Breakfast Topic: What's the best thing about your guild?
by Amelia Ramstead 
May 15th 2011 at 8:00AM
About eight months ago, I found myself in need of a new guild. It was nothing against the old guild; it just wasn't meeting my needs at the time. No one was ever in chat, and I was lonely. I'd grown bored with pugging heroics and wanted to see some endgame content before Cataclysm dropped.
So the husband and I set out to find The Perfect Guild. We had a short list of things we needed. We aren't hardcore, but we still wanted to raid. We wanted a guild where we could level new characters and get help when needed. We wanted enough members that guild chat was usually busy. We wanted friendly people who would welcome us in with open arms. We also needed the guild to be on our current server, because we couldn't afford a transfer. We poked around on the forums for awhile, and suddenly my husband jumped out of his chair. "Come here!" he said. "I think I've got one!" I read through the recruitment ad ... and it was perfect. Everything we wanted and more. We quickly applied and were indeed welcomed with open arms. Two weeks later, I joined a weekly raid and set foot in ICC for the first time.
How did you find your current guild? Why did you join them? Are you still happy with them?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
nclay May 15th 2011 8:07AM
There are 994 members in my guild all of which do not actively raid or dungeon run, all of which complain when I do either of the two and an achievement pops on the screen because none of them want the responsibility for 'setting one up', all of which do not respond to requests for help / requests for guild invites / msgs / insults in trade / calender events demanding they turn guild chat back on.
Whats best about my guild? I have no responsibilities to it, do whatever the hell I want and get to enjoy the lvl25 guild perk and all that preceed it.
DavidiousofAzeroth May 15th 2011 8:18AM
I'm not sure that a lvl 25 guild perk is worth being in a useless non-team forming guild. Find a new home bud, where people do care about each other. The more people in a guild, the less people care about each other and the guild as a whole.
dengarsw May 15th 2011 10:51AM
I can see how some players want that, but yeesh, why not just play a solo game? That's pretty sad.
HappyTreeDance May 15th 2011 11:28AM
That really sounds horrible, to be honest.
I'm also in a level 25 guild, and if I had to guess, I'd assume we have around 25 people with a hell of a lot of alts giving us around 250 characters. Everyone gets along, we do raids, randoms, pvp, and RP. Guild chat is almost always friendly, and people help each other out. Not to mention our amazing dance parties in Orgrimmar under the influence of Orbs of the Sin'dorei.
My point it, it's possible to get all the perks of a level 25 guild and not have it be a craptastic environment. And let me tell you, when we hit 25, we were *proud* of it, and of each other. It made the gathering we had on our shiny new guild mounts even more fun, and it meant something because we care about each other.
Sane May 15th 2011 12:35PM
No point down rating the guy (or gal) for being honest guys. :) Maybe he/she just enjoys the 25 guild perks the most. Nothing wrong with that.
Noyou May 15th 2011 1:28PM
It's not bad to do you own thing. Why not do your own thing and get some perks?
nclay May 15th 2011 7:46PM
A little clarification, the reason I enjoy a guild like the one im in so much is because I enjoy heroics and raiding in a pug enviroment. I enjoy meeting strangers, I get a chuckle out of slip ups and I don't mind wipes. I'm a bear tank alliance side so my eyes are always watching everyone else in my group/raid.
A organized guild would want me locked down into their raid enviroment and while I'm always happy to help out my guildmates I very much prefer helping out anyone beyond the guild as well.
In my original post, just to clarify I am not one of the silent/help noone/ignore everyone types. I'm the one who will be in twilight doing dailies, stop what I'm doing and go help someone kill a group quest in dragonblight and then 5 minutes later end up in outlands blades edge helping yet another person unlock the ogre base/dailies.
I'm a sociable bear :)
Androv May 15th 2011 8:18AM
My guild is good at most aspects of the game. I'm on an RP server and it successfully manages to juggle RP, social, normals, HC's and raids fantastically. It helps anyone and everyone. It has a great reputation on the server and I've heard NOBODY say ONE bad word about ANY member. EVER.
I'm a member of Immortalis btw, the subject of the recent http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/11/wow-moviewatch-immortalis-second-birthday/
Our second b'day movie. :)
What more could you ask for?
rhett May 15th 2011 8:19AM
When ToC had just recently come out I had wanted to join a new guild because they were American "i'm Australian" there was not many people in guild chat, there was very nice people in the guild but I did not really connect with them.
So I was talking to one of the guildies about how I was thinking about server swapping to and Oceanic server because more people will be online at the same time, so they said that they had just put their main into a new raiding guild "which also had a sub guild for family friends and alts" so I jumped into that guild they were helpful, a little crazy at time I love them none the less.
I have NEVER thought about swapping guilds since I joined I now raid a couple of nights a week fairly casually and with friends.
lycan_no_chaos May 15th 2011 8:29AM
If I remember correctly, I think I found my guild pretty much by accident. I'm a roleplayer who started on Moon Guard, but was unhappy with the Hordeside rp and looking for a new home. I had some alts on various other realms, and started looking at the forums to decide where to settle. The forums for Emerald Dream impressed me, being equally about rp and pvp, both sides thanking each other for good fights, and lots of rp ideas going around. I rolled a troll hunter and got invited to this troll based rp guild.
