Originally Posted by
XMrNiceguyX
I just finished reading through this whole thread and as a GM of a respectable 10 man guild (16/16 hc down as of yesterday), I am also a strong supporter of written applications. Of course there is the argument of having a pulse on an applicant's dedication. However, unlike the reasons mentioned in this threads, the reasoning behind requiring application is slightly different. Seeing that we're playing on EU servers, nationalities differ. As such, we use the application to also assess the mastery of the English language. This extends not only to in game communication, but also to communication on the forums. We use the forums actively to discuss encounters and hence we place high value in our applicant's ability to express themselves through writing.
We also decided to make all our recruitment public (although we do of course allow private applications). For one, it allows applicants to see how we handle applicants and can take lessons out of this. On top of this, it allows applicants to look at other applications and see how other applicants tried to get a trial in our guild. In this way, we see public applications as an opportunity to have people think out of the box and using resources available to them. This property of looking for information to better oneself is a much desirable property and we place high value therein.
While this next part may sound discriminatory, I did notice the mention of gender. However, people seem to not value this question. I do. Being of the female gender can influence raiding environment and performance. In a masculine oriented game such as this (especially and more prominently when raiding), the influence a female which is not shy to wave her "evag" (as you so aptly named it) around, does give reason for concern. The mere drive throughout this thread to emphasize your gender, Barberry, is an undesirable quality. You might as well raise a flag saying "HEY GUISE, I'M A GIRL, I NEED ATTENTION AND RECOGNITION!". I can speak from personal experience in my current and previous guilds is that the hormonal drive of male members will activate and deviate energy away from performing into raids or lead to overconfidence and overperformance in favor of primal needs. Even if a female member is playing like a monster (we actually have a female player in our guild, playing warlock and generally topping meters), depending on the hormonal pressure she is emitting, other member's performance is affected. (either by sapping strength or making them overconfident, both undesirable traits.). This does not mean we decline people based on gender, it does give us an additional point to consider when trialing members.
Lastly and more regarding the topic, is regarding the big question posed in this forum. Are guild applications becoming a thing of the past? I think not. If we consider trials, as a guild, we would first like to assess what new members can offer us and then once we have gone past the application process, we may opt for an oral interview. After this, we do a two week trial period. However, from this point we will start to give stuff to our applicant. We do a preliminary assessment halfway this trial period with our member and discuss last week. We ask about performance, environment and the social aspect of this game and then end up with a final "judgmental" chat at the end of the trial period. As a 10 man guild, we are a very tight group and need to properly analyze if we think a person would fit in and hence we have a lot of communication and we need a proper frame of analysis. For this last reason, we may extend the trial period if we could not fit a trial in our roster for about 80%-100% of our raids.
It does not stop here. We also have personal evaluation every tier, combined with a content patch survey in which we once again check how content our raiders are over the past tier before moving into the new tier. This will give us ground to improve upon and see discontent coming from far away.
All this together are arguments for having a written application as it is. Just like one would make an application for a job, so should one do so for a guild. We do tend to see this game as a job, however. Not a job for money, but a job for fun. WoW is a game in essence, as such, the general currency we should try to distribute among our members is not the one of coin, but the one of fun.