I know that there are several discussions regarding recruitment on these boards but very few (if any) of them specifically talk about starting a new guild from scratch. So my apologies if this article is redundant.

Establishing a hardcore raiding guild this day in age is likely one of the hardest feats in the game. Most raiders are either already involved in a well grounded guild or have their eyes set (and applications in to) rather well known guilds.

I'm writing this article because lately I've been thinking back to about six months ago when I was stuck in a rut. Back when the top guilds were clearing Hyjal there was a very large gap on the Kil'Jaeden server between the top guilds and the mediocre guilds. The guilds that I wanted to be in were attempting Vashj, but I couldn't qualify due to lack of gear/experience. Which left me to the rest of the guilds on the server who were still trying to figure out how to kill Moroes. There literally was an entier tier between the good guilds and the other ones. I was at a standstill, I didn't want to be stuck in Karazhan all my life.

So I thought "What if I start my own guild?"

Some of you might remember that I came to EJ for advice and the response was rather negative. Just about anyone can see the intense struggle that is starting a new guild, from scratch, and striving to set up a good core group of raiders.

Most of you probably remember one month later when I came here and (respectfully) gloated that the job was done. Within a month I had a guild consisting of 30+ active raiders that cleared all the way from Attumen to Vashj.

Ultimately the reason why I'm writing this article is because I often see the same old "How do you recruit good raiders" question pop up, and knowing how hard of a struggle it is to establish a core team. I figured I'd share my experience of building an entire guild from the ground up well after TBC was released.

Now I'm going to start off by assuming that you can get at least five people interested in starting a new guild. But your goal here is to go from five to twenty five. So you need to get into some heavy recruitment. Before you hit the message boards, take the following into consideration.

Recruiting mass members is a full time job. I literally spent hours each day on the WoW recruitment boards just scouring the top 10 pages for specific classes that were PVP server-transfer ready. Even if the players in question were beyond my guild's progression I would attempt to contact them with a dynamic appeal.

What I mean by that is I never copy/pasted the same old routine for each person. It's tacky and on my first day alone I found several recruiters doing this. If I could notice it then I'm sure as hell that people who are actively looking for a new guild would notice it. It's disrespectful, in most cases the information that was copy/pasted by the recruiter would clash with the requests of the recruitee so it was blatently obvious that the recruiter didn't even read the player's post.

Don't be disrespectful. Read the player's post. Respond with a well thought out appeal. There may be cases where the person in question doesn't meet your requirements (or you don't meet theirs), but they might have a friend who's willing to join your guild. I think my courtesy was what awarded me the person's extra effort to go tell their friends about my guild.

Have an edge. This especially applies to a guild that's starting from scratch. Say you only have five people, and therefore all you can run at the moment are heroics but you want to recruit five more for Karazhan/ZA. Well you better have a damn reason why people should apply to your guild instead of the countless others that have killed Illidan. Think about the kind of players you want in your guild and then find an edge that would appeal to them.

For me it was simple. I wanted good raiders that could compete with the better guilds of my server. So competition was my edge. Like I said before, most guilds on my server were still stuck on plateau bosses in Karazhan. So when I recruited my initial ten raiders our goal was to defeat Karazhan ASAP. Two runs later we had Prince down. This was huge news at the time because I didn't really advertise my guild just yet. I was waiting for an edge.

Once we killed prince I hit the message boards, both the recruitment boards and my realm forums. "New Guild Kills Prince in First Week of Raiding. Now Recruiting for Gruul's". We stood out. And guess what, our applications board started getting some activity.

Today you can't really pull that kind of thing off since there are PUGs for Kara. But you can find another edge. Maybe you want to advertise your guild as a guild that wants to beat all of TBC from scratch before WoTLK comes out. This might appeal to people who believe in ideas like progression servers. My point (I'll just beat you over the head with it this one last time) is find an edge. Your guild needs to stand out or else you're just another run-of-the-mill guild and you're only going to get run-of-the-mill players interested.

