Mannic Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 I've been in both Hardcore and Casual guilds and have seen the problems associated with each. Too casual and you can't get anyone together to do anything as a guild, too hardcore and people who can't log on at specific times each week and stay on for 5 hours for required guild activities end up with the short end of the stick. There is also the issue of elitism to combat. If your guild has a core group of members (be they RL friends or long time guild associates) that tend to alienate all of the other members, you'll start to bleed everyone but those core members. New guild members on the outside of the core group looking in who feel they have no chance of becoming an insider will be quick to leave. Understanding that not everyone lives in the same time zone or works the same schedule and arranging multiple groups and times helps a lot but really only works if you have enough people to split up. I spent a year of WoW in a guild made up entirely of Australians and 3rd shift working North and South Americans so that I could raid. It was fun, but Vent was an accent smorgasbord. A successful guild will mold itself around its players instead of forcing its players into a mold. To me, the biggest mistake guild leaders make is thinking they have to be 200+ members. IMO, it's an e-peen thing. There's no strength in looking at a 400+ member roster and realizing only 30 of them are active. The 10 Commandments for Guild Leaders: 1. Clearly establishe the rules, whether they're hardcore or casual or somewhere in between. Do not invite incompatible players to your guild, no matter how much you, personally, like them. 2. No more than 10% of your guild should be officers-- otherwise being an officer means nothing and, as a result, being a member will mean nothing. 3. No one should get invited without first being sponsored by a member of the guild, and then spending some time running in a group with the members of the guild. Do not invite unknown quantities. It's lazy and will come back to bite you later on. Being at least a little bit selective also makes your existing members feel better about being part of your guild. 4. Probationary periods should actually mean something, as well as actual membership in the guild. If a player has generated any sort of negativity before becoming a member, that player should be asked to leave before he is promoted to "member." This will also make being promoted to member actually meaningful. 5. The guild leader shouldn't play politics within the guild, and shouldn't talk crap on his own members even in jest. I saw an entire 80 person guild in Warcraft collapse because someone fraps'd the guild leader talking junk on a "terribad" guild healer behind his back. People lost all respect for him immediately. The guild members should always know where they stand, and should always know approximately where other members stand. Any negative feedback should, if at all possible, be done in private. And guild leaders should never kick a member in a moment of pique. It makes you look capricious and arbitrary, like your finger is hovering over the /kick button. 6. Being an officer should mean something, but it shouldn't mean too much. The guild leader should be the identity of the guild, and officers should have a realm of responsibility that's pretty easy to keep up with. Officers should not have leeway to kick members except in the most egregious of situations. A bad officer can ruin a lot of your hard recruiting work if he abuses his priveleges. Also, no one in the guild, including officers, should feel like their role is a second job. Assign each an area of responsibility, but keep to the "half- hour rule" in mind; that no officer's job should take him more than half an hour per day. 7. A casual guild who invites anyone who seems cool should never suddenly throw together an elitist dynamic, like a set raid group run by an elitist raid leader. If there's going to be elitism in the guild (for example, a raid that you can get kicked out of for being bad) that needs to be clear when the member is invited. 8. The guild leader should not talk junk on members who leave. Invariably, departing members will still have friends in the guild, regardless of their reason for leaving, and a guild leader who talks junk on those members appears petty. 9. The guild leader needs to work harder than anyone else in the guild at helping out other guildies, and not fall into a clique, especially when it comes to running content. It's easy for a guild leader to form favorites and get groups because he's the guild leader. I've seen this happen several times, and it always, always, always turns into a bone of contention. The guild leader should be the guy in the guild who, at the end of the week, has grouped with nearly everyone in the guild for one reason or another. 10. The goal of the guild should be to have fun, but the GL has to realize that what's fun for one member might not be fun for another. Be diverse in guild activities. If one guild event is a guild meeting in some out-of-the-way place, the next event should be an achievements run, the next should be a crafting event, the next a PvP event, and so on. Don't get too locked into one aspect of the game or you will lose a segment of your guild. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kourage Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 Difference is, if WoW lost two-thirds of its "existing" subscribers, it would still be twice as big as SWTOR. The difference is, SWTOR has not released in China, which are half of WoWs subs and the way they count them as a subscriber is very fishy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallorik Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 (edited) Difference is, if WoW lost two-thirds of its "existing" subscribers, it would still be twice as big as SWTOR. The difference is, SWTOR has not released in China, which are half of WoWs subs and the way they count them as a subscriber is very fishy. Actualy even if you dont count wow's chinese subs what mannic said is still probably true. Edited June 2, 2012 by Mallorik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valkirus Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 Actualy even if you dont count wow's chinese subs what mannic said is still probably true. Easily....by atleast 4 times... