Guild Wars 2

Back in the day I was a hardcore raider in EQ2 and was one of the first players to get to cap in GW1. Family commitments however mean I’ve been playing the game very casually since release. I’ve got three characters at cap but because I’ve never bothered about joining a guild and as such not really done any dungeons they’re all geared up to Orange gear.

Last week I decided I was able to offer something to a guild and spent a bit of time talking to recruiters. I made it clear I was never going to be able to be online 7 nights a week. In the end I accepted an invitation to join UK/EU guild and decided to cash in my Letter of Influence as the guild appeared to be well populated although guild chat was quite quiet even though players seemed friendly enough.

Three days later I’ve been kicked from the guild without any explanation while I was offline. I’d been online every day but hadn’t had the chance to do any instance running.

My question is to ask if this is a common occurrence seen by other players?

I’m not going to name names as I’m not that bothered but I’d be interested to know if this impersonal treatment of guild members is something I’m going to have to get used to if I continue my search for an in-game home.

If you didn’t know the reason for the kick then you should contact the guild leader and see why. After the reason is known then it can be debated if this is common or not.

It’s hard to find a good guild. After years of MMOs, I finally found one I enjoy, and it started from:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor

Post an ad for what you’re looking for, and scan for others who are actively recruiting. If you’ve already done all that, give it another go. Sorry that the previous guild was a buttface about it, but there are adult guilds that are more understanding of play time restrictions.

You can try reddit too.
http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildRecruitment

I haven’t kicked people from my guild even when they said they aren’t returning. They may some day and we’ll still be here. There are good guilds out there. Too bad you aren’t on NA. I have a very small guild but small guilds make the best guilds if you’re looking for people to play with and a friendly family feel.

Yeah, some guilds can be a little hardcore or just plain rude, but I know there are others that are really good about treating their members right. I’m going to be rebuilding mine ahead of HoT and although i may bounce certain players before then because of inactivity, a handful will always have a home in my guild and those that i do bounce will be messaged as to why they were bounced with an offer to come back if they become active again.

As someone else mentioned, ping the guild leader and find out what happened.

that has more to do with people in general than guilds in GW2 specifically. You meet all kinds of people in your life, some nice, some rude, some indifferent. As are in gaming guilds. There are a number of possible reasons for kicking you, some reasonable, others complete rubbish. Maybe they were not “unscrupulous”, you have no idea why they actually kicked you.

The morale: that should not bother you in any way when it comes to looking for a new guild. There is no “guilds are like X in GW2”.

Having recently retired from EQ2 myself I would recommend that you don’t think of guilds the same way in this game. Guilds in EQ2 are focused on teamwork at a vastly greater level than GW2 therefore membership is a duty and agreement that you will give 100% towards the guild’s progression.

GW2 pretty much only requires members to be polite and helpful when needed and to represent for influence as required. Anyone can form a guild in GW2 and a lot of them are only focused on getting rep from it’s members so when they go through their roster and see you aren’t repping there’s a good chance you’re going to get kicked but it’s not a personal thing like it would be in EQ2 nor will it follow you when you app to another guild.

It took me about a year to find a good guild in GW2 and i’ve been with them for 11 months now. I went through about 4 before I found the one I liked. In 10 years of EQ2 i went through the same amount of guilds and none of them were joined because I actually liked the people in it as much as it was a chance to see a higher level of progression.

All depends on the guild. I asked to join one even though I fell short of their requirements and they’ve been very welcoming and helpful get up to speed with the rest of them.

I agree to contact the leader and ask. If they don’t get back to you then just avoid the group and look for another.

Enlightening stuff Muusic. Thanks to everyone alse for their comments too.

I’m the leader of a small guild, and we are quite aware that people can’t always play 24/7, as we can all have complicated RL’s. I know one member has not been online for 3 months. I’m guessing he’s ok. But I’m not going to kick him from the guild. I’ve had a few members use there letters to help the guild, I personal. Have promoted them for there kindness. I do not expect anyone in my guild to give influence like that. The only way I expect members to gain it for the guild is by repping, but that might just be me.

I kick people if htey haven’t shown up for like 7 months. But I send them an in game mail to explain and tell them they can always join again if they want by seeing me a mail or an in game message.

The only reason I kick people from my guild is if they stop representing us. The only reason I do that is because we are a very large guild and I have to keep tabs on people so that I can ensure we have enough space to recruit more should anyone go inactive.

Do you have more than one toon/character? It may help you to know that Guilds are character bound, so if you switch character then you will be showing as “not representing” to that guild until you manually go into the guild panel and represent with that character.

That may be the reason why you were kicked, seemingly without reason.

