Guild Wars 2

Okay now before i start my little rant, im not insinuating that everyone that plays gw2 is in this bracket. Alot of people are really nice and really helpfull and the people that post regularly on these forums want to make this game great, and provide alot of help and suggestions. So I would also like to thank you all that put in the effort to be part of a community.

My gripe is, right now im recruiting for a guild that im in, on Seafarers Rest. And while I will post on /map the usual recruitment type posts I will also whisper anyone I see thats not in a guild. And I would say that on average out of every 20 people that I whisper around 18-19 people wont even reply to the whisper.

Even a no thanks I would be happy with, but I just think that people cant even take 2 seconds to write a reply as extremely rude.

I can accept that some people dont want to be in a guild (although why play a game called guild wars and not be in a guild confuses me a little) and I understand that not everyone represents the guild they are in (again confuses me as to why they dont represent)

And then there are the people that will just walk past you instead of reviving you. WTF is that all about?

Maybe ive just been playing these games too long and its no longer about fun with others but all about someones own selfish desires

“all about someones own selfish desires”

Edit: I hope it felt good to evacuate all your anger ^^

They are still humans lol some are just like that. I think the worst communities is still LoL or WoW.

The game is called guild wars beca… ah, never mind, its been said so many times hahaha.

In my experience, this games community seems right in the middle of community quality. Ive seen some that are better, and some that are worse.

Some people have their whispers turned off because people don’t want spam either.

I don’t think it’s rude. It would be more rude if 18-19 of those people told you to kitten off.

There are days when I think the GW2 community may be a little TOO entitled for a game they don’t pay a monthly fee for, but overall as a whole in game it IS one of the better communities in an MMO i’ve played.

Or at least one of the most helpful 50% due to gameplay mechanics and 50% due to people not being total jerks.

Jski.6180:

They are still humans lol some are just like that. I think the worst communities is still LoL or WoW.

This and this and so this. If you don’t block trade chat in wow main city for example… you’ll witness the worst of the human kind.

No, it’s not the community, they’re normal. It’s spamming to joining a guild that’s the problem. That can be unimaginative and annoying in chat etc. How about invite players to guild events? Don’t push them to join, they will ask YOU if they can join. Works 1000% better.

Edit after reading following post: Apart from people w/o guild tags, asking them to join is np imo, especially in LA or newbie areas. If I drop my tag it’s because I’m looking for a guild, or want to add a guild onto that character (not for every character). But spamming in chat can be annoying to many people, and whispering to someone with a tag seems rude. In fact I’ve done that before, un-rep my personal tag to join a guild, but I didn’t join another guild until I was in their group doing what I wanted to do with a new guild (wvw in that case). World spamming is best left to the first month or two after launch.

Hairy.6547:

My gripe is, right now im recruiting for a guild that im in, on Seafarers Rest. And while I will post on /map the usual recruitment type posts I will also whisper anyone I see thats not in a guild. And I would say that on average out of every 20 people that I whisper around 18-19 people wont even reply to the whisper.

Even a no thanks I would be happy with, but I just think that people cant even take 2 seconds to write a reply as extremely rude.

I’m one that plays without a guild. I do so because my primary reason for joining a guild in the past has always been to raid. The social aspects follow naturally when there’s a common goal. I play PvE primarily and GW2 has nothing that makes me feel like I need a guild (bounties don’t do it for me) so I don’t bother. A GW2 guild just feels like a large chat room.

I also don’t respond to guild invitation whispers though most people don’t even bother to whisper they just shoot invites out to somebody they’ve never played or talked with. I don’t feel like it’s any lack of courtesy on my part when I don’t respond to whispers or decline random invites.

Hairy.6547:

Okay now before i start my little rant, im not insinuating that everyone that plays gw2 is in this bracket. Alot of people are really nice and really helpfull and the people that post regularly on these forums want to make this game great, and provide alot of help and suggestions. So I would also like to thank you all that put in the effort to be part of a community.

My gripe is, right now im recruiting for a guild that im in, on Seafarers Rest. And while I will post on /map the usual recruitment type posts I will also whisper anyone I see thats not in a guild. And I would say that on average out of every 20 people that I whisper around 18-19 people wont even reply to the whisper.

Even a no thanks I would be happy with, but I just think that people cant even take 2 seconds to write a reply as extremely rude.

I can accept that some people dont want to be in a guild (although why play a game called guild wars and not be in a guild confuses me a little) and I understand that not everyone represents the guild they are in (again confuses me as to why they dont represent)

And then there are the people that will just walk past you instead of reviving you. WTF is that all about?

