Building A Successful Guild
With LotD having been
around 12 years, played multiple games, and having a good track record
for each guild game we often get asked for advice from others on how to
build a lasting and successful guild. Our primer is mainly designed for
a new guildmaster, or a guildmaster of a competitive guild (larger than
25 people) who is moving their guild to a new game for the first time.
Without writing a novel, I'll cover some of the core elements that have
helped us last through the years and remain competitive in each game
we've played.
Leadership
It all starts at
the top with a stable leadership core that knows how to plan, develop a
consistent set of standards, delegate and supervise to implement the
plan, and to ensure that critical timelines are being met. Good
leadership can make or break a guild, and many new guilds or guilds
trying to make a transition to their second MMO fail due to breakdowns
in the leadership.
A guild must also take the time to develop
junior leadership that can quickly fill key roles in the event that a
senior leader has to step aside, or if a senior leader has to be
removed for other reasons. Guilds should have a good set of policies
and procedures in place that allow for talented members to slowly ease
into positions of escalating responsibility and authority. Properly
trained and oriented junior leadership can be an asset to a guild, but
poorly trained junior leaders can cause all sorts of problems.
Policies and Procedures
Believe
it or not a set of standard policies and procedures can save a guild
lots of headaches. I don't know how many guilds I've seen fall apart
because members got special treatement, promoted, or disciplined
without regard to any set standard. In LotD, every member is
evaluated, promoted, demoted, or booted according to our by-laws. In
instances where our by-laws haven't been followed by the leadership,
the Elder Council has over turned junior leadership decisions and
sanctioned those leaders. Some policies on behavior, expectations, etc
need to be tailored for the game being played but its always a good
idea to have some universal standards and expectations for the
membership.
Standardized procedures are also a good thing.
Having a basic start up plan, standards for certain activities that are
fairly universal no matter the game, PVP standard operating procedures,
etc are all ideal to have. Once you establish basic procedures, then
you just need to modify the parts that are new to the game you are
presently playing. For example, in LotD we have standardized PVP
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's). These SOP's cover how we
organize for PVP by going over how we prepare, what some critical roles
are, what each class is expected to do, and some basic strategies we
employ on certain maps or zones. Having standardized procedures helps
us with new member orientation and training. The newbie member who
shows up to his first PVP practice with an obvious lack of knowledge of
our procedures isn't allowed to run with our groups until they show
they understand the basics.
Planning 101
In
instances where your guild is starting new or transitioning to another
game, your leadership will need to do some careful planning. How long
is your setup time going to be? How do you plan to handle recruitment?
How many of your existing members are likely to transition? What
resources is the guild likely to need, and how soon? Who do you have
that will be able to fill key leadership roles in the new game?
Guilds don't fall apart because they plan to fail, they fall apart because they fail to plan.
We
usually consider our setup phase of a new game to be the 45-60 day
mark, and we plan certain milestones into that time period for where we
want the guild to be by that time. We consider the operational phase
to be the 60-90 day mark, and by the end of that period we want to have
the guild engaging in its long term strategy for that particular game.
In
a sense you have to treat a guild like a business. You have to do your
homework on the new game you are going to, create a setup plan, create
operational plan to maintain after the setup is done, and then follow
through accordingly.
Personnel 101
While
nice to imagine, it is highly unlikely that your guild will retain the
same membership year after year and game after game. In 12 years LotD
has rebuilt 80% of its membership in each new game it has played,
trained and oriented that new membership, and then gone on to achieve
success. Members that do not follow the guild into every single game
are placed into a certain membership category, and members who do
follow the guild from game to game are put into another membership
category.
Either way its highly likely that LotD or any other
guild will have to rebuild its membership for new games. This is where
planning, leadership, and policies all become critical because new
members have to be recruited, trained and oriented, and brought up to a
certain level of performance usually within 60-90 days. If you are
still struggling with new membership training and orientation issues
after the 90 day point, the odds of your success in that game go down
considerably and it shows in your guild's overall game progression.
