Adding recruitment of upper level characters

[Magdalena]

Last night we had an impromtu meeting discussing where the group wants to head from here.

Several valid discussions started from this and it was decided to try and get our thoughts on this together up here.

The general points brought to the table were:

- A large portion of the group wants to move forward to bigger raids for new content. Nobody wants to stop doing the smaller instances, however some have been focusing on these for close to a year now and doing the same things over and over again does get quite tiresome. All of the new content thus far has been focused on 20 and 40-man raids and will likely continue to be so until the expansion comes out and possibly beyond that.

- While wanting to get our numbers up however there's the double edged sword of not wanting to lose the great community we've built thus far, however keeping the slow pace of growth we have now has kept us in the middle of the road, not quite small enough to be considered a small guild but not quite big enough to consistently have the number of 60s and/or classes needed to reach the upper end instances.

- Previously we've avoided recruiting higher end characters due to the greater connection you get with characters that have grown with the guild from lower levels.

- There is now a calling to find higher end (50+) characters that would find a good home and be a good addition to our family and focus on getting enough people in a decent amount of time to reach the content we want before we continue to grow increasingly tired of the stalemate we seem to have reached.

- There is also a calling to get our current lower end characters up to join in with the rest of us in guild events. This is also very difficult as often in order to actually assist them, one needs a character close to their level. Otherwise, you push them through quests with an upper level, but they don't receive the experience they should have in doing those quests due to the subtraction from the upper level assistance and are left with nothing but grinding to do. While grinding is often the quickest way to level, most get very tired of this very quickly and grinding areas are often targeted by the opposing factions for camping PKs.

Here are the Ideas for solutions that have come up so far:
(Sorry to any I miss as I'm going from memory this time...)

1. Add upper levels to the recruiting targets.

2. Start carrying at least 1-2 pugs on each 5 man raid, add to friends list if you find someone you like and tell them you're doing so. See if they're available the next time you get a small group together and/or if we need a specific class for raid nights.

3. Look for an alliance of another guild that has similar ideas and are possibly stuck at the same point we are to start raiding together with. We have had success with this in the past, but usually only a short term solution.

4. Review the limitations currently in place for the number of recruits we can handle at once.

5. Have others help setting up more of the smaller runs during the week, for examples look at the postings Yuki has created asking about certain runs on week nights and being there at that time to get the group started. She has been doing great at this.

Well, these are some thoughts to start the discussion... remember everyone is just posting their thoughts, ideas, and suggestions for the best route to take.

Lets also try not to focus this on the problems at hand as from discussions last night, pretty much everyone understood the issues above, if you have any questions about one of those please feel free to ask any of the guild officers.

Would like to see this discussion make some sort of headway, so lets try to focus on discussing the proposed resolutions and new resolution discussions rather than the problems. In keeping with these thoughts in mind, the following three questions are a good reference I believe.

1) What do you think about the resolution ideas given? Will they be affective and achieve results in the right direction or do you see flaws that might adversely affect the guild?

2) Are there any new ideas you have or suggestions for improvements to the above suggestions?

[Magdalena]

My personal opinion is that I believe these are all great ideas that have come up and though I tried not to I'm sure that shows somewhat in my post.

Bringing pugs is something we all dread, but with it being in the 5-man groups its more personable and gives a better opportunity to get to know them. Most of these will not become members, some will already be part of another guild, etc. We shouldn't discount these though because there's also the possibility we can find others in a guild in our same position now and make new friends and possibly form an alliance to help one another out.
Which brings me to the alliance suggestion, this is something I've mentioned several times before but never got either a positive or negative response. This as I see it is our best option if we can find it... it buys us and them time to grow so we're ready to do these on our own later down the road. It can start as an alliance to do ZG/AQ20 and as each guild gets enough people to do those on their own, grow into an MC alliance. Finding the right group for this may take several that we talk to though. To stand the best chance, we all need to have our eyes open... not saying just because you find them you have to be the one to enter into discussions with their GMs, send that talk over to our officers and they can take it and find out what they need to know from there. Finding them though should be distibuted to anyone in the membership because it increases our chances.

Upping our number limits... there have been several occassions where this has happened for one reason or another, and we haven't really had much of a problem with it so far. One idea I had was to set the number limit on the characters above 45 that are in initiate status. The reason for this is that most of the lower levels have a longer timeframe with which to get bonding in as they level up within the guild. That or maybe not have it as a number but have 4-5 people assigned as recruiters (volunteering of course), they are the only ones to actually send invites for anybody over 45 and are responsible for letting people know where we currently are with the guild, where we're wanting to go, and where the forums and ventrillo information can be found. They also point to trying to look at the schedules and get involved with as many member events as they can, especially over the first two weeks, keeping with voting members in, perhaps asking to have a separate section in the forums just for polls for that rather than doing it over the meetings to cut down on time.

