a guide by Wave & Spyder: How to create a succesful guild

How to create a succesful guild
a guide by Wave & Spyder

---

Hello, my name is Wave_Rida, and together with Spyder, I am going to help you set up your desired new Guild. Before starting a guild, please take into consideration the workload you are about to receive. After creating your guild, you will be bombarded with people wanting to join (hopefully!). Each of these people will expect you to tend to their every need and concern. When they get bored you will have to deal with their inactiveness and need for war. You will also have the newbies that you will have to teach how to "build their base" and the hidden game mechanics, while there will be the pros that want you to prove your worth. Your allies will want to know what your future plans are, maybe a few clicks, while the enemy guilds cannot wait to go to war with you.

Now, if you are still up for creating that successful guild, lets move on.

Guide sections:

---

1. Guild responsibilities
   
2. Designing your new guild
   
3. How to recruit for your guild
   
4. How to keep the new players you have recruited
   
5. Useful tools for your guild
   

Guild responsibilities

---

Lets put things into perspective.

With creating a guild, here are the responsibilities you are about to take on:

---

1. A good leader needs to be active enough to maintain and operate their guild efficiently
   
   You need to be active. Watch the chat for (possible) members and their behaviour, to declare war intime/place support commands, or to guide/lead your members to the victory. You need to know what is going on.
   

   ---

   
   
   
2. A good leader must know a general level of knowledge about other guilds that are active during their leadership
   
   This to prevent confusion. While you might deem this useless information right now, You want to know details about you fellow guilds, to both help them out, and/or adapt tips/tricks from them, to apply for yourself.
   
   You will need to know your allies, before you can actually "ally" them.
   

   ---

   
   
   
3. A good leader should do their best to know each of their members
   
   I cannot stress this enough. If you know who a member is, what timezone they are in, when they go on holiday, you can prevent losses of wars/members, missing talks with them, or what they are like ingeneral. This all works into a balance you need if you are going to preform actions which require their support. A concrete example of this is the taking of a certain hex. Are you sure you want to declare the conquest command right now, or wait until most of your members are active?
   
   Besides from this, it works along with making the new recruit feel at home. They are like a new kid in class. You need to know who they are, or their spirit will be crushed when their own guild leader doesn’t even know they are a part of the guild.
   A leader must be knowledgeable about the game, enough to assist both your fellow members or new recruits if they need direction.
   

   ---

   
   
   
4. A leader needs to act and operate professionally.
   
   Every guild has it’s keymembers. These people determine the face of your guild. You as a leader, are one of them. If you are caught spamming in chat or in the forums, or just are acting like an idiot, nobody will listen to you, and along with you your reputation goes down. If you are never active, this also works out negative.
   

   ---

   
   
   
5. The first few days of your new alliance will be the toughest.
   
   Everyone needs to meet each other, and together you need to work out a rythim. You should start slow, not immediately declare war on a big time guild. Get to know your members, and give them time to get to know each other.
   
   Besides from the above, most new guilds will be given a sceptic look, for the first few days, until the "established order" realizes there is quality in a guild (this doesn't apply to new guilds started by familiar names). There have been tactics rumoured about bullying new guilds, to create strong relations between the old established guilds, and to dimish the huge rise of new guilds that occurs with every new wave of players.  
   

Designing your new Guild

---

Name: The name of your new guild is like the cover of a book. While people shouldn’t judge you by the name, they will. Make sure that the name you choose is something that will get people’s attention. Check and see some of the other guilds that have existed, and base your name off of that. The more interesting the name you choose, the more people that will be attracted.

---

Your guild description: A description for your guild is not something you can make up on the spot. There should be a reason you created your guild, and that people that look at your guild will want to know. Whether its a simple explanation, or in-depth, make it truthful. Members might just relate to why you created your guild and what it stands for.

---

Requirements: It is a very good idea to outline some requirements that people need if they want to join. This can be about the random applications. Do you want to accept some random person, unknowing which platform they are playing from or what their experience is?
For example, you could demand as a guild for a certain activeness a day, a certain level of experience, or a certain fame/conquest points level.

---

Rules: to make sure your members dont start fighting over targets, you have to make some rules. A common rule amongst kongregate players, is that we dont attack faction guilds of the same side. People who do commit this, are usually attended to this rule by either their superior or other members.

---

Remember, every single member of your guild can influence your guilds reputation.

How to recruit for your guild

---

After you have created your guild, you might get excited about anyone wanting to join, however, you want to be carefull. You can only accept 19 initial members (which will have to pave the way for the others, by making donations/deposits).

---

Quality over Quantity.

I cannot stress this enough. There is a caps for members, therefore you want to have members who do their part, are willing to help and do a little extra in case one of your other members goes inactive. Activeness and willing to adapt their gameplay are another two important aspects. Remember, every applicant is unique.

There is a big difference between a recruit with fame of 30000, or fame of 30 applying. A fame 30 might not know as much, might not be able to play the game that well. But if you are able to pull them out of that ditch, and are able to raise their gameplay, they will feel loyal towards you and your guild. A fame 30 might offer a nice future member, but you need to make the balance. Is this member going to be worth the work/investments?
A fame 30000 is then again going to be a different case. What he wants is daily orders, maybe some occasional supplies for his progress, some skillfull friends to talk with and a challenge, this resulting in tougher targets/enemies.

