[GD] Retention/Recruiting

[Kier]

I expect that the chapters shall just evolve naturally along whatever the right lines turn out to be.
So long as we don't recruit ( / keep ) bad eggs then we cannot really go wrong.

[Saerwen]

From my experience with guilds in WoW it always seemed that guilds were the happiest when they were progressing and getting places. We don't need to be a casual guild to be friendly we can be competitive (which is the direction we should take) and still be a good group of guys and gals. I'm not saying we have to be the best guild on the server but as long as we're constantly advancing and winning I really don't think we'll have a problem recruiting people. People would notice us them selves and want to be a part of who we are.

With that being said that also means we would have to have some standards for our people. People would have to be willing enough to put time and effort into getting their "toon" leveled up and geared so they could run with the rest of us. Our guild can not be effective if we have a wide range of different geared people. Games can not be won by only one geared up person but rather the whole team of geared up people each pulling their own weight. If we can constantly get people gear through PvP/RvR or PvE people will notice and they'll want to a part of our team. If we go stagnant people will not be getting the gear they need, they wont be happy, and they'll eventually leave.

If we can have a guild of skilled people that are progressing I could care less about how many people we have. Moral is highest when we all get what we want. If we can achieve victories and gear on a constant basis people will want to stay and want to be apart of our guild.

It may just be from my experience playing Guild Wars, but I've actually found small guilds to be highly successful in MMOs, and this is the key, you don't have to spend 20+ hours on the game to be a highly respected and successful guild, because in the end all it requires is a tiny bit of co-ordination,

e.g., If you have 50 members in a guilds (in the EU server forinstance), and you wish to get your name known, all you need to do is find a convenient time for most people to be on, and encourage people to be on and available for RVR at that time, it doesn't have to be every night, and you only need 20-25 people on to get some good keep capping/RvRing going on,

As an example from GW: I was in a guild with just 7 other people and we regularly did Hall of Heroes (equivalent on highly co-ordinated keep capping), we used vent to co-ordinate, and we went on for maybe 10-12 hours a week, and do you know what? We were MASSIVELY successful, we all knew how each of the other's played and could work with them, we logged on at a similiar time most nights for an hour or 2, and just played together, you could easily beat large guilds, as they were simply not co-ordinated

As you can see from this, as long as you organise a time when you run your keep-capping, people know what time to be on to do this, so you get all the people you need to do this, if you are co-ordinated, and know how to play well with each other you don't 100+ people to ensure you have people on for keep capping IF you organise when and where you will be doing this capping

Just my thoughts anyway

[Berethas]

I did come up with a new recruitment form which is available for review in this forum.

[Kier]

I keep forgetting to ask :

Are we steering interested players towards the web-site, or are we having a special 'initiate' rank in-game ?

The initiate rank would be for people we meet in-game who say they want to join / try out the guild, to keep them around until they submit a forum apllication and the application process is complete.

I can see obvious merit in such a rank, but I can also see how it would be open to misuse by people who want access our guild benefits either falsely or simply without being prepared to make any effort to actually become part of the guild.

I think the answer to that is: we have an iniaite rank for new members, they stay in this rank for 2 weeks, and at the end of the 2 weeks we vote on whether to keep him or not (just a suggestion that bit), Limited privileges etc. should ensure they can't really get any big benefits in this rank

[Anaetheron]

Originally Posted by Saerwen

From my experience with guilds in WoW it always seemed that guilds were the happiest when they were progressing and getting places. We don't need to be a casual guild to be friendly we can be competitive (which is the direction we should take) and still be a good group of guys and gals. I'm not saying we have to be the best guild on the server but as long as we're constantly advancing and winning I really don't think we'll have a problem recruiting people. People would notice us them selves and want to be a part of who we are.

With that being said that also means we would have to have some standards for our people. People would have to be willing enough to put time and effort into getting their "toon" leveled up and geared so they could run with the rest of us. Our guild can not be effective if we have a wide range of different geared people. Games can not be won by only one geared up person but rather the whole team of geared up people each pulling their own weight. If we can constantly get people gear through PvP/RvR or PvE people will notice and they'll want to a part of our team. If we go stagnant people will not be getting the gear they need, they wont be happy, and they'll eventually leave.

