Guild Wars 2

I agree. Guilds are pretty useless and the incentives for recruitment are all wrong. The only reason I can think of for being in a guild is to team up to do explorable dungeons and have a prayer of a chance to complete them.

I was astonished that there isn’t really an LFG channel. I wanted to try my first dungeon last night, so I just … went and stood next to it.

In end I did find a group after grinding a few nearby lowbie heart-quests for my world completion.

But this seems like a really weird omission – especially as PvP has an intricate and well-worked-out system for finding pickup teams.

I love my guild. It’s a long-standing guild with a great history.

Without my guild, I’d really not care much for GW2, because I play MMOs for social reasons. The game doesn’t encourage relationships the way other games have. You don’t need a party to do anything, with the dungeons (badly bungled as they are) being the only exception. It’s just not a group/community-oriented game.

Still having a guild means voice-chat, playing with people of compatible maturity/attitude, easy access to groups to do things, and a sense of belonging. My guild also has an internal marketplace to share items and resources.

If you want to enjoy GW2, I urge you to find a good guild.

I love the guild system. We have fun together, we do stuff, we gain influence, and the guild leaders spend that influence to get us some really nice buffs. I can’t imagine playing this game without being in a guild.

Come over to Fort Aspenwood and send me a message. We’ll get you in a good guild :-)

(I’m actually in two guilds, one for PVE and one for PVP. Being able to be in multiple guilds is awesome and works really well.)

I strongly dislike that you can be in multiple guilds for one reason: there’s no accountability right now for influence gain. If I send a player an invite to my guild, he can sit on that invite for a week and accept whenever he likes. He can also NEVER represent my guild, and I have no way of knowing if he’s gained any influence for us. Yet whenever he wants, he can toss the guild name back on his character and use our vault or enjoy our benefits.

When you manage a large guild, it’s important to make sure your people are active and helping. I don’t want to give everyone a minimum influence quota, but I’m certainly likely to donate ectos and rares to a guildie who gains influence for me than one who simply represents on occasion.

Multiple guilds is an.. interesting.. idea. But until they have a way for guild leaders to see what you’re really doing for the guild, I think it’s a mistake.

Not sure I want them to give more tools for a person or group of people to enforce my activities, moonpuncher. It implies a level of distrust.

What is this nonsense, anonymity? I am the only swagman in gw2! Unless there’s some monocle wearing, tea sipping, scone biting imposter on the EU server!

Anyway the comment of you join a guild so you can have a prayer of completing an explo dungeon…. Come on! I’ve completed every dungeon I’ve started thus far. Yes some are harder than others, but it just takes direction, communication, and the will to keep pushing. And I’ve done it all with pugs. I’m not sure what you guys are doing wrong I wish I knew so I could help.

Try just chatting with people in map chat, I’m in 3 guilds now from doing that and I have more invites from others, if they don’t do nearly enough then try the next one.

My friends list is also mostly full of people that I’ve dungeoned with after forming and leading the group, taking the reigns and making groups and searching for people will draw others to you especially if you have smooth dungeon runs they will want to party with you again. That’s how I initially made a bunch of connections from when I was getting my SE set.

The whole multiple guild thing is just… odd. I’ve seen explanations for it, but none of them make sense.

That said, the best way to find guilds (or RP!) is to talk to people. Walk up and say ‘hi’, tell someone you like their armor, ask if they are lost, tell them a secret, point out someone nearby that looks silly. There’s so much social gameplay available, but none of it happens if you don’t start talking to people. In local, in map chat, even in tells if needed.

If you talk to people you’re far more likely to find a good home than being silent and only responding to spam recruiting or whatever.

Continuing the reasons to stay in a guild should be talking to people. Not how many dungeons you run or how much influence you’ve given, but how much you enjoy talking to guild mates and spending time with them doing anything.

If all you or and guild cares about is game mechanics, then yes, you are both doomed to have a miserable time together. Talk, enjoy, experience. That’s the key.

I’ve just started but I’ve been reading threads for ages now and I’m quite surprised that WvWvW names are hidden for friends and foes because I found on TOR that the RP community on both sides often had fun with the rivalry of it all. Some would even hop onto an alt and congratulate the other player that made their lives difficult.

If things were going bad we’d stop and chat in the middle of an arena when all was lost. It was cool and Community for me is a number 1 must for any MMO but I think the time for community has come and gone now MMO’s cater more for the soloing crowd.