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kourage Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 (edited) They can get it right, I hope. It certainly doesn't take a genius to figure out what they need. Make the Super Servers with a LFG Tool and add more content with a higher difficulty for the Hardcores, and a few things for casuals to do and this game could go over 3 million non Chinese subs easily. I mean really BioWare, how hard is it? I'll help. Give us a Restuss like zone where people can just pop in for PvP when they feel like it. No need to queue up for a Warzone or get stuck with players just leeching off of others. Do something with that Space Combat. Something to occupy those who either don't raid, or are waiting on one. Add some more class quests. Make them harder! If someone is really bad at the game and complains, then that person can bring a friend to help! Make an Operation that is a challenge for those who are focused on raiding. I'm not concerned with the top 2% who will finish it the 1st week it's out, but the rest of the raiders want to feel like they did something hard and they want to work at it. Get us off the Fleets! Fleet is ugly. The casinos I visit on Narr Shaddaa are empty. Kaas City is a ghost town and it should be vibrant. We don't like hanging out on the Fleets. Edited June 2, 2012 by Kourage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samaul Posted June 3, 2012 Author Share Posted June 3, 2012 The reason I started this thread is that the success of SWTOR is tied to the success of SWTOR guild and vice versa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiabloDoom Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 Sounds like you've recruited just any1 and created a big zerg guild my guild has a tenth of the members you have and has more people online. A feature I would like to see is a last login of guild members. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samaul Posted June 6, 2012 Author Share Posted June 6, 2012 Sounds like you've recruited just any1 and created a big zerg guild my guild has a tenth of the members you have and has more people online. A feature I would like to see is a last login of guild members. Don't hate, congratulate! We have about 450 characters, at least 250+ accounts, currently 21 members online, 9 on ventrilo. On sunday we had over 30 online for our gulid meeting. In fact, you can show last login and we regularly boot inactive and under level characters. Over 80% of the characters in the guild have been online in the past 30 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerdo_hormiguero Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 Newbie zerg guild recruiting in the starter area? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Acherus Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 And yet they still have 9 million + subscribers atm and they will get them all back when that stupid panda expansion comes out while swtor will continue to bleed subs. A vast majority of those being asians on pay to play "subs" which pad the numbers. Far fewer active north american/european accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FourTwent Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 I sure am glad I got to read through 4 pages of a 'wow subscriber debate' instead of you know. . .actually staying on topic and not derailing this guys thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smilefunk Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 (edited) I sure am glad I got to read through 4 pages of a 'wow subscriber debate' instead of you know. . .actually staying on topic and not derailing this guys thread. ugh, correct... but at least blame OP, HE BROUGHT IT UP! why man, WHY?!?1?1?! a gl should have better foresight Edited June 6, 2012 by smilefunk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Him Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 (edited) Nice opening post with interesting views. I probably don't have your experience, I've been officier/guild master since I started MMO's that is about 4 years ranging from casual to hardcore world first guild (as officer/RL in both) and from semi-casual (Fonder GL of a still 1st serveur guild) to compétitive mature guild (as fonder and GL). Concerning your semi-hardcore best pratice, I would like to know if it can be refered at what I did we my own guild. Our guild is focused on competitive end-game engagement in both PvP and PvE. Although we have a thorough application process and a set of restrictive rules. We also have a very active social section where people can apply regardless of their engagement and individual skill. Inevitibaly, as a sucessfull guild, we tend to attract those players too. And deciding not to sperate the core guild from the social players was maybe on of our best decision. Because these players, that are not engaged as core players, tend to give us fresh air by their positive and easy-going attitude. They don't just stand there and "talk" all day. We go play in WZ with them, and bring them for alts raiding. And it's always a blast to do things with them knowing there is not a perforamnce demand. They also tend to be very emotionally engaged to the guild. I have examples of social players that helped us resolve alot of inter-relation problems. All that to say, I don't know if the word semi-hardcore is accurate in our case, as our goal is cleary end-game competition. But I think that a "total hardcore" perspective can only work in a guild where players are emotionnaly attached to one another, as friends are. And that part, the emotional, i don't think it's something you can really build up mechanicaly. It's take a bit of luck, to have charamistic individuals in your guild, and manage, by selective recruiting, to ensure that the majority of players are enjoying themselves and others on the same level. And maybe, precisely, that isn't possible in a guild structure where rules are there for the sake of having rules, and too "look" as hardcore as possible. My 2 cents. Edited June 6, 2012 by The_Him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorpienne Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 (edited) The 10 Commandments for Guild Leaders: Should be a seperate post in the community thread and then stickied, then emailed to every GL. [EDIT] In fact, I just added it to the Community section as another post. It's a useful topic of conversation. Good post, thank you. Going on to the Sanctum of the Exalted server forums as we speak so I can see what my local GLs think of it... Paige Edited June 6, 2012 by Scorpienne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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