Guild Health - How active is your guild.

[Nalrach]

Two weeks ago I noticed another waves of folks leaving Istaria for greener pastures. I was wondering how the guilds were holding. Permit me to ask how the health of your guild is, which means the active status of your guild. By active I mean players that show every day and every weeks. All the guild can say the have a long list of players, but how many actually still log at least once a week.

I noticed some guild seems to fair well (having 3+ folks listed in player search each days, taken EST evening):

They are :
- Order of Pheonix ... Shardix stating a max of 16 still play
- Axe & Anvil
- Azure twiligth
- Brotherhood ... Uther stating"we are not recruiting"
- The iron circle
- Last of the forgotten
- Erus Ex Istaria ... Starligth staing 3-5/d and max of 10

and as final note, I'm affair to report that "the Ageless" health is low 3/d - 6/w. [:(]

[Icabald Percival dragon]

Elder Spirits are still holding on as well. We have at least 4 players on up until the wee sleep hours. On weekeends we can have an average of 10 players on.

But yes, it is sad to see so many drifting away. It causes one to sigh deeply and then keep on playing.

Icabald Percival Dragon
GM Elder Spirits

[Pharcellus]

We fair pretty well at times. We've had upwards of 15 people on at once, with some active players not present even then. I think we are in the 5-10 online average per day.

KoI also has a goodly number online daily, though I don't know their exact numbers. Tantalyr or Cauri can probably fill in that info here.

[Yuusuke Akiyama IV]

I'll say modestly for us now, (down from "sufficient" a month ago).

Expect 2-3 on weekday days, a few more in that time when it is late on the East Coast US / early evening on the West Coast US. Sundays are primetime for us. Can still hit 10 in then on a good one.

[Unicorn's Lady]

Azure Twilight has had a steady group of 7 regulars for most of this spring/early summer with occasional suprise visits from other members. Their schedules vary widely so it's a bit unusual to see all 7 on at the same time. (Especially since Nathaniel_Dawn Barber likes to lurk invis)


Nellie Lovett/Ochre Tekton

[C`gan]

Obsidian Order has an active 4 with a handful of others popping in from time to time. Schedules have been conflicting and vacation times and other messes have been scattering us about like crazy, not to mention the fact that we don't all work the same shift, so it's always difficult to say when we show online.

[Levity]

Crai Aisling has 3 active members, though we are active with a larger group of people and don't actually do much as a guild per se. Our GM occasionally pops in, looks around, gets distracted by a pie, and falls into a well.

-Levity Merrel, Crai Aisling, Sans AoP by Aiya's pad in need of a dragon statue
100 Blacksmith/79 Fitter/45 Mason/45 Carpenter/100 Reaver/53 IceD

[Kaylor]

Clan of Yggdrasil, proud winner of Greenest Plot [H] is still active too!

We have 4 active members, with the occasional extra two on occasions. We are also waiting for the return of my Head Of Council, due shortly. So actual number should be 5 to 7 members.

We also see a well known Lonely Ssilk under the Shadow of the Yggdrasil sometimes [;)]

The Clan is also a member of the Order Alliance, even if we didn't do much to help so far.

*waves* See you all in Istaria now!

Kaylor

[Warsong]

The Iron Circle is very active

We have gained players from guilds becoming less active with thier members. We hunt together daily. We have dedicated crafters who chat together about crafting. Course i hate crafting and won't be talking with anyone about that sort of thing. I do how ever have a new found respect for someone who crafts. Anyways we usually have about 12 active players each day. with more on the weekends reaching close to 15 or 20. We have at least two differant groups hunting at one time and at least one crafter chating about this or that in our chat room. For anyone who wants to just chat with active players we have a chat room that is called The Iron Circle its a place for friends to get together or just to get to know us. And for those of you who know me and just want to hunt with some nice people send me a tell and ill get you into one of our groups.(Based on your level)

[Danna Firesoul]

As mentioned above, Last of the Forgotten is fairly active. We have 3-5+ on most evenings, and often more than that on the weekends. There are a couple dozen who show themselves once a week or so, and our Active Roster of those who have been on at least once in the last 60 days is over 40.

