0. RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 02/10/2009 10:10:35 PDT
Hey there
I originally posted this thread in the AD forums due to the issues that many have voiced lately with guild recruitment for RP guilds and the problems intrinsic with both large guilds and small ones. I thought it might though also be a good thread to share here to gather more ideas and advice for others as well!
There has been a lot of kerfuffle, upset, and drama lately that has revolved around guilds and their recruitment.
Some has been due to the aggressive techniques some guilds use and some is caused by other guilds that feel overwhelmed and unable to cope with recruiting in the face of a well established RP community.
What is needed is some ideas, advice, and tips that some of the successful RP guilds have been using to gain members.
So if you consider yourself an established guild share with us your secrets to success and even some of the things you see that don't work. Lets create a database of ideas that others that are surely to come and are currently facing these problems can use to help them achieve the same level of stability.
I have collected below some of my own advice and tips from both my own experience and from watching other guilds grow and some falter.
Please share your own!
http://www.argentarchives.org/Adnaw
"I want them dead!" - T'challi the Witchdoctor and now Loa of booze
1. Re: RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 02/10/2009 10:11:36 PDT
Advice, Tips, and Ideas for Guild Recruitment that work:
Advertising
For the love of all things fel and unholy DO NOT spam a guild recruitment macro into every channel you can think of. I advise against guild recruitment macros in general as they tend to be more of an annoyance to people and a turn off than a good recruiting technique, but they are the lazy way to advertise. If you are going to use a macro set a particular time for using it. Ex. - Upon entering a city splash it in trade, upon leaving a city splash it in general. Or perhaps at the top of every hour. Don't use it in private channels, such as LFRP. This will just create spam on the channel as every guild will quickly feel the need to post their recruitment macro.
One of the best ways to advertise in game without getting too aggressive or annoying is to stay in the general and trade channels and listen for when people ask about RP guilds. If someone is asking about RP guilds have a list ready, generally compiled of a guild for each race (race specific guilds), one military guild, one civilian guild, and of course your own guild. Refer the person asking to what guild might best suit them. Obviously you would not recommend a Belf asking about RP guilds to a troll only guild. Make them aware of your guild and what it has to offer if it appears that it is something that might suit them.
Set aside the first month or so after your guild is created to do nothing other than offer constant themed RP in a location suited to your guild. If your guild is crazy cultists then sit in a city and preach and chat at passers-by about your religion and why they should join ( all IC of course). These constant displays of open public RP are probably your best platform of guild advertisement. it does mean you will lose out some time for daily grinding and raiding, but it is worth it right?
Forums
Take the time to create a guild forum, this is an invaluable tool for communicating large amounts of info to guild members. It also allows for you to post up relevant lore, rp tips, and other important Guild related information. It allows for you to most importantly have a place to put your guild rules and Code of Conduct. Guild forums also serve as a great hub for building friendly and strong OOC relationships with guild members.
Make sure to take advantage of the fact that you have free access to Blizzards forums and post information about you guild in any relevant location on those forums. Make sure if you are making a recruitment post you give enough information on the guild to make readers aware of the theme and any other important parts of the guild but that you do not overwhelm them with needless information such as every guild rank or whether you have a tabard. Also be creative with your recruitment post it gets boring to read Notices posted to walls and stories about the guild leaders awesome character for recruitment posts. Being unique will make your guild stand out more!
When your writing other posts that are not recruitment related remember to remain kind and positive. Don't make yourself known as the local forum troll and then expect people to flock to your guild. In general use manners and keep consideration for others in mind at all times if possible.
Events
Even if your guild at present only consist of three members at present make an impact by attending other peoples events. Get your guild tag seen among the roleplaying community. Even if just one or two members of the guild regularly attend RP events on the server it will make your guild noticeable and known.
If you want your guild to become known one of the quickest ways to do so is to host events. Events don't have to be large or well planned out. Events can be as simple as creating a regular time dedicated to people meeting and RP'ing in a specific location or with a specific theme. It might take some time for your events to become known, but it will happen.
When making events, make them something that are easy for anyone of any level to take part in. Don't make them too complex with a ton of rules that need to be read before the person can even attend the event. Also make it interesting and something that everyone gets to have a role in and RP with. Nothing is worse than attending a scripted event in which the attendees end up feeling more like an audience watching a play they can't actually take part in, of course unless the event is a play, but I think you get the point! ;)
Advertise the event in advance!
Guild Structure and Concept
It is very important if your looking to create an RP guild that the concept of the guild is both interesting and intriguing. You want to create a guild that other people will want to join. Make sure that you have a theme, this is one of the most important steps to creating a successful guild. A theme allows both your members and those interacting with the members have some concept of what type of RP you are after and as well how they will be able to interact with you. A theme allows for your members to know and be able to interact with one another. Beware of making the theme too generic, you want to make sure that your members always have a reason to interact and create RP among themselves.
