Once your guild is up and running the following tasks are things that you should consider
performing to better organise your guild. A number of these steps are optional but all are
recommended. Each step is explained, in more detail, in the sections following this
checklist.
●Create your ranks within the guild interface in game and assign guild privileges to
them. There are a number of privileges that WoW allows you to assign. You can
assign as many or as few of them to each rank as you wish.
●Promote your friends and guildmates to the ranks you wish to them to have.
Initially all people who signed your charter are classified as “members”. Once you
have setup your ranks you may wish to promote some to officers or demote them
to ranks you recently setup.
●Invite to the guild the rest of your members. If you guild is larger than the original
10 people, you will need to invite them to join. You may have secondary chars
that need adding and you will likely recruit new members over time.
●Consider saving for and purchasing a guild tabard. These cost 10 gold to create a
guild design for one and are designed by the guildmaster and then purchased by
members. They are a status symbol early in the game but are also a way to easily
recognise your guildmates
●Create your core guild rules and ensure members know them. If your guild is
meant to more than a short term collection of friends sharing a common chat room,
then you will need some core rules to run the guild by. You should establish those
early and make them clear to all members.
●Set and maintain your MoTD (Message of the Day). Every guild member will see
the MoTD every time they login. You can use it to communicate important
information to them.
●Set and maintain your members Public Messages in the roster. The roster has a
field for public messages that there are a number of good uses for.
●Decide how you wish to use the Officer Messages part of the roster. There is an
officer message part of the roster that only those with the correct privilege can
read. You can use it to keep private notes on members.

3.1. Create Your Ranks and Assign Privileges to Them:
Ideally, before you even created your guild you put some thought into what ranks you
wanted to have. In WoW, you can have up to 10 slots. They can all have different
privileges or they can all be identical but different in name only. It is up to you how to
structure them. Most guilds will use a combination of both approaches. There will be a
number of ranks that essentially have the same in game powers (like reading and talking
in guildsay) but differ in name in order to show a hierarchy in the guild. There will be
some other ranks that have more or less power than the others.
What ranks you put in place is your choice but here are some recommendations for
categories of ranks you should consider including:
Guildmaster: This rank is created by default and must exist. You can rename it to
something else but it is always the top rank. It can only ever have 1 member. And it has
all the privileges by default. This rank is the defacto “in charge” person. Even if your guild
is run by committee, the GM ranked person can demote and remove any other member in
the guild.
Officer: Regardless of what you call the rank or ranks, most guilds will have at least one
officer rank. Typically they can do things like add new members, remove members, set
the message of the day and things like that. You may have as few or as many officers as
you wish. By default, one officer rank is setup with basic officer powers granted to it.
Member: There is likely to be one or more member ranks in the guild. By default the
ranks of Veteran and Member are setup. They are essential the same with the names of
the ranks showing a hierarchy of who is “higher” in the guild. Who gets assigned to what
rank is up to you. Typically the member ranks have a lot less power granted to them and
often simply can talk in guildsay and read guildsay.
Recruit: You do not get a recruit rank by default but you may wish to create one. Make
sure it is the very last rank you create since by default the game adds new ranks you
make to the bottom of its in game hierarchy list. So all new members will automatically be
granted whatever the last rank is that you created (or will be set to Member if no new
ranks were created). You may wish to have a low-level rank that cannot read or speak in
guildsay, or perhaps can only read but not speak. You can use this rank to evaluate new

recruits before you hand over your guilds secrets to them or give them the ability to
potentially cause havoc by trusting them with a higher rank that has more privileges.
Specialized: You may also wish to create some specialized ranks like a recruiter rank that
can add people but perhaps cannot promote them or remove them. You may wish to
have a pvp commander rank that can set the MoTD but cannot add or remove members.
Think about the roles you wish to have in your guild and use your 10 rank spots wisely.
3.2. The Guild Interface:
To create a rank or adjust the permissions on a rank, you must first know how to get to the
guild interface and understand how to navigate it. To load the guild interface press O (the
letter, not the number). That will open a window and across the bottom of the window are
various tabs. The second to the last tab is labelled “guild”. Click on it.
The resulting view will show you your guild roster. In the lower right of the guild roster is a
small arrow. Pressing that arrow will change from 1 guild roster view to another. You
have two different views. One shows you members and their levels and the zones they
are in. The other shows you members, their public note (if any) and when they were last
online. You can sort on most of the columns by clicking on the column heading.
There is a checkbox in the upper right to toggle on and off the viewing of offline characters
as well. And in the lower left there will be a display showing how many characters are in
the resulting list. If the list is too long you will need to use the scrollbars, on the right side,
to scroll down and see the remaining names.
Just below the roster list are a series of buttons. Some of those buttons will be discussed,
in more detail, in later sections. Here is a quick definition of each one:
Small Bugle/Trumpet: There is a gold trumpet icon. That icon is for setting the guild
message of the day. Pressing it will change the words, immediately to the left of it, to read
“Guild Message of the Day” and then display whatever it is set to.
Small Piece of Paper: Immediately to the right of the gold trumpet is a small piece of
paper. That is the Set Public Note option. Pressing that will change the words,

