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How NOT to start a new guild in EQFollow

#1 Feb 04 2016 at 11:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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How NOT to start a new guild in EQ

I've always enjoyed scanning the Guild Search Window listings, usually not so much for a guild to join (since when I've wanted to be guilded, I've usually been in one, and when not... not) but to read the recruiting posts, which can often be very.... er, interesting.

Here are some of examples of how NOT to recruit players to your guild, whether new or long-lived. All this are derived from actual posts I have seen; any names have been changed to protect the perpetrators. :)

Quote:
Guild of Glory, Gods and Guts is a new giuld me and my friend have put together for grouping, hanging out, progression, raiding and we want to be eventually the best raiding guild on the server. Raiding is optional. No trolls or drama. Only requirment is to have fun! If interested send a tell to any member. Websight coming soon at www.someforumsomwhere/gamingguilds/guildnumber=726b161a902K776227k. Be sure to visit when we're up! lol


What's wrong with this post?

Misspellings make the guild look amateurish. Often when they specify classes they need, they list rouges. That always drives ME nuts!

"Only requirement is to have fun." I see this a lot. Umm... it's a game. Of course players should have fun. But you really want to make it a REQUIREMENT? Like you going to punish members who aren't having enough fun?

"Optional raiding"---and you're going to be the best raiding guild on the server? High hopes but not bloody likely. The best raiding guilds almost invariably have some raiding requirements: at minimum: if you're on-line you have to raid. Most players looking for a guild who are interested in raiding are going to know this. They probably wouldn't join a startup guild if they have immediate raiding aspirations but even if they would consider getting in on the ground floor this kinda pap tells them you're going nowhere fast when it comes to serious raiding.

No guild wants trolls or drama. You ever see a guild recruit specifically FOR trolls... other than the race? Worthless verbiage. No troll or drama queen ever thinks they are so does anyone think they'll be discouraged by such warnings?

Name is too long. Hard to do a /who to find members. I always prefer single-word guild names myself. I am often astounded by how BAD some guild names are.

Send a tell to "any member".... weak! Does every member really know HOW to recruit? Maybe better to list the recruitment officers to demonstrate at least that much organization. But if you do that make sure at least one is often on-line. It's horrible when a recruit tries to /tell a listed member and they're never online. Says a lot about the dedication of the guild, too. When I was recruitment officer for a raiding guild I always tried to post a list of knowledgeable members with varying non-raiding playtimes so with luck at least one was always available. Ironically, one time I was indeed interested in joining a particular guild. I sent a tell to a random member (as the guild's recruitment hype said to do) one time and turns out that player was REALLY disgruntled, was planning to quit and form his own guild, along with some other members, and he tried to recruit me for THAT guild! So maybe a guild in need of recruits might want to control WHO talks with prospects, eh?!

It's a real PLUS to have a website presence but here is a whole new set of potential problems. Don't advertise a site that isn't up and running and if so, make sure it's presentable. Make sure it works and has welcoming text, info about the guild and a short but effective list of rules and goals. A relatively simple url address helps a lot. There are various services which help set up a guild website fairly painlessly and cheaply and I'd go with one that makes referencing the guild home page as easy as possible. Forums are nice but only if they have content and it's current. Nothing's more discouraging to recruits to see that the last post was 3 months ago and the guild's home page has not been updated since the expansion before last. Kiss of death!

"lol", at the end. Gak! I see this from time to time and it's the worst. To me, lol is the text equivalent of nervous laughter and demonstrates lack of self-confidence. The only even slightly useful purpose for this acronym is that it can serve is to lessen the impact of a comment in chat which might otherwise be considered offensive. Surely a recruitment post should not include this grossly over-used Internet chat shorthand. It says---to me: see everything we wrote before this? Just kidding!

Oh, mentioning preferred timezones, if relevant, is always a good idea. When I was raiding heavily nothing drove my guild more crazy than players who arrived late to raids or had to leave early because of time zone problems. We were considering splitting the raid force into two different forces based on time zones, right before we imploded.

Anyone else have any guild recruitment horror stories?


Edited, Feb 4th 2016 1:05pm by Sippin

Edited, Feb 4th 2016 3:09pm by Sippin
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#2 Feb 04 2016 at 12:27 PM Rating: Good
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Blind invites.
Quote:
You have been invited to join
the guild Bristlebane's Bro's.
Accept ------- Decline




Edited, Feb 4th 2016 1:54pm by Trappin
#3 Feb 04 2016 at 4:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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DeclineSmiley: smile
#4 Feb 04 2016 at 4:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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Correct options for any guild with "Bro's" in the name should be:

1 - Accept
2 - Do you even lift?

