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I been playing since the open beta and eventually I got my wife to play ( my wife in IRL, not in-game). and I have been with this FC for awhile now but I feel like its time to move on. what are some tips for starting one and being successful and maintaining our ranks while trying to become one of the greats?
The first big step is to determine what the end goal of your FC is. Will you be raiding? Will you be crafting? What do you want to do with the FC?
Keep in mind a FC master is like a part-time job, so you will be spending 10 to 20 hours a week maintaining it. If you can't or aren't willing to put in that time, you may reconsider your options.
Also, what do you mean by "greats"? Do you want a big FC? an active FC? or do you want to be tackling world firsts? Is family and work life important for you to maintain? Try to be specific and prioritize them. Include your wife and any friends who might join you in the discussions of how you want the FC to be like. You need at least 5 people to make a FC, so bounce ideas off them.
Recruiting is a big deal for FCs. The average attrition rate for members in a FC is somewhere around 10% every week. That means you have to recruit a lot of people to keep your FC numbers up. Of course, more members does not mean the guild is necessarily better, but it is a metric players still use when looking for FCs.
Anyway, there's two extreme methods of recruitment: the public/random invite and the interview.
The public invite is a fast and dirty way to get a lot of people. However, it also has the highest attrition rate of all the FCs, and you're likely to lose 20% of all members you recruit within a week. If you're fine with seeing members join and leave without warning, this should be fine. I will warn you however that it will lead to antipathy and people will eventually stop welcoming new members and you will have a colder, more distant relationship between FC members.
The interview is like a full-on job interview. A player expresses interest in the FC and you ask them relevant questions on the gaming experience, classes/jobs they play, schedules, and expectations (suppose you want a player who is willing to spend 10 hours every week raiding. You will want to tell them that expectation from the first meeting, just so you don't waste your time on a player who won't fit). Once you know each other a little, you may invite the initiate on a dungeon run or raid. This may be a true run, just to see how they play or it can be a scripted event where a person intentionally messes up a mechanic and sees how the player reacts. The whole point is to give you and the other members a better view of how the new member interacts with the FC culturally. If they become very angry and toxic after a failed boss fight, you may reconsider bringing them in unless you have someone who can calm them down. This obviously recruits a more involved and happier player, but it can also take months to find the right player.
The method you use can be either, or a mix. You're a very new FC so you have time to experiment with the process. Any members you bring in to your core and make an officer though, I would highly recommend a full interview. Sometimes it's unnecessary since they've been showing you these things all along through several months of playtime together, but you should at least be aware of the process you're using.
I'd personally recommend the interview option for your first 8 to 10 members. That way nobody is really leaving in the very early phases of the FC and you can understand your new best friends better. After that, you can change the recruitment method. I'd really recommend getting everybody's opinion on it beforehand and telling them your reasoning for changing it, as that does help foster a more equitable culture and promote communication.
This is just a generalization though. If you have specifics when founding a FC, we can give more detailed feedback. Good luck and have fun.
Hiya \o well it boils down to what type of FC do you want and what type of people do you want to join your FC. If you want a fun casual FC that is full of mature social people that don't mind the odd wipe here or there or you after a super hardcore FC that it's main focus is gearing up to take down Raids as soon as and be the server 1st?
1. Keep the FC active with members. You will get say: 20 Members and props 1 or 3 of them will remain active for a good while and the rest of the 19/17 after 2 weeks prop never see them for another 3Months +
2. Set what type of FC you are.
3. Talk to your members and see what they need and if they do need help in.
4. Keep the peace, when your offline members might get in a squabble and it's best to find out what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again.
5. Don't give up, if you really want to make a great FC but you find your FC is dead don't give up just get more active members in.
6. Remain active and start things yourself. As FC leader it will fall down to you to organise the things people need doing so this requires you to be online more then you would like to.
Hmm.
As implied by the above posts... be prepared for a lot of work. A lot of work.
If you're not online for at least 3 hours each day... don't expect to get much done.
I would just say start off by also having guidelines in place, trust me it will help should you expand your FC.
And in terms of recruiting, do not shout out. Most players at least myself find it rather annoying when groups constantly spam messages.. Players do not join that way.
It is better posting on forums and such.
As you expand and learn about the players in your group and trust them, you will probably want some officers to help you out. Our FC has a few and has helped me alot :)