Maybe ive just been playing these games too long and its no longer about fun with others but all about someones own selfish desires

I gotta say…hypocritical much? Wow this is worse than pretty much anyone I have encountered ingame. So people HAVE to play the game the same way as you do, or it’s them that is selfish? I think you should stop whispering people without a guild tag. Hell for one thing my friends and I would NEVER join a guild with someone who just randomly pms people without a guild tags with an invite.

sirflamesword.3896:

I gotta say…hypocritical much? Wow this is worse than pretty much anyone I have encountered ingame. So people HAVE to play the game the same way as you do, or it’s them that is selfish? I think you should stop whispering people without a guild tag. Hell for one thing my friends and I would NEVER join a guild with someone who just randomly pms people without a guild tags with an invite.
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Whats selfish about wishing people to be polite? I dont expect people to play the way I do, or have the same manners that I do. Im just comparing this game to other games I have played, where most people do reply to whispers. Takes all of 5 seconds to reply.

I accept that people can get annoyed by it, but I stick to starter areas when I am recruiting as I am seeking out new players. As its easier to recruit new players.

And seeing as you already have a group of friends you play with then you would already know where you would like to move to if you wanted to move to another guild

OnionXI.6735:

Hairy.6547:

My gripe is, right now im recruiting for a guild that im in, on Seafarers Rest. And while I will post on /map the usual recruitment type posts I will also whisper anyone I see thats not in a guild. And I would say that on average out of every 20 people that I whisper around 18-19 people wont even reply to the whisper.

Even a no thanks I would be happy with, but I just think that people cant even take 2 seconds to write a reply as extremely rude.

I’m one that plays without a guild. I do so because my primary reason for joining a guild in the past has always been to raid. The social aspects follow naturally when there’s a common goal. .

I joined Cry Havoc with my friend and I couldn’t imagine a better guild. Guilds aren’t only there for raids and stuff but for advices, chatting and other common events like guild missions, dungeons, WvW and exploring.

To OP: I was being invited to dozens of guilds but I didn’t accept because I wanted to be in the same guild as my friend. Plus I wanted a guild that was organized, semi large and friendly.

I checked CHs forums and before that met many people from there and in the end when my friend got accepted in, I applied as well.

Many don’t want to join random guilds because they assume they are just an unorganized bunch of random people. It doesn’t help that you spam invites to every other people because then you will become just like the 90% of guilds in this game: 500 unknown people where no one knows each other.

If you can, a guild forum helps. ALOT. It makes you seem organized and creates a place for the community to get to know each other.

If you randomly whispered me about joining a guild, I would view it as distastefully as I view doorknocking religious morons. It is extremely rude.

Walking past without reviving is unusual in my experience. Most people will go out of their way to rez others.

Hairy.6547:

My gripe is, right now im recruiting for a guild that im in, on Seafarers Rest. And while I will post on /map the usual recruitment type posts I will also whisper anyone I see thats not in a guild. And I would say that on average out of every 20 people that I whisper around 18-19 people wont even reply to the whisper.

Even a no thanks I would be happy with, but I just think that people cant even take 2 seconds to write a reply as extremely rude.

no. what is rude is that you are advertising in map chat (which isn’t rude) but you are also whispering everyone with no guild (which i find rude), do you realize how annoying it is to have several guilds sending whispers and invites every time you go into lions arch? that’s why people ignore you, we want to play the game not stop to politely tell you and everyone else that we don’t want to join your guild, I would get chat suppressed telling people the same thing over and over.

to me random invites and whispers makes your guild look unprofessional and looking like you are desperate for members and makes me think your just full of a lot of new players that just clicked accept invitation without really caring and probably won’t be worth joining.

make a website, advertise that with a short description of what you specialize in in map chat. Then on the site go into more detail and recruit people from there, make a guild forum etc, look like your active and let people look into your guild to make their own decision in their own time without making them feel like they have to choose yes/no right on the spot like when you randomly whisper people…

And for not rezzing, half the time I rez a random player they just stand there afk and die again, so I’m doing them a favour by not rezzing them and saving them repair bills. If they ask nicely for a rez while I run past I will stop to rez.

OP, you are confusing etiquette concerning personal conversation with business conversation. Essentially, you are acting as a business soliciting new customers (guild members) by randomly inviting strangers, just like an employee outside a business asking passerby’s to come inside. That employee doesn’t reasonably expect those people to personally decline his invitation and neither should you.

okay i guess this is end of discussion as my thread has been wrongly renamed and moved to the wrong forum. I was not seeking help about how to recruit…..

So no more replies needed. My thanks to all the people that have posted their views and opinions.

