Guild concepts - From cookie to cake

I have been toying with the idea of creating my own guild lately. And while this is mostly due to logistical issues (tired of logging in and out all the time to transfer things from A to B) and a significant bankspace issue (I am too stingy to upgrade to primal mooncloth bags) I figured I would at least try to create a novel 'vision' for a guild.

Part of the issue of finding a guild at least for me is that there seem to be only limited flavors available.

1. The Raiding guild
This flavor doesn't suit me simply because I can make myself available maybe two or three times a week for a raid and due to job limitations can simply not guarantee that I will be online when the raid starts. I don't like inconveniencing people so I am simply not 'raid viable'.

2. The PVP guild
The pvp guilds at least on my realm attract a lot of questionable people generally displaying anything from l33t1sm to just plain bad attitude. PVPers are generally so invested in PVP that raiding anything except maybe an alliance town seems beyond their desire. This is compounded by the fact that my current server has very few pvp guilds. This is not to say I am not interested in PVP as a whole but I gain very little satisfaction from arena-ing (even when I win) and full-time BGing.

3. Levelling guilds
Levelling guilds for a lack of a better name are usually small groups of friends that have banded together to happily level themselves to 70 and then generally aspire to either turn to raiding or invest in pvp. These guilds are a solid choice for me until they make it to the point where they either go full raid or full pvp. These guilds are somewhat difficult to identify... they advertise with having a gbank and a tabard but generally don't state their long-term goals. Which means its easy to join a guild only to find out later down the line that they're heading a completely different way.



Of course at this point you're probably looking at me wondering if mr smarty pants has any better ideas. Well I do... or at least I like to think I do.
So here's a rundown of guild 'visions' I've been toying with, some ridiculous at best, others quite interesting. Guild names were picked randomly for illustration purposes.


For Hire
A guild that specialises in renting out players to other guilds for a set fee per hour. Essentially you set up a list of fees for all the instances/group activities in-game multiplied by a certain value depending on what class they want to hire and what gear level is needed. A Sunwell geared healer (if you can manage to recruit one of those) would obviously fetch a higher price than a kara geared DPS.
Payment would be in advance for a set amount of hours and of this payment a certain % of gold would go to the guild (the royal tenth so to speak) and the rest would be for the player that is being 'rented'.
Rented players for all intents and purposes are considered part of the renting guild and should have rights to roll on loot (with negotiable exceptions).

Warmongers
A pvp heavy guild with a focus on world PVP. Members of the guild should have their PVP flag enabled at all times and engage members of the opposite faction no matter the odds. The single minded goal of this guild would be to revive world pvp, organize raids on enemy cities, challenge the opposite faction to do the same and proliverate themselves as an extremely high profile pvp guild. Ideally this kind of guild would lock down enemy towns preventing quest turn-ins and as a result forcing the opposite faction to react. If the guild succeeds in completely locking down an enemy faction town for the duration of, say, a week (or a combined total of hours within that week) then this event should be celebrated and posted all over the place as if it were a raiding guild's first boss kill.
Arena and BG pvp should be considered a training ground only and visited for the purpose of training in groups and gaining the necessary gear. The focus must remain on world pvp at all times.


Free Form
A guild with no set goals or structure. A public site should be erected where members can answer a weekly poll that determines what the guilds goals will be for the coming week(s). The poll should consist of a random raiding target, a random pvp target and a random item target and replaced once the goal is reached.
Goals are picked at random for example by doing a google search on ner'zuhl and finding a relevant instance, pvp goal and item tied to this particular piece of wow lore.
Free form targets can also include doing a full druid 5-man, collecting 15 random pets, gaining revered with sporregar and whatnot. These targets could also be picked from the achievments list to be introduced with WotLK.
This guild should strive to see as much of the game and do as many 'fun to do' things without forcing themselves into an unreasonable raiding schedule.
Achieving a free-form target will award the participants points that should be listed as a ranking on a public site (with no other benefit than seeing your name there).


Collectors
As the name suggests this guild is all about collecting stuff. Members should be encouraged to research the various wow databases for unique, rare or just plain interesting items. This information should be posted in the forums and much like a freeform guild would do runs should be organized to make sure that everyone has the listed items.
Forums should allow for members to have personalized checklists so they can see what they have already and what would be interesting to get next.
Collectors should spend a significant amount of time at capital city banks to show off all the things other people don't have.
Anything from gear sets, darkmoon cards, vanity pets, unique trinkets and even rare craftables should be considered collectable.
Achievments could be listed on a public site showing off all the goodies players have via the item's icon symbol next to their name.



That's 4 ideas right there... with more in the back of my head that I will avoid mentioning here simply because this post is long enough as it is.

Do you have any guild ideas you would like to add? Or perhaps you like one of the concepts so much you wouldn't mind me going into more detail?

Comment away

Guildless

So yesterday I decide to take a stroll through the guild forums to see what's new and lo and behold what do I see?

