You don't have to leave your social guild. No raiding guild I am aware of requires you to relocate all your alts to their guild just to raid on your main.
Gendou Jan 2nd 2012 9:47AM
Just because you are recruiting doesn't mean you accept all applicants.
Be discriminating in who you accept. 'Recruiting' does not mean 'open enrollment.'
I've been a member and officer of a casual, social adult guild for over six years.
We are relatively small, and we have trouble fielding a ten-man raid team sometimes. For example, right now we aren't really raiding because one of our tanks left for SWTOR (damn you, Jor!).
We are also in a state of semi-permanent recruitment, since we are fairly small (250 or so members, with 30 or 40 actual active members). That having been said, we don't by any means accept every single applicant that applies on our website. Rather, we accept maybe one or two new applicants every six months or so.
Don't let the idea that your casual utopia will be flooded with scruffy newcomers discourage you from recruiting. Rather, look at it as a way to find like-minded individuals who would fit well with your unique guild atmosphere.
LynMars Jan 2nd 2012 9:54AM
If people are worried about the kinds of folks recruitment will bring in, have a tiered application process and a trial rank. Also see if friends and family of current guildmates are welcome first as a step in bringing in new blood.
In both guilds I belong to (one for RP/5mans mainly, the other casual organized raiding) there are app processes to weed people out. You hang out with us first; we like to RP with people, we also like them coming to our guild meetings and running instances with us, getting to know them. For the RP guild, we have an application to fill out on the website people can fill out after hanging out for a couple weeks; they often put in their app immediately, but we don't touch it until we've spent time with them in game.
If they have the patience and persistence to stick around, the RP group does an involved IC interview (an officer does a usually one-on-one, sometimes more than one officer or another full member appears) and sets the player at a trial rank; limited bank, etc access.
The more progression-ish guild has people hang around awhile, join the custom friends chat channel, and may give them the trial rank (which doesn't allow communication in the actual guild chat). They then do a "trial" which is "go on some task/quest/silly adventure and tell us about it". We freely give help, advice, etc to the recruit. They do their thing and get made full members.
In the RP group, after a trial period of a few weeks (depending on person), if they're active and fitting in with our OOC culture, we do more IC stuff to make them "full members" and promote from the trial rank.
If people can't follow our directions from the get-go, or figure out something as simple as "make a wowstead account and post to the app forum", that weeds out a surprising number of folks, as does telling them "we don't recruit from the guild finder directly, follow its instructions to our website". We don't get an excessive number of recruits with our various steps, but the folks who follow through generally -want- to be there and are of good quality. It lets us assess people before they, or we, make a commitment to the guild. We've only had issues twice and asked people to leave after giving them a chance and they still didn't work out.
Marsten Jan 2nd 2012 9:57AM
The GM in this instance is an idiot.
Guilds require an influx of members in order to survive, because they have a continual flow of people. Old members will leave, they will have RL crop up, they will be unable to dedicate time to gaming, and so on. For those reasons, a guild needs a steady influx of new members in order to simply survive.
I used to be a captain in a similar guild, a small one on Darkmoon Faire EU. There was really no purpose in me being a captain, because the GM didn't bother listening to any advise or suggestions that any of the captains had, at all.
One of these was her insistance on not recruiting members. Eventually she conceded that, after losing almost half the guild's active members due to simple atrophy over the course of half a year, she would need to bring some in. Unfortunately she became rather obsessed with the idea of checking out each applicant - our guildfinder post directed people to a website, where they had to fill out an application, following which there was an interview, and then a series of tests... In short, far too many hoops for any who could simply find another guild elsewhere.
Then there was her insistance that the guild should be raid-active. This was a roleplay guild, full of people who were mostly underprepped, and who made some very simple mistakes consistantly. They weren't raiding material, I could see that clearly. I suggested that if she wanted to raid, maybe she should open the applications to players who specialise in raiding. A simple and logical enough idea, but one that she wouldn't do at all because of her insisting that it was a 'roleplay guild'. Which made me ask "if it's a roleplay guild, why are you getting hung up about trying to raid?"
I left that guild round about March. I checked up on them while writing this, found out that they dissolved in November.
