The Guild Recruiting Window Demystified

For quite some time, people have wondered how EQII determines which guilds to list in the recruitment window. In light of Amnerys' recent article on using this window, I'll try to clear that up as much as possible. The original intent of the recruitment window was to help new players find a guild. So the server users several metrics to try to match a player up to a potential guild.

First off, only guilds with online recruiters are shown in the list, and up to a maximum of 40 guilds will be shown. When determining if a guild should be shown and how high it appears in the list, each guild is weighted on several factors.

Each member of the guild that has been online recently weights the guild higher. The more recent that member has been online, the higher the weighting. Players that are currently online weight the results the most. Also, for each guild member close to your level range, the guild is weighted even higher.

When all is said and done, larger guilds with a more active roster will appear higher in the list. However, the biggest factor that might affect your guild's listing is whether or not you have a recruiter currently online. So if you think this could be part of the reason your guild isn't showing up, talk to your guild leadership about adding more recruiters.

Happy Guild Hunting!

The guild recruiting is a great tool but... (isnt there always a but?)
Would it be possible to put a checkbox or something so that the guild could check the things they want. Actually I think there is a class thing to select but I do not know if it checks that before putting the LFM guilds in your guild recruiting window.
Some guilds only want level 80's
Some guilds only want folks over level 50.
Some guilds are looking for a certain class or tradeskill.
Some take anyone.
So if Uber Guild A wants ONLY a level 80 Templar with 140 aa's and I am a level 23 Monk with 12 aa's why am I seeing it?
I realize this is somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things but it would make it a more useful tool (in my opinion)

I agree that more options might make it more useful, and perhaps in the future we will see some changes.

As far as letting guilds specify "We want a level 80 Templar", well, there are just way too many variables. Some guilds also want raid-geared players, or players with a specific number of Achievement Points. There are so many options that the recruitment window would grow out of control if we tried to specifically address each option.

For now, the best idea is for a guild to be specific in their "Long Description". Then, as players are browsing for guild's, they should read the descriptions to see if they are a good match before contacting a recruiter. After all, maybe a player will find a guild that they want to strive to join even though they don't meet the requirements. This gives them something to work towards.

I don't think the weighting works the way you think it does in relation to a character's level.

Right now I logged on my unguildedd level 35 coercer on AB.

- First guild on the list - 2 players currently online that are within 10 levels of my character to either direction. The reset (13) were 70+

- Second on the list - again 2, the rest (16) were mostly 70+

- Third: zero of the 28 were less than 80 and they were seeking 78+ only.

- Forth: of the 10 online, four were actually within 10 levels of my character.

- Fifth: of the 16 online, six were within 10 levels.

- Sixth: 16 online, zero within 10 levels, only one was not 80.

and so on with nearly all of the guilds in the list having mostly level 80s online.

Of the ones appearing toward the top, there were some with only one or two recruiters online with other guilds lower down with more recruiters online, so even that weighting might not be working properly.

Oh and one guild had as their recruiting message "Recruiting is closed".

In my opinion, the tool isn't effective.

I find the guilds that appear in the list, keep enough recruiters online to ensure they appear high on the list, and yet are not recruiting and even say so in their message to be a big problem for the tool, on past occasions even taking up most of the list. Basically some large guilds do this as an ego stroking/showoff exercise
I dont know if a petition of such cases is even worth the bother right now, but it would be nice to know the possibility exists of reporting this and something being done (like a temporary ban from the list)
To make this fairer, there ideally could be a blanket 'not recruiting' setting which just takes a guild off the tool entirely regardless of individual members settings (as far as I know, at the moment guild leaders would have to remove every members recruiting rights?). Then guilds would have no excuse for not behaving properly and could fairly be 'reprimanded'

I think the guild tool requires some more options for the benefit of small guilds.

As it stands, whenever I look on the guild tool, it's almost always the same guilds displayed, and all of them are at the guild level cap.

Basically, the big guilds get bigger, and the small guilds either stay the same size or they lose people to the bigger guilds.