As someone not in an active guild, and who might join one under the right circumstances, let me tell you my problem.

When I see someone advertise a guild on /map, or whisper me with a copy/pasted statement, I am forced to wonder what kind of community I am joining, when I have demonstrated zero value to the person recruiting me?

Will these be people I enjoy talking to? Or are they going to fill up my box with chat pollution? Am I going to want to spend time with them?

Here’s my suggestion. Go to events. Tell someone they did a good job, putting down/exploiting a field, raising people instead of going tunnel vision boss, whatever, just as long as it was something they had to go out of their way to do. Make it feel as though you want them because they’d be useful, not because they have a pulse.

If I don’t feel like I’m useful as an individual to a guild, I’m going to assume I’m only useful because I provide free influence, and assume the same about the masses that join alongside me.

Go to low level areas,help new players and invite them,it has the 2advantages that you’ll be helping new players and you’ll have people to do story mode on alts with!

First off all. Do not recruit!
Where in the real world are people being recruited?? only for the army!. A guild is a group of friends, so stop recruiting but start making friends.

The way to do that is playing the game and meeting people.
I’ve been in a casual guild that has never activly recruited. We just meet now people and invite them in. It is slower, but also more durable.

Second of all. Decide what kind of guild you want to be. Want to specialise? then do the things you specialise in (WvW – get commander title and organise zergs, Dungeon’s? – be in dungeon pug’s a lot)

Third: Do not think whats wrong with others but find out whats wrong with you. A good leader/officer isn’t thinking of himself as better or more then others, but they are humble and thankfull for the support they get from their members.

‘no longer about fun with others but all about someones own selfish desire’

What isn’t there selfish bout having fun with others?? Are you meaning you see having fun with others as a sacrifice?? otherwise it is selfish to actually want to have fun with others and desire that. Being selfish isn’t wrong at all. How you act while recieving your selfish goals is.

So stop trying to lead a guild/be an officer and start having fun yourself. You are the problem, not others. So change yourself and the rest will follow.

How I got recruited to a great friendly guild:

Guild asks for a player to make up a party for Sorrow’s Embrace. I say that I’ve never done one before but if theyre patient, I’ll join.

Halfway through the dungeon, I’m asked if I want to join their guild. Of course, I accept, and never want to leave it.

Moral of the story: show a player that if they join they will get interaction, will be respected and will not be left out on their own, only there to make up the numbers. Be sociable, THEN recruit, or you will get viewed as warmly as the guys who knock on your door while you’re having dinner offering you double glazed windows. Just as you’d slam the door on them, people you whisper will slam the door on you.

Talk about poor etiquette:
A player actually called out to his guildies and others helping in a big battle “Do not Rez (specific name of player)”

Apparently he had mistakenly thought this player was inside a shrine that was in the process of being taken down. When confronted and told, no, you are wrong, he continued to indicate this single player was some how, on their own, going to change the outcome of his plan to get risen to destroy their own shrine. When maybe 15-20 other players are in the thick of it.

What bothers me the most about it is this game is specifically built to encourage co-operation and everyone gaining benefit…… and part of that is bringing each other back to life.

Ok, if you are in the middle of a battle and getting hit hard while trying to rez someone in the middle of hell spawn central, ok, I get that. But to specifically say, “dont rez this certain person” that’s just rude!

I guess people get too many invites or are asked too much so they can’t bear responding to more requests.
And then again there are people who do not realize they’re whispered at. Sometimes happens to me when switching between map and guild chat when trying to find people for a dungeon or some other reason.

Some people are in multiple guilds and forget or play with other friends of other guilds thus wanting to represent the other guild with the other guild’s members they play with but they do not want to leave the guild because they want to play with those members just as well.

The last one is easy it’s been the same thing I ask myself all the time. When I see someone being dead I have no idea if they’re afk or not.
Of course sometimes you’re unable to revive someone if the battle (if in a battle) prevents or results in own death.
Or sometimes you just do not realize a player is lying there.
I often act this way in fractals. I often tell people not to rezz <player> since it might end up in the players dying. I saw this a lot already.

The thing is:
If I revive him I helped him go on on his journey and he doesn’t have to pay waypoint costs.
Then again when he’s afk and I revive him he might die again and his repair costs increase…

Hmmm difficult if you think about it.

As some of the others stated, I simply do not like guild invites from random players I have never talked to in game. If I am working on, for example, a heart and get a whisper something like, “We are recruiting and would like you to join our guild. Most awesome cool, best ever, most fun ever guild. Really our guild is awesome. Did I mention that before? So please join our guild, it’s a pretty awesome and cool guild with lots of awesome and cool members.” I ignore it for a few reasons. I might be busy working on the task at hand. Or I don’t know you and never talked to you. I’m busy talking to someone I already know. I don’t have whisper on. I have whisper on but in the same window as /map and it got buried from all the other guild messages and I just didn’t see it. And many more reasons.

