Filed under: Guilds

There are lots of reasons to join a guild: it makes it easy to find groups and raids, you have guaranteed company while you're playing, and most importantly, guild perks. In case you've been living under a rock, guild perks give you great bonuses for guild membership based on your guild's level. Perks can boost the amount of experience, reputation, and honor you gain, make your hearthstone cooldown shorter, and even make flight paths go faster. So, really, the question seems to be why not join a guild?

The question's been asked on Reddit and it got me wondering why my own alt of choice (for the moment) is currently unguilded. It couldn't take much more than a polite request to jump on the guild bandwagon and get my hands on those yummy, yummy perks. It would stop the regular requests I get to join guilds (even if you've turned off guild requests, you do frequently get whispers) and it's not as though I'm in a demanding guild at the moment. And yet when I don't feel like doing much (or dealing with others), I hop on to my alt to solo for a while.

And what about you, fellow players? Are you guilded or unguilded?

Joining a guild has always been a core aspect of World of Warcraft. How to choose the right style of guild can be an especially large hurdle to overcome for new players, but it's something we learn along the way. Players currently have a few resources at their disposal, whether it be the Blizzard Guild Recruitment forums, GuildOx, WoWProgress, or other tools. But there's an oft-forgotten in-game tool that was released back in patch 4.1. What about the in-game Guild Finder?

The options are a bit limited, and the listings depend on the effort put in by guild masters. Let's just say it's a neglected feature on a few fronts. I've used the Guild Finder before, when searching for a casual leveling guild on a new server. Outside of that, I stick to other tools when recruiting or looking for a new guild.

What about you -- do you ever use the in-game Guild Finder? What's your preferred resource for guild recruitment and discovery?

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First off, this isn't one of those posts where I'm a detached observer with no first person experience with the problems of guild leadership. I'm an officer in a raiding 25 man guild, and recently I was the victim of a shakeup. Our Anne Stickney wrote about it for the site, so I won't dredge up the same material. Instead, what I will do is talk about what someone else experienced tonight, and what it has me thinking about: namely, that perhaps it's time that alternatives to the classic GM/officers style of guild leadership were made part of the game's set up. Sure, you can run your guild like a council, or even an anarcho-syndicalist commune if you would like, but said commune would still be a monarchy by the way Blizzard has designed the guild formation process.

The reason I bring this up is because of a tweet from Emberdione, who comments here frequently as well as writes on her own blog. It was a very familiar story - her GM had decided he was tired of WoW, and so instead of handing the guild over like a sane person he kicked everyone out. Since it was so familiar to my own recent story, it got me thinking. Why do we still have this one person at the top pyramid structure as the only option for guilds?

Yesterday, my guild fell apart.

I logged into the game as usual, with the intent of clearing the holiday boss and then doing our usual Sunday raid. Instead, I was greeted by a whisper from my cohort in crime, the other rogue in my guild, who told me to join a random channel. Bewildered, I did so, only to find the rest of my guild in said channel. "Why did we make a channel?" I asked. "Because we don't have a guild anymore," she replied -- which was when I realized I was, in fact, completely guildless for the first time since somewhere in the middle of Burning Crusade. Our guild leader systematically kicked everyone out of the guild, shut the doors and called it a day.

Needless to say, it's been a hell of a weekend. My first thought was nonexistent, my second thought, oddly enough, was whether or not we'd ever had a guide on this particular situation on WoW Insider. I couldn't find one after peering through the archives, so I decided, after all the madness of yesterday had settled down, that I ought to write one.

So, from first-hand experience -- what do you do when your guild falls to pieces?

You know your adults-only guild has built up a serious steamhead of history when you begin seeing an entirely new generation of applicants from within your own ranks. That's right, WoW players, you really are that old. This month marks the 17th anniversary of The Syndicate, the current Guinness world record holders for the longest continuously operating online gaming community.

"As our move into our 18th year as a community, internally we are starting to see the children of our members applying to join," writes Sean "Dragons" Stalzer, president and CEO of The Syndicate. "Said a different way, that means people who have only known MMORPGs similar to WoW or EQ or UO or Rift are heading off to college."

When we interviewed Dragons three years ago, we examined the group's massive size across multiple games, its unrivaled retention rate (an average loss of one to two people per year, for a 99.92% retention rate), and its own studio that turns out strategy guides for casual players and handles game and hardware consulting and testing for various game companies. That's a heady bouquet of achievements for a hardworking guild. Still, the group's anniversary this month makes waves in a much larger context -- a new era for MMO designers and fans alike.

