Officers' Quarters: When your guild won't recruit

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-02-2012 @ 9:57AM

Marsten said...

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.

1-02-2012 @ 11:40AM

Ktekwah said...

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.

1-02-2012 @ 2:54PM

LynMars said...

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.

1-02-2012 @ 3:17PM

Gamelover65 said...

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 :/

1-02-2012 @ 3:21PM

Gamelover65 said...

Actually sounds like something that has happened to a lot of guilds on a lot of servers....running a guild takes work!!!

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