I’ve had many cases where I did decide to be polite and responded with something like, “Thanks for asking but I’m not interested at this time” and the individual keeps whispering me with things like, “Why not?” “You’ll like our guild” “Really you should join” “Please don’t ignore me I want to talk to you about it more.” I have found that not responding discourages this type of behavior. I’m probably not alone in this.

There is a forum here that might improve you chances of recruiting good guild members:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds

If you want to recruit and have quality members I feel there are ways to go about it aside from randomly whispering people. Post a detailed message in the guild forum and make sure you discuss what your guild is about and what the benefits are. When working with another player/players that are not in a guild at the end of your time together mention your guild and ask if they are interested. Spend some time helping someone not in a guild like a new player and then discuss your guild.

And while we are on this topic, if I see a /map guild request I also ignore it, especially if they are posting it several times in a short time span. Lastly, nothing bothers me more than getting guild spammed. I’ve had cases where the same person sent me guild requests over and over in a few minutes. No thank you.

People don’t ignore whispers- at least I never found it so- people ignore guild spam from people they don’t know from a bar of soap.

I have a personal Guild mainly to avoid this and bank space naturally

As many people have already said the problem is they don’t see it the same way you do. You think you’re doing a favour by sending them a personal invite and the least they could do is take a few seconds to reply.

But from their perspective your ‘friendly, personal message’ is just the 20th or 30th random unsolicited invite they’ve gotten today, when all they want to do is get on and play their game, not stop every few minutes to explain to yet another complete stranger why they’re not interest in their guild.

If you’re advertising in map chat then there’s really no need to spam random people. If they’re interested in a guild they will be looking, will have seen your message and will let you know if they’re interested.

Internet culture in general. Unsolicited whispers like this from someone you’ve never even heard about before register as mass advertising just as mail spam, and lots of people (myself included) would treat it just the same (in my case just a simple ignore if it’s the first time, a block if I receive it again), I wouldn’t call it lack of courtesy, more of a conditioned reflex caused by regular internet usage when it comes to unsolicited advertising.

Now, if you were talking to someone (maybe doing a dungeon together) and during the conversation you mentioned something like “Oh, btw, I noticed you’re unguilded, would you be interested in joining mine?” and they didn’t respond, then I would call it lack of courtesy, otherwise not.

Unsolicited guild invites are the equivalent of Jehova’s Witnesses uninvitedly showing up on my door step.

You guys make me smile. So many comments that are right on target. Thanks.

The OP might be in sales or marketing (or of the type with a single-minded agenda) so rationalization of his undesirable behavior is to be expected.
I do not just ignore obnoxious players; my block list is probably the longest in history.

Just have a story for y’all…

While farming I found a dead guy next to a resource node. Whispered to see if he were there. No response.
Another player ran up. I told him the dead player was afk. So player2 says, “I wish we had the Reviver Daily so I could farm him”.
It still makes me laugh.

I wouldn’t respond to you if you whispered me to join your guild just because I am not representing one at the moment. What you are doing is rude, and I want nothing to do with it or you.

I agreed with your basic premise until I read your story.

It sounds like you are ‘cold calling’ people for recruitment. It’s like telemarketing, who likes telemarketing?

I would agree if you simply stated that people are ignoring your whispers and that is rude, but given the context, I disagree.

Sometimes people don’t assign a tab for their whispers and as such they get lost in the chatter. Another situation which pops up for me is at times the whisper tab I made doesn’t inform me of a new message. So I go without replying because there wasn’t a notification. At times the tab name does go red, but its a gamble for moments.

Protoavis.9107:

As someone who isn’t in a guild, I can say I stopped responding after the 30th query about it…it gets annoying when just because you aren’t in a guild dozens of people a day feel the need to whisper or send random invites. It’s like door to door sales people or telemarketers…it gets annoying and something to ignore very quickly.

And then there’s this I’m sad to say. I’ve had people whisper me just as I get into a zone if I want to join. Usually I’ll politely decline, then there’s the folks who spam the guild invite on me (seriously one guy just kept spamming, I had to move to another zone just to get away). With those types I just simply made my own personal storage guild tag and proudly display it, which makes a great deterrence to invites or messages of that nature.

1) The don’t notice. This happens to me more times than I like to count. I’m in battle, I’m looking at the map, I’m selling stuff on the market, etc and simply don’t notice the whisper until 10 minutes later. I try to reply if not a lot of time has passed but more often than not I don’t get a reply.