"It matters because the MMOs of the past 17 years were created, in large part, by a community of developers who knew the world of BBS gaming via a modem... who played MUDs and MOOs... who, in the more senior levels, knew gaming before there were computers," Dragons writes. "We are just now reaching the point where the future programmers, designers, producers etc.. are heading off to college having never known a world without MMORPGS. Some of the core mechanics and concepts that shaped what 'success' is in the MMORPG world are things they have never experienced, and that isn't a bad thing. It means there is change coming to the MMO space."

Are you searching for a guild of "friendly, mature people" who "have fun" in either a "social" or "raiding" context? You're in luck! You'll find those terms in most guild recruitment ads for WoW's 10 million players worldwide. On second thought, that may be more than good luck; it's more like an avalanche of virtually identical guild profiles. Will those terms help you discern any meaningful distinctions between these groups of players? That's a lot of "friendly" people to sort through.

Many guilds are fairly easily described by their schedules and raid progressions (or their lack of either). More likely, though, the essence of your group -- the part that gives it its flavor and makes it stand apart from other guilds -- is somewhat trickier to describe. "Social," "casual," "raiding" ...These terms describe most guilds. And even terms that seem fairly self-explanatory at first glance can be problematic for players trying to evaluate a potential fit. "We're a dedicated roleplaying guild." OK, so what's the spin? One RP guild might maintain a military structure and campaign, while another plays out some very adult-themed interpersonal dramas -- definitely not interchangeable concepts!

Our experience is that player and guild drama becomes inevitable when members end up unhappily guilded in a group that doesn't truly fit. The Drama Mamas frequently get mail from players who find their guildmates nice enough but still have that itchy feeling that something just isn't clicking. The fit you want is probably out there, but the terminology and labeling for these guilds hasn't quite caught up yet.

What are you looking for in a guild? What sort of group will help you enjoy playing World of Warcraft? Let's figure it out -- and if you're looking for a particularly specialized type of guild, we've included a few niche group suggestions to kickstart your research.

What is your guild all about? Many guilds are fairly easily described by their schedules and raid progressions (or their lack of either). More likely, though, the essence of your group -- the part that gives it its flavor and makes it stand apart from other guilds -- is somewhat trickier to describe. "Social," "casual," "raiding" ...These terms pretty much describe most guilds.

Even terms that seem fairly self-explanatory at first glance can be problematic for players trying to evaluate a potential fit. "We're a dedicated roleplaying guild." OK, so what's the spin? One RP guild might maintain a military structure and campaign, while another plays out some very adult-themed interpersonal dramas -- definitely not interchangeable concepts!

When I first started playing World of Warcraft, in late 2004 on the server Azjol-Nerub, I knew the people in the guild my wife introduced me to and that was about it. Via that guild, I eventually met people who brought me to another guild, one that raided fairly heavily. That guild moved to Norgannon, becoming one of its top raiding guilds up until the end of Wrath of the Lich King when it moved servers and factions, and I didn't go along for the ride. I instead moved to Cenarion Circle, then Sisters of Elune. In all of this, my sense of community in the game has always been very heavily guild focused.

This means that when people talk about having developed a sense of server community via pugging Stratholme or Shadow Labyrinth back in the day, they're talking about a game I never played. When I was pugging in early BC, before I started raiding again, I was miserable dealing with non-guildmates who often wouldn't listen, demanded a tank with more AoE than a warrior, refused to CC or refused to do so on the targets I asked, and were otherwise often awful. This isn't to say I didn't have any good pick up groups in those days, but if I wanted to get anything done I often had to wait for guild groups. One of the reasons I heralded the advent of the Dungeon Finder was that instead of bothering my guildies so I could get some runs in, I just queued up. No more "LF Tank and 2 CC for Shattered Halls, Paladin tank preferred" or whatever the flavor of the month is. Not that we were running Shattered Halls anymore by that point, of course.

Based on their database of 230,000 guilds, GuildOx has come up with the top 20 most popular guild names.

Interestingly there are no guild names that really run away with the list -- the most popular guild name only appears 62 times. One would have thought that there would have been names that'd appear hundreds of times, but according to the data that's not the case.

Also noteworthy is that none of the top names are offensive or jokes. This speaks well of the community at large. Here's GuildOx's results:

20. Prime -- 48
19. Requiem -- 49
18. Eclipse -- 50
17. Genesis -- 50
16. Exodus -- 50
15. Asylum -- 51
14. Defiance -- 51
13. Invictus -- 52
12. Relentless -- 52
11. Insidious -- 52

The rest of the list after the break!