Tat :)
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#5 Feb 04 2016 at 5:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Sippin wrote:
No guild wants trolls or drama. You ever see a guild recruit specifically FOR trolls... other than the race? Worthless verbiage. No troll or drama queen ever thinks they are so does anyone think they'll be discouraged by such warnings?


I'll add that, in my experience, if someone is making a point to say they don't want trolls or drama, it's because they've had numerous/constant issues with trolls and drama in the past, which almost always means they are the source of (or at least major contributor to) the problem. If every guild you've been in has too much drama? It's you.

I'd say that the number one problem, which is frankly a problem with online speech in general, is people tending to write the way they talk. This is presumably due to the rise in written media as a means of day to day conversation (texting, email, forums like this, etc). But when writing some kind of process document, business proposal, executive summary, or say a guild recruitment document, you need to write very differently than conversational speech. An alarming percentage of people these days simply have no experience with this form of writing, which in turn makes them look very unprofessional and amateurish. And yeah, adding "lol" in there is one prime example of this in action.

Any guild that doesn't define requirements for joining (level ranges for mains at the least, and probably also preferred/needed classes) is going to have trouble recruiting anyone worth recruiting. You'll have a bunch of people in your guild planning on riding the coattails of everyone else. Now, in a large and already established raiding guild, you can absorb a small percentage of these sorts, and have them learn as they go. If you're starting out with a small guild? You'll have nothing but people who have no clue what they are doing and chaos will ensue.

Obviously, if your objective is to be a purely social guild with members who get together maybe a few times a week and do some group stuff for fun, then that's fine. But you need to be very clear that's what you're doing. Saying that you plan to be a raiding guild but not actually setting any requirements or goals that would conceivably get you there is pretty darn foolish. And let's face it, all the players on a server that are raid capable will have some sort of pedigree to present. The only successful "new" raiding guilds I've ever seen were started by groups of players who split off from an existing raiding guild for some reason or other. They can succeed because people know that they have experience from the previous guild, and might decide that these guys will be more fun to raid with than <insert other raid guilds here>. And those guild's recruitment documents will clearly state where they came from, what experience they have, and again, what expectations they have of their members.

Hmmm... So many things people can do wrong, it's hard to list them. I'd also say anything that indicates youth and/or lack of actual experience in the game is a deal breaker. It's usually pretty obvious when the person writing the statement is trying to hard to pretend to be something he isn't. Well, obvious to everyone except that person, that is.
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#6 Feb 04 2016 at 8:23 PM Rating: Good
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Excellent post.

gbaji wrote:
If every guild you've been in has too much drama? It's you.


My wife and I collect board games, and we play games a lot with the kids. We have a saying at our house. If you're wondering who's turn it is.... it's yours!

Same principle :)
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Tatanka Wolfdancer, 115 Wood Elf Druid, 9 x 300+ Master Artisan, 7 maxed trophies (dang research! :)
Michone, 115 Troll Shadowknight
Anaceup Mysleeves, 115 Erudite Mage, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
Snookims Whinslow, 112 Erudite Enchanter, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
<Inisfree>, Tunare (Seventh Hammer!)
#7 Feb 05 2016 at 12:25 PM Rating: Excellent
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Haha, we do the same thing at my house. If you have to ask, it is your turn.
#8 Feb 05 2016 at 12:57 PM Rating: Excellent
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I used to be in a regular poker game and there was often a player who neglected to ante up. Sometimes it was just forgetfulness but I think some players planned it that way, hoping to save some money if none of the other players noticed a shortfall. In these games, the result was the opposite of what you guys described for your family games: the guy asking about the short pot was NEVER the one who failed to ante since THAT guy wouldn't want others noticing the short pot.

So we set a rule that for every hand the last player to ante up had to ante up DOUBLE. This only applied if the last player to ante was really late, or "forgot" entirely. If everyone threw in their ante a second or two apart, no penalty. Consequently, there were always players paying attention to the antes, because they loved the idea of one guy being caught and having to pay double.

Would you be surprised to hear that this eliminated the problem and after a few games we dropped the double-ante rule?


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#9 Feb 05 2016 at 4:47 PM Rating: Good
As a guild leader with.. (god.. has it been 6.5 years already?) experience, I've seen so many guilds come and go. I've seen tons and tons of guilds start up with 2-3 others, with a recruitment message of "We're raiding such and such." I always wonder, "Why would an established member of another guild that has been around longer and has already had success in raiding current content, leave for some start up?" And then, 2-3 months later.. that guild collapses.

