Guild leader advice please

[The_Family_Mordiff]

Myself and a friend started a guild. We then advertised it here, created a really cool website for it, and even sent out free weapons, etc, to new characters from our guild. All we asked for in response in all of these efforts was for anyone interested to send us a message. After doing this over and over again, we received exactly zero messages, emails or tells about our guild.

My question is . . . how can I get some interest in my guild? Is there a good way to get people to take a look or ask a question?

Thanks to all!

[Vinos]

Guilds take a while to get going. Best thing to do is build yourself/guild a good reputation and as players leave thier guild for whatever reason they will think of your guild and may want to join. Be patient.

[Osharan_Tregarth]

I'll put a couple of things in...

95% of the people in the game don't read the ddo forums. You're going to have to keep actively recruiting people in game to make your numbers grow any. A big part of that will be running quests with other people, and "impressing" them with your gaming/role playing/whatever skills.

Of the 5% or so that do read the forums, you'll get a much wider response(at least in my experience) to posting in your server forums, instead of in the guild matchup forums. I've noticed that there are maybe half a dozen guilds on Argonessen that actually read the postings here, and the rest all congregate in the Argonessen forums. You might see similar things on your server. But even there, you're looking at a pretty limited selection of people.

[JelloMold]

Just to piggyback on what was already said. Every time you run with cool people, just let them know that they are welcome to join your guild. I've not started up a guild for the same reasons you're describing. It just sounds hard.

Good luck.

[Mr_Ed7]

It has not been easy for me starting a guild from scratch either.

To echo the other poster's response, in-game may be your best venue.

I have created some unique cultural traits for our guild in the hopes that players will stick with us.

Many past members have had the complaint that people are not on and/or not playing with each other, my only reply to that has been "to be patient " and that it takes dedicated individuals to make a team successful.

[parvo]

Create a point of difference and make it well known. Honestly, 90% of the DDO guilds out there offer the same thing. If you aren't doing something unique, your guild looks like about 5000 other ones.

[The_Family_Mordiff]

I'd like to thank everyone for their responses. This has been very informative and has re-invigorated me to take a look at our guild and make it work.

Thanks again.

[Daerius of the Blessed Blades]

Create a point of difference and make it well known. Honestly, 90% of the DDO guilds out there offer the same thing. If you aren't doing something unique, your guild looks like about 5000 other ones.
Agreed. This is crucial...

You need to have a clear mission as to what your guild is about. Who is welcome? Who is your target player? Are there age restrictions? What size guild do you want? Are your goals achievable (for example, a halfling, Canadians only guild that also wants to be sure 10-25 guildees are on at all times is probably not going to be able to achieve both goals). I post my guild's principles clearly on our website, share them with all new members and (perhaps the hardest part) we dismiss members that do not adhere to our principles. Fortunately, we have only had to do that a few times. All three were good players and people, they were just not compatible with our guild's image and goals.

Patience will be required, too. If you are looking to grow, consider finding 3 or 4 people dedicated to your goals that you can trust to be officers and use them to help you grow and spread the word about your guild. Also, consider forming a few static groups (Every Saturday afternoon at 4pm Central, or Wednesday's at 7:00 Pacific, etc.) That gets the camaraderie built and guarantees a good group starting out. Either approach will still take time, but may accelerate the growth a bit.

Finally, I'd consider this (and this is a hard question...). Are you SURE you really want to start a guild? Building a successful guild is a LOT of work - and it takes nearly as much time and dedication to maintain it as it does to build it. You'll have lows - people leaving the game, lulls of activity between content releases or due to school, summer, etc, constant recruiting... Strongly consider that this is what you want to do. If not, there are lots of great guilds out there. You might try sending one of their leaders a /tell. Let them know that you want to run with them and if compatible you would like to help them grow the guild. They'll likely welcome you with open arms ;)

Whatever you choose - good luck. Don't hesitate to PM me if you want to bounce any of your ideas off of me. I sometimes think I spend as much time maintaining and growing my guild as I do my career...heh

[Djimonte]

Hee I once upon a time had a guild as I was the guild leader. My wife and I played together and the setup was she had a rogue and a caster my i had a cleric and paladin. We two didnt set out to build a guild but have a cluster of people who had sim interests and playability added to our friends list. We basically ran with folks from our friendship pools and well it helped kinda build the dnd imagination by refering to ourselves as "king and queen" lol the folks running with us seemed to promote that type thinking. My wife and I did no hard recruiting but rather just let word of mouth from other members as they joined to invite folks in. After about 6 months we had an active roster of everryday of 10 to 12 people online all week long with a guild following of around 30 people total. This was casual gaming and frnakly I felt bad that I couldnt run with all of them at once or that someone was being left out. Hence I ran alot of tempest spine runs. Lol Guess what I am saying is you and your friend just keep yourselves running together and don't worry about how many peple you can get into your guild if people enjoy playing with you and like the environment then that is enough to actually start the the recruitment process for you. As for websites I started one myself secretly and was working on it per request from a couple guildies. It interferred with play time I saw no real need for it since we all were on daily and the game has a internal mail system. The only benefit I could see was for friend networking off game and for a knowledge base and planner for up coming events you would like to schedule. And just as a point of fact I did not disolve my guild a friend did that for me by his own persoal interest, lonileness, and greed. So be aware of that as well when people run with you and put on a mask of friendship are they really friends or do they have private interests.
Good luck with your guild and I hope it grows but it isnt the number of people you have in the guild its the devotion and strength of the few that follow you that makes for a true guild.