Greetings! I have a question to the forum community at large.
We all know how most guilds recruit these days. Standing prominently with guild banners, waiting for people to approach, or walking down the street to approach unguilded people, or making a neat macro to post in either General or Trade…
What do you believe to be the absolute worst way to recruit?
For me, I’d say ‘Doing nothing but recruit’. You’ll be bleeding more members than you recruit.
Give me your hot takes.
Aside from random whisper + invite macros?
Striking up RP simply for the sake of recruiting. At least the banner-brigade mutely standing around doesn’t bother anyone directly, but being approached and near immediately nudged towards IC recruitment is… well it’s not fun.
I got a couple of things I consider really bad ways to recruit.
Walking up to players very obviously already in a roleplay guild and actively trying to recruit them either IC or OOC. Especially if not taking no for an answer. I hate guild poaching in general, even in roleplay.
Striking up lengthy conversations & roleplay, only to immediately treat the person as air if they don’t sign up when the pitch finally comes. Keep roleplaying.
I think those 2 are my biggest no no’s.
I agree with this - primarily because you can absolutely tell by how they immediately lose interest in interacting with you if it becomes clear you’re not interested in joining their guild. Not fun!
This one -right- here is what I believe to be the worst possible thing to do as you recruit.
‘hey i noticed ur not wearing a surcoat . . .’
What I normally get is this
“YOU THERE! You are not wearing a surcoat of any sort! How about you join us, you’ll last probably a week before leaving. Do not worry our members are like toilet paper. We can get more. So join now!”
The worst way is to random whisper or invite spam, second-worst, is to stand around expecting people to inquire about your guild, fourth on the list is recruitment flood, don’t give people the small intro and then invite, fifth would be always recruiting and not interacting.
Sir Greyclad of House Gloomgrey: “i see’st thou art without a tabard, myne lady faire… wouldth thine care to join me at Shadowfang Keep Fort Greysworn in the mighty North so that we’st mighteth reclaim the North?”
you join, the RP is just standing around the Cathedral Square, and then a few weeks later said Sir Greyclad will just want to talk to you over a video call about some aspect of noble RP and then… trauma.
Recruiting players without first thinking, ‘What can they add to our community?’ … is usually a good start down the wrong road.
Too often have I been in guilds where a new player’s recruited that does exactly my role in the ‘‘group,’’ rendering my concept obsolete. Likewise for others, and it’s sad to see. It’s the RP equivelant of having 2 tanks instead of one.
Most guilds I remained in for years on end were ones with selective recruitment processes. That means forums, interviews, tests. One guild master even told me, ‘come back tomorrow, and we’ll see about it.’
I never came back, so I guess I didn’t want it. That was a pretty good test, in hindsight.
Recruit people for what they can add, and ask them deeper questions than, ‘how often are you online?’ - Because you’ll find a guild can be made up of just 5 people and flourish, but it can die with a 40-man roster just as easily. Willingness to show initiative is a big one for me, for this exact reason. 5 people showing initiative creates a very nice flow, 40 people bumping heads screws the best people and their efforts over.
wait what?
Better yet, don’t force anything. The right people will come to you, recruit them if you feel like they’ve added something to your RP.
I’m not sure how that renders you obsolete though - two tanks is the standard in PvE anyway. In RP, that could just be a longer lasting shield wall, or a more effective/versatile one. Can you provide a more exact example for how it’s detrimental for RP? I’ve been in guilds where there have been multiple Talon druids and even that didn’t render any of us obsolete.
I can attest to that however, been in guilds with lower numbers and the overall activity was much larger and it felt like I was in more connections than in a larger number guild. The RP created feels much more personal and intricate, there’s more dynamics at play than with a 40-man roster especially if the latter forms their own smaller cliques inside the guild.
‘hey i noticed ur not wearing a guild tag above ur name . . .’
Sure, sorry. My post is vague because I didn’t want it to get long.
Let’s say, for example, that I run a warrior. He’s a standard beat 'em up. He has a flat arc, (already powerful, already satisfied.) He fits best attached to another character as foil due to his abrasive personality.
