"My" guild is dying. How do I save it?

[Deleted]

I'm currently an officer in a guild that did ok during WotLK (10/12 norm 10-man) for a casual raidguild.
And I've been optimistic ever since the Cata-launch, thinking "We'll get a raid together soon, just need to recruit a few more active players".
But the truth is that we started ONE raid since the launch, where we pugged two dpses and we wiped for 3 hours on the first boss.
The problem is that we have too few active players, and the ones we have doesn't make a great raid-setup. I'm currently the only officer. We're lacking a proper raidleader, and we were thinking of dragging a mate of the GM who's a bit more experienced with leading raids along one night, but he's constantly busy.
I used to spend atleast 30 mins every day in SW, letting off a guildrecruitment-message in Trade every 60 seconds, or so. But people simply won't join anymore. I've been recruiting lowlevels lately, to boost the guildxp and see if that makes the guild any more appealing.

We recently lost a dps and a healer, which was about a third of our group of active level 85s. I've been trying to encourage people to do guildrun HCs, but soon there won't be anyone left to encourage.

Is this guild doomed as far as raiding goes?

tl;dr - How do I make my guild more attractive to active players?

[Deleted]

Usually old active raiding guilds are more atractive to players, even if they are "casual" atm. A new guild to be attractive needs to have progress to show, at this point many many guilds are farming content be it in hc or normal. 0 kills in any raid is a bit lame at the point.

I personally think from your post, the guild is DEAD if you cant even do dungeon hcs in a grun!
Might aswell move on m8 and try your luck somewhere else.

[Merin]

Eat yourself to 300 lbs for attention.

[Anxt of Detheroc]

My guild ended up very much the same. I tried to revive it, but nobody wants to be in a guild where nobody is ever on. I moved to a new guild, but I still have an alt as the GM in case all of those people decide they want to give it another shot.

[Osmeric]

Yep, you're doomed.

[DETdream]

I don't want to sound harsh, but there are too many guilds out there. If your guild is struggling to get people, I suggest you look into absorbing another guild or merging with another guild.

Right now, every guild has attendance problems, doesn't make sense.

I myself was in a guild that just called it and active members went to 2 main guilds.

[Tziva]

Unfortunately, my experience from the servers I play on is that it is extremely hard to recruit right now if you don't already have a decent sized guild. The new guild system (which I do think is awesome) has made people reluctant to leave their current guilds lest they lose their reputation and achievements. Unfortunately, it seems like people's rush to align with a guild for the new system left too many half-filled guilds and there are more in a similar situation to you than not. So instead of 50 stable guilds, we have 100 guilds with not enough members to do anything. In an ideal world, these guilds would collapse into a sustainable amount of guilds with full rosters and some backups, but obviously no guild wants to be the one to disband in order to merge with another.

That you have only the framework of a roster and no established raid is only going to hurt your prospects. The guilds that are going to have the best luck are actually those that need recruits the least: stable guilds with good raiding progress and solid members.

I'd love to be optimistic and say you can do it by being cool people that are fun to hang out with, but I'm just not sure anymore if it is possible.

[Willing]

It would be awesome if everyone could get the people to run their own guild. but the simple fact is, there are to many guilds. It's incredibly hard to keep small pop guilds running, I'm a GM and i struggle. but we're doing fine now... anyways, It sounds like you're gonna need to leave, your active player base is far to small . best of luck m8.

[Feedmeh]

what kind of a guild recruitment macro are you using? what are you looking for to add to your roster in order to make raiding possible?

the reason I ask is that there are a ton of guilds recruiting on our server, but if you look at the recruitment messages there's a lot of guilds I wouldn't even consider if I was looking due to what was in the macro. A lot of them look generic, or that there hasn't been much thought put into it (spelling mistakes etc) The carefully worded ones get my attention when I'm spamming ours and I make a note of the guild name, often times the more "polished" a guild recruitment message, the more serious the guild is and since we're still looking for a third healer i keep that guild name in mind just in case we end up pugging someone and one of their members is asking to go. I also make note of the ones that look thrown together carelessly and assume most of their members have the same lack of attention to detail. Probably completely wrong to do so, but it does seem to end up being correct the majority of the time.

