The New Haven

[Windzarko]

Those of you still the guild will likely have noticed that things have been going downhill recently... there are fewer people in the guild, and there is far less going on than before. And it is time to finally get something properly done about it. To make The Haven more of the community guild it is meant to be, and to make it a more fun group to be a part of. This has been long in the works, and it needs to be done soon, before the guild dies a death.

In talking with various friends in other guilds, and bouncing some early ideas off people, I've come up with the following ideas, and I'd like to see what kind of responses/support/criticisms/whatever people have for them:

First step will be to choose a select few to help co-run the guild with me. The simple fact is that I shouldn't have been trying to run the show so much on my own for so long, and it is likely the root cause of many of the problems we have had. To prevent fruther problems and to ensure that we can do better from now on, I'll need two to four people to help me do things better.

Once we have these people to help me, we can look carefully at people in the guild; if we don't think they are that good for the guild, they are to be removed, but they will as a courtesy be sent an in-game mail explaining the changes and why they were removed. I expect that we may well end up halving the guild in size, maybe removing even more than that.

Once that is done, a new invitation policy will be put in place; interviews. I'm not talking the full-on Roleplay interviews of the Ashen Order, or formal applications and IM chats as I've heard some guilds do. I'm talking an arranged friendly chat with one of the higher-up officers to ensure that the potential recruit is going to be good for the guild. Assuming that they check out (we can maybe set some criteria for this), they will enter the guild in a Trial rank; they have to earn a promotion to Initiate within a certain time frame or have to leave. People who don't do anything to earn a promotion or who just go absent will thus be prevented from staying around too long.

An incentive system is something else I want to implement; incentives to turn up to events (more on that below), incentives to aid guildies, incentives to generally be a good member of the community. Incentives could include reputation hand-ins such as Arcane Tomes and suchlike, or reagents and recipes. These would be gathered both via donations and occasionally sending teams out to gather a few when necessary; possibly being promoted beyond a certain rank might require a certain amount of donations? I'm not entirely certain on some points of gathering the rewards, but I'm certain that the rewards system would certainly be very beneficial.

The final major thing: events. RP, PvE and PvP. Whilst the guild will not be an RP guild, there are many people who RP, and I will advertise us as having an RP element and events to go with it for those that are interested. PvP events might include organising a raid on an Alliance zone (no, not Astranaar and the like... I mean REAL targets. Like hitting Outland base camps of worthy levels), or making premades for the BGs. PvE events might be organising some groups to work through group quests and dungeons, attunements, quest chains, etc etc. RP events might include all manner of things from small meetings of members of the guild, or in-character PvE, or even player-created story arcs, who knows. In helping out with events (this will likely apply less to RP events), incentives might be won; if a spot is needed for a BG premade, incentives might be offered to fill it. Help in getting people through pre-organised dungeons and the like could be rewarded. Just turning up for any kind of event at all could be rewardable, thus encouraging activity and community.

Some things I need to make clear: the guild will not be a specifically RP guild, and being an RPer won't grant special privilages and unfair advantages. Neither will being a hardcore PvPer, or being an epic's PvEer. You earn your rank and privalages as you go by contributing to the community.

The main element that needs to be focused on above all else is community; friendliness, helping out, having a fun time. Signing up to the forums and joining us on Teamspeak should be encouraged more, and negative behaviour, particularly towards other guildies, should be penalised.

