Finding the Right Guild for You! Expanded

I was asked on the WoW forums to expand my "Finding the Right Guild for You!" guide. So I have added a good bit to it. I hope you enjoy the expansion.

I get asked a lot on how you find the right guild for you. Getting in the right guild is important to your enjoyment of the game as well as the stability of the guild. If you get into a hardcore raiding guild and you can only play 3 hours a week, you are not going to be having much fun with that guild and at the same time, they are not going to be adding a “valuable” member to their team to obtain their goals and they will either kick you or you will quit and move on. Either way, a member leaving a guild makes ripples that could have been avoided. In a guild with good communication and procedures, these ripples will just die off and everyone will go on. In an unstable guild, the ripples of someone leaving can cause the entire guild to collapse. So you should be picky to make sure that you join a guild that will be fun for you, AND the guild should be picky so they will find the right people who can contribute to their goals as a guild and become a fully productive member. You should apply for a guild just like you would a job. Below you will find the steps I suggest using to find the right guild for you!

Tauren, Know Thyself!

The key to finding the right guild for you is to know what kind of player you are and what you are wanting from the game. What goals do you want to accomplish and how do you want to get it done? Do you want to have a big group of friends to chat with? What values do you hold dear? How much time will you be playing per night, week, and month? The answers to these type questions are your compass to finding the best guild to fit your needs. Doing your homework: Get out a piece of paper and a pencil or bring up a nice clean MS Word document and write these words down the side of your paper and give yourself enough room to write beside and below them: Time, Goals & Play Style, Social, and Values. Leave the most space for values.

• Time: Quite simply, how much time per night and week are you willing to spend online? Also, factor in what times you normally play. Get a general idea of when you are online normally and how long you stay on. Write this schedule beside TIME on your sheet of paper.
• Goals & Play Style: Do you consider yourself someone who enjoys seeing the world, questing, and enjoying a good instance run with friends? Perhaps you are someone who is looking for the best gear in the game and willing to pay top gold for it if you can’t get it yourself? Or maybe the challenge of killing one of the best known villains in Warcraft history? Write down a list of things you want to get done this week in game beside Goals and Play Style. Next to each item, write down what you need to go to get those done.
• Social: At the core of it all MMOs are about the people. If not, you would be looking for a guild now would you! How do you want to interact with those around you? Do you enjoy playing in character and joining with other players to create storylines for your characters as you play? Do you enjoy cutting up with a group of adults on a voice chat server? Do you consider yourself a soldier in the war again the evil out there and like giving and taking orders to vanquish the foe? Do you enjoy helping those less experienced as you? Beside SOCIAL on your paper, think about your real life friends and how you interact. This is your natural social impulses and will probably be a good guide on how you want to belong in a social group such as a guild. Also put down what you think you would like in a social environment online.
• Values: This may be the easiest or hardest part of your homework and should take a little bit of time. Think about what guidelines you live your life by and start to write them down next to VALUES. Within this section think of things like cussing, friends and family first, need vs. greed, learning from your mistakes, teamwork, forgiveness, honoring your word, and any other generalization that you think of that may come up in real life as well as in game.

Now that you have a completed “Self Assessment” set it to the side and let’s go looking for guilds!

O Guild, Guild! Wherefore art thou Guild?
You now have a good view of what you are like and need, now to find some guilds. No matter what server you are on, save for the few “dead” servers, you will have an abundance of choices for guilds to pick from. But how do you track them down? There are several ways to begin your search, so let’s cover a few of the ones available.

