Council Chambers: The “Whos”, Or Who Will Your Members Be?

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

Once you have a concept, mission statement, and website, it’s time to think about adding new members. How will you handle recruiting? Recruiting is one of the most important functions of leading a guild, and one of the factors that most often contributes to guilds falling apart. You are only as good as your members, so I strongly encourage to think carefully about who you want to recruit for your organization and what ideal sorts of players you are looking for.

You Want Fries With That?

In general, they say you can either do something fast, or you can do it well. It is easy to grow a guild if you just blanket-recruit and take anyone who says “Yes”. Unfortunately, that will probably not get you a good quality player base, and it is doubtful that sort of recruiting will enable your guild to remain active and healthy in the long term. Instead, I suggest taking it a little slower and make sure that you are focusing your recruiting efforts on players that fit the model of the guild you are trying to build.

On that note, think about any restrictions you want to set on prospective new members. Now that you have a mission statement, you should have a pretty good idea of what your guild is trying to do and the niche they are seeking to fill in the community. The next step is to think about how this applies to your membership, and what a prospective member would be.

Points to Ponder

Some common questions you may want to decide are:

• Will you have a minimum age limit? Some guilds require a certain minimum age. This can impact everything from the sort of language people use in chat, to hours of play (for example, younger players often have more daytime or late night availability than older ones).

• Do you want players to have a minimum level of raiding experience and/or gear? This comes up with more advanced raiding guilds – they often require potential members to have a minimum level of gear, or experience raiding in other games, to ensure that new members will be able to keep up with their level of operations content and progression.

• Will you accept alts? There are two kinds of alts – the first kind are the alternate characters of your existing members. The second type are when new members have their main character in a larger, more established guild or an advanced raiding guild. It may be on the same server as your guild, or another server entirely. Think about if you’re willing to take new members who may spend significant amounts of their online time playing elsewhere, or if you want players focusing exclusively on your guild.

On one hand, people who have mains elsewhere often bring a lot of great experience and insight from their knowledge of their other guild(s), but the downside is that they may not have a lot of time to invest in yours. In social and leveling guilds that do not demand specific or regular participation from members, this would not be an issue at all. For operations guilds, dedicated PvP guilds, or roleplaying guilds with active stories and participation expectations, this could be a deal-breaker though. I recommend thinking about what your stance is on alts, and posting it clearly for new applicants to be aware.

• Will recruiting be open to any class and specialization? Some guilds are open to any prospective members, regardless of their class and spec, and will allow people to join the guild even if they may not have a guaranteed ops slot. Other guilds only recruit for their current needs, and will specifically close applications to certain combinations if they have a lot of those players already. For example, guilds may only be recruiting healing Bounty Hunters or Troopers, and not damage dealing (DD or DPS) or tanking versions of those classes. Plus, if your guild has a specific concept or theme (such as a Jedi or Sith guild), then you may only want Consulars and Knights, or Warriors and Inquisitors.

• Do you want to have a minimum player level? You should think about whether you will admit players who are new characters (level 10 and below), or want to restrict membership to a certain level (level 25 or above, for instance, or level 50s only). The main reason for having a minimum level is to make sure people are committed to that character; especially with a new game like TOR, a lot of people are trying out new classes and concepts and may not stick with all their low level characters that they try out. Admitting a new member can sometimes be a time intensive process, depending on whether you require applications or interviews, and it can be exhausting processing a bunch of new applications from people that roll an alt they play for three hours then never play again. Also, Ops-based guilds will often be focusing on people that can participate in the content they are running, which requires max level.

• What other requirements would you add for membership? This is a bit of a catch-all, anything that I did not already cover above. Some guilds are very open, and will admit nearly anyone who asks. Others are incredibly selective, and require anything from a raiding audition run, to a certain level of experience or ability, to in-game or over voice chat interviews with prospective members and the guild leader or officers. Before you go out recruiting, you should spend a lot of time thinking about who you want in your guild and what criteria you want to establish up front for prospective members before admitting them. Once you have these, I strongly recommend they be posted in a public spot (ideally on a website) for any interested parties to read over before applying. It saves them time filling out an application that might be disqualified, as well as your time and your officers’ time reading applications that don’t meet your requirements.

Apply Now!

Once you have thought about these questions, and discussed it with your other officers, then try to come up with an application that targets these areas well. Most websites will have a tool for creating applications, and you can easily capture most of the above in an application that prospective members fill out. If your guild does not require applications, then these might be things you ask a prospective member before admitting them.

Good luck on recruitment! Next week, we will cover advertising – how to get the word out about your fantastic organization and draw in potential members.

Got a question for Council Chambers?  Drop a line to ladyoftherepublic@gmail.com or post a comment here, and you may see your guild questions answered in a future column.