Okay, I’m going to be completely honest, being competitive by nature has not faired well for me here. I do enjoy having my own guild, but the stress of trying to keep it trending high in the ranks gets to me more often than I would like it to.
Being three months into a new server, here’s what I’ve learned:
People are people. Everyone wants to be at the top. I get it, I do too. So it’s hard to find like minded players who would rather keep building your guild even when you fall a couple spots from grace, than jump ship to this month’s current top three.
Do all you can to find passionate, long term, team players, not necessarily the high powered or VIPs, to keep your guild strong.
You never know when your high power guildies are going to suddenly stop playing. This is like a nail in the coffin for me, especially when they never communicate with you.
VIPs tend to clique together, and you will feel disadvantaged by it.
Marketing a lower level guild is difficult. Especially with language barriers. I’m a pretty talkative and friendly person, but trying to find a handful of English speakers amongst the sea of foreign language, gah!
There’s a constant pressure to remain active. If we’re all following the leader, as the Lost Boys from Peter Pan so joyfully sing about, then you have to set an example for your guildies to follow. I left my original guild on my P2P account due to the inactivity of the guild leader, so I have my own set of standards I expect myself to abide by. And, let's face it, there are times even I don’t want to follow them.
It puts a different set of demands on your ingot spending and game strategy.
I haven’t figured out if players like leading the guild together or having one person directing at the helm. But I’m not sure if that’s looping back to the language barrier or my own lack of in-game communication.
And finally, I find myself worrying what other guildies think about me as a leader. I don’t want to let them down, and I feel horrible if I’m not doing everything I can to benefit them and the group.
In hind sight, I sort of wish I hadn’t founded my own guild. But being the stubborn person I am, I’ll keep it around and see what happens moving forward.