• Realm Forum: For each realm, Blizzard has created a realm forum. You can find a list of all of them here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/child-forum.html?forumId=11119&sid=1. Many guilds will post that they are recruiting in the realm forums and most actually have a “Guild List” that some great person has taken the time to create and hopefully maintain. You might even find more information than you know what to do with! Such as on “Sisters of Elune” there is even a list of guild progression for raids, a list of role playing guilds, and more! Good guild recruiters should also be looking at these forums on a regular basis, so you can also post that you are looking for a guild and see what responses you get.
• Guild Recruiting Channel: In the major cities, there is a Guild Recruitment channel that players can join to promote their guild and look for new guilds. If you are unguilded and enter a major city, the chat channel should be added to your options automatically. If not you can go into your chat options and turn it on. Now you can use that channel to listen to the guild recruiting messages and to let people know you are looking for a guild. If you get instant invites, decline them. If you get instant invites, decline them. If they are willing to invite people without even asking a single question about you then they will be doing this for everyone. That is not a good thing. The quest here is to find the right guild, not the quickest inviting. I can guarantee you that the two are never the same.
• Using the Armory: Each member of a guild will have the guild name displayed under their name. Many of these you will cross on a normal basis. Remember these names and head to the armory(http://www.wowarmory.com/) to check out the guild. You can check how many members they have and what gear they have, which will let you know if they are raiders or not. You can also see if their members are in the arena and enjoy PVP. The armory can tell you a lot about a guild.

Taking a Tour and Seeing the Sites
Now you have some guild names that you would like to look at and see if they fit your needs listed on your personal assessment. My first stop on a quest for a new guild is that guild’s website. If you looked up the guild on the realm forums, there is a good chance the site was listed. If not, you can do a Google search for that guild, but make sure that you are looking for the guild on the right server. My personal method is to simply ask. Do a /who on that guild and see who is online. While you are looking at the /who, notice how many people are online. If you are trying to find a raiding guild and there are only 2 people online during your normal play time, you know that guild will not work for you. Assuming the number of online people is acceptable, you can ask any of those members if their guild has a website. If they do not know, ask for the name of one of their online officers and ask that officer.

If per chance the guild does not have a website, you can make a personal choice if you want to continue investigating them or not. My reasons for not joining a guild without a website are that 1) the guild mission, values, and rules are not posted for everyone to see. This can lead to infighting and arguments over things that were simply not posted on a website. Also, it leads to the guild leader making judgments on the fly which may or may not be fair to all involved. 2) No forums or calendar to organize the guild and keep communication flowing 3) Lack of the guild leadership putting time into the guild to make something that people can use and enjoy. It is not a money thing; there are a lot of free guild portals out there that can be used.

Once you get to the guild website, see if it is a “free site” or an actual website hosted by the guild. Now, do not take away from the free sites; they are good sites, but if you find a guild that hosts their own site and domain, then you know they are invested in the guild at least a little financially. Most of the guilds that will spend the money on hosting and domains are determined at sticking around a bit longer than those that don’t. There are guilds that are using free sites that are just as dedicated, so don’t get me wrong, but those that do spend their own money are more likely to fight it out and be dedicated to the guild than to just get frustrated and leave the guild.

Now past the URL and the general look of the site, read it all! The main things to look for are:
Guild Mission: Where are the leaders taking this guild? Grab your self assessment. Does their mission match up with your goals? If they are a top end raiding guild, is that something you listed in your goals and play style? If you listed “Ripping the Twin Warglaives of Azzinoth out of Illidan’s cold, dead hands” and they listed “Petting Bunnies” then you have a slight reason for concern.

• Guild Values: Again on your sheet, look at the things you value and the things they do. If you listed “a nice family guild that welcomes players of all ages” and they list “An adults only guild that role plays things that should not be allowed in decent society”(look for the news post if you missed it…funny but sad story) then you have a conflict of interest and should move on.
• Time Requirements: Now look to see what, if any, the guild requires of its member’s time. Check your list under TIME and make sure these two matches up. If not, move on. Unfortunately if they raid at 6:00pm each night, and you cannot get online till the kids are in bed and asleep at 9:00pm, then you are not a good fit for this guild and they are not a good fit for you. You can also use the guild calendar, if they have one, to see when they are online and playing.
• Membership Requirements: Some guilds have level and gear requirements as well as a mandatory time requirement, you should know these and already meet them if you are going to consider this guild home.
• Forums: Most guilds will have a lot of their forum sections locked down so only members can read the build of it, but that is OK. Read everything you can about them on the forums. Pay attention to how they treat each other and the tone they use. Are they friendly? Do they role play on the forums? Do they just list the strategies to defeat raid bosses? Use all of these facts to get a picture of what this guild is about.
• Raid Progression: Be sure to pick a guild that is close to where you are in raid progression. If you are only up to fighting Onyxia in your raid career, then joining a guild that is battling Illidan is probably not a good match for you or them. They will be needing someone with better gear and raid tactics and you will be needing a guild to get you gear to get up to their level. Either way, it is probably not the best choice in guilds.

