Finding the Perfect Guild

September 30, 2014 Sparty

Nobody likes looking for a guild, just as nobody enjoys looking for a new job or new friends. But this is just the predicament that so many people/players are in. Many of you are simply not enjoying your time in Warcraft because you’re not in the right guild. This is a social game, a massively multi-player game. You can play solo, but there is so much more enjoyment from playing with friends. People play for a bit, find nothing to do, nobody to hang out with and then quit out of boredom. There is SO much to do! And there are so many people to do those things with! So let me help you!

Looking for a guild can be a pretty daunting task, but with a little bit of preparation beforehand, you’ll make it easier on yourself. Knowing what you’re looking for ahead of time will likely result in less frustration for you.

So start asking yourself questions:

What kind of guild do I want? PVE or PVP focused?

PVE:

How hardcore do I want to be? Mythic Raider?

– Raiders come in all difficulties. Maybe your priorities have changed and it is no longer important to be a realm first raider.

How many days a week do I want to raid?

-A 5 day raid guild doesn’t necessarily do better than a 4 day raid guild. Looking at a guild’s rank is often indicative of this.

What days are my preferred raid days that I can stick with?

– Do I want my weekends free? I play hockey on Mondays so maybe any guild that raids Mondays is out of the question.

What kind of loot system do I prefer or do I even care about that?

– Is it a Loot Council, DKP, EPGP, Suicide Kings, Rolling?

Am I willing to server transfer? What about faction transfer?

– Can I afford the server transfer? Do I want to leave the best faction and join the rock-eating horde?

Trade Chat

One of the most common places to find leveling or casual guilds. You will not find many serious guild posting in trade chat and there is a connotation of trade chat guilds being bad and they often fall apart. This isn’t always the case. Trade chat is a really easy way to look for those early guilds that want to do dungeons and early raids together.

In between [Anal] and [Thunderfury] spam, look for guilds like:

“<Cobra Kai Dojo> recruiting for all classes for our guild. We are a fun ninja guild that has plans to raid in the future. Full access to repairs, food, gems. Initiation: Must sweep the leg.”

These guilds often will not be the raiding guilds that are killing heroic/mythic bosses, but they’ll probably have a fairly good base to start learning encounters and the game.

Realm Forums

These forums used to be full of drama and ninja-looter accusations. But these days it is mostly recruitment, raid carries, CM carries and profession kit sales. Realm forums are a much more effective way to find a raiding guild than trade chat. Players that are a bit more serious about progression, how much they value their time, are more likely to have a recruitment template up for potential recruits to see.

Find your Realm forums here and look at all the guilds trying to recruit you!

Recruitment Forums

The official recruitment forums open up your guild possibilities even more. If you are willing to faction and server transfer you have so many more possibilities for finding the right raiding guild, or even pvp guild. If you’re on a medium population server right now… think of these forums as a hundred times larger.

Example: If you’re doing some online dating, you’re increasing your search parameters to all of North America instead of just your farm town.

WoWProgress

This is one of the best tools to use to find a guild. Most guilds, whether they be top raiding guilds or casual raiding guilds, are using this website. It is very easy to use, just put in your own search parameters:

US or EU
Alliance or Horde
How many days you want to raid
What language your preferred guild speaks
What class you are
What spec your main character is
Click Go!

This sorts guilds based off your criteria based on their progression level.

Example:

Konrad is looking for a raiding guild. He’s a 12/14 Protection paladin that likely has experience with Paragons Heroic as well.

He is clearly on EU based off his armory. So at the top left under Guilds->Progress->West, he would scroll down to EU.

He is looking for a 25man guild and would click the appropriate link.

He has now sorted all 25man EU guilds.

Because he loves to eat rocks and loves the aesthetics of mud huts, he would choose the Horde faction. He also wants to raid 3 days a week in an English speaking guild. And finally he is a paladin, but protection.

Once he hits Go, WoWprogress will sort all guilds that are looking for a protection paladin based off his criteria(3 days a week, Horde, English speaking). Those results look like this:

Because he knows he’s an excellent player, and he doesn’t want to go back a few steps in progression, he’ll look for a guild that is at least 12/14.

