Your Guild Is What You Make Of It
We’ve had quite a few new members recently join up. I’d like to take a moment to welcome them, again, into our wonderful family! (Though, I’m sure some of them have already been showered with ‘welcomes!’.) I’m going to try not to turn this into an advertisement for our guild, but I really just wanted to talk about a few things…
Why People Leave Their Guilds
I keep hearing numerous complaints…
“I felt lost.”
“I didn’t like the hard-core raiding atmosphere.”
“They punish me for real-life issues.” (Family, wife aggro, etc.)
“They didn’t have a wide-range of levels.”
“The guild just fell apart.”
“The maturity level is very low.”
Those are fairly common complaints I hear, and I think they are pretty closely related. For smaller, friendlier guilds, I see them falling apart after periods of time. In my experience, although they can be closer-knit than larger guilds, they just can’t support a wide-range of things to do. Raiding is usually non-existant, and it can be hard to get things done.
Sometimes with larger guilds, you have other issues. I see many larger guilds that raid, but have very strict rules. Larger guilds can get so big, that new members seem to quickly get lost in a sea of groups and cliques. It can be very hit or miss sometimes.
Why People Like Our Guild
I think our guild appeals to people for a variety of reasons. I think most importantly, we try to be as casual as possible. That is to say, we have structure, organization and the such, but we try not to impose a ridiculous amount of rules. To sum up the ones we do have: use a few add-ons for instances/raiding as well as Ventrillo, treat others with respect (both in the guild or otherwise), don’t be a jack-ass.
We do raid, but it’s very casual. Yeah, it can get serious, but most of us do it to have fun. Cantara recently PUG’ed with another ‘raiding’ guild and had a horrible time. They were only after the badges, poorly organized, and acted like 13 year-olds the entire time. We’re not like that at all. I feel safe in saying the majority of us really, honestly, just love grouping with each other. We have a blast and help each other progress.
Speaking of maturity, we ask prospective members how old they are when they apply. That’s because we try to keep the maturity level in check. That’s not to say guild chat stays clean, especially ‘after dark,’ but we don’t want to constantly see “OMFG need gold 4 maunt plz, kthxbi!” That’s just really not our style by far.
ECC Is What You Make Of It
Our guild master, Archaion (Arch), made a very good point the other day, in that our guild is what you make of it. If someone is relatively quiet, not outgoing, or doesn’t want to participate in events, that’s just fine with us, but they’re not really taking advantage of what we have to offer. I’ve seen members leave after a couple of weeks saying they just didn’t “fit in.”
After hearing some of the horror stories lately, I feel damn-lucky to belong to ECC. When you stop for a moment and realize that what we have is an exception to the guild universe on Farstriders, it certainly makes you appreciate it a hell of
May 15 2008 08:09 am | Blog Updates
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