[Ryan]

Guild Leadership 101 / Back to the Basics

So, you want to start a guild? Maybe you’ve run a guild in the past and want to improve on some of the qualities that make good guilds great? Whether you’re a novice or seasoned guild veteran, these series of guides will help you take your guild to the next level without breaking your back.

This is the first article in a series entitled “Guild Leadership”. Through out the course of these articles I will address such topics as goals, rank structure, administration, loot distribution, and longevity. I invite you to share your thoughts and experiences relating to this article. There is no perfect system though different setups work for different dynamics. I encourage you to participate.

This article deals with the basics: the foundations you can implement to ensure success in your guild endeavors.

No matter your current level of experience in guild administration, when forming a guild and later leading the guild through the game, you need to have your goals pre-defined.

Starting a guild on a whim is a serious mistake.


Why do you want to lead a guild? Notice how I said “lead” and not “start”. This is a critically important observation and needs to be understood from day one: anybody can start a guild, but successful guilds are lead! Do you want higher level gear? Do you want recognition? Or is being the first to new content your thing? Guild success does not discriminate; both ‘casual’ and ‘serious’ guilds are capable of success. Guild success is defined! If you start a guild for a reason, know what that reason is and make decisions driving the guild toward that end.

Establish goals as the foundation and know what those goals entail.


For the sake of this section, I am going to start a guild because I want to raid end game content. The raids that I am interested in are 10-man encounters. With this statement, I now know what my end state is. But how do I get there? First, analyze the goal in depth. What does it take to raid 10-man content? What type of players are capable for a 10 man? A few questions in and it becomes clear what type of guild members fit the bill: players who are dedicated enough to reach the end state of the game and commit time and progression effort to raid a 10 man. That may sound pretty obvious (and to me it does), but with this simple realization you have already eliminated a tremendous amount of the player base that would not be a good fit for the guild. Use this as a guide for inviting new members to join you in your accomplishments. If 10-man raids are not a priority for a new recruit, why recruit him in the first place. Goals: you need them.

Establish guild rules early and stick to ‘em, but don’t be afraid to grow with them.


When recruiting a new player base into a guild, it is both critically important and extremely wise to let them know what they are getting in to. Guilds are prone to fail when issues arise at critical situations where there are shades of gray in an otherwise black and white set of rules. Take the source of most guild drama, loot, for instance. The uber-rare Chest Piece of Zargon has just dropped for your group. This item is so rare, and so powerful, any class can use it. In fact, it is the perfect fit for everybody! As a guild leader, what do you do? Did the guild rules account for this sort of situation ahead of time? They should have. Now, the guild is staring into the eyes of it’s most dangerous foe ever: LOOT DRAMA! This is a guild killer folks, and one that can easily be avoided. (I’ll discuss the topic of the guild charter in depth in a follow on article.)

The point is this: for a guild to survive and be strong from day one, the foundation starts with guild members knowing full well what the rules are – more importantly, how the guild operates.

Member Requirements; why wouldn’t you have them?

Following up with guild rules, member requirements can be a strong, single point of failure for your guild achieving the goals set out before it. Know before hand the type of real life character you want playing the in game characters.

If you’re like myself, a man in his late 20’s / soon to be early 30’s, the last thing you want do deal with at critical moments in raid history is a 12 year old haxxor on a sugar rush pwning the raid. Conversely, for all you rapscallions, do you really want to deal with, in some cases, people who could be the totalitarian equivalent of your parents controlling your life in game?

The above also applies to the other members in the guild as well, which brings me to my final point in this section:

The guild is not about you, it is about the guild!

Players who join a guild do so because they have common interests and are sold on it. Guild formation is only the beginning. Success comes with making the guild not only last, but endure. The moment the player base even suspects favoritism, gear stacking, or behind the scenes power moves that favor the few and not the many, they will become unhappy. These negative emotions lead to other negative emotions. Before you know it, the guild is no more.

A successful guild is similar to a team effort marathon race. If you sprint, you will make the mile markers first and feel the sense of quick reward. If you pace yourself and plan/train properly, you will finish the race. And that is what you want to do, finish the race together and as a team.

So there you have it. The above is merely an outline with which to form a solid foundation to a successful guild. In the coming weeks, I will expand on some of these ideas specifically, as well as introduce some alternative ways of thinking that break the molds of some of the standard guild setups we see in use today.

Thanks for tuning in and I’m standing by for your thoughts and comments!

[Vizy]

I agree with every point made here. Great Guide!! Back in my WoW days I had ran one guild. It was never anything great, just a couple of friends lallygagging around. What I found was that the more i recruited, the more pointless players I had laying around. They would ask for gear or money and supply nothing to help the guild. This wasn't a huge problem because I had plenty of goods to supply them with. None the less a good guild has to have members that are willing to endure and become a "good" guild. Success takes time.

[Ryan]

Thanks for the comment. I have (or should I say, had ) an article series planned around this topic. As I finish my work with the site code, I'm going to switch to more of an authoring role - and thank goodness for that too.

If you take a look, you can see that I stopped the next article in the series on a short note.

[Vizy]

Originally Posted by Ryan If you take a look, you can see that I stopped the next article in the series on a short note.

I had saw that shortly after the 15 minute allotted time to edit posts.

[Ryan]

Lol.