A couple of weeks ago I got into a discussion with someone who was struggling with running a casual guild and yet wanting said guild to perform more professionally in raids. I’ve seen similar discussions going on quite a bit lately, particularly in the wake of Pandaria. So how do you convince your guild to focus more on raids without becoming a shouty jerk?

As someone who built a guild from a couple of low level characters hanging out in Stormwind to a fairly capable 25-man heroic raid team, I have some definite opinions on the matter. Here’s my advice.

Reconcile your vision with reality

Perhaps no word in the MMO gamer’s vocabulary has been more up for debate than “casual”. The dictionary defines it as “without serious intention”, and without veering too much into an unwinnable argument I think that jibes with what most MMO players mean when they say the word, whether the intention is in regards to time or effort.

Do you want your guild to raid “without serious intention”? There’s nothing wrong with that. Lots of guilds have a primary goal of hanging out, and any bosses they kill are just bonus. But if you want your guild to focus more and thereby accomplish more with their raid time.. well, that’s probably antithetical to a lack of serious intent. Being on time, being flasked, making sure the guild has raid food — all those things require effort. They require being less casual.

Now, this certainly is not to say that you need to start implementing crazy mandatory attendance rules or performance standards! Think about the casual elements of your guild that you enjoy and value. Is it bringing people who are not always optimal, but are nice? Maybe it’s being flexible with that guy who can only show up at the last minute, or not worrying about specs. The good news is that you don’t have to change any of those things that you enjoy! In fact, I’d advise against it. Don’t throw out your guild’s identity for a little more raid success.

By this point you might be thinking, “Okay fine Liore! I’ll stop calling my guild “casual”! So what?” Well, I’m glad you asked.

Reconcile your guild with your vision

When you call your guild “casual”, most people immediately think of some variation of “lack of seriousness”. This is particularly true when that term is coming from the guild leadership, who are responsible for setting the vision and timbre of the guild. It will potentially confuse new members who thought they were joining a casual raid guild but are now getting some social pressure to show up with flasks and buff food.

One of the biggest problems that a guild can encounter, in my opinion, is discordance between what the members expect from a guild and what they actually get. I’ve read literally hundreds of posts on official forums written by people who thought they were joining a progression guild but nothing ever dies, or vice versa. Clearly communicating your expectations is a fundamental way to ensure a good match between you and your members.

So: want your guildies to stop treating raids so casually? Stop telling them that you’re casual. In my case, I switched to the similar-yet-different “casualcore” which was a nice balance between relaxed and serious, but there are many different ways to communicate a more considered attitude towards raiding.

Start right now, today, by being totally transparent with your goals and desires. Waiting until after the raid to grumble in officer chat about the lack of preparation (and man, I have been there) is just going to create a bad vibe for everyone. Instead, consider sharing something like, “We’re still the same loveable guild we always were, but if we want to kill some bosses then we’re gonna have to show up on time, and I’m going to expect that from now on for people who want to raid.”

There is absolutely the possibility that your guild will completely reject your motivation to kill bosses as something that they’re not interested in. If the vast majority of your guild rejects it, then at least you’ll know not to ever expect a higher level of attention to raids and you can stop worrying about it.

The “too long, didn’t read” version of this all is: Sort out your own priorities, and then communicate them effectively to your guild. That includes making expectations clear and using the right language when you talk about your guild. If you want to be less lackadaisical about right nights, then stop pretending you don’t care. There is, in fact, life after casual.

So look, I’ll just say it: part of the reason I started a WoW guild way back in the day is because I’m a control freak. I like things to be done efficiently, decisions to be made intelligently, and events to run smoothly. Instead of demanding that someone else meet my admittedly high expectations, I tend to do the work myself. It only seems fair.

This was fine while we were a WoW-centric guild. Well, truth be told it made me a little crazy over the years, but it was fine logistically. I generally ran a tight ship, but beyond just control I was involved in almost everything, if not participating directly. The idea of a raid boss dying without me present was almost painful to contemplate. While I wasn’t playing in every achievement 5-man group, I knew who was and when they usually ran and what they were working on.

It was almost a year ago that we officially switched from being a purely WoW guild to a gaming community, and without a doubt the biggest change for me was learning to let go. I can’t play every game. I can’t spend time really carefully getting to know every member. I can no longer make rules like “raids start at X time” and enforce them. We have guilds in four different MMOs at the moment, and I am the officially designated guild leader in exactly none of them.

