Finding a guild doesn’t have to be such a hard thing!
Server Restrictions – While server transfers are free there are no real server restrictions on you. If a guild sounds interesting to you, try them out. If they’re willing, they can invite you to join the guild cross server to allow you to get a taste for the guild before you uproot yourself from your current server. This is a great feature. If you are guilded cross server you can still use guild chat, and group with your guild members. What you CANT do is participate in WvW with them, or enjoy the guild buffs they are currently running. So If you find a guild on another server, try them out and seem to be enjoying them I would recommend server swapping to join them once you know there the right one. Then you can enjoy all the benefits of being on the same server as your guild, as well as contribute to building influence for your guild.
Loyalty to a friend’s dead guild! – Man that’s a hard one, isn’t it? Well in Guild Wars 2 you’re not limited to the number of guilds you can be in. The only limit comes in with which one you can actively benefit from / contribute to / participate with at a time. So try out a different guild. Test the waters to find a suitable home for you and your friends! The guild manager window is a powerful tool. You can see who’s online in any other guild your in (even if you’re not representing) so you can decided which guild you want to hang out with at any given time!
Here is what I think you should be looking for in a GW2 guild.
Activity Level – The guild should provide a nice core set of people who log in frequently enough so you don’t feel stuck in an empty shell of a guild. Now, that being said. If the guild is just forming, you may need to give the officers just enough time to fill up there ranks. You can tell if your guild is actively attempting to bolster its numbers or not.
Influence and Guild Buffs – This is an important one in my book! The romantic notion of a small guild is great! And guilds should strive not to become so bloated that guild chat is just consistent spam.. HOWEVER, a guild still need to have influence to run guild buffs for its guild members. To get that, the guild either need a VERY active small set of people or a moderate number of people so that influence accumulating at a decent enough pace to run guild buffs relatively frequently. IMHO those of you looking for a guild need to be looking at a guild that is managed enough, that buffs are on the leaders minds all the time, to make sure the guild members are being taken care of.
Common Interest – Do you like to do events that benefit greatly from the addition of other players? I’m not talking about map exploration or jumping puzzles, those are pretty much a solo man’s games. But maybe you like to farm dynamic events, you’re interested in dungeon runs, WvW or structured PvP. Guilds will normally focus on 1 style. Some guilds (like Archon on Sanctum of Rall) attempt to bolster their numbers to have enough players on to meet all of those play styles. For instance we have a PvP/WvW guild rank (assassins). This doesn’t mean these people are limited to only doing PvP or WvW, it just means that’s their primary focus in game. We even have a PvP officer to help people out who are new to it and may have questions. So right now we are building our WvW numbers. At the moment our Dynamic Event farmers and Dungeon Runners are greater in number. But one day I’m sure there will be a balance.
Voice Communication – This is an important one in so many peoples books these days, as well it should be. It improves reaction time greatly in game. And as we all know, without the ability to separate our chat boxes in game sometimes messages just get lost! So you should find a guild that does use Ventrilo, Teamspeak, Mumble or something like that! It adds to the enjoyment of the game as well as it brings your guild members much closer together. I personally prefer a guild’s Ventrilo (because that’s what Archon uses) to be separated up by interest/goal/chat type so everyone isn’t lumped into one giant chat room trying to talk over one another.
Outside of Game Written Communication – This isn’t near as big as it used to be. And let me tell you having been a guild leader for a few years now it’s almost impossible to get people all on the same page about using a forum. You find those in the know (who read the forums every day) and those who just absolutely refuse to ever visit them. Forums are NICE – But there not a game breaker if a guild has them or not. To be honest, there more of a recruiting tool then anything. Archon uses a Closed Facebook group. Not going to lie, there are times where the structure capability of a forum would be nice to have.. but the group seems to get the job done.
All this being said., I am Convinced of one thing…
ARCHON of Sanctum of Rall is the right guild for you!
Guardian of Archon :: Sanctum of Rall
(edited by pawtrisha.7234)