I know that's a lot of stuff, but there's more to go

New ranks; a new ranking system to help make things a bit clearer will be useful to help keep things organised:

Guild Master (aka Liddle Lithy) : me, duh
Arbiter : these people will co-run the guild with me. Two to four will be the optimal start number. Duties include handling invites, helping organise some events, helping with general administration, and helping decide who to boot in the initial sorting
Coordinator : these people will assist in organising and running events. It is possible that they will be given a specific area to focus on above others (RP, PvE, PvP).
Haven Elite : this rank will be the first with invite/kick permissions, and will be expected to interview potential recruits and keep an eye on new Initiates. No people without forum membership should be at this rank
Officer : this rank, despite the assumptions you'd have from its name, won't allow invite/kick privalages, but will give promote/demote, and the ability to edit Officer notes, and Officers will be expected to aid the Elites in keeping an eye on Initiates and helping keep the guild in order. I'll also expect them to encourage the community aspect of the guild as standard. It is quite possible that Teamspeak should be a requirement for this rank.
Adept : rank for a reasonably seasoned member; no major privilages really, this rank is more of a badge of honour
Veteran : a proven member of the guild, with the right to edit their personal note.
Member : no serious privilages, but they are in no danger of being kicked for a few days' inactivity; they are a proper part of the guild
Initiate : a trial member of the guild. If they are absent for more than three days, or fail to attain membership within a week or so, they are to be removed.

The names of the ranks and the permissions of the ranks are subject to change, as are the requirements for promotion; suggestions are good!

Ah, yes; once this system is in place, we can begin recruiting new people. The new interviews system and more rigid system for keeping unsuitable players out will hopefully ensure that we can grow and develop as a guild.

Well, that's all I can think of for now; feedback will be muchly appreciated!

One last note: irrespective of feedback, there WILL be change; we need it, desperately. The guild is on the way out otherwise.

 

[Birdy]

Im sorry hun, I think your making a big mistake. A community guild is one who has no limits and does not select its members. Its simply formed from people wanting to be part of it. There are around 100 people in the guild I have never spoken to. Its not a bad thing but, its just there are so many that you will never interact with them all. And in return not all will allways communicate on guild chat. Image 140 poeple trying to chat in guild! Would be mental.

Unfortunetly I also feel somthing needs to be done. My only Idea would be to follow your idea of having support for you, as in having 2-4 helpers. The old captins should be able to invite, but not on if the think the person would be good or not. By inviting more 70's (obviously if we can get them) You may be able to see if there is enough to do end of game stuff. If not then also invite people you have hand picked to help out and make the fondations of a group.

But hey, I dont really play much, if at all. So its your call. Just wanted to give you feedback as I have been in so many diffrent guilds.

 

[Windzarko]

There's over 70 people in the guild who are either never around and never do anything for the guild; some sit their quietly. Some sit there and just ask for help constantly and never do anything else, not even normal chatter. Not even so much as a "Hi" when someone else logs on and says "Hi, guild".

And many of the changes above are also ones I'm making on account of conversations I've had with potential recruits; many good people I've known have asked about the guild when interested, asking questions like "what's the RP situation like", "do you run any events", "what is the /g community like?" and so on, and when I answer honestly, they lose interest. It truly needs to be resolved, and the ways above are just my current ideas for what to do.

I'm -not- aiming for /g to be a constant string of chatter that prompts many to turn /g off when they're busy; I'm just trying to make it have more than a few dozen lines of text a day. To be more than a ghost guild.

I'm also not trying to make a rediculously large guild of all active people... don't want another Chaos Engines. But when we've got over 100 people and maybe a dozen of them online across the course of the day at best... well, you see what I mean?

But thanks for saying what you felt, Birdy. All feedback is good feedback, one way or another.

 

[Mortarmon]

Im sorry hun, I think your making a big mistake. A community guild is one who has no limits and does not select its members. Its simply formed from people wanting to be part of it. There are around 100 people in the guild I have never spoken to. Its not a bad thing but, its just there are so many that you will never interact with them all. And in return not all will allways communicate on guild chat. Image 140 poeple trying to chat in guild! Would be mental.

I still think that at the time i joined the haven , it werent many new faces showing up all the time. Still , it felt much more like a community , everybody helping and knowing eachother.

