Category Archives: guilds

Finding Your SWTOR Guild (an Update)

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

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One of the hardest things to do in any game — unless you are lucky enough to be part of a multi-game guild whose members’ interest in MMOs aligns with yours over time– is to find a guild that’s the right fit. But that’s where this guide comes in.

Before launch, it was, in theory, pretty easy to find a guild thanks to the guild recruitment functionality on the SWTOR website. With that handy tool removed, it is a little more arduous a task to find a guild that’s a good fit, but it truly can be done. Though it may take some trial and error– including joining a few guilds that turn out to be duds.

So, how do folks find guilds? A few of the more common methods include:

  • Word of mouth–asking your gaming buddies if they’d recommend their guilds as a good fit
  • Joining a guild affiliated with a blog you are a fan of or a website you’re a member of
  • Scanning Kristin Archer’s guild profiles on TORwars
  • Perusing the guild list on reddit or Ten Ton Hammer or TOR Syndicate
  • Eyeballing the guild recruitment posts in the server forums on SWTOR.com
  • Joining a guild that is advertising in trade or general chat on your server
  • And if all else fails and you can’t find quite what you are looking for, you can always start your own guild

At this point in my gaming life, I’ve pretty much done all of the above, EXCEPT for joining a guild that was advertising in chat for members. Call me old fashioned, but I would like to think I’m joining a guild that is more discriminating about creating a positive and collegial guild culture than by inviting all comers via a mass chat channel.

Before you jump in and start applying, make sure you know what you are looking for!

Before you start checking out guild recruitment posts, however, I think it’s a good idea to take a few minutes to think through what you are looking for in a guild. When I sit and think through the most important qualities I look for in a guild, a few of the top things that come to mind are:

  • I’d prefer West Coast, PvE. I’ve played on East Coast servers mind you, but I’m never home before 6PT, so unless the guild is a bunch of East Coast night owls, it doesn’t usually provide enough to do w/others.
  • I prefer a guild ruled by DBAD. In the guild’s overview in one form or another, I need to see that they don’t tolerate D-y behavior. Of course having it in writing is not always a guarantee the guild isn’t being run by a bunch of D’s but it’s a good ground floor.
  • I like a guild to have 15-20 people on per night minimum. This means there is a high likelihood of Operations and Flashpoint groups forming. Raiding has been one of my favorite activities in MMOs, so I like to see at least a glimmer of hope that there can be such activities in the future.
  • I prefer a diverse guild. What I mean more directly is: I don’t want to play exclusively with a bunch of teenage to 20-something dudes. It’s not that that demographic can’t be fun (I have enjoyed playing with so,e folks who fall into that category), but I get the most out of a guild when there is a solid mix of older professionally employed people, including a solid group of ladies. In fact, some of my favorite raid teams had a higher than average percentage of couples. I think that led to the high degree of coordination amongst the team.
  • On SWTOR specifically, I prefer the Empire. Because they have the purple lightning. I’m addicted, what can I say??? When searching, you want to make sure you only look for a guild that actually is the faction you want to play –ty to @Asros for making me realize I left this out.

So now that you’ve made your list, get out there and start hunting for your ideal guild! And let me know in the poll and the comments how you found your guild.

Guild Policies: The Application Process

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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After the demise of the SWTOR forums-based guild application and forums, guild leaders have had to decide how they want to approach onboarding new members. Although many have gone for the “word of mouth” invite system, I am still a big fan  of having a solid application and a well-defined process.

Why I Like Filling Out Guild Applications

Having been in a number of guilds who have accepted all comers, and guilds that had well thought out applications, I am definitely a fan of the latter. A thoughtful selection of questions helps your guild define the attributes that are important to your members and the characteristics a new member will ideally have to fit in well with the personality of your guild.

On the flipside, the application and the process around vetting it can show an applicant a lot about your guild’s leadership structure and its members. I have actually decided against app’ing to a guild based upon its application questions and process. And that’s much better than joining a guild only to realize in a short amount of time its personality and activities are not at all in line with what you are looking for.

Deciding What Your Application Process Looks Like

It’s important that your guild’s officer team as a whole agrees upon how the process works, and what questions are important. If you have a rogue officer who will just invite folks willy-nilly, regardless of their app status, then there’s no point in having one. Likewise, if you have an officer who hazes all new applicants, but the other officers are not onboard with that, it can come across to the applicants and a dysfunctional officer team.

Call together an officer meeting and actually talk through how you want the process to work (i.e. if you even want an app, how long of a waiting period is there, is there public application review and comments, etc.) Then, if you have decided on an application, actually hammer out the questions. Finally, put the application up on your guild forum, with an explanation of the process.

