Site Name

As a guild master myself, and having seen Stomp and Haf recently setup their own guild, ‘Bound’, I decided it would be a good idea to jot up some thoughts on how to go about setting up your own guild. I’m sure many of you are budding GMs with a passion for the game and a want to run things in a particular way. Setting up a guild is the best way of getting from the game exactly what you want, provided you find enough like-minded people to support your goals. So if you are on the verge of setting up a guild, or if the idea has tugged at the back of your mind but you’ve been concerned with just how to pull together the details to make a decent go at guild management then I hope this article proves some use.

Get some friends

My first tip would be to get some good friends together and thrash out a plan for your guild. Stomp has made it a big issue in her guild to drive home the ‘mission statement’ to anybody that wants to join the guild and this is an important thing to do.

With a clear mission statement you setup the expectations of your guild, your present a clear goal that other people can look at and assess. The more info you can give to people, the better informed they are then the more likely they are to get on board and get behind your guild.

Friends are a great way of pulling together a foundation of like-minded people. It should be easy for you to work out what you have in common and build up your guild ideals. Be careful at this stage, your friends may not entirely share the same sentiments so be sure to hammer out the small details early. You may need to compromise a little in order to smooth things out but believe me this is best done early to avoid complications and drama later on.

The Website

Once you have decided that running your own guild is definitely the way to go and you’ve prepared a plan to execute this you are going to need some way of presenting your guild to the world. You might argue that a website isn’t essential but I’d have to disagree. A guild website has a huge amount of functionality which if you were to take away I think would sink your guild.

On the site you can publish your guild mission statement, be sure to make it an easy thing for people to find so that any recruits coming to check you out can gauge what your guild can offer. I would strongly recommend you invest in a forum for your guild and encourage members to post up and get involved. Boards such as ‘Tell us who you are’ will help build the community spirit your guild needs to thrive whilst a ‘General Chat’ board can lighten the mood. I also use our forum to announce the raiding schedule which is a great way to ensure people log into the boards regularly.

There are many ways of setting up a website and a forum but I’m going to focus on two in particular. For those that can afford to splash a little cash then check out myguildhost. These guys offer a great service which will give you a pro looking site and tools without the need to know how to build a website. Features include a DKP management tool, a tracker that publishes your raiding progress and a recruitment panel which allows you to narrow down what you’re looking for.

All of this is managed through a control panel where users simply drop in what they want to publish; there are even templates handy so you don’t need to fret over the design of your website. If you’ve used blogging tools before then you’ll fit right into this setup.

Alternatively you could look to create and publish your own website. There are plenty of options out there but I have experience with free website hosting associated with my Combobulater podcast. Forgive the plug but go checkout the forums linked on my site, Simplemachines offer a free forum tool which can be thrown into a website host and setup with minimum fuss. I am far from an internet whizz and I managed to setup a website and a forum for my podcast and it could be easily tweaked to suit your guild needs. This method would require you to know a little more about website design and publishing than opting for the myguildhost package, out of the two myguildhost make it very easy and accessible but if you’re really stumped for cash (more on this soon) or dead set on designing your setup then you have some options.

Voice Communication

If you’ve setup a guild then I strongly recommend that you invest in setting up a means of voice communication for your guild to use. The less said about the in game voice communication the better so moving swiftly along, the Rawrcast is sponsored by UGTservers who can set you up with a server that costs just a few bucks a month. You can cater the package to suit your needs, so if you’re a small ten man guild then the cost won’t be as high as one that is looking to host twenty-five raiders and on top of that you can use the code RAWR to secure a discount on your chosen package.

Voice communication is vital in my opinion; I really cannot stress the impact it has on your guild setup. As a community tool it allows your guild-mates to chat openly and get to know each other on a level that typing in game just can’t compete with. Whilst as a raiding or PvP co-ordinating tool I could not begin to imagine trying to relate a boss strategy without voice comms. Your guild will come to life on Vent as you whoop, holler and cheer the latest boss kill or laugh your socks off as personalities emerge and you find yourself building genuine friendships. In all honesty it is thanks to our Vent server that I’m still playing this game and the guild that I run is still a vibrant place to be.

Recruitment

To wrap this article up I thought I’d spend a moment pointing you in the right direction when it comes to recruitment. By now you should have set yourself up with a flashy website that details what you guild is all about and where you plan to be. You may have setup a vent server (a great tool for interviewing recruits as well) so all you need to do now is attract some players to your cause. There are a number of ways you can do this.

Check out the official WoW forums and look for the guild recruitment boards. For all the grief that these forums generate the recruitment boards are fairly safe! Login with your wow account details, make a thread and you will expose your guild to the thousands of players that visit on a daily basis. Be on the lookout for sticky topics as well, if you can find one that fits your guild description then this can be a great way of highlighting your guild to a market that is looking for what you offer.

Have a look for realm forums. These aren’t quite the same as the official Blizzard forums so I’m not entirely sure if they exist for every server out there. For example, I’m on Dunemaul EU so I posted up a guild recruitment post at Dunemaul.org. This has the added advantage of appealing to players that are already on your server so you can present your guild to a player base that doesn’t need to fork out on the expense of a server/faction transfer.

You can also check out The WoW Headhunter website which is an awesome way of attracting the right recruit to your guild. Take the time to register your guild, have any existing members fill out a profile to develop a “Guild Personality”, then answer some questions on what you’re looking for from recruits and as players look for a guild they should uncover your name. This filtered approach may narrow down the pool of players you reach but it will drive the right kind of player to your doorstep which cuts out the stress of recruiting ‘bad’ players.

Go get ‘em!

So there you have it, I hope this article has given you guys a quick glance at what goes into getting a guild off the ground. I am sure there is a lot more that can be said about the commitment required to run a guild but the point of this topic was to steer you towards the tools you should invest in to make the guild a lasting community to be proud of.

Some cash may be required to take advantage of these tools but it is well worth pointing out that many sites setup to help emerging guilds offer a ‘guild contribution’ system; where players can chip in a few dollars each and contribute to the overall cost. There should be no need for any one person to bear the weight of financial costs if you can share the burden with friends and guild mates who are keen to keep the guild alive.

That’s all for now, good luck to those of you who brave the mantle of guild leadership!!

Emeny.