PvE-Only Guilds, are they dead and buried?

I know we're not supposed to recruit in here, so I won't mention my guild name or anything like that, but I was wondering if anyone else noticed just how DEAD PvE-only guilds seem to be, at least in the eyes of others.

I've spent the past few days struggling to recruit in every district of every major city in Elona, Cantha, and Tyria, all to no avail.

I personally find the idea of a guild that helps each other overcome PvE milestones as a universally good idea that a many people could enjoy, but it seems like everyone is only interested in PvP when it comes to joining guilds. I'm so incredibly confused by this.

Is there any SUCCESSFUL PvE-only guild out there? If so, how on earth did you recruit people into it? I'm so stuck, with nothing left to do but sit here in my empty hall and sulk about how organized PvE is dead. :P

the thing is that most of the GW population has started playing during the first 6 months after the release. By now, most of them have found guilds (its enough time) ot are simply guild hoping.

now, unless its a realy hard mission people dont even bother to take PUGs or friends, they use heros/henchmen. they ask for help once they get stuck on something.

this is why there is less activity in the PVE area of the guilds.

This may be just IMO, but the fact is, guilds are mainly for PvPing. Everything about it is PvP down from joining a guild for Faction alignment and GvG. Maybe it's just because I've been guildless for awhile now but PvE is generally not that hard and groups are easy to find in most cases. You don't really need to be very experienced to get into a group. On the other hand, in PvP, it's frustrating to look for a good group every time so boom: grab some guildies.

I wish you the best of luck recruiting though.

The key for a successful PvE guild I think is to focus on high end missions and such. Those are where you need the help of guildmates the most. General game play doesn't really require much so most people just kind of hang out with people they know.

Also, it helps to build a strong community where word of mouth about your guild will draw in people.

I don't think my concern is that PvE is hard. Sure there are some frustrating missions where the devs seemed to have forced you to only bring this build and this class, but for the most part, if you know what you're doing you won't have a problem with 95% of Guild Wars. I'm mostly referring to just having fun in a social environment WHILE you do these things. And while I can get things done with heroes and henchmen, I'm one lonely SOB in the meantime, and I find myself not having as much fun as I could be, like I could if I was out playing the game with someone who I didn't just grab up at a random outpost.

One thing to realize is that there are a ton of PvE guilds, and not a lot of people left who are guildless. My guild has been around for a while, but we have lower membership than I hoped.

One thing that helps us is that we've become very good friends over the course of playing and have learned to count on each other. For the most part, we work on getting titles most of the time, though I still try to recruit every chance I get.

I know it can be frustrating, and no one should have to go through the game alone. If you want, drop me a message & I'll see what I can do about getting an alliance to your guild. That way you can enjoy what we have to offer, without giving up what you have already.

I recently started a PvE-only guild (and doing pretty good already =D) and I think a good way of recruiting members is to play some missions with PUGs and if you see a player you like, tell him about your guild and ask him to join.;P
Feel free to PM me ingame if you want more information.=P

I believe our PvE (mainly) focused guild/alliance is doing pretty well... we have 9 guilds and about 150 fairly active players. I must say though, we have built a community through gameplay, cooperation, and having fun. Regular alliance events (hide and seek green rewards and such) and end game elite missions are becomming the staple that keeps us working together. Many are RL friends. Seasonal events are also a big draw as folks work on their titles (lucky, etc).

Can a PvE guild work...yep! Is it challenging to build...yep ;] Is it worth it...most definitely!

personaly i'd suggest only creating a pve oriented guild if you have players you know who are ready to join from the start, otherwise your better off just hoining a ready established guild. If, however you wish to run your old guild then try to avoid recruiting by spamming in towns, the few members you get that way will only be guild hoppers who take what they want then leave.

my guild is centered around helping new players, so my officers spend alot of time in pre, shing jea and istan helping pretty much anyone who asks, that person is then added to a friends list and if they ever decide to join later we let them, if they dont wish to we still help them .

the same strategy works pretty well in high end area's for recruiting more experianced players also.

this method is rather slow at building up members, but i personally prefer it that way as it allows you to get to know the person better.

i lead a PVE only guild. the guild has been PVE only for almost a year and a half. we are also the lead guild in a 5 guild alliance of mainly PVE only guilds. each guild is between 15-30 members. before nightfall, playing in PUG groups or inviting a random person to a guild/alliance group is how we tried to find new members. with nightfall and some missions requiring a hero, that takes the spot of the random person in those missions. never did any spamming in districts for members. i would say a handfull of members in the alliance do random PVP or HoH but thats only because its something to do in the hours when hardly anyone is on or as in HoH, we dont have favor.

