OP didn't give a lot of detail in your guild stance or recruiting process so we'll see how this goes.
*Long post, here we go.
1) Your guild goal in your recruitment thread here on tankspot isn't clear and concise. You state your goal is basically to fill your roster with quality people over quantity, maintain a small, tight roster and people "willing" to run 4 raids a week. Then you go on to say medium-core-guild (I don’t understand that) when you said you wanted small. You also say you have 79 unique accounts in guild. That isn’t small to me but I guess size is subjective.Those may be recruitment goals but they aren't a guild goal or mission statement. You need a unified intent for the guild. Whether that is "We will be Draenor's server first kills guild" or "We want to foster a community of social players who enjoy raiding." You want it simple and clear in intent. The meat of it comes from the process set up to accomplish that goal and expectations of members.
(Not promoting myself but check my guild's charter @
charter (New Methods - Stormreaver) if you want an example of what I'm describing. I just realized how bad the site looks in IE. Fusion on Turalyon also has a solid charter.)************
Also, do your best for clarity. Your posts seem to be fairly stream-of-consciousness style when you want to make sure your audience is getting exactly what you want them to get. There are sections where you have a separate thought in the middle of the sentence. I mean no insult in saying this, by the way. The majority of my posts require multiple revisions because I go off on tangents.*
2) What is your recruiting process? It’s great that you utilize cross-realm opportunities with your Tankspot post. You have a web based application on your forums it appears (I didn’t want to register so I couldn’t read it). Your recruitment process should reflect your guild goals in the questions you ask, criteria you set and members for which you look. If your goal is only strong raid progression with no care for turnover, you should be questioning app’s gem choices, rotations, evaluating combat logs from raids and other things of that nature. If you want a casual social guild, then personality wins out over everything. I look for a mix of strong raider and someone who will fit with my guild’s culture and that reflects in my application as well as the questions I ask applicants.************
What are you recruiting? Do you over-recruit (6 tanks when you need maybe 3 full time tanks in LK)? Do you only recruit a spot when it’s open? Some people seem to think filling a roster with double the necessary positions helps make raids fill 100% but it leads to an environment of people getting left out and thus not showing up or people saying, “Oh they’ll have my spot full I don’t have to talk to the officers tonight.” It’s not always the case but I’ve been an officer in a guild of 300 some toons and we couldn’t make a solid raid team quite often.
Do you use trade chat for recruitment? If so, I would stop since you are complaining about attendance issues and trade chat is rarely useful for picking up more than just PuGs or guild drifters. HOWEVER, organizing guild led PUGs of things like Naxx25 on off-nights can be helpful to not only demonstrating the positives (or negatives) of your guild’s raiding style to the community and if you make a blanket “we’re recruiting, check us out” statement to the raid you can spark interest in those looking for a guild.**********************
You’re an Oceanic-oriented raiding guild, correct? Advertise the hell out of that! That’s a bigger niche than saying, “We raid PST” and will get more interest from relevant players.***********
3) Once people are members, do you actually hold them accountable to the ranks listed on your website? Do you kick Trials who prove unreliable? You have Raider and Veteran ranks that are required to mark attendance on the in-game calendar and contribute 50g a week to the bank. What are raiders getting for that 50g investment? I would be hesitant to donate 50g to a guild bank if I wasn’t getting anything out of it. It’s like paying taxes but the government doesn’t give me anything back but part of my income tax (wait a minute…).*
So clarify these scenarios:
-********* I’m a Raider. I have marked “declined” on all raids for three weeks. What do you do to my guild status?
-********* I’m a Raider. I have ignored all raid sign ups for two weeks. What do you do to my guild status?
-********* I’m a Raider. I refuse to donate to the guild bank. What happens?*
You and your officers set a standard in the guild for behavior by setting rules and sticking to them wholeheartedly. A demotion or guild kick show how serious you are in your role and are necessary sometimes depending on what your guild goal is.*
4) Do you take into account summer attendance issues? So many guilds have issues with this and sometimes you can disguise a cancelled raid night due to attendance as “Old World Raid Night,” World PvP night or even “Guild Sponsored Night Off for Families.” It can alleviate discouragement that only leads to further cancellations.**
This was really long and I hope it helped. If you respond to my questions, it will give those on the forums a better evaluation of your situation and help you further.*
Tl;dr*
1) Set a one or two sentence guild goal.
2) Stick to it with recruitment and member policies.
3) Set your rules and stick to them.
4)*Life isn’t perfect, make adjustments.
