Organize Guild Events to Encourage Community

It was once super easy to form a guild and keep people around based solely on their interest in raiding. Today, with resources like Looking for Raid and daily quests providing valor points, gearing up and playing the end-game is easy to solo. How do you create an environment that encourages your guild to stick together and have fun? Create events outside of raiding for players to get excited about and have fun with.

In my World of Warcraft heyday, I acted as the “Events Officer” (along with my now-wife) for our guild. We were responsible for planning fun things for the guild that specifically could not involve raiding, and we had a blast! Even though a number of my guild-mates had never met in real life, many of us grew close enough that we’ve since met in person and become friends outside of the game.

Some helpful tools can make your guild events easier to coordinate and more fun to participate in:

• Guild forums
• Guild calendar
• A shared voice server like Ventrilo, Mumble, etc.

And here are some of the ideas we used successfully for great guild events:

Group scavenger hunts

There are a few different ways to organize scavenger hunts.

The first choice is to have guild-mates team up and travel the world to find or do rare, interesting, or funny things. Teams take screenshots of themselves with these things and post them to your guild forums. The team that checks the most shots off in a specific period of time wins. Alternatively, add values to different screenshots – a screenshot of killing the last boss of an old raid might be worth a lot more than say a screenshot of a random landmark. Another possibility is to reward points for creativity in screenshots, and let everyone in the guild participate in voting.

The other scavenger hunt option is a little more manpower-intensive, but essentially involves having a linear series of challenges where your “events team” has a person to observe/riddle/challenge each team as they come along at a series of checkpoints. After succeeding, they give clues as to the next destination. The first team to arrive at the end wins. (Think Amazing Race in your MMO of choice.)

Holiday-themed events

Holiday-themed events practically plan themselves. Here are a few specific holiday ideas, but you can be creative with others.

• Secret Santa – trade random gifts wrapped in packages. This can be IRL if your guildmates are trusting enough to share addresses on forums or in-game if not.
• Halloween costume contest – pick the spookiest venue in your game to host this. Everyone should show up wearing their favorite in-game costume. (Give people advanced notice so they can farm/craft/buy the things they want.)
• Fourth of July festivities – meet somewhere secluded at night, shoot of fireworks, laugh and tell stories on vent.

The Great Alt Race

Every participant creates a level one alt in the same zone and races to a specific destination in a level-capped zone (without help from higher-level characters, flight paths, etc.). First one to reach a specific place in a distant, level-capped zone wins.

Tournaments

Organize a tiered duel tournament – each participant “buys in” by paying a small fee. The winner(s) of the tournament gets the pot. For even more excitement, host different tiers of the tournament in different zones (underwater, surrounded by high-level elites, in a mountainous area with treacherous cliffs).

Another option is team-based tournaments, held in open-PvP arenas (if your game of choice has that option). These have the fun side-effect of sometimes devolving into faction wars.

Parade of Champions

After we had defeated Ahn’Qiraj as a guild, we organized a parade from the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj to Thunder Bluff. We encouraged anyone who came to bring copious amounts of fireworks and booze, dress in “fancy” clothes (tuxes/dresses), and holster their weapons. As we encountered other players, we would help or hinder them (depending on faction) by pummeling with our fists (either the player or the mob they were fighting). When we arrived at Thunder Bluff (we were Alliance in a Horde town), we killed Cairn Bloodhoof and danced until we were wiped out by the incoming horde.

What’s your idea?

The sky is the limit when it comes to making fun events for your guild. It’s a great way to have a good time within the game world but outside of the expected game rules. Come up with other ideas? Share them here!