Thursday, January 20, 2011

Growing your Guild

I wanted to talk a little about the pros and cons of growing your guild. What I mean by growing is expanding the core number of players in a guild. For example, my guild Morningstar has 39 members if you look at the guild pane in game but as far as I know we only have 5 active members. Most of us have 3-5 alts in the guild as well so our guild is not really growing if we add another alt. What we need to do is add to our core numbers so that we can have more that 5 players online at once. This has several advantages, but a few disadvantages as well.

I'm going to start with the advantages because those are what make people excited to be in a larger guild. First and foremost if you have a larger guild there will be more players around at any given time. This is great for several reasons; if you need some help on a quest or are looking for a group to run some instances. But is also nice to have someone there to say hello and ask how your day is going.

It's nice to have those players around for professions as well. In many smaller guilds you don't have crafters of every profession available to help you when you need something made/enchanted. It is also nice to not about geming you gear or getting all of your glyphs in place. Although our guild is small we have several max level characters so this is not a problem for our younger players. We have at least one toon with each profession above 450, and a few at 525.

Growth is important for meeting new players as well. It is nice to have a close relationship with all of your guildies but sometimes that can prevent you from meeting new players as well. I think it is vital to continue to meet new players and add to that friends list. After all not everyone from your guild can be on every night. If you enjoyed a run with someone from your server add them to your friends list and send them a whisper the next time you see them online. It will work wonders! If they are looking for a guild send them an invite. Be careful to not grow too fast or the guild can start to feel like a bunch of strangers standing around with the same name floating above their heads. As with everything in life, guild management is about balance.

Now for the disadvantages, nobody knows your name. I like the close, intimate feeling of a smaller guild. I have a few alliance toons in various larger guilds and I always feel like an outsider when I play those characters. Whenever I log with one of those characters nobody says a word to me. I want too login and have a few people say hello and ask how I'm doing. I want that community of players because we all know that the game is better when you play with friends. So go and grow your guilds, but make sure to take the time to get to know you new players.

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