4 Must-have Application Questions

For me, the following questions are the must-haves. If a guild isn’t asking these questions, they’re not getting a good sense of who their applicant is, in my opinion:

  1. What is your main character’s name, class, spec and level?

    2. This one is vital if you are running raids. It avoids the well-geared main being swapped for the brand new 50 after being invited to the guild, or the recruited healer morphing into a PvP spec’d DPS.

  2. Why are you leaving/why did you leave your last guild?
    Yes, I do realize this is often the big fat white lie section of an application. But you will be surprised at how often you do get a thoughtful response. If the reason smells fishy, talk to someone you know in their former guild and ask why they left. And beware the person app’ing to your guild who is currently in a rival guild — that is the smell of drama coming your way.
  3. Who do you know in the Guild?
    Follow-up with those named to see if they personally endorse the applicant. If not, this is not someone you want in your guild.
  4. If you don’t know anyone in the guild, what is prompting your application?
    This is a solid way to see if your forum posts, podcast pleas, and twitter recruitment calls are working. And if their reply is that they saw a guildie standing around the Fleet in their epic lootz and they want some, think about if you want this person in your guild.

Now, with that solid base in place, start thinking about what makes your guild unique, and start crafting some questions around that. If you are a raiding focused guild, you’ll want to ask questions about content completed, raiding availability, etc. If your guild is more casual and focused on alt leveling, ask about their stable of alts and how they like to spend their in-game time and what they are looking for a guild to provide them with socially.

Further reading from other guild management blog posts from my WoW blog:

Guild Policies: Selling to Guildies in Gchat?

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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Every guild has its own flavor, as does every game. Something that’s struck me as surprising in my SWTOR guild is the frequency with which we have folks, including officers, offering items for sale in Gchat, “guildie discount.”

We don’t have a policy on the topic, but in all my recent non-SWTOR guilds, crafting was done for guildies free of charge (their mats or the guild’s mats), and selling items in G was a no-no. Sometimes that rule was spelled out explicitly in the guild rules, but even when it wasn’t, it just didn’t happen.

So tell me, is this the bounty hunter’s influence in SWTOR? Or is it just my group of credit-loving guildies? Take my poll and let me know!

We’re Entering the Final SWTOR Stretch — the Wait is Nearly Over!

04 Friday Nov 2011

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As I keep telling folks, Star Wars: the Old Republic launches next month. Next month. Can you believe it? I mentioned that to someone who was on the fence about if they were planning to play at launch or wait until there was a free trial they could dip into risk-free, and I got that giddy “it’s almost Christmas” feeling again.

The movement of Guilds into Phase 3 only amplifies that we are in the home stretch of the game. At this point, guilds that have four members who have pre-ordered the game and redeemed their Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center. I am pretty sure our guild met that requirement a few dozen times over… 🙂

Have you decided on your guild yet? Are you ready for launch?

Clever SWTOR Guild Names

23 Sunday Oct 2011

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Every so often, as you are traveling about in a game world, you come upon a guild name that makes you giggle, or even laugh out loud. Inevitably, if I am able to quickly stop and do so, I tweet out the cool guild name and then go about my business. But since tweets are ephemeral, I thought why not start a running list of all the cool/funny/awesome Star Wars: the Old Republic Guild Names I come across?

This will be that running list. Please feel free to share the guild names you spot in the comments, and keep this list growing!

Republic

  • Bantha Poodoo
  • Blue Shirt Mafia
  • Corellian Coalition
  • Curb Your Imperialism
  • Ewok Dance Studio
  • Ewok Massage Parlor
  • Jawas Ate My Baby
  • Jawa Insurance Co
  • Jedi Meme Tricks
  • Love in Alderaan Places
  • Merely a Setback
  • Mos Eisley Cantina Crew
  • No Sleep Till Kessel
  • Pigs in Space
  • Sith Happens
  • Starfleet Dental*
  • The Antarian Rangers
  • The Snark Side
  • There is no Try
  • We Ain’t Found Sith
  • Wookie Love Machines
  • Wookiee Tango Foxtrot

Empire

  • Accurate Sand People
  • Aliens Ate My Lightsaber
  • Boba Fetish
  • Dead Rebel Society
  • Death Star Vent Designers
  • Dukes of Durasteel
  • Ewokalypse Now
  • Hoth Beach Club
  • Imperial Margarine
  • Incurable Sithilis
  • Intergalactic Planetary
  • IT IS KNOWN
  • It’s a Trap
  • It’s Getting Hoth in Here
  • Jawa Trading Co
  • Juicy KOTOR
  • Lazy Peon Tavern
  • Let the Wookie Win
  • My Wookie Steak is Chewy
  • No Country for Old Ben
  • OldSpice for Wookies
  • Pew pew lazerguns
  • Pirates of the Korriban
  • Pretty Pink Pwnies
  • Sector Forty Seven
  • Sith and Twisted
  • Sith Out of Luck
  • Son of a Bith
  • Super Silly Sith Squad
  • The One Percent
  • The Spice Must Flow
  • Utini
  • Wookie Cookies
  • Wookie Crisps

As an aside, it’s interesting to see how many guild names are Game of Thrones references…

* A guild moving on to SWTOR from STO. I suspect we’ll see a number of World of Warcraft Guilds that pack up their guilds, moniker and all, for playing Star Wars the Old Republic.

