Advanced Guild Management?

[Turenn]

OK OK! I have been sitting here for 30 mins wondering how I should formulate my questions. So I have decided to attack you with a wall of text cause I can't make this short really...

History of the Raiding Guild Horizon on Moonglade EU RP

I have been running Horizon for about 8-9 months now. I started Horizon because I wanted to have direct control of the guild. In the guilds I was a part of before I started Horizon, has all been plagued with the same problems, immature players, bad leaders, and down right lazy people that can't even show up on time. So in my arrogance I thought I could do better!

So I rerolled on Moonglade and started up my guild, with me I had my girlfriend and my best friend would join us later on. We started out as a leveling guild doing all the instances and doing lots of quests together. I told everyone that joined that Horizon would become a raiding guild in time, everyone understood this and accepted the rules (pretty easy going rules) I laid down. Before long we had a core player base of 10. Didn't take us long hit 70 and started gearing up for Karazhan and Heroics. This is were I hit the first "snag". Many of the players didn't have the patience to gear up for raiding, some of them even left the guild. So my solution was that I personally run every member that wasn't attuned to Kara yet thru the attunment. It worked like a charm.

So at this time I have 7 good players that I know very well and some 15 players that are slacking behind, but I decided that we had waited long enough, time to start raiding god damn it!
By the time our first raid rolled up, my 7 players had turned to 5...
I didn't want to pug, so I contacted a friend of mine from another guild (RoT) and we started a guild Alliance! Yay! We had all the members we needed. Everything was going great! The day we finally managed to kill Curator, the leader of RoT decided to end our alliance right out of the blue. No one know really why he did it, our team was doing great, everyone was happy, except for him apparently. The result was the many members left RoT to join other guilds, some of them even joined Horizon. After that it took us about 3 weeks to get a good solid team going.

Now our team 1 has cleared Karazhan, we need to start up our second team in order to gear up for the 25 man content. For our second team we have all the DPS we need but we don't have any real stable healers or tanks, and we have no one that is willing to lead the raid. So we're missing a MT, proper OT (druid, pala), two dedicated healers and most important a raid leader. At the moment we fill those spots with pugs and alts from our team 1, and I lead the team on my warlock. But this is just a temporary solution, as the alts for team 1 are taking up spots that should be filled by main characters.

Everyone in Horizon works really hard to make every raid a great one, so there is no question about their dedication. What my problem is: How do I find a raid leader, when no one in the guild feels comfortable doing it?


There are some other things I would like to talk about, please bear with me...

Alts

Everyone has alts right? At least my members do, and they want to get them into the guild, sure I tell them, why the hell not? Well I should not have done that! We had so many alts at one point that is was just silly. Some members had 2-3 alts as well as the main. This made managing the guild even harder. Not knowing which member has which alt, and our number got bloated. So when we was 80 people in the guild it was only 35 players. This made it harder for me to organize raids. So I got rid of almost all of the alts, Only level 70 alts were accepted. I always wanted Horizon to be a small raiding guild 40-50 level 70s max. Keep it small and simple

So should I start a new guild for alts and set up a joint channel or should I just flat out refuse them? How do you deal with alts in your guilds? I feel that not managing the alts can turn into a serious problem.


One more thing, last topic I promise.

The dealings and holdings of the Guild Bank.

First thing I did when I started up Horizon, was to create a Gbank alt. All our core members have been sending stuff to the bank for months, and it has grown! So much that I am able to give all raiders what they need of Mana Pots, Resistance Pots, Repair money, Mats for enchants, etc etc. On heavy wipe days I usually give all the members 25g and 10g on "normal" runs, not farm runs though.. The reason I do this is because I want the raiders to concentrate on their character, and not spending lots of time grinding gold. Some of them don't even have to time to do it. And buying gold is in our eyes the worst crime possible.

Now I am worried that our second team will "break" the bank, as many of the newer members do not contribute as much to the bank, and I can't force anyone do donate their crappy greens etc.

Is it even a good idea to run a Gbank like I do? Any suggestions?.


One last thing, I have to say that this place is probably the best WoW resource page on the net period. I have learned so much from you guys. Thank you.

Feel free the offer any advice you think could help, flame me if that's your preference.

