Ours is almost exactly this.

Guild Master (we have 3 guild masters/officers who share the same practical rank - nominally one person has guild master because you can't put multiple people there)
Raider
Casual Member (someone who has skill, but can't meet the time commitment regularly and for whatever reason we want to keep them)
Recruit
Social Member (lvl 1 alts from other guilds who come along to chat - typically opposite faction guilds)
Noob (comedic value)

We invite players from raider/member/recruit ranks indiscrimintely based on encounter design.

Just a note that this is a topic that is often visited on the US Guild Relations Forum, just because there are a lot of guild leaders out there who want to make useful and meaningful distinctions between their players. There is much discussion about how to structure guild leadership as well.

More casual raiding guilds seem to be moving towards a "Raider" rank for players who have regular raid spots and maintain certain standards. "Non-raider" seems to encompass a broad range of players from retired Raiders down to the friend-and-family types. Guilds which use these ranks successfully generally allow players to self-select into or out of them via meeting objective criteria, such as raid attendance or a certain level of performance or gearing.

The raiding guilds have no need to make that distinction, since membership depends on raid-readiness. However, we've noted that many raiding guilds tend to accrete a friends-and-family rank over time.

Most of the regular advisors would advise against using ranks as status symbols, particularly officer ranks. In well-managed guilds, this has less to do with hurt feelings or dissension than with workloads for the officers or the GM-- it's quite a pain to regularly police and update your roster for more than one 'special' rank. And the result of failing to do so-- deadwood at the top-- is even worse.

Guild Leader
Class Officers and their alts (ginvite/gremove privs) (some classes currently missing)
Class Assistants and their alts, and if this implies to you we have too many officers, you win a prize (/o and /gmotd only)
Long-time normal players who can change the gmotd but nothing else
normal players
normal players' alts
temporary "can't talk in /g" rank for when you disagree with the GM's taste in TV shows


Did I mention we have too many officers? I think I did. The corps has been trimmed a bit due to some burnout and main-switching but early on in our 25man raiding it was common for 13+ out of 25 to be officers.

We have no "trial" rank as we don't recruit.

I'd note that Class Officers aren't necessarily "officers" of any authority; at least for us, they're basically there to make sure the right people are in/out for any given boss and to assign buffs so the raid leader doesn't have to deal with it. Some of our Class Officers are also actual Officers; some aren't.

Shadows and Dust uses a few different guild ranks:

Domokun - Guild Leader
Officer - Self Explanatory
Raider - People committed to excellence while raiding, and given priority spots on raids, etc
Member - Average Joe Member of the Guild
Initiate - New Recruit
Alternate - Self Explanatory
Friends / Family - Non Raiding Member, here for Social Aspects
TimeOut - Self Explanatory

Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe you shouldn't be telling everyone in the world this, because it makes you and your guild look like a bunch of ignorant asshats.

There is no explicit benefit, you're right. It's a carrot, and it's a way of saying, "You've put in a lot of time with us, and you've never let us down." It's the light at the end of the 4 month tunnel for putting in all the hours and the effort. Moreover, I'd like to think it's a sign of respect, from our leaders to our members - we require a unanimous vote amongst the leadership team to elevate someone to Top Gun, and it really demonstrates their value and dedication in the eyes of both ourselves and the guild at large.

If the criteria for any guild rank was, "You must be X tall to play," I would absolutely be in your position. Top Guns are not necessarily the highest-DPS of their class (our top DPS Rogue is not a Top Gun - he's the best DPS in the guild) - they're the people who have demonstrated above-average skill and exceptional dedication. It's not a pejorative comment on other players - it's a compliment on being a cornerstone of the team.

I think I adequately addressed this above.

It isn't 'necessary', much like an Initiate rank in most guilds isn't 'necessary'. It's a distinction of integration - my Top Guns are one step further towards being cemented as indispensible guild members and friends.

I would argue that this could be said just as easily for any other rank. To be honest, we use ranks in our guild for a lot of fun - we have a wonderful and very skilled Paladin who is of partial African-American descent, and one day after he made a particularly good joke (at my expense), his rank in the guild was suddenly BACKOFTHEBUS. We all had a good laugh about it, and everything resumed as normal.

I assumed usage of ranks as distinction and reward would have been more typical universally.

My guild has a simplistic approach as well. We only have GM, Officers, Members, Initiates, Casuals. I tried using class leaders for a small time, but it proved to be fairly useless. The class leaders were neccesary in 40 man raid content, but with the smaller raid group everything is controlled a lot easier. It's not really neccesary for me to have one druid to manage two druids, and four is the most of any class I have in a raid at a time.

Certain members of my guild do take lead and assign buffs etc. but they are usually "veteran" players and it doesn't seem neccesary to put them on a pedastal. Maintaing a level of equality seems better, as others have mentioned, then trying to say, "xxx is the best player of the class all of you listen to him."

Delete.

We eliminate the need of a Guild Leader entirely and have all of the officers perform the same function. Basically acting a multi-person guild leader.