If you need more information after your first visit to the website, you can either catch a member in game or ask on their forums. I will intentionally ask a different person than I originally talked to in game about their site and ask the questions I have. This will help to make sure that others in the guild are not undesirables and I just happen to get the one nice guy he first time.

Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, GUILD!
Now that you have the information and weighted various guilds to find the one that best fits you, apply to only one guild. DO NOT apply to multiple guilds. It will solve hassles and not waste everyone’s time if you ally to 3 guilds and then have to tell two of them to never mind….good luck getting in if you even need to apply again!

First!!!!! Look over all there information on their site that deals with recruitment. Be sure to READ AND FOLLOW all the instructions listed before you ever start typing your application. In one guild I ran we had an issue with people following simple instructions. So in the recruitment post I listed all the normal items you would expect to see: What other guilds have you been in, what gear do you have, what instance keys do you have, and so forth. I was VERY detailed in the questions. At the very end I wrote, “Please ignore all of the above information. To secure an interview for the guild, please send me a private tell via our forums and let me know your favorite kind of food.” You would be amazed at how many people went into full detail about everything about their character and did not bother to actually read the instructions and apply correctly.

On my application I am very specific about what I want and how I think the guild matches my views based on the information on their website. Use as many examples as possible. If your new guild lists values such as teamwork and communication, then you should put in there examples of where you have worked as a team and had good communication. Do this same thing with as many items as you can to give yourself the best chance of being accepted.

And one final point to remember: the more stringent and hoops you have to jump through to join the guild can be a hassle, but it is protecting the guild from inviting the wrong people. Once you are in the guild, this will protect you as well from having to deal with someone that you would not enjoy. So be patient and jump through the hoops. It will help in the end!

What Kind of Leader am I?

Along with writing your guild mission, you need to consider what type of leader you are capable of becoming; and this takes a HUGE deal of honesty with yourself. This is a tough thing for many of us to do. Are you able to lay down the law, kick members without mercy, remove people from raids and not worry about their feelings? Are you sensitive to others feelings and want to be friends with everyone?

Knowing how you deal and react to people should also determine the kind of guild you wish to run. Let’s look at the first set of factors, that you are a rules lawyer and not afraid to use the beating cane. With this type of leadership, you are well on the path of becoming a hardcore raid guild leader. As a raiding leader, you will need to make judgments on what is best for the guild and not what is best for the member. For example, your main tank is not holding agro the way he should and your priests are dying because of it. Your job is not to hand hold the warrior and let him practice his agro maintenance while being the main tank for the guild. You job is to yank him out of that position and replace him with a tank that can handle the job at hand and progress the guild through the instance. Now you can be a good guy and work with the “bad” tank during the off hours that you are not raiding, but at no time should the one lacking raider cause the guild to stall. If the original tank has issues with you removing her/him from that role, then you need to quickly and firmly let him know that you will discuss it after the raid and to drop it for now because your decision is final. If he can’t drop it and it spills to guild chat, then you get out the kicking boots and drop kick him back to the guild recruitment channel.

Think you can be that tough as nails, no nonsense, guild first, refer to the guild first rule if you have questions, type of leader? If so then you might make a good raiding guild leader. If you cannot do it and you know that, then do not start a guild with the mission to become a big raiding guild. You will not be able to handle it! It really is that simple. You may not make any friends, but you guild may become one of the best geared, most feared guilds on your server.

However if you enjoy making friends and having fun just talking to people and handing out in game, then you are cut out to be a casual guild leader. These guilds are built around leveling and having a good time with each other instead of worrying about boss kills and having the best loot available. While many consider this a “fun” guild, it will also be one of high turnover. As people reach the upper levels, many do begin to seek that next level of advancement and want to start participating in the end game. So they will move on to one of the raiding guilds that fits their style and current goals. You will need to be ready for this because it will happen. Do not take it personally, because it is not; they are simply ready to move on and need a guild that is hitting those final instances to do it. Instead, look at it as a badge of honor that your guild has helped that person reach their personal goals of becoming a raider and challenging the end game. Without your guild, it might have taken them much longer if they go there at all.

