This guide-type is a type i have searched alot for while my Character was young and impulsive, and something i have accumulated the experience to write later. Guild Management can be done by everyone, but to do it well, you need alot of practice, be good at talking (by letters ) and good organization and leadership skills. This guide is mostly aimed at lvl 60 raid guilds, but will also give some info of running lower lvl guides at some points in the guide too. This guide is mostly geared towards PvE guilds.
Guide is in development, so some changes will be done.
Introduction
Guilds are, as most know, a group of players that share chat, cooperate and help each other out. They are lead by one or more persons (but only the founder can acess certain control options,) and have officers and different ranks.
To found a guild, visit the guild master in a capital City, pay 10 silver and get 7 people to sign your charter. Decide a name and return the charter. You are now a Guild Master! Remember, that to sign up people, you need to be close to them, but after the guild is established, you can recruit players that are far away.
Naming
All guilds need a name! Let it be humoristic or cool. End game guilds tend to use one, cool, epic word as title, and that makes the guild sound serious and hard-core P
Lower lvl, less serious guilds like the funny names as Lobster Pants and Horny Vikings, and as long as its mostly an extra LFG channel, its ok
Recruitment
Recruitment is a basic factor for starting. It should be done at the Capital City Chats, and you should have a proper, tempting ad with good info of you Guild and Plans.
A bad example is "Hey, join my guild, lobster panties, its imba and we do stuff and chill." You may get some unserious, talkative guys that probhably is friendly enough, but not the hardcore, 24-7 players thats needed to get a good End-Game guild.
A GOOD ad will be more like "Ascension is recruiting new members, we need Mages, Warlocks, Healers and some good Hunters. We only take players with those and that gear and talents. We are aiming at doing MC as soon as we reach a reasonable amount of Players, and are already doing regular ZG raids. We have Vent and Guild bank. /w me for more info or invite!
Tell what you require, and what the listener can expect to get. Be open for giving more info, seem friendly and serious. Remeber to have a tabard, oryou wont be taken seriously, and THAT is important. Tabards also give a feeling of being an unit, a community
If you are running and end-game guild, you will need MANY players, aim at atleast 5 of each class, and even more later if needed. You need atleast 60-80 players to do MC. Also check out class composition, as you need a balanced guild to get a balanced raid group.
Ranks
The most discussed topic by guildmembers, as even if theres no difference between Member and Veteran, many players will whine for an eternity to be Veteran, or even Officers. Make Ranks that make sense, and do it by the Guild Control Menu. You need one normal Member Rank, one Veteran-like rank just to allow veterans to brag and be happy, an officer rank and yourself. Many guildmasters is generally a bad idea, mostly used by lower lvl guilds that doesnt need any proper leadership. Class leaders is often a good idea for larger raid guilds, as the guild master wont have experience with and advise to all classes. Let the Class leaders be some kind of Semi-Officers that supervise their classes under your supervison. Dont have many real officers, and only chose serious, skilled veterans you know and trust. Officers are VERY important, and they got to be good. Remember, you dont have to lead the raids or do all the day to day management that way.
Remember, dont give in to the countless asks for promotions from the others, consider them worthy or not without their own opinion. Answer that asking just decreases their own chance for promotions, and they stop soon
The Beginning
Yes, this is one of the hard parts folks, mostly when in a raiding guild at lvl 60. Players seem to be very hard to appease, and some days without action can separate a new guild faster than you can log onto your character. Only after many weeks and many players, a good officer group and a set schedule, you can relax, take some days off and return to the same, happy guild with even better gear than last time.
So the important for raid guilds is to expand fast, get many active members and above all, have a schedule that you can make work!
Theres no use in havin Daily ZG raids if you cant get enough people on more than every second time. The second guild-killer is raids that is cancelled because of too few members. Even one daily Scholo or Strat can keep a new guild together, as long as its sucessfull. UBRS? Even better? Doing both with Vent or TS? You are well on you way.
Just do what can be done to make the members feel like an unit, and make them get used to cooperate. Even how small it is, making them feel the guild can make them active and help them get their gear can do wonders with the spirits and will to make the guild even better.
Helping them get their tier 0 and feel like supermen can make them do a whole lot to help you. Have a plan, and let them give feedback on it.
Have progress, and let the members help with it. Just the messange get the tier 0 gear by joining daily UBRS and look out for FR gear so we can start MC can make your members go wild and fill up the UBRS groups in 5 min, and soon you will be getting on Ragnaros!