If we can have a guild of skilled people that are progressing I could care less about how many people we have. Moral is highest when we all get what we want. If we can achieve victories and gear on a constant basis people will want to stay and want to be apart of our guild.

im not saying that what your pointing out here is wrong, i just want to point out that unlike WoW wich was a constant grind for new purple pixels, WAR is a tad different in the part that youre able to get your gear from both a PvP aspect and a PvE aspect and the game caters more to casual players than wow ever did !

that said, sure the guild can be as competitive as it wishes, but if thats where we begin to REQUIRE people to turn up from 8-11pm 4days a week bla bla bla, then im off here and now, had enough of that in WoW.
have a work allready, dont need another in my spare-time

its a fair point tho that getting what you want when you want makes some people happy, but it does come at a cost of casual players and the ability to take a few nights off from teh game. that and you WILL be required to go through [Insert Random shit instanced scenario/dungeon ere] many many more times than you would like in the end.

intrigues me tho, now i really want to know wich direction the guild is going

[Kier]

Originally Posted by Anaetheron

im not saying that what your pointing out here is wrong, i just want to point out that unlike WoW wich was a constant grind for new purple pixels, WAR is a tad different in the part that youre able to get your gear from both a PvP aspect and a PvE aspect and the game caters more to casual players than wow ever did !

that said, sure the guild can be as competitive as it wishes, but if thats where we begin to REQUIRE people to turn up from 8-11pm 4days a week bla bla bla, then im off here and now, had enough of that in WoW.
have a work allready, dont need another in my spare-time

its a fair point tho that getting what you want when you want makes some people happy, but it does come at a cost of casual players and the ability to take a few nights off from teh game. that and you WILL be required to go through [Insert Random shit instanced scenario/dungeon ere] many many more times than you would like in the end.

intrigues me tho, now i really want to know wich direction the guild is going

I imagine - via the wonders of recruitment and Alliance - we'll be going both directions. +

[Drackus]

One thing i did in my posts is not call out other games. its a mmo. mmo= grinding, leveling, player interaction and grouping. this game has a spot for soloing people. rvr people, talkers crafters ect ect. big guild or not people will do as they please. there is no reason to say i wont do that and say i am leaving. if i do a pq, does not mean you have to join me. though i might try the cookie lore to get the help but you dont have to. same for large events. we are out with 40 people doing keep. you want to craft, cool might buy some stuff off you after the keep is ours.

the real question here is should we recruit or go with the numbers we have. i posted up we should recuit so that we can grow and learn those already in the guild.

its easy to say you want to make a small guild with great people. Its anther to do so. recruiting to get more and grow will allow us to see who we want and dont want. to go small is to bank on those in the guild(all of them) are good people. will u bet me money that all the members we have right now are going to meet your standards??

normaly and those who have talked to me ingame and vent know me to be joking around alot and not serouse about anthing. this is a topic i hope goes the right way. as i said before i have seen alot of guilds go the route of small and family and end up dead in the water in a very short time. Also remebre its just a game, lets not have anymore posts of

"that said, sure the guild can be as competitive as it wishes, but if thats where we begin to REQUIRE people to turn up from 8-11pm 4days a week bla bla bla, then im off here and now, had enough of that in WoW."

one i dont see use ever putting requires on anthing. honestly i tryed to think of one thing they might do it with worse case and i am coming up with nothing. this is not a game were requires fit. there is only one raid over 6 people. capital city. the rest are 6 man or join a random group. two this is up to dagda and the rest. they have stared us right so far. toss out ideas and belive they will go down the right road.

O and one more thing. smile people. this is supose to be fun.

[Kalsydor]

In a sense, if our alliance is active, we almost don't need to have the larger guild size. We can have a guild of <60 members x the same 4 classes (since we are 100% elven) and retain a strong RP environment as well.

Considering how much more effective having a combination of classes is in RvR (i.e. rune priest + archmage is a superior combination to having 2 arch mages) this might be a definite option to target.

So, we have a "smaller" guild...retain whatever core values and consistently participate with our alliance (ala DAoC call to arms or C.T.A. tactics) on grand scale events.

Also if the cookie cutter success story of an RvR group is the:

2 healer (1st mistake most inexperienced RvR groups make is they go into a major conflict with only 1 healer)
2 tank
2 dps

then suffice it to say having:

Archmage + Runepriest
Swordmaster + Dwarven Hammerer
Bright Wizard + Shadow Warrior

might be more effective for grand scale RvR than:

Archmage + Archmage
Swordmaster + Swordmaster
Shadow Warrior + White Lion

Other than the superior combo of archmage and rune priest I'm not 100% on any of this mind you ~ but I am trying to analyze this somewhat.