Instead of handmaking and participating in everything, my job is more to create and maintain structures for the other members to fill. I don’t schedule and roster all events, but I do run the calendar system so others can post their events. I don’t play Minecraft (due to a lack of time), but I do update our server when there’s a new version out. I don’t personally make sure every new member is properly welcomed into our community culture, but I trust our long-term members to show them how we roll and provide feedback if there’s a problem.

I feel like this zen attitude is paying off. Our community has really come into its post-WoW fruition in the last month or two, in my opinion, and I really enjoy seeing the diverse interests of our members and how our we can meet those interests. We have folks who just play SWTOR, or who only play Bioware RPGs and Minecraft. We have a small group who are always chatting on RIFT Mobile. We have one person who doesn’t even play a game with the Cats anymore, technically, but she is on our IRC channel and in the Turntable.fm room every weekday, hanging out and being awesome. My lackidaisical attitude is helping to create a space where everyone can play or chat however they want.

There are certainly tasks that require my old hands-on approach — recruiting and creating cross-game events are the two big ones — but I’m kind of chagrined to see that just creating a nice space and then letting people do their thing has been my most successful tactic yet for growing a gaming community.

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I was watching a bit of the SWTOR Guild Summit feed while writing this, and one of the Bioware folks just said that 38% of all level 50s have played in an Operation at this point. That seems like a really high number to me, and a good sign of the health of group PvE content.

It is almost exactly a month until the first people will be let in the pod bay doors for the launch of SWTOR. All my trepidation about level-capped content aside, the game is undeniably going to be incredibly popular. Storefront pre-order numbers are rapidly approaching one million, and while digital pre-orders are not publicly tallied one can safely assume that they’re equally enormous. Suffice to say that a whole lot of people are going to be playing this game in December.

It’s kind of a new frontier for guild/community promotion. To think of it in strict capitalist terms, a huge new “people market” is about to open up with experienced MMO players and fresh new RPG folks looking for a guild. If you’re planning on creating a SWTOR guild/chapter/community, it is, as they say, “go time”.

So how do you recruit people before there is even a game to play? Are there general Best Practices of guild recruitment? I can talk a lot about this, so my thoughts are going to appear in three pieces:

Part One (this part!): Creating your marketing message
Part Two: Using the official game resources
Part Three: Using your own site and third-party resources

Okay, on with the content! If you are creating a new guild or re-imagining an existing one in particular there are three things you need to do first.

research the community
Read, read, read. Read the official forums. Read the popular unofficial forums. You don’t have to spoil yourself on the game, although learning some of the jargon will help. You should get a sense of what the players are like, what their general expectations are, and where they are likely to congregate after launch.

You should now be armed with an overview of the game and a sense of its future community.

identify your recruitment requirements
Who do you want in your guild? No, the answer is not “whoever will join”! If you played together as a guild before SWTOR you probably have an established culture that can help you figure this out. If you are a new guild, think about who your ideal member would be. How often do they play, and when? What kind of language do they use? What is their favorite activity? Do they use voice chat a lot? Do they like to be involved in the guild outside of the game, and if so how? Don’t skimp on this part — the better vision you have of your ideal audience, the better you can tailor your promotional efforts.

Got that? Okay, the next step is…

identify your guild’s benefits
Why is Ms. Ideal Audience Member going to join your guild? Every guild that ever existed will say they are full of helpful mature people and have a bank and tabard. What else ya got? Anything that makes you stand out belongs on this list, from being an all female guild to simply rolling on an RP-PvP server. Has your guild been around a long time? Is there a certain characteristic of most of the guildies you can promote? (The Cats are almost entirely grammar nerds, for example.) And while I don’t want to crush your entrepreneurial spirit, if you can’t think of at least four reasons why someone would choose your guild over others perhaps consider why you are making one in the first place.

Okay, you understand the game, can identify your ideal audience, and know why they should choose your guild. Now put those things together into an Elevator Pitch, or a couple of sentences that will (hopefully!) grab interest and summarize all your musing thus far.

