Another WOWInsider moment

I was wondering if they'd get around to posting this column.

Breakfast Topic: How's the Guild Finder working for you?

by Deb Montague Dec 7th 2011 at 8:00AM

Make the most of the Guild Finder

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

When Blizzard first proposed the Looking for Guild tab, I remember talking with my officers about whether we'd have a presence on it. The stated reason for the tab was to help people looking for a guild find one without having to stand in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and hollering, "Level 85 tank LFGuild!" My guild is rather specific in what we do and to whom we would appeal. Our recruiting is generally word of mouth and, I admit, winning one of the last WoW Insider Guilds of the Month titles helped, a lot. But we came to the conclusion that we should have a presence in the Guild Finder interface. You never know who is out there looking for a guild like us.

So I drew up a sales pitch and opened up the interface the first day it was available. Honestly, it's a pretty generic format. We run all content and raid pretty much any day. We don't have class restrictions so if we have more hunters than anything else, well, we have more hunters than anything else and hunters are still welcome to join. The only way to really distinguish yourself was your carefully worded sales pitch at the bottom. Would that be enough for people to find us?

We started with an average of 20 to 25 new names every week for the first couple of months. We always direct people to our website and then they have to go through an interview, so that whittled down the actual applicants to a handful. I would say the Guild Finder brought us 10 new guild members in the first couple of months it was available. My membership officer was scrambling to keep track of who had received introductory letters so we didn't spam them.

Since then, it's tapered off to three to four a week, and we have picked up a new member about once a month from the Guild Finder feature. The bulk of our new members have been friends and family recruited by current guild members. I'm thinking that's probably what it will really be, low-level interest with a couple people curious enough to go to the website. It's been good for us in that it gets our name out there.

What has been your experience with the Guild Finder interface? Have you been able to fill raiding slots, or have you found the interface all smoke and no substance? Is there something you would suggest be changed so you could better emphasize what you do? I'd like buttons for RP, hardcore and casual. Just because we do the occasional roleplaying event does not make us a roleplaying guild. Likewise, we raid but we are not anywhere near hardcore. I'd like to be able to make that distinction.

For those who have used the feature, did you find that perfect guild or are you still wandering about looking for a guild that meets your needs? Did you use this to find a guild, or did you hit your server forum or the WoW recruitment forum, or did you find a guild by word of mouth? If you used it, was it easy to sort through the guilds with posts or are they all saying the same thing?