Make your guild something new! If your creating the 25th guard guild your less likely to be able to successfully recruit in competition to thriving and well established guilds of the same theme. Find some new twist, or find a guild idea that is not already well represented.
Don't make your guild all about you! No one wants to join a guild merely for the glorification of the guild leaders ego. In general even though you are guild leader it is a bad idea to be the highest ranking lord/commander/whatever in your guild. Level the playing field a bit and at least give the officers a rank near equivalent. Or better yet set up some other form of leadership that does not revolve around only your word and whim.
Don't be overly complex! There is no need to have 12 ranks, or a very complex system of command or leadership. The more complex your guilds set up is, the harder it is for a new person to just pick up and be able to rp along with it.
Remember that the more specific your guild becomes the harder it will be to recruit new members. It will be much easier for a military guild that has no race or class restrictions to recruit than it would for a guild that represents the magic users of a particular race and town.
Share the power! Give many of the privileges within the guild to all members. Let anyone be able to change the message of the day! Make it easier for your guild members to be able to create and set up ideas for RP.
Members
Make sure that your members conduct themselves in a mature and respectful manner on an OOC level. There is few things that can ruin the reputation of a guild faster than having guild members that are OOC jerks or drama hounds. Take all reports of behavior to heart, and keep an eye on their interactions in public places such as forums or guild chat. If someone is a troll or a douchebag to others outside or within the guild, move quickly before the poison spreads. Have a low tolerance policy and give them leeway with a warning, but don;t be afraid to kick. You don't want those types of people associated with your guild tag no matter how good of a role player they are, as they will only serve to drive off others.
Make sure that your members represent the quality and theme of RP your after for your guild. It is important to take in even people new to RP, but make sure that they also understand the intent and focus of the guild as well as the rules. The other thing that will quickly ruin a guilds reputation is the poor IC behavior of its members. Make the rules known and accessible to all members and you will be able to prevent things such as reports of members using OOC in say or being majorly lore breaking.
Quality over quantity! If you want a big guild that will be both respected and long term successful then take your time and recruit only members that fit in both IC and OOC with the guild and its members. If a guild gains an impeccable reputation for good RP and mature behavior it will be the biggest boon in recruiting you can ever have.
http://www.argentarchives.org/Adnaw
"I want them dead!" - T'challi the Witchdoctor and now Loa of booze
3. Re: RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 07/10/2009 05:16:54 PDT
Nice post Adnaw and as founder and GL of the ‘Blackwatch’ a guild formed mid July on the Argent Dawn server I'll relate my experiences in trying to get a brand new guild off the ground on a well established server with a matured RP community.
Launch the guild to the community I had been mulling the idea of starting my own guild for a couple of months whilst playing on a PVE server. Having recently rolled my first character on the Argent Dawn the opportunity presented itself for a background story and raison d’être after a chance PVP encounter with one of the servers more notable personalities. I used this encounter to write a story and launch my concept for a guild to the community by posting in the Argent Dawn Realm Forum.
My initial instinct was to leave membership open to all races but based on the responses I was getting from the community via the thread there seemed to be a fair bit of encouragement for more Dwarf / Gnome role-play. Taking this on board as an opportunity to help fill a niche I changed our recruitment policy to restrict membership to Dwarves and Gnomes only. However the encouragement was positive and led me to believe there was demand for such a guild.
Interestingly despite the positive forum responses only three people came forward to sign the guild charter.
Since the initial launch post on the Blizzard Forums I have posted additional stories or small snips of information to try and make our guild name recognisable and remind folks we are out there. Adding a signature to my Blizzard profile with the guild name and web details has also helped to promote us as I can see from our web site analytics that we are getting a fair number of direct hits to the site where www.sixtysixth.co.uk has been cut and paste into the browser URL address box.
Getting the Charter Signed I began getting the remaining signatures for the charter by role-playing the whole recruitment process. I created a couple of Macro’s toYell an emotive call such as:
‘Wouldst there be anyone here who would serve their king?’
and visited the low level regions of Kharanos and Coldridge Valley to see if I could get players to talk back to me. Once people responded I held an in character conversation with them to explain what I was there for.
This approach was incredibly time consuming and whilst I thought it the most appropriate method for a RP server I was getting at best one signature an evening doing it. Not wanting to spam with the yells I varied them and only pressed the button about once every 10 minutes. The rest of the time was spent saying hello in Say and trying to get people to strike up a conversation so we could get onto the subject of ‘Would they serve their king?’
After getting the charter signatories this way we continued to recruit in these areas though changed the tactic slightly. After making the yell we would directly address people in Say ‘How about you lad/lass?’. This increased the number of people we got to talk to us and also the number of sign ups.
The Downside of Recruiting in Starter Areas I do not regret doing this for the experience but be assured that a fair number of the recruits we got this way did not advance their characters past level 15.
