It was hard a year ago to recruit. But nowadays it is close to impossible. And I am raging when I am saying this. People are leaving the game I think, more than ever.
Why do you think it has become so hard to recruit?
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What platform do you play on?
It seems like there are a lot of console players migrating to pc/mobile. We have a new guild, usually 2 about every day. Between GMs from consoles starting them and newbies who just want friends, there are too many new guilds popping up.
We also have a problem with people starting guild families and having 3-4 dead guilds they recruit new players to. Someone comes into global looking for a guild and then you never see them again. Hard to say if they continue playing but the guilds they end up in are dead or mostly so.
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On one hand, guild alliances. I’m in a big one (12 guilds) and we do have the occasional player coming in - but fewer than we used to get. We still get new to the game players once in awhile.
A major factor can be summed up to burnout. More details 
Monetization - more and more of it is making some people go f2p while others leave. I’d you’re bombarded with “spend your money here or lose out” it can be overwhelming.
Game design - ugly and unusable cards and pause menu and other interface changes. It made people quit.
Too much to do - people get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of events, and many can’t just decide to skip some. So they quit.
Too much pressure - mote battles needed to finish events, more pressure to do well and get those stupid shiny keys (FOMO is a thing). Makes people quit.
Bugs, Bugs, Bugs - Those make people quit. Something like a full underspire reset or being unable to play for days is exhausting.
Summer is also always slow for recruiting, and it has not fully come to an end yet.
So those are my informed guesses.
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Playing on PC/Mobile. Have very good experience with recruiting through most of the years since 2015. This was hard back in 2022 as well, but it has gotten a lot worse. And it is frustrating, frustrating as h***…
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Increased points in guild events.
It’s a symptom of a dwindling player base.
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I agree! 
Yes, I agree that it has been very challenging to recruit. Ironically it seems to mirror the issue in real life with worker shortages in every single industry.
My guild’s solution was to open up to new players. We coach them through learning the game and then if they like the game they stay with us.
We’re still very event focused and our veteran players are also the type of people who want to help others (kind of like most people here in the community) so this works out to maintain a full guild every week.
I agree that if we could make the event rewards more achievable again that we would definitely see more interest - as per a previous post, mix guilds have extra challenges to get to reward 12 let alone finish it. But then again it’s even worse for half empty guilds.
My most passionate suggestion for improvement is to improve communication within the guild by enabling direct messaging to all members.
In the meanwhile, some of the guilds have no choice but to join up with other guilds.
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As someone who recently looked for a guild to join (took a break from the game for some time due to work) I can say the following:
Middle-level guilds are extremely hard to find. They either play themselves to death or half the guild does not play at all.
Most guilds require full event completion. This comes from back in old times. Now that guild events are extended it has become very hard and expensive, in difficult economical times, and the rewards are not worth it either. So I was looking for a guild that does not require full event completion every week, but at the same time one that has active players and at least completes the first two levels of statues, gets pets sometimes, and plays Guild Wars - once again hard to find because many casual guilds do not complete statues or play GW.
Some of the veteran guilds have high level members who spend a ton on events, so they complete the events, but they do nothing else in the game - so newer members never get pets because no one ever goes into PVP. Many of these older veteran guilds are in Guild Wars bracket 1 - 15 or so, and newer members cannot compete on those levels, it is very demoralizing to try an play on those levels with a low-level team.
So anyway I finally found a guild that has active members that do get some pets, plays GW on a fair level (it is a relatively newer guild so they are not in top brackets), completes statues, but that is not fanatical about completing guild events. I hopped guilds several times before I found this guild, and so far so good.
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@Ash3nShad3 that’s very true. If you end up looking for another guild, come find us or DM me. You sound like the very kind of player we are looking for. You can also check our guild out - I’ve made a post about it.
I’m happy there are players like you who come back to the game again! 
Thank you for posting about your experience.
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That’s a plus about the bigger alliances. They usually have guilds for all types of play styles, including ours - and people can switch between these guilds.
While my guild is one of the more active ones (we finish all events, play GWs in the top 5 brackets, get to LTs every week), we have have laid back guilds for advanced players, beginner guilds, and all kinds of styles that you can imagine.
Not trying to get you to join us, just saying that guilds and guild alliances are such a major part of this game that it’s baffling how weak things like guild messaging, chats etc is.
We do all our communication using discord.
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@sylverscale Do you recruit by invite only? What do you do about people who join from within the game and then don’t turn on their chat?
I’ve seen that happen so much where I’m greeting them in the chat and it’s like crickets…it’s so quiet I can hear the grass growing. 
It depends on the guilds. All are led independently so some are by invite only, others are open.
Those that are open encourage players to join discord. I think some may have discord as mandatory.
We want the be able to reach our players if something comes up - like we notice they hsvbet leveled their sentinels, or that they seemingly don’t use the weekly troop etc.
You can make reading the guild chat mandatory if you don’t mind to boot players if they don’t and also don’t make minimums (if you’ve set any).
