How often do WvW guilds recruit people from outside WvW?

[SkyShroud.2865]

From what I observed so far, most don't. They just recruit from WvW itself, most of which are done by bandwagoning and taking the remnants of disbanded guilds. Those who don't bandwagon or not on bandwagon server, you can see their numbers go lesser by days.

What I realize is people don't like recruiting newbies, they don't like the trouble of training them up or finding the correct ones. Most importantly, they don't like risking to be wiped due to carrying them.

The guilds that do consistently get people from pve will only be the pvx guilds and those guilds are very few in numbers.

[grouchybhaal.4275]

Very true, [boB] Brotherhood of Bogans does it. Recruiting from its pve/raider base along with roamers/solo players that join the open tag, letting everyone in the OCX time zone experience wvw with someone. Also giving we're access to people that do pve/raids

[Gop.8713]

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Liston.9708 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:this used to be a common occurrence before megaservers. its how I got started.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:this used to be a common occurrence before megaservers. its how I got started.

On yaks bend, dragun knight would pop into Lions Arch all the time to rally the troops. As noted above, megaservers killed that

And then he resorted to having a giant contact list and would PM everyone on that list. :/

Megaservers were the first death blow to WvW.

And alliances would fix that problem since servers wouldn't exist and you could recruit anyone from mapchat again . . .

[enkidu.5937]

Recruiting? The game mode is easy to access, you just have to click 2 buttons.

But 99% of those ppl that just jump in from time to time are ganked when roaming, and kicked from squads. So they take their leave quickly.

Better find a guild that does both, PvE and WvW, but I guess, there aren't many. They may just get steam rolled by WvW guilds or zergs all day long.

[KeyOrion.9506]

The saddest thing is, I don't see recruitment for WvW specifically any more at any city location outside of WvW. And I see recruitment messages for WvW on some guilds...but come on. We're already in WvW doing WvW things. Unless the sucker didn't have a guild, their just not going to drop their current guilds to join another one branded for just wvw. Still...outside WvW, I remember one guy that recruited in Lions Arch for the first three years. I don't see him anymore. And he was always recruiting players for NA in Lions Arch.

[Sovereign.1093]

ppl who join are always welcome to see how we do things. its pretty simple and basic. the test is to resist squirtling or squirelling and obey the dictatorship.

[sephiroth.4217]

it was a major factor before megaservers...

too many complications now days, wrong servers, wrong links and so on.

[Fatherbliss.4701]

So I'll bite and answer this with a few comments. I have done this and continue to do so periodically. Echoing the comments above what winds up happening over time is folks leave the game. You wind up basically perpetually training people, spending a ton of time getting people geared up and into the game mode only to have them leave later on. Add to that if you have the misfortune of being on a server that is consistently outnumbered it also burns folks out at a rather high rate. I still see players coming in to check out WvW but this has slowed down considerably after the summer started this year. Maybe it will pick up again now that school is back in session. Its a great idea. Problem is many of us as guild leaders or community managers have to develop our own content with a drought of changes coming from the Anet side which have been in development for years now. It would take a concerted effort to get people pulled in. Also the comment above that talked about the challenges regarding transferring servers is very real. The vast majority of the time when I ask people what server they are on they don't even know. lol. Not to mention the steep cost if you are on the realm listed as Very High. I've also been on a server that was locked for four months. So I see a variety of reasons for this. When you think about it the main organized content that is driven by players has been around GvG tournaments. Not everyone is into the big huge lag infested 3 way battles inside SMC. :p I would love to see more advertising of guilds in general. On my server I'm one of the only people who bothers with Reddit or the main forums.

[Baldrick.8967]

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:Specifically, how often are WvW guilds interested in training or marshalling more players into WvW? For some time now WvW chats have stated that they've lost lots of players. Sometimes when I look at team chat I'm reminded that some of it is server-hopping.

OK.

Is there any desire or initiative to recruit from outside? One would assume that this is how it's done in some way, but I find that there are a lot of players who take a "revolving door" approach and hop servers to join guilds and play that way. Ignoring the implications of alliances since they are not live at the time of this post, the "jump ship" bandwagon appears to be how most WvW guilds acquire new members.

So...

Very few people would say PvE has a small population, and I would suggest perhaps looking there for new people. Why? I recently added some members to my guild who were completely disillusioned with any competitive formats. Slowly over the last several months I have managed to get them to tag along with a group of us and they've since expressed their increasing appreciation for the game mode and the guild as well. I am often reminded by them that if it weren't for the group of people they play with, they would probably not have given the game mode a shot. So coming back full-circle, I wonder why it doesn't appear that people want to try to recruit from outside since that's where all the manpower is.

