Tips and Tricks to Starting a Faction

Each faction has their own way of doing things. What works for some, doesn't work for others, etc. Thus, the advice I'm gonna give is taken from personal experience as a faction director, and is yours to use as you will

Before you begin:

1. Write up your faction rules and policies. How long can a member be inactive without warning before they're kicked from the faction? How does your faction feel about PvP and PK? Are you going to allow alts in faction, or only one character per account? Keep the list short, but don't let yourself skimp on what you feel to be necessary....too many rules can makes your faction seem arrogant and militarist, but too little can lead to things getting out of hand.

2. Choose a director. Running a successful guild is a lot of work, and its very easy to get in over your head. Your director should be someone you trust – a real life friend, your significant other, a close in-game companion. For my faction, I became second-in-command for my boyfriend, and a close friend from in-game became our first marshal. A smoothly run administration is key to a successful guild.

3. Splurge on a few telecoustics. Trust me.

4. Make a mule character. This is entirely optional, but having a faction “bank” is always nice for holding money and faction-owned items.


Recruiting:

1. Open your faction to all levels. Some of the best players in my faction we got at level 3 or even lower. Yes, some will never log on again, but that's what activeness rules are for Those that stay will be among your most loyal and enjoyable members.

2. Run FB19 runs with your faction. A lot. You'll not only be putting your name out there, but you're likely to get a good amount of unguilded people interested.

3. Related to the above, be helpful. Help with Fbs, bosses, instances... Even at higher levels, when most people are already in a faction, some people still need help – and some are just hoping for a faction better for them then the one they're already in.

4. Before you recruit over WC, start a chatroom. Then, when all the whispers start getting in, instead of inviting them straight to faction, invite them into the chatroom, where you and your director and marshals can get to know them first – and they can get to know you and your faction.

5. Remember always: A faction is for the players. Players that fit into your ideals as a faction are the ones most likely to stay for a good long while. Whenever I see someone shouting “looking for faction” in any chat, my first whisper is always, without fail, “what are you looking for in a faction?”

Making money:

1. Ask your faction members to donate money. You can make it mandatory if you want, though that's entirely your choice. Let them know that all money will go to the faction – paying for upgrading the faction and bids for TW. How they do this is up to them – selling rare pets or molds, farming gold, a percentage of what they make in overnight cat shops, whatever.

2. Be creative, but don't beg. Especially, don't beg random people. Yes, I have known people to shout in the common chat in West Arch “PLZ DONATE $$ TO MY AWESOME FACTION, PLZ!!!” Its annoying, and likely to get more people to blacklist you than help you.

Being Successful:

1. Always stick to your principles, as a faction, and yourself as a leader. There will always, always be people who will argue. You will gain enemies, but you'll also gain a lot of respect as a leader, and as a person.

2. Enforce your rules. You don't want to come off as a push-over, but try not to be too harsh. Finding the balance between the two is difficult, but once you do, you'll find it easier to run your faction.

3. As an international server, democracy is not practiced by everyone. However, give your players some say in how their faction is run. How you do this is up to you – for us, guild rules and policies are decided upon by the leader, director, and marshals as a whole; and marshal positions can be held up to guild vote.

4. Get to know your members. In fact, make sure everyone gets to know everyone else. There doesn't need to be any personal information spread around, but general information brings everyone closer. Know what region of the world your players come from, or what state, if they're US. If you have college students, chat them up about their areas of studies, and the older players love to go on about their kids and families. Ages are a good thing to know as well, so you can get a general idea of what your members have been through.

5. Be chatty in faction chat. You'll always have the quiet ones, but even they learn to speak up. Just talking gets everyone involved, and makes everyone feel more comfortable approaching higher ranked or higher level players in faction with questions or when they need help.

6. Try and keep guild drama out of faction. It happens to every faction, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. If a problem comes up, don't avoid or ignore it. Settle the problems as best you can, and remind both parties that involving the rest of the faction usually is unnecessary and only creates more problems.

7. Be helpful and respectful to all members. If your faction is open to all levels, be prepared to patiently answer any questions anyone may have, and expect to repeat yourself, especially with the lower levels.

One last word of advice for you, from personal experience: Running a faction is hard. A wise person once said that the hardest thing to lead is your own peers. Its true - leading your peers in real life is hard, but it's even harder to run a faction of people you have never met. Never, ever be afraid or ashamed to admit that you've gotten in over your head - its best for you, and for your faction.

Good luck with your faction, and I hope my advice helps ^^

I lead FateofAll and a faction is really just a little club of ppl and they help eachother its pretty much just 4 social matters.