MY own P vs E guild is doing quite well. I have in fact gotten a few members that are actually sick of the you must donate X amount of faction each day or have been burned out on the P vs P aspect of the game. Everyone wants to belong to the LEET ranked guilds but at what cost ? Unless your 15-18 years of age live at home with your folks, have no job, or zero real life responsibility then it's extremely hard to meet the requirements of those guilds. I would say that a P vs P guild would burn itself out quicker then a community based P vs E guild. The game was meant to be fun, make it a job for people to play it and see what happens.

I also see a lot of gamers say I've beaten this X amount of times and that " I'm bored ". I've seen these same gamers unable to defeat missions without the need for the skill specific classes helping them. The P vs P crowd in any game I've ever played in has always followed the norm and done what everyone else does. How long until that gets boring ?

Nope give me a small P vs E comunity any day over P vs P guilds.

My guild, [boat], is 99% PVE, and we were recently on GW.com as Guild of the Week. PVE guilds do exist, but like guilds in general, for every good guild that exists, there's at least 100 bad ones.

I'd follow the advice of one of the above posters, that if you start a guild yourself, play through quests and missions with randoms (those who aren't so antisocial to use heroes and hench 100% of the time at least). My previous guild often picked up new members this way.

We're in the middle of developing our small guild built from a group of friends into a larger guild. We're a PvE guild that focus on things like title development, further character development etc and it seems to be going well.

I'd argue long and hard with anyone who claimed that PvE guilds were dead.

I've created my own PvE Guild about two weeks ago. I'm still alone but I could care less. I find it hard to find GOOD players who are interested in joining a PvE guild because of the appealing emotes for people are are into Tournament PvP. Since 70% of the Guild Wars community is made up of PvP fanatics, there aren't alot of people who are easy to find and recruit for a PvE guild.

I think you're approaching it from the wrong angle. PvP guilds have something to offer right off the bat to people who PvP, and that's likeminded people interested in the same thing.

A successful PvE guild should offer the same thing, which isn't so easy to aquire as you first have to find likeminded people who's PvE interests are similar to yours. Once you find a few players that you mesh well with (personality wise moreso than game interests) it gets muche easier to attract more members.

Though, you shouldn't be looking just for members to boost your rank, but for people you get along with, which is why spam recruiting in towns is not the best way to recruit. I personally only recruit people that I believe will mesh well with our current members. We've been around for almost 2 years, and I've yet to have someone I recruited leave the guild.

The point?

Get to know people before you send an invite, ask questions based on what you'd look for in a friend before asking anything relevent to what you'd expect in a guild member. That's the best advice I can give you.

I'd say ours is doing well, its all about community, teaming up for specific things (DoA, Urgoz, UW, Tombs, various missions, etc), helping people, and just participating in the life of the guild in general. Sure we have "soloists" within the guild but we have plenty who help others when needed.

We also have RP teams meeting once a week and working through each chapter and that's been a lot of fun.

That's impressive that no one has left your guild. I wholeheartdly agree with your advise, spam recruiting is not really the way to go if you are looking for members who you want to "fit" in with your guild. I can tell you a year ago, we a few active members in our guild. Over a time period of about 6-8 months we grew to about 50 members. This is not to say everyone we recruited stayed who joined our guild, but if you put up front and are honest about your guild and where you want to go with it, you can do it. Most people who end up leaving because their expectations were not in line with the reality of what they found. So the more honest you are at the beginning the more likely people are willing to stay, reagardless of how few people you have in your guild.

Yeah, something doesn't fit. Every time I observe that player interaction is diminished or diminishing in the game the retort is, "You need to find a good Guild and play with guildees!"

So, which is it, lol?

My, personal; opinion is that the Heroes trend has impacted guild play on the PvE side as well. It isn't only PuG's that have suffered. PuG's have always been inferior to guild play or playing with friends, for obvious reasons. I prefer to playing with people I know in real life or through online experiences and PuG's don't provide that, of course.

