Looking for like minded individuals to start a new Guild Wars 2, possibly TESO guild.

Introduction

I have been gaming for most of my life. I am an avid MMO player, and it is by far me favorite genre. I am a PVPer, at times a very hardcore PVPer. One thing I have never been and do not foresee ever being is elitist. I treat others with respect, both my allies and opponents. I am very easy going, never rage, and I am told a pretty nice guy. I am a hard worker, and do not believe in doing something unless I am willing to put 100% effort into it. I am in my early 30's and have a wife and a son.

I have leadership experience both in gaming environments and out of gaming environments. I have led a guild before, and been an officer in a few other guilds. I have been a guild member even more often. I have been a leader in real life environments and a follower in real life environments. I will not say I have led "the best guild on the best server", because I have not. I have not lead a large corporation. I have only lead small groups of people for the most part. I do think I have a good balance of experience and following others, but certainly I have not seen everything.

Some might think my personality type does not make a good leader. I disagree of course, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I am looking for people that share some of these qualities though they do not have to share my exact same personality type by any means.


Guild Philosophy

The type of guild I envision may not be similar to the type of guild someone else envisions that would be interested in contacting me. That is fine, and those are sort of details prospective partner(s) could work out with myself.

I prefer to have a guild leadership style that promotes guild members having a say in guild policies and decisions. How much or how little is something that would need to be worked out. If there was a way to have a full blown democratic leadership style that would still allow for the guild to function I would be for it. Though, I do think a full blown democracy would be difficult to pull off and it is more likely that we would settle on a hybrid system, I am definitely willing to do everything I can to ensure members feel like more than just numbers. I want a relatively new member to be able to come and fill a leadership position if his peers decide he is capable and the guild has a need for the leader.

Leaders being elected by members is something I am interested in exploring. It may not be what is decided in the end, but I want to at least look into it.

New members being approved by current members through some sort of voting system is also something that I am very interested in. In fact, for new members I do not not particularly believe in having an initiate rank and than kicking those that are not good fits. I want to have potential new members play with us for an amount of time, and when we feel we have seen enough of them put it to some sort of vote. Whether it's simple majority, 3/4ths majority, etc. is something to consider but I feel this is an excellent way to ensure we only invite quality people into the guild.

When I say "quality people" I am primarily concerned with personality. The number one goal I have for this guild is to have guild filled with quality people that enjoy each other and having fun. All other goals are secondary. That does not mean I do not want to be one the better guilds on a server in PVP/E/X, etc. That is certainly a long term goal I would want to strive for. First and foremost though, I want to have a guild that is full of people that are high character people that have fun. Recruits do not necessarily have to have played every MMO or MUD since before they came out. They do not necessarily have to have achieved a certain rating or been in a certain high end guild or downed a certain boss first.

I also am not terribly interested in having a guild that has a massive amount of rules. I am even really against any sort of formal application. I am willing to have a guild application form, but I am not necessarily in favor of making it mandatory. The only real way to get into the guild in my view would be to play the game with us. If the individual applied it certainly wouldn't hurt, but again I don't know that it needs to be mandatory.

Things such as website usage, voice chat usage, representing the guild, etc. are not necessarily things that I think are necessary rules to have in place. Of course, in order for someone to get invited into the guild they would have to join us on voice chat. Otherwise, we have no way to truly judge their character. After that, I don't believe it needs to be mandatory, because I think the people we invite would use these mediums anyway.


What type of people am I looking for?

I am looking for people that share some of my personality traits and vision of what a guild should be, though how much or how little is not important. I am certainly not looking for clones of myself. I am more interested in finding intelligent, experienced, charismatic, and hard-working individuals willing to do everything it takes to see this guild succeed. I am not interested in finding someone that wants to disagree with everything, but I am also not interested in finding someone who never disagrees with anything. I want people willing to provide ideas in order to grow this guild into something special.

