WoW Raiding Guild
Hello everyone! With new expansions coming out in the future, and progression with Tomb of Sargeras going on there is a lot of people looking for raiding guilds, and maybe if you are not looking for a raiding guild, you might be looking to create your own raiding guild. So I'm going to teach you guys not only how to build a raiding guild, but more importantly sustain a successful raiding guild.
What Are My First Steps?
First off, let's talk about why you want to make a guild, you need to ask yourself and be totally honest with yourself in why you are interested in making the guild. If you are making the guild for the sole intent, that you think everyone is just not as good as you, and or everyone is stupid. You probably are not going to have a good time or much success. Also what are the intents of your guild, are you going to just be a casual guild where any can join and you just raid on the weekends, is it a guild for just you and a group of your friends to just have some fun? Or do you want to be a high end Mythic raiding guild pushing for the top spot on your realm? These are all valuable questions you need to ask yourself before you start rallying up a group of people, that we are going to be calling your councilor your officer core.
Now it is very important that you do not make your guild until you have enough people to sign your guild charter, and what I mean by this is, do not go and ask randoms to sign it then just kick them. Establish together that core group, and start getting together what you guys have as your "mission statement" for the guild. So the entire group of 5, which I will be just referring to as, your core. Is all on the same page, and everyone else that joins the guild understands what the plan is and knows if it is a nice fit for them. Also you want those people to be on the same page as well, so when you are offline, things can be handled how you would handle them, this is extremely important! You do not want one person saying something, then a different person in the guild that is consider one of the leaders to say something completely different, this will cause problems to arise, which of course are inevitable, but you want to avoid them at all costs, and have as few as possible.
Once you have this group put together, we can start assigning roles , and start handing out responsibilities and task to other members of the core, this is also extremely important. When you first make the guild, there is going to be a ton of pressure on you, and it is important that you start delegating these responsibilities so things can be done effectively and constantly moving in the beginning. The last thing you want is for someone to join the guild, and go yahh.. Nothing is really going on here, and just leaves the guild. You want to start gaining members that are effective and willing to wait out for other like minded people. It is also important, that you do not have too many people that are in the council, this should in my opion range anywhere from four to eight people, too few than you will get overwhelmed too many, then that is when people who are not an officer will feel like they are not apart of the guild, and cliques will form. Which is an obvious issue, you can not have any commanders without any soldiers to follow them.
What Roles Do I Assign?
Next let's get into the topic of specific guild ranks.
- Guild Master
- Officer (Loot Council)
- Raider
- Alts
- Trial Raider
- Member
- Social
- Trial
Now this is when your creativity can come into play, and you can start coming up with some names for ranks and roles for those ranks, or you can use the format I am about to lay down before you, and I think this works the best, and is quite effective as it has worked for many of my past guilds and works for my current guild which is a high tier Mythic Raiding Guild.
So first and foremost, you need to have a Guild Leader this most definitely goes without saying, but it should be quite clear what this person stands for and what their role is as the Guild Master. Now, it is important this person is not in charge of everything, or he/she will start to go crazy, and it is also important this person is someone everyone can talk to about any problem they may have. Whether this be an issue with another guildmate, or officer, raid scheduling, absences and any in-game question, etc. The Guild Leader should be extremely well versed with the game, and have a really good understanding of what they are trying to say, portray and teach. Not only will this person be the 2nd person making executive decisions with raids, they will be the first person dealing with all the day to day work with general guild affairs. Now as many guilds have different goals at hand, and what kind of guild they are trying to be I will not say there is only a one way road of going about doing this, but I have found through trial and error there are better ways, and there are worse ways.
WoW Raiding Guild
The Raid Leader
This method is the good cop, bad cop technique. You want to have the Raid Leader be the person who is not afraid to call someone out on a mistake, and be the person to tell everyone to focus, and push for the best in progression. That being said, that does not mean this person is a total douche, they say what needs to be said when it has to be, other than that is just a regular person that can also let loose and remember this is just a game, and have some fun with their guildmates on raid nights. So that being said, this person should be the one calling people out on raid nights, while the Guild Leader is the person people can come to at the end of the day to talk to, to just make them feel better and tell people what they want to hear, while also not lying to their face. Also the Raid Leader is in charge, of scheduling raids, making sure the roster of people who are on the raiding team show up on time, how many times people do not show up time, who is causing problems on raid nights, who is dying a lot, who does not take it seriously, etc. The list goes on and on, and it is up to the cores judgement on what should be watched, and what kind of stuff is tolerated on raid nights.
