Nobody likes looking for a guild,  just as nobody enjoys looking for a new job or new friends.  But this is just the predicament that so many people/players are in.  Many of you are simply not enjoying your time in Warcraft  because you’re not in the right guild.  This is a social game,  a massively multi-player game.  You can play solo, but there is so much more enjoyment from playing with friends.  People play for a bit, find nothing to do, nobody to hang out with and then quit out of boredom. There is SO much to do!  And there are so many people to do those things with!  So let me help you!

Looking for a guild can be a pretty daunting task,  but with a little bit of preparation beforehand,  you’ll make it easier on yourself.  Knowing what you’re looking for ahead of time will likely result in less frustration for you.

So start asking yourself questions:

What kind of guild do I want? PVE or PVP focused?

PVE:

How hardcore do I want to be? Mythic Raider?

– Raiders come in all difficulties. Maybe your priorities have changed and it is no longer important to be a realm first raider.

How many days a week do I want to raid?

-A 5 day raid guild doesn’t necessarily do better than a 4 day raid guild. Looking at a guild’s rank is often indicative of this.

What days are my preferred raid days that I can stick with?

– Do I want my weekends free? I play hockey on Mondays so maybe any guild that raids Mondays is out of the question.

What kind of loot system do I prefer or do I even care about that?

– Is it a Loot Council, DKP, EPGP, Suicide Kings, Rolling?

Am I willing to server transfer? What about faction transfer?

– Can I afford the server transfer? Do I want to leave the best faction and join the rock-eating horde?

Trade Chat

One of the most common places to find leveling or casual guilds. You will not find many serious guild posting in trade chat and there is a connotation of trade chat guilds being bad and they often fall apart. This isn’t  always the case. Trade chat is a really easy way to look for those early guilds that want to do dungeons and early raids together.

In between [Anal] and [Thunderfury]  spam, look for guilds like:

“<Cobra Kai Dojo> recruiting for all classes for our guild. We are a fun ninja guild that has plans to raid in the future. Full access to repairs, food, gems. Initiation: Must sweep the leg.”

These guilds often will not be the raiding guilds that are killing heroic/mythic bosses, but they’ll probably have a fairly good base to start learning encounters and the game.

Realm Forums

These forums used to be full of drama and ninja-looter accusations. But these days it is mostly recruitment, raid carries, CM carries and profession kit sales.  Realm forums are a much more effective way to find a raiding guild than trade chat.  Players that are a bit more serious about progression,  how much they value their time,  are more likely to have a recruitment template up for potential recruits to see.

Find your Realm forums here and look at all the guilds trying to recruit you!

Recruitment Forums

The official recruitment forums open up your guild possibilities even more. If you are willing to faction and server transfer you have so many more possibilities for finding the right raiding guild, or even pvp guild. If you’re on a medium population server right now… think of these forums as a hundred times larger.

Example:  If you’re doing some online dating, you’re increasing your search parameters to all of North America instead of just your farm town.

WoWProgress

This is one of the best tools to use to find a guild.  Most guilds, whether they be top raiding guilds or casual raiding guilds,  are using this website. It is very easy to use, just put in your own search parameters:

• US or EU
• Alliance or Horde
• How many days you want to raid
• What language your preferred guild speaks
• What class you are
• What spec your main character is
• Click Go!

This sorts guilds based off your criteria based on their progression level.

Example:

Konrad is looking for a raiding guild.  He’s a 12/14 Protection paladin that likely has experience with Paragons Heroic as well.

He is clearly on EU based off his armory.  So at the top left under Guilds->Progress->West,  he would scroll down to EU.

He is looking for a 25man guild and would click the appropriate link.

He has now sorted all 25man EU guilds.

Because he loves to eat rocks and loves the aesthetics of mud huts, he would choose the Horde faction.  He also wants to raid 3 days a week in an English speaking guild.  And finally he is a paladin, but protection.

Once he hits Go, WoWprogress will sort all guilds that are looking for a protection paladin based off his criteria(3 days a week, Horde, English speaking). Those results look like this:

Because he knows he’s an excellent player, and he doesn’t want to go back a few steps in progression, he’ll look for a guild that is at least 12/14.

That is 14 potential guilds that may be his dream guild. He’d now go through each of them and see if they were the right guild for him but he has saved himself hours of looking for a guild on the EU recruitment forums.

