Will I ever find a 'perfect' guild again?

[Netherspark]

I love my guild, I've been with them for years. We've always been really relaxed, never demanded anything from our raiders or even from our applicants/trials other than turning up on time. A very social guild, we had no real 'structure', rules, ranks or hierarchy and all our members were great, friendly people. We acted and played incredibly casual yet made really good heroic raiding progress! We were among the top ranked guilds on our server. This is my perfect guild.

But sadly the guild has slowly disintergrated; most of our raiders have either stopped raiding or stopped playing altogether and the time has come for me to make the decision to either stop raiding proper or look for a new guild.

This brings me to an uncomfortable place though - all the guilds I've looked at appear really serious (regardless of progress); they require you to submit raid logs in applications, have strict ranks and "regulations", require you to speak over voice chat, use complicated point systems for loot, require detailed history of raiding experience, demand that you use all manors of addons and custom UI's and all seem to share delusions of grandeur...

Now I have been raiding since early TBC, was once the 7th top Warlock on my server (equalling people in some of the top 200 guilds there) and I have never even considered doing virtually anything of the above: I don't believe in it. I find myself in the position of not being wanted by guilds for my relaxed approach to raiding despite having greater experience and dare I say skill than most of their best players.

I've never had to search for a guild before, the only two guilds I've ever been in both found me. In my searching I've realized that I don't want to join any of these 'serious' guilds. I want one like mine... my perfect guild.


I came here to ask if guilds like mine actually exist elsewhere, or whether my guild was truly one in a million and If I'll ever find one like it again - a relaxed and casual guild with great raiding progress?

Do you think I should 'change my ways', give up my idea of a "perfect" guild and just join a guild I don't like, with people I don't like just so I can keep raiding?

[IRunSoFarAway]

I'm sure there's one out there that's pretty laid back but still progresses, you'll find one again eventually. Don't bother joining a guild that you won't enjoy being in or around just so you can continue raiding, it's not worth it.

[Griffter]

They are rare, but they do exist. No guild is actually perfect, but there are other laid-back, friendly guilds who are still able to progress through raids.

[Orangetai420]

You might need to reroll or transfer servers.

In my experiences guilds like that are sort of a once in a long while type of thing, or 'when the stars align'. It's not that easy to find a large group of people where everyone clicks and gets shit done.

[Halicia]

a relaxed and casual guild with great raiding progress?

the problem with that is that most guilds have those rules to ensure everyone performs to the minimum expectations. whether its attendance or whatever.

a guild can only start relaxing once they're comfortable with the ability and reliability of its members, and consequently, I think its human nature to start slacking a little.

are there guilds suited for you ? probably, but the more demanding you are of progression, the fewer options you have.

Decide what kind of Progression you want from a guild and start looking there. I'm afraid to say it, but chatting with them in their voicechat is the fastest way to find a good fit, imo. Adjust your expectations of progression up or down a little until you have 3 or 4 guilds whose rules & society mesh with you, and then see where it goes.

[Biohazard]

I had the same problem as well. I used to be in a well organized guild, whose qualities pretty well are the same as your old guild's. Until it broke up because of silly drama.

My advice for you is to just solo it while you can, work on some achievements, gear up as much as you can and just do the things that make you happy. Next thing you know, you'll have a guild asking you to join them and they might be your next home, if not then the search continues. Personally, there are hundreds of thousands of guilds out there, there will be a guild that will fit the same qualities as your "ideal" guild, so you won't be having this problem anytime soon.

Another idea is to make your own guild, if you even feel up to that. Create a decent member base, assign trustworthy people as officers, and that's where you can set rules to build up to your "ideal" guild.

[Deleted]

No, you're not. Not even if you try and make one yourself. The perfect guild is a once in a lifetime thing and everything else will fall short when compared to it.

[Deleted]

have had some guild problems myself lately. end of this summer i got into a socail new raiding guild, but we had to move to a higher lvl guild to get flasks. eventually our raid leader was too busy in real life to be a raid leader, so that guild didn't happen. so i was 'stuck' with this lvl 25 guild, and they were bad, real bad in being social. they always ignored me/my questions for some reason and they didn't care about the guild members who weren't in their 'core friend/raider group' so i left it. yesterday i got into another guild to be in their 2nd raid group. when i joined it, nobody said welcome beside the guy who invited me. so yea, it's difficult to find a 'perfect' guild, and i'm on a high pop horde server (my faction) with plenty of guilds, but i went through 4 guilds and none of them were 'perfect'.

