We just downed heroic Atramedes last night on 25 man. We’re now 5/13.
So, the in-game recruitment interface.
I love it.
It’s about time something like this was added. Not every guild can afford its own online presence or has the desire to monitor constant forum posts. Instead of listing how serious a guild is (hardcore or casual), there are options allowing leaders to indicate guild interests. Weekdays and weekends could be a little more specific, but it’ll do the job for now. Same thing with class roles even though it is extremely basic. I like how they subtly allowed leaders to show whether the guild is a leveling or an endgame guild. It doesn’t say it per se, but come on. For me, I left the Any Level radio button checked. I might have rerolls wandering around and exploring guilds or something.
I do have some suggestions to make.
From the guild leader perspective
I would like to see more screen real estate for additional options. Weekday and weekend availability is nice, but we all know people take their Friday nights off to go watch movies like Fast 5 (Anyone see it yet? Worth it?). Add 7 checkboxes for each day of the week showing what days the guild does stuff on.
Why stop there? How about some buttons for times like:
- Red eye early morning
- Morning
- Afternoon
- Evening
- Late night
Approximate time of day would need to be based on server time. At least prospects will have an idea of whether or not they can commit to the rough time.
See the class roles? Setting tank, healer and damage is great for queuing for instances. But we need a little more precision when it comes to class selection at least. Throw class and spec icons. If not, consider adding in classes so we can choose to recruit elusive classes that players seem to be ditching these days like Rogues and Shamans.
I’d also like the ability to set permissions on who can view the Requests tab. I cant seem to find it in the permissions settings anywhere.
From the applicant’s perspective
The upside to this is that if you’re in a guild, you can’t browse other guilds. That means you need to be an unguilded, free agent.
Here’s the thing.
I imagine most players would want to retain benefits of their guild or at least enjoy some social interaction before their time to leave. I’m sure that if a player is leaving their guild, they would have informed their leadership anyway (At least, I hope). If I were looking to change guilds, I know I’d want to minimize downtime between current guild and guild-to-be.
Okay, I guess I’ll be more realistic. If I were a player unsatisfied in a guild, I’d love to at least explore what guild options are available to me. Being able to browse all the guilds that are looking while guilded would be nice to have. Perhaps remove the “Apply” button or render it unclickable to minimize any errors.
Besides, as a GM, I’d love to see what my competition colleagues are looking for. It’s also amazing how many “blank” applications are out there. A good number of players who wanted to join Conquest don’t even fill out the description so I have to guess based on their role and level. Usually what I do in cases where I think the player has serious interest is I’ll decline their application but I’ll fire them an in-game mail asking them to formally apply on the Conquest site anyway.
How about you guys? What do you think of the in-game recruiting interface and how would you improve it further?
The tool just really feels incomplete for sure. We picked up one new member from it, but it’s really clunky to use and it doesn’t provide enough info.
It could definitely use some more features, but I’m really glad that we’re at least moving in the right direction and getting tools like this developed.
I haven’t done much with the finder other than look at it. I definitely agree that, if nothing else, it needs class/role granularity. It doesn’t need to be all the way down to spec (although in some cases the difference is negligible). My guild right now could use a few more healers, but only if they’re Trees or Pallies. We’re overfull on Shamans and Priests at the moment.
Also, Fast Five was totally worth it. Better than the last two. But I’m a simple guy with simple tastes. If you like to dissect movies, save your money.
No seen it our GM is away for a while and officers are maintaining the guild, we can see or use it, from what I read and I agree with @Lissanna that its a half baked tool, they should do research before they make things the concept of in-game recruit is fantastic, but they seem to lack real usability.
So we still back to online applications and spamming trade
all the best 🙂
You can see the guild finder whilst in a guild – just type /gf
But I agree there are quite a few improvements I’d like to see.
Indeed this works. If you are guilded though, you can’t apply to join another guild.
I’m extremely reluctant to use this feature. It’s far too vague as far as our needs, it puts the GM in the critical path for recruitment and it bypasses our existing application process.
From a raiding standpoint alone, there is drama when you have raiders with differing degrees of focus mixing together as it is. For raiding guilds that straddle the line between “hardcore” and “casual,” getting a raider in who is too far in either direction causes a ton of disruption and disappointment. This feature requires that we define the nature of our raiding to a field that is not going to be read.
In general, I am in agreement that the availability and the class/role requirements need to be far more granular than they are now. “Weekdays” mean nothing if the guild is a late-night guild. And I know some guilds who raid Tues/Thurs/Sun.
The issue is that for many guilds, the definitions are so broad that in order to try and define a particular guild you have to select almost every category, which is about as helpful as selecting none of them. To be honest, the Daily Blink had a better format, tongue-in-cheek aside.
For now,I’m going to keep with our traditional system unless my recruiters tell me otherwise. I appreciate the intent, but the system as it now stands is just not something that dovetails nicely with our recruitment strategies.
My guildies and I love this new feature! We’ve been using this new tool from the first day and it’s been a success for us – we’ve invited a dozen new players into the guild. The only real complaint we have is the lack of a notification/alert to let us know when there’s a new request or pending requests waiting for our attention.
We only interview those who actually put something about themselves in the comment field and seem like they might be a good fit for our guild. For the 12 who we’ve invited to join the guild, we’ve declined 3x’s that many just because they didn’t put anything in the comment box. Check boxes and such are not a replacement for an interview process.
I wish the “Guild Interests” tab could have it’s own subdivisions with their own separate requirements. Although I suppose I don’t know how many guilds out there are like Conquest and have multiple divisions in their guild. Seems like there’s no downside to having the Recruitment feature be more thorough.
I bet they’ll add in the specifics you talk about, with certain classes, days/times, etc.
So to be straight, only the guild leader can see this? Bummer city.
Overall this is a wonderful addition. Sure it needs a lot of improvements but already my guild, Saturday Knight Fever of Shadowsong EU have seen some great new folk join us.
The application vary from the lazy no commenters, the retarded “lulz can I join ur guld plox” to the awesome.
Fast 5 is insane! So korny and cheesy but if you loved the first 4 (barring tokyo – nuff said) then you will love it. Think I may even have to see it a second time…
I actually like the new recruitment system, and I truthfully don’t mind if alts or new players are looking for a home. There are two things about it that annoy me though that could be easily fixed ..
1) Blank applications like you mentioned. I mean its not that hard to write a sentance like “I am hoping to get into raiding” or “Hi this is my first Horde toon and im after a friendly place to level”
2) There is no way to see which of the applicants are actually online when you are reviewing requests. I’ll take the time to respond to everyone, but having to click and repeat a same message to a dozen people who are not online is annoying. I am sure it wouldn’t have been hard to show an online /offline comment in the applications to make sorting through them easier
We tend to use the recruitment interface simply as a “postcard”, inviting people to apply via our website. It is just another way to promote your guild.
Of course you still get many, many people who don’t read the advert – they probably just see how many members we have and what level we are and stick in a request for the hell of it.
Which is where this new addon comes in, which certainly seems to tick all the right boxes, for us anyway:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recruitmentenhancement.aspx#953050
(not affiliated with the addon author by the way, I just happen to be a fan of cool addons 😛 )
Indeed, Upyursh mentioned that to me before (but I already had it installed). It certainly is quite nice. ^^
Thanks Rowtan 🙂 It’s nice to see other people finding the addon useful
I think all the bugs are now ironed out and 0.1-release should be packaged this weekend 🙂
Upy