Games like Final Fantasy XI made it so the community had to work together and I’m pretty sure I’ll find that in GW2 at some point when I start getting my character level up and end up in WvWvW but at the moment I’m in the starting area worrying about currency, micropayments and what everything does. Totally lost but I’ll find my place.

Playing a Mesmer and I’m confusing myself when I see little me’s running ahead and hitting targets… “hold on a sec…. oh kitten, it’s my class!”

Find the community site(s) for your world and see many of the guilds who are playing on it. You can also get to know them before you join them.

Frankly, I would never join a guild in a game, only outside of it. The reason being that gaming isn’t enough to form relationships on, which is what a good guild fit is all about. If you can find a group of people that you like hanging around with, without the benefit of the game world to bring you together, it’s almost a guarantee that you will enjoy spending time with them when you do have that.

Look outside the game, not in it.

IMO and from experiance almost never accept guild invites from those who use mchat or whisp u for inv if u go online research guilds and find one you think suits u. it takes some effort to find a good guild there are areas in the official site and on guru that has a long list of guilds that are recruiting thats how i found mine and i love it we help each other out have a good time and what not. when it comes to guilds u get what u put in it.

Umm…finding a good guild to join has always been a challenge.

Why expect Arena.net to spontaneously generate like-minded players for you to group with?

Safire.1965

So the perfect MMORPG as it stands, it not really GW2, but some features of GW2 + some features of WoW + some features of EQ + some features of SWG + some features of many other games. There is still yet to be the best MMORPG of all time – take note developers.

So, so true. GW2 is fun and there are lots of things I like about it. Doesn’t mean that some things in Aion, or Rift, or EQ, or gasp WoW don’t work better or wouldn’t fit nicely into this game.

I’ve been talking about the enhancements needed for socialization/grouping/playing with friends since the Beta Weekends and agree that this still needs work, although some progress has been made. Not only can you play most of this game without making friends, but if you HAVE friends to play with, there are still some very frustrating things that make it difficult or annoying.

For example, one thing I think Rift got right is how they handled grouping for their version of dynamic events (rifts/invasions). If you got in vicinity of a group event, you could join the public group. If you were already grouped, the group leader could choose to merge the groups. This small difference added a more collaborative feeling to the ad hoc group. You could see how many people were participating, their names, and their health bars. I think you could also tell their classes but not 100% certain on this – it’s been a while since I’ve played. But the result was you got to know people on your server just because you’d see them in these groups. Sometimes you’d join a public group and stick with it the whole evening. But, if you just wanted to do that event and be done, your group leader could choose to un-merge and you’d be on your merry way.

This feature made me feel like I was working with a team in rifts and invasions, and sometimes caused me to meet and befriend people. I’d (personally) like to see something like this implemented in GW2, as DEs feel way more like “ships passing in the night.” But this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t play GW2 and should “go back to Rift.” It’s just something that I felt was done well in that game that would also work well here.

As far as the multiple guilds, I do also find it odd and wish it was one guild per character. Or, at most, TWO guilds per character but you can only represent one, and pay gold to switch, and always access the storage for both. This I suggest as I often have a guild for my alts, and the only scenario I can imagine where it would be useful to switch between guilds would be to access your “alt guild.”

The multi-guild idea seems, to me, to be an attempt to eradicate the idea of raiding guilds and hardcore guild requirements. But the implementation seems flawed and is completely at odds with the earning influence concept.

ALL of GW2 seems to be in the spirit of skill, not gear, and against building this end game, raiding mentality. Many guilds in other games have the minimum requirements, level requirements, trials, and a myriad of rules. I’d bet that allowing multi-guild membership was an attempt to discourage this type of thinking. As in, guilds are about playing with your friends, not being locked into a certain code of rules. However, this has caused us to lose more than just the rigid, raiding guild. You lose a sense of identity and loyalty. And, since there ARE guild rewards, and you can switch immediately between many, the system actually encourages the practice of reaping the benefits of others’ rewards without helping. It just doesn’t work. I think something needs to be done to fix this. Either get rid of the idea completely, and go back to the one character, one guild concept, or split the idea of communication/identity with rewards. Perhaps a primary guild choice, with a cooldown or gold paid, or both, to switch primary guilds. The primary guild is where your influence always goes, and guild leaders have a list of who has their guild as primary. Something like that. But right now the fact that being in a guild can give benefits without effort seems very out of whack with the rest of the Guild Wars 2 philosophy.

