So I helped start an imp guild a new months ago, I took a 2 week break from the game, unfortunately I then had a noisy pc problem which took a full month to fix (its a rental), 2 weeks ago I came back to find the guild all but dead and the MotD saying we are merging.

 

Today I noticed one of my alts in the guild is now the guild master, so I have decided to rebuild the guild, and am looking for advice.

 

The first thing that was suggested to me was kick all inactive players, but my first thought was it was hard getting people to in/stay with the guild when it first started when people saw we didn't have the 10% xp bonus.

 

So my thought was drop some of the ranks as there are too many, then drop all players to lowest level, and make a website then get people to join the website and start promoting from there.

 

My problem is while I have the time to be on, I have no idea how to get a website going, or really the money being unemployed.

 

Any advice would be helped, my plan for now is get a website, then promote recruits to members and let them be able to invite, then look for officers, and in time start running raids and stuff.

All we have right now is a couple of people, 2 slot guild bank, and me who has been playing for almost a year and never ran a guild, or played an mmo before this.

Guild Launch for websites. (Stay away from Guild Portal.) Or maybe Enjin.com. Make a post that anyone can see that gives an outline of your guild: Your rules, what your activities are (or will be).

 

Your XP bonus is 5% unless you have 25 active accounts (I believe Preferred count, too), so if you can keep it at 10% it's definitely a plus for recruiting. I'm not sure what Bioware considers "active" though.

 

Make an inactive rank, and remove any Guild Bank privileges from that rank. Assuming you have thing in the bank worth protecting.

 

Make a recruiting thread in your server's Guild Recruitment forum. Get yourself into the Ideal Guild Quiz.

 

Go to the lower level planets and recruit in General Chat. Keep it brief and don't spam. Be prepared for lots of turnover! Guilds that don't recruit constantly, will die off. I have a brief message that put into General Chat that says we accept all classes at all levels, only people over 16, PvE centered, maximum XP bonus."

 

Be sure you have a "Recruit" level with restrictions on your guild bank. Just saying...

 

Good luck!

While this is my first post ever on the forums, I found this one the most interesting one to post in.

 

My opinion, and this is running from my experience from running Guilds in Wow and what I, a new player (new being that I just recently started playing after purchasing this game at launch) would like to see.

 

A website is a must IMO. It gives people a way to communicate outside of TOR forums and strictly for the guild. Opinions on the guild, raids, raid scheduling and all that can be discussed without anyone having to be online or sending emails in game. Plus people can check it from their phones which gives them a sense of roleplay or feeling they are still tied to the Game some how.

 

As far as guild recruiting, I agree. You should also constantly recruit. I don't know how feasable it would be in TOR but maybe offer incentives of staying with the Guild. ie. some valuable armour, maybe the guild purchases speeders for its members, the guild pays gold at milestones. Just some stuff like that.

 

Another thing we did in our Guild on WoW was give the purpose of officers. Its good to give officers privs to the guild and bank, but we also made them responsible for players. What we did was take the officers and assigned them players. (where a forum would help) Say a player lives in Europe, we tried to assign them an Officer that lived in Europe, so if they ever needed help while they were playing, chances are their Officer was on. While that works in a perfect world, in the gaming world it doesn't. But it does help a little. The Officer can take the newer people to harder levels and help them level up with xp and loot. Plus they are there for questions.

 

Just some ideas.

 

Forgot to add some free websites that would work for forums or websites are:

 

wix.com

createaforum.com

 

those are the two I use for gaming

Edited November 9, 2013 by Alogard

Thanks for the info, turns out I am also the guild master of the sister pub guild.

 

Stupid question, is it a must to have a website, just have forums instead?, or maybe just use facebook.

Most guilds have websites, it allows members to ask for things when they aren't playing, vital if you're not going to be playing 24/7, because they'll miss you. It also adds to the club feel, and can help shoot down all sorts of issues.

 

You might still have to cull the inactive members, if you can't contact them and get them to stay active, depending on how many there are, but at the moment it sounds like it's not an issue, since it appears to be stripped down to the bones.

 

Also get some decent lieutenants, to help run the guild, initially give them recruiting privileges and maybe allow them to promote upto a certain level, this will help keep things smooth.