At the very least, I think there should be an option for selecting the guild level range (eg, a drop down box with options 1 - 9, 10 - 19, 20 - 20, etc) so that people can contribute something more to a guild.

Rijacki wrote:

The weighting is working correctly. As I mentioned in my original post, it also weights players based on how recently they've logged in. So looking at only those players who are online at this moment can be misleading. Most likely the guilds near the top have lots of players offline, but have been online recently. It also weights players near your level even if they are not online, so just looking at the current online roster doesn't always give you the clear picture. Remember, the original intent was to list the most active guilds near the top so new players looking for a guild won't find themselves joining an inactive guild where people don't log in.

One thing I could try tweaking is changing the weighting values to give more weight to members within your level range.

Rothgar wrote:

Something along these lines does need to be done.
As stated before the situation we have now is that the biggest guilds are always at the top, hence they get the majority of the new players applications and the smaller guilds dont get as much as a chance to grow.
Not everyone wants to be a part of a huge guild (although I have no problem with those who do), some people would prefer a smaller guild where things are more 'personal'.
Would it not be possible to add filtering options?
Let the player decide what 40 guilds to show
Give options such as filter by active players in last 24 hours.
filter by active players in lvl x-x range in last 24 hours
filter by guilds looking for fighters
filter by guilds looking to raid

The guis that show up on the list , but are not actually recruting, are a problem, although I dont know what could be done about this

It has been a while since I have looked at our guild recruitment tool. I gave up a while ago when I realized that the chances of us being in that 40 were slim. We still have the settings set but I have not gone back and looked at it or updated it or anything. I will say the filter idea would get me back into believing in this tool. If I remember correctly you can say that you are a raiding guild or a family guild, what classes you are looking for, as well as add a description. If players could use those same items to filter by it would be a great.

On the guild side, there should be a only recruiting level X+ with radio buttons for "all" and then 20+, 30+, 40+, etc and have that weighted to show a player no more than 20 levels above current character level.

If there isn't a "not currently recruiting" select box which then drops the guild from the recruitment window, there should be. (And, I agree it should be petitionable for a guild to be actively recruiting via the tool but not accepting recruits via the message displayed.. they're disrupting the game play of others)

The tool really does need heavier weighting toward the level range of the character viewing it. At what ever time I have been on with that same character, I have seen roughly the same guilds.

I am actually seeking a guild with that character (AB, evil only, RP but no scripted RP or cyber, allowing casuals since I also play on other servers and have characters guilded on the good side on AB) and keep hoping to see some other guild listed there to peruse (I loathe guildportal and that seems to be the only option open to look for guilds on AB).

So, the intent of the guild window is to help new players find a guild and the criterias which determine which guilds are shown are set so, that a raiding guild with 25-30 people online 24/7 has the best chance to appear on top of the list. Um, yeah...

Bremer wrote:

Wow i dont know where you get that idea from ? On 24/7 nobody does that.( well we dont anyway )
I know we are a big guild and we always get new players everyday but the reason is there is always some one on to chat with them to see if they are a good fit.
We are not a raiding guild and we are not 80 but we grow by lots and lose lots of new toons also because of some of the things our guild believes in .
We help lots of new toons out but do not need needy people ,they dont last long and i am amazed at how people want access to banks right away which does not happen.
For the smaller guilds there does need to be someway of setting the tool better cause guilds like us always have some recruiter on (Not on Purpose) but we can have 30+ toons on at any given time with 1-3 of them being recruiters.
I just believe the smaller guilds need some HELP with this !!!!

I have a question for the smaller guilds that say they aren't showing up. When you open the recruitment window, is it really capping out at 40 guilds displayed? I logged onto several servers last night and checked the results and never saw the window cap at 40 guilds. This means a guild of ANY size, even just 1 person, as long as they had a recruiter online would have shown up in the list.

As Asif stated above, just because larger guilds show up near the top doesn't mean that they are raiding guilds. In fact, many raiding guilds, especially the hardcore guilds, keep smaller roster sizes.