That is 14 potential guilds that may be his dream guild. He’d now go through each of them and see if they were the right guild for him but he has saved himself hours of looking for a guild on the EU recruitment forums.

If you’re an excellent player with a lot of experience, these guilds should be courting you! For Multiple recruitment places/sites, make a template for yourself. Sell yourself to your guild of choice and show them why you’re the player THEY want!

Make sure to include your musts for a guild:

What days you’re looking to raid, what hours, flexibility. Include information about yourself, your previous guild histories, type of person and player you with type of humor. Include your past progression and look at posting some of your logs.

Here is an example of a very basic recruitment ad.

Here is an example of a bad recruitment ad.

And Here and Here are examples of a pretty decent recruitment ad.

Whichever way you look for a guild, your goal is to have many options available. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Apply to multiple guilds, post a great template so multiple guilds are interested in you. We’ll cover applying to guilds next week.

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Once you have many choices for guilds and numerous options, you can start narrowing them down. Don’t always settle for an average guild. Shoot for the stars!

Start research on these guilds and decide what else is important to you.

How important is the raid environment? What kind of raid environment do I want?

Some guilds run the top-down leadership system. Other guilds have more councils or discussion from their members.

Do I care about the guild’s values and integrity?

Does it matter to me that the guild treats people like garbage but kills bosses at a quick pace? W hat does that say about me?

How much do I value progression?

Is US 55th a big deal to me compared to US 65th?

Things to look for in a guild:

Guilds that have been around for a long time are much less likely to fall apart.
Find out if the guild is part of a ‘rebuilding’ phase.
Find out how long the leadership has been in place. Is it a newly promoted GM or different leadership team?
How do they handle drama? How often does it occur?
What kind of raid leading style do they have?
What else do they do outside of raiding?

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So, I want to encourage those of you that are bored or unhappy in their current situation, to look for the right guild. Regardless of your progression, your raiding background, or how long you’ve been playing. That dream home, that community you’re looking for, is waiting for you. Put in the effort and find it, you may be suprised at the outcome!

Guild Advice, Tales

Recruiting for your Guild

September 21, 2014 Sparty

Let’s face it, recruiting sucks. But it’s a job that someone must do. I’ve met few people that enjoyed the actual bit of recruiting, but the ones that did, were phenomenal recruitment officers. Recruiting is one of the most time consuming jobs in any leadership position, but it is also one of the most vital. A good recruitment officer can make or break a guild.

Recruitment can be broken down into two sections:

Passive and Active Recruitment

Passive recruitment has a large amount of time invested up front, but is fairly effective long-term. This involves having a template of of your guild’s information.

Think of your recruitment post or your template as your guild’s resumé. It is your opportunity to sell your guild to a prospective applicant. Your template should include relevant information including your current progression (please don’t BS your guild’s progression). Include your raid days, information about your guild, what classes you are recruiting. Sell your guild, show those potential applicants what makes your guild stand out, what makes it awesome.

Here is an example recruitment post by our guild.

We emphasize that we’re one of the oldest raiding guild in Warcraft. People look for longevity, stability and we provide that. We share our progression rankings for this expansion, or so far if we were still progressing. We list our raid days, raid times, our expectations of raiders, and what they may expect from us.

Many players will not read giant walls of text, so really sell yourselves in your title, and in your post. If you’re not sure what to put on your own guild’s post, look at what other guilds are doing and use parts of their posts and apply it to your guild. It is completely fine to do so!

Use both the Official Recruitment Forums as well as your Realm Forums when posting these recruitment templates. Bookmark your forum threads and at this point all you need to do is make sure you bump your posts. Blizzard sometimes doesn’t like this and will occasionally suspend your FORUM accounts for a few hours if you spam bumps. But every guild is doing it, multiple people from each guild bump those posts, as do people that are looking for guilds. Once every few hours for the Recruitment Forums and once a day for your realm forums is plenty. You need to make sure your guild is noticed.

The other website you definitely want to keep updated is: WoWprogress.

