Greetings everyone, it has been quite awhile since I have made a posting, even after saying that this side of things would become more active and enticing as a whole. I will be honest here, I am seeing a severe lack of participation of late. Sure there are some that will do and be there for every little event we plan, but I will say, speaking for myself especially, that we have become a bit too comfortable in our rut, and I believe that is something that has to change.
In the long short of it, a lot of us have drifted into what I like to call the "soloist mentality". Basically what happens in this situation is that we feel in some ways we're more efficient and can get more done by doing things on our own than doing things as a group. We in a sense become hermits in our own guild. I'm not pointing fingers here, because hey, guilty as charged. We see the guild more as a corner store to get a need then a place to socialize and make our community better as a whole. We treat an MMO like a single player game. I know sometimes people need to do their own thing, thats expected, but when things like that become the standard instead of the exception, then it is time to re-evaluate the situation. I will go over a few things I believe have caused this shift, and some things I believe will bring us back to the sense of community that we want and begin the retooling process, so we don't have to get into a full on rebuilding process.
Lack of encouragement: We have not been very good in getting our members feeling like they belong, instead of helping we sometimes go almost to the point of ridicule. Not everyone will be at the same skill level as everyone else, some people come along a little slower than others, this does not mean that they cannot succeed, they just need a little more TLC to bring out their greatness.
Lack of Motivation: This is something that Patty has pointed out to me many times, we lack goals, we don't know what to do. When we were leveling the guild, we had a goal, when MoP came out, we had a goal to achieve things. Right now, we're kind of drifting, so we need to work on setting goals for our guild so we can get ourselves back on track.
Lack of learning: This is a biggie for me, honestly. Whether its as simple as learning your class to watching a video on a boss fight, it seems that we do not want to take the time to learn it and instead wait for someone else to tell us how to do it. We can do a better job of this, making the resources available for ease of use.
Feeling of entitlement: I think we get into the idea that we just do what we want because we're better than everyone else. that's not the case. Sometimes to learn we need to take on different roles to accomplish our goals, whatever that may be. No one should feel entitled, we all worked to get the guild to where it is, and we need to work on getting it back on track, together.
Lack of Focus: Facebook and Youtube are fun, except when you're suppose to be focusing on the task in game. You log in, you tab out, you surf the web, etc. (Once again, guilty) We need to work on returning our focus, and by that we must have goals to focus on.
Now what I may suggest to get people involved and more invested in the guild as a whole.
Guild bank funds: When activity gets lacking, we still like to use the perks we have been using, and don't pay attention to the fact that we are using a finite resource. The Guild Bank is there to help guildies, however it will become useless if the repairs and such is no longer available to use, either from restrictions or from it simply drying up. so for the short term, I want the guild to build up a reserve of 100k gold, then after that, 20k per month added to the bank. its only 5k per week and if we work on it, either by donation, dungeoning as a group or scenarios as a group, and yes, even raiding, we can build our coffers up and maintain a steady flow of guild income to be used for more fun projects. Events such as raffles for the guild bank can be set up for motivation of that as well.
recruitment: I may have said a dirty word, because it seems sometimes that we get to a point of wanting new blood, then kind of give up on it for whatever reason. I believe its time to have a constant stream of recruitment, that way we have a deep bench of people that can help with all sorts of activities. We don't really screen people, and try to take their word for it. We sometimes have to take a chance and bring in new folks, its how we grow as a community, and new blood and activity may be helpful in keeping some of us old hats going for the long run.
Raiding: IF we want to take raiding semi-seriously, we need to build some core folks for that then branch out to bring in more people that want to raid. Committing to raiding for 3 weeks is not a recipe for success, and I think the more successful we can be, the more people will be willing to come to our guild to raid.
Transmog runs: People LOVE transmogs, and if we could set up runs for people that would like to run in a group, then that would get people interested in that. We could also use them for people that want to collect pets in certain raids and would rather not go alone.
These are just a few ideas, I se I would love to hear more. please post on here, facebook, or in game, and we will take any suggestion under advisement, anything to get the guild back on track!!
-Wayne
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