If you’re an excellent player with a lot of experience,  these guilds should be courting you!  For Multiple recruitment places/sites,  make a template for yourself.  Sell yourself to your guild of choice and show them why you’re the player THEY want!

Make sure to include your musts for a guild:

What days you’re looking to raid,  what hours,  flexibility.  Include information about yourself, your previous guild histories, type of person and player you with type of humor.  Include your past progression and look at posting some of your logs.

Here is an example of a very basic recruitment ad.

Here is an example of a bad recruitment ad.

And Here  and Here  are examples of a pretty decent recruitment ad.

Whichever way you look for a guild,  your goal is to have many options available.  Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  Apply to multiple guilds,  post a great template so multiple guilds are interested in you.  We’ll cover applying to guilds next week.

Once you have many choices for guilds and numerous options, you can start narrowing them down.  Don’t always settle for an average guild.  Shoot for the stars!

Start research on these guilds and decide what else is important to you.

How important is the raid environment? What kind of raid environment do I want?

• Some guilds run the top-down leadership system. Other guilds have more councils or discussion from their members.

Do I care about the guild’s values and integrity?

• Does it matter to me that the guild treats people like garbage but kills bosses at a quick pace? W hat does that say about me?

How much do I value progression?

• Is US 55th a big deal to me compared to US 65th?

Things to look for in a guild:

• Guilds that have been around for a long time are much less likely to fall apart.
• Find out if the guild is part of a ‘rebuilding’ phase.
• Find out how long the leadership has been in place. Is it a newly promoted GM or different leadership team?
• How do they handle drama? How often does it occur?
• What kind of raid leading style do they have?
• What else do they do outside of raiding?

So, I want to encourage those of you that are bored or unhappy in their current situation, to look for the right guild.  Regardless of your progression,  your raiding background, or how long you’ve been playing.  That dream home, that community you’re looking for, is waiting for you.  Put in the effort and find it, you may be suprised at the outcome!

A great question was tweeted to @Rygarius recently.  Rygarius is a Community Manager (CM) for World of Warcraft.

Let’s not just limit this idea to a forum community. How about our guilds?  Or a gaming community? Or a Twitch channel?  How do we build a better one of these?  What are your community goals?  What is the purpose of your forums?

I’d like to think it’s to facilitate discussion amongst Warcraft players. Giving feedback and suggestions on the game that we love. It’s to share our accomplishments,  ask questions,  joke around and show everyone why we are continuing to play this 10 year old game.

I would ask the same of a guild.  What are the goals of my guild?  Do I want to be a top end raiding guild?  Do I want to be a fun RP guild? Should my guild be a second family?  Do I limit my guild to Warcraft only or can we make it grow into something more?  What kind of stream do you want to be?  What separates you from the others? What will make your community so great?Story Time!

Death Jesters started off as simply a guild of friends with raiding dreams. We came from different backgrounds with the same goals in mind. We’ve had some of the best players in the world in our guild, we raided at times, 5-7 days a week and were at the top of the raiding scene until we got older.  We achieved our raiding goals and continue to achieve them but we raid far less.  We were just a raiding guild but as time went on and the months turned to years; what was a raiding guild with a great atmosphere, turned into a community.

We play games outside of Warcraft,  play Hockey together,  go to BBQs,  Blizzcon together.  We send Christmas cards!

We go to each other’s weddings, celebrate when children are born and watch those children grow up.  We are not just guildies, but also friends.   I have guild members that have not logged on in years,  but still hang out on our forums.  Or I see a guild member that hasn’t been online since WotLK,  log on with his Atiesh.  They continue to stay for the community,  guild chat, the atmosphere,  and the feeling of being welcome.  This is like a second family to them.

In terms of a raiding guild,  I have often said that your core raiders are the bricks of your guild.  You need them to keep the guild strong.  Or they are the gears of your raiding war machine.  But the casual members you have in your guild,  the friends,  the retired players,  the ones that help farm mats in order to contribute;  well,  they are the mortar. They are the oil that keeps those gears running.