This Wowprogress listing only has to be updated once a month and is a fantastic source for recruits. We’ll cover how to use it next week when I show people how to apply to guilds. Make sure you are using this tool!

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Active Recruitment is another beast entirely. The more effort you put into recruitment, the more time, the more energy – the more successful you will be finding long term guild members.

The easiest method is searching those Recruitment Threads for a class that you are looking for. Players will post their class, ilvl and what they are looking for. It is up to you to read each of those potential threads and see if that person is worth the time to ctrl-v your post into.

See our example above: It’s a much smaller post, sells the potential applicant as to why they should come to you, and includes all relevant contact information.

WoWprogress again, has a tool to help you find potential recruits for players that have opted to be searching for a new guild.

Proraiders is also another website for potential high end heroic raiders, but is not used as often.

Trade chat is also a very common recruitment tool that many newer guilds use. I’ve never used it in my guild’s history as I’ve always found you will find a certain type of player in trade chat.

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And finally one of the most effective and time consuming ways to have people apply to and join your guild is to go out and find them.

To start off I look for guild that is lower ranked than my own:

I pick a guild that raids similar times to mine and I’ll take a look at their logs:

I go through those logs, determine who their best players are based off some log sleuthing and if they are a class I’m looking for, I turn on the charm.

Here is a chat transcript with a potential Discipline Priest Applicant.

I tried not to be overly pushy but really click with this person. I empathized with her situation, didn’t initially push joining Death Jesters. But if it didn’t, my plan was to plant those seeds… those seeds of making her think that in the future if she is not happy, or her guild starts to fall apart…, she’ll know a guild to apply to. I used my guild’s strength’s to fill in the places she was unhappy. I didn’t BS her, was completely honest and maybe one day this person will apply.

Tailor your recruiting pitch to each applicant. It’ll take practice but you’ll be able to sense what needs to be said without being overbearing.

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What did I do back in the day when we didn’t have these tools? I did random dungeons with players on the server. I chatted them up if they didn’t have a dumb name like xxLegolasxx or Babelicious and if I thought they were a good fit for the guild, I had them apply.

There are other resources to use as well, Elitist Jerks had paid for recruitment posts which I found ineffective. You can use Twitter, Facebook Groups, and Twitch Streams to help promote your guild.

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And finally think of recruiting as a numbers game. The more threads you paste your post into, the more people you try to recruit; the higher chance that someone will apply to your guild. The larger your potential applicant pool, the greater the chance that you will recruit a long term, core-raider.

Guild Advice, Tales

Preparing your Roster for Mythic Raiding

September 14, 2014 Sparty

Blizzcon 2013: Blizzard announces one high end difficulty that will only be 20 players: Mythic.

25man guilds everywhere were rejoicing, I was ecstatic. One size for all! A smaller guild means less logistical issues, less headache.

For every person at that convention center that day that was elated at the news, there was an eerie quiet from people that were in 10man raid teams. They weren’t sure what to make of the change. The enormity of the announcement was only beginning to sink in. And at once there was a communal 10man thought of, ‘holy crap, we need to recruit at least 10 more people.’

For TBC the 25man change was announced and I knew it would be good for the game. Running a 40man guild was a nightmare. It was more than a full time job. We ran with roughly 55 players during Vanilla. And managing each person’s schedules, late logon or early logoff times, a modified loot council/dkp tracker for each person, and the eventual personality conflicts in a large active guild would allow you to put your Guild Master position on your resume.

Many guilds thought back then, like many are thinking now, that it is a good opportunity to trim the ‘fat.’ What that means is that many in leadership want to make their roster a bit leaner where every person is pulling their own weight and there isn’t anyone being carried by the other 24 or 19 players.

I firmly believe that simply cutting players is not the way to go. That is to say, for a 20man team, you do not tell five of your raiders that they will no longer be raiding. Yes you need bloat and you wouldn’t have just 20 on your mythic roster anyway (more likely 25).

During the start of every new expansion there is an influx of players and people quitting the game due to natural attrition. People move on with their lives, get older, have kids, realize that WoW is a timesink…. Whatever excuse you want to make up for leaving the game. It happens to every guild. That influx of players or the guildies that are coming back to the game should not be used to battle the natural attrition of your guild. Few of them will actually stick around. They quit for a good reason. Garrisons and lack of flying will not bring them back.

