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Purpose
This guide aims to establish the tasks that contribute to a successful guild. The intent is to provide a framework for officers and members to reflect on how these tasks are performed within their own guild. Discussion on best practices from various guilds across the server is welcome.
Tasks of a Successful Guild
- Recruitment
- Integration
- Activities
- Member Development
- Discipline
Recruitment
Recruitment is getting new members to join your guild. It is the lifeblood of a guild. Most guilds naturally expand and contract. As players leave for other games, stop playing, or leave the guild in other ways, it is important to replenish the guild ranks. Without recruitment, the guild will decay.
Actual recruitment is more difficult that it first appears. Guilds need a way to reach prospective members, and a way to separate themselves from other guilds. MyDDO seeks to fill this niche, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting a referral from MyDDO. The forum has server threads that attempt to fill this niche, but it is difficult to maintain your message among a sea of other guilds seeking to do the same thing.
The most effective recruiting tool is your guild’s reputation. If your guild has established itself on the server, and its members are known and looked up to, then it becomes easier to recruit. Members will seek you out, instead of the other way around. Unfortunately, there are typically only 10-20 guilds out of the thousands on the server that can recruit based solely on reputation.
Running mostly guild runs with a few spots open for a pug is a good way to find new members. If you find someone that meshes with the group, add them to your friends list. The next time a spot is open, see if they would like to join. This is essentially building your guild reputation at an individual level. It works.
There are some ways to recruit that will get your guild ridiculed. Using the LFM boards, spamming general chat, and blind invites are generally considered poor behavior.
Integration
Integration is getting new recruits to become involved. It’s taking the newbie and turning them into a contributing member. It’s also one of the easiest things to ignore.
When new members join, hang around for a little while, then leave; that is a sign that your guild needs to do a better job of integration. It can be especially difficult for new members to break into a small, tight-knit guild. Integration is more than just saying, “Hi!” in guild chat, the new member must be included in guild activities.
One method of integrating a new member is to have an officer with similar level character become a mentor. The officer creates groups, and makes sure the new player is included. The new player is introduced to others, and learns about the guild.
A better method is to have all guild members make an effort to integrate new members. The necessity of integration would be clearly explained, to the point that members have bought into the process.
The most common mistake is just to ignore new members. Everyone is pleasant enough, but questions about what is going on are turned away – “We’re running _____, sorry we’re full. Maybe next time.” The next time gets forgotten, and the new member is pugging just as they were before. The new member eventually feels like an outsider in their own guild, and they leave.
Activities
Activities come naturally to a healthy guild. They do not have to be formal, it is just a matter of deciding to do something as a guild and doing it. Some guilds are extremely formal posting daily events with sign-ups. Others just log on and figure it out. Whatever works for your guilds members is the best – don’t try to force something on the guild just because you like it.
If the activities are not coming naturally, then there is some kind of issue going on. This could be anything, but this is likely the first sign that something needs to be corrected. When members are logging on but not joining guild runs, when members just don’t log on, these are signs that something is wrong. Figure it out and address it, quickly.
Here are a few possible guild activites: raids, favor runs, static groups (dangerous due to forming cliques imo), loot farming, experience farming, roleplaying, perma death, figuring out a new quest, giving away extra equipment, swap meet, naked Tempest Spine, etc. The possibilities are endless.
The worst activities are the ones that your guild isn’t interested in. If it bombs, don’t try to make the guild enjoy it anyway.
Member Development (SFW)
In any guild, there is always something someone needs to learn to do, or some item that needs to be attained, some build that needs to be explored. There should always be some incentive to join the guild.
Perhaps the biggest issue is to make sure that your players are getting good advice. Maybe one player has the skill to make their bad build work, but when the whole guild starts making a copy of the Halfling barbarian thrower build, it can lead to disaster. Your reputation as a guild can get creamed by just a few idiots. A bad guild reputation is devastating.
Discipline
The purpose of discipline is to build your guild’s reputation. At some point, there will be arguments between guild members. There will be arguments between your guild members and others. You will get complaints, and you will have to handle the complaints.
The first thing to remember with a complaint is that it needs to be fairly specific. Ink is acting like a dickwad is not a valid complaint. Get the person to explain the situation and what was said or done in as clear language as possible. Write it down.
When investigating a complaint, you can either ask others that were present or the person targeted with the complaint. I recommend asking any others first, but that’s my personal preference. Do what works for you.
When confronting the guild member, the most important thing to remember is that this is a guild member. Don’t accuse. Ink, I heard you were a dickwad last night doesn’t work – it just puts the person on the defensive. Instead, concentrate on actions. It was reported that you did this and said this.
Be understanding. Get both sides of the story, and realize that the truth is probably somewhere in between.
If your guild member acted incorrectly, try to make sure it won’t happen again. Enforce an appropriate penalty. You don’t have to decide what it is immediately, but it should be implemented quickly. Contact other officers or guild members for advice if you don’t know what an appropriate penalty is. The important thing is that the rest of your guild should think it is fair. Not the guild member that the complaint was directed against, not the person that did the complaining; the rest of the guild should generally agree with the decision.
If enforcement doesn’t match the guild membership’s expectation, perhaps the expectations of behavior do not match. Every guild will have some expectations of what is and is not acceptable behavior. It is ok to adjust this, but realize that it will affect the guild membership. Drastic changes are generally bad unless called for by extraordinarily bad behavior.
Examples of poor discipline include uneven enforcement (the punishment should be the same no matter who did the deed), selective enforcement (the rules apply to everyone), and no enforcement (if its anarchy, your guild reputation will suffer).
The most common mistake in discipline is tolerating a bad guildie. Once it is apparent that they are bad, cut them lose. Some people just cannot do this. If it helps, find an officer to act as a hatchet man.
Conclusion
A good guild is not something that just happens. It is something that is shaped over the course of years. If the guild leaders think about how their guild handles recruitment, integration, activities, member development, and discipline they can become a better guild.
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Ink’s Guide to Guild Management (Read 17326 times)