immediately to the left of it, to read “Public Note” and allow you to change a member's
public note.
Small Piece of Paper #2: Immediately to the right of the first paper icon is a second one.
That one is to set the Officer note which is basically a second notes area, for each
member, which only those with the correct rank can view.
Group Invite: There is a large red button labelled group invite near the lower right of the
guild interface. Its function is just as its name implies. You single click on any online
member in your guild list and press group invite and they will get an invitation to join your
group, if you are the group leader or just forming a new group.
Guild Control: The guild control option is the one that you will use to both add new ranks
and adjust the permissions on an existing rank. Pressing this button will launch another
small window that is titled “Select a Guild Rank to Modify”
Add Member: As the name implies, if you target a character that is not already in a guild
and select Add Member, they will be invited to join the guild. If they accept, their name
will appear in your guild roster.
Promote: In the lower left of the guild window is the button labelled promote. If you do not
have permission to use this feature or if no member is selected, this option will be greyed
out. If you do have permission to promote members, select one from the roster and this
button will be activated. You can press it and they will move up 1 rank in the roster. You
may promote members to the rank just below the one you currently hold. Note: All
members online will see the message that someone has been promoted and to what rank
they were promoted to.
Demote: Located right next to the promote button, this button has the exact opposite
affect. Highlight a member and press it and you will move them down 1 rank in the guild.
Note: All members online will see the message that someone has been demoted and to
what rank they were demoted to.
Remove: As the name implies, there may be times you need to kick someone out of the
guild. Locate their name on the roster and click on it. Then click Remove and if you have

the remove permission, they will be removed from the guild. Note: All members online will
see the message that someone has been removed.
3.3. Grant Privileges To A Rank:
Each rank in the guild has its own set of privileges assigned to it. Only the guildmaster
character can set those or even see what they are. To set a rank's privileges, the
guildmaster character loads the guild interface and presses the Guild Control button. A
window pops up. At the top of the window is a drop down list box with the Guildmaster
entry highlighted and a down arrow next to the list box (click there to expand it and select
any other rank in the list) and a plus sign (+) to the right of that which is used to add a new
rank. Just below this area of the window is listing of all 10 ranks with checkmarks in the
boxes next to the privilege that rank has granted to it.
The guildmaster rank always has every privilege but the other ranks could have as many
or they could have less. Select the down arrow and pick any other rank and you can
adjust its privileges. When you select a rank the area just below the list box changes to
show only checkmarks next to the privileges the newly selected rank has granted to it. No
checkmark means that the privilege isn't granted to that rank.
To grant a privilege to a rank, first select the rank. And then check the box next to the
privilege you wish the rank to have. Then click the red ACCEPT button just under the list
of privileges. You can also click CANCEL to undo the changes and not apply them.
Here is a definition of what each privilege means and what powers it gives a rank that has
been granted it:
Guildchat Listen: Anyone with this privilege can read what is said in guildsay. If you wish
to have a rank where they cannot read guildsay, remove this privilege.
Guildchat Speak: Anyone with this privilege can type text into guildsay using the /GU
command. If you do not wish a rank to be able to talk in guildsay, remove this privilege.
Officerchat Listen: Anyone with this privilege can read what is said in the officer (/O) chat.
Typically this is not granted to anyone but officers.

Officerchat Speak: Anyone with this privilege can speak into officer chat. Again this is
typically limited to only officers, hence the name, so they have a private channel to
discuss core guild issues. Note: By default the text for this channel is a slightly darker
shade of green than guildsay which can lead to confusion and misspeaking into the wrong
room. You may wish to have all of your officers change their default officer speak to a
different color like yellow.
Promote: When a rank has this privilege, if they highlight a member in the roster the red
promote button will be activated. Anyone with this privilege can promote another member
to the rank just below theirs.
Demote: When a rank has this privilege, if they highlight a member in the roster the red
demote button will be activated. Anyone with this privilege can demote another member
to the lowest rank defined to the guild.
Invite Member: When a rank has this privilege they can add new members. All new
members are added at the lowest rank so if your lowest rank is set so that it cannot read
or speak in guildsay then this privilege is not very dangerous if most members don’t also
have the ability to promote. However, a person that can both invite and promote has a lot
of power in the guild since they can grant anyone they wish access to your guildsay even
if you tried to limit that by having lower tier ranks that lacked guildsay permission. Grant
this privilege with care.
Remove Member: This privilege should also be granted with care. Ranks that have it can
remove any member from the guild that is of a lower rank than they are. So a lower
ranking person can’t kick the guildmaster out. Officers can't kick officers out. But a higher
ranking member could kick lower ranking members out, if you freely give this power out.
So grant it with caution.
Set MOTD: The MOTD (Message of the Day) at the time of the writing of this guild only
holds 60 characters. That is inadequate for most guilds. This rank, however, gives a
member the ability to edit the MOTD. There are no filters on what can be said and there
is no tracking of who edited it to put up nasty things or remove important things. So again,
grant this privilege with care.

