After many months without a guild, my boyfriend and I decided to blow the dust of old Ash and make it into a social/casual guild. Most people left Ash after we stopped raiding last year, but many still got their alts there. Our mains are still stuck on Tarren Mill and Ash is on Kazzak, so we have our alts there which we play more than our mains at the moment. The game kinda stopped being fun when we stopped raiding in Ash and everyone left and it hasn’t been very fun since then. So we thought it would be a good idea to try to get something going in Ash again. We hope old Ash players who don’t have a lot of time to raid anymore will come back and join us, but we’re also looking for new players who wants to raid more casual flex or just be in a Scandinavian social guild.
Several old Ash players thought it was a great idea but most of them raid with their main in another guild so it’s not easy to find a day which is good for everyone. But we also got some old players who don’t raid anymore interested, so hopefully they’ll come back and join us soon. We’ve invited a few new players none of us know, most of them don’t have good enough gear to do the last part in flex and some of them don’t have a lot of experience, but they’re all really nice people and I hope they want to stay in the guild so we can continue to grow.
Our goal right now is to get more people who like our idea which is a Scandinavian social guild where you can play casual and still see the content through flex raids, called normal in Warlords of Draenor, and find other Scandinavian players to play with. There won’t be any raid attendance requirements, so people don’t have to worry about missing raids or feel like they have to play if they want to do something else. People are free to arrange other raids, PvP and whatever they want and when they want. We still got our website and a ventrilo server which we’ll use, and we’ve fixed the guildbank so people can both give and take a small amount of items each day.
I don’t know if this idea will succeed but I hope so, because we don’t have anything else. But I still don’t feel like putting all of my energy into it, after all the time I’ve spent fixing, thinking and worrying, and then get disappointed and sad when it doesn’t work out the way I hoped. So I hope we’ll find more people who want to help us run this and it’ll become easier for us all.
You’re welcome to join if you got a character on Kazzak. Sadly our requirement is that you understand Norwegian and Swedish, and can communicate in one of those languages as we’re a Scandinavian guild and most of our members are Norwegian or Swedish. I think we got a few Danes, but none of them are very active at the moment.
Anyone of you got experience from running a guild? Maybe a social or casual guild? Would love some tips or just your thoughts.
Syrco Owl 
But what about Finnish people?! I have Horde and I’m planning to level it in WoD and maybe between Druid raiding would be nice to do raids with that too :)
Finnish people are also welcome as long as they understand and can communicate in Swedish. That’s our only requirement as we speak our own languages in guild chat and on vent. I don’t know how well you understand Norwegian, but I think you’ll learn it fast as you’re learning Swedish now, cause it’s very similar.
well we’ll see at what level my Swedish skills are when WoD is out and stuff.
I think you’ll learn fast and I hope you join us some day :D
I have been involved in running a social / casual (soft-core raiding) guild since the end of vanilla / start of BC and I think there are a number of things that have kept us going.
Ensure the core group are friendly and mature people, we dont take anyone under 18 and aim not to keep anyone who acts immaturely of whatever age. Have a vent / TS server for people to use to chat. Organise events to involve as many of your guildies as possible even if they are just old raids for achivements and mounts. I would start running flexi’s even before you have a full guild group and just pug. Remember the friendly pugs (and the less friendly ones for a different reason). Be fair to everyone, even handed and dont get angry. Have good officers you can trust.
But mainly have fun yourself and keep exploring.
Thanks :) Running a guild sounds simple yet so complicated.
I think it sounds like a fun idea to be doing. Running a guild in any capacity is always a lot of work, but can definitely be worth it. You seem to have one of the most important bits done already – gather a group of people that have a common goal. One of the biggest issues I often see in guilds is when you have different motivations. Someone who wants to progress and do heroic bosses, doesn’t fit in a casual guild and vice versa. But you guys all seem to be on the same page that this is a casual guild, mainly for fun (and the heroic raiding and stuff can be done elsewhere).
There are lots of people out there with much more experience in running a guild than I have. I’m just an officer and not the GM. Mainly I feel like I’m putting out fires, and every time there’s one put out a new one starts! We’ve managed to survive since start of TBC though – so we must be doing something right! One thing I personally find important is information and transparency. Let people know what’s going on, why decisions are made etc. This may not be as important in a casual guild unless you start having more rules imposed on members though. But people do usually in general appreciate getting the info on what’s going on in general :)
Good luck with everything!
Maybe I’ll use my instant-90 to come join you once I can afford the expansion *lol* Though I’m uncertain about the Swedish/Norwegian. I’m so used to speaking English these days!
In fact another thing i would suggest on a similar vein is to always write any guild / raiding rules you have down and make them visible to everyone. If they need to change do so but in a visible way.
I’m still not sure how much time we’ll put into this as it’s very hard to find more people with the same goals at the moment. It feels like most people are on breaks because there isn’t a lot to do ingame right now. I’ve been away for a while no myself, not that smart with loads of new people in the guild, I know.. But we haven’t really found that many who actually wanted to raid flex and have a future in Ash. It’s hard because I know how the perfect guild should be, but it won’t be anything without people with the same goals.
I know how frustrating it can be. We’ve had the same guild for years, but it’s still difficult at times. People end up having stuff to do in real life, stop playing.. and suddenly you’re having to cancel raids. Other times you have too many people and have to sit them out.
There are so many guilds out there at the moment as well, it’s difficult to get a new one off the ground. Which is a shame. You can always try to get some friends on other servers I guess, since you can raid flex (and even normal currently) cross-server? Just to get some content going?