Council Chambers: The “Wheres” – Come Play With Me!

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.  

There you are. You’ve got a guild, a website, an application, rules, a mission statement, and a set of criteria to apply to any applicants. Hmm, it seems like something is missing….Oh right! Members.

Now, I am going to preface this post by saying, a brand-spanking-new game is always in interesting time to be starting a new guild and recruiting new members. On the one hand, TONS of people are looking for a guild! On the other hand – people at this stage of the game are very flighty in general, and there is a lot of new character rolling and re-rolling or guild-hopping as people search for their perfect home that takes place early on in a game’s life cycle. Things will get a lot better in about two months from now, but right now it might involve a lot of member turn-over. So keep that in mind, and don’t become discouraged if you don’t have a solid stable of new members ready to go. Even then though, you should still try to start building a name for your guild and trying to get the word out. But – how?

The first tool you have at your disposal is the official forums.

No please, don’t leave!

I know, I know. A lot of folks despise community forums – and often for good reason. The WoW server community in particular is known for being….how to put this politely….well, as Obi Wan Kenobi said about Mos Eisley, “a wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Anonymity can breed a certain “je ne sais quoi” as I call it (mostly because there really isn’t a word for it that I like to use in polite company); Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade call it something else that’s also fitting. The point is, official game forums are not always the most friendly and helpful lot out there on the wide world of the interweb, so it can be rather scary and daunting to use them and post. It is far too early to know how our own TOR forums will be in the long term, but based on other games it’s likely to be a mixed bag. However, it is one of the first stops a lot of new players will make when looking for a guild. So you will want to stop in there, log in with your guild leader or officer toon, and put up a post.

Act Now!

Primarily, you will probably want to create a post in the official guild forums themselves about your guild and recruiting status. Make sure to post in the correct area for your guild region (North America or Europe), the Server Type, and then the Faction before creating your announcement; odds are if you just create one in the general guild forums, it will get moved anyway. Since you are creating this one, you can take the opportunity to write a lot about your guild. It’s good to keep in mind your mission, and try to strike a balance between being brief (so folks will actually read the entire post and not be critted by a wall of text) but detailed enough to differentiate your guild from the 10,000 other ones out there. Ask your existing members to also go to the forums and bump the post regularly. The reason for this is to create the impact of a diverse body of players – you want folks to see your guild recruiting post and see that there are other active members, not just you and your guild tag.

See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

But Wait – There’s More!

The next thing you can do is head over to R2-DB and write up a little blurb there as well. Again, you’ll wannt to be brief – a short description of your guild and its mission, plus a link to your website, is really all you need. This is a great way of reaching a more focused community than the official forums, and a fantastic opportunity to get the word out about your guild. Finally, you can also look into doing a piece through TORWars in their Galaxy of Guilds feature, to get your guild a lot of attention and interest in the greater fan community.

Those are the primary recruiting options to start. If you’re an active raiding guild, you may want to put up a recruiting post in Sith Warrior or Force Heal’s forums, both of which have forums specifically for guild recruiting. Some web hosting services, like Guildlaunch and Enjin, also have options to use if your guild is recruiting.

We’ll Even Give You A Third Option Free!

Finally, there’s always the General channel. If you do want to use this, you’ll probably want to create a macro with your message. Do *NOT* create a recruiting message so long that it requires two separate blocks of text – players don’t like that and won’t read it. Create something brief, to the point, and with your contact information. Then feel free to advertise every few minutes, but not so often it becomes spam. Once every 10-30 minutes is more than enough, as players will usually be on long enough to see the message once, but not so often it becomes an annoyance. Then hang out in a main location, such as your capitol city (Dromund Kaas or Coruscant) or the Fleet Station of your choice, and advertise away. Shipping and handling not included, and please check the sales tax in your area of residence before ordering. *cough* Ok, ok, I promise I’m finished with the cheesy tele-marketing theme now. Well, at least for this week…

And that’s all there is to it! Recruiting is a lot like a garden – takes a lot of effort to set up and get going, but once you’ve established it the process will take care of itself smoothly as long as you tend to it. It will take time to build a solid player base of active members, but with patience and perseverance, you’ll get there. Good luck!

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.