Get Vibrant

Thanks for the reply Plasma.

I have to somewhat disagree on the standard playtime thing, but just for the fact that in international guild such as ours there isn’t one specific playtime more like peak times, for example that that is a peak but so is 7pm-3am EST for us here in the US thus the suggested ops times. In terms of the ops times specificlly, my goal isto have times where we can have everyone no matter when they play have access to runs if it’s what they desire. I just can’t personally commit to lead and organize
times when i can’t be available like 8pm your time because thats when I’m at work, but i’m all for making it available and recruiting for it.

For advertising the only things i think i would like access to, if possible are our infinite loop logo on a transparent background and maybe a video file of the
“Infinite Crawl” I think that would be cool to start and end my streams with as a promotional tool.

I logged in to post on the subject that Zez had already covered… /highfive

What I would like to add, hoping someone hasn’t already mentioned it,… recruiting, eww. Not something anyone enjoys, so what about this… I’m sure
there are other guilds in a similar position. Rather than look for individual players, lets look for another guild to join ours. I know it sounds risky,
but I’ve done it in the past and it has worked out great. This way you talk to a “guild master”, if he or she seems cool, chances are the “majority” of
new members would be cool. Sounds funny, but the biggest hiccup I’ve ran into with this… “guild name”. Now our guild name is tied into to much, so
of course, changing it is not an option… but sense it is a great name, I doubt we’d have trouble finding people willing to run with it. As far as
leadership goes, the way I worked out in the past, keep our leadership and offer their #1, a #2 seat, and let that person select a certain number
of upper management positions to fill with their members, so we all mesh together. Something to think about. To anyone who has done their fair share
of recruiting, this is a pretty sweet option.

Thanks Plasma for being open minded to the idea, that’s a good sign. The idea got shot down immediately, without discussion… no weighing of the “pros” and “cons”
just told it wasn’t a good idea. And sense I’m not doing the recruiting, it makes no difference to me. It was just an idea that has worked well in the past, so
I felt I should throw it out there… ^_~

There’s nothing wrong with having ideas. Not every idea is taken up, but it’s important to say what you think.

Your comment disturbs me R3 because it has put you in the mindset of ‘well I’m not recruiting, so its no diff to me’. Experiences like that isolate your rather than make you want to get involved. This is never something that I would want anyone I’m associated with feeling, and I just want you to know that every opinion is of value to me.

Back to mergers, on Star Trek Online we had quite a lot of active members and when it started to decline the idea of mergers came up. I was against it because I felt that we would lose our identity, however like I said the balance between staying active and losing a part of your guild history is the hard choice. Which is why I say, if it can be done on our terms, then I am for it.

One of the more insightful features of Star Trek Online was Chat channels that crossed guilds and factions. you could create a chat channel that you could see cross-faction and on any of your characters. Using this function we created a multi-guild, guild for the purposes of teaming called Interfleet. This feature would have been a great help for SWTOR.

Thanks for posting Zez. One thing I would encourage is that discussions that start on the forums flow on through the forums or else we get a disjointed view of what has been discussed. If you want to please briefly post your opinions on R3’s proposal as it will definitely help the conversation.

I didn’t really go into too many details in game but from my experiance issues i’ve seen are:

*Incompatible styles: like bringing in casual social levelers into a raid focused guild and they start to feel alienated out flat out left out by members
*Mini Guilds or Sects: Groups of players that communicated among theirselves before the split and after don’t communicate to new people from the merger. This can
cause entire groups to leave or stop playing altogether
*Disagreement in Management Direction: Usually starts out all well and good and after time if miss handled or handled without clearly stated direction from the
officers causes people to question things like “what are we really? PvP? I don’t PvP so I’m out” and this in particular is especailly toxic among officers and I’ve
seen people who ran things together completely divided on this some will stay some leave occasionally comes along with high drama

These are the big 3 that i’ve seen. Alliances seem to work a bit better but, it’s much harder to manage effectively, I would imagine more so with an international
guild or guilds. With that being said your wrong plasma they don’t reset after each update they may have used to but, on my other server I have been using them for the past 2 years and have not had an issue with it. Now even with my with all this I have been apart of ones that worked even while experiancing all of these issues

LOL… I like you Zez, and that’s not going to change, but I’m not “wrong”. When I brought the idea up, I received 100% “negative” feedback. I realize
that we were all in game and had things going on, but you didn’t explain “why” you were against, just that you felt there are a number of problems
with a “merger” type of solution, and I was fine with that. I had already anticipated that when you had time, you would explain here and would could have
more of a real discussion about it. But from my perspective, not one thing was mentioned that would indicate that it was even a “possible” solution,
so “yes”, the idea got “shot down”, but I’m okay with it. But I do want to clarify a bit, because based on the replies, we aren’t all looking at the same
picture…

“*Incompatible styles: like bringing in casual social levelers into a raid focused guild and they start to feel alienated out flat out left out by members”…
This suggests we would be merging with “any old” guild. Which is why I mentioned meeting with the other “guild leader”, during which time it would be
determined if we all had similar goals, styles, personalities,… “are we compatible?”

“*Mini Guilds or Sects: Groups of players that communicated among theirselves before the split and after don’t communicate to new people from the merger.
This can cause entire groups to leave or stop playing altogether”…
This is “anti-social” behavior, and not a characteristic of a guild looking to expand. This happens on an individual basis more often than with an
entire guild. This is “why” I constantly bring topics up in guild chat. A team that communicates well, works well together… or “plays” well in
this case. Meeting new people as a group, is far easier than doing it on your own, for most people.

“*Disagreement in Management Direction: Usually starts out all well and good and after time if miss handled or handled without clearly stated direction
from the officers causes people to question things like “what are we really? PvP? I don’t PvP so I’m out” and this in particular is especailly toxic among officers and I’ve seen people who ran things together completely divided on this some will stay some leave occasionally comes along with high drama”…
In my experience, “miss handled” information can break a part a well established guild. In fact, when I first joined this guild, there was some drama
resulting in a founding member leaving. She was really cool, fun to talk to, and she was a knowledgeable player with a great personality. I don’t
know the details of what happened, but it was “drama”… it happens. PvP vs. PvE would be clearly explained in the interview of the leader.

You are absolutely right. All these things are potential destroyers of guilds, but really have nothing to do with a “merger”. They are far more
common in “large” guilds. We have less than (10) really active players. Seeking out a guild in a similar situation, would add lets say another (10)
in this fictitious scenario… Our size would double, and we would still be small enough to avoid large scale drama, but we could start doing
more stuff.

How I approached it in the past, as a guild leader… “LF small personable guild. Raiding experience prefered, but not necessary. Looking to be social
without large scale drama. Pst if you want a good player”… Bait them in and make a proposal. Potentially double the size, one interview. The guilds
that I successfully merged, were larger than what we are working with here. They had about (20) active members each, which isn’t enough to do 25man
content, so by WoW standards they were small. But I don’t see any reason it couldn’t work here. I like the members we have now, I’d like to get
into more content, but if that doesn’t happen I’ll just work on my Stronghold all the time, and trade decorations with Plasma. =)