There are more types of guilds of course, such as the casual raiding guild, a hybrid of the two mentioned above. This is a very hard guild to lead simply because you have to lay down the beating cane from time to time and yet be nice about it while trying to still move forward as a guild in instance progression while being sensitive to people’s time restraints that come with a casual guild. Yeah, it can be very tough and slow going, but it can be done. Again, you will lose those that want more raiding, but keep others that want to raid but do not have the time that the big raiding guilds require.

There are also role playing guilds, twink guilds that want to dominate the battlegrounds at their level no matter what the cost, and so forth. Each comes with their own challenges, limits, and especially rewards. You just need to know your leadership style to best suit your guild needs.

Searching for the Right Guild

I get asked a lot about finding a guild and what guild leaders look for on applications. Getting in the right guild is important to your enjoyment of the game as well as the stability of the guild. If you get into a hardcore raiding guild and you can only play 3 hours a week, you are not going to be having much fun with that guild and at the same time, they are not going to be adding a “valuable” member to their team to obtain their goals and they will either kick you or you will quit and move on. Either way, a member leaving a guild makes ripples that could have been avoided. In a guild with good communication and procedures, these ripples will just die off and everyone will go on. In an unstable guild, the ripples of someone leaving can cause the entire guild to collapse. So you should be picky to make sure that you join a guild that will be fun for you, AND the guild should be picky so they will find the right people who can contribute to their goals as a guild and become a fully productive member.

You should apply for a guild just like you would a job. Do your research and find a good guild that fits with your values and goals in game. Most realm forums will have a list of guilds that you can go through and look at. I found a guild just by going into guild recruitment and saying “Raiding Level 70 holy priest looking for a guild”. I had quite a few people whisper me. Most said something along the lines of “We need a priest! We would love to have you! Want an invite?”, a few of the less picky types just sent me guild invites straight out, which got their guild put on my “No Way!” list. The smart ones responded one of two ways:

1. “What are you looking for in a guild?”/”Tell me more about yourself” or,
2. They began to tell me about the guild and their goals and values.

These are the only two answers that would get my interest. I would talk to the person for a good bit, ask any questions, ask them their position in the guild, inquire about their recruitment process, go back and forth, and finally ask for their website.

The reason I would instantly brush off the others is because if they were willing to recruit me based off of the fact that I am a raider and a 70 priest, then they are not overly picky and will be doing that with other people as well. One of my goals is not to be in a guild that self destructs within a month of joining, and random recruiting is a good way to accomplish that.

If I had a good conversation with the person, I would then travel to their website and check it out. My main purpose is to see the following:

• Guild Mission: Does it match your own? Do you want to go where they are leading this guild?
• Guild Values: Do they conduct themselves with the same values that you do? Do they allow cussing? What are their loot rules and if they have the current points posted I look at them and make sure that the spread is nice and not just a core group running raids and a few extras when needed. Do they allow minors in the guild? and so forth.
• Guild Forums: If you can view their forums, get in there and look around. See how they treat and speak to each other.
• Guild Rules/Charter: Check out if they have rules that you can appreciate or are they something that you are going to have issue with.
• Raid Progression: If you are looking for a raiding guild, make sure they are running instances that you are geared for and want to run. If you are used to raiding Illidan, and join a Kara guild, you might be bored. And the other way as well, if you are a Kara player and join a Black Temple guild, you may find it hard to get help to get you up to their level.

If you need more information after your first visit to the website, you can either catch a member in game or ask on their forums. I will intentionally ask a different person than I originally talked to in game about their site and ask the questions I have. This will help to make sure that others in the guild are not undesirables and I just happen to get the one nice guy he first time.

Now that I have my information, I apply to only one guild, the one that fits me best. DO NOT apply to multiple guilds. It will solve hassles and not waste everyone’s time if you ally to 3 guilds and then have to tell two of them to never mind….good luck getting in if you even need to apply again!

On my application I am very specific about what I want and how I think the guild matches my views based on the information on their website. Use as many examples as possible.