Please excuse all the typos, horrible grammar, and in general bad English.

[Ceravantes]

It is important not to push to hard to quickly,a s yourself and your raiders will burn out and leave the guild. If no one is able to step up and lead then you are better off not running a second group, perhaps you could try swapping people out for certain bosses, but you def don't want to get ahead of yourself

As far as the guild bank goes, you are probably not at the point in upir progression where you will be bringing in enough money to pay out that kind of money, If it were me I would stop handing out anything for the time being, perhaps only mana pots to people who have donated already.

[Calve]

Turenn,

Just wanted to comment on a couple of things that stood out in your post.

As far as raid leaders, I usually found that if somebody is comfortable with an instance and isn't shy about talking, that they'll move into a RL posistion soon enough.

I had a similar situation when I was getting 2+ Kara groups going. I took the 3 strongest players from our original group and had them start up the second one. I found that by making 2 equal teams, the leaders rose to the top on their own, without me having to choose them. This slowed the progression of the first group, but overall, it sped the progression of the guild up exponentially.

Concerning Alt, I encourage people to bring their alts into the guild, but chastise them for spending time on them when their mains are lacking keys, gear or keying quests. As soon as I bring an alt into the guild, I promote him to "Alternate" rank and make their Guild note with their mains name in it, so everybody can see who it is.

One of the banes of moving into 25 man content is you will always have people who progress faster than others. You need to encourage that and at the same time keep using your "slower players" to fill the holes in your 25man raids. The more bosses you kill, the more heroic pugs you pick up, the more quality players, in line with your goals you'll recruit.

It's frustrating to wait. I know you want it now. Why can't there be 25 people who want to raid BT with me?

One thing I believe all raiding guilds need is a core raiding status of 50% more raiders than what is needed for any given raid, that is if you want to raid consistently. ie.. Kara? look for 15 raiders who can make it all the time. 25man's? You need 35 core raiders minimum to make solid attempts more than one or two nights a week.

Biggest thing I could suggest is to be patient and build your raiding ranks up one player at a time. Focus on quality and availability.

-Calve

[Turenn]

First of all thanks for the replies.

Centx: I have not pushed any players into doing anything they don't want to do. I accept all specs, all types of players into Horizon, in short I give everyone a chance. I am very patient and we do progress in our own pace.
The bank was created to give all players what they need for raiding. My problem isn't getting the gold, my problem is getting the new member to "want" to give back.

Calve: I am guessing that you play on US servers were language isn't a problem since everyone speaks English. On the EU server it's quite different, I have to take language skills into consideration as well as playing skill. And you suggestion to make 3 players from team 1 make up and lead team 2 is a good one. One that I will try out.

The raid leader I want is someone that has to deal with sign ups, new recruits and making sure they have the gear, enchants, gems, etc. They also have to deal with our DKP system. I almost feel like they are scared to mess things up. (If they only knew how much I fucked up in the beginning!).

The alts is still a problem for me, no matter how well I "tag" them. I think I will try an alt guild see how things turn out.

Fortunately I have a lot of time on my hands and I do have patience in abundance. Black Temple isn't all that important to me. If loot and being in a BT guild was my goal I would be in one. Yeah I know arrogant . For me the feeling of building something up from to ground up is much more important.

[Anaea]

The raid leader I want is someone that has to deal with sign ups, new recruits and making sure they have the gear, enchants, gems, etc. They also have to deal with our DKP system. I almost feel like they are scared to mess things up.

I just wanted to mention that it's worth considering how you can break these out into separate duties, and assign Raid Assistants. Just leading the raid can be pressure enough - perhaps your RL would be more comfortable if someone else was responsible for checking out the gear, etc. I know of guilds that have a Master Looter, a Raid Leader, a pull marker, and a coordinator who just wrangles all the bodies into a raid.

It's a good way to get more people involved and give them the opportunity for leadership, as well as avoid burning out your RL.

[nethervoid]

I've got a few ideas for you. I hope these help.

--Alts--
1 guilded alt per guild member. It works pretty well. If you are a guild member on probation (e.g. new member), no alts. We want to get to know your main character. If you are not yet geared up enough to hit kara, no alts. This gives incentive to gear up.