It seems to me that the game's "society issues" are even impacting player interaction in Guilds.

Agreed, the combo of heroes and play spread over 3 continents has thinned out participation in general. Over the weekend I missed several opportunities to team up with guildies simply because I didn't have characters where the action was happening (DoA, later NF locations, Gayala [I took Kurzick route], etc).

Part of that is my "fault" obviously because I haven't taken the time or perhaps focused on a single character to get to those locations, but the fact that there are many different activities to choose from between PvP and PvE spreads out the guildies all over the place.

I'd like to echo obastable's sentiments -- you simply have to find people with whom you get along. To me, this applies to both PvE and PvP: it's difficult for me to conceive of a successful guild, regardless of its aims, that doesn't have that personality-chemistry that takes group gaming beyond the mechanics of cookie-cutter builds and standard farming techniques.

And yes, I have recruited in LA (very successfully in some cases) competing with whatever else text might be flying by. Honestly, in a game so engineered towards tight gaming groups (8 player-per-'team' maximum per 'game', elite missions notwithstanding) it's extremely hard to find like-minded people, especially if you're a hermit or misanthrope by nature. In other games (read: more stereotypical MMORPGs), I've experienced moments of desolate loneliness in some obscure zone broken by wanderers or random events. You simply won't get that in GW, at least not as it stands.

Whether your goal is to master every mission with a bunch of good players, dominate HoH or, I dunno, just hang out in guild chat with a bunch of loonies up with whom you occasionally actually hook, you won't do it embracing the full quotient of solitude that GW offers, because it offers a heck of a lot. When everything's instanced, Tyria can be a big, hollow world.

And as an aside, I want to add that I don't believe purely PvP or purely PvE guilds are ideal for the scope of Guild Wars. Yes, I resisted the horror of PvP for as long as I could, but there are interesting sub-elements to PvP that Arena.Net have no doubt implemented as part of their their unending struggle to unite the yin and yang of PvP/PvE. In this case, I cite Alliance Battle, which we as a guild do quite often. The infinite rezzes and zero DP really helps reduce that 'competitive-killer' attitude most PvP scenarios require -- but of course it's still PvP and there's still a distinct competition going on.

So, is the PvE guild dead and buried? Absolutely not. I will concede that the mentality of a purist PvEer, that is to say their requirements and ideas of enjoyment, are most likely catered for more substantially by other games (games which naturally lack the fine-tuned pvp of GW and, to wax subjective, the beautiful graphics ) -- but the fact that a lot of PvEers *have* remained and remained in guilds to me is fine testament that Guild Wars still has a lot to offer the PvEers at a guild level, not necessarily as a commander of Henchies and their slightly less retarded kin, Heroes.

If the PvE guild, generally speaking, ever does die, it won't be because of the players. And if a PvE guild 'has' to dip into other forms of play, such as AB, to remain interested, to maintain coherency as a guild, then...so be it. Gosh, they might actually *enjoy* it. Is being a 'guild' without that label of 'PvE' or 'PvP' really going to do any harm?

Sometimes, in real life, the best of parties can be ruined by the worst of company...

But if a party has the best of company, who cares what the party's like? Moreover -- doesn't *that* make it the best of parties to you anyway?

^_^

Happy Apple

PS Regarding your recruiting techniques, Dingo, I suggest you think very carefully about what sort of players you want, rather than focusing on what you might be offering as a guild. And then advertise accordingly -- in such a flooded market, you simply have to be unique. To this day I've no idea why some guilds recruit with statements of 'have guild hall cape' etc...I mean, is this somehow going to *impress* anyone anymore? I give these suggestions only because they've worked for me, to some greater or lesser extent.

Good luck. ^_^

Though the player base may be slightly declining, I don't think PvE guilds are dead. If anything, I'd say there are many more PvE guilds than PvP ones. Because most of the players are already in some guild (due to the relative ease of creating one), recruiting like that isn't the best way to get people (especially quality-wise). I'd suggest completing missions with people, and asking some of the ones that share your philosophy if they'd like to join your guild (even if they appear to be in a guild, they may like your guild better). The players that will join any guild are probably already recruited by other guild spammers, and the only ones left are the ones who a) don't want to be in a guild or haven't found one they like, or b) want instant fame by being in a top 1000/500/200 guild without much experience, neither of which will respond to your recruitment methods.