Having a balance of both will build that community within your guild. Examples of community in action?  We had a tank from Dragon Soul to Tier 14 named Ethica.  Solid guy,  ex-army vet,  Iraq and Afghanistan. One day,  Ethica doesn’t show up to raid and missed a couple days after that – very unlike him.  A few days later we see a forum post from his account,  but from his sister.  Ethica was in a motorcycle accident.  He went through the windshield of a car, halfway through the rear window, nearly severed arm,  nerve damage. When he woke up a few days later, one of the first things he asked was to have his sister open his computer browser to the first page that popped up and make a forum post on his behalf.  He didn’t want to let his guild down.  He didn’t want to let his friends down.

One of our Veteran members,  Kiramaren comes to me with an idea. Ethica was such a great guy when he was around,  why don’t we as a guild do something nice for him. She proposed we get a little fund going to send him some get well goodies.  A Figureprint of his character so he could forever be immortalized,  cookies,  pancake mix (because he loved pancakes) and a number of other goodies. This would show him that we missed him and cared about our friend.  Yet, not a single one of us had met him in person.

Is that not what a community should be about?  Treating others how you want to be treated?  Banding together for a greater cause?  Understand that there is a human being behind that computer screen.  Know that you’re playing a video game but there are people on the other side. When you make a forum post, know that the recipient(s) of your message have feelings like you.  Find people like this.  Find like minded people and your community will grow.  If your community is a positive one,  it will grow much better,  will be stronger than one that does not value these things.

You want to foster growth of people that help your community. Reward those that go the extra mile to be supportive.  On the Warcraft forums we have the MVP program.  On Twitch we give those people moderator status. In a guild,  we promote those that are leading by example to Veteran or Officer positions (never take these promotions folks, it’s a trap).

A year ago when I got into streaming, I asked Towelliee how he dealt with trolls. “Ban them asap, they do nothing for your community and spread like a cancer”, he said.  What most people think of as trolls these days, are not actual trolls;  just idiots spamming stupid things and making defamatory posts or messages. Yes, remove those.  But the trolls we really want to watch out for,  are the ones inciting hatred and building negativity.  That negativity can be directed at the game, at Blues,  at the streamer or someone else. If you can’t rehabilitate and show them why that doesn’t belong in your community,  remove them. One day they may learn,  but that day/year,  is not this one.

That’s not to say someone should not disagree with a CM,  a Dev,  a streamer or other people in your guild/channel.  Those things happen and SHOULD happen.  Friends and family argue, but at the end of the day the bond grows stronger. Discussion is good to foster change and community growth.  You can’t fix issues unless you discuss them.  I love to have good debates with Hordies on why those rock-eaters think they are the good guys.  Obviously they never win,  but it spurs good discussion!

On your forums, in your guild and on Twitch; you want to have a great support system.  Without this,  your chances of building that community are slim to none.  In your guild,  your officers should be an extension of yourself.  Embodying your qualities,  but building on your weaknesses.

On the forums, we have our Community managers (CMs),  Zarhym, Nethaera,  Bashiok, Lore,  Rygarius, Crithto and many others. They are Blizzard’s Support system and they have their own help through the MVPs.

On Twitch,  we all have our support systems that we couldn’t succeed without. The ones making pictures and intros – to the ones that are your tech gurus – to the ones that just do a bit of everything and are on your ass, to get things done.

What about building a better community in game?  I hear many complain about the community in Warcraft. They say that it is a terrible,  vapid cesspool. You join an LFR or a dungeon as a new player and people start swearing at you. Telling you to “L2P,”  jump off a cliff and  go to ‘Toxxic’ websites for information. You ask a question on the forums or in a Twitch channel;  then are told to ‘GTFO noob’,  go learn basics.  You are basically made fun of.

So what are we as a community doing about it? Complaining about it doesn’t solve anything.  What are we actively doing to help build our community? What are you personally doing, to better YOUR community?

We all have hilarious tales of noobery.  Who helped you?  Many of us are now heroic raiders.  Are we trying to build a community of raiders to help sustain us?  Why does our Community exist?  What are we trying to get out of it?  Let me help you with this one:

It is our turn to help others. Our turn to ‘Pay it Forward’.

I ask my Twitch viewers everyday,  what good deed did they do today to help build the community?  How did they help some poor noob out?  How did you handle that guy in your LFR that thought it was okay to berate people that were new to the game? What did you do about the person that heard rumors about you being an elitist streamer?  Did you ban them or convince them of the opposite?  Did you allow your community to grow today?

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.” – Libba Bray

Foster positive growth and the community will build itself.