Finding the right guild

I've been playing Guild Wars, off and on, for a year now. In the old days I just played with friends, but by and large they've moved to other games or simply gotten preoccupied with real life. Anyway, it'd be awfully nice to have a group of players with a similar outlook to mine to play with from time to time, but I really have no idea how to go about finding a guild that matches my tastes. I'm a fairly casual player, I don't realy want to have to adhere to schedules for planned events and the like, I just want a pool of competant, friendly people I can play PvE and PvP with whenever I'm around.

Any advice?

I really, really, really hate chat spam, but me and my (very small) guild of friends felt the same way, so went looking for an alliance made up of similar guilds.

How did I find one? I made a short message for local chat, and instead of spamming it, I simply posted it every time I entered an area.

I was able to find another like-minded group within an hour or two, all while I was questing. I would suggest you do something similar. Something like "Casual PvE/PvP player looking for friendly, mature, laid-back guild." Then while you're playing just post it in local once in a while.

Once you get a whisper, I would strongly urge you to be very wary of any guild that just says "you can join us!" You'll be much better off with a guild where the person talking to you wants to get to know a bit about you before making the offer.

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the advice. And yeah, the eagerness of so many guilds to recruit just about anyone is why I see this as difficult. I'll keep this in mind.

agreed,
Lot's of guilds just recruit random people because they want to fill up their 100 members limit.. stupid, cause most of the time the people get not what they expect from a guild
The guild I am in is dutch, really relaxed and laid-back.. We play the game with eachother, help eachother out when possible and just generally have a good time chatting and questing together
Tryn to find a guild that fits your playing style, and you should be happy in no time at all

Hum. Thats gonna be hard with all those guilds around. I wish u luck

That 100 memeber is what is ruining guilds today as it is best to keep your guild small and managable say around 40 members is fine but all you really need is say 25.I would just ask to be guest or put a few guild leader or officers on friends list and see what they are like.This is not easy though especially when you see some that have been offline for months.

I would look at as well what would attract you to that guild as well are they nice and pleassant and what do you look for in guild for me maturity.organizied and nice looking cape.I hate all those flamey looking capes out there way to many of them.

Go to guru's Guild Discussion forum. There are two stickies you should check out. The first is "Looking for a guild" where you can post info on yourself and what you are looking for in a guild. The second is "Introduce your guild" where guilds post descriptions and what they are looking for in members.

Check out some of their forums (if they have one), pm the leader if you have questions or want to get to know some of their members by questing with them.

Take your time, the better guilds will be more interested in compatibility than in recruiting numbers. It can get very frustrating but keep at it. You will eventually find the right match.

I have the same predicement as you, i keep searching, and can't find one that meets my needs, no one seems to think PvE and PvP are just as important, and having fun more than both combined

Its hard to get a guild that does PvE and PvP to a decent level, just join a guild that you know already or do what you enjoy doing in guildwars and you will get an idea of the crowd of people that do the same things as you.

A large PvE guild is a good place to start if your farily new to Guild Wars, just as somewhere to stay until you find a decent guild, usually the 100 member guilds have a bit of everything.

What I did which sounds really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, bad but I was sick of guild hopping (yes sadly I used to guild hop) so I said "Jakal, the next guild you see spamming in HA d1 you will join"... Which I did and have been proudly and happily been in since then. The only problem I have been having is that, once our leader left to play Lineage II more often, none of the remaining 8 of us were good at leading. We have now been drifting in and out of various guilds, including pVz, because of un-leadernessness. I am now stuck with the almost(if not full I cant remember) guild hall and a 5 person guild of which I, the leader, am the only very active one. *sigh* I'm stuck in a completely different situation, and sorry to vent, but that was my solution which was like crack, a spectacular temporary fix, but mentally deteriorating in the long run.

I'm playuing for quite a while now and never joined a guild myself. Than I decided to start a guild with just one friend about one month ago. Today, we are stil the only members but found one more guy that we think will be the 3rd member. We will only invite people that we got to know by playing with them for a while and that we think are compatible with our way of playing. This will take some time, I know, but I'm hoping at the end we'll have a good guild with around 20 members.

That's one way of doing it...