I’ve been trying to start a guild for over a year now and posting recruitment messages in-game or on various community sites which doesn’t do anything. I’m kind of confused about what to do. All the guides I’ve seen seem very outdated and the methods recommended are ineffective.
Any advice would be appreciated!
Get a group so it’s not a solo effort.
Connect with people in real life as bonds will be closer.
Get people who are on at shared times.
Have and understanding of the guild culture you want to develop (what is your theme, is it casual? If so how will you engage your guildies, is it hardcore? Etc)
Get people with a similar lifestyle. Easier to do activities with people who have the same time availability as you.
I find for a guild to be somewhat good, you have to learn to manage people. I have seen many guild fall apart, because players only join to serve themselves and help out the group. They want the perks, that’s about it.
It’s been a long time I haven’t created or managed a guild as a gm. It’s never gonna be easy to make a guild or manage it.
Way easier if you have a group of friends to start it 4-5 people to get it running.
The most simple and sure way for me is to start small and recruit people to clear content like normal or heroic or do M+ together on a schedule. If you don’t have enough just fill with pugs, and hopefully if the atmosphere is interesting you’ll manage to make people stay and add more over time.
That also means as a gm it’s your job people do content with each other by organizing for example raids or events to do stuff together. You have to make sure to keep the guild together and fix any rising drama.
After some time if it works out and you find content easier enough to clear and you manage to get 20 people you can try your hand at content like mythic raiding. Some guilds will also try to merge with another to get into mythic, protip that never ends well.
Making a new guild is hard. People try to join guilds that are already doing well so they don’t have to leave and redo the searching aspect. If your guild is targeted at raiding, having good heroic/mythic logs and attaching them to your community posts might help, or if its rated bgs having your bg rating attached to your logs might be the way to go.
the only other thing I can suggest is to just sit in trade chat and spam for hours and hours and hours and hope that your message manages to get a couple bites instead of the dozens of other posters.
Additionally, having your post be fun or eye catching may help as well as your guild name. I can see that your current forum character is named Legend and so is your guild and that may deter alot of potential recruits as it kinda makes you seem like you have an ego or something naming the guild after yourself
oh ya, as the other guy said, host content for pugs and try and recruit off that as well because they will already see your capabilities as well as know the atmosphere of your raid group
I think this is the largest challenge I face because not a lot of people on my server do rated PvP and those who do are already in guilds. I’ve tried stating I’m looking for officers to help establish but I’ve yet to encounter anyone interested.
I guess one way I haven’t tried would be to do some RBGs and if I see someone from my server on my team ask if they’d like to join up and contribute to the effort.
People that can lead RBGS are diamonds, if you show you can lead them I feel you can easily make a guild out of that skill. (or if you find someone that can lead them for your group)
I didn’t think of it like that. I just saw the aesthetic of the insane title working well with the guild name. I’ll try another guild name that I got, thanks!
ya, the character name on its own is fine. the guild name on its own is fine. but both of them together leads to an unintended side effect that can deterr people
Oh man it’s incredibly hard!
Guilds are a mix of lifestyle, gameplay enjoyment, personality and effort.
Having previously hosted a guild for 6 years it basically is like a separate job. I don’t bother much in WoW but in my guild in FFXIV (known as free company) the core are my friends I know IRL and all being in the early thirties and definitely helps. 10 heads that have some involvement in keeping something running is much better than one and the activity you make together entices others to join.
I started the guild in Uldir, It was a little easier for me because I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish with it. I wanted to be the two night guild in OCE for raiding (which we eventually accomplished).
What is your goal? What is your guild? Are you raiding, collecting, m+ ?
Unpopular opinion;
It should way be harder to start a guild in game than it is. 90% of guilds are just dead or have barely anyone doing anything.
Everyone thinks they should be a guild leader.
There should be way fewer guilds and caps should exist on how many are allowed per server.
I don’t disagree with this. I think there should be a minimum amount of guild events done per month and if the game detects that hasn’t happened it changes your guild’s designation to casual or something that indicates it’s not as active.
Dwindling interest in the game. Theres less ppl, less ppl who care to be in a guild because they’re solo, and dont do mythics. Hard to start somthing when ppl arent technically interested in that thing
The entire game is in a lull except maybe raiding with season 4, but yeah if PVP is the objective then Battlegrounds are where you should be asking around. Also avoid trade chat like the plague, there’s rarely any good prospects there and just posting in it lowers the image of the guild a little bit (it’s seen as desperate).
You need at least 8-9 solid people who respect you as a leader. Then the rest will come over time and fall in line.
pretty much.
and for that I just use my own personal guilds. Easy enough to make.
A while back I subbed to a few extra accounts,created a few guilds, invited my own characters. Easy enough.
I think the biggest thing to realize is that you usually can’t run a guild by yourself. Finding people that are willing to lead raids or manage the guild bank frees you up to manage people instead.
You need a focus point. Is your guild there to raid to spam M+ to pvp? The more focus you have the better your chances are to attract the kind of people you want.
Decide what type of people you want. Is it a safe space or a guild were people banter all the time?
Being the leader does mean that you will have to kick people. Nothing kills a raiding guild faster than not kicking under performers that cause tons of wipes. At least in my experience.
You can think of a guild like a company. The purpose is to fulfill a purpose/need that isn’t being met in your area and/or do it “better” in some way to your competition (because it is all but impossible to be unique in a global environment). This is going to be next to impossible to do in WoW because it’s all but guaranteed there is already some form of established guild already doing what you’re trying to do that has the bodies you need for your own.
Also keep in mind that nearly all facets of the game are cross realm (and even faction) now also further lessening the need for a dedicated guild for these people to “live” in. One of the biggest draws to a guild is the centralized space and communication…but communities also serve that function and you can be in multiples of them.
So yeah, your efforts are largely going to be wasted because there are plenty of established guilds/groups with the bodies of the people you somehow need to attract while having to start from scratch and not only build up the infrastructure of your guild, but then actually prove it has the chops to do what it aims to do and the payoff for these people jumping ship is hopefully a “better” group in some capacity to what they already got. That’s asking a lot.
Honestly, stop trying and instead spend that effort on finding a comparable guild/group and lending your budding leadership services to them instead.