[MoanaLisa]

To answer the question, you may not. It's well to remember when anything like this that involves personal relationships is going well, be it in WoW or real life, that stuff like this is an intersection of a lot of different things and is unlikely to last forever. The more people involved, the less likely.

Enjoy it for what it is and when it's over, be glad that you experienced and had a part in it. After that, don't look back. Keep moving forward.

[Deleted]

No you are doomed.

[Schmittay]

Why don't you make your own guild and run it like your perfect one? Surely other people from the same guild would be looking for another one too?

Might be a lot of fun.

[Maelle]

Our guild is a little like you describe, the only thing we do ask is voice comms as we prefer it for speedy communication, over stopping what you are doing and typing mid-fight :P

It comes with it's own set of problems though... if you are relaxed, especially if everyone feels really secure in their raid spot, people tend to be relaxed a little with things like attendance and self-research for bosses etc :P It can be awkward for recruitment - people who respond to recruitment either think they can get away with crappy gear / alts or they mistake relaxed for "bad".

We are sitting on 6/6 normal (not raided this reset yet) and our first week of this raiding tier we had this awful moonkin on trial who did about 28k dps and really screwed us! So I think we do ok for 2 nights a week, and relaxed, we also are on a very high pop server so it's nigh impossible to get a high rank for a guild without being much more serious than we will ever be...

I would say being a relaxed guild is mostly a blessing, but something of a curse in some ways

[rnbwtrout]

definitely a once in a lifetime thing my friend. just be glad you had the chance to experience it. think of the millions of other people who have played this game for 3,4,5,6+ years and have never experienced that magic.

i know exactly what you're talking about because i experienced the same magic myself in WotLK. our semi-casual guild got friendly with another semi-casual guild and we formed a 25-man raid. everything from ulduar to toc to icc was magic...simply magic. my best memories ever in WoW. but it didn't last.

im sure there are still similar guilds out there if you do your research. wowprogress.com is a great place to start to find guilds and most guilds will give you a snapshot of their personality. compare their progress to their personality and im sure there will be a few guilds that come close. good luck.

[PetersenIII]

all the guilds I've looked at appear really serious (regardless of progress); they require you to submit raid logs in applications, have strict ranks and "regulations", require you to speak over voice chat, use complicated point systems for loot, require detailed history of raiding experience, demand that you use all manors of addons and custom UI's and all seem to share delusions of grandeur...

This is the most ridiculous bullshit in the game. I fucking hate (HATE) guilds like that. It's a fucking game. If they're not in the race for world first, none of that shit you list fucking matters.

"Delusions of grandeur" is right on the money.

[roflpot]

This is exactly why I quit raiding. I'm still in my guild, but fucking hell the "delusions of grandeur" as you put it sums it up perfectly. There is this one twat in our guild who takes everything so seriously it's like a job for him. I told him once that I don't do dailies because I don't find them fun and he went absolutely mental at me for letting down the raid team by not putting enough effort in.

Screw people like that. I just PvP now and I'm much happier.

[Icebear]

The Leveling Agony (Xavius-H), we're a relaxed lvling/social/raiding guild who only expects maturity from our members, attenting to raids isn't a must, surely we raid "seriously", but we don't expect anyone to show up. Aslong as the DPS and skills is in order, you're good.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/03/15/fi...-calling-home/
We might not be a directly great raiding guild, but we're progressing (4/6 MSV) with 2 raid days a week (19-23).

[Galaddriel]

there are hundreds of thousands of guilds out there, there will be a guild that will fit the same qualities as your "ideal" guild, so you won't be having this problem anytime soon.

A bit of an exaggeration. There are currently 24,299 raiding guilds across all of US, EU, Taiwan, Russia and Korea.

