I was asked on the WoW forums to expand my "Finding the Right Guild for You!" guide. So I have added a good bit to it. I hope you enjoy the expansion.I get asked a lot on how you find the right guild for you. Getting in the right guild is important to your enjoyment of the game as well as the stability of the guild. If you get into a hardcore raiding guild and you can only play 3 hours a week, you are not going to be having much fun with that guild and at the same time, they are not going to be adding a “valuable” member to their team to obtain their goals and they will either kick you or you will quit and move on. Either way, a member leaving a guild makes ripples that could have been avoided. In a guild with good communication and procedures, these ripples will just die off and everyone will go on. In an unstable guild, the ripples of someone leaving can cause the entire guild to collapse. So you should be picky to make sure that you join a guild that will be fun for you, AND the guild should be picky so they will find the right people who can contribute to their goals as a guild and become a fully productive member. You should apply for a guild just like you would a job. Below you will find the steps I suggest using to find the right guild for you!
- Time: Quite simply, how much time per night and week are you willing to spend online? Also, factor in what times you normally play. Get a general idea of when you are online normally and how long you stay on. Write this schedule beside TIME on your sheet of paper.
- Goals & Play Style: Do you consider yourself someone who enjoys seeing the world, questing, and enjoying a good instance run with friends? Perhaps you are someone who is looking for the best gear in the game and willing to pay top gold for it if you can’t get it yourself? Or maybe the challenge of killing one of the best known villains in Warcraft history? Write down a list of things you want to get done this week in game beside Goals and Play Style. Next to each item, write down what you need to go to get those done.
- Social: At the core of it all MMOs are about the people. If not, you would be looking for a guild now would you! How do you want to interact with those around you? Do you enjoy playing in character and joining with other players to create storylines for your characters as you play? Do you enjoy cutting up with a group of adults on a voice chat server? Do you consider yourself a soldier in the war again the evil out there and like giving and taking orders to vanquish the foe? Do you enjoy helping those less experienced as you? Beside SOCIAL on your paper, think about your real life friends and how you interact. This is your natural social impulses and will probably be a good guide on how you want to belong in a social group such as a guild. Also put down what you think you would like in a social environment online.
- Values: This may be the easiest or hardest part of your homework and should take a little bit of time. Think about what guidelines you live your life by and start to write them down next to VALUES. Within this section think of things like cussing, friends and family first, need vs. greed, learning from your mistakes, teamwork, forgiveness, honoring your word, and any other generalization that you think of that may come up in real life as well as in game.
Now that you have a completed “Self Assessment” set it to the side and let’s go looking for guilds!
O Guild, Guild! Wherefore art thou Guild?
You now have a good view of what you are like and need, now to find some guilds. No matter what server you are on, save for the few “dead” servers, you will have an abundance of choices for guilds to pick from. But how do you track them down? There are several ways to begin your search, so let’s cover a few of the ones available.
- Realm Forum: For each realm, Blizzard has created a realm forum. You can find a list of all of them here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/child-forum.html?forumId=11119&sid=1. Many guilds will post that they are recruiting in the realm forums and most actually have a “Guild List” that some great person has taken the time to create and hopefully maintain. You might even find more information than you know what to do with! Such as on “Sisters of Elune” there is even a list of guild progression for raids, a list of role playing guilds, and more! Good guild recruiters should also be looking at these forums on a regular basis, so you can also post that you are looking for a guild and see what responses you get.
- Guild Recruiting Channel: In the major cities, there is a Guild Recruitment channel that players can join to promote their guild and look for new guilds. If you are unguilded and enter a major city, the chat channel should be added to your options automatically. If not you can go into your chat options and turn it on. Now you can use that channel to listen to the guild recruiting messages and to let people know you are looking for a guild. If you get instant invites, decline them. If you get instant invites, decline them. If they are willing to invite people without even asking a single question about you then they will be doing this for everyone. That is not a good thing. The quest here is to find the right guild, not the quickest inviting. I can guarantee you that the two are never the same.
- Using the Armory: Each member of a guild will have the guild name displayed under their name. Many of these you will cross on a normal basis. Remember these names and head to the armory(http://www.wowarmory.com/) to check out the guild. You can check how many members they have and what gear they have, which will let you know if they are raiders or not. You can also see if their members are in the arena and enjoy PVP. The armory can tell you a lot about a guild.
Taking a Tour and Seeing the Sites
Now you have some guild names that you would like to look at and see if they fit your needs listed on your personal assessment. My first stop on a quest for a new guild is that guild’s website. If you looked up the guild on the realm forums, there is a good chance the site was listed. If not, you can do a Google search for that guild, but make sure that you are looking for the guild on the right server. My personal method is to simply ask. Do a /who on that guild and see who is online. While you are looking at the /who, notice how many people are online. If you are trying to find a raiding guild and there are only 2 people online during your normal play time, you know that guild will not work for you. Assuming the number of online people is acceptable, you can ask any of those members if their guild has a website. If they do not know, ask for the name of one of their online officers and ask that officer.
