When it comes to guilds not all communities are for all people. There are big huge social guilds that are so large you can get lost in them, on the other hand there are super small guilds that are so tight they seem closed off to newcomers. The community of a guild is just as vital as the goal of the guild, so you have to look for both a guild with goals that match your own, as well as a community you feel comfortable in. Some people don’t mind being a number on a roster, some people don’t mind being an outsider. Most people prefer something in the middle though.
Our guild tends to be somewhat close to the small side, though we do try to include newcomers, I’m sure we seem cliquish to start out to some people. Part of that is because, for the most part, everyone in the guild knows someone else in the guild and some of us have met in real life. In the span of the Cataclysm expansion, we’ve managed to recruit and keep one person who we recruited from the server without a referral. This worries me to a point. It makes me wonder if we are too close knit to be accepting of new people.
On the flip side, when I first came to the server, we were in a very large guild of which Kurby (my spouse) was a hardcore raider and I was a social member. I didn’t know anyone else in the guild, and felt really uncomfortable, even when they asked me to join in on “alt” raids. That is actually how Elunamakata went from being a “fun” level 13 character to getting leveled and geared to heal my way though Cataclysm in a month and a half…she was in a guild with some friends.
That brings about the question, how do you balance your guild community so that everyone feels at peace? I am actually still looking for that balance as the guild leader. Earlier last month I wrote about scheduling social events which I still haven’t got nailed down. As our guild’s focus is progression raiding, I find it hard to balance raiding schedules as well as social schedules. It leaves me to wonder if having someone in charge of a social schedule would be optimal. When does a guild become big enough to need someone to oversee fun times for the people who aren’t into raiding?