I think the Arbiter idea might be good. If it's 2-4 people , there will more often be a watching eye on the /g. That could prevent less funny happenings and such. It will be much easier for the guild master to do stuff , so he doesnt have to manage the guild all the time. ( Though i must say Lith/umb/syr has got good gear and levelling rate while being the guild master of such a large guild , and organising so much stuff )

About the premade bg's , i think it'd be great . The guild fighting together just could be a cool experience. And , as always , success will be closer than with a random bunch of noobs farming honour.

RP. Great stuff if you ask me. I know -some- people are almost afraid '' Omg it s a rp gulid noobs '' . Some retards tend to think RPers dont do anything then rp. And you arent a wacko because you RP.

The idea you spoke of being rewarded with helping out and stuff is great. That will highten the Community feeling, although you should do it even for free.

That's my opinion. Hope it helps.

(( I hope you dont mind me giving opinions though im not in the game anymore? ))

Mortarmon

 

[Birdy]

ok, if thats how you want it, I would seriously consider about not calling yourself a community guild. Why not just a guild. Not one thing more than the other. It gives the impression you can join and just hang out, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.

If it really is only a few lines a day, things must be worse than I thought. My trouble is with the whole " how much effort people put in" though, who decides how much is enough? And i think you will hvae problem with people saying they will join in when actually they sit there and just do their own thing. You will be stuck having to remove people all the time, which may cause problems in groups if you're removing their friend.

 

[Windzarko]

Well the central focus would be to be a friendly group; yes, there would be attempts at getting more RP, PvE and PvP going, but the main focus is still about being a community. And a community doesn't necessarily just mean "walk right in and begin chatting away".

How much effort people put in... well, people will generally only be removed for certain reasons: negative behaviour (that already applies now), extremely loing unannounced absence (I'd let people stay on if they give a good reason for the absence), or if they are an Initiate who is doing nothing in the guild whatsoever; so much as an Initiate having a friendly chat in /g and showing that they're a halfway decent person would be enough to get them promoted and thus secure.

Promotions have never been that solidly fixed in the guild, many of them have been me looking at someone's rank and going "meh, whack it up a notch". Now it'd just have some more guidelines, and there'd still be officer discretion involved.

No guidelines have been set as of yet, and that is part of what this thread is about; seeing what kind of limitations, guidelines and so on should be used.

Also; any volunteers for the position of Arbiter? I have a few people in mind that I might ask, but I want to see who is interested first. And please be sensible about it

 

[Chumpo]

Yo, im always out and about on Rumproast nowadays, that is presuming you dont want all 70's as the Arby's (im bringing in that nickname, get used to it ).

Anyways, when i play itll mainly be on Rump, not baldi as he is mainly for raiding and high ebd stuff like if someone in the haven asks if anyone wants to come to something when im on Rump, i just flick over.

So as far as spending time on Rump is concerned, ill be there.

I dont mind either way tho, just letting you know im happy to do it.

 

[Chumpo]

Also i support changes in the guild and tbh i dont know what to do so we might as well try this nw system out, worst that happens, we scrap it and go back to how it was before, its not hard, just a couple of hours work.

Anyways, we might as well give it a go imo, nothing to lose as it stands atm.

Baldi.

 

[Windzarko]

I'm not demanding any specific level for the Arbiters, it's about the person behind the character, and Rumproast will be fine as an Arbiter. I need at least one more, preferably a couple (no more than four to begin with).

And as it stands, all we might lose is a few less worthwhile members (a harsh way to describe it, but meh, tis true)

 

[waterproofbob]

I hate to be negative but is there anyway to get the WoWers, (if this does stay as a community guild) to get more involved in the community. It really get on my tits that the WoWers (not all of you but most) hide away and rarely post outside the WoW forum bit. It's in my opinion a great shame as I'm sure loads of you are great and I'd love to get to know you all. BUT as there is a great sense of we are WoW therefore we must only post in the WoW section and not venture out, there's little chance I'll get to talk to you lot as a person who doesn't like MMORPGs. A lot of the old THN lot still post elsewhere but those who are new and shiny imo are missing out.
for example, I joined THN in July 2006 i think yet it wasn't until august/september this year that I first talked to T-bone and KillCrazy when we played some TMN together. I feel that is a great shame.
Basically bob wants to feel the love from everyone and is frustrated that it's not happening.