Recruitment
Next you need to have a Recruiting Officer this person of course is the person who recruits people into the guild, now before I say anything else, by far the best way to get good members into the guild, and active members is through connections and friends. By people having other friends in the guild, it gives them a little bit more strings attached, they feel like they should give it some more effort, as it is not just some randoms, they also may have a group of friends involved with them. Also another extremely efficient way of recruiting members into your guild is by running public raids, using the looking for group tab. This method is good when you do not have a solid group of at least 30 people, because it allows people to view your guild, and see how you runs bosses as well it an effective use of time. Not only do you have the potential of earning more members, you also get the raid done at the same time earning more loot, which is a very positive thing. After the end of the raid, if you see someone you like or did very well, just ask them "hey you got a minute", then ask them if they would be interested in joining your guild, and then give them your whole pitch. Also sometimes if the run goes extremely well, you will have people sometimes ask you if they can join the guild.
Another role that the recruitment officer(s) should have, is being in-charge of raiding trials, I personally think the raid leader should not have this role, he/she already has enough on their plate with coming up with strategies and making sure who shows up on time, and who is performing well and all that kind of stuff, although it is very important that your officer core, is communicating during raids and noting who is not performing well, which is why you want to have at least 22-30 people on during raid nights who are able to raid, you want the pressure on people that they can be replaced if they mess up too many times and are not giving it their all. Back to the raiding trials though, now the time frame they are given this rank can totally differ, depending on their motivation, grit and determination, but I generally give it two weeks, and each time they are late to a raid night, an extra 2 days is added to their trial period. However this can totally change, at one point we needed a healing officer, and we recruited a druid healer, he showed up prepared, provided materials and pots to those who needed them, gave input on strategies called people out gave points that we could improve on, and we had him promoted to an officer in just 4 raid nights, so things can totally change depending on the person, and as they should. Everyone new member should not be treated the same.
WoW Raiding Guild
Delegating The Tasks
While we are on this note, it is important to add, that all these roles should be different people. Not only do you not want someone being overwhelmed with tasks, you do not want one person having too much power. This is what allows us to the checks and balance system, and makes sure nobody's does something without discussing it with everyone in the core, so it is also important you guys have some sort of medium or platform where you can all talk on, this does not only include the core this includes the entire guild. I strongly recommend Discord, at is has proven to have the most efficient tools for running large groups of people, while displaying an immense amount of information to everyone in an organized manner. Back on the topic of the recruitment officer, this person should be advertising your guild's name, and your current progression in the guild, and what you guys are looking for.
*on this note, it is important your guild name is something that is easy to say, spell and type, you do not want it too confusing so people can not look you up, and as well so your guild members are not ashamed of the name that is above their head all day long.*
So here is a simple example of what you can type in trade chat, or on the WoW forums.
"Exiled (8/9) Mythic is an active Mythic Raiding Group in desperate need of active, and hardworking members looking to complete our Core Raiding Roster and push our progression to the best it can be."
Now the recruitment officer is not the only person that can recruit people into the guild, you should allow any officer to have invite power, but this should be the main person looking into people's stats, their playtime, their past raid experience, etc. You want to ensure the best members, so you can avoid tiny errors at raid nights, although they still will happen, certain people are just taught the game incorrectly in certain aspects, as I am and as you probably are as well, that's what makes guild great, everyone call bounce ideas off of each other and new strategies can come into play and it really lets it all flow well in my opinion.
WoW Raiding Guild
Player Development
Now let's talk about the subject, of gearing people who are highly motivated to be a good raider, but essentially do not have the tools to an effective raider at the time. It is important to understand, not everyone starts off at item level 930, there are going to be plenty of people who are actually extremely good players but maybe had to take a couple months off from WoW and just sort of got left behind, this is your opportunity to invite these people in as Social and just offer them the raider position, and tell them if they stick around long enough gear up on our non-mythic raiding nights and shows us you are dedicated we can get you a core spot. This also allows for more members of the guild that are not taking up a raiding spot just yet, which offers a sense of community which is what you totally want your atmosphere to be! At any given time, you basically want 5-10 people on, so there is stuff for people to do and it actually makes your guild active, there is nothing worse than running a dead guild. The guild should be thriving, such as questing, gearing and doing mythic+ or gearing alts on days that are not raid nights so you can have some people to play with.
It is also extremely important, that your guild has diversity in their classes & specs. It is totally fine to have 8 druids but you better make sure they are not all boomkins, one of them should be healers, one at least a tank, and dps. You also need a fine line between melee and ranged. For me and my guild personally during progression we like to run, 2/4/14 meaning two tanks, four healers, and fourteen dps, but once we have completed the raid a few times depending on the difficulty and boss fight, we either do 2/3/15, or 2/2/16 but again it totally depends.
Have fun!
WoW is a game, but it's full of real people, and guilds are in many ways the most "real" element of the game. Your interactions with guild members are as real as your interactions with friends in the real world. You are all here to have fun, so keep that in mind!
People come and people go from guilds. But if you are honest and respectful, it is doubtful that your guild will ever fully dissolve as long as you are putting energy into keeping it going.
Good luck with your guild, I hope it becomes a wonderful place to be!
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