Guilds?

I always find it difficult to get involved with guilds. I love the idea of being able to connect with all these players from around the world but every guild I join I just feel like an outsider trying too hard to be "cool".

Some of the best guilds I've been in usually have well structured rankings and several rules in place to prevent ninja-ing. They seemed to be pretty successful at it too.

One thing that really helps is interviewing guild applicants so you know what kind of people are joining your guild.

 

The guild I am in is called Thottbot Legends. Some of you who has played WoW for years may be familiar with the name "Thottbot". They were a highly popular website which ZAM Networks bought out a few years ago.

I was one of three active moderators at that website under a different alias. Over the years, the forum community got to know each other and eventually in July 2010, a guild was created on the Nordrassil server with a good handful of members. We were all tightly knit and active.

Unfortunately, some drama ensued in the ass end of 2011 to 2012 and over time with inactivity, the guild was stolen by a low ranking member that never spoke in chat and changed the name, then booted out everyone. Needless to say, when we found out, we were quite pissed. With that, we rebuilt the guild last year with the same name.

Since that fiasco, we've kept our guild as private as possible. The original founders and members who have been with us for a long time were made officers. We have ranks such as:

- Guild Master
- Officer
- Retired Officer
- Veteran
- Retired Veteran
- Member
- Initiate

We used to do active dungeons and old school raids, but today, we mainly just socialize.

Prior to Thottbot Legends, I was in two very good guilds since 2005: Malevolent (Nerzhul Horde) and Death (Thunderlord). The dynamics of them were near-perfect, but I had some personal issues during those months and years and the rest is history.

Anyway, I believe that the thing you have to realize is what you want your guild to be. Is it a Social guild, PvP, raiding, casual dungeon and questing or a mix of them?

I have been in a Social guild for one day that had hundreds of members. It was a nightmare in guild chat. I left because it wasn't right for me.

Keeping everyone happy? Make sure you have weekly events broken up between half days on separate days. Normally, we would have one in the weekend and one mid-week. This would cater to both working/post-sec adults and kids still in school.

Assign raid leaders, class leaders, coaches, etc. Promote people based on contributions instead of levels. Be fair. Don't let your girlfriend/boyfriend influence the way you lead your guild. I've seen this happen many times where the new boyfriend or girlfriend gets invited to the guild, screws up the reputation of leadership, create drama and cause the guild to collapse.

Most importantly: even if it's just a game, real people play the game. Social dynamics are important. Create an environment where people can have fun and not take things too seriously. Make sure to lead by example and indirectly teach people to keep their schedules and be responsible. Signing up for dungeons and not showing up twice in a row, means priority goes to someone else.

 

I played in 2 guilds where I was really active and we did a lot of quests and raids together. The first one really felt like a bunch of friends. We had a lot of fun playing. The second one was more serious and this is why I quit. They got angry when I couldn't invest enough time.

 

I was GM for several guilds, one of which almost downed Arthas in WOTLK as a server-first. Sadly, (as many guilds before it had suffered) drama destroyed and disbanded the guild nearly all in one night. Few of us remained to do 10 mans until we went casual and broke up for good. Many of the members quit as they got older as well, including me.