But i cant press it enough, have a plan and keep you members active EVERY DAY. Dont care about signing at a website, just say "be online at 1900 and i will invite you"
People are way to lazy to enter a website, unless it is to view their DKP.
DKP
Dkp, or Dragon Kill Points are an very important factor in Raid Guilds.
DKP are given for killing bosses and joining raids. DKP is not of much use in ZG and AQ20, but is required in MC, BWL, AQ40 and Naxxramaxas.
DKP is used to "buy" loot in Raids. This ensures that the ones most active gets most loot. Each item has a price, and the needer with most DKP gets it without having to roll for it. The DKP cost is taken from his total DKP. Always have Master Looting, so that you can take good time deciding.
To get a DKP system, find a site that allows it, they are everywhere, and requires you to make a site. There are alot of premade, customizable sites out there for free, like at guildwizard.com and many others.
Talking - Best way of communicating!
In raids, you GOT TO HAVE a talking server like Ventrilo (the best option) or TeamSpeak (The Free, Second best Option.) Have rules for who`s allowed to talk at raids, and use the channels as Social Channels when not raiding. These are useful at 5-man instances too, and allow complex strategies to be made in a few minutes. Always have one, and always have it in the Recruitment Ad!
Requirements to stay
Yes, you cant let everyone stay. All Raid Guilds need firm rules, as you cant afford inactive players. Demand a good reason and a post in your (reccomended to get) forums or a public note. If not, kick after a week inactivity. Also have rules for raid activity, be aviable once a week or more/less, or get kicked. These are unpleasant but required parts about leading a guild. You need progress, not obstracles.
Guild Banks
No requirement, but an very handy thing anyways. Tends to attract players, as it makes your guild look serious. A guild bank is a lvl 1 character that stands by a bank and has 5 big bags and all the bank slots to store guild items that is given by members. Keep a list over the stuff thats in it at the forums. The Character is usually named GuildBank or so, and is most often an alt of the Guild Master.
The less serious matters too
Now that your guild is established, has 80-100+ members, does MC or better regulary (every day is best) and has good progress, keep the same strict rules, be the authority, but be nice too! Being nice is important in the whole progress, playing James Blunt when taking down Ragnaros is always fun Being nice, humorous AND strict is possble P
Now that you are established
Keep up the progress, still have a plan and keep a schedule with activities every day, even with many daily raids (both 40 and 20 man raids).
Gearing up and giving all members the oppotunity to join raids is important. Members left out off the action, leaves. Require a PvE spec from the members, exept from some DpS warriors and that kind of people
The Lower lvl Guilds
Much of the same stuff, exept the raid parts. Keep a plan for lvling progress, and keep the members lvling fast. Aim at getting a higher lvl guild, 10 lvls per 2 weeks or so can be a goal. In lower lvl guilds, a friendly and closely-knitted community tied with active-instance loving members is all that matters. Keep it up until you all are lvl 60 and can follow the raid part of my guide P
RolePlaying Guilds
Less experience here, but i know that you got to have a purpose, goal and backstory of your guild. Arrange RP-Events and try to have a good time pretending you are a dwarf female Paladin
PvP Guilds
Little experience here too, but planning to found one soon.
Organize regular BG Premades, have a good strategy, talking server and get rank 14 all of you P Lvl is slightly less important here, but keeping a healthy number of lvl 60s is always good. Lvl 50-59s just dont fit in the 60 BG premades, so they should concentrate on lvling for now.
Summary
Starting To get the Active players, you got to get a good ad, seem serious, skilled and look like having a plan for fast progress.
Get many players of different classes.
Running Show that the guild is even better than the ads, keep progress, have a plan, be nice and let your members be a part of it all! Keep good oficers, and have routines every day to keep your members active and progressing.
Useful Ideas and Twists
-Just remove the Veteran Rank, it has no purpose and will just be a point of quarreling and begging/whining at the guild chat.
-Keep as few ranks as possible, normal Member and Officer, no more. This minimizes the bad behavior many shows when whining for promotions
-Try to keep the same officers all the time, so they can get known with all members in order to optimize their efforts.
-Be sure you got some officer that can lead raids when you are absent.
Useful Addons
Addons are always good, and i love them!
Raid guild should have CT_Raid Mod to keep track off Raids and help defeating bosses.
There are adds that help managing DKP and GuildBanks, but i am not Familiar with those.
This guide is not finished yet, and i would love getting some feedback, suggestions and ideas for addons, RP guilds ad PvP guilds.
-Trekloss
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