One Size Does Not Fit All: What’s Your Ideal #SWTOR Guild Fit

20 Tuesday Sep 2011

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I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to what I want to be doing guild-wise when Star Wars: the Old Republic comes out. There are so many options — join a guild that’s forming now, play with one of my World of Warcraft guilds that’s planning to start a SWTOR guild, or even start my own guild.

I’ve given them all a serious amount of thought since I put up the guild poll here a while back. And I think that alt creation capabilities willing, I’ll be doing a little of each of those.

In a perfect world where I had unlimited free time, I would have gone with starting up my own guild. But this year has been anything but that. So although I do have plans to create a little alt guild with some of my favorite gaming people, I am not going to try to do that as a serious full-time endeavor. I simply do not have the time I would want to allot to it (which I think is also the case for most of my buddies, truth be told.)

Instead, keeping in mind my favorite WoW guild of all time, I decided to look for a nice big, boisterous guild that would hopefully be teaming with folks who want to be out and about and raising hell for the launch. I also wanted to think about doing something a little different from my usual PvE raiding focused recent past. And thus, I sought out Coconut Monkeys, the PC Gamer SWTOR guild.

We’ll see how I do in a PvP environment. It’s a big change, but PvP, and specifically world PvP, was a key part of what I really enjoyed about my favorite WoW guild. I’ve already raised my hand to help out with whatever needs doing in building the guild for launch. As a bonus, something about having an active guild forum to go and chat in has gotten me just that much more revved up about the game.

Making Your SWTOR Guild Application Stand Out from the Pack

06 Tuesday Sep 2011

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stand out from the crowd

One of the more interesting account features on the SWTOR community site is the Guild Application. If you’re like me, you  probably didn’t even notice it at first. But it’s there, accessible by clicking my account at the top of the screen, then clicking the Guild application link in the middle of your Account Management menu on the right of the screen.

If you are planning to apply to a guild before launch, you’ll want to make sure you spend some time with this page. The fields they make available are some of the same fields you see cropping up on guild applications in other MMOs, plus a few specific to SWTOR. I’ll walk you through how to make the most of these questions to help your future GM get to know you and your strengths.

The Basics

  • What class will you play first? (you can only pick one)
  • What time zone will you play in? (PST, EST, GMT)
  • What days do you plan on playing?
  • What hours do you plan on playing? (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Weekends)

These fields help you form a basic screening for finding a guild that’s a good fit for when you plan on being available to play. Interestingly enough, these are the sort of small details that I’ve seen numerous new applicants in guilds leave over. SO make sure that if you are a PST time player you don’t join a guild that’s full of folks who are packing up for the night when you are just getting home from work.

Tell Us a Little Bit More About You…

  • List your past MMORPG experience (550 characters)
  • What are you looking for in a guild? (1000 characters)
  • What can you contribute to a guild? (1000 characters)
  • What else is important to know about you? (1000 characters)

This is the part of the application where you get to do the five paragraph essay on why you will be an excellent addition to the SWTOR guild to which you are applying. Yes, you technically *can* get away with one-sentence answers here, but why would you want to? The guild application, as I have opined elsewhere, truly is your place to shine as an applicant, and increase your chances of finding a guild that will be a good fit.

Lets take these questions one-by one and discuss.

List your past MMORPG experience

In addition to a laundry list of all the MMOs you’ve ever played (commenting on what you thought of them is optional and may be contentious), this is a good place to note if you’ve had any leadership positions, earned any special recognition or achievements, etc. Consider this to be a brief gaming resume. If SWTOR is going to be your first MMORPG, share other gaming experiences you’ve had, or what it is that’s inspired you to start up now. Resist the urge to embellish upon your accomplishments– just like on an IRL resume, it’s the kind of thing that can come back to bite you early and often.

What are you looking for in a guild?

No, this isn’t an in-game version of your childhood Christmas lists for Santa. You shouldn’t expect a guild to hand you all of the game’s perks on a silver platter. On the other hand, if you are someone whose perfect guild is one where everyone will lend you in-game currency, run your low-level characters through instance content, and talk to you on Mumble for hours, it’s probably in everyone’s best interest that you note that here. Ahem.

Some good things to note here: your interest in end game group content (raids/operations), PvP, and altism, how social of a guild you are looking for, and if you are interested in raiding, what sort of time commitment and level of focus you would want that to be for your guild. It’s also a good place to note any special considerations you keep in mind when picking out a guild — such as looking to play only with mature adult players or ensuring the guild lives by DBAD*.