I hear a lot of complaints about how some guild leaders act like dictators, officers who think they're above you just because they have that officer title, all sorts of things. That sort of attitude will also collapse a guild quick.

Just throwing in my 2 coppers. =)
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#10 Feb 05 2016 at 4:50 PM Rating: Good
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Funny story, Sippin, and oddly enough, I was going to include another saying on my last post, also related to poker!

I have a group of friends who are really quite talented at poker (several have been to various World Series, and other various $10K buy-in events. One made a final table this year!). The saying they all live by is, if you look around the table, and can't figure out who the fish is, it's you :)

Tat
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Tatanka Wolfdancer, 115 Wood Elf Druid, 9 x 300+ Master Artisan, 7 maxed trophies (dang research! :)
Michone, 115 Troll Shadowknight
Anaceup Mysleeves, 115 Erudite Mage, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
Snookims Whinslow, 112 Erudite Enchanter, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
<Inisfree>, Tunare (Seventh Hammer!)
#11 Feb 05 2016 at 5:31 PM Rating: Decent
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tatankaseventh wrote:
My wife and I collect board games, and we play games a lot with the kids. We have a saying at our house. If you're wondering who's turn it is.... it's yours!

Same principle :)


Hah! Yup. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. The other thing we run into is that there are certain players in my family who are... how should I say this? Slow. Not like mentally or anything, but when it's their turn, they will sometimes sit there for quite some time thinking about their move, or whatever. Sometimes, you can't tell if they know it's their turn and are planning their move, or don't realize it's their turn and are waiting for someone else to do something. Additionally, they will sometimes just sit there at the end of their turn, and you also don't know if they're done and expecting you to take your turn, or are still planning to do something else. One of my sisters and I (who are the two who actually seem to pay attention the most and try to keep the game moving) will arrange the seating so that we alternate us and these other players. So that when we're done we remind them "Ok, I'm done. It's your turn now". And when they stop doing something on their turn we'll ask them "Are you done now?". The game time delta that occurs if two such "slow" players are seated next to each other versus not is pretty significant. One doesn't tell the other it's their turn, and the other doesn't think to ask.

The two games we tend to play the most are Catan and Crayan Rails. Catan isn't bad since whomever has the dice is taking their turn. So when they hand it to you, you know to start, and people don't usually forget to hand over the dice. With rail games, players can take quite a bit of time thinking and planning, and baring them telling the next player that they are done, there's often no clear sign. So it's quite easy for one player to just stop doing stuff and forget to tell the next person they're done, resulting in one person waiting for their turn to start thinking the previous player is still taking their turn, and that other player waiting for him/her to start playing and thinking they're just planning their move. Meanwhile the rest of us are sitting their twiddling our thumbs. Well, not really. In those games, you don't really stop thinking strategy, even when it's not your turn. So it's not uncommon for 5 minutes to go by, everyone intently examining the board, counting spaces and build costs and whatnot, and no one actually doing anything.

Still super fun. But there's always some quirks.
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#12 Feb 05 2016 at 5:43 PM Rating: Good
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missjackie wrote:
As a guild leader with.. (god.. has it been 6.5 years already?) experience, I've seen so many guilds come and go. I've seen tons and tons of guilds start up with 2-3 others, with a recruitment message of "We're raiding such and such." I always wonder, "Why would an established member of another guild that has been around longer and has already had success in raiding current content, leave for some start up?" And then, 2-3 months later.. that guild collapses.


Usually, that doesn't work if the new startup is being started by relatively new/unknown players. What I have seen happen successfully is when a group of players become dissatisfied with the leadership/direction/whatever of their current raiding guild, and break off to form their own. Obviously, the success or failure depends on whether the conflict that caused the split was actually the fault of bad leadership in the previous guild, or bad/disruptive players among those who split off. If the former, then the new guild will often succeed. If the later, they're usually broken up with the members seeking spots in some other established guild within a relatively short period of time.

Quote:
I hear a lot of complaints about how some guild leaders act like dictators, officers who think they're above you just because they have that officer title, all sorts of things. That sort of attitude will also collapse a guild quick.


