[GD] Retention/Recruiting

[Dagda]

Currently, and until Live we have basically had a you ask we accept outlook as far as recruits go. This was due to the fact of being a pre-game guild that was not based in another MMO. I knew that when it comes down to going live we should have a decent number of people that actually get along and want the guild to survive. I think we did pretty well in this aspect, for both sides of the guild.

Now we are coming up on actually getting to get in the guild in the game and my question is where do you guys want to head with retention and recruiting?

My thoughts for the way I set things up with the mentoring as well as elder members is that there will be a lot of different play styles from those very casual players to those that are on doing RvR 24/7. It is very important to me that we get a wide varioty of those players so all of us will be able to find those in the guild that share the same playstyles. So I want to extend the invite rights to several different members so that we can try to cover many different play styles.

[Argencia]

I like the idea that people are responsible for who they invite.. both in term of making sure they're meshing well with the rest of the guild and in the sense of helping them level or understand the game.. That way people won't mass-invite everyone they meet that is unguilded.. and everyone who is recruited will at least know someone right off the bat. At least.. that's my 2 cents.

Definetly agree with argencia on this,
Also i think 1 thing we've got to bear in mind is quality over quantity, I personally would like to see us as a relatively small and close knit guild full of skilled members, rather than just a huge zergway of elves

[Anaris Ceyl]

Mentoring any potential guild member is the accepted system within which the guild will operate ingame.

As for the concerns about the actual size of our member roster. Please keep in mind that Mythic, themselves, have indicated that they believe a guild with 30-50 members is what they were aiming at. As the "Living Guild" system depends upon guild members to slowly, or quickly, gain guild levels. I am not advocating a massive guild to rival gaming syndicates, but I would like everyone to remember there are innate benefits in being a "decent" sized guild.

I've always had an image of the Lost Guard having at least 5-6 members logged on at any given time day or night. Now, that might be asking for much. But it was my vision of the guild being represented either in small groups and/or massive formations of warbands.

I understand the desire to have a smaller, closer-knit guild. But the way the living guild system works, if we want to unlock standards, guild vaults, etc we do need to have a warband plus size guild.

Lastly, many would see we have an enormous member rosters for EU & US members. Please understand the nature of pre-release guilds. Many join but for many reasons will not be part of the guild once WAR is released. It is no one's fault for people change their minds, realize they rather play a different race, career and/or join another guild. I expect the total number of guild members present during the initial days of WAR to be much smaller than the rosters on the website.

My motto for the guild ....... The guild only reflects the ambition, desire and vision of its members.

Just to clarify, when I say "small and close knit" I mean between 30-40 players, on both US and EU sides, smaller than that makes the guild too small as raids etc. cannot be managed, bigger than that and the guilds become unwieldly

[Bel-Uanmaar]

I think that no one wants to let in "low quality" guild members for sure. On the other hand it does seem like WAR is kind of geared towards larger guilds, with the guild leveling dynamic and the special role that guilds can play in RvR.

Also, as a casual gamer who likes both RvR and PvE, my (albeit selfish) hope for the guild is that whenever I have time to log on, they'll be some members of my guild (or at least an allied guild) on as well who are in my tier and in the mood for the same thing I am (i.e., PVE or RVR). The only way I can see that ever happening is if we have a lot of members.

That being said, I don't think we need to spam invites on the first day of the head start; I just think we should think about organizing some consistent, ongoing efforts towards recruiting so that we can keep finding and inviting those players that are a good match for the guild. I do understand that managing a large guild will be a big challenge, but I think if we can divide up the work fairly and evenly we can do it. For starters I think having a leader for each career is a great idea, and if that gets unwieldy, we could also add lieutenants in charge of smaller groups within each career, or groups based on timezones or whatever. We could also have multiple people assigned to recruiting (i.e., posting on forums, etc.) and other management work that needs to be done, and even rotating them over time if that helps. I'm certainly willing to do my part to keep the guild going strong!

[Baghora]

Greetings. As a player, I am very interested in the RvR side of the game. If the plan is to have an average of 5 or 6 people logged in game then that just won't work. For grouping with guildmate purposes, some will want to RvR, some will want to PvE and some will want to craft. After a week or so I would suspect problems to occur. Also, is there plans for ventrilo to be used to coordinate for RvR, Raiding or just social purposes?

[Bel-Uanmaar]

I think Vent will definitely be used (and was used during the CB + preview weekend when I was on at least) to coordinate RvR. Dagda has put in enough different "rooms" on our Vent server so that RvR tactical communications shouldn't interfere with socializing and other stuff. We didn't have enough people on at the same time this weekend to warrant everyone being in a different channel, but we definitely can if we need to.

[Rebririon]

There is this little thing called Alliance. I think that might help on the "i'm looking for people to do XvX with" issue. I don't know about the US side, but the EU side does have allied guilds, and i assume we will be working close with these as well.

[Dagda]

Seems like everyone is in the same frame of mind as I have been in. So far I dont see any reason to change our recruiting policies at this time.

Vent: I saw this brought up. Yes we have that in order not only to just hang out with one another but also to help out in game. We have set up rooms to help with this fact, if more are needed it is very easy to set up temporary rooms.

Alliance: This was another thing that caught my eye. I really hope we can stress this with all guild members. We should always try to help the guilds within the Conclave of Light. Arathnar and several others have really worked their tails off with the CoL.

Retention: Not much has been said about retention, and to be honest I dont really think there is much about it has ever really been talked about. But I think it could be a very important fact with the viability of the guild.

So, With the many years of MMO experience that we all share what are some of the things that made you stay with guilds you were apart of?

For me it was the guilds that seemed to listen to what I said and seemed to try and help me when I asked for it. They were not entirely focused on getting to the end game content. And no, I am not saying that we should deny ourselves time to advance to help the new jacks as there will be those in the guild where that is their main objective, but I do want all of us to think about ways to help those new to the guild when they can. Just try to remember what it was like for you when you were a noob.