But wait, there are no characters my character can fit with, because the guild isn’t recruiting to compliment its roster. My character, despite my best efforts, cannot wedge himself in with another person because there are other warriors (with all-round friendly personalities) doing ‘‘my job’’ for me. Immediately, my character’s rendered obsolete. These guys with their brains and their brawn have no flaws, and so my flawed character is left patchless because none of the healers/damage characters need my help.
Of course, your response could be to make my character nicer; to fix his bad personality; to make him more well-rounded. Well, then he wouldn’t be flawed, and he wouldn’t be the same character. There’s nothing wrong with playing a bad guy as long as there’s a good person to attach him to, to bring out the best (and worst) of both characters. But if there’s a bad recruitment process going on, there’s often ‘‘too many nice guys,’’ which makes the role-play become sedentary (because the guild lacks diversity and tension.) — If the healer needs the help of a warrior to achieve something, all they have to do is go and ask one of the ‘‘nice’’ warriors. They have no need to interact with the jerk. But wouldn’t it be more interesting if the jerk was all they had? Having two tanks in the party means you can choose to exclude one of them at any given time. That’s not so good. Necessary evils can light up stories. Think Zuko from Avatar, Legend of Aang (the quickest example that comes to mind). That character is hated by the cast, but think of the number of times he’s changed the story for the better… without him, a lot wouldn’t have happened, and many characters wouldn’t have had their moments of revelation unless he gave them his unique perspective on life. (Toph even says, ‘I want my life changing journey with Zuko, next!’)
What I’m saying is, if you’ve got a non-social character (for example), you need a social character to foil him with. The roster must be balanced - or else you end up with players on the fringes, who will eventually just disappear. The idea isn’t to make these players conform to be just like everyone else, in my opinion, it’s to support their concepts as best as you possibly can by introducing characters into the mix who might be willing to challenge them. That’s when the RP starts really popping off.
More than likely, all your talon druids complimented each other’s weaknesses in different ways. Maybe you had a sleepy talon druid, a proactive talon druid, and a druid who likes to control everything, making for the ideal trinity of players. Or maybe you all just got on really well because you shared traits and you had a good story-line going in your guild that meant character-driven plots weren’t the focus. But I’m a character-guy so I talk character-problems, you see.
Hopefully this helps. (Edits: for clarity, I’m not the best writer.)
There are so many Do’s and Don’t when it comes to recruiting to guilds.
Like just seeking members and having the largest number of people in your guild. It tells me that the GL doesn’t care about the members but rather the numbers. So if one person leaves, what is the loss?
Seems pretty simple to me - Just RP with people and if they want to join they will. Quality over quantity. Standing around cathedral square with a banner is boring AF too, for all parties!
Equally though, we’ve found some people pretty much “treat you like air” as somebody else said, if you don’t instantly invite them to the guild, but we prefer to do an IC interview and RP with the people before inviting them.
I learnt my lesson in that. I remember my GL during WoD and Legion openly demanded that once we log on, we start recruiting. Events were so rare and far between, why, he even admitted at the end that he just wanted numbers to flex in front of other guilds… I never will stand in front of a banner like that ever again and waste my RP hours I have. Like I come home from work to RP not to stand idle and watch my GL flex to other guilds about “Look how many members are online right now!”
Yep, basically! I think the only circumstance it makes sense to me in is if you’re a guild that doesn’t tend to RP in a “Hub” or sorts - so perhaps sending a couple of people to make folks aware of you once in a blue-moon is okay, although there are probably more creative ways to do.
In MoP I was in a DK guild that did the banner thing, was mainly because 90% of the time we were “in deh nurth” so was a way to scoop up DKS who might be interested. But yeah, recruiting for the sake of it is just a waste of time, frankly!
Once you get to like 40+ members (unique players ) RP events become a bit of a chore to run too, IMO, or rather it becomes much harder to keep the level of detail that people actually feel satisfied with.
Agreed, eventually, it can become so packed GL’s end up recruiting Players who are… well… unique in the sense that… the GL should have looked into their character more before recruiting.
I say this cause my former GL once recruited, and I am not kidding here… recruited the Right hand and advisor to Tyrande. The GL saw no problem with this and argued when the concern was brought forward.