After 90 days of retail release the playerbase on a server usually
becomes mature, and it becomes harder to maintain continuous
recruitment if potential applicants see your guild still mired in
growing pains.
Personnel activity is fluid though, and you
always have to have a game plan to deal with normal attrition. I advise
a continuous recruitment process, and recruiting what you need as you
need it. Eventually though a game matures and a server matures to
where recruitment becomes difficult, and at that point your leadership
has to consider options such as server transfers or whether or not its
time to move on to the next game. Once you lose the ability to recruit,
its only a matter of time before guild effectiveness is eroded. If a
guild waits too long to make decisions, it can lose its core members to
guilds that are more proactive or guilds that are moving to other games.
Communications
In
this day and age, voice chat is all the rage. Any guild worth its salt
is going to have ventrilo, teamspeak, or some voice server capacity.
Things happen so fast in games these days, that you just don't have
time to sit there and type in text chat commands to people. For day to
day coordination, it is imperitive that you establish some sort of
voice based communications capacity.
On the flip side though
voice chat makes people lazy. The guild leadership must take time to
establish policies and procedures on its website or in forums, make
regular news announcements, and ensure that their members are reading
the updates. Otherwise you waste time and productivity with having to
constantly explain what's going on to every idiot who's too lazy to
take five minutes a day to check the forums. Voice chat is great for coordinating activities, but it sucks ass for long term planning and organization.
Figure out what works for you, but beware of the trap that voice chat can create.
Progression Strategy
Whether
its PVE or PVP, the leadership should have a strategy for guild
progression. The strategy should be both realistic, and obtainable
without requiring the membership to feel like the game is a full time
job. It is also advisable to regulary check your strategies, and update
them based on existing conditions.
Establishing class leads,
PVP coordinators, etc is very helpful to keeping the guild organized
and to assist in creating optimal group configurations. With good
coordination and communication amongst your leads or coordinators,
creating optimal group configurations is usually not very difficult.
Sure you can advance to the end game without an optimal group
configuration, but you usually get there faster with the best group configuration possible.
I
wouldn't be too strict on forcing people to play a certain class, but
you have to encourage members to roll things needed to fill gaps or be
able to recruit the types of classes you need. Class makeup and group
configurations can make or break your progression so its important to
balance the needs of the guild vs the class needs of the guild.
A
nerf here or there could totally gimp a character class while making
another character class powerful. These types of changes could require
individuals to reroll and level new characters, and could affect guild
progression in the meantime. Whatever the situation keep your members
actively doing something that contributes to the overall guild goals.
Public Relations and News
One
way to keep your guild in the public eye is to make periodic
announcements about relevant activities, events, or achievements. This
shouldn't be overdone or the public will get "your guild" fatigue, but
its certainly acceptable from time to time. By keeping your guild in
the public eye, it can also help to attract new recruits over time.
Regular
guild news is also a good way to keep your membership informed about
guild events, planned activities, outlining goals, and setting
preferred activities for your membership during a given time. I like
to release monthly newsletters, internally, on guild chapter forums to
that everyone knows what the expectations and priorities are for that
month. When members know what to do or what the priorities are for a
given time period, they usually become more productive.
Member Discipline
Last
but not least we have member discipline. Most members integrate well,
but from time to time there's always that one person who feels he's
god's gift to your guild. This is gut check time because sometimes you
have to boot that guy, and all his friends who came with him.
Personally I believe its acceptable to suffer a temporary setback in
order to remove a cancerous member and his supporters within the guild
than to let them fester and grow. Games like World of Warcraft that
require a perfect combination of so many people or so many of each
class do make one hesitant to boot someone and their friends at times,
but letting cancerous people remain in your guild can doom the entire
guild. We have booted recruits, full members, and even Elders over 12
years when they got too big for their britches, but those things are
required if you want to stand the test of time.
Conclusion
So
this has been a short primer, and I covered the things that I feel are
most important. If you've got more things to add, feel free to let us
know in our forums.
