Representing rule (Why?)

[Guest Blackheart]

Representing

Representing is a thing I get often questions about and also a thing I have to deal with constantly. I decided to explain it here in more detail in hope that people will read it and understand that the rule is not there because I enjoy being cranky officer and annoy people, but because there is a good reason for it. So, why 100% represent rule? Well, excuse me for long wall of text with this one, but here we go.

I had to refuse few potential recruits because they were not willing to represent and we had few people leave the guild because of it. It's a shame people are not honest with themselves and with others and decide to just say "yes, no problem" to anything before they join the guild, but after, they are not following that.

Just because this is a game, doesn't mean we don't have to be responsible and show no respect to each other. You are not playing alone. You are part of community. Therefore people depend on you. If you don't care to be on time for event, you make others wait for you. You would probably not enjoy that if you were in their place. Everyone has stuff to do either in game or real life, so we have to respect each others time. Same goes with representing. If someone is not representing, that is not fair to others, who do represent. Rule is rule. Follow it or don't join and say "Yeah, it's not problem ", but then decide to not follow it. I'm recruiting people and telling them we have 100% rep rule and then they join and see someone not representing. How do you think they feel? How would you feel in that scenario? You would probably think Black is a bit crazy, right? He's bugging me here, but look at that other guy, not representing... 

The questions now is, why is this such an issue? In all other online multiplayer games I have played, you picked a clan/guild and you were happy with it. Well, if you weren't, you found another one, but you always stuck with one. It's like in sports, if you want to play football with a team, you pick a club to join and that's your team. You don't join five clubs and play for all of them. But GW2 is special case. Since GW2 allows us to have up to five guilds at the same time, a lot of people join multiple guilds. Now, I don't have an issue with that at all and I don't care in how many guilds you are. If you think you need more guilds, go for it, but rule is still to represent our guild 100% of the time (with few exceptions like personal guild bank and personal guild halls). The rule is there, because we honestly believe every serious guild should have this one and because we believe it's better for a guild that wants to be active and make a nice and familiar place for all members. I've been in many guilds myself and every time I saw people not representing it just felt so wrong and discouraging.  Like they don't care. And in most cases they really didn't. Those people never talked, never helped, never joined for activities. They only joined things when they needed something. Like guild missions, so they got guild commendations (currency).

Now, to answer some of the reasons I've heard so far for not representing:

"I'm doing meta event in Dragon Stand". I don't see how that prevents you to represent the guild. No event in the game will require you to drop off your guild tag in order to complete it. This was a reply from someone who previously represented on same character, but I guess decided to stop representing for meta event, which makes zero sense.

"I don't want to be restricted like that..." You are not restricted in any way. You are free to do play whenever you like, however you like, any event you like, you can solo or play with guild, you can take time for yourself and do your story, achievements, farming and all the rest. I don't expect everyone to join every single guild event or be present in guild chat 100% of the time. You can do your own thing. I just expect you to keep attention to our forum and discord for upcoming events and decide which ones you can and wish to attend. Because not attending any event for weeks makes me scratch my head and wonder why join the guild in the first place?

"I want to do WvW". You can do WvW, nothing is stopping you. I did WvW myself with our tag just fine. It works.  You can join a zerg or play with friends. The only issue would be if you are a serious and dedicated WvWer and want to do WvW raids with a guild. That I completely understand. But in that case, you don't join PvE guild, you join WvW focused guild or PvX guild with a focus on WvW. Same applies for PvP. I completely understand it's not ideal solution, but we have to draw a line somewhere, because we can't bend represent rules just for those few people who want to do WvW sometimes. So, it's up to you to make a decision how important WvW is for you. And note that we are aiming to expand our roster to inlcude WvW players as well if there will be enough interest. Same for PvP. But at this moment, we have people mostly for PvE.