Alts in the guild is a real tightrope. I believe in the theory that you want your guildies talking to each other as much as possible to build comraudarie (sp). You want to get them hooked on each other, and building new friendships. If your guild chat is always dead because nobody's ever on their main except when raiding, it really can hurt guild morale. 1 alt per member helps keep chat going.

--New Raid Leaders--
I like the idea of taking 2 people from kara 1 and promoting them to raid lead of kara 2 and kara 3. Great idea.

--Raid Leader's Job/DKP Officer--
BUT Their only job is running the raid group. They check gear and pick who goes to the raid, etc. You really need a DKP officer. Here's how you handle it:

Raid Leader assigns a loot whor...assistant on his or her raid. They keep track of who loots what and for how much etc for the raid. After the raid, the loot whor...assistant sends that list to the DKP officer of your guild. The DKP officer updates your guild's DKP system. The DKP officer then posts it to the web or wherever else you guys post your DKP. Then it's all nice and ready for the next raid. This is a pretty easy system, but you need to have a DKP officer who will jump all over the DKP every time a new list comes in from a raid. I actually did GM and DKP officer in the last guild I created, but I had a semi-automated system, and you might not have this. Pick someone who's always around and who you can count on. Do NOT give this to one of your raid leaders. They have enough to do already, and nothing screws over a raid guild like losing a raid leader.

--Guild Bank--
This is going to bite you in the ass later when funds run out and members are whining and moaning about doing their own farming now. Ever seen someone take a bottle away from a baby? Hehe that's not far from what can happen if you keep this up. It's a good idea, but I would keep reminding your members not to EXPECT the guild bank to always have funds for them to use. Encourage them to get their own supplies and gold, so if/when the bank does run out, they don't constantly complain about it.

I would assign an Officer to manage the gear selling and consumable restocking, and then Raid Leaders should mail themselves supplies and then assign someone on their raid to hand it all out at the beginning of the raid. Remember to tell your raid leaders to delegate work. They should be focusing on kicking ass, not on who needs what potions.

Hope that helps.

[Ceravantes]

Raid leading is a bit tough to tackle when shooting for new content, it is generally easier to have other officers keep a closer eye on gera. Eventually your raid leader will know who is capable of what,etc. As a guild starting out it would probably be a bit much for the first month or so.

[Ravenwings]

Everyone has alts right? At least my members do, and they want to get them into the guild, sure I tell them, why the hell not? Well I should not have done that! We had so many alts at one point that is was just silly. Some members had 2-3 alts as well as the main. This made managing the guild even harder. Not knowing which member has which alt, and our number got bloated.

No offense but how does having alts in the guild make managing a guild harder? You don't have to do anything extra because of it. If anything it makes it easier - visual confirmation of who's online, easy to contact, more (=better) lines of communications so that IF someone needs help...there's someone who can actualy reply and say "I can help".

Don't know who's alt is who's? Just add the mains name in his profile note - it's not rocket science. And even then, with such a small guild as yours if you are online enough you know people's alt names by heart. Yes all 2/3 of them...People should be encouraged to bring their alts in the guild for above mentioned reasons, making an alt guild is probably the worst thing you can do if you want to maintain any form of guildspirit.

[Bonesy]

I know for my guild, we have a whole separate guild for alts with a chat channel linking the two. That way I know who is on in the main guild, Aristocracy, and i can do a quick /who Altocracy and see who is in the alt guild.

Another thing you might want to try that worked well for us is to not use dkp at all in Kara. We use/used free roll in kara as we wanted to stress that Kara is not endgame content. It is a 10man instance that is used as a stepping stone to gear for 25man. Sure you can throw in some stipulations on how many items a person can receive in a given run, but it puts people in a certain mindset.

[Tristessa]

So should I start a new guild for alts and set up a joint channel or should I just flat out refuse them? How do you deal with alts in your guilds? I feel that not managing the alts can turn into a serious problem.

I don't know what you use your Public and Officer Notes, but what I did was use Public Notes for profession information, Kara attunement marks (just a *) and Aldor/Scryer affilliation. Example: "[S] Mining/Gnome Engineering *"

I make it so people can view (and change) Officer Notes and put a note on it if that character is an alt. Say, for my character Dawnbreaker I'd write "Tristessa's alt." on Officer Notes. Simple, and people can view them at all times.