And one final point to remember: the more stringent and hoops you have to jump through to join the guild can be a hassle, but it is protecting the guild from inviting the wrong people. Once you are in the guild, this will protect you as well from having to deal with someone that you would not enjoy. So be patient and jump through the hoops. It will help in the end!

So Here We Are…Now Where Are We Going?

So, you want to create and run a guild. Good for you! You have realized the time it takes and you have the dedication….and now what do you do? Start planning! That’s right, get out the pencil and paper or a nice clean Word document and get ready to plan your guild. I can hear you now “Wait isn’t the first thing I do is go to get a guild charter?” and I say no! Let’s use this example:

You ran out, got your guild charter. You head into the center of town and proclaim that you are a new guild and looking for members. When people ask about your guild you state that you are a mature guild who is looking for players that are interested in have fun and helping each other. You have had some people drop and some people join up and, just for the example; you are still at 10 members. And you think you are doing pretty well on the recruiting. Then one of your members says he has to go because his mother is telling him it is dinner time. Another member messages you and says “I thought you said this was a mature guild. Why is this kid in here with us?” At the same time your new rogue pops up in guild chat and asks if anyone would like to join him in an arena team. The few responses he gets is that everyone is in an instance or already on arena teams and can’t join him. But he is invited to join the hunter and shaman in an instance. Another member pops up and asked why you are not running Karazhan since we do have enough people online at the moment. People start going back and forth. One guy will only speak in some crazy form of Shakespearian jargon. A couple of people leave over the debate of Raiding vs. Casual and your numbers already start to dwindle and the rest that stay just go to do their own thing.

Not a good start for a guild.

Little did you know that all 10 people liked your idea of a mature fun guild of helpful people, but no one stopped to think about what that means.

Is raiding fun? Is PvP fun? Are carebear instance crawls fun? And are we saying that the person has to act mature or be of a certain age?

Little did you know that while all 10 of you really wanted a mature fun guild this is how it really broke down:

• 1 Role Player wanted a good group of friends that would have fun with him talking in character and exploring the world in linen armor because his character had a poor family growing up.
• 2 PvPers were looking for a guild to form pre-mades and tear up the battle groups.
• 1 PvPer, who is a 14 year old girl, was looking for arena teams to get new gear
• 4 Raiders have fun in raids and wanted an adults only group so they could get on a voice chat server and cuss up a storm while seeing the WoW endgame
• 2 people, a husband and wife team, wanted to run 5- man instances after work for a couple of hours after the kids went to sleep and before bed.

You have 10 people who are looking for completely different things that they call “fun” in World of Warcraft as well as a maturity issue thrown in.

Planning is the key to success to a guild and, it all starts with the reason you are here. You are creating a new guild so, what do you want to accomplish with it? Do you want it to be a big raiding guild and slowly work its way to the last boss of the last dungeon? Do you want to be the leader of the guild that is the very first to down a new boss? Do you want to PvP together? Do you just want to gather a group of friends to run instances? Do you want to role play?

This is a guild’s mission. This is what we are going to do! Many people know how to write a mission statement, but few know how to write an effective one. In the example above “To be a mature, friendly guild that helps each other” is a complete mission statement. However, does it really say anything at all? Is mature a set age or the way a person carries themselves online? What is the guild members helping each other do? Who are you friendly to? Before you say everyone, are you sure? If the horde is attacking Stormwind, do you just let them go because it is the friendly thing to do? If you do let him go, are you being friendly to the rest of the Alliance that can’t turn in quests because he killed the questgiver?

I am considering playing Age of Conan and am very interested in a Clan in the game. I am thinking about making a guild of barbarian lead by a bear shaman. The way I envision it is a group of very friendly players on TeamSpeak and in the forums, but in game all outsiders to our clan are viewed with mistrust and borderline hatred. Yes we will kill you when you turn your back, we will raid your city, and we will destroy you in any way possible for both our own safety and the continuing growth of our purses.

With that, how do you say we are friendly…but not really if you are not one of us? You would have to explain, in your mission, exactly what you are going, what you are trying to do and how you are going to do it. Think about the terms you use and how they could be misinterpreted. This will not only save you the headache of explaining the guild mission to people but also will bring likeminded people to you at the same time it is a shield for those that do not want the same thing.