Coopziana.1802:

It may help you to know that Guilds are character bound,

I would rephrase that as “_representation is different for each character” — actual membership is account bound. The advice remains the same: make sure each of your toons is representing the proper guild, e.g. if it’s 100% rep, then all characters need to be set to rep that oen guild.

For the OP, on the face of it, your description sounds very unusual for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the amount of influence that you donated is small for any reasonably-sized guild — even if ‘unscrupulous’, it wouldn’t be worth their while to kick someone for a 1,000 or even 5,000 influence, when they can earn that from a few g-mish, minor amounts of gold (for a guild), or other sources.

As others have suggested, contact the guild leader to ask for an explanation (or to offer your own, e.g. that you forgot to change rep on all your toons).

Good luck and please let us know how it turns out.

Guilds in gw2 generally are terrible compared to other MMOs.
There is just no commitment.

In Gw1, I knew everyone in my guild always. Even when I was relatively new to the guilds, everyone. 100 people imo was more than enough and now it’s up to 500? Really?

My favorite guilds in gw1.. Aion.. had at most 25 people in and the mainly active ones were about 1 full guild group.

It generally meant I had to wait for them to log in to do stuff, but that was okay because we had the same goals

Guilds now imo, are just an extended LFG tool with small core groups

There are very few guilds imho where everyone knows everyone and everyone shares a common goal

I’ll be honest I do play alts but it was my main that was guilded. I had been told, and it was clearly stated in the MOTD that the guild preferred 80% rep. How they monitor an arbitrary figure such as this I have no idea. I noted that other people were online unrepresented while over half the rosta hadn’t appeared for over two months. Whatever the reason I wasn’t informed by mail and I’d prefer to draw a line at that as there will be no point in dragging it out any further.

I too find the guild mechanic so different from other MMOs and have to say it does little for engendering a feeling of togetherness. Maybe I’ll get lucky next time.

Coopziana.1802:

The only reason I kick people from my guild is if they stop representing us. The only reason I do that is because we are a very large guild and I have to keep tabs on people so that I can ensure we have enough space to recruit more should anyone go inactive.

Do you have more than one toon/character? It may help you to know that Guilds are character bound, so if you switch character then you will be showing as “not representing” to that guild until you manually go into the guild panel and represent with that character.

That may be the reason why you were kicked, seemingly without reason.

If the guild has multiple leadership, you may have just gotten lost in a process. Officer A invites you, Officer B cleans up the roster a few days later and kicks you because they haven’t seen your rep/be online/whatever the case.

I’ve tried several guilds, and they all seem to be either full of veteran players who are bored with the game and uninterested in making new friends, or full of newbies due to mass recruiting.. It just sucks when trying to put together a dungeon/fractals run and you have the veterans who just want to farm silverwastes all day or the newbies who aren’t able to do it yet.

Crystallize.8603:

Guilds in gw2 generally are terrible compared to other MMOs.
There is just no commitment.

In Gw1, I knew everyone in my guild always. Even when I was relatively new to the guilds, everyone. 100 people imo was more than enough and now it’s up to 500? Really?

My favorite guilds in gw1.. Aion.. had at most 25 people in and the mainly active ones were about 1 full guild group.

It generally meant I had to wait for them to log in to do stuff, but that was okay because we had the same goals

Guilds now imo, are just an extended LFG tool with small core groups

There are very few guilds imho where everyone knows everyone and everyone shares a common goal

And that is exactly the problem. Not everyone can play 24/7 or be loged in every day for 6 or more hours.

Small guilds with limited people rely on every one to no-live the game or very strict schedules so people can tackle group content. This becomes excedingly more difficult once you are out of highschool/college and god forbid have a family.

GW2 is very lenient and allows for people to be in multiple guilds at the same time. There is nothing stoping you to be part of a small guild of personal friends, and part of a big guild with multiple members. I even dare say, the 500 member cap is more a problem due it it being to small instead of to big.

Some big WvW guilds or guilds from other games have run into that cap and were forced to create twink guilds, especially post release. Not fun.

Did they have any stated activity requirements that you may have run afoul of? Might just need to ask what was the reason and/or just move on.

We have an inactivity policy but even when people are removed, I send them an invite to our inactive guild with all the information to rejoin again if they so choose.

IMHO, if a Guild recruits, that is not a good sign. Guilds that are good in my book do not need to recruit. Guilds that d not recruit usually have more level headed players and superiors.
I once joined a guild that sent me spam that I owed them dues, having never mentioned that when they recruited me. The in game mails lasted for about three months. Obviously they had WAY too much time on their hands.

