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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.

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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.

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Posted by Lady Republic | 7 Comments

Council Chambers: Next Steps, Or “The Hows”

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.  

Whether you have been playing MMOs for five days or five years, if you are new to guild leadership, you will need to think some about the hows – how does one form a guild, what should you do in advance, and how do you make it work? All you need to go is go pay your money and buy a charter, right?

Well, there is a little more to it than that – perhaps not in the most basic sense, but in actually building a guild that will last longer than it took to find three people to sign the charter. So, how does one try to set up a guild that will work?

1. Make Sure You Have Enough Time to Run a Guild

Running a guild is very time intensive, even for small or casual guilds. Especially early on, you will be the main point of contact for anyone who is interested in the guild, or for any members that have questions. As you promote officers and gain stability, you will not need to be around quite so often. In the early days though, plan on being around at least every other night if not more – at least until you have gotten a good, reliable support crew of an officer or two to fill your shoes on the nights you are not around.

Even once the guild is established, you should try to still be a visible presence online. People get skittish when the guild leader vanishes for long periods of time – so even once the guild has been around for a while, it is still helpful to check in a few hours a week and be present for your members. If your time and availability change so that you cannot continue to do so, it might be time to think about transitioning leadership to another person. If you cannot commit a couple hours a week to the guild forming up, then I would strongly encourage you think twice, and perhaps consider not, forming a guild. Guilds are like gardens – beautiful when you invest the time in tending to it, but prone to getting clogged with weeds or overgrowth if you stop paying attention or lack the time to take care of it any longer.

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Council Chambers: Before You Begin, Or “The Whys”

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.  

One of the biggest questions that I see pop up regularly in forums or general chat is some variation along the lines of “Should I start a new guild”? There are many reasons people think about forming up a new guild. So before we begin even talking about how to start a guild, let’s first talk about whether. You can find help in-game on how to form the guild, but it is not always as easy determining if you should form a guild. Of course, this is a bit counter-intuitive as anyone who is researching guild leadership in the first place will likely be a good guild leader, and the ones who could most benefit from some consideration about the merits of their plan are not the type to research guild leadership. (This is just like when I have to mention to my student the merits of showing up on time at the beginning of class with administrative announcements, when really the ones who need to hear it are not there yet. *sigh*) Be that as it may – I am still starting off with the most basics of basics in guild leadership – questions to ask yourself before agreeing to lead.

In journalism, they teach you how to ask questions – basically, always start with the who, what, where, when, why, and how. So let’s start with those too! Now, we know the who already – presumably you, or a friend of yours. That part is easy. We know the what, as well – leading a guild. The where – well, odds are you know this as well, the server you are playing on in The Old Republic (or other MMOs). When gets a little more complicated, and we will talk some more about that in another week’s entry. For this week – let’s start with the why, then move in the coming weeks to the when and how.

So without further ado – the “Whys”.

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Council Chambers: Finding Space In Space

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.  

It is hard to believe that Early Access began almost two weeks ago. Where has the time gone? For me, I cannot claim any level 50s yet – I’ll confess to being a bit more of a slow leveler, especially in this game – but I have definitely tried to take my time, explore the galaxy, and more specifically scout out some potential guild or event meeting locations. This week’s question comes from Joey, who asked,

“Do you have any recommendations for large scale grouping in the game? Coruscant seemed as if it had a good deal of room, but I was wondering if there was something that could specifically be used for a guild hall, for example. Similarly, if other planets had conducive areas, Alderaan in particular, I’d love to hear of any information you had there.

Second to this; as I understand it right now, it is NOT possible to form groups with other players and gather on your respective starships. Can you confirm that this is in fact the case? Further, do you know if Bioware has any plans to change this, or dare I dream, implement some kind of guild capital ship system?”

These are both great questions, and something I have been looking for myself as a guild leader. Ideally, for events like meetings where members may be either high or low levels (and if they are anything like ours, have a slight tendency to run a bit late and need something close to the Fleet), you will want to scout out areas that are easily accessible to both high and low level players. In particular, I have looked to Tython and Coruscant for meeting locations, as both of these are fairly easy to get to for anyone as low as level 10, and so should provide fairly convenient access for members of any level.

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Council Chambers: Host Sweet Host

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.  

A couple weeks ago, we had some great questions and comments relating to the ending of the Guild Headquarters project (at least temporarily) through the official site at www.swtor.com, and what alternatives may be out there for guilds looking for site hosting options.

Specifically, Suro writes,

I’d be interested in an article describing TOR-specific or themed hosting sites, and the benefits and features of each. For WoW, sites like Guildzilla, Wowstead, and such all have differing features, costs, and quality levels. I’d be interested in knowing which sites feature TOR themes, good forums, and game integration (progression list? profession listings?)

What’s out there?

Thanks for the question, Suro! I definitely think this is on a lot of guild officers’ minds as they look for places to relocate their content by the end of the year. The good news is that there are a lot of options out there for guilds, from largely pre-configured templates for the non-tech savvy guild officers to do-it-yourself programs that allow complete control over your site.

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