Anyway, long post to agree with the OP and raise a few related observations and theories of my own.

I kinda see what you mean about guilds, OP. I’ve gotten several random invites via /whisper but have yet to actually join one. Finding one that is a good fit for me seems to be a daunting task. I need to find somewhere with server specific forums.

And the issues with multiple guilds reminds me of FFXIV, where you can have multiple linkshells (as close as you can get to guilds atm) but compounded as linkshells are very simple with low functionality and stuff like influence wasn’t a factor. You join a linkshell, they have crests you can wear to “represent” them, they have a linkshell chat, and there are ranks, but that is pretty much it.

IMHO, FFXIV’s solution to this might be nice for GW2. They are making it so you can have multiple linkshells, but only one free company (aka guild). This way, people can keep up with friends in multiple circles, but give their loyalty primarily to a single group. Basically, you have only one guild for influence and stuff but can have multiple not quite guilds for keeping up with friends, RP, crafting chatter, etc.

Though I must say, when I read the title of this post, I was like, “what the heck is this guy talking about!” The way friending works in this game actually makes me rather anti-social due to the lack of anonymity , as though I like to play and chat with other people sometimes, I often want to play by myself. But in this game, I can’t have my anonymous alt that no one knows about, nooooo. Someone friends one of my characters, they see me when I’m on any of them! This actually happened to me already when someone I don’t even know friended one of my alts and then /whispered me on another character asking me about the name of said alt. >.<

And the “invisible” option is rubbish atm, as you can’t choose it until after you have already logged on, and people aren’t stupid. So I just run around with no friends, because it feels like I must either be social all the time or not at all. ^^;

My Guild is pretty nice, we have roots in Guild Wars, and have grown to 54 people since launch, we tend to hang out on voice & text chat and we do things together like dungeons and events. We do explorable mode dungeons sometimes, other times we hit up events and do some farming, from time to time we do WvW but we always have fun and hang out.

The goal for my guild when I decided I would have one again in GW2 was to build a guild which is social and with people I could forge friendships with not just people who I see occasionally online in the guild roster. Right now the guild is a mix of Friends from Guild Wars, a few other games and People we’ve met since head start launch.

We do have a few guildies who are on other servers but that’s because they are friends who tend to be a bit more PVP focused so they joined a PVP guild with the intention on doing PVE on our server and representing us once guesting becomes available.

If anybody is intersted and looking for a Mature 18+ guild that doesn’t ask you to make your game a 2nd job, you can check us out at http://www.TravelersOfTyria.com or you can contact myself (MrsAngelD.6971) or the other Guild Leader in Game (Razor Bliss.1675)

Have you tried the guild section on this very forum? Usually talking with people would be the best way to determine if you have similar goals.

I find the multiple guilds thing odd as well. I understand why Arenanet did it but it really kills the unifying feeling of being in one guild.

That said, this thread has degraded into guild joining advice and plugs for guilds so I figure I should toss in my two cents on that with a little story about my guild. We have been playing various games together for for almost 8 years. Every game we play we make attempts to recruit new players but like clockwork we never get more than one or two folks to stick around. Yet we find this to be a good thing because we have focused on our community of friends first and playing games second. After all it would be quite difficult to go get beers or share an apartment at PAX if we were a few hundred strong instead of couple dozen!

Now what does this have to do with anything besides plugging how great my guild is? EVERYTHING! The people are the most important part of the guild and if you can find a group of people you like the game playing just becomes a bonus. You can play any game, no matter how broken or terrible, and it will be entertaining. So just ignore those whispers and /map spam and talk to people.

This is precisely why I created a guild, pre game, JUST for GW2, with the concept being that it was a social construct that exists almost independently of the game. Thus, the game and its guild mechanics doesn’t define us as a group — we define ourselves.

I agree with the OP. There is nothing to do as a guild and the way the system is designed guilds just spam invite people so they can get the most influence. This means you end up with a basic town population where no one has similar interests and you’re no better off talking in guild than you would be in /map chat. It also means later, if anyone is still playing this game later, guilds that try to start will have no hope of recruiting people because they won’t have the perks and people will simply go with a guild that’s already earned them. It happened in WoW when they introduced perks, it will happen here. Also, being able to join multiple guilds yet being visible to all only serves to start arguments. “Why aren’t you representing us?” It needs to be one character per guild or go back to the GW1 way (which was awful).