"Bank tabs 2 and 3 are now closed. Contact an officer if you need anything from them." (*not an exact quote)

I wasn't really surprised. Previously someone had snagged a stack of void crystals from bank tab3 before leaving resulting in anyone but officers being kicked out of accessing it.

And apparantly the day before yesterday the GL found out someone that was stealing from tab2 resulting in the immediate closure of the tab.

But in both scenarios it was never adressed how the problem would be solved or if it would even be looked at beyond closing the tabs. So in my infinite stupidity I decided to start discussing the topic on the forums indicating potential solutions and that long term-members should be exempt from being treated like children because new guild members steal from the bank.

Suffice to say that drama ensued. Requesting for some form of clarity wasn't really appreciated and all of a sudden my posts get twisted into being offensive, hostile and even caustic which they were never intended as.

To top things off I get the classical GL private message stating: "If you don't like how I run the guild, get out."

So I did. There's completely no point in being in a guild that doesn't accept constructive criticism and where the leadership isn't willing to discuss anything and especially not their decisions.

The banking matter is closed. The GL issued the all-mighty: Here's a tip, if you want to be able to take things out of the bank don't put them in tab2 or 3. I don't know how this solves the issue beyond inviting people to steal from tab1 but one thing is certain, officers and their cronies don't have any problems because they still have full access. This in essence reduces the lower ranks to nothing but bank feeders who can put stuff in but can't take stuff out unless an officer is online and deems them worthy.

What irks me the most is that there was absolutely no platform to discuss anything in the guild. Decisions were made and we could either accept them or get the hell out. Discussing them constructively or not on the forums was simply not an option. People left continually but no explanation was ever given beyond whatever the guild leader 'thought' why people left.

Unfortunately I do have an opinion... and as such me and my guild were simply mismatched.

I wish them well, although I have a sneaking suspicion that the guild will last exactly until the GL burns out. If you control everything, including the flow of information you end up with a bunch of sheep in your guild. People that are more than willing to follow a strong leader but become incapable of holding a guild together without their mighty leader.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am hopelessly misguided... maybe, maybe... Still, it was an interesting 4 months being guilded. I am sure my alts will appreciate the extra attention (and gold) and I look forward to picking things up from a solo perspective.

On guilds

It's been a turbulent month for the guild. With my latency being stuck in the upper echelons of 2000ms I have effectively purged myself from any raid group and had the opportunity to return to my usual observant nature.

And I don't like what I see. One of our generals recently decided that he no longer wanted to be a general, one of our raid leaders decided that he no longer wanted to lead raids, a few members left for their various reasons...

But in all that I never heard a 'why'. No indication of why people were unhappy with their role, why they would choose to leave the guild (well that one chap who ran off with a stack of void crystals didn't need to explain really).

All this isn't new to me. It wasn't any different in ultima online or everquest or any of the other games I played and had the unfortunate role of leadership in.

I know the signs of a burnout, the frustration of having to deal with people that don't want to conform to your idea of how things should be done, the frustration of people outright stealing from you and then running off or people that were previously extremely active all of a sudden dropping from the radar.

Sadly a lot of times it stems from an inability to delegate. Every guild in every game anywhere runs on the back of not 1 but multiple people. There has to be a core to each guild, a core that is willing to pick up the lousy chores that need to be done, a core that is willing to deal with infinite cycles of people leaving and new recruits coming in.
This is not something that can be handled by one person over an extended period of time without that person burning out on the game.

You can't lead a guild, run the raid, do the recruitment, do the farming for raid materials, lead 5-mans and do all the planning surrounding these things yourself without running into the inevitable burnout.

I've been down that road. I learned the hard way that you need to assemble people around you that you can delegate things to. You need to have people around that will put forth the effort and get things done. You need to realize that you can be in control without micro-managing everything that goes on.

Maybe my guild is fine, maybe there are no problems and it's just a temporary hickup that doesn't affect anything... but I don't know... there is no information to be had about things, it's an uphill struggle to get any form of information and any attempt to suggest a little structure is often met by 'why didn't you discuss this first in a whisper to me?'

In the meantime most of the guild lives under the assumption that raid consumables just spawn in the bank rather than costing (probably our gm) a day a week to get it replenished.

I have always run my guilds under an open information policy. Tell your guild what's going on, why people leave, where there's problems. Set out a structure and then actively motivate people to pick up tasks.

As a guild leader you should be 'able' to do anything that's needed but only rarely required to do so because you should actively delegate responsibility to the people that _want_ to do specific things like lead 5-mans or grind mats (yes there are people that enjoy that).

If you don't set out the necessary structure in a guild and reward people for their efforts (especially for shitty tasks like raid consumable grinding) then people will fall away from you and you will end up with a guild full of people that can't be arsed to pickup anything (there's no fun in having 80 people in your guild when you're doing all the work).

Delegating responsibility has it's risks and drawbacks and drama may ensue but that's no reason for anyone to turn a game into a job.