With your goal firmly in place, you need to also include how you are going to get there. Say you want to do a lot of world firsts, you might include something in the area of “Our goal is to be the first in the world to accomplish the challenges that the developers have placed in front of us. To do this we will be raiding 4 nights a week and assisting each other 2 nights a week to farm ingredients for our consumables and to pay for repairs. Through this we will become a close team, knowing each other’s play styles and personalities that is able to accomplish what no one else yet has!”

This statement tells people where you are going and if they sign on the dotted line, what they are in for. A casual sees this and says “I don’t have time for all that; this is not the guild for me”. That not only saves her time from applying, but also saves you time to do what you love instead of reading an application you know will not cut the mustard anyhow.

So in conclusion, think about what you want and how you want to get it. Put that down in a very concise mission with not only your goal, but the way you will accomplish it. This will bring the right people to apply and make your guild much more stable that just filling it with warm bodies that have completely different ideas.

Till then, guild strong!

Fending off the Monkeys from Your Banana Supply

Let me start this with the simple fact that people do not understand: You have to have an abundance of time to run a guild. Period, the end, game over. And yes I am dead serious! If there were a Guilds for Dummies book, step one would be to make sure you have enough time to run the guild. In case you missed it, leading a guild takes a lot of time. Some of this can be controlled by you and some of it cannot.

Think of it this way, everyone has a monkey on their back that will eat up a good portion of their time banana supply. Now, you want to play the game you love, that is a monkey. Seriously, starting a guild will take away from that monkey’s banana supply so you better consider it! Now add on that you are creating a guild, each thing you add on to make your guild successful will add to the monkeys on you back that are eating up your time and bananas.

Think of your basic guild. Most are offering the same basic things besides in game features: website, forums, TeamSpeak or Ventrilo or other voice chat servers, and so forth. Now let’s look at these as we try to figure out how much time this takes.

The Guild Website. Who is going to make it and design it? That is a large monkey at the start of your guilds life and many experienced players will not give the time of day to a guild without a website....I know I will not.

Let’s just say for argument sake that either you or your buddy creates the site….now you are done with the site right? Nope! Not if you want to make it actually useful. And if you do make a static site, it will eat up less time, but not allow you to do many of the fun guild stuff. We like fun stuff, so let’s add some features and watch the monkeys come out of the trees!

• Forums – This is a guild standard everyone loves to talk on the forums when they are not in game. I personally hang out on my guild forums for 8 hours a day while I am at work, checking them for new posts every few minutes. Even if you do not do that, you are going to have to look at them on a regular basis to make sure things are running smoothly, people’s questions are being answered, and to just simply police them for trolls or God forbid unhappy members who just want to go off and vent. That takes time and you now have two monkeys on your back, one for playing the game and on for maintaining the forums.
  
• Now you know we have to have a guild news page! People love news right? So who is going to write those news articles? Ah ha! Another monkey takes its place on your back happily eating away on your time banana supply. So you try to counter with “I will let an officer do the news”, sure that will help, but you will still need to track it and make sure they are doing their job. That still takes some time.
  
• If you are a MMO guild you will need to track the guild bank and get it to the website some way or another and that takes time. There are MODs out there to assist, but it will still take some time away from playing and other duties.
  
• Roster management takes time. Like the guild bank, you may be able to find an add-on or something to make life easier, but it still takes the time to run it and upload it to your site’s database.
  
• Voice chat servers will take time to set up, configure, and then maintain. Again, be ready for it.

So now we are done with the basic web site.So at the end of just the website, we now have a total of 6 monkeys eating our banana supply. Now let’s look at the in-game time.

• Practice can take a lot of time for a FPS guild that is trying to compete in the tournament ladders. The same can be said for arena teams in Warcraft. Practice makes perfect, and to be successful, you will need to invest some of your banana supply.
  
• Officer meetings will eat up some of your yellow skinned friends. These are vital and need to be fed so just partition off some of your supply because these are coming.
  
• Arguments and rules lawyering will eat up a huge amount of time. Hopefully you will not have to deal with this much, but you better bet one day you will log on and find a heated debate over loot or team killing or whatever and you will need to resolve it.
  