How do we recruit now? Having spent a lot of time RP recruiting I went to a much more direct approach after about a month as I had hardly levelled my character at all and wanted to spend more time actually playing the game.
1. Guild Recruitment Channel - Whenever I enter or leave Ironforge I hit a macro that sends a message into the Guild Recruitment Channel. I have tried a variety of different flavours of message to see if there is any one better than another. The one that has produced the most enquiries is a very simple statement that says we are a Dwarf / Gnome casual RP and levelling guild with the website address included in it.
However the numbers of people we have recruited via this method is small compared to the next method.
I also keep an eye open for people LFG and have had one or two members join via this route.
2. Direct Whispers – When in Ironforge or out levelling and I see a Dwarf or Gnome who is unattached to a guild I simply whisper them with a polite message asking if they would be interested in joining a Dwarf / Gnome casual RP and Levelling guild with some PVP thrown in for good measure. I would estimate that around 80% of people reply to you. Usually the replies are polite and a large proportion of those who decline your invitation thank you for asking. I always respond by thanking them for the reply and wishing them good luck.
I think this method is far from ideal in the spirit of a RP server but it has been responsible for finding a significant number of our regular players and has not yet turned up a rotten egg. I do have a filter mechanism for weeding out those I consider inappropriate however:
• If they have a non role-play name like ‘Axebreaker’
• They have no clothes on
• They are below level 10
• They are acting in a fashion I consider inappropriate, like bunny hopping around outside the IF bank talking nonsense in Say.
3. Roleplay Nights When we organise RP evenings we always start in the Thunderbrew Distillery in Kharanos. Having 8 or so members wearing guild tabards and all sporting the Blackwatch name where potential recruits are milling about has an amazing ability to draw attention and get folks to enquire about us and what we are doing. We have recruited a number of players of the back of this.
One of the catch 22 situations I think I have fallen into with the guild is not arranging enough themed RP in the first few months of having the guild. I had the gut feel that we need more players to make RP work and therefore spent more time recruiting than RP’ing. As a consequence we lost one of our best RP’rs (and I am sure others) to another guild as we were not active enough in the first month. Two steps forward and one back.
What are we doing outside of the Game to engage members and prospective members?
1. We have a Website - (www.sixtysixth.co.uk) that is evolving slowly and includes a Forum with member only and public sections. We also have a blog integrated into the site to publish news articles and stories.
Our plans are to include some Machinima and a comic chronicling some of the storylines and profiling characters from the Blackwatch on the website that we can use to raise our profile.
2. Argent Archives – We are fortunate that we have a decent RP portal and we use this to make our guild information and contact details available as well as post our adventures and stories there.
3. Open Roleplay Events – Apart from raiding enemy settlements we have not yet undertaken any of these though we have plans to run an Iron-man style triathlon around Dun Morogh and Loch Modan that will be open to all. Getting an annual event named after the guild would go a long way to ingratiating our name on the server I think?
What not to do Allow your account to be hacked so that said Nair'do well can disband your guild. We are in the process or re-building after such an incident and as you can imagine it has undone a fiar bit of the work we have done to date - Authenticator is a must for a Guild Leader
The Colonel
66th Ironforge - Blackwatch
www.sixtysixth.co.uk
4. Re: RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 12/10/2009 10:02:15 PDT
Q u o t e: Oh hey! Didn't expect a sticky, but thanks. I would still love to hear the advice of others here! It is important we share our success stories.
I just wanna take the time-out to say a big thanks to Adnaw. Over a lot of time, she has given us great advice through the forums, and on Argent Dawn. Hopefully, this will help me to make my guild! =)
5. Re: RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 13/10/2009 08:36:44 PDT
Q u o t e:
I just wanna take the time-out to say a big thanks to Adnaw. Over a lot of time, she has given us great advice through the forums, and on Argent Dawn. Hopefully, this will help me to make my guild! =)
*blush* I am glad I could help.
http://www.argentarchives.org/Adnaw
"I want them dead!" - T'challi the Witchdoctor and now Loa of booze
7. Re: RP Guild Recruitment - Your advice 28/01/2010 12:14:07 PST
Thank you for the advice, but I am finding it very hard on the darkmoon server to Rp and Build up intrest for my guild. The darkmoon server has been plagued with the halo fanboy children and anti-rpers, it has come to the point where if you go into a area and send out a Advert you and just abused to the point where you just call it for the night.
How do you propose Recruiting on a Rp server that seems to be anything but a Rp server?
Thanks.
Also one of my tips, i found if you started in bootybay take a fp from there to the top of the map, and drop one recruitment add in each area as you go, then do the same on your way back, this can be done with any of the kingdoms and even outland/.
Also take one night where you all go to citys, stand out side and just rp recruit call out to those who run past and even walk past id does not matter if they are in a guild, some might come over to yours, or
