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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

Honestly, the time slot is the biggest thing, then shopping around within that slot to find a group that you can relate to.

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.