Guild management advice

[ZirusZero]

I'm a leader of a struggling guild. We often have to PUG a portion of our group for whatever we do, and we don't have that many members on. The only few accomplishments we have made is that we've managed to down a few world bosses and dominate the lowest warzone bracket for a night. To all of you successful guild masters, I just want to ask one question: How do you pull it off?

[uniz]

I'm a leader of a struggling guild. We often have to PUG a portion of our group for whatever we do, and we don't have that many members on. The only few accomplishments we have made is that we've managed to down a few world bosses and dominate the lowest warzone bracket for a night. To all of you successful guild masters, I just want to ask one question: How do you pull it off?

 

 

assuming you are talking about guild recruitment I will share some observations.

 

if you want just bodies fast and are the type to kick out the chaff later, if you ever do, then recruit in general channel. the best areas are the lower planets and fleet where newer players are more in abundance. this can work well if you have the ability to ask potential recruits the right questions and have the answers for theirs. if you take just anyone then you might be actually hurting yourself.

 

what I advise is to do guild group content using the lfd queue leaving a spot open. then look at those you get in your group. usually after playing with such unguilded players you can get a good idea if said player will "fit in" with your current players and guild. this is by far the best method to get quality people. my guild recruits this way which we have a few things we must have from new players. one is the ability to listen and follow directions. we can teach you the rest but cant if you wont listen.

 

which ever method you do just make sure you have alts and or players around the levels of the new recruits. it is pointless to get new players if you have no one at their level to play with. such players will just leave as you havnt provided any grouping benefit to them for being in your guild. lets face it that is main reason players join a guild in the first place.

 

set up a night or two (more even) a week for guild activities like a lowbie pvp night or world boss night. add on to it as the guild grows. this way you give players a reason to log in on certain days. just ask your players now what nights works best for everyone and go from there.

 

be up front with them as to what activities you are doing and what you want to do in the future. if you don't pvp then getting players who want to heavy pvp isn't a good fit for example. see asking the right questions above.

 

another option is to create a guild alliance with another guild or guilds with simuliar goals. this requires more work though. mostly it is done for endgame content or even pvp premades.

 

what ever you do requires effort and takes time. there are other things that can be done but I don't want to write a book here.

[mfourcustom]

I've been in the same guild since launch and for a time was the GM of the guild.

 

The advice I can give you is this.

 

This game is at a point were its VERY hard to build something from the ground up the player pool in terms of skilled players is VERY low and it will get even lower when 2.4 hits and Free to play players can queue for as many warzones as they want. That being said I never found it worth while to recruit in general chat or on the forums so on and so forth Myself and the other officers of the guild would just keep our eyes out for talented players in lowbies brackets and the 50/55s bracket as for PVE we would keep our eyes open in group finder and when some of our members would pug groups for fun on our down time we would keep our eyes out for any talented players there and go from there, If they were skilled players in a guild I would spend weeks grouping and inviting them in to our vent to spend time with them and get them used to the people in our guild to the point were they enjoyed spending time with us than i would pop the question and ask them to join lol Like i said above its hard to build something from the ground up in this game it has been for a long time now its even harder to maintain a strong guild in this game seeing as how slow content comes out and how low the moral for the game is at the moment and how low it has been in the past.

 

If i were you I wouldn't think of it as a swtor guild try to think of your guild as a "Gaming Community" Get yourself players that enjoy playing with one another people that log in to your vent/mumble everyday not for the game but for each other that creates a strong bond that has worked for myself and my guildmates for a LOOONG time now at the end of the day I would have quit this game and never looked back a long time ago if it wasn't for the people in my guild. So in short do your best to keep an eye out for skilled players but also encourage people to play other games with one another make a steam group kick back with games like payday 2 and other co op games the most important thing about leading a guild is NOT what your guild has done in terms of owning PVP or how many ops you have cleared its about keeping the people together and there moral high with a strong tight knit group you can go from there in terms of moving up the ladder with PVP and OPS and such.

 

One thing to watch for when you do recruit people is to watch peoples personality's keep a good eye on how some of your recruits or people you want to recruit act how they carry themselves around your community see if they enjoy just jumping in to your most populated vent/mumble channels or if they like to lone wolf it and make their own clicks. Clicks can be a good and bad thing for a guild I wish waay back when at launch we would have screened people in terms of personality more before inviting them. I have a list of people I wish everyday never got in to our guild lol Some very elitist PVE players that just had to much time on there hands outside of game and took there real life problems of having NO life out on the guild and such which lead to problems lol You'll bump in to some weirdo's when recruiting and sometimes you'll regret inviting some people that at first you thought were a great pick up for your guild.

 

 

As far as being a good GM oddly enough in our guilds life span our guilds BEST GM imo is the one we have now lol this being our third GM He is upfront with his guild members, approachable but most of all honest and does his best trying to get involved with everyone but at the same time he pormotes each player to have a level of Independence in terms of setting up groups so on and so forth. Those are the qualities I think make a good GM. Also As the GM make sure you have a strong officer body look for stand out players to promote to officer if you have not already. Look for people that your members seem to fallow and respect. Before the news hit that 8v8 rated pvp would be gone in 2.4 in my guild anyway I was our rated team leader I made the call outs I got everyone talking I was the voice of our team our GM played on our team but he's more laid back and didn't fit the role of combat leader or whatever you want to call it good delegation with your officer body makes life so much more enjoyable as a GM, anyway I never thought I was a good GM lol I hated my time as GM tbh but I need to close this out.

 

In short make the best decisions with the time you have and do the best you can with the time you have. Play for one another not for swtor.

 

I hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck.

Edited September 8, 2013 by mfourcustom