Horde Guild
Since 2008 I have done a variety of work for World of Warcraft guilds. Right now I want to focus on Bloodsworn, a Horde guild that I ran at various points during the Cataclysm, Warlords of Draenor and Heroes of Azeroth expansions. The work included making website, brand materials & community management .
Branding
I found early on how powerful and effective branding can be for a guild. Both to form a sense of identity and community within the guild itself, and also to be recognizable brand people can identify with.
This is why, when I created the logo and brand identity, it was very important for me to include the Horde icon. If you’re going Horde, that’s something people identify with, but it’s also a factor people instantly want to know when they apply to join your guild. I’ve once had a recruit decline after the approval process, once they realized we were not an Alliance guild. It’s good to avoid confusion.
Website
I’ve created different versions of websites, but the one I want to focus on is the website I created using WordPress and Bootstrap. I chose to make the website in a dark theme, in my experience it’s more commonly used for gaming websites, and also has a different association for the visitors.
To continue to build on the Horde theme, I chose to use Red as a primary color. And it was easy to style on with a dark theme. It’s a high intensity, in-your-face color, asking for attention, and makes for a perfect color to highlight important aspects of the website.
The goal for the website was to make it easier to announce recruitment of players. Give possible applicants the information they need to start their applications. And introduce the guild, who we are, what we’ve accomplished and how we get along as a community.
It was a part of the marketing strategy, creating content out of the tier progression, boss kill videos/screenshots, and distribute these alongside recruitment messages on a variety of platforms, linking back directly to the website.
Community
One very important aspect of leading a guild, is managing the community within it. We always wanted to create a space where people helped each other, people weren’t afraid to ask questions, and provide information in a simple manner, to keep everyone informed and involved.
We build a treasure trove of information on the forums and website, to give people little excuse to not be up to date, and also facilitate the synthesization of information within the community.
Because to become a hive-mind you need each individual to understand their part, but to be effective, you need to nurture a community in which people are actively contributing back to the collective knowledge with their points of view.