So yeah, in short, getting new members is vital to a guild that wants to last. If your GM doesn't understand that, he's an idiot.
Ktekwah Jan 2nd 2012 11:40AM
Just to sate my curiosity, was it horde or alliance? Anyway. On topic, getting a social guild to actually raid is a nightmare. And even if you somehow get a raidteam you will be constantly troubled with attendance and motivation. Unmotivated players are lazy players, lazy players are bad players, bad players don't kill things, players that don't kill things become unmotivated and so on. It's a vicious circle.
LynMars Jan 2nd 2012 2:54PM
We actually have similar "hoops" to joining our guild (described in my own post above), and it's never been a problem for finding new members, either by word of mouth, forum posting, or guild finder. But we also stick to the idea that we are primarily a small casual RP guild with a specific IC concept--that is a big chunk of where it sounds your old GL went wrong, she didn't know what she really wanted to do (had similar issues with someone like that in BC, she changed the guild's concept weekly for a month with no discussion or input from anyone).
We do have some folks learning to dungeon and raid, who then work with our sister guild to do so if they have the time and inclination. We don't grow fast, but we keep pretty steady on long term members and new blood--it depends on their reason for being there and wanting to join to begin with. If they like the people and the RP, for instance, the hoops aren't so bad; honestly, they're mostly reading comprehension and waiting for real life schedules to align.
Gamelover65 Jan 2nd 2012 3:17PM
This kind of sounds like a guild I was in a few years ago...never wanted to pug or recruit...not really sure what they were afraid of....possibly the unknown? Elitist people? Bad players? Two sides to every story but honestly this guild ran itself into the ground unfortunately to close minded greedy officers. And what's sadder is that the officers did not learn one thing (except to be more close minded and overly cautious). Blamed others and people that left for their fall even though they never knew why various people left...there was just a lot of assuming unfortunately...but that happens with the close minded a lot :/
Gamelover65 Jan 2nd 2012 3:21PM
Actually sounds like something that has happened to a lot of guilds on a lot of servers....running a guild takes work!!!
danawhitaker Jan 2nd 2012 11:34AM
I fully disagree with the recommendation to remove inactive players from the roster. It's disconcerting to returning players to find they've been removed from a guild. They don't need a reminder of how small the guild has become, they already seem to be aware of it and simply don't care. As a guild member in that position, I'd find booting inactive members more offensive than recruiting.
That being said, I'd recommend that you start running the Tier 11 10-man raids. Set up a time, see who shows up, then use trade chat to fill the gaps that you have. Then, approach the people who join your group for the night about possibly joining your guild. Not everyone who runs with you will be a fit, but some of the people may very well be. We gained some new members in this manner after Cataclysm, and it's worked out fairly well.
As other comments have said, recruiting doesn't have to mean immediately inviting people to be in the guild. Tiered applications and trial memberships can be a good way to weed out people who really just aren't right. It's not the method I personally choose. I usually just leave people on the lowest guild rank for a while and see what develops.
Really though, if I were in that position, and it weren't a guild I'd helped found, I'd probably be looking for a guild more suited to what I wanted to do. You're not obligated to stay with them, it seems that the members don't really care about recruiting enough people to form a raid team, and even if they give in to that, we all know that people come and go and schedules change and you'll be constantly trying to find new people. Your efforts may actually backfire on you and be seen as an attempt to usurp control from the GM, which is a dangerous position to be in, especially in a guild that seems to be fairly close-knit.
Brett Porter Jan 2nd 2012 11:57AM
Any particular reason you feel offended about booting inactive members? I've seen lots of guilds, both large and small, institute a policy of booting after 3-6 months of inactivity.
You're always welcome to join back up, but if someone who is actively out of the game (and possibly not coming back) I'm not sure what the issue or harm is of booting them. At the very least, there should be an "inactive" ranking where they don't have access to the guild bank to alleviate any concerns about hacking.
Kolyarut Jan 2nd 2012 12:27PM
On a slightly mercenary note, with Mists of Pandaria and the possibility of new guild levels approaching, booting inactive members who may be waiting for the expansion before they return might be unwise, especially for smaller guilds who're less likely to hit the guild XP cap every day.
