I've finally made a decision that I want to be the leader of a highly successful hardcore raiding guild...the problem is I don't know where to start! Well I do, but I'm not sure how to execute it, and I need advice. I'm a huge fan of Ciderhelm's guild relations podcast so I have decided to come here for my primary source of advice.
Basically what I'm looking at is becoming the next "top-end" guild on the server. It's a little late now, but I still want to at least be nipping at the current top-guild's heels at WoTLK launch. Is this a realistic goal? I don't think so, but it IS my goal and I don't want to aim any lower.
What the problem is that the server (Area 52 US) is already a very established server horde-side with a large number of progression heavy guilds. I don't find that the hill I need to climb, the hill is finding those dedicated players to fill up a roster. The way I'm looking at it, it would start up with MAYBE 10 extremely dedicated, intelligent players willing to stay up for days to progress. So what about the other 15-25?
I'm not new to the whole guild management thing, but I am new to the whole "starting from the ground up" thing. So any advice at ALL on starting a new hardcore guild would be greatly appreciated.
That sounds like a huge task, just some questions, that might enable people to give relevant advice:
-what level are you, yourself geared to? kara, za, early 25mans etc? ie. at what level of raiding are you looking at starting.
-what's your raiding experience?
-do you have one or two friends to help you? with recruiting, leading raids, setting up webpage and forums etc
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I'm geared to about half-way through BT/Hyjal. Starting would be TK/SSC but the idea would be to plow through 3/4, 5/6 in under 2 months.
My raiding experience is raid leader for everything up to early Hyjal/BT.
I would have *maybe* 10 friends to help at the very beginning. The largest part they would help with is recruiting, however.
Well what are the strengths you offer?
There are hard core guilds with higher progression I assume, how could you tempt players from them?
You will probably need to recruit kara/badge geared players but then how do you know they will want to raid hard core. (Obviously they say they do)
If you form your guild today - how quickly can you add 20 people to a guild. Answer probably not fast enough. Hard core raiders want to raid TODAY, and not in 2-3 weeks when the recruitment catches up with your needs.
I'd say abandon the concept of a hard core from scratch guild. Focus on the ordinary SSC/TK raiding guild, get 40-50 toons who will raid full time or part time. Call in every friend and favor to get the raids up and running. Look for alliances at the start. Make it clear you are trying to build a Top Quality guild and that the goal is hard core raiding. As time goes on you will expand your raiding core and can refine your 25 man teams, but you will have the "baggage" of 20-50 casual raiders.
This is a tough road you have picked.
Wow, yeah I never thought of it that way. Those are some very solid points.
If you do not have an established core, accept the fact that you'll have to start with being a Kara guild. If you think you can just jump straight into Sunwell, well... yeah, gl.
It takes time but it's certainly not an impossible task if you have the time, patience, and a solid vision of where you want to get. Just be ready to accept that it WILL take time and effort, and that you'll probably change your roster 5 times around by the time you'll reach BT.
There isn't really any other way to do it, unless you've got a lot of contacts who may be interested from the very start.
I had someone on my server just like you. He was in the most successful PvP guild on our server. 5/5 S3 Orc Warrior, really good player. At some point he specced Prot and started running heroics almost 24/7 to get large parts of his prot gear.
Shortly after he founded the guild Exordium. That was roughly a month ago. Exordium has now downed Illidan.
The World of Warcraft Armory
So it can work. Even if you don't have any tanking gear at first but i'm guesstimating you'll have to unemployed like he is to pull off what he did.
I wish you the best luck.
Let's assume you pickup guys who are Kara/Badge geared and you can get enough healers and tanks together to raid. Hardcore differs dramatically depending on who you talk to. If you are looking to make a 10 hour a day 7 day a week raiding guild it is going to have to be with people who know you very well because you won't get commitments to that unless they know you or you are already successful. :P
Assuming you want to build a raiding focused guild, I would outline how many days and hours you expect people to be in for. Many of the raiding guilds on Suramar use a 3 or 4 day a week schedule, but you probably need to have that decided before you start bringing people in.
You also are going to want to design the loot system before you start seeing equipment drop. Everyone has their own flavor that they prefer, but you aren't going to be able to get the right kind of people signing on unless they can see how their "rewards" are going to be distributed.
"Successful" varies greatly depending on the circumstances of the server and a person's perceptions. I would recommend you build a progression milestone list before you start getting people. For a guild just breaking into Tier 5 a fight like A'lar or Hydross is a pretty big milestone, make sure you don't have "downing Sunwell" as your only stated objective because people will burnout if they see the other objectives as failures. My current guild's main goal is getting new screenshots and that seems to work fairly well; we take a screenshot when we take out a new boss and we post it on our forum frontpage as a pat on the back.
I wish you luck with your new guild. My time as a GM is something I would never trade but also something I would never do again. :P
Minrog, you play on suramar too? What guild are you in? I'd armory you but i'm at work.
I too am in the position of wanting to start a hardcore guild (on suramar) but recruitment will be a nightmare as well. Mostly becuase at this stage of the game people are pretty set in their guilds and aren't willing to take a risk on a new guild. But, we'll see.
Tanks: We like it rough.
Starting a guild from scratch is not an easy task but little things are very rewarding once the ball gets rolling. I started a guild on Suramar about 5 months ago, we were originally only Kara and moved into Gruuls, then Mag, and are currently working on SSC and TK with a foot in MH. There are some things that haven’t been mentioned that I would strongly suggest. Your main goal this close to the next expansion is to get a close nit group that work very well together and an established loot system, vent, forums, and ranking so that things post expansion can go smooth and easy for you and your guild so you can be one of the leaders in progression in the expansion.
1. Have a site before you start recruiting.
2. Start with Kara—the badge gear is retardedly amazing for all classes and epic gems or vortex’s can help you open up a guild bank which will also be a must since you're probably over geared for badge loot as a MH/BT raider.
3. Don’t give access to everyone for everything. Be conservative on certain permissions to avoid controversies or overlapping actions.
4. Appoint officers based on their abilities but makes sure they can get along with the rest of the guild so they don’t scare other members away and have regular posts or meeting with them so you all remain on the same page.
5. Don’t bend the rules for your friends, this is the hardest part but you have to have a professional stance as the gm especially if you plan on making your guild a serious progression guild. This especially goes for loot and officer ranks, it will only cause problems if you don’t address this from the start.
6. Make small goals, start out with something really reasonable, like in the first 3 weeks you’re around plan to down Gruul and pull in 5 new members of you guild and get them Kara gear.
7. Set the best example you can. Show up ready, at the stone, ready to go, know all the strats, and bring at least a few repair bots as back ups even if you can’t drop them so that if needed you’re prepared as much as possible.
8. Even though wiping on something you’ve done a thousand times will be ungodly annoying and make you want to gouge your eyes out remember that ppl listen to you and will in many ways copy your attitude so try to stay upbeat and do your job to the best of your ability.
9. One thing that I’ve been doing more lately is handing out specific jobs to certain ppl so that I don’t get burnt out.
10. This last suggestion is probably gonna sound weird but you’ll understand later. Have a toon outside of the guild, don’t tell ppl about it. Log onto it to chill and relax and just break from the guild when you need to, and you will need to.
11. Remember you started the guild for a reason and stay true to that reason. I started TfT to be fair and fun and even when I get jipped for being fair I always stay fair and that makes it fun b/c ppl know and respect us for being fair.
12. Have fun… Drink a lot ;P
I wish you the best of luck and I hope you find it to be rewarding
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Tanks: We like it rough.
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