Starting A New Guild: Part 1, Before You Start

This is designed to be a multiple article post about what I would do if I were starting a completely new guild.  I should say right off the bat I didn’t start my current guild, but I did become co-leader when it was down to few enough people to run even heroics together, and helped rebuild it.  Also I’ve watched what has and hasn’t worked in multiple games both from a guild leader standpoint and a member standpoint.  So with that said, take this for what it’s worth.  If you can take anything out of this that will help you then great, if not then at least perhaps there is some food for thought here for you.

I’m going to assume you are on a server where you don’t know anyone or perhaps know only a few people.

First, there are a few things to think about before you even start a guild and some questions you need to ask yourself:

1. Do you play enough?  You’ve got to be available (and ONLINE) a lot.  If you log in once or twice a week you’re probably not on enough (depending on the type of guild).  If you take a lot of breaks from the game then someone else should be leading.
2. Can you follow through?  If you aren’t willing to do the not-so-fun stuff to make the guild work, if you quit when things get hard…don’t bother.
3. Are you capable of dealing with pissed off people without losing your head?  No matter what happens you’re going to get WAY more complaints and pissed off people then people who tell you things are great.
4. Are you willing to give up some of your play time to deal with guild related things?  Guild bank issues, messages from in-game mail, forum personal messages, guild management stuff….and lots and LOTS of whispers, daily.  If those things are a problem for you then you should JOIN a guild instead.
5. Are you enough of a “people person”?  If people generally think you’re an asshole they may stay in the guild to get what they want, but they’ll leave as soon as they get it.  Not everyone likes everyone, but you have to at least be “likable” and somewhat friendly.
6. Are you capable of kicking people out of your guild or talking to them and trying to correct behavior you deem “unacceptable” in your guild?
7. Can you delegate authority?

I’m not saying I’m perfect or great with all of the above things.  There are times I definitely fail on some or all of those things.  The above are just things I noticed can be root causes of failures in the management of guilds I’ve seen in this and other games.

So let’s assume you’ve thought it through and you decided you want to start your guild.  You might be thinking “Let’s go get people!  I’ve got a tabard and a bank slot!”….whoa whoa whoa.  Before you go get people, you need to define what kind of guild you want to be, and there are a lot of questions to answer.  You’re going to want to define your guild first so in the long run you recruit the people that will best fit your vision of what you want to accomplish with your guild.

Questions you need to answer if you are going to raid:

• Are you going to be a hard core raiding guild?  Casual guild?  Somewhere in the middle?  Where in the middle?
• If you are a hard core guild, will you kick people out (or sit them out of raids) based on their performance?
• Are there set times you already have in mind?  (That is one of the first questions people will ask when you look for recruits.)
• What do you expect out of your raiders and raids? (Properly gemmed/enchanted gear, flasks and other consumables for raids, etc)
• What system will you use to determine loot?  (This will also be a question everyone asks.)
• Do you aspire to raid only 10 man content, or do you want to run 25 man stuff?  MORE than one 25 man eventually?  (Very large guilds can get quite impersonal, from my experience.)

You need to decide if you want your guild to be adults only, a younger guild, or open to everyone.  Even if you are an “adult only” guild, will explicit language be ok in guild chat?  Will you take mains only or allow people to join on an alt while their main is elsewhere? (You can’t stop people from lying to you, but you can do your best to only recruit mains.)

You also need to decide what kind of behavior is acceptable in your guild.  The guild tag above members heads is a reflection of all of you, and any actions members of your guild take reflect on you and the rest of the guild.  Is it ok for your members to run their mouths in public chat channels (like trade chat), or battle grounds, or dungeons?  Are you ok taking people with suspensions or bans of their account for “bad behavior”?   If you haven’t asked yourself this question, or you think it won’t matter, be prepared to deal with angry whispers from other guild leaders when someone from your guild acts like an ass. (Trust me, you WILL have to deal with this if you run a guild long enough, even if you are careful with screening recruits.)

In closing of this section, to give an example, this is how I’d define my guild.  At this point I would say we are a Medium-core guild, that fields one 25 man and multiple 10 man raids per week.  On 25s we expect people to take raiding somewhat seriously (though we laugh constantly), show up prepared, and we all try to constantly improve our play.  We don’t raid 5 nights a week even on new content so we work at it when we DO raid.  On 10s we have a group that runs some harder-core stuff.  We are a guild of only adults 21 and up, and our guild chat is explicit and is not a place for kids.  We have some set raid times during the week but we don’t force strict attendance.  We have our own specific loot system in place.  We do not allow members with “mains” in other guilds.  We expect rowdy (fun) behavior in guild but expect people wearing our tag to act appropriately when grouped with people outside of the guild, or we will not hesitate to remove them.

I would tell a potential recruit an awful lot more than that, but I hope that gives you a guideline for where to start before you recruit.

Part two of this article will dive in to recruiting and actually starting a guild.