2) They are having a conversation with other people on another channel and your whisper just fudged up their autoreply.

3) He/she and their buds are all on ventro or the like and don’t even have the kitten chat open.

4) They don’t like you. They have a murder wall set up in a room where they are plotting your horrible demise. Run.

As several others have mentioned, it’s probably because the players you’re whispering find it annoying, on the same level as getting telemarketer calls or hawkers knocking on your door. If you want to advertise your guild, I suggest doing it in the thread provided in the official forums here, and announcing it in Map chat in-game. Don’t whisper unguilded people about it.

As for people who run past you without reviving, I always stop to revive someone, but I can’t speak for others. Maybe they have somewhere really urgent to get to. (For instance, if I was in Wayfarer Foothills and somebody announced Maw was up, you can be sure I’d be hightailing it there and not stopping for anything along the way.)

In most games, whispering people to join your guild would be looked down upon. It’s a form of spamming. I don’t send nice letters to people who send me email spam either. Some people don’t want to be in a guild and some people are in guilds and not representing. We don’t need whispers to ask us to join a guild.

I’m really quite surprised you haven’t been reported by people for spamming. And I’d never consider a guld that approached me in this way. I’d immediately reject them from serious consideration.

Honestly doesn’t bother me as much just because I love the community in this game, sure there is a few solo players every now and than but its better than every kitten player being a solo player and only a few being friendly and wanting to help another player out. That’s how WOW made me feel, this game changed that.

Random whispers for guild recruitment are like telemarketers, in my opinion. And back when I had a landline and got those calls, I would hang up. Not responding to unwanted conversation is pretty much the same thing.

Your messages in /map should be sufficient to get attention without badgering people.

The lack of reviving you surprises me. Most of the time multiple folks will rez a downed player, unless combat prevents it. Even folks that are visibly Akitten will get a repeat rez or three, in my experience.

Maybe they didn’t like your guild advertising.

a.) there is simply too much “join my guild!!!11!” spam. Whenever I play an alt who is not representing a guild, I get spammed to death by people asking me to join their guild – from lengthy explanations like “we are a smallish guild with players age 16-50 who like to … blah blah blah” to simple guild invites without any chat message at all. The first one or two times I might respond and politely decline, but after that, it’s just “ignore”. Same as I simply hang up the phone when some advertiser calls to inform me about some incredible insurance savings.

b.) even if I would be looking for a guild to join, I probably would not consider ANY guild which randomly whispers other players or sends random guild invites. Simply because that gives the impression, like someone already posted above, that this guild is looking for ANYBODY to join without caring about what kind of people those new guild members are. So I’d expect a guild full of rejects from other guilds where people actually have to apply and are given a trial time, i.e. exactly those people I do NOT want to be together with.

edit: wow, what a weird text filter, if you write “that” and then “it’s”, it gets filtered because the forum thinks you want to write about female breasts :-)

Hairy.6547:

okay i guess this is end of discussion as my thread has been wrongly renamed and moved to the wrong forum. I was not seeking help about how to recruit…..

So no more replies needed. My thanks to all the people that have posted their views and opinions.

Anything that is still being posted here is pointless. The OP has long since decided that this thread getting moved to “Players Helping Players” is reason to no longer read it.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Hairy.6547:

okay i guess this is end of discussion as my thread has been wrongly renamed and moved to the wrong forum. I was not seeking help about how to recruit…..

So no more replies needed. My thanks to all the people that have posted their views and opinions.

Anything that is still being posted here is pointless. The OP has long since decided that this thread getting moved to “Players Helping Players” is reason to no longer read it.

I understood the concerns of the OP and decided to post regarding the actual problem in hope he might expect a few people to actually read the OP’s post instead of posting about “how to recruit” which is not the purpose.

My impression is also that the OP was more looking for commiseration (“Oh yes, people are so rude these days”) than for critical feedback. Although I could be wrong here.

When I was guildless, I responded to whispers. I appreciate those approaches, as opposed to the unsolicited invitations out of the blue, which I decline. As to reviving… I do that, too. Although I also ask in /say if the person is akitten. If I get no response I do not revive, as an akitten person will likely just die again.

Communities are made up of individuals. If, in interacting with some individuals in a community, you encounter behavior you find rude, please do not generalize that the community as a whole is rude.

1. rule of guild recruitment – Don’t randomly send a tell or a guild invite, I probably won’t dignify it with a response either. If I was interested in the guild, I would respond to the zone wide spam messages.

Take it to heart, a lot of players, especially older MMO players, find it rude.