Edit Public Note: In the roster listing, there is a column for public note. Any rank with this
privilege can edit or add a public note to a member. All guilded members can see all
public notes. Common uses for the public note include indicating whose alt a specific
character is and indicating who the guild’s craftsman are.
View Officer Note: In the roster listing, there is also a column for officer note. This is
meant to be a private note that only your officers can see however technically you can
grant this view to all members and use the public note to serve one function and the
officer note to serve another.
Edit Officer Note: Ranks with this privilege have the ability to edit the officer note for a
member. By keeping officer notes private, your officers can use them to record facts on
characters that only other officers can read.
3.4. Adding A Rank:
World of Warcraft allows a guild to have up to 10 ranks. You are not required to use them
all but one important thing to note is that all new ranks that you add, are added to the
bottom of the hierarchy and all new members added to your guild are initially granted your
bottom rank (i.e. the last rank you created). So even if you call a rank “Top Dog Officer”, if
it is the last rank you added, then all new members will get that rank. Therefore it is
important to plan out your ranks early in the guild’s creation and then make all of those
ranks (or at least create placeholder ones). Ensure they are in the order you wish them to
be in (by renaming ranks, promoting and demoting as appropriate). And ensure they have
the proper permissions. It would be embarrassing to create a new rank that was an all
powerful and not realise all new members got that rank until one of them wreaked havoc
on your guild.
To add a rank, perform the following steps:
●Press O and select the Guild tab to bring up the guild interface
●Press the Guild Control button to load the rank/privilege interface
●Press the small red plus sign (+) to the right of the rank list box at the top of that
new window

●A small popup window appears asking you for the new ranks name. Type in what
you wish to name the rank. Note: This will be how the rank appears in your roster
that members see and how it shows up on web sites like thottbot.
●Click Accept when you have entered the name you wish the rank to have.
●Now select your new rank from the drop down list box and the list of privileges will
update to just have Guildchat Listen and Guildchat Speak checked. Grant or
revoke any privileges you wish this rank to have, or not have
●Click the Accept button at the bottom of the window to commit the change
●You now have a new rank which is the lowest rank in your guild hierarchy.
Again it is important to point out that regardless of what you name your ranks, the game
doesn’t know and doesn’t care about their importance to you. It treats the last rank added
as the lowest rank in the hierarchy. That means that all new members automatically get
granted your last added rank when they join. It means that if your ranks are in a nice
linear order, as far as the game is concerned, weird messages will result when you
promote and delete members. To illustrate that, let's take this simple example.
You create a guild and get the following ranks by default:
●Guildmaster
●Officer
●Veteran
●Member
You now wish to add in ranks for Assistant Guildmaster and Raid Commander. You click
the + button and you add Assistant Guildmaster. Now your guild ranks are:
●Guildmaster
●Officer
●Veteran
●Member
●Assistant Guildmaster
You click the + again and add in Raid Commander. Now your guild ranks are:
●Guildmaster

●Officer
●Veteran
●Member
●Assistant Guildmaster
●Raid Commander
Now, when you add a new member, they are added to the guild as a Raid Commander
since, as far as the game is concerned, that is your lowest level rank. If you click the
promote button twice to make them a member, your guildmates online will see, in their
guild chat area,
XXXXX is promoted to Assistant Guildmaster
XXXXX is promoted to Member
Needless to say that is confusing and not very well organised. A better way, to add those
two ranks, would be to use this example:
Create the guild and get the base ranks. Select the Officer rank from the drop down list
box and rename it to Assistant Guildmaster. Select the Veteran rank from the drop down
list box and rename it to Raid Commander. Select the Member rank from the drop down
list box and rename it to Officer. Now, click the + button and add a rank called Veteran.
Then click the + button again and add a rank called Member. Now you have all of the
same ranks but they are in the correct logical and hierarchical order and the game will
function much more smoothly for you.
For the reason illustrated by those examples above, it is a good idea to plan out your
ranks before you heavily populate your guild with characters. If you need to add a rank in
later, you will end up needing to rename old ranks and demote members to the new, lower
rank (lower in terms of its location in your hierarchy list in game). That can be a lot of work
and a lot of spam in your guildsay.