 

[Duren]

What you want is something that has to be pushed on conception.

Community is drummed in by the people when you join. When I created Zeitgeist I talked with as many of the members as humanly possible. I talked to them about what I wanted from Zeitgeist and what I expected from them. Behaviour wise, contribution wise etc.

A post on the forums is going to do very little. You need to talk to all those people in your guild and you also need to lead them and show them what you expect. Helping them and saying what you expect from the guild in return.

out of those 100 odd people in thehaven how many of them actually read the forums? I know of about 4-5 and some of those people are part of THN and friends of yourself.

This isnt a negative post but it is just hopefully a helping post in what I view needs done if you want to make it possible to survive.

Possibly even a re-application of people, if removing them all is the answer and saying that they apply to a new fresh haven guild and this is what is expected of them (this is just to get their attention). I dunno, the call is yours.

Cheers,
Duren

 

[Windzarko]

Right... as I was trying to say before the server downtime prevented my posting... >.<

It's not a negative post in the slightest, Duren; everyone who's posted has made it clear to me that I didn't go into enough detail in the original post, so replies like yours help.

Yes, I intend to drum it into people what hte guild is about; new recruits (or people who get kicked in the initial tidy-up and then apply to get back in) will be told about the guild and what is expected when the person interviewing them talks to them. Also asking the recruit what they are expecting would be an idea, just to be sure (and you never know, they might have a good idea none of us have thought of).

I seriously doubt that there will be more than 60-70 active people in the guild even after we've done all of this and more people have joined, which is good; that many active people could lead to problems and /g spam... and possibly descending towards Chaos Engines standards (noooot good).

Think I've said all I intended to the first time I tried to post...

 

[Birdy]

Duren has a good point. There needs to be a set way foe people to be in contact. Not just u must sing up to THN. Maybe u must sign up and u must post ur professions and how you would contribute to the guild. That way if they are willing to make the effort you know they will make the effort in game

 

[Ronin Storm]

A forum community and a play community for an MMORPG are separate beasts. I've seen in this in multiple games, multiple communities, and the common factor appears to be that people who are busy playing really couldn't give a rat's ass what's going on around the forums. It's not what they signed up for.

Sure, a few (dedicated? bored?) people will take part both in the game and in the forum but the majority only want to play the game and have the social contact that the game provides. In fact, I've seen the division go so far as to have the people who are game-oriented accuse the minority of forum-goers as being deliberately dividing the community.

Bringing WoW players here doesn't seem to help. When we started in WoW, (almost) all of The Haven guild were already signed up here, long term THN members. It was already natural for them to be visiting here, arranging things on here. The people you meet in game are interested in WoW, want to do WoW things, and that is only natural as that's the game they've subscribed to. Why on earth would they want to take part in a forum, less a forum that's actually not even dedicated to their needs? Hell, for a number of MMO players I've spoken to, they're not even hardcore computer users and they find forums confusing!

I believe that guild recruitment based on forum constraints isn't going to work. At best, those who really want to be in the guild will do the absolute minimum (if that's 5 posts, that's all you'll get, etc, etc) to join in the game side of things. For some it's a needless irritation. The minority who actually want to be part of the community will seek the forum out regardless. But know they are a minority and will always remain so; after all, MMORPGs don't award experience for posts on forums.

Better to build your experience in game. Add in-game support for discussion, scheduling, whatever. Hold meetings. Go out of your way to just hang out. Support ad-hoc events, requests for help, at the expense of your own levelling/acquisition. Do it again and again.