As a social game goes, I’ve never felt so alone as I do in GW2. I felt more comradery from Lidia in Skyrim than I do with the people around me in DE’s. They aren’t designed to require communication and everyone on the map might as well be just as digital as Lidia was. At least she was polite 100% of the time and always helpful.

I don’t need or want a /who command, but it would be nice if there was an ingame place for people to advertise their guild and for other people to search them.

There could be various options to specify whether a guild is PvP-oriented, whether they require representation or are just social, etc.

Guilds in Guild Wars are an obvious afterthought thrown in. It’s just a chat channel and some tiny buffs. You don’t need people to really do anything in this game like other MMO’s, so if anything, they should at least make it social, give guilds some space somewhere, an arena, something?

I think you people are misunderstanding the purpose of the guild. You’re never supposed to be forced to have to have a guild or even a party to do content in the world that is of normal difficulty, champions being the obvious factor that states “YOU SHOULD HAVE A TEAM TO FIGHT ME!”

I’m in wonderful, small, welcoming guild of roleplayers. We meet every monday night to enjoy company, laugh, boast, etc, and enjoy each other’s company regardless of whether we’re in character or out of character.

Guilds aren’t supposed to be a necessity, but for those who are looking for more social interaction, this is where you start. And of course you’re going to come across guilds that false-advertise “yeah, we’re active” or “yeah, we’re friendly.” That should be a hint at you, saying “it’s time to gtfo of this sh@#hole and find a real guild.”

No offense man if you are receiving a tell in game or responding to a map comment in game to join a guild, you are doing it wrong.
I personally spent hours reading posts, visiting sites, checking out rosters, getting in vent and talking etc
That is how you find a guild
So instead of looking for the fast guild invite, do some research

I see it more as a the guild vetting issue than anything and not the multiple guild system that’s the problem. Getting random people to join a no name guild isn’t gonna get you anywhere in GW or in any other online game for that matter.

I don’t think lack of /who is about hiding numbers. That’s pretty funny.

It’s more that ANet is looking to remove any and all elements of griefing so you can’t do things like inspect, see names in pvp, etc. Some of this is a bit over the top, I guess, but it’s pretty consistent across the game.

Finding the right guild is up to you. No amount of in-game tools will ever change that.

This is their biggest failing IMO. everyone is zerging and running off on their own tangents. the maps are huge so you probably won’t be running with people for very long. There’s no real advantage to grouping either.

Even if you were inclined to run with others, the waypoint costs would quickly become intrusive.

‘Serious’ guilds will usually be active on some boards (e.g. inofficial server forums) as well, so that’d be a good place to look.

Also, I am quite confident, that the server communities will come to know their guilds in the next months. It just takes some time – also, don’t forget that most of the high-end guilds keep a low profile (especially ingame). When I was still playing WoW, the top 3 guilds of my server were almost invisible and most of the scrubs on general chat didn’t even know we existed, only bragging/ranting/flaming/mentioning the middle tier guilds, they were lucky to pug with at some time or another.

But you’re spot on with that trend of games veiling their player stats recently. Still, there’s other ways to find the right guild than who-stalking.

Why do you have a title that looks like a pontification about the overall state of MMOs and a complaint that GW2 is contributing to it, when the subject of the thread is just your personal preference?

Not that I totally disagree with what you’re saying, but really, was the grandiosity in the title necessary?

Ansultares.1567:

Umm…finding a good guild to join has always been a challenge.

Why expect Arena.net to spontaneously generate like-minded players for you to group with?

Same people who expect Anet to spawn a gigantic mountain of gold and gear at their feet.

Concerning people having issues with multiple guilds:

You don’t actually have to join multiple guilds if you want to stick with just one guild. Also, if you are a guild leader, you don’t have to allow people who are already members of other guilds into yours. You can also screen members by getting to know them, trial periods, etc. to weed out anyone who may be using the multiple guild system just to raid guild banks.

The multiple guild option is an option not a requirement. It is there for those who benefit from that option, not for those who don’t. The issues are more with the players who use and abuse the option rather than an issue of it existing.

I’m in only one guild and don’t currently see a need to join any other guilds, but I’m glad the option is there.