I’m planning to write a longer post this week on different ways to find guilds in games. One of the things that stands out to me is that you may need to search in different ways, depending on what you want from your guild.
For example, WoW offers recruitment forums on the official boards. But at least 90% of the guilds who use those forums are looking for raiders to take on hard mode ICC. So if that wasn’t what you wanted, there’s no point searching those forums even if they were widely publicised (which they aren’t). And there’s also no easy way to filter out the guilds which are on awkward schedules for you, even if you were a hard mode raider looking for a home. Other websites attempt to plug these gaps, but that still leaves the potential recruit with a lot of work to do. Recommendations from a friend is another time-honoured way to find a guild, especially if you know people who raid on multiple servers/ characters.
I’m hoping that someday, some enterprising guild or game takes the Facebook approach and lets people recommend guilds to their friends. (This would actually be a useful battle.net feature but I don’t think that Blizzard is socially savvy enough to do it.)
Another way is via other communities. For example, maybe you are a member of a bulletin board or group of bloggers who decide to start a guild and you join it because you want to play with them.
Listening to recruitment chat in games is yet another way. People disparage the guilds who recruit madly via game chat, but it’s one way to meet people. And just because a guild recruits publically doesn’t mean that they might not be good company.
Running lots of random groups is another time honored way to meet people in games. If you find yourself frequently in a PUG with people from the same guild and you like them, asking if they are recruiting is a natural next step.
And the most traditional way of all, although maybe the hardest – is to start your own.
So how did you find your current guild/s? And do you think the same method would work for a new player starting now?
Welcome to Spinksville! 
I found it through a recruitment ad in the official realm forum. Applied, got in as by a miracle and never looked back. But yeah, it can be a bit of a chance taking if you’re judging a guild from their advertising. Taking references could help, but I didn’t know anyone in the guild, so I took a chance and it turned out to be right. I suppose I was a bit lucky there.
I can’t see though why a new player would be any worse off than I was back then. There are plenty of ads and on our realm they’re not only for hardmode raiding guilds, but also for way more casual guilds. It goes all over the range.
Advertising through the channels isn’t anything I’d recommend. It’s just annoying to see the spam.
I wonder if it’s worth recommending people to pick popular factions on popular servers if they’d like a better choice of guild via this sort of route.
Mine is quite hit and miss, and actually I’ve seen much more recruiting on channels than on bboards lately. The realm board seems unusually quiet, maybe it just hasn’t been effective for people at this point in the game (is what I’m wondering, at least).
My guild is a special snowflake. 😉 My guild is one of two Livejournal-based all-female guilds on the US-Bronzebeard realm. I read about it in wow_ladies, which is the largest WoW Livejournal community, and when my previous guild fell apart, my SO and I joined that guild. We don’t recruit as such, but we’re listed as community guild in wow_ladies.
I did notice lately that guild advertisements in trade channel have picked up a lot, must all be part of the end time mood at the end of the expansion.
I think the trade channel activity is just a response to people becoming inactive due to burnout/exams/summer. It happens this time every year.
WoW – no active account. In Cataclysm I’ll almost certainly join a guild via trade channel.
Eve – they have a very good forum recruitment board. I had a number of quite specific requirements and looked through a lot of options before I picked this one.
AoC – we started a guild but it will probably fall by the wayside. I started it in partnership with a real life friend whose interest has flagged. Because members mean guild ranking which translates directly into better stats competition for members is fierce and it takes a lot of energy to catch up with the big boys. Older guilds give people passive stat buffs that are hard to match.
I think I’m probably in a strange position – I tend to find guilds through real-life links. I’m lucky in that I know a lot of people in the general RPG community in the UK, so I tend to join guilds that I know people in.
I started getting recruited by folks recruiting me.
it basicaly came down to puging and getting recuited by some of the better players.
My first three guilds were that route. The last was actualy pretty okay and I’ve only recently left them formally.
However my real in-game home game when someone I trusted (a certain undead warrior tank) mentioned their guild on a RP server.
I do think that taking PuG’s battle group wide means that guild recuitment is a bit tougher now. You dont keep bumping into the same people with quite the same frequency and when you do start meeting cool folks that you wouldnt mind being in a guild with its rare that they’re on your server.
