State of the Guild

Friday night didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped. Quite a few of the folks who'd signed up for the Titan raid hadn't been able to complete the pre-requisites during the period leading up to the raid.

Which I find odd, considering how many times I ran Titan pre-req's with a variety of my characters, and with many different players from both the Face Stabbing Misfits and the Lifetakers and Heartbreakers. I'd made it a point to be available to help folks prepare their characters for the raid, but few took me up on the offer. Of the few that did take advantage of the opportunity, some ran two or three of their charcters through the pre-req's.

However, when Friday night rolled around, only six of us were ready to go. Which was a bit of a problem. You see, the Titan raid requires a well organized group who can work together to solve common problems. This tends to be a trait of guild raids more than one of PUG (Pick-Up Group) raid parties.

This is not to say PUG raids can't work together and be successful. But, the problem is that with PUG raids, you often have many different people with widely varied expectations and ways of doing things. The kind of teamwork a Titan raid requires is more commonly found amongst guild groups.

Which is why, when we decided that, since we couldn't come up with enough allied guildies to run the raid, that we wouldn't PUG-out the remaining slots, but that we'd reschedule the raid and do something else instead. And, that turned out to be an Elite Tempest's Spine raid. (Always fun, the Tempest's Spine.)

But, I began to wonder...

You know, I try to give folks at least two weeks notice before hosting a raid. So, why is it that we have difficulty finding enough people to fill a single twelve-player raid party?

I mean, I've conducted polls on our guild website, trying to learn which raids folks like to play most, which level ranges they like to play, when's the best time for people to get together for group adventures, that sort of thing. As a result, I've re-arranged the days on which I host raids to increase the likelihood of having enough folks available, I've adjusted which raids I try to host to bring more folks together, and I try to offer a wide variety of character levels and difficulty choices, to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

Still, we have problems filling raid groups on occasion.

And, that got me to thinking about why we guild...

I know I've covered some of this ground before, but bear with me, please.

Back in the old days, particularly before the change to the raid loot system, it was almost a requirement that players were guilded to run a raid. And, that was back when we had only the Dragon raid, the Queen raid, and the Titan raid. You'd think that with only three raids in the game (at that time) that you wouldn't *need* a guild to find a raid group and to have a successful completion. But, back in the day, it was almost a requirement.

A side-effect of guilding together, players developed a social connection with one another, one that often carried well beyond raids, and sometimes even carried out to the realm of real-life.

For me, it was the social interaction that really pulled me into the Face Stabbers.

I mean, DDO is a social game, so having a group with which to socialize, as well as having a group with which to raid, is a good thing.

The difficult part about the change in the raid loot system is that it changed many of the reasons people guild together.

In fact, with the change to the raid loot system, Turbine fundamentally altered the reason that players guild together in the game. Sure, they still guild to create raid groups but, because of the changes, it became much easier to find PUG raid groups, in which the groups could be successful, and in which the miscreants in the community could no longer ninja the loot from other players.

As a result, many folks decided that they no longer needed to belong to the same old guilds they used to.

And, the server merge had a significant impact on the way players guilded together. I think you saw quite a bit of guild-hopping once Turbine merged three servers into one.

No, I'm not arguing the logic of doing so. There are now many more players online at any given point than there were before the merge, at least, on any single server. So, Stormreach has a much more populated feel than it did before the merge, for sure.

So, the reasons for guilding have changed and, following several modifications to the game on Turbine's part, the face of guilds has changed rather significantly.

But, I can't help but ponder what I can do to help grow my own guild.

Certainly, we've witnessed many changes to the Face Stabbing Misfits. Back on Fernia, we were one of the larger guilds, and we were very well known. Moving to Ghallanda meant that we were now a relatively small fish in a much larger pond. And with changes the game, or in some cases, a lack thereof, many of our veterans have left the game. Granted, we also had some veterans leave the game for personal and/or real-life reasons. And, we had quite a few who left the guild to align themselves with new friends on the newly merged servers. But, at the same time, there wasn't much influx of new players to the guild. It had become a war of attrition.

By now, the active player base in the Face Stabbing Misfits is but a shadow of what it once was. And I find that to be extremely disappointing. We have so many good players still on the rolls in the guild, but we don't seem to have the common vision we once had, so finding active players is becomming quite difficult.

It seems that it's time for a shake-up in the guild.

The funny thing is how I came to this realization... I used to be a fairly active model railroader. I know, I know... but it's a fascinating hobby, and I've always loved model building. However, after having lived in apartments for many years, and not having made an opportunity to build a new empire in my basement, I'm more of what's called an arm-chair model railroader; I spend more time reading about the hobby than I do actually participating in it. But, that has a lot to do with my current focus on DDO, too.

But I was struck by the coincidence of an article in my latest edition of Model Railroader magazine. It was an overview of a club and the layout they've assembled. In a side-bar to the article, a representative of the club summarized the keys to a successful club...

"One of the challenges of a club is to keep everyone moving in the same direction. A club requires compromise, and sometimes ideas from members can't be incorporated [but] we do the best we can to keep a high level of interest among the members."

Hmm...

Funny how close to home a statement like that lands.

I find myself as the unexpected leader of the Face Stabbing Misfits, and I face the challenges of keeping the guild together, and maintaining interest. The difference I see here is that I don't have a lot of help in running the guild, where the folks dealing with the model railroad club don't have quite the level of difficulty, since there's a group of individuals working together to help maintain the effort.

I'm at a point where I have to rethink my position, and take action to implement some changes. I cannot run this guild by myself. Particularly since I cannot be in-game 24/7. (I, too, have real-life commitments.) But, the guild is struggling right now. I'd like to restore it to it's previous level of prestige. I'd like to bring new faces into the guild, and I'd like to have a group of regular players that can get together once or twice a week for informal group runs.

What I really need are some folks who share the same ideals who're willing to help me attain those goals. I need officers who can help cover the bases and help me recruit the players we need to sustain our organization.

Sure, there's some work involved. Sometimes more work than what it seems to be worth. It is, after all, just a game. And, no, it doesn't pay very well. In fact, it doesn't pay at all. It's a volunteer thing. But, for those of us who want to bring folks together to have the kind of fun you can't have by soloing every quest in the game, it's a worthy line of work.

So, I stand at a cross-roads, and I'm looking around. I see guildies going off in all different directions. If we want to be as successful as we once were, we'll have to come together, and choose a path. But it's something we'll have to do together, because it isn't something any one of us can do alone.

Here's hoping we can reassemble the troops.

In the mean time, keep it fun!