Post up your macro and we can take a look and offer suggestions.

[Drazarr]

I'm seeing a lot of raiding guilds on my server die off. They will all need to contract into fewer guilds to make up for the server population decline.

[Deleted]

I don't want to ruin anything for you, but 10/12 normal in 10man at the end of Wrath would be the same as Halfus on farm and some good progression on Magmaw in my opnion. Honestly you aren't very far behind, you just have to take the fact that 10mans aren't as 'easy' as it used to be, and that Cataclysm content is:
1) harder to outgear, 2) haven't suffered as many nerfs, 3) tactics are unknown by a big part of the population, and Cata raiding is completely new to those who previously used to pug the first few 4/6/9/11 bosses of Icc 10man. These people also happen to be in your guild.

You should really reconsider how you want to construct your guild.

[Deleted]

Ouchie... And I was almost Honored...

This is exactly the main problem with the new system.

I'm all up for guild loyalty, but the rep system encourages half-baked guilds that do nothing to stay together, instead of moving to try and get themselves a better game experience.

[IPWNFGZRS]

Reroll your guild on Telaar

[Deleted]

Ouchie... And I was almost Honored...

I feel for you there. i was 700 rep from exalted before my guild disbanded - sad times.

The system is broken

[Pokot]

tl;dr - How do I make my guild more attractive to active players?

There are ways of resurrecting the guild but I do not advise to try. It would require shtload of time and effort and you have to be a very dedicated person with leadership skills. I have failed with guilds in far better position than yours is.

[ciggy]

Contraction ftw.

[Siton]

"/2 <Mea Culpa> is a social guild, with 3 raidnights a week and a nice little community. We're currently looking for warlocks and healing druids/shams/pallys for raiding, but any class between 1-85 is welcome. Ventserver up and running. /w if interested."
"3 raidnights a week" used to be true, we used to have 3 raids scheduled every week, but I haven't updated this in a while.

Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe we're not that casual... which makes this even more sad.

3 raidnights a week for a casual guild? Sound like alot.

[arcticsnow]

If you really like the guild stick with it, but you may have to change how and why you are recruiting. If your just recruiting for raiding, then you will probably find it very had to get people. I currently do not raid. No time for it, but I am enjoying seeing new content in questing. I suggest trying to raid with some other guild, while you try to get people in your guild for other reasons than just raiding.

[Daetur]

Sadly, my beloved guild is in a similar boat, and were were 11/12 H 10m ICC by the end, running "casually" once or twice a week with occasional lockouts for progression. We took it easy, we really, really, enjoyed each others company, and generally had a great time. We seem to have lost that in Cata, for a number of reasons. It seems to be a common theme with smaller guilds this expansion, and I'm sorry you guys are hurting like we are.

Recruiting is far harder now than it's ever been.

There may come a time when you have to decide between raiding, and sticking with the people in your guild that you've grown close to. I'm lucky enough to have multiple 85 alts, and I moved one to a very large guild on my server (the ONLY large guild on my faction), so that I could see the content on off nights, when I'm not with my tried and true guildies. It works for me, but there may come a time when that doesn't fly, and I have to choose between raiding and my closest online friends. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, ultimately.

[Spikedriver]

Well if you want to raid, if thats what you want to do in WoW, I will show you what you need to do.
First /gquit
Yes this seems a bit extreme, but it do 2 things a) get you away from thinking about fixing a problem that cannot be fixed b) will get you off your ass and actually looking for that new guild that you need.
Second, get a list of the names of raiding guilds on your server and look them up on the web. Most will have a website that you can apply at and will get good info such as the days and times they raid and what classes/specs they are recruiting atm
Third, enjoy new guild and actually pwn stuff