ArenaNet talk:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Guild Recruitment Bulletin Board

-  STOP THE SPAMMING   -

Nothing is more irritating than seeing repeated attempts to recruit new members being spammed on open channel while resting or talking to others in a town or outpost. Did you know that people hire themselves out as Guild Recruiters who do nothing more than spam these invites over and over? Although I applaud their industriousness this is very annoying and disruptive. I doubt that there is anyway to completely eliminate this type of spamming - case in point: the "Account Buyers" who manage to spam their messages even though it is considered a scam - but creating a message board which allows for recruiters to reach out to new players, or accomplished players who are dissatisfied with their current guild, would help to eliminated this annoying practice.12.21.174.25 08:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

- Now - In Response to the Discussion Topic -
I agree that a message board, accessible from a town or outpost is a good idea. Charging to maintain the advertisement is also a good idea. A suitable price can be charged to minimize abuse of this privilege or service. Making the post time delineated and reassessing the fee on a recurring basis will help to eliminate board congestion because if you don't pay the fee - your recruitment message is deleted. The length of time the advertisement is maintained should determine placement on the board with the longest uninterrupted ads appearing sequentially - this should appease the established guilds who have the where-with-all and means to maintain their recruitment messages.

Making the fee somewhere in the neighborhood of 1K/day would allow new and budding Guilds to get their message out and, like in the newspapers, purchasing the advertising space for a limited time will also demand that established guilds maintain their advertisements at a cost. If a guild can not afford a 1K/day fee - they shouldn't be recruiting anyway.

I am perfectly aware that charging for this service will impact the recruiting efforts of small and beginning guilds. But, I think that this may actually help to improve the quality of both new and existing Guilds. When I first started playing this game several years ago, I was besieged by numerous "Private Messages" (PM), and open channel spam by recruiters to join Guilds of questionable merit - other than the fact that they existed. In fact, this practice was so common when I was in a town or outpost that it forced me to join a guild just to have a [Guild Tag] which effectively removed me from their radar.

I disagree, however, with the author of this post that this would place an unfair disadvantage on new or beginning guilds. At this point in time, anyone who knows how to use the up-arrow and enter buttons on their keyboard, and has the insignificant funds to create a guild tag, can spam their Guild Invitations on open and private channels. Although this practice is convenient for established and new guilds alike to farm "Guild Fodder" (the practice of inviting hundreds of people into their guilds in the hopes that at least a few will stay), or new guilds created by inexperienced players with no intent to actually establishing a guild for any reason but for name-sake to recruit transient members. Creating and policing a Guild Recruitment board (much like the trading board) will help clear up the airways and enhance game play.

In my opinion, establishing a Guild should be a privilege, not a right, acquired by accomplishments gleaned from hard work and experience. Making it so will help eliminate the practice of spamming Guild invitations on open channel even if the creation of a message board, in any form, is not forthcoming in GW2. 12.21.174.25 09:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)