Officers’ Quarters: Creating a Mythic+ guild

This week, a military service member comes home to a dead roster and wants to know whether he should revive it into a new Mythic+ guild. We’ll look at questions you should ask yourself before embarking on such an endeavor and then the ways that you can make it happen.

First of all, Lithorien, I’m sorry to hear about your guild. We have a number of military members in my guild and I’m always happy that we’re still around for them when they come back to the game. Not everyone is so lucky.

I’m also glad to hear that you’re interested in creating a guild. WoW always needs more players who are willing to assume these responsibilities.

To decide whether you should move forward with this, I recommend asking yourself these questions:

• Do I know anyone who’s interested in helping me? Creating a guild by yourself is exponentially more difficult than starting it with a few friends. Just a few trusted fellow players can make a huge difference.
• What can my guild offer that existing guilds can’t or aren’t? To succeed with a new guild, it’s important to set yourself apart from the competition. You can differentiate your guild in many ways: the activities you focus on, the times that your activities take place, the type of players you recruit, and so on. Once your guild is established, a key differentiating factor can be the skill of your players, or their friendliness, or the guild’s willingness to help players improve their skill. For you, focusing on Mythic+ content rather than raiding already sets you apart from many PVE guilds.
• Am I willing and able to sacrifice leisure time to make this happen? The best guild leaders are the people who will put aside their own free time on the guild’s behalf, whether it’s to recruit, to mediate disputes between guild members, or to organize activities. Populating the guild is just the first step. There’s a lot of hard work that comes after it.

Designing a guild

Most people talk about “creating” a guild (and indeed, it’s in my title up there because that’s the vernacular). But I think a better way to think about this process is “designing” a guild. Creating, to me, is the nuts and bolts process of making a guild exist using the game’s UI. For Lithorien, that process already happened.

Designing a guild is a different matter. That means deciding what the guild will seek to achieve and under what guidelines. It means choosing who joins it, what you will try to accomplish together, and in what fashion. These are all important things to think about, and they’re covered in the steps below.

Here’s how to go about it:

1. Reach out. If you have anyone from your old guild on your friends list, or anyone you know IRL who plays WoW, you should start by contacting them. See what they’re up to in-game and ask if they’re interested in helping you. With any luck, you’ll have a few friends as a base to build on who can lend a hand with the next steps.
2. Define the guild and its policies. You and your founding members need to make important decisions about how the guild will operate, what kinds of players you want to bring in, how you expect those players to behave, and what the consequences will be when they don’t. Put it all in writing. This sounds boring and serious, but it’s essential. It will protect you in the event of drama and hopefully avoid most of that drama in the first place. Also, lay out the specific goals of the guild. This document should answer the question, Why does this guild exist?
3. Create an application process. Will you have a written application, a one-on-one interview, or will you just take whoever wants to join? The latter method is tempting, but it comes with some drawbacks. For one, you won’t really know who you’re getting, which may lead to problems down the road. Two, the person you’re bringing in won’t know the guild or its policies very well. Three, neither you nor the recruited player will feel an investment in each other, because the process of joining was so easy. It’s a recipe to end up with a lot of guild-hopping players who may not stick around, and I don’t recommend it. Take the time to vet potential members, however you want to do so. If a player pushes back against this process, that’s a red flag. They are likely to be lazy about other things, too, so they may not be the type of recruit you want. An application process is a way to filter out players like that.
4. Nail down the details. Potential recruits will want answers to specific questions. When will the Mythic+ runs happen every week? Who will lead these runs? What voice software will we use? What roles and classes does the guild need most? How many players will be on the team? How will you decide who goes on each run if there are too many people? What other activities, if any, do you plan to organize? Can a player join the guild with an alt while their main is in another guild? How will everyone contact one another outside of the game? If you don’t know these answers when you approach potential recruits, you’ll come across as disorganized. If you can address everything with concrete answers, on the other hand, you’ll look like you mean business.
5. Recruit, recruit, recruit. There are many techniques that I’ve covered in other columns. Talk about your vision for the guild. Make a case for why you are a good choice to lead it. You can mention your military experience or the leadership roles that you’ve taken on in your life so far, either IRL or in other games. Be passionate! Players are more likely to respond when they see that the person leading the guild is just as devoted as they are to mastering a specific type of content.

Good luck, Lithorien! I hope you can make this happen and lead players through all the amazing dungeons Legion has to offer.

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/salute