Yes, guilds that put notes in there that they are not recruiting could be annoying, but there really isn't much we can do about that. I don't think involving Customer Service in this area with petitions would be a good use of their time.

I am the recruiter for my guild, and we've never appeared on the guild listing to my knowledge. Now, I know that AB has an enormous number of guilds so chances are really good that the list is always capped at 40, and we're /tiny/ so our metrics would almost always leave us off the list.
Still, it would be nice of the guild recruitment tool could be tweaked somehow that when I am online, we show up to someone. Someday.
/sniffle /smile

Roth: My guild has 2 accounts attached to it, mine and my wife's. We have a ton of active alts that we play, and one or two that aren't in the guild for whatever reason. I can absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt tell you that on primetime (or much any time) on Mistmoore, my guild -does not- show up on the guild recruitment tool, even though I've got my toons all flagged as recruiters.
Maybe it's because some of the older servers have more than 40 guilds or whatever the metric is.. I know new ones spring up on MM every single day for a host of reasons. *shrugs*

A simple checkbox for each guild that says "Guild is currently recruiting" would be an easy start. If they don't have that box checked, they don't show up . . .

Rothgar wrote:

I was under the understanding that in -addition- to being made a recruiter, that person had to go into their guild window on one of the pages and check the box saying that they are recruiting... maybe some of them are missing this?

Rothgar wrote:

Thanks for the explanation Rothgar, but I think you might have missed what many are asking for because your answer doesn't seem to jive (alternatively I am just mising something here).
When you set up the guild recruiting you set several drop downs / checkboxes. These are quantifiable things that you set about your guild. If the guild search tool allowed you to set the same switches, and then find only guilds that match (or that match the most switches) up to the 40 guild cap then it would be much more useful. The full text could then be persued to limit the list further. This shouldn't be too many variables as all the switches are already there. You just need an interface that compares already existing switches to switches you set just like the broker window does. The only other addition I would love to see is a recuriting lvl x+ box or drop down, but comparing the existing switches would go a long way towards helping out.
Sure you might still see guilds that don't apply (maybe they are looking for furies instead of templars but the only checkbox is priests), but it would be a lot more accurate. With the push to use it, the more useful it is, the better off everyone looks.
I haven't looked at our guild recruiting box on Nek in a bit, so I will double check whether our guild shows up and more than 40 show up or not. They did not, and there were not as of the create date on my Brigand which was a few months ago (I tend to check when I make a new character). It was quite amusing to open up the window with my lvl 1 Brigand and see the entire first page filled with guilds recruiting 70+ only.

I think we should just tab the guild window and set the tabs across to top to Raiding, Casual, Small, Large.. (or whatever major criteria, just examples)

Then when a player pulls open the window they can click on one of the tabs and see a list of guilds currently recruiting that have declared these options.

Guild leaders (or assigned members) set these options in their guild window. Sure a guild maybe a large raiding guild, let it show on both lists. Same with Large casual or small raiding.. etc. etc. Give the player the filters and the guild's the criteria (which is basically what the above posters are stating).

As for my guild, we usually have one to three (6 or 7 during peak times) people on at a time, we're trying to grow. I'm set to recruiter, I have recruiting active. I pull up the guild window and we're not listed and no the guild window isn't displaying 40 guilds, it's more like 20.

I think having the guild looking for more window broken down into some basic criteria (which we already set in game) would be very helpful in letting people see the less popular guilds (It's almost always the same 20 on our server) and see some of the smaller struggling guilds. Anyways just my two coppers worth.

Rothgar: No, I have not been seeing the guild recruiting window capping at 40 guilds. Like the previous poster, it's been around 20. And sometimes our small guild isn't showing up while active recruiters are on when there are fewer than 40 listed in the window. And yes, I know at least two recruiters have the recruiting box checked to on because two of them are me. That's whether I check with my level 80 character or a level 25 character, and even with a level 1 unguilded character just to see. It sure seems like something is amiss with the tool if it's supposed to cap at 40 and is not and guilds with active recruiters on still aren't showing up.