Of course, we're only a small guild so it might not be applicable to you...but it might help.

[Anaea]

Tristessa, we do something very similar. Officer notes are tags for alts (we use a consistent format for wowroster syncing... "ALT-Mainname") and Public Notes are tags for professions (they have to be maxed to be listed). None are editable by Members (WTB "change only own public note" permission) but all are viewable.

[Rhorr]

Iv'e been playing the game for close to 3 years now. I was an officer in my last guild, and one thing I had noticed, when someone needed to be removed from the guild, it was difficult to know if they had any alts. I offered a suggestion, which worked well. In the public note, one of the persons toons was named <123's> Main and for all the alts it was <123's> alt. That quickly solved that problem.


But I have a few more comments to add. I left that guild roughly 3.5 months ago and decided(after lots of deliberation) to create my own guild. First, I'd like to point out that a few things were important to me. I wanted a guild that people enjoyed playing with each other(who doesnt), not asshats, no whiners, no drama...I'll assume everyone reading this is rolling their eyes But honestly, that just sets up the foundation for a fun environment.

Now, every guild eventually comes to its first major hurdle when it decides to start raiding. The biggest issue is...who gets to go...If you don't setup something in the begining that establishes some kind of format, friends can quickly become enemies.

This may answer one of your questions. By establishing mains and alts, I used that strategy to solve one major issue, people with mains and alts attuned for kara will want to bring both from time to time. So what I did was asked every member to indicate to me, which toon they wanted to be their main, for raiding purposes. It didnt have to be a level 70, even if they had a level 70 alt. BUT only mains in the guild have priority. Alts would only come in if needed. That solved a few problems. People had to think seriously what toon they wanted to have as their main. I also have tried to provide the guild with what I call the "ideal" environment. If you have 50 accounts in the guild, spread over all the different classes, but you lack in 2 or 3 specific roles, you will have a problem. If you only have 2 tanks, regardless of class, and 4 healers (this is just an example) it wont take long for people to get bored.

Now the roles are very important and I have worked specifically at providing enough tanks/healers for the guild. Having 5-6 healers and 5-6 tanks is on my A list right now since we already have 48 accounts. But some of those accounts are people who never wish to raid, so this 50 number will increase a bit. In fact we may increase the healers and tanks to 7-8 since shamans make great healers as well. I'm not trying to be perfect with this, but by thinking this through before hand, it has helped guide me for what we actually need. I have had to turn down a few applicants. I don't want the guild to get too big. Again, this is my view of the "ideal" guild.

What I had come up with was a 50 accounts number. Since there are 9 classes(not going into roles specifically here, ie tanks and healers) that means you need roughly 5 toon mains per class....5 warriors, 5 warlocks, etc...That does not solve the tank and healer problem, but you deal with that as you recruit people. Once I knew thats what I wanted, I setup to search for specific roles as well as classes. This has worked well. Its not easy to set this up mind you, but my guild members understand WHY I'm trying to set this up and they are actively helping me find "good" people, regardless of gear and experience. I always say..."good" people can learn, but an asshat is always an asshat.

This agenda(if this is the best word to use) solves alot of issues. There is lack of competion for gear drops. There is lots of bonding between members, since there is not favortism over geared players...When we do Kara, which we just started last week(although Iv'e been there many times with my last guild) we have enough of an even class distribution to facilitate and accomodate the runs. Not only that, but by having a decent spread of classes, even when there is a Kara run going on, the guild members can form another instance group...

I'm at work and I keep getting distracted and lose my thoughts, so if this seems jumbled together..my apologize.

Ok.. another thing, about ranks,dkp and bank.

Ranks. --Iv'e setup that only my 3 officers will ever be officers. What I never liked in my last guild was how easily some member would get promoted to officer status. It truly lost its value and setup for lots of unhappy members when they didnt get this title/recognition.

Here is how it looks,

Rank 1= GM
Rank 2= GM officer(predetermined by the GM, prior to the creation of the guild)
Rank 3= Legendary Officer(discussed below)
Rank 4= Legend (in guild minimum 1 year)
Rank 5= Centurion (in the guild minimum 9 months)
Rank 6= Champion (in the guild minimum 6 months)
Rank 7= Templar (in the guild minimum 3 months)
Rank 8= Member (in the guild from day 1)

In the officer notes, we put the date that person joined, on the mains toon. We only increase the rank at the begining of the month, and the timer doesnt start until the next month.