Tiaque post was just great. Unfortunately, I cannot give you "rep" for it as in other forums.

My only concern is not with the post but with the game though. There should be more ways for guilds to make money.

-Allowing guilds to have permanent catshops and banks would be a great help. This could allow guilds to make money by trading certain mats
-It would be nice if there were periodicly guild quests. Yes, exactly that, quest for guild members only.

-I wish there were guild wars as somebody suggested in the suggestion box, so your guild could be hired (is not the same as TW) as mercenary.

I've been had all positions in this game in guilds (except leader) and still I find no many reasons to be in one. yes, i's important for FB, bosses, TW, chat, friends and other things but that's it.

Just glad I can help ^^

Also, to all those with the excellent ideas, thanks for mentioning the things I didn't touch upon

Well....in my faction, officer positions are earned based off of leadership quality and helpfulness. Marshals act as a council to me and the faction leader, and they're elected by the faction members - no matter how new they are, they get a say. Executors are chosen and reveiwed by the marshals every two weeks or so.

One thing I highly recommend that you do not give away any faction officer position to anyone based solely on level. We just elected a new marshal this week - she was level 38 when the voting started, and just popped 40 today. We have level 20s as Executors - and they're among the best officers of the server (but my opinion's biased ). Level only tells how far they've advanced into the game - I know level 75+s who are still utter newbs at the game for one reason or another.

Officers are your faction representatives - they should be the ones that not only practice the ideals of your faction in words, but in action as well.

...I leave long posts >> I'm sorry, I like to give advice - let me know when to stop. ^^

Excellent advice all around. It has helped Me so far. One thing I think this thread could use is the definitions of the various officer rankings and what is entailed in each officer position. I understand everyone's definition will be different, but nonetheless, any advice is helpful and will aid in shaping one's own definitions of what they expect from their officers.

Thank you for the reply Valdea but that wasn't really what I was looking for. Those are basically just the "permissions", if you will, that the various ranks have within the guild. It does, however, serve as a good starting point for those wanting to start a faction.

What I was asking for, specifically, is what job militarily, for lack of a better term, does each rank hold. An example would be, for argument's sake, the executor would be in charge of X amount of ppl during a TW, Marshals in charge of X amount of exec's etc. & on up. Another example: do executors play a key role in guild events such as internal fb's or does the marshal or director take care of that? I am asking more for Myself as I am leader & I'm trying to find other ppls definitions of what each rank is responsible for within the faction and define My own to create more structure & strength within.

I'm sure there are others out there that would benefit from this information also.

Guilds vary in how they use the officers. One guild I was in imposed a very military structure on officers to give every player an executor they could talk to as a first point of contact with the administration. Execs had specific Marshalls to escalate issues to, etc. That emerged in a faction that had grown up with everyone PMing the leader for anything they needed. As the faction got to level 3 size, the leader needed to impose a filter on those messages without drastically changing people's experience in the guild. So, the officers were a communications structure.

Most guilds use officers for a combination of rule enforcement and reward. Often, a guild will bring in a block of members (maybe a merger with another guild) who want some assurance the new guild will be run in a way they like - making their leader an officer helps give that assurance. Also, officers are usually your players who are visibly on the game the most and who don't mind helping other players or, at least, spending some time making sure they can help each other. Or, officers may be used to lend credence outside the guild to a person with an out-of-guild focused task (like a PR officer or a recruitment officer).

For TW, a guild will organize around its prominent core players. The basic operating unit for a TW is still the squad (although you may have a person directing a few squads with similar missions). Squad leaders may be guild officers, but they obviously do not have to be. You usually see a good bit of overlap there, because many of the core players in a guild will be officers, but it is usually a separate organization scheme.

Hey everyone, I'm rather new to PWI, but I've got lots of guild experience, both leading and following. Here's my problem, I want to start my faction, and I meet the requirements after only 4 days, but I cannot find the NPC to make a guild anywhere in Archosaur. Can anyone pinpoint this NPC for me?

I just started PWi last week, and Im still a bit lost, and I made a faction, and im helping everyone to the best of my ability, and alot of them are long time friends, but im having trouble on how to know what ranks would be best for them and im a bit cautious about recruiting new people, can anyone give an insight?

i have just started a faction and it is well balanced and has nice peeps in it i want to upgrade us so we can get an emblem. i had problems at the beggining because the player i put to director was promoting any1 who was lvl 20+ so i demoted them and threatened him with the loss of his position if he continues with what he is doing.