• And finally after all your daily guild chores, you actually get to sit down and play the game.

Now of course this does not represent everything you may need to do every day and then again you may run into more stuff than this list. But this will give you a good basis to look at when you are judging your time.

Consider your time and what you want to do in your game. Let’s say you enjoy running an instance in Warcraft every night with your friends. Well most instances take about 2 hours for the most part. Then consider how much time you think everything you want to implement in your guild will take and simply add them together.

• 2 hours to run an instance
• 20 minutes of forum maintenance
• 30 minutes looking up news from the web if needed and being creative to write your site news.
• 10 minutes to add the 6 rookies to the roster and remove the guy that dropped last night
• 5 minutes to upload the file to the guild bank database
• 20 minutes stopping an argument over a blue dagger that dropped that the hunter and rogue are fighting over after you log into Ventrilo for what you thought was going to be a peaceful night.
• 20 minutes to talk with the officers and get guild business handled

So on this example night, you spent 1 hour and 45 minutes handling guild business and taking on other people's monkeys. Then you actually get to start your instance run. And you have been online for a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Now use this type of logic to think about if you truly do want to spend that much time working on your guild instead of playing. If you do have the time, then wait for the next few installments of Guild Guide to see what to do next. However, if you are honest with yourself and you don’t think you want to give up that much time to maintaining a guild, then start looking for an established guild to join instead of creating your own and soon feeling overwhelmed and pulling the plug. It will be better for you and for the members you have recruited that now need to find a good home.

Guild Strong, Happy Gamers and until next time…

Leaders, Officers, and Members

If you have ever been in an online guild, you know there are three basic groups in a guild: the guild master or leader, the officers, and the general membership of the guild. All three are responsible in some degree to making a guild successful. On my posts there will be some things that only the guild master needs to worry about or, perhaps just the leadership team of the guild, and finally there are tips for everyone in the guild. So I am putting in an icon system to let everyone know who the article was aimed towards.

At the start my posts you will see an icon that will let you know who that post is aimed at. Even if you are not a guild leader, the knowledge of these topics to a grunt in the trenches will be helpful as well. As that general membership that may not have ever run a guild, know that it is a lot of work! Reading the leadership posts may give you an idea of what the guild leader is going through and give you ideas of how to help them. Also, you may want to make suggestions to your guild leaders or even start a guild yourself one day. Below you will find a list of the icon I will use, and I hope they will help!

Leaders

Officers

Members

Welcome!

Welcome to the Guild Guide! My mission here to equip both guild leaders and guild members with the knowledge needed to create and maintain a strong and productive guild in whatever game you choose. Now you did notice that I did not solo out guild masters all by themselves, didn’t you? Yes, you too! Even if you are not a guild master, you also share the burden for helping your guild be successful. This is a large task, and I will be hacking away at it in pieces for the future months. So let’s explore the aspects of being a member of a wonderful guild and hopefully leading one into immortality.

What Guild Guide is Not
Guild Guide is not going to be a place to list the strategies to killing a boss or the best way to defend a map. We are he to help build strong guilds. Playing the game is up to you guys!

A Little about Me
I have been leading guilds since the late ‘90s. I first began my online gaming career in the First Person Shooter(FPS) games with titles such as Tribes, Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty. Then I moved on to World of Warcraft(WoW) during the closed beta and have been there ever since. Now I am looking at one of my all-time favorite games returning to the PC with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I am currently in a guild in WoW as one of the class leaders and working on a new guild/clan for ET: QW. Through the years, I have started many guilds: some were not created well and spun out of control quickly…oh the painful memories of stupid mistakes. Some of my guilds lasted months before guild drama ripped them apart, and two have even lasted years and are still going. I have made my fair share of mistakes and a guild or two has folded because of it. But over the years I have learned what works and what doesn’t work. And that is what we are here to discuss.

Non-World of Warcraft Guilds and Guild Guide
Since WoW is the 800-pound gorilla in the jungle of internet gaming and does not appear to be knocked out of the tree anytime soon, a lot of the points I make will refer to WoW lingo and themes. Never fear FPS guilds, you too can take these lessons and run with them most of the time. If you do have specific questions, please do not hesitate to email me at guildguide@gmail.com.