Unfortunately, the play community won't do it for you and asking them to do it will just engender apathy ("I don't know how", "I can't be arsed", "I'm busy", "I'm tired", "I'm not on for long", etc). So you just do it regardless, forge ahead and keep around you those who are running with you. Gain momentum yourself. Pleas to the community to contribute, get in line or whatever have, in my experience, universally failed.

I think that this sort of thread arrives when one realises that the momentum is falling fast, possibly even lost completely, that there's a group in name but not in experience. I've seen two ways of approaching this.

1. Leave. Go somewhere else and try again.
2. Purge. Make the requirements such that a lot of people are forced to leave or leave of their own accord (with more or less recriminations). Keep the core group (which might only be 10-20% of the members). Try again.

I don't know what happens with (1) because I'm a glutton for punishment. I have, however, seen (2) tried a few times and once you've purged it seems to be very hard to gain and keep members after that. I think that is probably because the purge also kills any momentum you've retained; basically you're so shot up by throwing out the chaff and/or people who are best somewhere else that you've not got any more energy for anything else.

That said, if you can think of a way to push your momentum up and keep it up then a purge could work, theoretically.

I do wonder, though, if just leaving with a few friends and starting again isn't a better plan. I've seen those people go and I wonder if it worked out for them. I have rarely heard from them again.

Hmm... so ends my more useful comments. Just depressing stuff below (what, the stuff above was all light and happy? )...

However, I believe that the existing MMORPG advancement model inherently creates division and fails to support community as a result. If that is true, you're fighting an uphill battle that I feel you're destined to lose, ultimately. It can work for a time but I think that without substantial and ongoing will from the play community the nature of the game will separate players. Level gaps, equipment gaps, attunement gaps, whatever... they exist to separate characters, and separated characters equals separated players in the game's context.

 

[Windzarko]

Most of what you have said is very true, although I have seen some guilds work -very- well from the forum side of things (many of my examples would be community RP guilds), and to a degree that is what I wish to emulate. I'm not going to force people to sign up or anything like that, but it will be restricted so that if you wish to advance beyond a certain point in the guild, you will need to have a forum account and to post occasionally.

I reckon that enough people will get removed from the guild in this "make-over" that we can ensure that all people that are left and all that come in afterwards will know that we have forums and that it is highly encouraged to make use of them.

Also, as I have said, I am planning the in-game community aspect to be enhanced as well, and to go beyond just /g. I had entirely forgotten to mention that I wanted to have in-game guild meetings, taking the form of a raid group (that way we can tell who's actually there) to carry out the meeting, and it would be a scheduled event to make sure that as many were aware of it as possible.

And your points about the problems with communities in MMOs are all to true... but at the end of the day it is largely down to each individual person when it comes to what will happen. I joined through WoW, and I'm a forumite, no?

 

[Ronin Storm]

I joined through WoW, and I'm a forumite, no?

You can count in the minority.

 

[Windzarko]

Yay, I'm a minority!

>.<

 

[thatbloke]

Yay, I'm a minority!

>.<

Quick! Make him an admin so that he has more rights and priveliges than us! We wouldn't want to offend the minority....

Also make sure he knows how to remove any post that could potentially cause offence to the minority of WoW players that are on the boards.

 

[Windzarko]

Actually, one that topic; whenever I mark a thread in the WoW forums for deletion, it hangs around for ages first; are they properly removed in batches, or does it take an Admin to truly delete them?

Anyhoo, back to the topic of the thread: I just need to find one more Arbiter (quite possibly Dorakh), and then it's just coming up with some finer details of the plan before putting it into action. I've been rather vague about some points, and entirely forgotten to say some things (as Birdy and Duren made clear for me), but I think we can get everything finalised soon.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Actually, one that topic; whenever I mark a thread in the WoW forums for deletion, it hangs around for ages first; are they properly removed in batches, or does it take an Admin to truly delete them?

Most Mods can only soft delete. Only a few (mostly Super Mods and Admins, I believe) can hard delete. Soft delete is recoverable.