Guilds: A Matter of Size

I'll begin with my opinion about the size of a guild. I consider a guild to be small when it has under 30 members. The guild is usually still in developmentat this point and it is very important to recruit members from a variety of timezones to get a core chatting group going. The owners and (newly) involved members will try to recruit as many people as possible to increase the size of the guild and it's popularity.Once a guild has 30 members or more I would no longer see it as a small guild. With it's medium size, the guild has a steady member base and has most of its pages set up.It's now ready to switch to casual recruiting. Some guild owners don't switch yet and continue to go for quantity rather than quality. The continuous growth will eventually cause the guild to become large, with at least 75 members.A large guild usually possesses one or more of the following characteristics:The guild is public; the guild has no member cap; the guild does not use member sweeps and/or the guild has closed down but is not deleted. Since my general idea of the guild sizes has now been made clear, I shall move on to the next part: the various (dis)advantages of each size. To make everything easier to explain, I shall only discuss small (less than 30 members) and large (more than 75 members) guilds. Medium, the remaining size, will be discussed in a later section so stay tuned!

A very well-known fact of small guilds is that they are more close-knit. I'd like to think of it as a village compared to a city.A village is often inhabited by only a small amount of people who most likely know one another as well. A city is generally considered 'big and scary' by people from the village and its inhabitants are more spread out.Besides that, small guilds often attract people of the same timezone, which may be good and bad simultaneously. Many members are online at the same time which allows for more chatter during the peak hours. However, the guild will unlikely have members from around the world.Especially when the guild is private, people from other timezones will most likely stay away from this guild.Last but not least, the small size of the guild could imply that it's brand new. Some people may avoid non established guilds, because they question their longevity. On the contrary, other people who may want to help out a new guild are especially attracted by their small size.

Large guilds are often considered to be overwhelming and biased to a core group: guilds members who have been together for a long time.Any amount of members above 50 can easily scare people away, so why are there still people who join them?One of the benefits of the large size is that there is often someone online.This is beneficial for people who don't live in a timezone close to NST, because they will no longer be alone during the day. Another reason why people are interested in a larger guild, is because they are often public.Quite a few people don't like to send an application as if they're applying for a job and therefore seek out public guilds which are free for anyone to join. Besides being public, they may also offer a non member sweep policy. These guilds don't mind when the members go on extended leave of absence and are generally preferred by people who lack the activity to keep up with member sweeps. The downside of large guilds is something I've mentioned before in the small guild section. They're certainly not known to be friendly towards new members.Many (ex) members of large guilds have reported that they easily get lost in the crowd and that the other members, who presumably have already bonded, act less friendly to those who just joined. Large guilds who do not perform member sweeps could eventually lose all their active members, whether they get frozen or go on hiatus. This will be highly unattractive for any new members to join, since the member count does not truly reflect the amount of active guild members anymore and the guild will slowly fall apart.In this case, the owner may either decide to keep the guild around for nostalgia purposes, or delete the guild and force everyone to move on.

With these benefits and downsides in mind, I would like to announce the medium sized guild to be the ideal size. To be more precise, a guild that has between 30 and 50 members. Furthermore, it's preferred that the member cap is set at 50. Why is this the ideal size, you ask?First and foremost, they share the benefit of small guilds to be close-knit and welcoming. And secondly, they share the benefit of large guilds by having plenty of members from around the world. Therefore, they are not just appealing to people from around the NST timezone. Besides that, they often come across as being established, while not being as intimidating as larger guilds.

That concludes my overview of each guild size's (dis)advantages and what I consider to be the ideal guild size. Thank you all for reading this article. I sincerely hope I have been able to provide you some insight in guild sizes.This is just how I see it and I completely respect that you may not share my opinion.Whether you prefer small, medium or large is naturally up to you.