 

Definately protect the guild bank, even if it has nothing at the moment, because if it can't grow without the risk of an old member logging on and emptying it (not saying the would) then it will never become worth protecting.

 

And finally, your right to cut down the ranks, overcomplications can wreck a guild, choose decent ranks that anyone can use, don't force all of one class into a dumb catchall rank (Bounty hunter's all being Mandaloreans for example), and give yourself room to expand the ranks if the guild grows.

Thanks for the info guys, I have taken notes.

I decided to go with a goggle blogger blog, I used it once before, and its free and people can use the rss feed to keep up to date, not to mention easier for me to use then a website.

 

I will get to work adding a forum and implementing the other suggestions during the week.

 

Thanks again.

So glad I found this post. The guild I joined over a year ago simply stopped and now I am guild master and want to get it going. The website is through swtorwebsite so I have to find out how to be able to manage it since no other members have bothered to answer mail. Any suggestions are greatly wanted. As well as the great info I am reading here alone...

Some suggestions I can offer (sorry for the long read):

 

1. Know what you want the guild to be- casual, PvE/ PvP only or actively participate in both, do you want to do end-game raiding or do you need to recruit and build on your own skill significantly first? Will you run regular events and group content? You don't have to say yes to any of these things (and only sign up for what you're capable of continuing!) but people will ask, and if you don't know the answers the guild has no direction. It doesn't have to have a STRONG direction, but as long as people know what they're signing up for you're in the clear. Some people just want a place to hang out with other friendly people and chat as they play. Some people don't like to do group content at all and never participate in guild chat but don't leave the guild (I am still baffled by people like that but hey, it's an extra number to the guild!).

It's okay for the guild to change direction as it grows and shrinks, but have SOME kind of direction for it.

 

2. As others have said, protect the guild bank. It may not have anything in it now but if you let people take what they please at first, they may kick up a stink when you enforce rules later, or may unintentionally be greedy.

 

3. A guild master's role should be to oversee what everyone else is running. As you're rebuilding the guild from scratch, you will be in charge of, and running everything for a while yet until you can get some trusted lieutenants and officers. But when you find them, definitely learn to allocate responsibility and ensure they understand that they have a job to do that helps keep the guild running smoothly. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, if they are not able or willing to do that job, they should not be officers or lieutenants any more. Otherwise, the rank of officer/ lieutenant becomes less of a responsibility thing and more of a recognition thing, and your guild becomes top-heavy but nobody does anything.

 

4. Definitely have a way of communicating outside the game with your guild mates. I would not recommend Facebook, as a lot of people will want to keep their real lives separate from their gaming identities.

 

5. When your guild gets off the ground, see if you can acquire a voice server such as Mumble, Teamspeak, or Ventrilo. This not only helps with co-ordination when doing group content, but also is a place for you to all hang out and shoot the breeze while levelling/ PvPing/ waiting around for something to happen on Fleet. You can organise a group pay thing for the voice server through your website.

 

6. Set ground rules. The best ones are few, but effective. For example, rather than having a long list of things people shouldn't do, you could reduce it to "Dont' be a dick". (Thanks Wil Wheaton.) If you want to have an age restriction or not have any swearing in guild chat, best outline it where people can see it. Oh, and make it a rule that recruits don't progress past that rank until they've read the guild rules and your guidelines for use of the guild bank. Put the web address of your guild's website in the guild description window.

 

 

That's all I can think of for now. I wish you the best of luck, running a guild is hard work. Don't have too many expectations and keep it fun for yourself most of all.

 

 

EDIT: just thought of something in regards to the voice server particularly. I know of at least one kind of "super guild" that is run across multiple games, multiple guilds involved, that share a Mumble server, called "MOG Nation". They have an Enjin site if you want to check it out. I'm sure there are others out there but I don't know how one would join them; it may be that you have to be an off-shoot of a guild from another game or have a decent sized guild first. Something to consider, anyway.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Kufuffelupagus

Thanks for all the advice, but I think its time to move on, as many as I gained in new I lost again, no one talks, no one registers with the forums, no one invites, I can't even get a Hello, I mean is it too much to ask if your GM says hi hows things to expect a reply, I mean its what my mum taught me.

 

It was nice for all the help you guys gave but I give up, its too much trying to do it for one guild yet alone two, more so when no one helps out.