I used to boot the inactives back when I guild led in BC, but the guild I'm in these days just has a special rank for them so we don't look at them on the guild roster and wonder where they've gone, and I think I'd be more inclined to run things that way these days, guild rep or no guild rep. Coming back from a break of a few months to find that the nice people you used to know wanted rid of you can't be a nice feeling.
raingod Jan 2nd 2012 1:22PM
That makes no sense at all; why wouldn't you kick inactive members? What possible good is an inflated roster number going to serve?
Kolyarut Jan 2nd 2012 1:44PM
"That makes no sense at all; why wouldn't you kick inactive members? What possible good is an inflated roster number going to serve?"
They might come back, and be active members again - they're far less likely to want to rejoin you if you've told them to GTFO with a /gkick.
Your turn, barring a guild that's hit the member cap, what possible good is kicking them out going to serve?
LynMars Jan 2nd 2012 2:48PM
We have in our policies that we kick because a guild thrives on activity, and with the unfortunate reality of inactive accounts and hackers, it's a precaution to minimize damage. We let people back in (and they're likely to auto-rejoin our chat channel in most cases, or manually join out of habit) and ask for a re-invite.
If people are aware of the policy and the reasons it exists from the get-go, there's nothing disconcerting about it; at most, it's temporarily inconvenient. Also, they lose nothing in the way of rep or other perks so long as they don't join another guild before rejoining the original one.
danawhitaker Jan 2nd 2012 3:40PM
Firstly, from a hacking standpoint, I'm not concerned about it because I have everything beyond the first two ranks restricted by authenticator. People cannot be promoted beyond Initiate without one, and all an initiate can do in my guild is 10g of repair a day and see the bank contents (but not access them). When people get beyond a certain point of inactivity, I demote them below the initiate level to inactive, which has access to nothing but guild chat anyway.
Secondly, I don't consider my guild a business. The core of the guild is made up of a group of people who've known each other for ten years, and most of the people we invite are people who revolve in our various circles both in and out of game. I'm not trying to pad the numbers, but when people leave the game, I feel a certain amount of camaraderie with them, and I see no reason in kicking people I consider to be my friends from the guild. I communicate with many of them out of game through other channels, e-mail, AIM, or Facebook.
And yes, while we all know that as long as you rejoin the guild you left you won't lose any ranks or perks unless you joined another guild in the interim, maybe the average player doesn't realize that, and will simply go join another guild when they realize they've been kicked out of the one they were in. I'd rather not make it harder on someone coming back to the game after a hiatus to get their bearings. I took a break for a period of a little over a year during BC and early Wrath and coming back to everything being new was bad enough without having to worry about why I wasn't in a guild, trying to find someone online from my guild to reinvite me, etc.
Looking at my guild roster is something like looking at a yearbook. It's fun to look back and see the people who used to be around a lot, even if they aren't there anymore. It's a little snapshot of guild history. To each their own.
KPB Jan 2nd 2012 11:54AM
I'm surprised that the first thing recommended wasn't to clearly define what recruiting means. I'm sure that going out and shouting in trade chat and inviting anyone who is interested wouldn't fit the guild culture at all so getting a definition of what it means to recruit is going to be critical to getting people to buy into it.
I'd agree that kicking anyone who is inactive may be a bit extreme in a small social guild but what you can do is create a new lower rank that has no access to the guild bank, guild repairs etc and demote all the inactives to that rank. It still allows you to see how many active people you have and it's simple to up someones rank if they do start playing again but you don't have any major risk from the account being hacked.
Gimmlette Jan 2nd 2012 12:08PM
@danawhitaker "I fully disagree with the recommendation to remove inactive players from the roster. It's disconcerting to returning players to find they've been removed from a guild. They don't need a reminder of how small the guild has become, they already seem to be aware of it and simply don't care. As a guild member in that position, I'd find booting inactive members more offensive than recruiting."
You're not doing anyone any good by keeping inactive members in a guild. Every 6-7 months, my membership officer and I go through the list. If you have not been on in that amount of time and have not communicated to anyone, either me or an officer, about your play status, you're gone. Names, just for the sake of numbers, do not reflect well on your guild. Who wants to join a guild where there are names that haven't been played in months and no one knows if those people are coming back. There are rare cases where real life prevents someone from letting people know someone isn't playing but will be back. I have had, in 4 years, 3 people come back after 9 months and being booted.