Cyninja.2954:

GW2 is very lenient and allows for people to be in multiple guilds at the same time. There is nothing stoping you to be part of a small guild of personal friends, and part of a big guild with multiple members.

That’s kind of the problem. If you try to do this you are more than likely to be booted from the large guild for non-repping while you play for the small one. Or even vice versa in some instances.

Dalwhat.2867:

Cyninja.2954:

GW2 is very lenient and allows for people to be in multiple guilds at the same time. There is nothing stoping you to be part of a small guild of personal friends, and part of a big guild with multiple members.

That’s kind of the problem. If you try to do this you are more than likely to be booted from the large guild for non-repping while you play for the small one. Or even vice versa in some instances.

Any semi decent guild would not do that, unless you never represent, but then why are you in the guild to begin with when not socializing in guild chat or running guild events. Also it’s more likely that a small guild would boot you than a large one. Large guilds are swimming in currency.

This is a problem with craapy guilds, not the game design.

also, something i don’t think anyone pointed out, is that the “invite to party” button is very close to the “kick from guild” button. in a previous wvw guild i would get kicked by people 2-3 times a week misclicking while forming parties.

along with that, as other people pointed out, it may have been due to inactivity or not repping enough (though i personally disagree with 100% rep guilds, but that’s another story) or it could have been another person kicking you because they didn’t know you

I would personally mail them just to see the reason, just so you know for the future, regardless of if you’re going to join the guild again or not. but that’s just me.

I don’t think you will ever find out why you were kicked unless you contact the Guild Master.
Some can be very tedius with kicking people.

One thing that does bother me personally is ‘80/90/100% rep’ no one can realistically monitor this time (except 100% ofc), it’s just one of the things that make me cringe when you see guild spams in map chat.

I help run a guild on Aurora Glade, we started as a bunch of friends migrating from WoW so we have a ‘do not kick, veteran’ rank within guild. We don’t recruit. We make in game friends who then request to join. We’re a casual guild and do pretty much everything in game, we have veterans of gw2 and new gw2 players. Finding a guild like this is rare.

I hope your hunt for a guild you like is successful.

I’ll tell you my personal experience with guilds.

This all happened in the first 2~3 months of the game by the way.

So when I got the game on the early days I joined a guild of some guys that came in from another MMO, doesn’t matter which one.

With me and my brother we were 8 people in total, but as soon as the other guys started hitting 80, they stopped playing the game, I’d call them idiots because they couldn’t see everything the game had to offer, but that’s just me.

So for some time I was rocking the tag of a dead guild when I decided I might as well not have any guild at all, because that’s what I had.

This was when I saw some guild with a funny name recruiting, and since I’m very good humored guy I thought I’d ask to join in, their only requirement was that I’d rep 100%, sounded alright to me.
The thing was, although it was fairly large I started realizing no one ever wanted to do anything when you called for help on guild chat, and I could be calling in for half an hour too with no luck. So again, I just left because I wasn’t doing anything there.

The 3rd guild I got in was a direct invite from someone after a dungeon pug, same story, 100% rep required, after I got in everyone was just always sort of busy.
So one day like any other day I asked for some help, and no one was up for anything, so I tried a little experiment, turn off the tag.

I tell you, in less than 10 minutes I had some guild leader/officer on /w giving me a speech of how I was “denying YOUR guild influence…”.
Really? What has the guild ever done for me besides nothing?
So once more, I just left.

Reality is most guilds work as a pyramid, you have the top players collecting all the perks of the influence all these other players generate, and some (won’t risk a number) even ask you for a weekly deposit of 10~20 silver, doesn’t sound like much per player but from a few dozens it’s a very nice cash flow the officers will use to get their tags and legendaries without much effort.
That’s why you see stock piles of useless PvE commanders and shockingly bad WvW ones.

At the end what I did was, well, my own guild really.
Today I got all the bank upgrades unlocked and all the banners upgrades (except hero) and I’m sitting on 24K Influence.
All of that would have gone to some weasel guys if I had just kept staying with these guilds and I couldn’t enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Today I’ve been playing for 1001 days and all I have I got it on my own or with pugs, I recommend you doing the same so you don’t owe any favors to anyone.

if a guild “requires” me to represent either 100% or anything other, I do not even join them. I represent when i see fit. most people do not understand that we can join 5 guilds and that some people do. one of my characters (out of never represents a guild i am in and they know this (I communicate anyway but through whisper instead). they are aware of it and they do not mind.

communication is key. I got my own guild as well, and i really can not care less about people representing. if people do not represent, they just do not get vault access or any other boon or extra from the guild it self. But I wont kick them.

If you want to stay away from “unscrupulous guilds” I suggest not joining any guild that spams their advert on map/team chat.

