Looking to start new guild. Recruitment process?

[Tanaboon]

Hey there. I've been thoroughly researching starting a new guild. I've been listening to Ciderhelm's podcast and etc. My old guild broke up 2 weeks after 3.2, we were server rank 2nd. Then, I transfered to raid in a guild that was US ranked 200, and we randomly hit US rank 40 after a HM kill which I did not expect. After raiding with them for a few weeks, real life situations led me to not be able to play WoW. Now, I transfered back to play with RL friends on my old server, but, no guild at the moment needs warlock, and because of my departure, I lack some notable hm achievements. I joined my friends casual guild, but I'd really like to raid hardcore and I don't feel like server transferring again. I'm deciding to start my own guild to attempt to compete with progression on my server. At the moment, I only have about 5 people that want to go through with this. After my old guild broke up, the new GM tried to mass recruit, and that led to horrible outcomes. He mass recruited people with no enchants and people that did not know how to gem. Basically, he was able to get 25mans going again, but with inexperienced people. So, I know not to do that.

I know that I have the time irl to lead a guild and I'm ready to plop down money for vent and a website. But, how should I recruit? I want to have a rigid application process as my previous guilds did to make sure I only recruit exceptional players. I know that I will need an INSANE amount of patience and this will not be the fastest process.

Basically, I want to know the best way to recruit exceptional players. I don't want to make the mistake of mass recruiting an inexperienced roster. Should I just post Recruitment post on multiple forums and wait for the apps to pile up on my website?

[Whispah]

Hey mate,

I typed up a long winded story for you but figured most of it was irrelevant. Theres no real way you can recruit only exceptional players because you have nothing to recruit with - no bargining chips per se'.

To start off with you need to basiclaly just recruit whoever you can and promote a competitve raid spot. By this I mean make it clear from the start that you have no personal bias towards any particular person and that if someone wants to keep their raid spot they need to keep fighting for it else they'll lose it to someone else who coems in and may out perform them.

Unless you have some amazing achievements to boast to people about (ie KJ and Muru pre nerf and pre 3.0 along with killing KT at 60) then you really dont have anything to offer or entice those 'amazing' players. You need to take what you can get now and build up.

[Tygorl]

When starting our guild at wrath release we initially had a bunch of in game friends, many of them casual players. We had some raiders from our last guild & we advertised to get a 10's off the ground. A few websites & also trade chat ads are fine, as long as you have a thorough checking process & don't just accept anyone who says 'inv'.

We made people fill out an application form - one that's recently been revamped & sits about 30 questions long! (we now have an excellent reputation on our server which enables us to be strict & picky about who we recruit). Also our recruits love our guild & raid environment, and they're forever bringing in their friends - a great source of recruitment for us is word of mouth, in fact we haven't really advertised since Ulduar dropped.

But initially, starting off, we pretty much had to take who we could - and we definitely carried about 5 people through Naxx...luckily for us it was an instance where you could carry players.

I guess I'm trying to say be very selective in your recruiting process as soon as you can field numbers for regular raids. Also, have a set raid schedule that's publicly viewable (such as the guild website) and stick to those times.

Recruitment is an ongoing process. People get happy when they have seen every boss, or gotten every purple on their list, or real life stuff happens. Don't ever stop looking for players, because just when you start telling people you'll accept them, but they'll be spending some time on the bench...you end up needing them every raid night.

I'd definitely advise having spare raiders. It's very likely that only the very top guilds ever run with the same raid setup every night. You need some flexibility because nothing will kill a raiding guild faster than cancelled raids....and I'm talking about roughly 1-2 weeks tops, that's all it takes for people to move on.

Hope this helps, feel free to checkout our website in my sig for some ideas.