Wait, there is an area outside of wvw?

[Strider Pj.2193]

@Baldrick.8967 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:Specifically, how often are WvW guilds interested in training or marshalling more players into WvW? For some time now WvW chats have stated that they've lost lots of players. Sometimes when I look at team chat I'm reminded that some of it is server-hopping.

OK.

Is there any desire or initiative to recruit from outside? One would assume that this is how it's done in some way, but I find that there are a lot of players who take a "revolving door" approach and hop servers to join guilds and play that way. Ignoring the implications of alliances since they are not live at the time of this post, the "jump ship" bandwagon appears to be how most WvW guilds acquire new members.

So...

Very few people would say PvE has a small population, and I would suggest perhaps looking there for new people. Why? I recently added some members to my guild who were completely disillusioned with any competitive formats. Slowly over the last several months I have managed to get them to tag along with a group of us and they've since expressed their increasing appreciation for the game mode and the guild as well. I am often reminded by them that if it weren't for the group of people they play with, they would probably not have given the game mode a shot. So coming back full-circle, I wonder why it doesn't appear that people want to try to recruit from outside since that's where all the manpower is.

Wait, there is an area outside of wvw?

We don’t speak of said evil.

Inquire no more. Or we shall be forced to take action

[Brother.1504]

Back before mega servers it was very common to see recruitment in LA map chat. Not so much anymore.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Ya it’s really hard to recruit for wvw because the reasons people have mentioned already...many people are spread through different servers and that makes it difficult to train people in a real WVW setting

I got lucky one time, with someone looking for a guild for WvW on SF. Luckily I was also on SF, reached out, trained and everything. He was OCX so once I trained him up I barely see him since I’m on NA time...which kinda blows...but it was really cool to get someone into a game mode that really is fun and showing him the potential of what WVW has to offer

[Chaba.5410]

It ain't simply WvW players that ended up being disconnected from the rest of the playerbase, I remember when Anet removed Power of the Mists, a bunch of PvE-only players started making forum posts asking why they weren't getting extra strikes on resources nodes anymore. They literally had no clue that how their server was doing in WvW was directly tied to bonuses they got in PvE.

[FrigginPaco.4178]

@Chaba.5410 said:It ain't simply WvW players that ended up being disconnected from the rest of the playerbase, I remember when Anet removed Power of the Mists, a bunch of PvE-only players started making forum posts asking why they weren't getting extra strikes on resources nodes anymore. They literally had no clue that how their server was doing in WvW was directly tied to bonuses they got in PvE.

It's one of the things that Anet missed the most imo. The interconnectivity between game modes used to be a significant thing back in the day. Even in GW1, Favor of the Gods (generated by PvP) was used to open up access to the old school version of the raid portals with Underword, Fissure of Woe, and I believe also Domain of Anguish, possibly others. Definitely something I hope to be addressed in the future.

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@"enkidu.5937" said:Recruiting? The game mode is easy to access, you just have to click 2 buttons.

But 99% of those ppl that just jump in from time to time are ganked when roaming, and kicked from squads. So they take their leave quickly.

Better find a guild that does both, PvE and WvW, but I guess, there aren't many. They may just get steam rolled by WvW guilds or zergs all day long.

On your end, you observe that a lot of players who try WvW don't stick around because they can't "endure" the deaths/general roflstomping that can occur to a fresh player. And yeah, that can totally happen for sure. Frankly, I blame how stunningly easy most PvE is, and yet, I get a lot of players in my own guild who sometimes struggle doing things I don't consider that dangerous. I and another officer coach them to learn certain playstyles or different builds when necessary, but it's still something we run into from time to time. I feel like the game doesn't do a good job of shifting the expectation of what each game mode might be like. Although I'm not certain what else can be done about that if players are willfully ignorant, which some are.

[FrigginPaco.4178]

I just want to reiterate, it's not that I feel 100% of the duty is on WvW players. I haven't asked other people about it and thought it was worth exploration and deliberation.

[Sarrs.4831]

It seems almost entirely impossible after megaservers, just because it's so unlikely someone in open world is actually someone who you can WvW with.

Once alliances are out it'll be more doable, you can have your casual guild that you WvW flag and people who aren't WvW flagged & don't WvW you can bring in, or you can collect people from the loner set to add to your guild or alliance.