Question about guildsFollow

Tangible benefits to being in a guild: you get a Guild Chat channel of your own, only viewable by members of the guild. The Officers have a separate channel only they can access. The Guild Master can design a tabard. He can also make up the names of the ranks in the guild, promote and demote or remove people as he sees fit, and give the power to do those things to the officers. He can set a Message of the Day, played to all guild members when they log on.

There is no set place for guilds to meet, no space they call their own. Some guilds may have a spot where their avatars can gather for a guild meeting (usually somewhere quiet or isolated). There is no official bank system for guilds yet (though Blizzard are working on this at the moment), guild banks are operated on a trust basis.

That's pretty much the basics of guild mechanics, and answers about half of the question(s).

As to the benefits of joining a guild, and their grouping habits... it depends on the guild. On an older or more popular server, expect to find hundreds of guilds, all with their own agenda.

Some guilds are purely social, existing only for chat and company between friends. There are guilds who only engage in PvP and Battlegrounds. There are high-end raid guilds, that exist solely to defeat new content as fast as Blizzard can make it; there are even Role Playing guilds (mainly on RP servers), where your character needs a unique and interesting backstory, and talking out of character can lead to being kicked from the guild... basically, there's something for everyone

The best advice I can offer you is to go to the Official WoW Forum for your own realm. Most realm forums have a 'Guild List', containing links to the websites of that realm's guilds. Take an hour to browse through them, and see the differences for yourself.

A few tips on joining guilds:

1. Research. As noted above, there's a guild to suit nearly everyone. Don't waste your time applying to a guild that only does 5-night-a-week level 60 raid content if you can only log on for 3 hours at midday.

2. Once you have a guild or two in mind, try talking to a few of their members, to see what sort of people they are. Ask around to see what their reputation is like as well.

3. Treat them as you would like them to treat you. Above all, be honest: both about what you want from the game, and about yourself. Anything else is wasting your time, and theirs.

4. No good thing is ever achieved by spam: don't bug people for a place in their guild. Make your interest known, and let them decide. Also, shouting 'want to join a guild!!! in IF or Org will only serve to make you the target of ridicule.

5. If all else fails, make your own. For a little outlay, and some footwork, you could have your own guild. Running and maintaining one however, whilst preserving your enjoyment of WoW, is harder than learning Calculus in Chinese.

Hope this helps somewhat,

E

As wonderfully complete The One and Only Eschatologist's answer was, there is one other benefit I'd like to point out.

If you're in a guild then you aren't as likely to get spammed by people asking you to sign their guild charters or join their guild. :D I really hate having my auction window or mailbox shut on me because someone has opened a guild sign-up on me uninvited.

Kensak, you are more than welcome Having taken the time to post a polite enquiry, it's the least I could do.

Good points Morghast and SD, there is an auto-refuse mod out there (name escapes me for the moment).

I think it's fairly rare to be in one guild for the whole length of your stay in WoW. Most people don't have that good an idea of what the game holds for them when they create their first character, and their goals can change rapidly (especially at the level cap).

My main has been in 4 guilds in a little over 13 months and, in retrospect, they follow a fairly predictable pattern

1. Random whispers: u wanna join my guild?

This happens a lot when you're unguilded at lower levels. I think I accepted the invitation to <Shadowlord's Society> because I knew one of their members, but mainly because... well, why not? If you don't like it, /gquit. The guild equivalent of a pug in many ways, lasted from 18-30 or so, when the 12 or so members went their separate ways.

2. *Phone rings* RLBuddy: We're all /gquitting and starting our own guild, you're in right?

I rolled on Silvermoon because that's where my RL buddies were. Given the option of a shiny new guild with my 10 or so RL mates, I leapt at it (I'd been guildless a while, and my mates were all dissatisfied in their own guilds). This lasted me 'till 60 and beyond, with lots of good times.

However, even though I started months after my friends, I was the second person to ding 60 in <Thorium Dogs>. The first guy to ding 60 started leveling another toon fairly soon, but I found I couldn't let go of my main. I wanted to keep playing him, and seeing new things, and doing exciting stuff.

Raiding, basically. So, to do what I wanted to do, I had to look for another guild.

3. "A guild that raids"

As opposed to a raid guild. I didn't feel I could just step from 10 man Scholo pugs to BWL and TAQ. For a start, I didn't have any experience in a 'proper' raid environment, and more importantly, all the big raid guilds seemed kind of scary, with their dkp, enforced raid times and what have you.

During my interminable Scholo/Strat/UBRS period, I'd met a couple of great guys in a large friendly guild, that also did MC and Ony, AQ20 and ZG. All the guys they introduced me to were pleasant people, the guild leadership was fair and honest. For a while, things were great (guild first kill on Raggy, that kind of thing) until the serpent arrived in the garden :p

A few key people quit to join hardcore guilds; a long summer break; trying to motivate people for long expensive nights of BWL wipes all added up. Eventually, most of the people who'd put in the effort to get MC on farm status quit, leaving the leader with a lot of work to do. I still wanted to see and do more.

4. A Raid guild

Why try and kid myself? Raiding is what I loved most about the end game, so I took the plunge, did my research, and applied to the guild I'm currently in. Having fun, doing what I enjoy, and looking forward to more of the same in TBC, with a bunch of guys and girls who aren't afraid to put in some effort.


I'm sure a lot of people recognise the sorts of guilds I mentioned here
This was all to show that what you think you want at the beginning, may not be what you look for at the end. If you're like me, you'll end up spending a lot of time in WoW.: it might as well be spent enjoying yourself.

Yaya, tldr, I know you philistines

E

The best thing you can do is post in in the Guild recruitment channel. There is really no other way to ask people to join and not be rude. Or you could post on the o-boards.