What makes a good guild?

Tasear

With so many guilds out there, how do you decide where to call home? What makes a good guild for you?

Nelson_Rebel

all magicka sorcs

Tasear

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

all magicka sorcs

But nova, chains, major viltiaty, and what ever warden does ...seems like a red headed step child. As such I don't think such a guild will last.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

People helping each other. A community of players that are like family. Players that can have fun and enjoy running things with each other. Folks who support each other..Guilds that help other guilds.
That's a good guild!
Huzzah!

runa_gate

(1) Interviewing people before they join during a probationary period to ensure that they're not annoying. One single person that causes no one else to join in chat or, even more vitally, voice coms like Teamspeak or Discord, can ruin a guild. This is the single most important rule for all guilds and one that basically none understand.

You needn't have some terrible reason to exclude people from your group or guild. Think of a dinner party. Would you let just anyone sit down to eat and socialize with you? Of course not. Now consider if that person could literally pop in, anytime. Will your other guests keep coming back if the person that doesn't fit keep coming. Of course not. If a GM and/or officers don't have a good feel for other people then they shouldn't be leading a guild - unless it's something like a trade guild where people aren't going to be trying to corner someone for chitchat.

(2) Active and engaged GM and officers. I do NOT mean they send out mails and big, allcaps announcements about guild events. I mean actually doing content with the people they have invited to the guild. Members should not be padding to get numbers except, of course, in the case of trade guilds or the like. I've been in guilds where I literally had no idea that the officers even still played, GMs who basically never logged on and then certainly never engaged with members. "Welcome!" and "Hi, guildies" and then going about your day does not count. If you want to play alone and not engage then don't run a guild. Inexperienced or conflict-averse players may not realize that they could simply leave and find one of the other bajillion do-nothing guilds.

(3) Offer content that members require other members in a group to perform. Not on a schedule only, either. Every day, paying attention to what your actual guild members need group help to perform as opposed to, say, "IC Patrolling Bosses 2nd Wednesday of the Month." Pledges should be offered basically every day, with officers filling needed roles, at the barest minimum as those without a giant friends list need this more than anything as it's unavoidable, even for PvPers.

(4) Teach and offer advice, education, and correct information. Even some of the people who've played the longest and post here all the times on the forum are seemingly immune to knowing anything aside form their preferred playstyle and feel the need to offer incorrect information to every question posited. People will be afraid to contradict your guild officers and blowhards. Keep them in line. Find who does know everything and support them in helping out without overwhelming them by having to repeat everything a million times.

Malmai

Tasear wrote: »

With so many guilds out there, how do you decide where to call home? What makes a good guild for you?

Definitly how many horses you gambled and houses you bought and how much clothes you have.

Enslaved

Tasear wrote: »

With so many guilds out there, how do you decide where to call home? What makes a good guild for you?

Friendly, with a lot of ppl doing all content, and EP only. Yes, that means not even a single alt in another alliance.

Runschei

As an officer and/or guildmaster myself I highly prioritize an open guildchat. I like having the guildchat active at all times, not just about the game itself, but about everything! How is your cat feeling? How was your holiday? I try to keep it including so everyone in the guild can join the chat if they want to. Guildmates should not be afraid to ask any question in the chat, or to start a conversation, no matter their rank within the guild. I want new members to feel welcome in the family and not be shy. I try to get to know everyone in the guild, not like add them on Facebook and show up to their door irl, but just replying to their hello in chat, helping them out with all kinds of stuff and being including. Even exchanging first names and nationality or languages they speak. Damn I love an active chat.


Note; I used a guild of my own as an example c:

Nermy

runa_gate wrote: »

(1) Interviewing people before they join during a probationary period to ensure that they're not annoying. One single person that causes no one else to join in chat or, even more vitally, voice coms like Teamspeak or Discord, can ruin a guild. This is the single most important rule for all guilds and one that basically none understand.

