For those who have joined a new startup guild that was/wasn’t successful, what were the reasons why or why not?
Edit: thanks so much for all the thoughtful responses and conversation!
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Many players seem to think they can just up and start a successful guild. The biggest reason why I believe guilds fall is because the failed guild does not have a solid core leadership who care enough and the guild has no real direction or goal.
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Leadership is definitely the key. Especially if the core leadership group covers all the key positions.
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What positions would you say are core/would need to be covered in order to be successful?
As somebody who built a long-standing guild from scratch, here’s my 5 cents.
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Every guild should have a reason to exist. “The purpose of this guild is _______.” And that should be something that you can clearly communicate to people.
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The purpose of the guild needs to be appealing to people so that people for whom it’s a good fit will want to join. It also needs to be realistic.
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You need a DAMN GOOD REASON to start a guild. There are too many guilds in the game already, have been for years. Many of which do not have a realistic, attractive, and specific purpose.
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“I want to be a guild master” is not a good reason to start a guild. Well, it might be for the person with such ambitions, but there’s zero reason for anyone else to join such a guild.
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Guilds should not take people who do not fit with the guild’s purpose, just to have more people. Because people who are not in harmony with the guild’s purpose will just cause disharmony. A raiding guild should not have non-raiders, a RP guild should not have people who do not RP, a M+ guild should not have people who do not M+. Friends/family of others in the guild, sure. But anybody off the street who joins a guild they have nothing in common with is not going to be happy there. Quality over Quantity.
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Yes. I know it’ll be a ton of work but I’d rather do it myself than endlessly search for someone else out there who happens to have a vision and goal like mine. 
I definitely plan to develop an extremely solid and well-defined direction and goal, so thank you for confirming that that is important!
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If possible you want all tanks and healers to be covered by reliable core group members.
An unreliable tank or healer can shut down a progression raid night…and if it happens often enough break up the group.
Option B is to have a core group that can play multiple roles. That way they can cover down if a tank/healer goes missing
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Gotcha that’s a fair point, and definitely something I’ve seen happen in plenty of guilds. Thank you!
I can think of a few guilds that continuously rise and fall because the GM doesn’t really care about making something work for the group and more so work for themselves.
Your guild can be what you want it to be, but if you get to a point where it’s more important how you are progressing and not the guild then you will have problems.
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You can’t and shouldn’t run it and do things alone. Get officers and spread responsibilities.
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this is the first thing i thought of and the number one in my opinion as well.
no server in the game needs yet another “well we’ll do a bit of everything, some m+, some raiding, casual pvp, just hanging out” guild. they’re all “doing normal/heroic raids now but looking to push into mythic real soon” and none of them ever get there.
edit: I’m not saying don’t make a social guild. If you want one, make one. Why not? But if you’re looking to build something that grows and lasts, you need more.
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Most of the time, the reason why new guilds fail is because they have no direction, or consistency, and then they quit when other people don’t like the fact there’s no consistency nor direction.
The important thing with fresh guilds is recruiting and being open and direct with people so they have a clue. People are much more understanding (usually) when they have a clue as to what’s going on.
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The way our guild started was about 6 or 7 of us were pugging high M+ keys together for a few weeks and then decided to form a M+ guild.
We pugged alot so we were able to get a few members that were on our bnet. Eventually we got to pretty decent io and was able to recruit more players through keys. Our shared goal was pushing high io and had good competition within the guild.
The core of us formed officers and we went from there, although most people joined to do M+ we were able to get 20 people that would also raid.
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Thanks for this.
I’ve been toying around with the idea for a while and you’ve confirmed for me that it’s the best (but not easiest) course of action.
I feel like I do have a solid goal and direction, and while I don’t necessarily want to be a guild leader, I think it’ll be the best way to create a space I’d want to be in!
I’ve joined some guilds over the years that recruited almost anyone they could get their hands on, and then leadership had trouble taking decisive action when drama came about. I totally agree here.
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Most players I have encountered that started new guild have absolutely no idea what the purpose, focus or intentions the guild needs to be successful.
Most of the adds I see in Trade Chat are guild that are all basically the same. They all are PvP.PvE, running dungeons, RP, rated BG or are this or that on Raiding. It’s rather sickening to read it.
It is tough to be really creative. I have owned some really small guilds and also so really big ones. None of them survived more then a year despite my best efforts with my real life training as a manager and public relations person.
Good luck with your new guild.
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for me it’s just the lack of work they put into the guild. like a guild is a mini community so to speak you can’t have your GL making randoms officers and then officers not doing anything to contribute to the guild. You can’t have any of that heirarchy bs mentality where they think oh im an officer and so you gotta do what i say or else imma kick you over some petty bs. Big ego basically.
then you got things like it will start off as a dead guild of course but again as i said above they need to put work into recruiting people that want to stay and help it grow rather then just recruiting a bunch of randoms that only want to benefit off of the guild via free repairs yet do nothing to contribute as a member. people that don’t want to run content with the guild, etc…
for me that is some of the biggest reasons why i don’t like those guilds. i don’t mind sticking around but typically it ends the same way. nobody is recruiting, nobody stays long enough to build up the guild they just want to get into a massive guild and do raiding or w.e.
me i’ve been in big guilds before MANY of them. they make me feel like a nobody. ask them if they want to run content they dont even reply, ask them for help on a quest i am having trouble with they dont reply, then you got the little cliques who only talk to the people in that clique and run content with them making the guild fairly pointless imo only contributing to raid days which to me is bs for what a guild should be.
a lot of this the GL cannot control it’s just a people issue. i dont mind start up guilds what i don’t like is when they go nowhere kinda like having a wallet when you dont even got money to put in it. i want it to go somewhere eventually. start up a raid group when you got 1 solid group down maybe form a 2nd one, get M+ groups going which is easier, etc… doesn’t technically need to be “hardcore” i prefer the more casual pace now days learning/teaching people instead of people expecting others to know how to run M+ or raids and then get mad after just 1 wipe and causing drama.
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What are some big responsibilities you think are best delegated to officers?
Our guild doesn’t even have officers. There’s the GM, the raiders, and people on trial. All decisions are made by consensus. If something needs to be done, somebody offers to do it and does it.
We’re just a big hippie commune that raids Cutting Edge.
(But we seem to be the exception, not the rule.)
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You are successful without a doubt as your profile page shows but this seems contradictory to what you just said, How can you have a focus if you let family/friend raider or not into guild without causing strife?
Personally just officers in a general sense. Folks that’ll help you manage the guild. Officers are folks ya lean on.
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