Announce to the guild there will be a membership purge and if you know any of the people who have not logged on in 6-7 months, please contact them. Most of those who haven't logged on in 6-7 months aren't coming back. Get inactive people out of the guild. You know, then, how many toons you have to work with.
The OP doesn't say if his guild is raiding any content. Don't go into current content. Run something else, like, say Naxx. Maybe people are afraid of raiding. It comes with a lot of expectations, both real and imagined. You can easily do Naxx 10-man with 5 people. See how people like it. You said you dragged them kicking and screaming into 5-mans. It's possible they are scared of the raid environment. Doing something easier will help you judge whether these people can handle what's needed in a raid.
Get yourself into the LFR. While you are working within your guild to expand horizons, you should be taking advantage of what Blizzard offers you. Mind you, think about whether you are ready for the raid leadership position because that's what you're setting yourself up for.
Once you see how people handle the raiding atmosphere, you'll know whether raiding is even an option for your guild. Maybe you and those who want to raid will have to use the LFR. That's not a bad option for you if you want to stay within your guild. Answer any calls in Trade or General chat for people to run something that's forming. It will satisfy your desire to raid while staying within your guild.
Lastly, I think this is a very big point. Social guilds generally don't raid. Raiding guilds can act socially. There is a difference. If the people in the guild would rather log on to run around with their in-game friends, you have a social guild and getting them to actively raid is going to be nearly impossible. The requirements of raiding are not what these people want.
Until you can figure out if current members can and want to raid, I wouldn't look at recruiting. You'll only bring people into an unsure situation and no one wants that.
Harvoc Jan 2nd 2012 12:33PM
My small raiding guild is in a state of perpetual recruitment for our 10-man raiding team. We currently have 136 guild members with about 62 85s. The roster changes with each raid as it's usually based on attendance and performance. If there are 10 people on when the raid starts, those 10 people will be on the team. If there are more than 10 on when the raid starts, the roster is chosen based on each person's performance in previous raids as well as raid composition. Currently, the guild is 6/8 10N, which is pretty good considering that the server is a pretty small one (the top ranked guild is 1/8 10H) and the guild only started a couple of months ago.
Harvoc Jan 2nd 2012 12:38PM
As for booting inactive members, my previous guild booted people after a month of inactivity but since it was a large, social guild, there wasn't a problem with it feeling small. I don't believe that my current guild kicks people for inactivity but since I've only been in it for about a month, I wouldn't know.
araquen Jan 2nd 2012 12:52PM
Your GM needs to come to terms with his guild if he wants this guild to survive.
No guild should not have active recruitment. I have FOUR recruiters, and my guild is semi-casual raiding/community style guild. We're not pumping in people willy-nilly though. Recruitment is ESSENTIAL for a guild's survival - whether or not you are spamming trade or using word-of-mouth.
HOWEVER, you cannot even begin to recruit until your GM and all of the officers are of one accord on what, exactly, your guild is and be willing to actively support that vision - and I'm not seeing that in the example. If you try to recruit now, without clearly defining who you are as a guild with languid officers and an MIA GM, all you are going to do is create drama.
In your case, I find the GM and other officers' attitudes worrisome. it sounds to me like they have their little clique, with the guild being their personal playground, and your efforts to breathe new life into the guild disrupts their complacent little world.
To be honest, you will not be able to make someone else's guild into a guild YOU envision. You have two choices - find a guild who shares your vision OR start your own guild and find good people to help you support your vision. From personal experience I can tell you that being the sole voice for change with every other officer insisting on maintaining the status quo does not end well. You cannot force them to change. And if you end up leaving, then your GM has no one to blame but himself for not supporting your efforts to help reinvigorate your guild.
If you really want to make it work, then I suggest sitting down with the GM and hammering out your vision and mission statements. Define what your guild IS (try not to speak to negatives, as that is off-putting) and formulate your recruitment pitch. Then make sure your officers all agree to this vision. If you can't get through this part, then all you'll be doing is bringing people into your guild who will be very confused and disappointed and will end up leaving.