You needn't have some terrible reason to exclude people from your group or guild. Think of a dinner party. Would you let just anyone sit down to eat and socialize with you? Of course not. Now consider if that person could literally pop in, anytime. Will your other guests keep coming back if the person that doesn't fit keep coming. Of course not. If a GM and/or officers don't have a good feel for other people then they shouldn't be leading a guild - unless it's something like a trade guild where people aren't going to be trying to corner someone for chitchat.

(2) Active and engaged GM and officers. I do NOT mean they send out mails and big, allcaps announcements about guild events. I mean actually doing content with the people they have invited to the guild. Members should not be padding to get numbers except, of course, in the case of trade guilds or the like. I've been in guilds where I literally had no idea that the officers even still played, GMs who basically never logged on and then certainly never engaged with members. "Welcome!" and "Hi, guildies" and then going about your day does not count. If you want to play alone and not engage then don't run a guild. Inexperienced or conflict-averse players may not realize that they could simply leave and find one of the other bajillion do-nothing guilds.

(3) Offer content that members require other members in a group to perform. Not on a schedule only, either. Every day, paying attention to what your actual guild members need group help to perform as opposed to, say, "IC Patrolling Bosses 2nd Wednesday of the Month." Pledges should be offered basically every day, with officers filling needed roles, at the barest minimum as those without a giant friends list need this more than anything as it's unavoidable, even for PvPers.

(4) Teach and offer advice, education, and correct information. Even some of the people who've played the longest and post here all the times on the forum are seemingly immune to knowing anything aside form their preferred playstyle and feel the need to offer incorrect information to every question posited. People will be afraid to contradict your guild officers and blowhards. Keep them in line. Find who does know everything and support them in helping out without overwhelming them by having to repeat everything a million times.

This. A great answer and as a guild leader myself, something I try to do. I may fall short sometimes but I have an excellent group of officers who support me and I support them, we run daily PvP raids, have loads of crafters and generally try and help people be the best they can.

Prof_Bawbag

Quite simple and no need for convoluted or in depth analysis, it's the people within that guild.

Kay1

Me and a friend created a guild about 2 months ago.

Our intention was to create the best PvP Guild of our server with all the best solo and small-scale players so once Battlegrounds gets released our guild chat will be a godlike lfg, and we accomplished our goal, we have the best of the best from our server and every day we receive whisper from top PvP players to join.

Most of the guilds in this game besides Trading guilds are used to die after few months so we try to make our guild a family, there's always people talking, asking for group to 2-3vX or for small-scale, we always help each others and we get involved into Trials and our guild is currently #6 in the Leaderboard and we don't even PvE!

We try to do vMol runs for our members that want the skin or the title, we do events like 1v1 Tournaments, 3v3, 4v4, take the scroll from an Alliance with a group of 4 and defend it, ect..

We also have a mediator, me, between good players there's always rivalry so everytime there's a trouble they come to me and I try to fix the issue speaking with them.

I would say my guild is my family, and for me is the best one .

Sheva I 7 I

If its a raiding guild, people who can smear *** in your face if you are *** up.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Many good points I agree with above. I'd like to add that a good guild is a guild that has a strong identity. And sticks to it.

Would you go repeatedly to a restaurant that offers the same standard pizza-lunch as everyone else ?
Would you go to a restaurant that pretends to offer both 2$ burgers and 100$ gastronomy servings ?
No. Maybe you'd try them, but you'd swap next time and hop from one restaurant to the next, never feeling truly at "home" in any of them.
More specifically, a bad guild is like a restaurant (you get something to eat) but a good guild is like a restaurant where you know you'll find like-minded people to have dinner with.

If the guild pretends to welcome everyone, to do all kind of content, to be cool and relaxed and friendly and that there are no further requirements than to be polite, helpful and respectful to other members : RUN ! That guild has no identity.

A good guild is not about the number of members in it. It's about the social and affective bonds that people will build up among each other while playing together. You can join a guild in literally 2 minutes, and leave it in 2 seconds just to join another guild. You don't make friends in two minutes and you don't leave them in two seconds. A good guild is a guild where members find something (friends, atmosphere, performance, whatever) they know they won't find anywhere else, or not easily.

