small guilds and how hard they are to make.

being the leader of a small yet realy friendly guild.. ive found it realy hard to recruit a good ammount of members.. when ever i seem to get past the 20 mark i notice they go in active, i try hard to do missions and recruit that way but it becomes hard... especially when 9 out of 10 people say "" im looking for a guild with a good rating and heaps of members.."" and its gettin REALY annoying.. how are we suppose to become big and actually get enough members to get a good guild rating.. oh and another thing i dont like when i recruit.. is the members that need so much help you cant even play the game.. god dam what did they do before they got a guild? lol, well post ur thoughts on this.. lol flame away if ya dont agree with me.. but anyways thanks for reading

Rome

build slowly and be picky. And understand MMO's are transient games, people come and go often. It will take time to build a core of people who consistantly play.

It can be annoying if you're trying to get the right group. Don't compromise the morals and priciples of your guild just to get a few members (a mistake I made). Eventually you will find the right people, and if they leave because the guild is small so be it. If you find someone with a common goal they will stay around and those are the people you want.

Try to find another small guild to merge with, and work from there.

I feel your pain. It does suck and is hard to find people like that. I just recently joined a small guild that has members that sign on just about every single day, when my old guild had members that'd join and leave to never come back. I seriously want to know how they even do that. They get good and far enough to join the guild and then disappear for a month or more. Makes no sense to me.

If people you're trying to recruit are only shallow enough to care about guild size and rank, they probably aren't the type you'd want in your guild to begin with.

Yea when i created mine i have a select few people or friends that i truley enjoy playing with and the only thing that kinda irrates me is when people join and sit there and ask for your help or they stress the fact that you have items they want and they want it Completly cheap, Or my favorite "Do i get anything rare just to join" Hahaha.

the guild im in can not seem to pass the 10 member mark, we have had like 20 people join but most of them leave one or two days after... finding new members is tough, im not a recruting type so im not sure exactly how hard it is

My guild has well over 50 members with a core of like 15-20 very active players who will sign on every day - but recruiting good people is still a hassle. Even at these numbers we often have not enough people on to form a complete UW or Tombs team with (as we play in different time zones). It has become increasingly difficult as most senior members of our guild have only high level characters by now and as such we don't play in areas like Old Ascalon anymore where you encounter most unguilded players. The yelling of "Guild XXX is recruiting now" usually doesn't really work, too. At most times, you will get responses by people who expect to become officer right after joining and 2 or 3 rare items on top of that
Sending spam guild invites to any unguilded player out there will work even less, since all you're going achieve by that is annoying them.

And - as harsh as it sounds - at most times you don't need to try recruiting the few unguilded high level players, too. You can safely assume that they have received like 500 guild invites so far and they are likely to decline the 501st, too. Some people just don't WANT to be in a guild.

One thing about the helping each other stuff - IMO, that's what a guild is all about. At least for those guilds which don't exclusively exist to get the highest rank possible. In my guild if someone wants to do a hard mission and asks for help, you are encouraged to come and help. In a guild of our size, this happens quite frequently. Some people don't like that - they wouldn't like our guild much. And especially as a leader/officer you probably spend even more time helping your members out. Well, I guess you can't have it all - leadership of a fairly sized guild AND playing without any ties. A good guild can give you much, but you have to give something back in return, too.

Honestly, what I would try to do is finding another smallish guild with the same recruitment problems (they all have them), and try a merger. The only other way to recruit players is to keep a toon in lowbie land and recruit new players as they start GW.

We formed a guild based on a small group of friends from a guitar magazine forum - we've all known each other for a number of years from frequenting that forum, so seemed only natural for us to form the Guitarring Adventurers Society [GAS]

We're now down to 3 active players as some have left or move on to other games, so we're a bit stuck for what to do now - carry on playing as a small group or go recruit and experience all the agro people rant about

Rich

There was this one fellow in my guild that kept comming to our GvG games in Ascalon armor, I think. He was level 20 but he had hardly ever updated his armor and he refused to make a PvP character becuase he had three pre-searing charcters. One time he pressed Alt+F4 after the other team said that it would show stats

The guy kept moaning everytime I would discuss builds: He always thought I was making fun of his build. One day he just left a message (he was a guild officer) that he was leaving becuase no one would help him ascend or something :/

You're right. What do these people do before they get a guild?

In that special case, it probably was for the better that he left.