The ingame chat is really insufficient. I’ve seen much better ones in other games. I’ve also seen worse but not that many.
A huge plus is that you can share teams and such in chat. We still do that in discord, though, as fortunately Garybot exists. And we aren’t limited to a few lines but can read back months and even years.
We also post pet rescues because not everyone gets the notifications from the game even though they should.
I’m spending less time in the game tbh because I’m using discord so frequently.
Thanks @sylverscale, you’ve given me food for thought. At least there’s the idea to let people know in the guild invite that they need to read the chat.
For me when I was a new player, I just did that when joining a guild in order to say hi to everyone so it’s strange to encounter people that don’t even greet others.
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You assume (incorrectly) that people come to this game to chat with others, and that they join guilds to meet people and play together with them in a group.
The thing is, most of them don’t do it for that. They come to the game to move some gems around, to do some match-3s, to relax a little, and they don’t need other people to do that. They want to play the game. They join a guild because at some point the game tells them to do it - but doesn’t say what the guild is for exactly and that the other people in the guild aren’t bots but living and breathing people. So they don’t chat. They won’t ever join an invite-only guild, they likely won’t read 001 or ads, they find guilds via guild search. Nothing really wrong with that, people have the right to play how they want, even if for us, more seasoned and engaged players, it feels wrong 
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I guess the game has all sorts of players. I prefer Discord and used it prior to this game. Most gamers are very familiar with Discord and use it all the time. So I found it extremely odd that some guilds do not use Discord at all. If you do have Discord you will attract more regular gamers.
Once again I want to reiterate I think the exodus from many guilds is due to lengthened and expensive events, yet they do not yield what many players seek - the books. So end-gamers now have to spend more gems and more time yet they still do not make any more progress. The new Underspire does not give any books either. I almost think this was done on purpose to get rid of older players so the focus is on newer players. Well, even middle-level players like myself do not benefit vastly from event rewards. And they are now too expensive. Yet most active guilds insist on full event completion and want you to buy in extra tiers.
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Bragging rights And the constant push to have a full collection, get all achievements, etc. The new reward tiers have those shiny keys , which is - next to books - the only thing that end gamers don’t have in their extensive stashes, so they push for completion, even if they don’t need anything else from there.
The thing is, new and middle-level players won’t benefit from these rewards either - they simply won’t be able to reach them because of the gem spending required, even if they could actually use them. And this is actually very sad.
The push towards greater monetization isn’t helping; it’s clear that the goal of the new rewards is not to reward players, but to push them to spend more $$ on headstart and booster offers. And it’s easier to squeeze new players and force them to pay by making “playing catch-up” harder, than to encourage the end gamers to pay, because there’s very little in the game these players actually need.
That’s a very big assumption. I’d say that it’s the minority that actually uses Discord, the most hardcore gaming community does, yes. Those that play games with actual pvp, or live sessions - they do, yes. But the casuals who play one game at a time, finish it, never go back - they don’t. Those who want to match some gems while in transit - they don’t. There are also people who don’t want social interaction while playing or don’t feel the need to discuss the game with anyone - they simply don’t need or want discord. Nothing wrong with not wanting, needing, or using discord.
This is a match-3 game you can play on the phone while standing in a queue at the supermarket, or when you’re bored on the bus or subway. You actually shouldn’t need discord for that (or any sort of official forums to get info about scoring or rules of various kinds, but that’s a different discussion and I’m going way off topic), if you don’t want to go hardcore.
Different strokes for different folks. But if we are looking at guild survival I’d say it is the larger family guilds with Discord that are surviving in this game.
As for the long guild events - like you say - they are not helpful to anyone from beginner to mid to end level, each for different reasons.
IRC, Teamspeak, Facebook, Discord…
I don’t want to build a new account network every two years, just because the trend medium has changed yet again. Those things do not last. And I don’t want to register on a new website every week either. There’s a good reason, why I am able to use the same single email adress for over twenty years.
The ingame communication system is very weak, but it exists and is the only thing, I would expect anyone to be willing to work with.
(Also as I love to mention, my one experience with Discord was horrible to such a degree, that I would never want to go there again… and I did not even get to the chatting part)
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Yes, I struggle to recruit too and to keep the great players we have.
Last week I lost 2 players, they didn’t have the time to play anymore.
2 players have announced they are quitting this Sunday; 1 because they have to work more in real life because of the inflation and both of them because all of the new content and harder Guild events - they simply can’t keep up. This game is getting more and more consuming - time, gems, money.
That leave us to having 26 members… 
And I hear a lot of concern from most members about having enough time to play. This is a game, where we should be able to have fun - forget about real life problems and not log in to face more chores.
I don’t mind some grinding and I can easily choose which part of the game I want to play, because otherwise I would quit. But I also know that it isnt that easy for everyone.
The devs are gambling: either force players to play more, pay more or they loose players… so far losing players havn’t been important
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