Newbie Guild Leader need tips on how to manage a Guild! Help!

[Nyarlathotep.4350]

I kind of took on the task of creating a GW2 guild for a gaming community I'm in, but I am mostly a solo-player and have little to no experience of even being in a guild in any kind of game. (Got excited and threw myself into the fire...)

So, do anyone have any kind of tips on how to make things go smoothly and keep me from looking too much like an idiot? :flushed:Any kind of tips and tricks to keep things in order and keep members happy will be extremely appreciated!

There will most likely be players of all kinds of skill levels, from complete beginners to more experienced players.

[mercury ranique.2170]

1: Do not see it as a nice job. A leader is a slave to the community he/she is leading. It destroys your game and the amount of time you can play. Always be ready for your members. I know this is ridicilious, but with the amount of guilds, the competition is killing and people simply demand that you are answering them when you show online.

2: you'll need tons of materials to build the guildhall.

3: be kind and optimistic. don't try to be a bully in leading.

[Khailyn.6248]

Be ready for disappointment. Even if you amass a good amount of players to your guild, only a handful may actually help you with guild hall donations or even running the guild missions. As mercury said, it takes a large amount of time out of your playing micromanaging things. Again, get used to disappointment, building up a guild from level 1 and getting others interested will take time. Many guilds are near or at max level, and that can be more enticing for majority of players that only care about the guild hall nodes and tavern buffs.

The only advice I can give are to learn the guild missions (you'll be doing a lot of easy mode ones until your recruitment numbers go up,. bounty, trek, race etc), recognize that recruitment and guild progression may be slow for awhile. Perhaps consider setting a predetermined day and time for events like missions so members are aware of when they are so those interested can be online.

[Taelac.7036]

Just don't try to do too much at once, and you should be fine. Pick one time a week to start out where you do things together as a guild, and build on that as you get more people and more interest. Good activities to begin with are the easy guild missions, HP trains, jumping puzzles if you have a mesmer or two who are good at those, world boss trains, and "let's help each other with achievements in [map or region] this week." Pick one a week and rotate through a list, so you get some variety to keep things interesting. Ask each week if there are any requests for next week, to encourage folks to be active in guild decision making and to make sure you're doing things people actually want to do.

Regular, predictable activity times are one of the easiest ways to build guild cohesion and camaraderie, and you can use that time to cheerfully remind folks to pitch in toward guild hall upgrades. For those upgrades, pick about two at a time to focus on, so you can limit the number of things you're actively asking for each week. Ask your guild to help you decide which ones to focus on next from a short list with a short explanation of the benefits of each, so they know why they might want to pitch in.

You can always add more days/times/activities as you grow and add to your officer group.

[Moonlit.6421]

Some really good advice has already been mentioned here but I guess I'll throw in my two cents. You said you were making it as part of a gaming community and had both new and established players, so I would advise trying to set up an officer core first and foremost. People who are knowledgeable, good with others, fairly active, and can assist you in some way such as through dealing with problems that arise or leading events in the guild. Hard workers and fun, jovial personalities can do wonders for a guild and community building is key. I've been playing since launch and one of my main reasons for sticking around even during the more boring times is I love my guild and enjoy the company of those I play with, so I keep coming back. Buffs are nice but having fun, likeminded people there to talk to and play with when you log in are for many players like me the main attraction of a guild.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

Be prepared that from 10 people you invite into your guild, only 1 will still be logging on regularly one week later. Inviting people is a never ending task. To keep up your member base, you need to invite at least 1-2 people a day. Don't think you can stop if you guild roster contains 30-40 people. A week later, only 3-4 will be logging on regularly, and another week later, not more than one. I don't know why, but after joining a guild many people continue to log in for another 3-4 days and then never again. Even if they were greeted warmly and spent time with the guild these 3-4 days.

After a few months, you may have attracted a core of a few people that log on daily or almost daily. 3-5 if you're lucky. This is a beginning where new people can stick at and stay longer than a few days.

Don't plan ahead and beyond getting members. Do everything ad hoc. Help them if they ask, show them around, again and again for every new member.

If you have a core, you can begin to plan regular guild activities. Until you have a core, you're only a bunch of players.

Most new guilds fail and wither after 2-3 weeks.

I witnessed this many times before. I have a mule account, and there were a time where I played that a bit more. While guildless with that account, I joined every guild that whispered me for invitation. Usually brand new guilds with 5-30 members, and usually, after 1-3 weeks, I was the last active member (including guild leader) and left. Happened so often. After perhaps 10 guilds, I got into a fairly large guild with a core of about 5 people and about 70 members. The officers invited 2-3 people per day and kicked the same amount of inactive players. This guild lasted at least a year, but became very thin after the most active officers stopped playing, after which I was kicked as well, because I did not play my mule account any longer. At that time, my account was one of the oldest members in that guild.

If you want your guild stick more together and less fluctuation than that, you have to invite people that fit into the guild. Don't just invite everyone, invite people that somehow match each other. Same game part - pve open world, pve instances, perhaps rp, wvw, pvp, whatever.

[Danikat.8537]

I think it will help a lot that you're creating a guild for an existing community, because that gets you over the major first hurdle of getting people to join a brand new guild and to stick around and contribute when they don't know anyone and the guild may not yet have much to offer.

I agree with the person who said set up a core of officers early on, so they can support you, even if it's just having someone from 'the leadership' online to talk to and answer questions when you can't be there. But ideally they should help with other things as well, like building up the guild hall and moderating chat if necessary. You could get a few people and give them all most/all permissions so they can do anything you can do, or you could assign roles - for example one person who will run guild missions, one who is the designated guild scribe/decorator, someone to organise guild events (different to missions - things like getting together to do WvW or map completion or dungeons or whatever it is you like to do together).

I also think it would be good to involve all the guild members in decision making as much as you can. This serves a few purposes: firstly it takes some of the pressure off you, but it also reinforces the idea that this is a community guild which you've just volunteered to create rather than your guild which you're trying to recruit people from this community to join. It also helps members feel more committed and hopefully more inclined to help - if they've voted to build up the guild hall tavern first because they want the buffs they should feel more inclined to contribute materials towards it than if they log in one day to find you have decided to build a tavern and want them to give up their materials for it.

On that note communication is really important - keep your members up to date on what's going on and why, and also think about how you're saying things. Checking out what a guild hall upgrade will cost and letting people know in advance so they're prepared for that and then reminding them on a regular basis that one person cannot provide all the materials and what they'll get when the upgrade is done will go a lot better than periodically yelling "Guild hall needs elder wood!" in chat.

[Talindra.4958]

There's no set rules on how to be a good guild leader.. it's like how to be a good parent to your child xD no one can tell you how you to be a good parent .. you get better over time with exp. Just enjoy the game and get engaged with your guild members.. :) focus on leveling up your guild too as it maybe useful.. gl n hf