But I have to admit that I would leave a guild that would constantly refuse to team up with me for doing a mission, too. If you do PvE, the main reason for being in a guild is helping each other out and not having to party up with crappy PUGs anymore. If I wanted to play in PUGs - why join a guild?

I am as of now not looking for any guild... However, I am always on the looker out for an admirable leader (my expectation are too high... I guess my chance of finding one? slim to none).

--Example1:
him/her"Would you like to join a guild?"
me"no currently not looking for a guild, thx for asking"
him/her"np"
end of conversation.
--Example2:
him/her"I see you are really good with mesemer"
me"well, thx... well... I don't think I am that good yet, still got here and there... you know"
him/her"want to join our guild? we would be really appreciated if you join... we need a good mesemer, if you don't like the guild... you are free to leave anytime, at least give us a chance you know what I mean?"
me"ok, I guess I give it a try"
A spark of interest. Even if he/she doesn't join, he/she would be shaken to think about joining. Like they said, "good people are hard to find"... be a little more friendly and persistant in keeping communication is the key.

I am telling you... it going to have high hit ratio compare to "want to join my guild?"

I think it is very important for a leader to be able to understand what his guild mate is capable of. Nobody go out and tell a scientist to wash the toilet... you need to understand that he/she is a scientist and able to assign the spot where they are most fitted... "leader" hel~lo?

I have had a wonderful experience creating my guild. I tried a few others, but they weren't for me, so I started my own. What I found out was that I couldn't do it by myself. We now have over 40+ members, at least half are fairly active along with a great core. It has taken a lil over 2 months.

These are our tricks. First thing I did was talk to peeps in the PUG's that I was adventuring with. Generally, even though most PUGs suck, there is one or two really cool people. Then you invite into guild. I get approx 2 out of 5 to accept. The others are added to my friends list. (WHO CARES IF THEY ARE IN ANOTHER GUILD, IT NEVER HURTS TO ASK). The thing is, you cannot worry about char lvl or skill lvl, they HAVE to want to work together and actually play the game. You need a good leader, but you need good guildies too. When they join guild -- TAG, they're it -- they have to go out on their own with PUG's and do the same thing. NO BLIND INVITES.

The guild must be "our" guild not "my" guild. Without my guildies, our guild wouldn't exist. They helped pay for guild hall, even though I raised 30+p and they covered last 12p. Now they feel that they have invested in guild and take a lil extra pride outta that.

Don't be jerks about promoting to officer. I still don't know why some guilds make you "APPLY", get off your high-horse. This allows good guildies to post messages, invite other players, and be more involved. We have 3 officer rules ---
1- No Blind Invites
2- No booting, without group consent
3- No Rated GvG, till guild is ready

Now to keep the members active (which you have no control over), you need to turn the guild into a community not a mission-machine. Set up dates/times to do group stuff, or you can even make a weekly night to meet. This helps with the not everyday players. Also, we have tons of fun getting the groups together for screenshots at the guild. You would be surprised how much personality you can get out of people when you do something so simple. In fact, we catch ourselves standing face to face in the hall talking alot (which really cracks me up). People will come and go, and come back. It is a game, but the guildies don't stay in guild for the game, they stay in the guild because of guildies.

My last bit, is about the "needy" members. The guild members should take turns helping out. There is nothing to be gained from 5 lvl 20's helping out with the "Gates Of Kryta" mission. Take turns helping out the other members. Now, when you do help, either take hench and show noob how to use them, or take other random peeps and show them how your guild works together.(that has been my best method of recruiting yet)

Hope this helps-- Lil C

hey everyone, well the part where i said they wanted help ALL the time.. is stupid missions.... like frost gate.. this one person has been through the game already and he wanted help there and he wanted me to run him from beacons to lions arch. yes they are al easy.. but bloody hell its just that we want to play the game aswell.. if it was a harder mission like thunderhead keep.. or elonas reach.. something which is a challenge to even some people going for the second or third time.. yes i would have helped him.. and another thing about doing missions while recruiting.. is well i live in australia and when im on is usually like midnight for everyone else.. so its hard to even find non guild people.. but thanks for everyones ideas, im sure ill use some, but please keep bringing the ideas thanks people.

lol i just got reminded by my bro, one time this guy joined our guild... he created TWO characters from scratch and asked for help before he was even out of pre searing "" im nearly out of pre searing could you come to ascalon and run me to lions arch?"" so.. isnt that taking advantage of our friendlyless...? its sad i think that people would do this.. but anyways thanks again

Rome

well im in a guild with some of my friends and we have about 20 people, 3/4 of them i know from school or whatever, so i dont have any problems with finding people to play with. we do gvg every now and then, so its all good.

