How to find or create the perfect guild for you

[Ramzuz]

How to find or create the right guild for you

With the introduction of guild leveling and guild perks, there has never been a better time to join one. Some of the perks are increased experience gains and even your very own scorpion mount if you're horde and lion if you're alliance. This guide is here to point you in the right direction if you're looking for a guild to join or even create a fully functioning guild. This guide will go over everything from the standard family-friendly guilds to the hardcore raiding guilds. The main thing that you need to know before you start searching is what you’re looking for. There’s a guild out there for everyone, and even if there isn’t you have the power to create one the suits you. I’ll start off first with the family-friendly guild.

The Family-Friendly Guild

The family-friendly guild is exactly what the name states. Normally you’ll find a small group of close friends that are helping each other out; whether it be running heroics or leveling all of their ten character slots to 85. With this type of guild vulgar language is probably against the rules. No one wants their 10-year-old child learning about “Two girls, One cup” in this guild and if you’re into those sort of things there’s a guild out there for you as well.

PROS

• Small
• Good for little kids that ask "How do I use a wand?"
• Most likely polite
• Extremely helpfully
• Tight knit

CONS

• Doesn't frequently raid
• No cursing (Like that's going to happen)
• Possibly hard to mesh with a close group of friends when you're the "new kid on the block"

Player vs. Player Guilds (PvP)
Player vs. player guilds focus on killing people, obviously. Most PvP guilds are composed of all decked out Vicious Gladiator rogues. Nothing competes with endless stun-locks and completely random ganking. Who doesn't like being stealthy taken down by four rogues next to that random tree in Arathi Basin? These players focus on becoming some of the top rated groups of people in either arena matches or the newly introduced rated battlegrounds. Even though there are many tiers of people who PvP the only thing you're trying to do is stay alive. If you take time to learn every ability from every class, and you also know how to counter them then you belong in the higher tier of players. If you don't know who to associate with to find a good team you can always find out who the best teams are with the armory on battle.net. If you play more casual and just like owning the common "ArthasDK" then you're probably looking for a different type of guild, more on those later. There are a few exceptions to a pure PvP guild and that is that some of the best PvP items are from PvE content and can only be obtained by raiders but more on this later.

PROS

• Fun if you like PvP
• All rogues
• Premades
• New seasons
• Ganking people

CONS

• Always the same thing
• Nerfs
• Going against those OP classes
• Getting ganked

Raiding Guilds
The vast majority of players raid end-game content. In this class of guild there are several tiers. The most common tiers of raiding guilds are casual, hardcore, and robotic. The first thing you need to know when looking for a raiding guild is how much time and effort you are willing to spend in order to down bosses. To be honest you can't really get into a hardcore raiding guild if you only show up for "free-loot" Tuesday. If you can only show up on certain days then you should try to find a guild with those raid times, even if it means searching on other servers. Casual raiding guilds are normally composed of "not the greatest" of players and will usually out gear content in order to clear it. There's nothing wrong with this because it allows you to raid without having to invest excessive time into the game. You should also know that there is a grey zone that falls between casual and hardcore raiding. These guilds are good, just not to the level of hardcore guilds. If you couldn't tell from the name hardcore guilds are hardcore. You can normally find anywhere from 1 to 5 hardcore guilds on any given server that compete for server firsts. These hardcore guilds usually have the best players in wow, otherwise they wouldn't progress at the speed they do. If you would like to join a hardcore raiding guild I personally suggest you research your class. Even just googling your class will bring up some extremely helpful information that will make you a better player overall. I use elitestjerks, but there is a lot of information that can help you become a better player on MMO-Champion and sites like it. When it comes to harcore guilds it's all about time, and how much of it you are willing to invest. You can normally be expected to raid from 2 to 5 days a week and spend anywhere from 2 to 4 hours at your computer on any given raid night. What separates hardcore guilds from the grey zone is their dedication to the game. They are willing to spend hours upon hours on a single boss if that's what it takes, even if it's Mimiron hard mode. The only group that is better than the hardcore is the robotic. These people aren't just going for server firsts but for world firsts. These guilds have somehow already managed to down Deathwing (probably even going as far as to do it naked). I honestly do not know how these guilds work or how to join them but I bet google does. Some of the worlds best guilds include Paragon, Method, Ensida, Vodka, SSDD, and about 100 others that I'd like to list but just don't have the space. If you would like to be in a robotic raiding guild I suggest you try hardcore raiding first to see if you like it.

PROS

• Something to do at 85
• Gear
• Seeing end-game content
• The joy when you finally kill that one boss
• Achievement spam in guild

CONS

• Wiping isn't fun
• Wiping at 20%
• Wiping at 5%
• Wiping at 5k health (Evasion tank bro)

Creating a guild
The first thing you need to know when you're creating a guild is what you want to do and what type of guild it will be. I suggest you write down a list of goals and rules that you want to accomplish and to look back at it as your guild forms and see if you're headed in your original direction. One of the first things you need to have when creating a guild is strong group of founders/officers because you can't be expected to run a fully functioning guild just by yourself. Your officers should be people you trust but if you don't have that you'll be okay. Many guilds have started from nothing but with trial and error they have ended up being well known and respected. After you have a strong base you can start to recruit new members and depending on how serious you want to be taken this could be anywhere from recruiting in trade to recruiting strong players on the forums at battle.net or here on MMO-Champion. One thing that will strongly help you in this is having an awesome name because you are going to be characterized by this no matter what you say. You can have a serious name like <The Unnamed> or have a hilarious name like <Rides A Unicorn> but it all comes down to you and your creativity. After you have the amount of players you wanted to reach you will hopefully be okay. I say hopefully because you're most likely going to run into drama at one point or another and this is where a strong base comes into play. Depending on the drama it comes down to how well you and your officers react to the situation deal with it. If someone is going against the rule or just excluding other members from things then you should pull them aside and talk with them and make sure that they understand a strong guild depends on everyone working together as a unit. If it's resolved after that then great but if it isn't then you might have to consider removing them. As a guild leader you have to willing to get rid of certain people if it's not working out. Sometimes you might have others leave with that person but to be completely honest almost everyone is replaceable in this game. If you're able to do this you should hopefully have a strong and cohesive group of like-minded players. I wish you the best of luck.

PROS

• Watching a group of players come together for a common goal
• Creating a strong group of friends
• You actually made a guild (You should get an achievement)
• Guild Tabard that you made awesome

CONS

• Hard to get off of the ground
• Investing a lot of time and effort (Everything should just happen now and with no work!)
• Might hurt some feelings

*Disclaimer - There is no way that I could possibly cover all the different types of guilds in a single guide. This guide is a heroic attempt to classify the vast majority of guilds in the World of Warcraft; however, it is important to note that with a community as diverse as wow there are bound to be exceptions. For instance this guide makes no mention of Deaf guilds, RP guilds, Bank guilds, Trolling guilds, and even the rare, yet hardly ever seen, Blind guild. Always remember that there is likely a guild on at least one server that has exactly what you are looking for. If not, keep in mind that you can be the first to start one.