This has been spinning in my head for days and I thought I should finally bring it up to the roleplaying forums and get an opinion from the wider audience.

Since the forming of the Spirit Wolves, we have switched applications on and off and tried various forms of them, but it always ended up with a confused Aenokhe not knowing which method is the best.

Without applications and with people joining the guild through only IC contact, I get a steadier inflow of members but the members I get are people that will usually take a while to get used to the guild and might not ever log on again.

With applications, I get a lot fewer members, but they tend to be people that will stay with us for a while.

That said, I've no idea what to stick with. I do want people to join me and I don't want the process to be too painful, however, I still think I should have a way of filtering them out on an OOC basis too.

What do you think?

Here is an interesting question regarding applications for roleplaying guilds: How should a good application look like, and what information should be in it?

Also, if you find that not enough people are applying due to application requirements, what do you think would be a good way to make the guild application process easier, while at the same time making sure that you only get the right members for your guild?