Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 2

Player retention is a double edged sword that does not allow for a win-win situation. Guilds of all sorts have this problem and the biggest reason why is the player himself. Players will not stay where they feel unwanted, unchallenged, and unrewarded if they feel the guild will not help them to achieve their own personal goals. For these reasons and many more, this means that GM's will never resolve this issue. Even the most dedicated and tightly knit raiding guilds have difficulties with this issue. Here the most common mistake GM's make is trying to keep everyone happy.

I remember reading some time back that the GM for Nihilum (the world's #1 raiding guild who are now operating under a different name) said that his job was to insure he had the right person for the job in each of his raiding slots. Given that the guild only had 50 members, this is still a daunting task. While he considered gear important, he considered experience and the ability to fully play a class even more so. He knew that if every player was an expert at playing their class he could take them through any raid instance successfully regardless of how the guild was geared (for the most part.). Yet, like any other guild, players came and went, though with less frequency. He stated on the official EU forums once that he made no bones about keeping people happy, he just didn't do that. Success was his driving goal and everyone had to be on board with that goal or they couldn't be in the guild.

While this is easy to accomplish within a raid guild since your focus can be more narrowed, accomplishing this in a casual guild is much harder. The vast majority of casual players will only stick to a guild if they have friends there; otherwise they jump from guild to guild a lot looking for a good match. Then you have the players that could care less about the guild and only care about what they can get from the guild. Other players look for certain kinds of guild while leveling and a different kind of guild when they hit the cap. In all of this, the GM really has not say or influence over what will happen, he can only hope players will like his guild and stay.

The key here, I believe for any GM, is to let the players come and go but to try and get to know every person that comes through the guild. This way you can learn who is most compatible to your guild and the guilds goals. This way it will be easier to encourage these players to stick around and more of the will likely do this. While this process takes longer, it does slowly grow a solid core of players to work with as more and more of them hit the level cap. The thing to remember is that casual guilds will either grow slowly with a good measure of quality in the guild or you can go on a recruit ‘anyone’ binges to build your numbers quickly and then deal with the fallout later.

One last thought about player retention. Some players need to be doing things to feel a part of the guild, other’s need to see active players on the ‘who’ list and in chat, while others just need the title above their head. Whether or not guild activities are a presence in the guild seems irrelevant. I’ve been in large casual guilds that maintained a high number of players from all levels mainly due to the fact that the leadership was constantly planning guild events and such. This is a lot of fun and does build a significant community. I’ve also seen guilds who only scheduled dungeon runs and instances only that were successful as well. The key for the GM and officers is to have a presence, regardless of how that presence is carried out. And all of these people need to be actively looking for more likeminded individuals at all times.