I’m with Gazimoff, I found my guild through a real life acquaintance. Or alternately, you could say I found my guild through blogging…
I blog with Aurdon, who is the husband of my real life best friend. If I hadn’t started helping out with his blog, I’d never have gotten to be friends with him independent of his wife, and I probably wouldn’t have landed in his guild when mine broke up.
To trace back another link, Aurdon returned to our current guild because it was his raiding guild way back in the day and he had fond memories of it. Lots of the people he knew then are still around, and things are getting lively once more.
🙂 It’s a good way to find a guild.
I’ve mostly found my guilds through either knowing someone in guild in RL or searching forums and/or Google searching for LGBT-inclusive guilds. Aside from that, I have to say that the tools for recruiting and browsing guild information in EQ2 are great… just wish more games would follow that path.
I joined my guild in WoW something like May / June 2006. My noobie hunter (first char) was doing some group quests in Stromgarde with the help of my husband’s mage, when we stumbled across another hunter and a warlock doing the same quests. We completed them all together and afterwards I got a whisper asking if I wanted to join their guild. And that’s that.
We have an add up on the realm forums advertising for raiders, but also for social members (can’t have too many of those – makes sure the guild is lively and fun whether it’s raid time or not). Admittedly though most apps are raidings ones as I guess people looking for a social guild may not think to check the realm forums.
I formed a guild with some friends from the paladin forums. It eventually died, but I made some friends in it and followed one to a couple guilds after that. Finally we both ended up in my current guild and we’ve been here since late BC. I have no clue how he found them.
The only guild I’m currently in is in DDO, found by hanging around with Van Hemlock. Amongst previous guilds, there was a rather splendid guild in WAR tracked down via an equally splendid blog devoted to it, shame the game didn’t quite work out, but it was a good few months.
This has always been a difficult task for me as I’m not much of a social person. I’m fairly shy and I’ve never had an easy time making friends ingame.
One of the biggest hurdles is that players looking for guilds often aren’t realistic about their gear level in relation to the type of guild they want to join. If you hit 80 a couple of weeks ago and have been running heroics to get badge gear, don’t apply for a guild that is running heroic ICC. You’re looking for a guild that is starting ICC.
The first step for me has always been determining what kind of guild you want. People talk about hardcore vs. casual, but they mean different things to different people and there are so many different guilds that stretch the gamut of one to the other.
After I determine the level of seriousness that I wanted when it comes to raiding, I then check out their schedule regarding how many days per week and what time zone they’re primarily scheduling in. After that, I like to see what the atmosphere is like. I’m 45 and hanging around a bunch of people acting and talking immaturely isn’t what I’m looking for.
Once I have the type of guild I want, I look at wowprogression, guildox, etc. to target guilds that look like possible matches. I then visit their website and try to get a feel for their schedule and atmosphere. After that, I might inquire about membership or try to get in a few raids with them in pug situations for a mutual evaluation.
Repeat until you’re able to find what you’re looking for.
After two years, my guild collapsed and I was recently looking for a new home and found one through one of the blogs that I frequent.
I didn’t have any friends playing the game when I first started, and leveled my way to 80 via a couple free and easy casual guilds. At 80 I couldn’t find anything on the forums so I started scanning in game chat channels.
I looked for somebody posting a recruiting message that was close to what I was looking for. Then I would talk to the recruiter and ask a bunch of questions to see if not only I would be a good fit but, more importantly, if their philosophies were a good fit for me. Eventually I found one, but I was extremely fastidious until that point. That’s it, no grand story, but a lot of questions and answers were required before I would commit.
Two of my 80s are in a very large “Fan Guild”, formed by the hosts of a podcast. I’ve noticed there’s a few podcasts that have created a guild for their fans (even WoW.com has “It Came From The Blog” which, of course, references their page moreso than their podcast).
There’s a benefit to these Fan Guilds in that you have a better idea of the personalities you would be dealing with before you even sign the guild charter. If the blog/podcast the guild is based around is PVP centered, you know the focus is on PVP. Raiding podcasts, a guild with a raiding focus. A podcast with an “explicit” tag will probably have guildies that tend to fling some colorful language. And so on.
