Start with the arithmetic
A forty-player raid does not need forty members. It needs forty people online, prepared and at the keyboard at the same moment, every week. Real life takes a few of them each night. Plan on a roster of fifty to fifty-five active raiders for a stable forty, and more if your atmosphere is relaxed and attendance is not tracked.
Composition matters as much as headcount. As a rough guide, most classic-style forty-player rosters carry a handful of tanks including off-tanks, ten to twelve healers, and the rest damage dealers with a sensible mix of melee and ranged. Your exact numbers depend on the content you are working on, but write your targets down before you recruit, and recruit towards the gaps rather than towards whoever applied last.
Keep the openings honest and specific
The guild page lets you list openings by class and role, with a count and a note. Use it. “Recruiting all” is what a guild says when it has not decided what it needs, and applicants read it that way. “Two healers, priest or druid preferred, for Thursday raids” gets fewer applications and better ones.
Openings drive the fit score on every player’s profile, so specific openings also mean your guild shows up as a great fit for the right people. Mark an opening as filled the day it fills. Stale openings cost you trust with the exact players you want.
Build the pipeline before you need it
A forty-player guild is always recruiting, even when the roster is full, because the roster will not stay full. Keep a small number of openings live at all times, confirm recruitment on the dashboard so your page stays fresh, and answer applications within a day or two even when the answer is “not right now”.
The player directory is your second pipeline. Filter it by role and availability, read profiles, and use the invite-to-apply button for people who fit. A short, personal note works far better than a generic one.
Say what the bench looks like
Fifty raiders and forty spots means someone sits every week. How you handle that is the single biggest factor in whether people stay. Decide the rotation rules in advance, publish them, and make sure a benched raider still gets loot priority, an alt run or a clear path back into the main group.
Applicants will ask about this. If you have a written answer, you look organised. If you do not, you look like a guild that will bench people without telling them why.
Use the community, not just the page
Post in the Inn under “Looking for players” when you have a specific gap. Host a guild open night on the events calendar and let people see a real raid before applying. Both are free and both reach players who never search the directory.
Cross-guild raid groups are also worth talking to. A ten-player group that already raids together brings a proven core, and a merger, when it happens, is usually easier than recruiting ten strangers one at a time.
Protect the people doing the recruiting
Recruitment for a large guild is a job. Give it to more than one person, use the recruiter rank so they can review applications without full officer access, and rotate it so nobody spends every evening in application threads. Private notes on applications keep the team on the same page when a recruiter is away.
Finally, celebrate the arrivals. A welcome message in Discord and a name on the roster tab within the hour makes the new person feel expected. It is the cheapest retention tool you have.