I am looking for people that realize many guilds do eventually fail, because they are not built on a firm foundation. I want to ensure the foundation is incredibly solid first and foremost.

I do not require an immense amount of leadership experience per se. However, I do value leadership experience that is gotten from outside gaming. It is very easy for someone to create a guild, mass recruit people, and say they have led a guild. In the real world, however, you cannot just promote yourself to manager or platoon leader(there are exceptions no doubt). Also real world leadership is a whole different animal for so many reasons. In a gaming environment, it is very easy for someone just to leave a guild and go to another. It is a huge challenge to keep people interested, because not much is on the line in most cases. I want to create an environment that people enjoy so much they do not want to leave on a whim.

Anyone that meets criteria I am seeking would be on equal footing with me. I am not any more powerful than any of the other "founders" of the guild if you will. Depending on how leadership is chosen in the guild there is the potential I might take orders from someone else if the guild sees said person as a better leader in a particular area. I am perfectly fine with that, and so should anyone looking to join me on this. Early on, however, the 3-5 "founders" will run the guild. It may stay that way, it may not. It depends on what kind of system we put in place, whether it be a democracy or some other form of leadership. After a certain amount of time, I anticipate the founders of the guild will drop that title and become members, officers, what have you. Many of this is speculation and open to discussion of course.

As for web hosting fees, voice comms fees, etc. I am able and willing to pay them. If others want to help we can work that out, but know that no one will ever have to.

I am not in any particular hurry to make this happen. I am willing to wait as long as necessary to find the right people to help me get this started. I do not want to open the doors of this guild to the world until we are 100% ready to. Website, voice comms, and basic policies will all need to be in place and fully operational.


Why am I doing this? Why don't I find someone in game to start a guild with? Why don't I just join an established guild?

Good question! The truth is I do have a few people that I know outside of gaming that do game with me from time to time. However, they have a fairly casual play style and would not be interested in running a guild. They would be interested in joining, but of course they would have to go through the full process just as anyone else would.

I recently left the guild I was in and have been guild-less for a while. I have been looking at other guilds and have yet to find one that interested me. Most guilds are either very dictatorial and/or overly causal. That is not to say I dislike people who are casual, in fact I am all for having people with casual play styles in the guild if they are a good fit.


How to join in on this adventure

If you are interested, send me a private message. You will have to play Guild Wars 2, because it is really the only game I play right now. Give me a reason why you would work well with me, a summary of your experience. Sell yourself, basically. There is no formal form to fill out, just tell me as much about yourself as you can. If I am interested I will send you my in game information and we will play together, you can either join the small guild of me and my two friends for now or we can start another one. Either way it will be temporary. We will play together for however long is necessary to determine if we are willing to proceed further. We will set up some sort of temporary free forum on enjin to discuss policies and procedures. Once we have a core leadership of anywhere from 3-5 people we will start on constructing the website, getting up voice comms and setting up some policies. Only when we are fully prepared will we launch to the world. As I have said before, I am in no hurry to get to this point. I want to build something that will be around 20 years from now.

I am keeping a very curious eye of The Elder Scrolls Online, it is garnered my interested recently with some of the new information released about it. Whether or not this guild will officially be a TESO guild remains to be seen. I personally need to see game play and play it myself.


Closing Thoughts

If you have read this far, you are either bored or perhaps you are interested. Contact me and we will get started. If you are not interested, because you are in a guild that is fine too. In that case, if you have suggestions I am very willing to hear constructive comments or criticism.

I have said before and I want to reiterate it one last time, I do not want this to be a standard run of the mill guild. I want this to be a quality community that treats each other and opponents very well. A long term goal would also be to be one the better guilds in terms of performance, however it is not the priority. If you are willing to put in the work, message me. If you are one of those that wants to be a leader in a guild so you can brag to your friends, or bark orders at people, do not message me. If you realize it takes a lot of work, the job is not glamorous, your responsibilities will take away from your game time, and you will not always be thanked please message me.

Thank you all for your time!