---

Usual suspects

What do I mean by usual suspects, there are a number of people who jump from guild to guild. They dont stay long and they are not useful members to have in your guild. You need to be proactive, and get to know the community along with the current guilds!

---

Ranks and positions

For your frist few members, try and give them a leg up in your guild. If you accept 5 new members, all into the slot of private, they will be very put off. While people are still getting to know your guild and while your new members might not be all that your hoped for… give them a chance. They will appreciate what you are doing for them, and hopefully, they will return the favour later. If you want to pass this issue, make sure you start you guild with a few friends, and promote these friends to spots you would trust them with.

---

Trolls

There are a lot of them. Some trolls will try to join while they officially are already in another guild, just to tear it apart from the inside. Others, will declare war in chat in your name. Make sure your guild is troll-proof. This is difficult, but it can be achieved.

---

Spammers

You truly need to think yourself what kind of person you are trying to recruit. Keep in mind there is a difference between a high activeness in chat or forums, and spamming. It is up to you to decide what the difference is. Your members represent your guild both in the forums and in chat. Make sure they are acting the way you want them to before you allow them to join your guild.

---

How to keep the new players you have recruited

---

This is a big deal here inBattle Conquest. How do you keep your members in your guild, and at the same time active?
Now you have 200 members, but how do you keep them there. It is a very important stage for your guild. All players get bored after a while, and think about leaving, to that new rising guild, or to create their own. Let’s prevent them from leaving your guild!

---

Inactive members

Often, members will go inactive, due to circumstances. You should respect this, as real life > internet. But that means you are stuck with an inactive member in the meanwhile. What you should do is check first. Are they truly inactive? Or have they just gone on a holiday? Make sure you have an agreement to make members tell you when they go inactive, and for how long. This way you can boot them if they haven’t informed you.
Before booting, you have to make the decision: fame, or an active alliance? Too many inactives will affect the available spots in your guild, too many boots will leave you no fame.

---

Members

Can be devided into two groups: active and mediocre active.
The second group wants a safe spot to gain some points, and won’t be that active. They might sign in once every 3 days, just to check on their base, do a quick attack and leave. You might not want these guys in your guild, but if you decide to keep them, make sure they know what they are up to, and that if they sign in, they can update quickly on the new situation. You also have to make sure that you are able to support them in their needs. You need enough active members to carry the guild.

The first group are active, often at least one time a day, usually more than an hour on average. They want action, targets to go for, hexes to take. You have to keep them active, and in the spot to fight almost all day long. A tip for this would be to make one of them, the most active in this case, a higher ranking officer. This way, there will always be a target when they are up for it.

---

Leader

You as a leader have an influence yourself. You have to be active, to show the members what you and the guild stand for, as a grip to them. The more active and entertaining you are a leader, the more your members will be. Besides from simply being there, you also have to be there for your members. If they want to talk or need help with something in real life. You would be amazed with how many of my members I have talked about their weekends, their difficulties and advice on several different things, just to help them out.
Besides from you as a leader, your officers ranging all the way to the vice-leaders also have a responsibility. If you as a leader, pick bad recruiters, you will have crappy members join and with bad generals, terrible targets. This due to the control these people have.

Useful tools for your guild

---

There are a ton of ways to sustain information for your guild. Below are a few great tools:

---

1. chatzy
   
   Chatzy is a useful site for you to create your own chat room for your guild. If you feel that anything you need to say to your members in a chat-style format that cannot be on Kongregate, or you simply dont play on Kong, use chatzy. You can even password protect your channel if needed. Another viable option is a K+ chatroom. If one of your members has K+, they can create a chatroom for only those invited. The benefit of this over chatzy is, that you remain on kongregate. However, K+ does require a payment every month.
   

   ---

   
   
   
2. A forum thread (on kongregate) (to create one of these you will need a formatting guide)
   
   A forum thread, is not only closeby for those regarding kongregate, but also allows you to further control and enlist your members. It is a good place to show yourself, and to list the rules you have as a guild. You can also place your fanart here, but to create a thread, you would need coding/formatting guide, or atleast someone experienced to help you. Same applies to the Battle Conquest forums, even though each have their own audience.
   

   ---

   
   
   
3. Your own forums!
   
   If you feel the need for your own forums, which allows you the option for more than 1 thread, you can create your own forums. If you would use google and search for free forum creator, I believe there will show enough tools to create and manage your own forums.
   

   ---

   
   
   
4. Guild Halls
   
   Allow you to maintain your own forums, within the battle conquest forums. Send RuneSlayer a nice pm, and you should be able to moderate the people able to view it. Difference between these and your own forums is, that you can only create topics, and no sub-forums which can be a pain to keep the forums organized.
   

   ---

   
   
   
5. Tinypic
   
   Tinypic is an example of the many image hosting sites. It allows you to upload images. Make sure to copy the html link, and you can share images desired with friends. other examples are lightshot or imgur.
   

   ---

   
   
   
6. An online document
   
   You can choose for an dropbox sheet, or a google drive file. Both would allow your guild members to enter data desired.
   

   ---

   
   
   

A few examples:

• Dark Inquisition
  The current guild both I and Spyder are in, top ranked on the darkside for olympus.
  
• eXorsus
  It's no Battle Conquest, yet the ideal example of a forum thread. It's the thread of spyder's old alliance.
  

---

A big thanks to Spyder, as without his efforts this guide would never have been created, and ofcourse thanks to all at Dark Inquisition for their support.

placeholder