A guild that pretends to cater to ALL levels of players (casual, min/maxers, etc...) WILL split up sooner or later, and rather sooner than later.
A guild with people who like to trash talk will not attract people who like a more "censored" or "controlled" environment.
Etc, etc.

No guild identity or culture is better than another. But it's essential to HAVE ONE and that the guild is managed accordingly.

Farorin

One that has members available for groups, be it dungeon runs, trials, PVP, or whatever, that also leaves me the hell alone and doesn't expect me to do much apart from just be there for when I feel like joining one of the groups for ingame content.

WuffyCerulei

Good GMs can seriously make a difference, especially with end-game pve guilds. The GM of this one pve guild I'm in decided to drop all the core groups as well as focusing on training and progression with the rest of the members, which means a lot for someone like me, who loves the end-game stuff but isn't that great yet. Though, one of the GMs in the other pve guild I'm in has been focusing too much on the main core group and set rather strict rules for joining, so the guild is dying. The person running the guild can make a serious difference.

IxSTALKERxI

Teamwork! Have an atmosphere that encourages everyone to work together to achieve a goal.

Belidos

If the guild pretends to welcome everyone, to do all kind of content, to be cool and relaxed and friendly and that there are no further requirements than to be polite, helpful and respectful to other members : RUN ! That guild has no identity.

I have to disagree with that, it all depends on the members, the guild that i ran for nearly 6 years in DAoC was a very successful and well known guild, part of one of the largest alliances on the server, yet for nearly 6 years our ethos was very much as you have said, casual and friendly, every rarely arranged anything in advance, but almost always did do something, even if it was just hanging out en-mass in Camelot city. I've either run or been in guilds in multiple mmo's since then, all were relaxed guilds, in fact most of them were populated by people who were in or knew of the original guild in DAoC, and none of them failed because of being relaxed, most of them ended up closing down because people moved on to other games, but we always chose another game and stuck together. Over the years though there are less and less of the original players, but that's not because of the guild style, it's simply because sometimes people just don't like certain games and you end up going your different ways.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

To put it short it's almost like a real job, with the stress, antics and only difference is you don't get paid.
Good luck

altemriel

Tasear wrote: »

With so many guilds out there, how do you decide where to call home? What makes a good guild for you?

first, when looking for a guild I decide based on these keywords in their guild description:
- friendly, mature, no mandatory fees, at least 300 - 400 active players

then depends if you want to trade (trade guilds) or do trials or PVP...

in the end what matters the most is the atmosphere when playing with the people. if you do not like them, leave.

Violynne

Tasear wrote: »

With so many guilds out there, how do you decide where to call home?

I do my research. I have specific needs, and I assume guild members also have them. Find like-minded members is a huge bonus for me, because we'll know what the other is looking for.

But the biggest factor for me was a guild dedicated to solo players. There's less pressure, and most don't require fees (which takes away from playing solo, to me).

What makes a good guild for you?

The officers, no question. Good officers will take the time to maintain the guild's inventory, make announcements to keep members up-to-date, and will monitor new members to ensure they're not taking advantage of the guild's generous and open inventory.

I've heard stories of guilds run by officers who simply don't care, and they're not good for the members.

I will say this to those out there reading: if you're one of these nitwits who goes about cities and spams invites to your guild, knock this crap off.

If you can't take 5 minutes out of your time to tell me why I should join your guild, you're wasting both our time.

I will never join a guild on an invite only basis.

It's disrespectful of the guild and if there's no respect to tell people about it, you can bet your keester I'm not joining it. It's already bad from my point of view.

Blacksmoke

A well placed guild trader

anitajoneb17_ESO

Belidos wrote: »

If the guild pretends to welcome everyone, to do all kind of content, to be cool and relaxed and friendly and that there are no further requirements than to be polite, helpful and respectful to other members : RUN ! That guild has no identity.

