guild-roster
Latest
The Guild Counsel: Recruitment tips in the age of free-to-play
Free-to-play is here to stay, and in just a few short years, the MMO landscape has changed dramatically. It seems like just yesterday that games like SWTOR and RIFT were adamantly insisting that the subscription model was the best plan for them. And four years ago, if you had suggested that most MMOs would adopt a free-to-play business model, people would question your sanity. Today, if you claim that the subscription model is the best bet, you'll get funny looks. The change has had an impact on guilds, and it's caused many guild leaders to have to rethink the way they recruit and manage their guilds. Let's take a look at how the free-to-play movement can actually help guilds build and maintain a healthy roster.
The Guild Counsel: Building a roster from the ground up
When you're running a guild, it's essential to choose wisely when you're filling out your roster. Longtime guilds are successful at weathering the ups and downs of guild life because they've put together a team of like-minded people and have established a guild culture that suits everyone well. But it's hard to build a guild from the ground up, and it's no surprise that most new guilds don't last very long at all. Guild leaders need to grow their roster quickly because if there isn't enough manpower to take on guild goals, the few who have agreed to join will have second thoughts and end up leaving. How do you recruit quickly but avoid building a guild that's primed for drama? Let's take a look in this week's Guild Counsel.
The Guild Counsel: Filling gaps when guild members leave
Imagine a scenario where a baseball team is heading into a do-or-die game, and as the coach is making up his lineup, he hears that his best hitter decided to take a break and take up knitting. Or a business manager who is scheduling a crucial demo of his new product with investors, only to find out that his star performer just took a job with a rival company. The result would be nothing short of catastrophic. Just about every guild leader who's been around for any length of time has had to deal with sudden and unexpected gaps in the roster, and it usually comes at the worst time for the guild. While it can cause no end of stress for the leadership and become a potential guild breaker, it's actually a natural part of the game and of guild management. Let's take a look at the issue of filling gaps in this week's Guild Counsel.
Officers' Quarters: Roster cleanup pros and cons
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Guild rosters inevitably become bloated over time. They fill up with inactive players or throwaway alts that current members haven't dusted off for years. This week, a guild leader asks when is the right time to remove characters from the roster -- and whether we should even do it at all. I run a casual guild. One of my officers puts it thus, "We're a raiding guild that acts casual." We have a decent roster and a great group of people, but we also have a lot of people who join, show up for awhile and then disappear. Some come back in six months and some, I have no idea if they are coming back or if they are gone for good. I like my roster to reflect an active guild, which we are. My membership officer sent me a roster list and I'm in the process of going through it for names that haven't been played in over 6 months. We've been doing a purge like this for the last 3 years and, every time, there's always some consternation about removing names from the roster.
The Guild Counsel: Making rebuilding less painful
One of the toughest times in a guild's life is when a guild has to face the prospect of rebuilding. Every guild has some extent of attrition, but there are times when roster numbers dip so low that it puts the future of the guild in jeopardy. For a guild leader, it might be tempting to just close up shop and move on, but there are some things that make the tough task of rebuilding more manageable. Let's look at a few options in this week's Guild Counsel.
The Guild Counsel: Guild-friendly features for which to be thankful
If you're reading this, it's probably well into Thanksgiving Day, which makes me wonder why you are reading this -- it's Thanksgiving Day! Perhaps you're playing catch-up while you finish up that slice of pumpkin pie. Or maybe you're back home, raiding the fridge for a late night turkey snack and a quick MMO update. Whatever your reason, there are many things that we can be thankful for when it comes to our MMOs. We've come a long way when it comes to guild-friendly features, and it's worth taking a look at in this week's Guild Counsel.
The Guild Counsel: Help, other games are stealing my members!
I have to start off this week's column with a hearty show of sympathy for current guild leaders because in some ways, it's much harder to manage a guild now than it was a decade ago when MMOs were just in their infancy. When I first created a guild in EverQuest with a friend, we had the luxury of knowing that "our way or the highway" really did apply. If you got booted or chose to leave, your choice was to join another guild (which was pretty hard to do if you were a problem because word got around) or basically hang up your MMO hat for good. Now, there are more MMOs to choose from than ever before, and with the flurry of game launches over the past year, it's sometimes hard to manage the ebb and flow of guild members on the roster. Guild departures are a fairly common problem, but what if the reason for the departure isn't a "grass is greener" guild but a "grass is greener" game? In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at what to consider when treating the issue.
The Guild Council: Why you should diversify your guild roster
More than once in this column, I've tried to hammer home the point that it's important to recruit players who match up well with your guild. So much guild drama spawns from a situation in which one player just doesn't fit in with the culture of the guild. But you don't want to lead a bunch of sheep, either, and while there are certain traits that you want to see match up (like playtimes, game style in general, and chat preference), it's worth it to carry a roster with some diversity. In the past, we've looked at a few good player types to seek out, but in this week's Guild Counsel, I'd like to look more closely at some of the more subtle personalities that are good to have on board.