Don't give up on raids unless you have to. On our first scheduled Maulgar night we had about 20 people show up. It was heartbreaking. I felt that I had worked very hard to create a group of 25 raiders but getting them all online at the same time felt impossible. In my anger I decided to continue on with the raid. People thought I was joking at first but I told them to form up in front of Gruul's Lair and that we were going to at least learn the pull if nothing else.

Several hours later we were standing on top of Maulgar's dead body with a group of 22. This was a huge victory for the guild and a stepping stone as well. We killed a boss on schedule, we killed a boss with a less-than-optimal group and we killed our first 25 man raid boss. We were extatic. And I can only imagine how bummed out we would have been had we not attempted the boss and just gave up on the raid.

Once we learned that we were capable of breaking these kind of boundries we began a trend of mis-matched raid groups killing bosses. 8 Man Karazhan, 20 man Gruul, we killed Illhoof before his big nerf without any warlocks (big news at the time). All of these feats turned into marketing campaigns on the message boards, and they all had positive returns.

So if you're having trouble building up your guild. Don't think that it's impossible. Work hard at it, recruiting is a long and hard job. Be respectful and you'll attract respectful players. And most importantly, dont be run-of-the-mill. Find an edge. If accomplishments aren't your guild's strong side then maybe advertise how great of a community your guild is. Just find something other than "LF HUNTER STARTING KARA WE HAVE A TABARD LOL" to represent your guild. Good luck.

P.S. It's also best to avoid spamming about your new-forged guild in general or trade chat. I used to be in a guild that did that and when I made my new guild I asked people why they wouldn't apply for that previous guild but are giving my new guild a shot. Their answer usually was that my new guild seemed a lot more "serious" simply because we didn't spam trade chat with stupid macros. Let word-of-mouth advertise your guild in-game. Use message boards for direct advertising.

So what happened to your guild?

Did you happen to have a character named "Igni" in the past?

Frankly, it's nice to see a new post on something other than boss strategies. I think it's a good thing when people try to share their experiences with difficult topics in a clear, helpful manner.

Sounds like a best practices to me.

I think I was off the mark anyway, as he clearly said the topic was guild creation, not guild continuation or management,

You're right about finding and holding your edge. If you're looking to progress fast, don't accept subpar candidates just to bulk up your raid roster. Not doing Kara doesn't hurt as badly as wiping on Huntsman because your people were idiots. If you want to have a community, the uber-geared jerk should be rejected immediately. Whatever you want your guild to stand out for, hold firm to it.

Prevent drama by stopping the bad seeds at the door.
Don't lower your standards just to get the guild started. I've seen too much guild drama caused by a guy who wouldn't be allowed in under current standards, but was basically grandfathered in because he was there from the beginning. Yeah, you want to get started on Karazhan, you want to have the numbers for Gruuls, you want some good tanks for ZA, whatever. But in the long run, it causes a lot less drama to reject Bob the incredibly annoying jerk than it is to kick Bob, "highest dps rogue in the guild, and he's been here forever!", and the two stooges he got invited.

I think it's interesting to hear about different guild experiences, though I'd say that holding a guild together is a lot harder than starting a new one, and that not all the advice in the OP can be generalized to all guilds.

The point of having "an edge" is important though. For instance, my guild has a few edges that we push during recruitment and retention:

1) Last of the native day 1 guilds on our server. Stable as a rock.
2) No foul language, racism, sexism, gay-bashing or intolerance in chat, forums and vent.
3) No minimum raid attendance (members regularly take breaks for weeks or months)
4) No core raid team, no set raid composition
5) We abide by the rule of law: we have a constitution, a 2-house legislature, rules of conduct and voting, and a checked/balanced guild leader. (For example, the guild leader does not have the power to invite or gkick people and would be in serious trouble if he did).

As you can imagine, this makes it hard to progress at the same rate as core guilds--but we keep picking up new recruits who are attracted to a guild that values real life > play or have been previously burned by abuse of officer / star power.

Thems fightin words!

Apologies, alliance side. I didn't know KF was that old. /respect. Goon squad is day one too, but their edge is a never-ending supply of fresh goons. I'm a SA member myself, but I wouldn't call goon guilds "stable."

Goon Squad is stable like an asylum is. As a building it is unlikely to move however the interior's sanity is sometimes questionable :v