Yup. Which is what often leads to the case mentioned above. Some people actually do think that leadership means bossing people around. And that pretty much 100% ends poorly.
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#13 Feb 05 2016 at 6:54 PM Rating: Good
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Crayan Rails? Have to admit, that's a new one to me, and we have at least 8 train-related games. I've alerted my wife about this new one, she'll probably locate one shortly :)

Tat
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Tatanka Wolfdancer, 115 Wood Elf Druid, 9 x 300+ Master Artisan, 7 maxed trophies (dang research! :)
Michone, 115 Troll Shadowknight
Anaceup Mysleeves, 115 Erudite Mage, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
Snookims Whinslow, 112 Erudite Enchanter, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
<Inisfree>, Tunare (Seventh Hammer!)
#14 Feb 05 2016 at 7:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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One could write a psychology master's thesis on guilds and guild leadership. It would be fascinating as hell! Especially under the rules established by EQ. A guild leader is the ULTIMATE dictator. I still remember the first guild I ever joined, in 2000 IIRC, where the leader had a hissy fit, booted every member, transferred the leadership to one of his alts and refused to talk to anyone from the guild. It took us quite a while to form a new guild and by the time we contacted every member and recruited them for the new guild some of them had panicked and moved to other guilds. Those were the days when forming a guild was complicated: you needed 10 "real"players (not alts) on line at once and had to contact a GM who came along and established the guild for you.

We even /petitioned to try to get the original leadership transferred and Sony (or maybe Verant back then) refused, saying the rules didn't allow it. The GM's basically just told us we should have picked a more stable guild leader. See, this is why I see psychology master's thesis potential in this subject!
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#15 Feb 08 2016 at 3:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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tatankaseventh wrote:
Crayan Rails? Have to admit, that's a new one to me, and we have at least 8 train-related games. I've alerted my wife about this new one, she'll probably locate one shortly :)

Tat


Quick derail (hah!):

Mayfair owns the rights to them now. They've been around for like 30 years or so now I think. They're much more open ended than most train games, since you actually build the track yourself and then move your train on it. I'd recommend starting with Empire Builder. It's the first one, focuses on North America and Mexico (so it's likely to be familiar to US players), and it has the least complex rules. Terrain only consists of clear, mountain, and rivers, and events are pretty standard storms/tornadoes and other natural disasters, strikes, and derailments. Later games introduce ferries, alpine spaces, inlets and lake boundaries, swamps, jungles, deserts, forests, dry lakes and rivers, and events with space monsters, a giant lizard attacking the capitol, the fall of Communism, decompressing tunnels, meteor strikes, floods, dragon attacks, etc, etc, etc.

All of them run 3-5 hours to play, depending on how many players and how experienced they are at playing and at the map/game they're playing with. I really like this series of games because you aren't just jockeying for who can buy up the best routes, or whatever, but actually physically drawing your track on the board (which is still often about grabbing that best route, but with a lot more granularity). While there is some random factor to the game, a lot of it is about planning ahead. What might be the best/fastest way to do something right now, may not be the best choice later in the game. You have to balance what you can afford to build that will earn you money now and allow you to expand your rail system against what will provide you the fastest money generation in the end game when you're racing to win. The random factors do play a part in that, and you have to balance the risk of something bad happening against the cost of reducing or avoiding it.

They're fun games. A bit more strategy heavy, but that's why I like them.
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#16 Feb 08 2016 at 4:36 PM Rating: Excellent
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OK, got it. Crayon rails, not crayan :) We have Euro-rails (not sure about the others at that web page), and we've played it quite a bit over the years. It's a really good game!

Tat
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Tatanka Wolfdancer, 115 Wood Elf Druid, 9 x 300+ Master Artisan, 7 maxed trophies (dang research! :)
Michone, 115 Troll Shadowknight
Anaceup Mysleeves, 115 Erudite Mage, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
Snookims Whinslow, 112 Erudite Enchanter, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
<Inisfree>, Tunare (Seventh Hammer!)
#17 Feb 08 2016 at 5:11 PM Rating: Good
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tatankaseventh wrote:
OK, got it. Crayon rails, not crayan :) We have Euro-rails (not sure about the others at that web page), and we've played it quite a bit over the years. It's a really good game!

Tat


Oh geez! Didn't even notice I misspelled that.
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#18 Apr 11 2016 at 6:34 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
. If every guild you've been in has too much drama? It's you.


I once had a guild where all the members were me and we still had drama!

I guess I learned from that
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#19 Apr 11 2016 at 7:13 AM Rating: Excellent
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Yeah I have an alt guild and sometimes I do argue with myself in guild chat. I even had to /ignore one of my alts to shut him up! Smiley: grin
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Sippin 115 DRU **** Firiona Vie ****Agnarr
FV: 115 WAR ENC CLE MAG WIZ SHD SHM Master Alchemist ROG Master Tinkerer & Poison-Maker
Master Artisan (300+) * Baker * Brewer * Fletcher * Jeweler * Potter * Researcher * Smith * Tailor
Agnarr: 65 DRU ENC SHD MAG CLE ROG WIZ BRD WAR
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