Tips on Starting a Guild by Myself

[Deleted]

I was GM of a sucessful (top 200) raid guild for years. And as long as you know going in that it will literally be a second job then just know you were warned :P One of the biggest problems was having more raiders than raid spots, so you're lucky that's solved with the flexibility of raids these days (bar mythic).

My advice to you, is be prepared for 'heartbreak'. By that I mean that people will leave, your best raiders will leave, your officers will leave. Be that rage quitting, moving guild or quitting wow, whatever the reason it will happen, and it'll happen a lot more than you think! I had raiders that were friends for years in-game who simply disappeared without saying a word and others who just blew up on me for almost no reason at all and quit. That's what I feel is the hardest part of being GM/RL, bringing these people together, being friends, and them leaving.

Just my two cents.

Nav

This.

This.

Seriously, been playing since Vanilla and the moments that made me unsub was losing my both in game friends or real life friends. (Unsubbing or changing to PvP or simply leaving without a reason)

I have found a new guild back in 5.4 and I'm very happy, It was a random guy recruiting people for a casual guild and all of the sudden I have new 12 friends to play and hang out with while doing semi-hardcore progression!

[TheTrueKueen]

As a fellow prot warr who started his own guild, here's my advice:

- Try to find mostly only people who share your mindset. It'll save you drama, make them stay for longer and make the guild & events extra enjoyable for everyone.

If you have a limited schedule, make sure to find people with matching schedules (eg set your raid nights beforehand and make sure everyone joining is compatible with the schedule).

If what you want is to strive for realmfirsts or something, find people who also want to and are willing to commit to it.
If what you want is to just raid 1 or 2 nights and progress slowly in a "smoother" mood & approach, find people who want to do that too.

Post in forums and such about your guild, maybe wow reddit?


- Don't be afraid to use tools like Open Raid to start raiding before you have enough actual guildies. It may not be as smooth as a guild run, but if you are careful when choosing who to take (maybe talk with them before accepting them into the raid) you'll start doing stuff with your guildies sooner (which is good to avoid them leaving) and you will meet new people that might be interested in joining your guild, or at least you'll get a few people you might call on if you need to fill a spot later on.

Personally I've had a great experience with Open Raid. Only had maybe 1 or 2 sour grapes being upatient & stuff, but that completly stopped after I started putting a big red notice like "Don't come if you're not ok with wiping till we get it right" in every event. I've met a lot of awesome people raiding like this during MoP and now a bunch of them transfered to raid with me during WoD!


- Tanking alone can be intense at times, leading while tanking can get close to overwhelming. Don't be afraid to hand out small responsibilities to officers or people you trust to do them right. Like handling group management when you need to split, warning about a specific mechanic or using a macro at a given time, setting world raid markers, etc.

That is all for now, I'll add more in if I recall anything more =P

"Don't come if you're not ok with wiping till we get it right" Haha I love your idea. It is funny how some players do not have the patience and want immediate gratification. I will download Open Raid and try out your advice aswell! Thank you

[Kolvarg]

"Don't come if you're not ok with wiping till we get it right" Haha I love your idea. It is funny how some players do not have the patience and want immediate gratification. I will download Open Raid and try out your advice aswell! Thank you

Oh eheh Open Raid is not an addon or something x) It's a website you can register on and add your WoW characters. Then you can create events (eg raids) and other users can sign up for it. Basically like planning a premade ahead.

I was GM of a sucessful (top 200) raid guild for years. And as long as you know going in that it will literally be a second job then just know you were warned :P One of the biggest problems was having more raiders than raid spots, so you're lucky that's solved with the flexibility of raids these days (bar mythic).

My advice to you, is be prepared for 'heartbreak'. By that I mean that people will leave, your best raiders will leave, your officers will leave. Be that rage quitting, moving guild or quitting wow, whatever the reason it will happen, and it'll happen a lot more than you think! I had raiders that were friends for years in-game who simply disappeared without saying a word and others who just blew up on me for almost no reason at all and quit. That's what I feel is the hardest part of being GM/RL, bringing these people together, being friends, and them leaving.

Just my two cents.

Nav

This is true. The same kind of guild I'm leading atm I was leading back in WotLK with different people. Raiding 2~3 nights a week for 3 or so hours, taking it in a light and fun mood, helping each other get better but without blaming or becoming upset when someone made a mistake.

We wiped a lot on LK and Sindragosa not only while learning but because we not always had 10 people online so we'd usually have to take at least 1 or 2 pugs. But when we finally killed the Lich King, a lot of people simply stopped playing WoW - and even though I still have contact with most through Facebook and such, most never came back to WoW at least for raiding, that I know of.

At the time it was pretty saddening considering we pretty much only started raiding on ICC and I was looking forward to try new content with them when Cata came out, and for a long while I thought I would never even raidlead again. But looking back it was totally worth it.

But by the time I returned mid-MoP to check out the expansion with 2 more of those I raided with back in WotLK, we couldn't find any raiding guild to join that matched our free time, and we really wanted that Garrosh wolf =P So here I am back again.

The most likely scenario is people complaining about this or that, much more than thanking you or congratulating you on your leading. But in the end, if you managed to have fun and provide fun for a bunch of people even if only for a few months, it was worth it. Looking back and knowing I slowly helped that group of amazing people get better until we were able to down the Lich King feels pretty amazing.

[Navoan]

Heartbreak. That has never crossed my mind. That must be very tough for any GM to experience. It is most definitely something to put into consideration and probably the only comment that has deterred me from the idea so far.

I don't mean to dissuade you from starting a guild mate. My best memories from WoW are from my guild, no doubts about that at all. Some of the worst too though so it is definitely a two-sided coin. In my experience it was worth it, we enjoyed progress and we had some drunken raids, alt raids specific to the purpose , and generally had a great time. If the guild wasn't so progress focused I think we would have had a higher retention rate of raiders too so that is something for you to think about too.

It seems others have had the same experiences and it would be nice to see if they agree that at the end of the day if they thought it was worthwhile. As I mentioned, for me it was worth it, but it was difficult too

Let me know if you need anything.

Nav

[Bathory]

Don't forget it's a game. It might not work out, especially not right away, so take your time and keep going if it's something you really wanna do.

I remember being intimidated when I started my first guild. People would join, then leave, kinda killed my morale, but I kept going and eventually had enough people to start raiding and pushing content. Long story short, my guild ended up being the top raiding guild of the server.

This was years ago though, so I can't really speak on the state of the game now, Gleader wise, but keep at it. Be engaging as a GM, get to know your people, invest in your members and help em out.