“ScruffyLookinCatHerders are a Sith-side guild recruiting literate, sassy adults for questing and casualcore raiding on a PST schedule. As part of the Machiavellis Cat Gaming Community we also play a number of other games together and even, yes ew, have a Republic-side sister guild.”

Write this down and put it in a safe place. This is your core message. You will be looking at it again and again as you create recruitment materials and practices on the SWTOR.com site, your own guild site, and other places.

- End of Part One! -

So, I’m addicted to Project Runway. I love that show to pieces, to the point where when I was sick this weekend I sat under a blanket on the couch and watched the entire eleven hours of Season Two of Project Runway Australia. (I also will watch Project Runway Canada, and Project Catwalk (UK). I am not limited by nationality!) I could go on at length about why I enjoy the show so much, but the short version is that I am utterly mystified by a contestant’s ability to take a seemingly impossible task and create fashion art in a few hours. I don’t understand how their creative processes work, and nothing entrances me quite like a process I don’t understand.

While watching hours of fashion-based TV has not made me any more chic, it has actually taught me a few things about life. It is with that in mind that I give to you:

Raid Leading, Project Runway Style

Make it work!
Okay, okay, you probably saw that one coming a mile away, but it’s true. Sometimes despite everyone’s best intentions you end up with 24 people online, one raid tank, and 9 healers. Or maybe you’re just having one of those nights where everyone has a case of The Dumb. What do you do? Pull up your bootstraps, and just make it work. Kill what you can and try to not get too bogged down in negative vibes. Do the weekly raid quest, or Sarth-3D for mounts, or break into 10s groups. Take a 5m break and give people an opportunity to shake out the sillies. Just.. make it work!

Use your mentors
The contestants on Project Runway are usually very focused designers who are confident in their vision. However, the best of them will still stand back and really consider the feedback from their Mentor. Accepting the wisdom and experience of someone else doesn’t lessen their strong approach or skills. When you feel your raid strategy is getting stuck in a rut, solicit feedback from your “mentors” in the guild. Ask your fellow officers, ask any class/role leads, ask your tanks.. sometimes when I am just not sure what is blocking us I’ll ask the whole raid on Vent for their feedback. A fresh perspective often helps, and asking for feedback doesn’t diminish your confidence as raid leader.

Don’t be afraid to be unique
If there is one single piece of advice that I think the Mentors give more than anything else, it’s that a design is too safe. Contestants are encouraged to be unique, be creative, and be true to themselves. The same can be said for your raid team! Don’t get hung up on what The Joneses are doing. Unless you are in a guild with a mandate of being Top 100 or whatever (in which case good on ya!), your world ranking doesn’t really matter. Let your raid be true to itself — how is it doing in comparison to how it did last week? Or last month? Or last expansion? It’s okay — actually, no, it’s GREAT — to expect improvement and progression, but it should be within the scope of your guild and its stregnths and weaknesses, not what Premonition is doing this week. I have a tough time with this one myself, for what it’s worth.

Look at your strategy with an editing eye
The second most frequent critique I hear on Project Runway is that an outfit is too overworked. It has sequins and flowers and lace and cutouts and shoulder pads and a giant bustle and and and and… resulting in a big ol’ mess. The same can be said for picking a raid strategy. I admit this one could be chalked up to personal preference, but I am huge on simplifying boss strategies as much as possible. Don’t assign everyone their own unique spot to run to after BQL fears — just emphasize spatial awareness and spreading out. A more simple strategy will be easier to translate to different raid groups and different raiders. Of course, adopting strategies like this one require more practice, which is the other half of this concept. Don’t be fussy and change things on every pull. Sometimes you just have to decide on a strategy and give it a good number of tries for people to master the bare bones.

Use the accessories wall thoughtfully and strategically
No, wait — scratch this one.

In short, Tim Gunn can lead my raid anyday. Call me!

No leader likes to contemplate it, but sometimes people decide to quit their guild. Maybe they are quitting the game, or perhaps they want something different, but quitting a guild can lead to drama, bad feelings, and burned bridges. Over the years I have seen everything from people disappearing in the middle of the night to big drama-filled goodbyes to sad departures by people who will always be welcomed back in the Cats. I think it’s impossible to quit a guild with absolutely no repercussions at all, but with the right approach and attitude you can definitely minimize any conflict.

art by nataliedee.com

There is one universal policy about leaving a guild, no matter what the cause: any guild leader worth their salt wants a minimum of disruption to the rest of the team. If you can help them with that, it will go a long way towards making everyone as satisfied as possible with the outcome. That means no lingering drama posts on the guild forum, and no hissy fits in chat. When you do go, make a clean break and wait at least a couple of weeks before popping back on the guild website to say hi. Consider actually /gquitting during off-peak times to reduce the number of alarmed witnesses.