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

This week's letter writer is busted.

Dear Drama Mamas,

I recently had a bit of a blow-up with a guild I used to be in that's really making me feel kinda crappy about myself...and I'm not really sure if it wasn't my fault.

Okay, so I was a casual member (i.e, not a raider) in a raiding guild with a female GM who has an....admirer, I'll call him B. B is a core raider who flirts openly and rather explicitly at times with GM (also a raider) over guild chat. GM does nothing to encourage it, but nothing to discourage it either, and as far as I know she's already in a relationship, and she and B live in different parts of the country. She added me to Real ID so we chatted and still do from time to time - I have no romantic interest in her whatsoever since I'm already in a relationship.

I have primarily run in 25 man raiding for the entirety of Cataclysm, and I raided all through Wrath of the Lich King and even Burning Crusade in 25 man raids. 25 man raiding is where I have the most fun. I like it for a variety of reasons. I enjoy having a wider selection of classes and specs available, I generally feel like a larger raid makes a fight feel more dramatic, I dislike how empty some raids feel with a smaller group. To me, a 10 man feels like a UBRS run. These are all personal reasons, I accept that they're not universal. I also wasn't impressed the few times I went into 10 man raids this expansion - the fights always seemed much easier, we blew through bosses we struggled with on 25, clearing 10 with undergeared alts due to the extremely forgiving space mechanics of raids like Firelands and Dragon Soul on 10 man.

So please understand, I am not a partisan of 10 man raiding. I don't like 10 mans. I find that their elevation to the top form of raiding was destructive to the game, to guilds, and to raiding itself. But they are and have been for some time the primary way that people raid. I hate 10 man raids. But the time has come to accept that we have killed the 25 man raid in all but name. It's not a question of should they be removed. They effectively have been removed. You see a lot of debate on what can be done to save the 25 man raid, and the developers have addressed the issue repeatedly in the Reddit AMA and Best Buy Q&A. But you'll notice that they address the issue by acknowledging it and highlighting the issues facing 25 man raids (difficulty of logistics, higher churn rates, higher recruitment needs, difficulty of encounter movement) but that no solutions are forthcoming.

I always remember sitting in Shattrath. Sometimes for hours, scrolling through trade, seeing the same messages over and over again. "LF1M Shadow Labyrinth, CC."

Every so often, the discussion comes back to how grouping tools are ruining World of Warcraft's social aspects. The arguments are usually the same, talking about how before the Dungeon Finder people had to have active guilds or set up groups via trade, how the servers had a sense of community, how you have to get out there and put groups together and make friends in order to play WoW, and how that's lost now. And whenever I see this argument, I remember sitting in Shattath, sometimes for hours, trying to get a group for Shadow Labyrinth.

People never really seem to remember those times when they're talking about this. Now, I've made a lot of friends in WoW over the years. Through server x-fers, through tiers of raiding, through old school days of dungeon running. I talk to a lot of these people to this day, and I've raided actively since the days of Molten Core. And yet, when people bemoan the tools that have been added to this game all I can remember is sitting in Shattrath, doing the "LFG Shadow Labyrinth" shuffle, looking at other people also looking for groups. Watching those groups demand that any new DPS have CC (warriors didn't) and that any new tank be an AoE god (warriors weren't) so they didn't have to use that CC they wanted you to have.

Even the mightiest among us are not immune to the decline of 25 man raiding. Paragon, who you may remember as one of the world's leading 25 man raiding guilds, is switching to a 10 man raid with the release of Mists of Pandaria. Reasons given include raider burnout during Dragon Soul, difficulty of recruiting players to fill those gaps (and I can attest to that one in a general sense, even far less progression oriented 25 mans are struggling to recruit right now) and player schedules changing.

It should be interesting to see how Paragon does as a 10 man in Mists of Pandaria. Some guilds thrive after the switch, others rebuild and re-enter 25 mans. I personally can't help but think this is a symptom of the gradual erosion of 25 man raiding, myself, but we'll see.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Back in July, Blizzard announced the Guild Mentoring Program, aimed at easing the process of connecting new players to guilds. Now, both the European and US servers have their initial mentoring guilds selected. These guilds will have their names temporarily changed to make finding them easier for new players, becoming Blizzard Mentor Horde or Blizzard Mentor Alliance for the duration of the program.

The Mentoring program is only available on the selected servers for now, so if you feel you're in need of mentor services, check the lists to see if they're available on your server. The program is specifically tailored for new and low level players to get an introduction to what being in a guild is all about, so if that's you, definitely check it out.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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