So you’ve been from guild to guild and just can’t find one that’ll suit you. Why not make your own guild?
I have been in a total of 4 other guilds, and none of them were quite what I was looking for. I decided to start another guild with a few buddies of mine. Other friends of mine were skeptical, they thought I could never really create a guild people would want to join, not to mention one that could raid and defeat bosses like other top raid guilds. Well, I did. But of course I didn’t do it solely alone. Here are a few things to help start your guild up.
Remember, your guild name may have an influence on what others think.
After you name your guild, besides just going to the NPC to create a guild, and finding random people to sign your charter here are other steps.
Make In-Game Contacts – Hopefully by now you have made friends in this game. Get them in on the new guild. Tell them about it before you create it to see if they are interested. If you have people you trust in the game, you can all ready have a couple officers set up right away to start. One of the best way to make contacts in the game is to help people when they ask, (and I don’t mean giving beggars gold) and Pugging (pick up groups) of people you never met. If the run is a success, many times people want to befriend you on their friend’s list.
Create a website – This will help other members connect through forums, sign up for runs, raids, and allow others to apply. If you aren’t sure if your guild is going to work out and you don’t want to take any chances, or if you just don’t want to spend money on it, I suggest guildportal or guildlaunch. My guild uses Guildlaunch because it allows you to have a simple URL that people can remember that you choose.
Advertise Your Guild – In my opinion one of the worse ways to advertise your guild is through yell, say, trade, or general chat. You can do this in the /guildrecruitment channel without having people upset at your spamming channels it is not used for. Another great way to promote your guild is again, making more friends in the game through runs and questing, but also through the World of Warcraft Forums. You can post about your guild in your server forum section of the Guild Recruitment section.
Start up Ventrilo or Teamspeak – This is essential if you want to be a PVP or a Raiding guild. This does cost money, but you can start for as little as a couple of dollars for a small 12 man server. Some of your officers may even volunteer to set up the server.
Make Guild Rules – Make rules that you will keep enforced and make others read before inviting them into the guild. Make sure you don’t leave anything important out, but also do not create a wall of text of rules.
Now that you have basically everything you need to set it up…here are a few things to also remember.
If you are a raiding guild, requiring KLH Threat Meter and Deadly Boss Mods is essential. I am a destruction warlock with 26% chance to crit. That threat meter is vital or I have the main tank yelling at me and the healers losing all their mana keeping me up. smiles
After you have members, now what?
Well one way to keep members is to (as a guild master) talk to all of them, and make them feel like they weren’t just here to be another number or a spot filler. Remove any trouble makers early on. I learned this the hard way. I kept people in my guild I thought would stop creating drama after I had spoken to them, and I ended up losing good people because of the bad eggs.
Have events going, whether that is doing runs together, pvping, or contests. The more you keep everyone involved, the more friendships will build and harder it will be for people to leave.
Keep drama down, and fighting out of guild chat. It is sometimes easier said than done, but even a little drama will turn members away.
Essentially you cannot force people to stay, and even guilds that do everything basically right, people will still leave you for another guild. It could be for a reason as simple as they don’t play the same time everyone else does.
And remember to pick your officers carefully. They can make or break your guild, even if they are real life friends.