I think there are two basic reasons that people leave a guild: they want to move to a different guild (usually with “better” progression), or they are quitting or reducing their gametime in general. Honesty is the best policy — be straight forward about what your reasons are. Don’t make up crazy stories. To be very honest, people who are quitting WoW or going ultra-casual will get much better treatment from me than people who are hopping to a more progressed guild, but if you’re going to do the latter at least stand up for your reasons.

If you are looking for a new guild, don’t start applying before letting your guild leader or favorite officer know that you’re looking. GLs on the same server talk more than you suspect, and we have a sixth sense about these things. Part of our job (as recruiters) is to keep tabs on all the usual recruitment avenues, so there is very little ground that we don’t cover. Being honest, while difficult, is better than being caught.

And keep in mind that, in my experience, people come back to the guild or to WoW about 90% of the time. Perhaps you won’t come back to the exact same role, but history shows that you will likely want to come back in some capacity, so don’t burn any bridges.

So, in conclusion, five tips to quitting your guild:

1. Talk to your guild leader or favorite officer first. Give us a chance to fix things!
2. Be honest. Have the conviction to stand behind your reasons. Act professionally, and your guild leader should respond in kind.
3. If you start “secretly” guild shopping, you will likely be busted.
4. If you’re quitting WoW or reducing your game time you’ll probably be coming back at some point, so don’t burn any bridges!
5. Remember that your guild leader wants this process to go as smoothly as possible, so any help you can give along those lines will count for a lot.

** Note to my guild: no, no one is quitting. That’s why I decided to write this post now!

Today I turned down a guild application because they had never watched The Princess Bride. Actually, to be honest they couldn’t even identify The Princess Bride, asking if it was one of those Robin Hood movies. This, more than anything else, sealed the denial from our guild. What I found most interesting was that the reaction from my guildies to that decision was overwhelmingly positive, whereas some of the non-guildies I talked to were taken aback by what seemed like relatively arbitrary recruiting policies.

I’ve talked in the past about how to write recruitment posts and about how to write recruitment applications. One thing I haven’t really touched on is that ephemeral art of recruiting people with your guild community in mind. The Cats are indeed a raiding guild, whatever that means nowadays, and people who want to join the raiding team need to bring a certain level of player skill to fill the role that we need. One thing I’ve had to learn as we made that slow slide from uber casual to more casualcore is that the best personality in the world cannot make up for repeatedly wiping the raid by standing in the void zones, however much I wish it were true. However, personality still counts.

I started my guild with the very egocentric plan of only recruiting people that I suspect I’d like to have a beer with in real life. At this point that desire is stronger about some members than others, but I think over the years I’ve generally stuck to my plan. This means a few things: applicants have to not freak out about being around women, because we have more than most guilds and they will all kick your ass; you have to be on the more clever range of things; swearing and mild raunchiness is okay, but derogatory or racist crap is not. A bunch of us are professionals (engineers, teachers, lawyers, editors, tech gurus), which means that we’re older and trend towards the geeky. Our guild sense of humor celebrates puns and typos and dry wit. Hence, The Princess Bride Test.

So what can you tell about someone based on one carefully selected movie? First, you get a general idea of their age range. I admit to not being hip with the kids anymore, but I doubt your average 15-year old has seen this movie. Next, a hint of their tendency towards or against.. macho rants. At it’s core, Princess Bride is a love story featuring royalty, which might turn some manly men off. And finally, it gives a good idea of someone’s sense of humor. Will it jibe with that of the guild at large?

Raid performance is very important, but completing Sarth 3D would be worthless to me if I didn’t enjoy the company of the people I did it with. I will veto without hesitation anyone I think won’t get along with the rest of the team, no matter what their raid credentials are. A carefully chosen personality question or two on your guild application can help you understand how someone would fit with your guild community, and having happy cohesive guildies improves teamwork, longevity, and plain old fun.