Not only are the people in my guild friendly and always chatty, it's pretty much a drama-free zone, everyone's pretty chill. Not only that, but we have active pvp and pve going, and we do old content, too. I came into the game late Wrath, and got my first 80 right before Cataclysm hit, so I have never raided before or seen any of the old raids, and I want to see it all. Finally, they have the patience to deal with my erratic schedule, altaholicism, and insane amount of rp ideas I come up with. We're drama-free OOC, but IC we got some epic things going.
I still wander around servers, but I've pretty much made my home there thanks to this guild.
Gendou May 15th 2011 8:31AM
I am active (and an officer) in two different guilds.
One is a Horde guild on a PVE server. It is a casual guild which raids on occasion. It is an extremely social guild, and the people in it are amazing and the reason I have remained a member through good times and bad for the last six years.
The other is an Alliance guild on an RP server. It is a heavy RP guild which does not raid and does not often do instancing. It is also a very social guild, and has amazing folks in it as well. I enjoy spending time in chat over there, even when I am not roleplaying.
The best part of both guilds? The people. In fact, there's been some crossover. When I started spending time with the RP guild, some of our more lore-oriented members of the PVE guild rolled characters on the RP server. And now several members of the RP guild are also members of the Horde PVE guild and leveling new Horde characters to see a lot of the Horde lore.
World of Warcraft is an amazing game, but what ultimately keeps us subscribing and logging in are the people with whom we share the experience.
Mortenebra May 15th 2011 9:06AM
This. A million times this, Gendou.
Back before our current guild became what it is today, we were all just people thrown together through happenstance and random luck. A few of the people were crossovers from guilds/factions/servers we were previously on, friends of aforementioned people thrown together by happenstance. Fast forward about two years and boom! There we are: a fairly successful, off-the-grid, no-drama-allowed, Horde PvE casual raiding guild. In raid, we tend to call each other by our real names rather than character names. Instead of being a bunch of characters who play together often, we're a group of friends who play the same game together, even if some of us haven't officially met in person yet.
When I was in labor with our first baby last year, my husband told four people first: his mom, his boss, my mom and one of our guildmates. That's how close-knit our guild is. In the months following, our guild gave us advice when we asked for it, sympathy and empathy when we were overwhelmed with being a new parent, and understood, with great patience, when we had "emergency AFKs" during the sporadic times we were online (which meant any time within a day's 24hr span). To be perfectly honest, I may have gone crazy with the postpartum biological craziness and cabin fever if not for my guildmates.
In essence, we are a family-- an extensive, continent-encompassing family. We sometimes get on another person's nerves, I'm not going to lie. But that's all part of being a family.
jessieveller May 15th 2011 8:32AM
I was ally on my current server for my entire wow career. After cata dropped I wanted to find a hardcore end-game raiding guild that couldn't be found where I was. I xferred off for greener pastures. The guild I joined was not all I had expected it to be. The atmosphere was full of elitist assholes and leaders who were inadequate at best. About 3 months later, this guild was falling apart and the GM of the top horde guild on my old server tracked me down and persuaded me to come over to the dark side.
Here I've found that I can have the 25man heroic end-game raiding that I wanted, and the community of a 5year old guild with mature and wonderful people at the same time. Its absolutely perfect, and I couldn't be happier. (Even if I did waste a few hundred dollars in xfers to get there >.
Wallert May 15th 2011 8:35AM
The people.
Anyone who can't say the same thing is in the wrong guild.
Hob May 15th 2011 9:04AM
I agree that people make or break a guild ~ I've dropped any number of guilds due to racist / sexist guild chat, or that one dude who won't shut up with the idiotic commentary but he happens to be an officer's friend (or worse, an officer's kid), so nothing ever happens.
All of the guilds that I stick with have players who are quiet and mind their own business, apart from the very occasional "grats" when someone hits a true milestone. (Not just "Shave and a Haircut" or "Can I Keep Him?")
webby_o May 15th 2011 9:52AM
Surely guilds are people? To me, saying you like a guild because of the people is like saying you like music because of the tunes or swimming because of the water.
Hob May 15th 2011 11:59AM
@webby_o
Before Cataclysm, I would agree 100%. Now, guilds include extremely convenient perks, as well as new heirlooms, recipes, mounts, and pets.
In today's environment, saying you like your guild for no other reason than your guildmates is a bit like saying you enjoy your job for no other reason than your co-workers. That may certainly be true (friends and family guilds, for example), but you can hang out with your friends and family without being in a guild.
Blizzard / Activision has said that they want to be really push the social aspect of the game. That's why they implemented guild levels and perks instead of, say, a dance studio or guild housing.
loop_not_defined May 15th 2011 1:15PM
webby_o, I've met plenty of people who like their guilds for the purples. They treated the people more like a tool for accomplishing that goal, and easily got upset when they felt the tool wasn't functioning correctly.
Noyou May 15th 2011 1:28PM
I'd have to agree with Wallert and Loop. I for one liked the guild I was in. When it fell apart I made my own and made it in the image of the one I was in. It's great on people. I have slowly accepted the fact that we will never be a raiding guild. I don't think it's fair to say that if you don't list - "the people" you are in the wrong guild though. Different people play for different things. The sad fact is if you want to see end game content in the current expansion your chances are less in a social guild then in a raiding guild. I am sure there are good guilds out there that can do both. In the end you have to be honest with yourself. Time to check on my people :)
Necromann May 15th 2011 8:38AM
What I love about my guild is our epic conversations on vent. Sometimes me and the GM, some times 20 ppl.