Yes, firstly this post is made after Alex's rant on how my blog post should be nicely about my guildmates! I am in the WarriorNation guild, I joined it when I played Cabal. So I met this awesome guild and we had so much fun together. Back then it was so active. Now, the Cabal section is DEAD!
Steps
1. Recruit members.
Firstly, recruit friends. Then recruit random people you see. Populate your guild a bit, and set a little level requirement for the guild. This ensures that your guildmates won't be too slow or too weak for any occassion. It's good to have girls in your guild too. It keeps the guys from leaving your guild.
Snowie A.K.A Olivia, happy-go-lucky girl in the guild.
2. Keeping the guild chat active.
Mainly your friends will be the ones actively spamming in the guild chat. This will let other guild members chat and have fun themselves as well. When guild members chat and interact with each other, they will build a relationship and will be more devoted to the guild.
In forums, we celebrate birthdays to keep everyone warm and active.
3. Scheduling events.
For every guild, there would be guild events and some fun for all members to participate. Members can get to join events and win some fancy prizes or advantages. When making events, you must be creative and make sure that every guild member has a chance to participate. Have your assistants or yourself sponsor some cool prizes. Set a date and let all members know about it at least a few days before the event starts!
Battle Ops Lulu posting up a CTF event in forums.
4. Manage your guild's ranks and groups.
Sometimes you may want people to help you. So a guild could consist not only the guild master, but also his assistants and many other levels or ranks of members. This allows members to have a small goal to achieve as well as lightening your burden by splitting up the work. You can give funny names to your groups as well!
It's also best that you assign a member as a crafter, or someone who keeps all the stuff like a warehouse. You can also select members that are specially for guild wars and many things to ease management.
Points & Rank system in my guild. Templars rock, Paladins suck. =D
5. Get a guild forum or website.
If your game doesn't support a guild board, then you have to create your own. Having your own guild forum allows you to post up events and various things you need to let your guild know. Guild members can also chat and moderate the forums and post up pictures of themselves to share online.
Here is an example site which lets you build guild sites for free.
(http://www.guildportal.com/)
6. Do stuff together and party.
When knowing guild members of nearly the same level, party them and do some training together. You could also get higher level members to help out the lower level members in their quest or leveling. Help each other and interact more daily, even when there's no events!
xTitan from Cabal NA trying to split an item with his party.
Example Suitable Events
If you don't know what I mean by suitable events, here's a few examples.
1. Hide and Seek
Being my guild's traditional event, Hide and Seek is a simple game where the organizers will find a place to hide and give simple hints. Players will then try to find them and start a trade. The first one who succeeds doing that will win and get their prize. This is done a couple of times in one whole event.
2. Chicken Dash
I don't know why it's named like that but this event is a race event. Players are required to team up with a partner. The first player will start at one point, and race with the rest to another point. Then the second player will start moving as soon as the first player reaches them. This is pretty much like the passing the baton.
Yeah, XiiaoRanger or Alex, tribute to you for coming up with the greatest ideas for events. Oh, almost forgot, that's the cute and forever young Mashi beside him.
Notice these events does not require any level requirement and it's just plain and direct fun. There are many more cool events my guild has made, but it's not as common as these and is more complex. So use your imagination!
Real-Life Gatherings
I'm sure most of you all didn't expect this, but a gaming guild could have real-life gatherings and have some quality time. Firstly, it's best that the members you're going out with are on the same region or nearby. You can't expect guys from Malaysia to fly over to the US just to meet up and have fun for 3 days, unless they want to and have money to spend.
Guild Mistress Ohmchii posts up the outing event in forums.
GarDiaN, the most handsome pastry chef cooked for us in our 2nd gathering.
For these outings, the host must get a good hotel which is near to all the places where your activities will be done. If possible, travel light and let the places you want to go in walking distance. If it's not in walking distance, then you have to rent a car or use your own car(s), else, call a few cabs. Then, do some fun stuff together that you could interact more such as paintball, archery, pool, picnic and so on.
Picnic at waterfall, with Superman GarDiaN and Wonder Woman Qiu Han.
Estimate the total expenditure and post it up in the forums or something to let your guild members know. Oh, and the most important thing is SAFETY!! Be sure to look out for each other.
Yeah, group photo of 1st gathering.
Well that's about it. A guild can be as close as a family and you could have lots of fun in it. Manage a fun guild and members will always keep the guild active!
Love,
Nicholas.