<ACE> Alpha Crucis Exiles - Oceania Guild (Australia, New Zealand, Asia)

Thanks to all of you ACE celebrated its second anniversary last month as the preeminent Path of Exile guild on the Australia Gateway. This was achieved through our Guild Focus (of being Active, Competitive and Engaged) which all old and new members agreed to as our guild philosophy. This State of ACE will look at membership numbers and its impact on guild size for the future.

In one and half years ACE has doubled its membership. All of these members were interviewed by Guild Staff ensuring gradual quality growth. Before Invasion in March 2014 ACE had 56 members after a severe cull to rid ourselves of casuals who had joined for 1.0.0. Currently in November 2015 ACE has 113 members with a purchased maximum capacity of 130 members. If growth continues at its current rate of three new members per month ACE will reach its capacity by mid-2016.

Guild Leaders have allowed ACE to grow because an active guild must have a requisite number of members. Even though ACE has over a hundred members, never have all of these been online at once or in VoIP, even when a new Challenge League starts which is the peak On Season moment for the guild. At best the guild will have between 20-30 members in-game during peak play with half of these in VoIP. These numbers will decline as the Off Season kicks in for the guild. Having more members keeps ACE feeling alive especially when members choose to become inactive. Conversely a guild that gets too large may be less intimate. Old and new members equally may not engage with each other outside of pre-existing groups or forgo the social challenge of breaking into one. A large guild may fracture into splinter groups losing its core direction. An issue with a smaller guild with a high culling rate may result in existing members not making the effort to know new members.

The answer to the right guild size lies in Dunbar’s number (aka the monkeysphere) which suggests there is a “cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.” ACE proposes that membership capacity be increased to 150 and held there. It’s a number that can be expanded to easily with pre-existing Guild Credit that has remained unused for two years. It also straddles the line between being too small or getting too large mixed with anthropological research on the ideal number. This new limit will enable ACE to grow for another twelve months unhindered before proper culling takes place.

ACE has clearly stated how members can maintain or lose their membership under Guild Policies which is applicable to all. If you are Being Engaged in VoIP you are immune from culling. Beyond that other measures are taken into account with culls occurring in the Off Season. ACE recently culled two members with a further nine marked as possible due to their inactivity during The Awakening expansion and Tempest Challenge League. Having a hard guild limit of 100, 130 or 150 means instead of being a possible candidate for culling it would just happen and more regularly once the cap was reached. If a member is culled it is obviously only for slot clearage. So under the “once an ACE member always an ACE member” rule a culled member can easily return provided there are slots available.

A guild at capacity should contain the most active members. Those who were culled who wanted to re-join ACE would go on a waiting list. They would need to wait for a cull to occur before they could be re-admitted. The net effect over time would create a guild of known persons within a logical capacity where quality members will be retained and those that are too casual will be culled. If ACE persists as an entity it may be prudent to expand capacity by 10 per year if the need arises beyond the 150 cap.

Guild Leaders realise this is a lot to take in and some may not even choose to read this section. Most guilds would just enact a solution without consultation. We recognise that our guild strength comes from you our members so we wish to be as transparent as possible when making large decisions like on Guild size. Any feedback on this matter will be appreciated and taken into account preceding Talisman.