Last but not least, having others try to get the small runs going during the week... this is something Trix and I are going to be trying to get to as much as we can, yes we're going to try and get on a little during the weeks for this... I won't be signing up though because I can't pre-determine my schedule during the week. It seems computer equipment always seems to decide to blow up at about 4-5pm when getting ready to go home... which means a late night for me... If Jack and I are going to make it, we will be online by 8:30 at the latest (7:30 our time). Also, every other Friday I'm usually online during the day from about 7am... I can do smaller stuff then too, can even take my rogue since Trix won't be home We can always use more of these, keep in mind some people just getting close to 60 will need a lot of help in this...



Well, those are my thoughts so far... though I'm sure I'll have more as the discussion builds...

[requiemdreamer]

Well, I can't honestly think of any fantastic ideas at the moment, but I do have some concerns about a couple of the above solutions:

2. Looking at it from the other point of view, I see this as a very hit or miss strategy. I know that if I were in a raid group with another guild, let's say an UBRS run, and I was asked to join their guild, I would say "no thank you" almost immediately. Obviously, because I love this guild. I think that this type of a process has a chance of coming off a little too strong if not done carefully. Also, we can't offer the MC and similar raids that most people in the position of leaving their guild would be looking for. In essence, I think that this process is the same as the membership process we currently have, in the sense that we are "evaluating" these people during the raid and before initiation. That it is a reverse process of what we are trying to achieve already. Getting people in as initiates and putting them through an evaluation process before promoting to membership. Of course, this is just the way I am seeing it.

And, as I'm writing this I just had an idea. Maybe if we adjusted the evaluation process of initiates a little bit we would be able to open up recruiting a bit more.

3. In the situation of a guild alliance there essentially needs to be a controlling guild, or a general agreement beforehand between guilds. If we were to look for an alliance we would want to make sure they agree with the way we want to handle looting, and that they are there for the same reasons we are. We can also run into problems of different people wanting to do things a different way. If we team up with a guild that wants to do it a certain way, and we don't like it, we're going to have problems. Just a concern I have.

5. Going along with this one I am all for getting our mid-range members up to the top to play with us. Designated questing days would be cool. Assign a buddy system . "Ok guys, your lvl 60 buddy for today will be Trixster. Don't worry, he doesn't bite..." just kidding.

[Trixster]

I can see the point req made about the pub groups, now this is just my 2 cents, but i dont think u can get a good feeling on a person from just one run, what we may do is add them to buddy list and invite them back into other pug groups. sell them on the guild by lettting them see how we are.
If they have run with us a few times they may be more willing to chage guilds or will even ask if we are recruiting.

[Brandonheat]

Its very rare to see a 50+ without a guild. And when you do, you would start to question that person's character (Ninja ?) So be very careful.

[Magdalena]

That is why we've steered clear for the most part Brandonheat, but looking at our current roster, you can also find some great people too... Rlyan and Ex-Archons members come to mind as examples.

[Padishar]

How about we expand our initiate status thread to include:
Who invited said person in to the guild, who there alts are and how we know them...
ie. this is Jack's cousin rudolfo
or a former member of X guild that has rolled with us off and on in 5 man runs...
etc.

This might help keep a quick easy list to look up and keep tabs on everyone.
Something more then the officer tags and messages we have in game,
which are helpful but still a bit light on info. Not to mention we have over 200 plus names...
can take a bit of scrolling and clicking to see who what when and how....

[Rlyan]

Let's use the initiate status. Let's get rid of the intial screening (one person grouping with the person several time) and just invite after one run. The guild can then make a decision over the two week period.

[requiemdreamer]

Let's use the initiate status. Let's get rid of the intial screening (one person grouping with the person several time) and just invite after one run. The guild can then make a decision over the two week period.

We could even extend the length of time that an initiate is required to wait before becoming a member. Due to our FFA looting system on our large raids it will be pretty easy to see who is a ninja and who isn't. Or, if we are worried about that, we can keep the larger raids exclusive to members only.
We could encourage members to invite anyone they find along the way that they think would be a good addition to our guild. Change it so that a player only needs the vote of one full member of our guild to become an initiate, and from there on they follow the standard initiate process. If anyone wanted someone invited to the guild they could just whisper an Officer or make a post here on the forums. Just a thought.

Haven't seen many more posts about this, so I'm hoping it hasn't fallen by the way-side. The sooner we can get this sorted out, the better.

[Magdalena]

I too am hoping this isn't just being dropped. I have no issues with making it easier to become an initiate or anything listed above, however don't see how they're going to get the numbers up.

That I'm aware of we haven't turned many away, they're just not knocking at our doorstep.

Judging by the postings though, it seems we're in the minority of wanting to get to doing those runs, so it appears this is a dead subject.