Officer > Member > Trials > Alts

After that it's just a buncha nonsense ranks such as G/F, communist and that sorta thing. Obviously we can do without them but they add flavor and cause a few laughs from time to time.

Like many others have said guild structure really doesn't matter as long as it keeps very basic. Actually making it anymore then basic (from my experience) can cause a lot of drama. This usually is caused by ranks inbetween officer and a traditional member. If you can make it work (lots of very like minded individuals) then thats cool. But from my exerience the inbetween rank will leave many upset if you become too strict with it or lose its meaning when every single person eventually becomes one.

Looking back, I don't think you did.

What happens when a Top Gun starts to act more like a Normal Raider? Do you demote him? How much leeway does he get? What happens to the people who are performing/attending/whatever-criteria better than him, are they promoted? How does it go over if they aren't?

I don't really think so.

The traditional guild ranks carry with them associated responsibilities and benefits as you are promoted. Those're the basis for the distinctions. That makes them fundamentally different from your Top Gun rank.

Maybe I'm not making myself clear enough - a Top Gun is a "Normal Raider". They're players that have demonstrated consistency and dedication over time. We currently have 2 people in this rank, and are voting on the potential of elevating a handful of others. The system is not designed to separate them from the other members of the guild on the basis of their skill/class/height/religion/sexual preferences - it's a reward for the time and effort they have invested in the guild. It carries with it, by function of their dedication to the guild, the privilege to be offered a spot in raids (provided that class balance is satisfied and they are adequately specced/geared/gemmed/enchanted/prepared to raid) before general raid invites. That's it, that's all.

The only fundamental difference is that there is no separate set of responsibilities or benefits - thus, the distinction, while important to the people who receive it as recognition of their contributions, has no discouraging or limiting effects on other players.

I didnt read the guy I quoted well enough! =/

1. Guild Leader- Self explanatory.
2. Officer- See above.
3. Member- Typical raiding member rank, has to have certain attendance to raids and gets priority on loot over the lower ranks.
4. Casual- Casual member, still invited to raids and a full member of the guild, but without the minimum raiding requirements. Also has a lower priority for loot than members.
5. Probate- New invites to the guild, low loot priority, high raid attendance requirement, lasts as long as the officers feel like it.
6. Alt- Only a few are let into the guild (have to be a level 70 alt) but otherwise self explanatory
7. RetardedlikeLAW- Guild joke, the place for members (like me) who say stupid things (wands are weapons!) and are demoted to the lowest rank possible. Absolutely no difference from Member status, just a much lower listing on the member list.

Oh, I understand what the idea is. What I'm asking you is, once you're a Top Gun raider, are you there forever (no matter how much your consistency and dedication drop off), or not?

If - once promoted to this rank - you are there forever, what is your plan for when a Top Gun player's attendance drops off? That sort of devalues the whole point of the rank (or at least changes the rank from meaning "this person is an extremely valuable contributor to the guild" to "this person was, at one time, an extremely valuable contributor to the guild", which is quite a bit less compelling), doesn't it?

If you aren't there forever, at what point are you no longer considered a Top Gun? Since it's a voting system to put someone in that rank, I assume there's no cut-and-dry X% attendance over Y time formula. This puts a lot of onus on you to make sure that all the Top Guns really *are* Top Guns. And, of course, members may disagree with you - in which case they will feel discouraged that soandso's contribution is about the same as theirs now, but soandso is a Top Gun.

Actually, I didn't realize (probably from not reading carefully enough!) that you were giving Top Gun players invites ahead of general raid invites. That does sound like an associated benefit (albeit a small one).

I think any time your (the leadership's) opinion is elevating some guildmembers in status and not others, there's the potential for guildmates to feel discouraged and limited simply from disagreeing with your decision.

I lay more juice than Barry Bonds

"Juice layer," "giants pick," and "knee grow" are all cute racial puns. "Knee grow" alone wouldn't be horribly offensive, but in that context, it's pretty hard not to get a bad taste in my mouth at those.

i only get knee grow? what are the other ones

It's not a situation we've run into yet, but we've done it with people who were previously Veterans and have elected to quit raiding actively (but they're still on the roster, and can attend raids when they have the time) - we would simply lower them back to our basic Member rank. It's not a penalty, other than the loss of the circumstantial preferential invite.

If there were concerns about the awarding of the rank, we would happily take them under consideration. We have a 3-page post on our guild forums on why X Mage got the trinket off of Morogrim last night - we're more than willing to be as transparent as possible in our explanations and rationale.



I think an exceptionally large portion of this comes down to the individual guild ambience - in our guild, this system was announced well ahead of time, well received, and implemented successfully. We also use a purely officer-decision-based loot system in our raids. We just dance to a different tune than others, I guess.

It's not an inside joke, say them outloud and think about it. It's not clever, it's racist and stupid.

what are juice layer and giants pick? pm me to clarify plz

Let's not translate these and just let it go.