Here's an example-- Jimmy joins the guild august 14th 2007 and Rhorr invited him. Since there was a discussion with Jimmy before adding him to the guild who his main would be, we put the public note--Jimmy' main and the officer note says Aug 14,07, Rhorr.
The 3 month timer start Sept 1st, so 3 months would be Sept1-Oct1=month 1, Oct1-Nov1=month 2, Nov1-Dec1=month 3. The main gets promote December 1st.

Jimmy's alts are refered to as--public note--Jimmy's alt and no officer note. Alts never move up in rank, just the mains.

We did it this way to minimize the need to checking the roster everyday...since I or my officers did NOT need the extra work.

What I wanted was to remove as much competitiveness as possible so I gave the ranks a time based structure. People who join are members from day 1. I dont beleive people should be on probation. If they dont fit in, I'll remove then. I don't need to go into detail, I'm sure you guys know what I'm refering to. After 3 months, the MAINS ONLY, move up 1 rank, after 6 months 1 more rank, 9 months 1 more and after 1 year they reach the highest rank. Actually theres one higher, but I'll go into that in a sec.

Let me first say that the name of my guild is Legends of Eldre'Thalas. I set up the 1 year rank name to be Legend, so it follows the theme. The next highest rank, which is just under my officers(which are refered to as GM officers) is Legendary officer. Someone from the Legend pool ONLY gets voted into that rank from all the guild. This happens once every 6 months.

Sounds like a long term plan...it is. Iv'e been playing almost 3 years, a year will pass fast

The Legendary officers will have limited priviledges. They will not be able to invite people to the guild, they will not be able to remove people from the guild, they will not be able to promote people from the guild or change the Motd. They have received that rank, primarily as recognition from the guild as the whole for being a truly great contributor. What that rank does have is a couple priviledges to help the officers manage the guild members when none are on. There is one more rank i forgot to put there, its a Ghost rank at the very bottom. The Legendary officers will be able to demote someone to that rank for the reason's I don;t need to explain, I'm sure you can figure that out. Then when the GM officers are on or the GM, that person is dealt with.
The Legendary officers will also be able to communicate in officer chat.

Dkp---I have NO intentions of ever using it. I beleive in the need basis of doing a run. I beleive that I have setup the guild, so far, with good people who want to help each other. I have seen people say "we" alot and very few "me's". Those "me" based people don't last long in the guild.

Bank-- Yes i have a bank alt, but I dont support anyones repairs. I will not start something I can't maintain. It's my opinion that if anyone expects that type of support, they are not selfsufficient enough to last long term. I do have people who donate stuff to the bank, but they know that they do so knowing I will not track who gave me what. What I have seen in the guild though, members asking in guild chat if someone can use green, and quite often blue drops. Its completely voluntary. It's hard to get that ball rolling and you may have a guild ninja now and then, but as long as the guild member see that you deal with it properly, your members will trust you.

I'm sorry this post was long. But I really think the original poster is trying very hard to get a good thing going. It took me a while to come up with these ideas, and everything I do, I discuss with my officers. It has worked well for me so far, but only time will tell.

We will never be a "hardcore" raiding guild, every member knows that. But my commitement to push there with the kind of structure Iv'e setup, has help us recruit some members who came FROM endgame guilds and love the environment in our guild. Iv'e received alot of compliments from guild members, I guess they like it and appreciate what I'm trying to do.

Hope all this helps someone, and again..sorry for the long post. Feel free to give me a tell on Eldre'Thalas if you have any questions or comments.

[Penlowe]

I'll be blunt. If the people in your guild "don't have time to farm" but have time to level alts- they are not serious about raiding. They are tourists.
Yes, they are very eager to see the pyramids (Karazhan), but they would rather see it from a deck chair on a Nile cruise tham actually hiking out there, in the desert...where it's hot...and there's lots of uncomfortable sand...

Back in the 40 man days there was room for tourists, many guilds had lots of them without even knowing it. But 10 man content doesn't allow for it.