I found it easy to make a good guild by helping the ones who just came over from the presearing. They are still lost on what to do, as it is something completely new, and they see sooo much spammin they have no clue on what to do. In my old guild, I would often ask the ones to join my guild if they show great interest in this game, and truely love to play it, but because of our guild leader deciding to kick me out, had to find a new one, yet no more officer position

Good thread! There's been some really good advice that I'm gonna keep in mind, and I'll throw in my thoughts aswell for anybody who cares to read.

I'm the leader of a 60 member guild, and made things harder on myself when I started off by deciding it would be an Irish-only guild. The pool of players I could potentially recruit from was tiny, Ireland being a very small country. But this worked in my favour, because the guild instantly had a theme, it offered something that no other guild was offering. If your guild offers something different, the members will come.

Of course not all guilds can be nationality orientated, but go to Lion's Arch or Ascalon any time and you'll see the generic "any1 want 2 join my guild?! cool cape! first 5 become officers!! saving for a guild hall..." messages. How many guilds are there like that? Thousands upon thousands. At least offer something to potential members. If you stand out a little you're bound to interest people.

Maybe you have these already, but a few things you should sort out if you want to attract decent members:

Get a website. Doesn't have to be fancy, doesn't even have to cost a penny, just a little bit of effort. It'll act as a central point and your guild will "exist" outside of the game. Your members will appreciate the effort you're putting into the guild, and to potential recruits you'll look organised.

Get a forum. Again, doesn't have to cost a penny or be anything fancy. A forum is great for creating a sense of community in your guild, the more non-Guild Wars threads the better, so you'll get to know each other alot faster. You can post guild news and fixtures, because guildies never read the damn in-game announcements!

Get the guild sorted out with TeamSpeak/Ventrilo. In our guild we rent out our own server, but you don't have to, there's plenty of free channels to use. Again, to people on the look out for a guild, you look organised. You stand out from the usual "cool cape" brigade.

Keeping players once you've got them is another thing. You can do alot more than just organising friendly GvG's if you use your imagination. For example in our guild we have a medal system, where players can win different medals that are displayed on their forum sigs, won by being a part of a GvG team that gets 3 consecutive wins, a flawless victory etc. Hold a guild raffle. Just this week we had a raffle that raised 200k, members even donated items for free as prizes because there was interest in it. I can guarantee you the bastard that won that won't be leaving the guild any time soon! Things like that keep your members wanting to stay.

As for the "I'm looking for a guild with a good rating and heaps of members" type people...forget about them. Not the type of people you really want in your guild. Quantity isn't everything. Look at Eternum Pariah with their 12 members. Even with 60 members our guild struggles to get enough people on for GvG's, what you're looking for is quality over quantity.

Eh, that turned into an essay, sorry! Hope there was some help in there...

I felt your pain as the leader of a guild..Now I just unload the pain on my current guild leader

it is far from shallow to not want to be in a guild where only 3-5 people are remotely active ... the most fun aspect of GW is GvGs, and in a normal, non-hardcore PvP guild, you'd need at least 30 members to be able to have 8 people online and ready to GvG on a designated GvG day/time (not talking about the serious PvP guilds that only recruit ranked PvPers here!). Of course being able to invite a couple guest players for your GvG majorly helps the casual guilds now.

to the OP: finding a couple other small guilds with a similar way of thinking and playing style/activity level and merging seems to be the best solution for any small guild that wants to grow. Unfortunately there is way too many tiny guilds since nearly every 2nd player wants their own guild, and to be a leader of it ... if more people give up their personal ambitions for simply having fun, we'd see more guilds merge to become bigger and thus give all of their members more ways to enjoy the game.

I agree with you completely about some people seeming to need help with anything, constantly ... I like helping guildies with missions, especially those where a good team is a must - and it's usually good fun. But I do want to do my own stuff at times ... if I have helped someone with 2 missions yesterday, and today he asks me to drop all my stuff and come help him through the next mission? Am I supposed to play the whole game for him or what?

merge with other guilds having the same problem, are at the same level as you, and have the same intentions. although the leaders of the smaller guild may have problems giving up some power, they really arent losing much and will probably be happier together with some other guilds. just keep putting these small guilds together until you have a good foundation.