Thoughts on Community Building

I have been a member of various online communities since I was but a wee lass. Like we’re talking 8-9 years old. I used to call up local Montreal-area bulletin board systems (BBSes) using my 1200 baud modem on my Atari 520 ST (but was souped up to 1040 bytes of RAM!). There is where I learned that when you’re online, your ideas (and how you express them) matter more than anything else about you.

In the intervening years, I have joined numerous online communities on the Internet. I even created several of them. That’s sort of been my jam. As a woman who is generally interested in things dudes are interested in, I have often had to make a place for myself in the online world. And World of Warcraft was no exception.

So as we’re now firmly into the Beta for WoW Forever, I find myself thinking about community, particularly when thinking about a certain toxic streamer who has necessitated someone creating an addon to mute/block/ignore anyone from that person’s affiliated guild. And the WoW Forever team wants to lean in to the community aspect, too, hence the campfires and stuff.

As such, I thought that I would talk a bit about the Dos and Don’ts of building a community in WoW. I was pretty successful in building a vibrant one back at the end of Wrath and throughout Cataclysm. While that’s a long time ago, the basics of community building never change. So without further ado, here we go.

Things to Do to Build a Successful WoW Guild Community

1) You need a place to gather. Not in-game. We’re talking a place where you and your guildies can communicate outside of the game, where you can write policies and where those can live. Historically, this has been a web forum of some sort, but Discord is a lot easier for some and is free, etc. If you use Discord, make sure you have some forum channels. This will allow you to easily post policies/rules/etc that should be read by everyone. The place in which you gather will also allow you to have persistent discussions about the guild, its purpose, what to do when members misbehave, etc. It should also allow you to accept applications to your guild. Yes. Applications. I am being absolutely serious.

2) Have people apply to the guild. Again, I’m being totally serious. It doesn’t need to be a very long application, and it doesn’t need to be super complicated. It just needs to require some effort from the candidate so that they understand you’re serious about whatever it is you do in the game. Whether it’s mythics or raiding or RBGs or arenas or even questing and chasing achievements, an application is a way to keep out people who aren’t serious about what you’re serious about, and it’s a way to get to know the applicant as well. Plus, it allows the applicant to understand what your whole guild is about.

3) Have a Guild Discord. This is especially important now with the guild chat link to Discord servers. This is a no-brainer. And in that Discord server, even if you already use it for forum channels, make sure you have some channels that are meant for organized group activities and make sure you have some channels for just chill hang time.

Don’t do These Things if You Want to Build a Successful WoW Guild Community

1) Don’t spam people in-game with invitations or text asking if they want to join. Just don’t. Random people do not want to join your guild. People who join your guild in this fashion have what we call “loose ties” to your guild. There’s nothing keeping them there. They’re just as likely to /gquit tomorrow as they are to stick around for three months. You have no idea if these people have similar goals to you, no idea if they’re jerks (to put it mildly) or genuinely lovely human beings, no idea if their idea of “common sense” is the same as yours. (Spoiler: their idea of common sense is almost certainly not the same as yours.) If you advertise in Trade chat or General chat (and, again, I discourage that), point them to your Discord application or website application, not to a “click this and instantly become a member” type thing.

2) Don’t leave your guild unattended without a word. If you’re the guildmaster (GM), it’s not recommended to just go away for like a week or three at a time without telling your guildies. They will leave. They might even try to gain control of the guild from you since you may be seen as “abandoning” the guild. Let them know when you’ll be away and if you’ll be completely cut off from the guild or not. (With Discord chat enabled, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be completely cut off, so bear that in mind.)

3) Don’t make just anyone an officer. First, figure out what you want your officers to do. They should have some kind of job in the guild. Guild banker, log analyst, RBG organizer, raid leader, etc, etc. If they don’t have a job, you probably shouldn’t have them be an officer. Note that sometimes these jobs are less visible than others. If they are providing you value as an officer, that’s fine. Just make sure they’re doing something. Heck, you can make an officer be “That Poor Schmuck Who Has All The Crappy Jobs In Raids”. (Hiiiiiii Toga! Hiiiiiiii Majik! Hiiiiiiiiiii Daey!) So long as they’re going to do a thing for you that you find helpful, that’s fine. But they also have to be consistent. You don’t want to promote someone who, a month later, suddenly can’t do any of your guild activity with you because their university term started. Sometimes this can’t be helped and work schedules change, and such, but most things are foreseeable. You should ask “hey, is there anything you can think of that would prevent you from being a consistent presence in the guild for the next 3-6 months?” and that sort of thing.

I have a lot more advice. Like, a lot more. But I think that’ll do for now. What dos and don’ts do you have when it comes to recruiting and creating a guild? Let me know in the comments below.

Also, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel. I went looking for Ruins of Lordaeron and then found it and healed it!

And I also explored Riverglades. I was severely below level and it was hilarious.