Advice on starting your own Guild

I'd like to hear from people who started their own guilds.

What went right, what went wrong, what would you do differently if you had it to do over again.

Where'd you get a website, where do you get your vent?
_________________

http://honorscode.blogspot.com/

I didn't start my guild, but I am the raid leader. I purchased the vent from www.maximumvoice.com; I enjoy running the show, I try to be fair, keep things moving and keep people informed. it can be a little draining at times, but you have to foster a good atmosphere first and foremost.

Once the guild members trust you, and see that you have their best interests in mind when it comes to raids and handing out loot, it gets easier. there will be drama but best to tackle it on quickly, before it gets out of hand.

Your officer's need to be on the same page. I can't stress that enough.
_________________
Visit my crappy blog... Nerf This...

Just a self promotion of the guild I am in. I am an Officer in the guild and have been in it about 10 years now. We are 11 yrs old, 12 this year.

I don't do this often, but will do this once

The Syndicate book

Website is www.LLTS.org
_________________
[url=http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Zul'jin&n=Keldor
][/url]

Oh god before I even finished reading I figured you were in the Syndicate.
_________________
Visit my crappy blog... Nerf This...

Figure out what kind of guild you want. Hard core? Social? Somewhere in the middle?

Figure out what you want to do. Lead raids? Stick to raiding and let someone else do raids, while you do guild stuff?

Figure out how much time you want to spend on administrivia. Guess how much time you'll spend dealing with crap. Then double it.

Figure out what your guild structure is going to be -- class officers? Just an officer cadre? Loot council?

Figure out how you're going to organize. Get a website. Get a vent server. I hosted and wrote my own guild management application and got vent service from pure-voice.net or something; there are a bunch of different vent providers. It'll cost you like $20/mo or something. You could hack together a livejournal and Google Calendar to do all your guild stuff if you really wanted to. It's not terribly difficult if you have folks with skills.

Leading a guild is a lot of work. It will take away from the time you have to actually play the game. Make sure it's what you want to do before you start doing it.

In my case, I didn't have to start from ground zero; it was a guild that reformed when the GM needed to take a break. We reorganized very quickly and barely missed a step in our progression. This is back in the 40 man raid days, so the numbers of people I was dealing with are very different from today's guilds; I imagine it's considerably easier nowadays.

If I were to do it again today, I would have made some personel changes. I would have retooled things a bit so raiding was less serious business and more fun ... after all, this is a game -- and if you're not enjoying yourself, why bother?

Some folks want to raid and treat the getting of purples with the seriousness of life and death. If that's the kind of guild you want to run, good luck to you.

But I think in a couple years you'll have more to show for it if you focus on having fun with a tightknit group of folks who happen to kill internet dragons together, instead of running some boiler room purple making factory.

But that's just me.
_________________

Tips for making your own guild.

1) State your rules and goals clearly... whatever they are. preferably in some semi-permanent form, such as a web page.

2) enforce them.

3) ....

4) profit.

The vast majority of people that play this game want to have things handed to them, and they will seek out like-minded folks and organizations that will give it to them. If you want your guild to be successful, you need to be consistant. People will join, some will agree and follow, some will leave, and thats a good thing too, as you only want those who want to follow your rules and goals.

Don't despair, don't try to leapfrog... absorbing other guilds that are breaking up is a usually a mistake, drama ensues.

The best advice i guess i can give, is to keep it simple. keep it within your scope, and only do it if you have the time to commit. Guild leading can rapidly become a full time job, if you let it. That is why I eventually disbanded my own guild. You can only control so much.
_________________

I don't have the time right now to write out my thoughts on creating a guild properly. But I can help you with the technical front fairly quickly.

Go to:
www.nrgservers.net

For cheap you will get a Ventrilo server AND a good amount of webspace with CGI/PHP and a MySQL database. So if you're able to hack some web stuffs, then you can get a forum set up pretty quickly. They won't make a website for you though.
_________________

Starting/Leading a guild is not the same as raiding or playing. It's a second job. It will be stressful, and it will take a Lot of your time. IMO, if you want to raid, you're better off looking for a guild that fits you, even if it involves transferring servers. DO NOT equate raiding with guild leading in any way.

that aside...

If you were sitting on the right side of the faction fence, I'd ginvite you.

I won't describe my guild because I don't want this to sound like a recruitment post.
_________________

www.kleaandron.com

A good guild is a self regulating social circle, rather then a heavily administrated organization. The hard part is keeping it together through raid stagnation.
_________________

You know you want it! Ooorah /dance