Despite so many of them ending in drama and despair, I’m still a great believer in the concept of guilds/clans/player associations/call them what you like, in MMOs. Maybe I’ve been luckier than most in the guilds I have chosen to join in my time, but I guess I’ve also made some of my own luck by creating some guilds from the ground up with the simple concept of creating the kind of MMO guild that I would want to be in. A pretty simple concept.
What I’m hoping to do with this series is record some of my thoughts on guild creation. Maybe my thoughts will work for you and give you something to think about. Or maybe you’ll write me some hate mail and tell me that this is a bunch of crap. Either way, let me be the first to acknowledge that, like most things in life, there is no single “right way” to create an MMO guild. What works for me, might not work for you – and vice versa. OK, that’s the intro done.
For our second outing, I thought it might be useful to talk about guild hosting. That is, once you’ve decided on your guild name (see part one), and are ready to build your guild’s website, where do you propose hosting it? There are two distinct options. The first is to buy a URL which corresponds with your guild name. In some cases the name will be available outright, but if you’re using a generic sort of name for your guild, you might have to get creative and insert an extra word like “guild”, or similar, into the URL in order to find something unique. With the name registered, you then need to find a plot of of hosting to point the name at. In today’s dog-eat-dog Internet market, decent hosting packages can be as cheap as a mere couple of bucks per month, with the only hitch being you need to pay for 12 months at once. I believe that if you’re confident about your guild concept, however, slapping down under $10 for the URL, and around $24 for a year’s hosting is a small price to pay. But more on that in a moment.
The other option relates to the large body of guild-centric web services that are already out there. I won’t name any service in particular as I don’t personally use them and, besides, don’t want to be seen as favouring some over others if I neglect to name one. But if you Google “guild hosting”, or similar, you will find tons. They are also regularly advertised on MMO-centric websites, too. In a sentence, they are kinda hard to miss. These services build a website for you in moments, with all the tools you need in a guild environment, like member lists, forums, and so on. They are really good for people who aren’t Web-savvy, but still want to build an online presence for their guild. They also come in two flavours: advertising-funded and paid-for. As the names suggest, an advertising-funded web service will stick banner ads and the like on your guild’s site. Sometimes this is done attractively and unobtrusively; other times it looks like a pile of crap. If you elect to pay for the service, meanwhile, your site will be banner free.
What’s best? Personally, I lean towards buying a URL and hosting and building a site. Among other things, I think it shows that you are serious about your guild. How serious? Well, you’ve gone out and paid real money for a URL and hosting, not to mention spent hours designing a website and an overall look and feel for the guild, while many of your competition are still scrabbling around on a freebie guild hosting sites. For many MMO gamers, looking for a stable and solid guild, this kind of thing speaks volumes. A freebie web service can give the impression, “Yeah, we’re here… but we could pack up tomorrow…” while a paid-for URL and hosting suggests you are more serious about things. Of course, the paid-for URL and hosting means you will need some kind of Internet savvy to build your site and forums (although with hosting add-ons such as Fantastico, that is becoming easier every day), and I appreciate not everyone has that. For such people, I’d recommend the guild hosting sites, but with the strong suggestion that the site is paid for (and advertisement free), so that even if the site looks a bit generic and “newbie”, at least the lack of advertisements gives the impression, “Here is a guild that might not be Web savvy, but is still pretty serious about sticking around and has been investing some real money into this…” You might not think people have these thoughts when checking out guilds, but they do!
Undoubtedly, someone is sitting out there reading this blog and getting hot under the collar because they have run their guild on a freebie, advertising-laden website for the past decade and are accordingly giving my thoughts the finger and shouting, “You’re wrong, Rob!”. To such people I say, “You are the exception, not the rule…” because I think if anyone sticks around in the MMO game for more than five minutes, they will see that the biggest, most-respected and longest-reigning guilds all take the path of buying a URL and hosting eventually, and don’t play with the freebie guild hosting services that are out there. At the end of the day, it’s all about perception and how you want your members, and prospective members to perceive you. Player or chump? Your Web presence, rightly or wrongly, can define you long before anyone reads a word about you. Consider that when you are debating whether to spend money on your guild.
Next time I will take a look at the next major step in creating a guild once you’re done with choosing the name and hosting package… the recruiting process. Bye for now.