If per chance the guild does not have a website, you can make a personal choice if you want to continue investigating them or not. My reasons for not joining a guild without a website are that 1) the guild mission, values, and rules are not posted for everyone to see. This can lead to infighting and arguments over things that were simply not posted on a website. Also, it leads to the guild leader making judgments on the fly which may or may not be fair to all involved. 2) No forums or calendar to organize the guild and keep communication flowing 3) Lack of the guild leadership putting time into the guild to make something that people can use and enjoy. It is not a money thing; there are a lot of free guild portals out there that can be used.
Once you get to the guild website, see if it is a “free site” or an actual website hosted by the guild. Now, do not take away from the free sites; they are good sites, but if you find a guild that hosts their own site and domain, then you know they are invested in the guild at least a little financially. Most of the guilds that will spend the money on hosting and domains are determined at sticking around a bit longer than those that don’t. There are guilds that are using free sites that are just as dedicated, so don’t get me wrong, but those that do spend their own money are more likely to fight it out and be dedicated to the guild than to just get frustrated and leave the guild.
Now past the URL and the general look of the site, read it all! The main things to look for are:
Guild Mission: Where are the leaders taking this guild? Grab your self assessment. Does their mission match up with your goals? If they are a top end raiding guild, is that something you listed in your goals and play style? If you listed “Ripping the Twin Warglaives of Azzinoth out of Illidan’s cold, dead hands” and they listed “Petting Bunnies” then you have a slight reason for concern.
- Guild Values: Again on your sheet, look at the things you value and the things they do. If you listed “a nice family guild that welcomes players of all ages” and they list “An adults only guild that role plays things that should not be allowed in decent society”(look for the news post if you missed it…funny but sad story) then you have a conflict of interest and should move on.
- Time Requirements: Now look to see what, if any, the guild requires of its member’s time. Check your list under TIME and make sure these two matches up. If not, move on. Unfortunately if they raid at 6:00pm each night, and you cannot get online till the kids are in bed and asleep at 9:00pm, then you are not a good fit for this guild and they are not a good fit for you. You can also use the guild calendar, if they have one, to see when they are online and playing.
- Membership Requirements: Some guilds have level and gear requirements as well as a mandatory time requirement, you should know these and already meet them if you are going to consider this guild home.
- Forums: Most guilds will have a lot of their forum sections locked down so only members can read the build of it, but that is OK. Read everything you can about them on the forums. Pay attention to how they treat each other and the tone they use. Are they friendly? Do they role play on the forums? Do they just list the strategies to defeat raid bosses? Use all of these facts to get a picture of what this guild is about.
- Raid Progression: Be sure to pick a guild that is close to where you are in raid progression. If you are only up to fighting Onyxia in your raid career, then joining a guild that is battling Illidan is probably not a good match for you or them. They will be needing someone with better gear and raid tactics and you will be needing a guild to get you gear to get up to their level. Either way, it is probably not the best choice in guilds.
If you need more information after your first visit to the website, you can either catch a member in game or ask on their forums. I will intentionally ask a different person than I originally talked to in game about their site and ask the questions I have. This will help to make sure that others in the guild are not undesirables and I just happen to get the one nice guy he first time.
Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, GUILD!
Now that you have the information and weighted various guilds to find the one that best fits you, apply to only one guild. DO NOT apply to multiple guilds. It will solve hassles and not waste everyone’s time if you ally to 3 guilds and then have to tell two of them to never mind….good luck getting in if you even need to apply again!
First!!!!! Look over all there information on their site that deals with recruitment. Be sure to READ AND FOLLOW all the instructions listed before you ever start typing your application. In one guild I ran we had an issue with people following simple instructions. So in the recruitment post I listed all the normal items you would expect to see: What other guilds have you been in, what gear do you have, what instance keys do you have, and so forth. I was VERY detailed in the questions. At the very end I wrote, “Please ignore all of the above information. To secure an interview for the guild, please send me a private tell via our forums and let me know your favorite kind of food.” You would be amazed at how many people went into full detail about everything about their character and did not bother to actually read the instructions and apply correctly.
On my application I am very specific about what I want and how I think the guild matches my views based on the information on their website. Use as many examples as possible. If your new guild lists values such as teamwork and communication, then you should put in there examples of where you have worked as a team and had good communication. Do this same thing with as many items as you can to give yourself the best chance of being accepted.
And one final point to remember: the more stringent and hoops you have to jump through to join the guild can be a hassle, but it is protecting the guild from inviting the wrong people. Once you are in the guild, this will protect you as well from having to deal with someone that you would not enjoy. So be patient and jump through the hoops. It will help in the end!
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