(One again I speak for the Night Blades and not for any FC on the server who isn't the Night Blades)
For the Night Blades, the forums are exceedingly important. Since we're large and also do endgame, saying stuff in FC about wanting to do stuff is going to get drowned out by all the chatter about how a Pirate is Free
http://www.nightblades.shivtr.com/events - is our Calander that people sign up to Raid with. We have people sign up so we know they CAN go. There's just nothing like that in game. As you can see, we do a lot of raiding (Team Gridania was taken down temporarily to reschedule it), 4/5 nights a week with different people, so it's the only way to keep that organized.
http://www.nightblades.shivtr.com/forum_...st_9697765 - This is our Raid Schedule thread, where everyone puts their Ilvl, what they want to raid, how often, and what their schedule is. Again, just not possible in game and back the officers more aware of what people want us to set up.
RP events are also posted there, discussions of plot and lore, getting people into the guild ICLY. Without the forums, we would certainly drown and I encourage all our members to join it because without it we have no record of what they want from US. And that's important. It's our jobs as officers to get people where they want to go, and we just can't without people telling us in a place where we can see it.
Forums are very important for larger guilds, they're almost a necessity.
We use Shivtr, I've never had a spam email from them and I've been using it for like 5 years O.o
~~~
ON RECRUITMENT:
We're actually fairly laid back. We have one major rule for getting into the Night Blades that some people might find "Elitist" which is sticking to lore - we're very into making sure no one breaks lore, but other than THAT we don't really have any set rules in place whether or not you can come in.
I know some RPFC's have an approval process that can take weeks, but ours will at most take days and that's only if I have to ask you a question about lore. To date, we've only turned down one person - because their character was blatantly lore breaky and they refused to work with the officers to help make it more lore appropriate. This doesn't happen often though, as a lot of our recruitment is word of mouth - the members enjoy being in our guild, they tell others to join our guild or people enjoy roleplaying with us in the community and they decide to join us that way - so they already know how we are so it's generally not an issue.
Honestly, looking through the "Big name FCs" in this game, none of them really have a lengthy recruiting process or seem that hard to get into. What great about the High Population FCs is that all the themes are different so they aren't even competing with each other and the smaller FCs seem to have very niche themes for people looking for something specific. It's pretty great, really.
ON HOUSING:
We have a lot of people who come hang out in the mansion of the NB (Plot 6, Ward 5 - Lavender Beds) who aren't in the NB. Some of them wait around and roleplay with us when they see us in the house (Since, with some exceptions, inside is generally considered IC). We welcome it! A few people have gotten into the NB that way, just walking in and roleplaying with us. We like people outside our FC. We even have an OOC LS for people to talk to us. Like the others said, we may not always be there, but if you see us, feel free to be like "So this is the Night blades HQ?" all in character.
Maybe FCs seem more intimidating then they are? We're really just a bunch of dorks...
For the Night Blades, the forums are exceedingly important. Since we're large and also do endgame, saying stuff in FC about wanting to do stuff is going to get drowned out by all the chatter about how a Pirate is Free
http://www.nightblades.shivtr.com/events - is our Calander that people sign up to Raid with. We have people sign up so we know they CAN go. There's just nothing like that in game. As you can see, we do a lot of raiding (Team Gridania was taken down temporarily to reschedule it), 4/5 nights a week with different people, so it's the only way to keep that organized.
http://www.nightblades.shivtr.com/forum_...st_9697765 - This is our Raid Schedule thread, where everyone puts their Ilvl, what they want to raid, how often, and what their schedule is. Again, just not possible in game and back the officers more aware of what people want us to set up.
RP events are also posted there, discussions of plot and lore, getting people into the guild ICLY. Without the forums, we would certainly drown and I encourage all our members to join it because without it we have no record of what they want from US. And that's important. It's our jobs as officers to get people where they want to go, and we just can't without people telling us in a place where we can see it.
Forums are very important for larger guilds, they're almost a necessity.
We use Shivtr, I've never had a spam email from them and I've been using it for like 5 years O.o
~~~
ON RECRUITMENT:
We're actually fairly laid back. We have one major rule for getting into the Night Blades that some people might find "Elitist" which is sticking to lore - we're very into making sure no one breaks lore, but other than THAT we don't really have any set rules in place whether or not you can come in.
I know some RPFC's have an approval process that can take weeks, but ours will at most take days and that's only if I have to ask you a question about lore. To date, we've only turned down one person - because their character was blatantly lore breaky and they refused to work with the officers to help make it more lore appropriate. This doesn't happen often though, as a lot of our recruitment is word of mouth - the members enjoy being in our guild, they tell others to join our guild or people enjoy roleplaying with us in the community and they decide to join us that way - so they already know how we are so it's generally not an issue.
Honestly, looking through the "Big name FCs" in this game, none of them really have a lengthy recruiting process or seem that hard to get into. What great about the High Population FCs is that all the themes are different so they aren't even competing with each other and the smaller FCs seem to have very niche themes for people looking for something specific. It's pretty great, really.
ON HOUSING:
We have a lot of people who come hang out in the mansion of the NB (Plot 6, Ward 5 - Lavender Beds) who aren't in the NB. Some of them wait around and roleplay with us when they see us in the house (Since, with some exceptions, inside is generally considered IC). We welcome it! A few people have gotten into the NB that way, just walking in and roleplaying with us. We like people outside our FC. We even have an OOC LS for people to talk to us. Like the others said, we may not always be there, but if you see us, feel free to be like "So this is the Night blades HQ?" all in character.
Maybe FCs seem more intimidating then they are? We're really just a bunch of dorks...
![[Image: tumblr_n92fndN0EH1rujdn8o1_500.gif]](https://33.media.tumblr.com/449e130ac31106ec8aeda3d0f121d76b/tumblr_n92fndN0EH1rujdn8o1_500.gif)