You should go into the next expansion with a decent amount of bloat on your roster. Expect people to hate the game, get bored, and you will also find the ones that are simply not cut out for raiding in WoD. Those are the ones that will cut themselves and make your job as officers and guild leaders much easier.

When determining the size of your mythic roster, consider factors such as your progression goal, your composition, how many days you intend to raid and the chance that people are absent on a given raid night. I’m sure Theck could write a formula for it.

If you’re raiding 2 days a week, your roster can likely be on the smaller side (23) people due to it being easier to set aside two days a week to raid, compared to a heavier schedule of 4 days.

Keep in mind attendance policies, a potential ‘bench.’ Some guilds require 95% attendance, which means you miss at most one raid a month. Smaller rosters also allow you to pool your loot/gear to fewer players, increasing the relative power of your guild.

Undoubtedly the guilds that are going to have the most difficult transition will be the ones going from a 10man heroic to 20 mythic. And to get to that roster size you have to double your playerbase.

Well what easier way to do so than merge with another guild? It’s the quickest method as well as most appealing. You assimilate another guild, give one or two of their officers an officer position in your guild and you’re done! Right?!

Mergers are a bad idea. And that is speaking from watching a majority of guilds fall apart due to merging. While they look appealing and often guilds that merge may see a surge in progress, most of them(not all) are doomed to fail. Why? Well cliques form: while its one guild under one banner, it is still two guilds. The guild members still only play with their previous friends and are hesitant to reach out. This is also one of the reasons that guilds are hesitant to take group apps. Sometimes the members from one of the old guilds don’t like the new raid leader’s style, personalities clash, and people realize the grass is not greener on the other side.

Don’t get me wrong, a merger approached properly can be successful, but it is a tremendous risk when most fail.

So how should you approach recruiting for your 20man roster from a 10man? The same way you formed that 10man. You brought in likeminded people. You made friends and bonded with that small core. It was a tight-knit group. Well build on that, recruit slowly but look for the same quality players you have in your 10man. That way you ensure every player in your guild is on the same page and you avoid those merger troubles.

The downside of this method is that there will come a point where you have 17 or so people on your roster for a 10man team. Your team(and I use this word on purpose) need to realize that everyone will need to sit out on some bosses. And your team, should know that your goal is to have 20+ people on the roster. While you are farming bosses now, or progressing, every player will sit some bosses. But when WoD arrives, they will all be in. If your team can get over this hump until WoD, you’ll have a solid core going into the expansion.

A great tool for looking at your roster is Guild Audit. Simply put in your guild’s information and it will sort your raid roster. It will take a little time playing with it so your entire roster is represented on it. But it is a great tool that currently shows the exact ilvl of your guild and is more accurate than something like WoWprogress. You’re able to track your players progress upgrading their gear(irrelevant in WoD), as well as their enchants and gems.

But use it to determine the balance of your mythic roster. Yes some classes will be incredibly strong, maybe you want to capitalize on that? Thinking about loot breakdowns? Maybe you have too many leather dps, or too many healers.

Here you see an example of the Guild Audit screen.

You see the name, spec rank, ilvl, percentage of upgraded items, and any reg flags. In this screenshot it shows that Prime is missing a gem in his gear. While the armory is buggy, and some of the information will be changing in the coming months, use this tool.

And here you see a more important breakdown of your raid roster.

This will help you maintain a balance of the right heal and dps classes. Maybe you’ll want to stack those warlocks that are so strong each.

Beyond that, ask advice of other guild leaders that have been around for a while, see what they’ve done in the past. Find out what worked and didn’t work for them, learn from their mistakes so you do not repeat them. Grow your guild slowly, steadily and with quality people, and cultivate a positive atmosphere where you expect the best of your mythic raiders.

Sparty's Tales from the Front

Finding the Perfect Guild

Recruiting for your Guild

Preparing your Roster for Mythic Raiding

Creating a community of Raiders, one player at a time.