You can even get an idea of how the guild is doing by listening to the podcasts. Most podcasters who have these Fan Guilds will discuss what the guild is up to, what goals they’ve reached in the past week, and give you a peek behind the curtain to get a feel as to what morale is like leading up to Cataclysm.
My experiences: most raiding guilds and communities I were in I’ve got by being invited by a friend of friend to their run or pugged as a replacement for a missing guildie, asked can I stay and was let in. It was basically luck as many “guild run LF1M” are either usual sucky pugs you don’t want to see again or are guilds with closed roster.
I am very wary of trade-spamming recruitment macros “send app of http://ourawsumwebsite.org” as I really hate such bureaucratic and impersonal approach, it looks like reading ad in newspaper and sending a CV to get a job, it doesn’t work most of the time unlike getting one by “knowing the right person”.
Even with non raiding guilds, asking friends and friends of friends works well. The start of the chain is either irl friend or random person I grouped with, then it expands. However if you quest solo to 80 and never chat in instances then you might think it’s hard to find anyone worthy of putting on your friend list. But that seems to look like you’re a loner rather than social person…
Anyway I’m looking forward to Cataclysm “looking for guild” tool, maybe it’ll help because you won’t have to spam trade every 5 mins with guild recruitment, it will be posted once and stay for those interested while not bothering those who want to trade on trade.
i found a guy online the same time I was (usually pretty late), and we just consistently were farming the hell out of heroics. I joined up with his guild, but the times don’t line up so much anymore. I still PvP with a few from the guild, but might need to make a break to people that don’t raid at 6pm as it just doesn’t work with my schedule.
Honestly, the time slot is the biggest thing, then shopping around within that slot to find a group that you can relate to.
I went server hunting first, then took a look at the top guilds from each of my short list of servers, and applied to the best of them that met what I was looking for in terms of progression, maturity, longevity, and raid schedule.
As for the specific tools I used, first I hit wowwiki.com to get the location of each server’s data center (wanted the closest server to home I could find to minimize latency, and it cut it by around 75%). From there, I knew I wanted a PVP server with good balance, or slight preference towards horde, with a fairly competitive race to server firsts. So I hit wowprogress.com to research that. From there, I took a look at the top handful of guilds on each server on my short list. Suffice to say, a well-maintained website and active forum was a clear advantage in my search.
I ended up applying to four guilds, and got accepted to my top pick this past week.
WoW – first/only guild, found their website with a random google search. Guild of Awesomeness, the name totally sucked me in. Very well written casual mission statement. Was looking for a mature, casual guild to access group content once a week. Hadn’t even grouped a single instance in 7 months of leveling prior to joining.
GL’s name is Awesomeness. GoA been my home ever since.
Awesomeness and his SO Ros (also a player) are getting married this week. I got an invite to the wedding, but wasn’t able to get off work. Lots of guildees will be there.
Grats to them!
Who says this isn’t a social game?
It was a late night, crazy, crazy grand plan idealistic sort of thing. A couple of us discussing what we truly wanted from WoW, a dream.
And then we formed it. We spent time looking for the right people and the right people brought more to us. Sometimes I cruise through the WoW forums, and notice a soul who seems the right fit, who wants the same as we do, and I put out feelers.
And no, I’d not recommend it as a way of finding a guild unless you’re prepared to put in a heck of a lot of passion, commitment, work and love!
I joined my present guild when my former guild disbanded during Ulduar. Went and searched online and found out there is actually a guild on the US-Realms that uses my mother language as a primary communication method in the guild, and guess what? the raiding progression is actually good.
I immediately transfered and joined and we’re still going strong after 5 years since the guild was created(11/12 ICC HM). Although time has took its toll on us, our members diminishing and the officers slowly going towards quiting. I think we can still exist after Cataclysm and falling apart. I still can’t believe that although the only requirement to join the guild was to speak the same language we still could make it up to the top 1000s in the World, my guild is an extraordinary one.
I was brought into my GW guild by my significant other at the time. Although we are no longer together, I had the opportunity to make friends with all of his friends and we are still guilded with a great group of people.
Since I brought my current better half into the guild as well, I would say this is one of those timeless methods that will always work for those small guilds such as ours that are made up of RL friends and acquaintances. 🙂
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Sheer damn luck, I reckon….don’t jinx it!
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