What can you contribute to a guild?

Are you a quest completionist? An obsessive crafter? A hoarder of vanity pets? Do you blog or use twitter to keep up on game news and resources? These are all great things to share in this section. Additionally, if you aspire to being an officer in a guild, go ahead and mention it. And finally, if you have friends and family already in the guild name check them here as well.

NOTE: “friend” is not someone you just met in an instance today. I had a WoW guildie in a raiding guild who was responsible for some of the absolutely most annoying friends and family adds due to her spending much of her time playing alts in lowbie dungeons and apparently encouraging everyone in her groups to apply to our guild.

What else is important to know about you?

Of these four questions, for me, this me was the hardest. What more is there to know about me that’s relevant? Since this is not a document that anyone else sees, other than the guildmaster, it’s an opportunity to share something a little more personal than you might put in your public profile, such as what you do for a living or where you live or that your cat always howls into Vent when you’re not paying him enough attention. Or you can just use it to make a targeted pitch for why you would be a great fit for a listed raiding or officer slot. It’s a place where you can show a little personality, so make the most of those 1000 characters!

The best part about the guild application is once you spend the time to set it up once, you don’t have to do it again. You can just go in and revise what you have, adding in new accomplishments or revised things you are looking for at any time. It will be interesting to see if guilds continue to use the community website’s application system and forums after the game launches, or if there will be a migration to external guild website purveyors. Only time will tell.

For related reading on looking for a SWTOR guild, read this post. Happy guild hunting!

*DBAD = Don’t be a d***.

Eternity Vault demo, Guild Testing, and Changes to Cross-Server Chat

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

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Lots of interesting news tidbits over the last 24 hours or so…still no release date, mind you, but at least we have “several months of BETA weekends” to possibly look forward to…

  • The BiowareTV archive from yesterday’s Gamescom coverage has a brief live demo of the Eternity Vault raid. I can’t wait to be dishing out my own force lightning against sentry robots…
  • Also announced yesterday (though via the forums), guild testing is coming soon. And if you are looking for some assistance in finding a guid that’s the right fit for you, I’ve got just the post you need.
  • Devs clarified around a recent change to the ability to talk cross-faction — i.e. players may no longer talk cross-faction in the server’s general chat settings. Devs noted the made the change after seeing the griefing behavior too many of us have gotten to know and loathe in other MMOs, devs said “putting the onus on the user (“you can just /ignore them”) is not our idea of a quality game experience. “

How to Find Your SWTOR Guild

10 Wednesday Aug 2011

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guild screenEditor’s NOTE: This post is from August 2011 and thus is outdated, as the Official Community site’s guild forums closed down in mid January. Stay tuned for an updated set of resources!

Even though Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) lacks a publicly known release date, folks are already starting to feel like they want to get the age-old top MMO to-do item out-of-the-way: finding the guild they’ll start the game with.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a solid group of MMO-playing friends who are planning to start a SWTOR guild, there are still a number of ways to find a guild.

Start with the Official Community Site

As of this morning, the official community site’s guild search utility found over 30,000 results when searching for an Empire guild, and over 24,000 Republic guilds. The tool allows you to search by affiliation (Republic or Empire), or by primary activity focus (PvP, PvE, RP.) Many guilds already have some public forum chit chat going, which gives you a taste for what their culture may be like. Other have already started recruitment threads in the Guild Hall forum to give prospective applicants a better idea of what they’re looking for.

Once you find a guild that look appealing, just hit the “Apply to this guild” button, and you’re set. Now your guild homepage will show that you’ve applied to the guild. Should you have clickers remorse you can easily hit the “withdraw your application” button, and start over again. Kudos for EA/bioware for allowing the guild formation process to start ahead of the live date.

My only complaint (and it’s a small one) is that the guild application process is not customized. There is a big “apply” button on each guild’s primary page, and hitting it submits your application to the guild owner for approval, but there isn’t a formal application or any way to tell your potential guild anything about yourself. [NOTE: as Guld notes in the comments, in your account settings you can fill out what amounts to an application resume that is submitted to prospective guilds when you hit the “apply” button.]

Check out Fan Sites and Gaming Publications

Another way to find a guild is by checking out the many SWTOR community sites, and the gaming publications that are already covering the game. Many of these sites have some sort of guild classified or guild recruitment forums you can browse. Just a few of the ones I’ve seen include:

Put Your Social Networks to Work

Probably the best way to find a guild of like-minded people is simply to put it out there in your social media channels of choice that you are excited about playing SWTOR and see who responds.

Another easy way to get a pulse on interesting people you might want to be guilded with is to follow the #SWTOR tag on twitter, tumblr, or other social networks. In addition to a steady stream of news and blog post links, you are likely to see a number of guild promos as well.

If you have other ideas or resources for finding SWTOR guilds, let me know in the comments.