Those are mega guilds where the leaders/officers don’t really care about new members, they just want to invite as many people as possible to get as much influence as possible and brag about having 400-500 members (even though nobody knows anyone in a mega guild except for the core members who have been playing together since day one).

Also, if the guild is good, guild leaders don’t have to endlessly spam their advert on map chat, people who are interested will ask to join in!

And any guild asking for a gold tax or full rep, is a big no. There’s absolutely no reason for having a tax in this game and again, if a guild is good enough, their members will be happy to represent it all the time.

It seems I’ve been very lucky with my guilds. I started at launch, only ever joined 3 guilds and I’m still in all of them. (Plus a personal bank guild.) I also know quite a few of the members in each guild. (Not all of them, there’s 66 people in one, 224 in another and 95 in the 3rd, I can’t remember that many people.)

It never would have occurred to me to say that I can’t be on every day and I’ve never seen a guild requiring that. Most only say they’ll kick you if you haven’t been on for several months. I don’t do dungeons with any of them very often either (simply because I don’t do dungeons very often).

But then one of the best and worst things about guilds in GW2 (and apparently something that sets it apart from other games) is that they don’t have a specific pre-determined function. Forming a guild gives you a few tools like a dedicated game-wide chat channel, boosters and guild missions. But the actual function of the guild is determined by the leaders (and the members).

Therefore what they expect of you and what might get you kicked out is very different across guilds. A WvW guild is unlikely to care if you’ve ever done a dungeon before while a hardcore dungeon guild may kick you for not knowing where to stand while fighting Lupi and a casual-friendly guild may kick you for yelling at someone else because they didn’t know where to stand.

IMO the important thing is to think about what you want from a guild and then look for a guild that offer’s that. And ask about their rules etc. before joining.

For example I mainly want people to chat to while I’m playing, but also people I can do dungeons or other group content with if I feel like it (using my ranger in rabid gear). So I look for casual, medium sized guilds with most members in or near my time zone. Big enough that I can almost guarantee people online to talk to but small enough that I can get to know them and preferably low drama.

I also look for something to indicate they don’t take themselves or the game too seriously because that’s a pretty good indication we’re going to get along.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

also, something i don’t think anyone pointed out, is that the “invite to party” button is very close to the “kick from guild” button. in a previous wvw guild i would get kicked by people 2-3 times a week misclicking while forming parties.

along with that, as other people pointed out, it may have been due to inactivity or not repping enough (though i personally disagree with 100% rep guilds, but that’s another story) or it could have been another person kicking you because they didn’t know you

I would personally mail them just to see the reason, just so you know for the future, regardless of if you’re going to join the guild again or not. but that’s just me.

This is a good point. In my first guild it was a running joke that Saturdays were “kick everyone from the guild” night. That’s when we’d do guild events and a lot of mis-clicking went on and lead to people being kicked.

Fortunately it was a relatively small guild and everyone knew everyone so it was easy to re-add people.

Dalwhat.2867:

Three days later I’ve been kicked from the guild without any explanation while I was offline. I’d been online every day but hadn’t had the chance to do any instance running.

I suppose my first question to you would be, did you ask why you were kicked?

Can’t speak to the guild you were booted from but the following are reasons we might kick:

-Inactive for 30 days without a heads up you are taking a break (people burn out on GW2, it happens, we get that, so we just ask you let us know so we can adjust your rank to reflect you won’t be active so we don’t accidentally kick you)

-Not representing, after being reminded we require rep 3×. We understand full rep isn’t for everyone, but we let everyone know that before joining, so there’s really no excuse for not doing it since you were told ahead of time. This is rarely an issue and typically if someone has a problem with the rep rule they will leave on good terms. We of course have exceptions such as: being a member of TTS or similar guild and are doing Teq/Wurm, accessing your personal guild bank, running with a WvW guild because you are on a different server than our home server, running all guild missions back to back with a guild that specializes in that. Outside of these reasons you need to be repping us.

-Extreme profanity in guild chat. We’re talking toxic language: racist/sexual/offensive comments are asked to be kept out of guild chat at all times. We have children that play and if you want to speak with profanity you can do so in party chat or whisper or what have you. Just not in guild chat.

-Being a troll in public channels like /map. Who the heck would want someone like that representing their guild. But it would have to be plainly obvious to everyone you were clearly trolling to be a troll. Not just having a bad day. Luckily this one has never come up.

If we ever kick anyone, for any reason, we send an in-game mail explaining why and that they are more than welcome to return if they choose. Most common reason is inactivity. We are looking for active players, not just a giant list of people. As it stands we have 120 members, 97 of which have logged in within the last 24hrs. Quality over quantity.