Looking for guild feature available on patch 4.1 PTR
by Dawn Moore 
Feb 25th 2011 at 5:00PM
The feature only appears when you aren't in a guild, taking the place of the usual "you aren't in a guild" message you get when you're guildless on live realms.
Overall, the feature looks a bit too simplified for serious raiding or PvP guilds, but for anyone looking for a casual, social, or leveling guild, this new feature seems like a great way to ease the guild search.
Currently, there don't appear to be any guilds in the "Browse Guilds" tab, but based on the grayed-out option to "Request Membership," I'm thinking guild leaders have to set up recruitment status on their end. I guess we'll have to wait for Guild Master Holisky to charter the guild so we can see just how much information a guild can feature on this tab.
We'll keep you up to date as we learn more.
Update: After chartering a guild I've found that there are currently no recruitment options available to a guild leader inside the guild or social panels. This probably means Blizzard hasn't finished implementing the feature yet. Stay tuned!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
sephosis Feb 25th 2011 5:08PM
What a very interesting implementation.
Golis Feb 25th 2011 5:10PM
Waaaaaait a minute: Someone Shadows better than Fox???
I would need references first!
Hih Feb 25th 2011 5:11PM
I'm a little disappointed that you can only use the feature while guildless, that should place it squarely in the usefulness of "Only for 'Casuals'". A raider tends to know where they want to go next before they drop guild.
Hih Feb 25th 2011 5:12PM
Er.. edit: Not that it being useful for casuals is a bad thing! This would have been amazing for me when I was still but a wee little noob!
squig_masta Feb 25th 2011 5:41PM
1st off, it still trips me up whenever I see you up there.
Second, you could always create an alt and put your real character's info in the discription, or just brows the guild frames. It'd be kind of dangerouse to put your real character up there anyway, as your gm might suddenly notice that the holy priest that just got Twilight's Hammer appears to be looking for a new guild.
Not that I'm saying you shouldn't tell your gm you're planning to leave, it's just better to know where you're going first in case it causes drama that leads to you being kicked out early.
jfofla Feb 25th 2011 5:47PM
Maybe a Future Patch will provide a "Loot and Scoot" option for Raiders looking to screw their current Guild.
loop_not_defined Feb 25th 2011 5:57PM
Well, there's no real incentive to design a system for assisting players that don't need assistance.
Noyou Feb 25th 2011 7:40PM
I think its amazing. This to me is the best thing since flying in the old world. I have a casual/social guild and this would help. I generally don't like spamming a guild recruit macro and often only do to counter the ones who feel like they need to do it.
As for wanting to use the tool when in a guild-#1 you are in a guild damn it. Own up to it. That is the #1 reason why you lose your rep when you leave. It should matter. #2 if you were in my guild casual or not and I saw you using that- I would boot you long before you had time to explain. The cake may or may not be a lie but you can't have yours and eat it too :) Sorry.
razion Feb 25th 2011 5:12PM
I was part a um... quote-unquote "casual" raiding guild back in Wrath. We were also second best on the realm for progression in early ICC, second on the realm to make it to the Lich King.
Our guild constantly liked to "reassure" its members that we were casual, but the fact of the matter was we were lead by an individual who, in retrospect, probably would have been happier in a hardcore raiding guild.
Well, what I'm getting at is that I just hope this system leaves off players able to list themselves as looking for that sort of guild, while at the same time not LABELING guilds as "hardcore moderate casual" or whatever.
SamLowry Feb 25th 2011 11:34PM
"Second on the realm to make it to the Lich King"...and you described yourselves as a "casual" raiding guild? Casual compared to what--the first on the realm to make it to the Lich King?
razion Feb 26th 2011 4:21AM
Correct, that was indeed the idea--we were something of a group of hypocrites, in many ways, but we were happy being hypocrites. We were happy trying to come up with excuses for why we were two to three bosses ahead of the next guild on the realm in terms of progression and content (a famous excuse was that the realm wasn't on "high [or for when the days it did spike that high] full" population). I'm just hoping that this won't lead to classifying guilds directly in the system. I know that if our guild had started referring to itself as hardcore, it would have started to act more like one. Which was, frankly, the sort of thing the raiders in our guild came to the guild to avoid in the first place.
zubbiefish Feb 25th 2011 5:12PM
I like this idea. The more things that you can do to keep your guild running, and growing, in-game the better. Now all they need to do is sort out some kind of in-game message board, and guild leaders can stop begging, members to visit their website.
Drakkenfyre Feb 25th 2011 6:12PM
Never going to happen. Not only would that put a ton of strain on the game, but if they can't have GM's monitoring Trade on each realm, imagine how many they would need for each message board.
MichaelBerean Mar 2nd 2011 10:14AM
I have seen an ingame guild message board implemented in another game. It would be incredibly easy in WoW with very little marginal cost. Just provide a small internet access window. If you like, restrict it to the official blizzard forum. The off the shelf tools to do this are very robust. And it could actually reduce GM workload if you used it to funnel bug reports through the bug report forum.
Once you have ingame WoW forum access you could implement an official sub-forum for every guild. If you are in a guild your guild's official sub-forum appears when you first open the web tool ingame.
This would definitely facilitate ingame/outofgame communications for non-hardcore guilds.
Whoa you say, that's a lot of extra threads on the official forum. But on the positive side, not only are they all exposed to the blizzard advertising banners (unless you pay extra) you also have the chance to sell premium content like posting ingame screenshots. There are reasons why there are so many sites eager to host your guild's website. And as large as the current official forums are I doubt a little more would be significant.
Ben Feb 25th 2011 5:15PM
This is a pretty cool feature. I doubt it will get used that much for really hardcore raid guilds, but I could see a casual raid guild using it to at least reach out to prospective members. I'm sure it will be even better for new players that don't really know how to go about looking for a guild to find a guild that might work for them.
Tim Feb 25th 2011 5:22PM
That was funny Dawn. I chuckled.
kvanje Feb 25th 2011 5:29PM
It's looking rather useless to me. First of all, there's the whole guild rep issue. It's being helped slightly by the tabards in 4.1, but regaining rep for a new guild will still be a massive grind, and also annoyingly pointless for characters who are already 85 and exalted with everything. Then there's the fact that this, as currently envisioned, seems to be aimed at raiders which, as Hih mentions, is rather incompatible with it only being available while you're guildless.
What would be great: a tool which helped you find and switch to the guild that's the best fit for you, without having to put in days upon days of /played to get back to where you were. Especially useful would be a much more detailed availability field - weekdays vs. weekends will give way too many false positives for someone who can e.g. never go on Thursdays.
Sentess Feb 25th 2011 5:32PM
I hope they will implent another under "tab" wich allows you to check what you search for.
PvE/PvP/RP/Social guilds.
Vyosher Feb 25th 2011 6:02PM
I agree with this. It's often difficult to find a roleplaying guild with the level of RP that you're looking for (light/medium/heavy/full-immersion) and something like this would be great for guilds looking for niche people that want to raid and RP or pvp and RP or whatever.
Dunno, great idea, will be nice if they put support for multiple guild types on it.
Duckaholica Feb 25th 2011 6:06PM
As the leader of an rp guild I am dismayed to not see an rp option. I know doers are blizz' redbreast stepchild but don't forget us entirely.