"I'm in another guild with my real life friends."  That's totally fine, but why would you need to represent that guild? They don't get anything from it. I know it's cool to run around with your friends and have same tag on, but that's pretty much all there is to it. You don't get anything for that. In the past you got influence for doing content together with your guild members. This isn't the case anymore. So, representing is not needed for any good reason that is beneficial to guild. It's needed for guilds like ours, that are aiming to create an active community and trying to give people more reasons to play the game and hold their interest. Small guilds with real life friends is just for fun and to keep contact. They probably won't stop playing with you and stop being your friends if you don't represent for them. And you can play with them any time and as much as you want. Carrying that tag doesn't make a difference in my honest opinion. Because I doubt many people pay attention to your guild tag. I know I don't. When I do open world or dungeons or anything else, I don't look at tags. Even if I did, they would mean nothing to me, since I have no idea what that guild is and why should they be important to me. This is not PvP where you might recognize some hardcore ass kicking guild and think "woah, look this guy is probably important since he's part of this ass kicking guild". If you care for that stuff, that is. So, tags don't mean a thing. Not even our tag. I don't ask you to represent, so people can see our beautiful [LoS], but because it shows you care for guild and want to be part of it and make it a great place for all guildies. This is a job of entire guild, everyone has to contribute. 

So, in the end, I firmly stand by 100% rule, because I've seen guilds with one and guild without one. There is no something in between, like 80%. Bunch of guilds have that, but that's nonsense and it doesn't work at all. As soon as you let people know it's not 100%, many will not represent even half the time. Most of them represent when they join for guild event, which is pretty rare thing in general for most guilds.

Thank you for reading. I hope I didn't scare anyone.  I appreciate all members and I would hate to lose anyone. I think we are doing great and have nice community so far. We all have to be honest, fair and willing to contribute in whatever way we can to make guild great. You can't expect officer or leader to do all the work. It doesn't work that way. So, hopefully I answered some questions here and people can be more understanding if this rule.

If you have any questions, you know where to find me.

 

[Guest Slavic Varg]

Amen

[gelmir]

Thanks @Blackheart for the explanation you provided here!

To be honest, as the leader of this guild, I still can't understand why any serious member who joined our guild wouldn't like to represent us. Guild tag is there for a reason: to rep our community to outside world in activities we do, in personality we demonstrate. Guilds are things made possible by communities that create them - one man, a guild leader doesn't make a guild. And since day 1, we've been trying to create a gaming community of moderate sizes which would have fun together for long time to come. This guild originally was established in Rift, then in GW2 and ESO. Of course in most of these games the roster happened to be brand new and fresh... Well, mostly. But the idea, the legacy of it remains. We have officers here who spend countless hours and other resources (including real money) to make this guild happen. They are those who find the nice people like yourselves we need to join us, they are the ones keeping things running smoothly. They don't do this just because they are officers and they have to. No, they have zero obligation towards me or any member in this guild to do what they are doing. And since this is a guild, a joint venture of some sorts where many people come together to create something, then we all have to contribute. All-time representation is just the smallest way of contributing. Tomorrow we will have a PvE Raid Core ongoing in GW2, and people committing themselves to it will be contributing in many other ways. The day after it will be PvP day, the day after that will be RP one - all those people joining these projects will be joining us to "contribute", to commit themselves to these activities. And as a rule, when everything is settled in our guilds in all these games, we generally don't tend to recruit Social members just like that. Being Social in Lodge involves some kind of commitment as well, even if that is as easy as all-time representation. 

So my dear friends! Please know two things for sure:

1. We are not planning for over-growing, over-populated guild - that doesn't create a family sense in a community, but only a herd of names who barely know each other; which we don't want to have here,
2. Social members of Lodge are expected to be "social" as this adjective really entails. We don't need people just coming in and filling ranks and increasing numbers - numbers have never been our focus ever. We need people to have fun with, to have a history with, and if one day we part ways, to feel sad for such departure (like friends would feel, or even family).

So if you feel like we do, please join us! Otherwise, trust me: Lodge isn't a place for you! We don't want to be just another guild you join!