Danna Firesoul
Oracle of the Last of the Forgotten.

[Sonea]

The Circle of the Hawk is still active as well. We have half a dozen who wake in the land most every evening, a couple who can be found during the day time as well. There are another 3 or 4 who might wake a time or two over the course of the week.

It sounds as if many guilds are reduced to handfuls of members.. In fact CoH felt the lack of companionship and at one point had merged with the House of Morrigan (a fine guild by anyone's standards), but in the end one returned to CoH and then most others came back too.IMHO, we returnedto supportthe long-time CoH member,but we would have been more than happy to stay in HoM, were there to have been a full concensus.

My point, though, is towards the possibility of merging guilds where only a handful of members remain. There are many benefits to a larger community, but there are two key challenges that can make ituncomfortable. The first is the negotiation over guild name and the second is the profound sense of family in the current guilds, particularly when a small group has been together for a long time (like CoH).It takes people out of their comfort zone for awhile.

A key lesson that CoH learned from our merger experience was that we needed to expand our personal circles of friends, regardless of guild, so that wehave a larger sense of community without losing our very close 'family' ties. I have met some of the most interesting peoplesince then.

Even so, I am curious about others' thoughts on guild mergers.

[imported_Lycaunoss]

Sad to report but New World Order is pretty much a dead guild. Most of our people got frustrated with the game and quit. With Chiyuu back in game membership is up 50%.

[imported_Frith-Rae]

we wax and wane like any guild -

but for the most part we have 2-4 the "active nightly" types, and then I'd say getting on up to 6 "active weekly", and when an event is annouced (barring computer malfunctions that seem to plague us recently...chuckle) there can be anywhere from 7/8 to 10/12 or so..

several of our players have alts, so sometimes when the alt is on they may or may not also be in guild ooc public chat - so its hard to say *shrugs*

As to merging guilds, I know some guilds have done it successfully - Erus Ex did it :) Loooonnnngggg time ago...

but some of us more specific type guilds (KCE is not only RP based/heavy but also dragon only exclusively) wouldn't mesh well with too many others. As far as I can tell we're the last dragon only guild left since creation of the game when we came about, and we're certainly seemingly the most RP active at least in public *shrugs* (i.e. outside of guild chat) and when we recruit we stress that aspect of our guild (i.e. if you dont like nor want to RP it won't be a good fit..."

It would never "fly" to then combine us with a mixed guild ;) - it just won't happen.

[Tokoz]

Refiner's Fire has five very active members, plus a few others. About to add one more very active member, once his computer gets upgraded. :) Considering we are a friends and family guild, we're not too worried about losing members.

[Tirion]

Some many remember me most if not all probably wont hehe. But I played on Dawn back in "the day" and recently have decided to re reg and take a look at the game again seeing what there is to see and all that. I know the guild I was a member of is more than likely dead and it is natural things like that happen, my main concern with the game is more the overall community health? How many people do you see on order in an average night? Couple hundred, 100, 50, 10 :P?

Also for the love of pete what are some good channels to join to actually talk to people? I messed around for about 30 minutes last night just to tinker with my settings and such and things were dead without my 500 chat tabs.

[C`gan]

Tirion, glad to see you back.

Actively talking channels: New Player, MarketPlace, WorldProjects, KCERoleplay, Dragon, Order Alliance, among others.

In the various channels, I'd say upwards of 50-75 different people I see in a night.

Oh, and an update for the topic at hand. Obsidian Order has two more who have joined over the past week.

[Sammo]

Abandoned Crafters has3 activeplayers with5 activeaccounts that are on most nights. As a guild we have had a rough time since the merger. Pre-merger we were known as Mithril Order of Aradoth, then briefly as Keepers of Mirth. We have had several members leave so we are down to three. We are mostly construction oriented crafters as the name implies.

Sammo