Wowprogress is a good place to look for a guild, just about everyone is recruiting these days.
http://www.wowprogress.com/

[Primernova]

Any guilds that require 'logs' in this day and age of WoW, are living in the distant past. I've always had a similar ideal for guilds OP. They were very hard to find before and always required me to transfer, mine and my GFs characters across servers (usually about $300 worth)

[Deleted]

Only requirement for raids for us is showing up in time, DBM or Big Wigs add on and able to /listen vent. Talk is not prequisite, logs are not prequisite, UI screenshots are not prequisite.
I find showing up in time important, as it shows respect for other people valuable time.
I find that DBM type add on for someone that wants to raid is important.
Finally for practical reasons Vent (or mumble teamspeak if other guilds are using them) is also important.

Other than that, UI screenshot, logs, detailed raiding history and other excesive details, have a place if you apply for a top 500 guild or better, but definately not for a guild that has different orientation or simply cannot reach that level of play.
Also skill is welcome, but if you behave like a douchebag it is getting completely irrelevant for me when it comes to people. It is hard to have everything 100% perfect, but raiding is a team activity for people to have fun. If we miss that part for me it has no point to continue trying.

Best wishes in finding your "perfect guild" OP, but have in mind that this is something that happens overtime.
You got lucky with the one you were at for the years it lasted, maybe you will get a couple of frustrating experiences till you find the next one. Don't give up though, they are still out there

[NightZero88]

I love my guild, I've been with them for years. We've always been really relaxed, never demanded anything from our raiders or even from our applicants/trials other than turning up on time. A very social guild, we had no real 'structure', rules, ranks or hierarchy and all our members were great, friendly people. We acted and played incredibly casual yet made really good heroic raiding progress! We were among the top ranked guilds on our server. This is my perfect guild.

But sadly the guild has slowly disintergrated; most of our raiders have either stopped raiding or stopped playing altogether and the time has come for me to make the decision to either stop raiding proper or look for a new guild.

This brings me to an uncomfortable place though - all the guilds I've looked at appear really serious (regardless of progress); they require you to submit raid logs in applications, have strict ranks and "regulations", require you to speak over voice chat, use complicated point systems for loot, require detailed history of raiding experience, demand that you use all manors of addons and custom UI's and all seem to share delusions of grandeur...

Now I have been raiding since early TBC, was once the 7th top Warlock on my server (equalling people in some of the top 200 guilds there) and I have never even considered doing virtually anything of the above: I don't believe in it. I find myself in the position of not being wanted by guilds for my relaxed approach to raiding despite having greater experience and dare I say skill than most of their best players.

I've never had to search for a guild before, the only two guilds I've ever been in both found me. In my searching I've realized that I don't want to join any of these 'serious' guilds. I want one like mine... my perfect guild.


I came here to ask if guilds like mine actually exist elsewhere, or whether my guild was truly one in a million and If I'll ever find one like it again - a relaxed and casual guild with great raiding progress?

Do you think I should 'change my ways', give up my idea of a "perfect" guild and just join a guild I don't like, with people I don't like just so I can keep raiding?

I think you'll find what you're looking for if you look long enough. I am the raid leader of a group in a guild (have 2 raid groups) that is like what you describe. I do ask everyone to have vent even if you don't talk, you need to be able to listen what I call. Outside of that I don't care though DBM does help to make you not die, if you can do without go ahead. If you're not cutting edge which we are not I don't see why you would want screenshots or logs, etc. I do ask you show up for raids when they are scheduled on the calendar or let me know in advance (emergencies happen and real life > WoW). That's my attitude and is similar for my raiders.

Outside of that I'll say this: My group, 6 of our raiders have raided together for 6 years. Two more have raided with us for 2 years and the last two we just got this expansion. Finding a group that has raided together for a long time will go a long way towards that easy going nature you are talking about. We constantly joke on vent and we are so easy going about it our newest raiders are getting in on it because they know they can relax. Another thing is I am not super hardcore and don't insult my raiders for mistakes. I just say: Lets stop being stupid and get this done and that is generally it. So I would look for groups that have been together for a few years (might be hard but lots of people are quitting so groups are recruiting, especially now during a new x-pac)

Lastly it depends on how far you want to go. The harder the progression the more strict the raid will be. To me it has always been Having fun with friends>>>>>Gear/Progession. So we are only 3/6 in MGV but we also only raid 2-3 times a week for 3 hours and have only done two weeks in total. As you can see we're not hardcore but we still get stuff done and have fun.

TLDR: Find a group that's been together for a long time, figure out how much progression you want and you'll find a new guild that is right for you sooner or later.