I have to disagree with that, it all depends on the members, the guild that i ran for nearly 6 years in DAoC was a very successful and well known guild, part of one of the largest alliances on the server, yet for nearly 6 years our ethos was very much as you have said, casual and friendly, every rarely arranged anything in advance, but almost always did do something, even if it was just hanging out en-mass in Camelot city. I've either run or been in guilds in multiple mmo's since then, all were relaxed guilds, in fact most of them were populated by people who were in or knew of the original guild in DAoC, and none of them failed because of being relaxed, most of them ended up closing down because people moved on to other games, but we always chose another game and stuck together. Over the years though there are less and less of the original players, but that's not because of the guild style, it's simply because sometimes people just don't like certain games and you end up going your different ways.

Maybe I didn't express myself properly. I never meant to say that relaxed guilds were lacking identity and doomed to failure.
What I meant was more that a guild that pretends to cater to everyone and every playstyle is likely to not succeed.
There are people who love to play efficiently and beat records and min/max everything. They're not going to mix well with people who choose their gear according to cosmetics.
There are people who like to chit chat on teamspeak as soon as they're online. They'll not mix well with people who like to quietly enjoy solo immersion and will only join teamspeak for a dungeon.
There are people who will run dungeons for the thousandth time just because they love group play and dungeoning is what they care about. They won't mix well with people who won't join the group because they're busy fishing.
There are people who care about the game itself and their teammates are just a mean to an end, said end being : playing the game. And there are people who care about their social contacts and friendship more than about the game and they would go as far as moving to another game as long as it is with the same people.

In other words, I never meant to say that a casual guild is bad. What I meant to say is that a guild that wants to cater to *everyone* is probably doomed to fail or to split up.

Kas

I'm in a great guild:

Almost everyone logs into TS before they log into the game.
While there are daily things like pvp, trials, etc, so much just happens in the main ts channel. you quickly find groups for everything and move to some other channel. when you're done, you go back up to chat with all the others again.

That said, officers work really hard for this. New players have to apply on the forum, the have length discussions with a recruiter, finally and depending on their experience, they receive an introduction into pvp/their trial group depending on what they join for.

Officers sit down and talk with members whenever there is potential for a conflict or when others feel like they don't perform too well.

Apart from that, the main reasons is for me, that the guild used to have a only-one-guild (apart form trading guilds) allowed rule for years. while it has been relaxed now, there still is a core of people that only ever join our TS and sit there the whole day. This attracts others as well and now that multiple guilds are allowed, most of those with multiple guilds end up in our TS anyway - simply because it's fully alive outside of fixed raid times and because the most alive channel is open for everyone - not groups of 2-4 spread across TS.

At the same time, the skill level is incredibly different between some players. But I think the guild finds a healthy mix of free-for-all events and somewhat exclusive progress-oriented stuff.

It's perfect in that regard, imho. However, that's largely due to the insane effort some peopel put into the guild. And whenever 1-2 key figures are busy for a week or two, you can greatly feel the quality decline. Fortunately they always came back to full power and everything turned out well so far

jackiemeeking

It really depends on what you are looking for in a guild.

You need to identify the things (in game) you need to achieve.

Some guilds are purely PVP, PVE or casual guilds.
Some has a trader and you need to pay dues/donate money, etc.
Some guild has activity planner, so you can see what events going on for that day.
Some are very casual, they accept people for the sake of opening a guild bank.

You can only join 5 guilds. Collect and then select.
Make sure they don't milk you for gold (:

runa_gate

I would add to this avoid groups who can't be bothered to be thoughtful and can't seem to string more than a sentence or two together at a time due to lack of attention span or interest in analysis.

anitajoneb17_ESO

jackiemeeking wrote: »

Some are very casual, they accept people for the sake of opening a guild bank.

That's not a guild. That's called a scam.

Carokube

I believe OP is in my guild so that.

vamp_emily

What makes a good guild?
The members. I have 2 guilds and I give all credit to the members to why the guilds are a success.

My advice would be to look on the forums for guilds that sound interesting, join them and if it don't feel like home, then join another guild.