I was in the Mutants guild before I left for personal reasons. They where mainly PvE. In fact, I can't remember doing anything PvP with them. A couple of weeks ago they were GotW.

We(they) did some nice PvE things, like running contests and such, or who was the first of getting titles/armor/endgame etc.
Quite big, something around 60 members with app. 20 very active. If you happen to join them, or already joined, tell Tribina that Vortex says hi.

At the moment I'm guildess and not looking, but when I'd join a Guild it would be rather a PvE than a PvP.

PvE guilds dead? Haha, surely not the one I'm in. We do have a few PvPers, but most of us are PvE. We're 64 I think (we dropped a lot, we used to be 80+) and most of are are active (high 40's, 50 people active). We don't really do contests and such, most of us farm "elite" areas (Tombs, FoW, DoA, Urgoz/Deep) or help with missions, collect armor... or just do it for the fun of playing.

We built my main guild, GR, as a PvE guild with GvGs. We find it fun to take a break from the PvEing to have a random GvG. We try to do one every weekend. Some of us officers research and write builds and we usually have something different every couple of weeks.

Akki, the guild my secondary account is in (also the leader of our alliance), is solely PvE. In addition to helping each other with missions and quests, every evening there is a trip to Tombs/FoW/UW, etc.

We have some PvPers in our alliance though, and so we work as a group if anyone wants to pvp. If someone says "hey, want to AB?" or "anyone want to HA?", theres usually a few people who will tag along.

EDIT: Almost forgot to mention...GR has over 60 active members, Akki has over 80 active members...so yes, it is possible to have a large successful PvE guild.

The people in the guild I'm in are mostly PvEers so as an answer to your question they arn't dead. The whole alliance is mosty PvE aswell seeing as the leader of the guild im in had an idea to have more people with the same cape and similar tag he calls it "spreading the plauge" and i think at the satrt he wanted a different guild for thedifferent types or things to do like PvP but in the end he gave up on that and all the guilds are a mix of people now.

In my opinion a good way to extend a PvE guild is to find a PvP guild and form an alliance... Hit me on the head if I'm WAAAAAY off topic but I was just thinking that would be a good idea X_x... I know my guild is looking to join an alliance with about 2-3 PvE guilds and about 4-5 PvP guilds. It would be an interesting combination that would benefit most anyone involved... again, sorry if this post was more or less irrelevant DX...

A guild is a formal collective of people who find more utility in the group rather than being by themselves.

Pray, though, the question must be begged: what kind of utility and is it of any relevance in the context of GuildWars:

#1. Guilds are needed to complete high-end content - Nope. People have a need for help in PvE which is inversely proportion to their intelligence. Anyone who has a few grey cells doesn't need guildmates to help with any mission or areas period, save a couple, where a casual non-guild acquaintance can be of greater utility.

#2. Guilds are needed in the game to foster a sense of community - Nope. Meaningful friendships you make accidentally with people who like you for your wit, charm or just plain fluffiness are important. Not "wat r u doing. i am farming etins lmao" morons on guildchat. And I dare anyone to tell me with a straight face that most gamers aren't of the latter category. And i'm not nit-picking the choice of semantics; just making the point that truckloads of irrelevance doesn't a community make.

#3. Guild are needed for PvP - Yes. This one I will concede. Though, if you are guildless but talented as hell (with a microphone and headset) in both gameplay and meta-analysis, you'll have some good PvPers whispering you all the time to roll with them in the HA and GvG. So yes if you want to compete consistently at the top-100, but this excludes most GW players. For running around at the TA/HA you don't need a guild (and yes, all HA/TA PvP is "running around", nothing more. AB isn't considered to be PvP by this poster in any form). Only for serious, top-level GvG do you need a guild. *


Just about the only mechanic more useless than Guilds in this game is Alliances. People see a facet in the game, and they lap it in, zombie-like, not putting any thought into whether it has any impact on their gameplay at all.

And anyone who sees any discernible advantage in this game to being in a guild over utilizing a couple of casual acquaintances as far as impact on achievement or frequency of intelligent discourse goes: sorry, you really don't have any idea either about gaming or interpersonal skills.

Cheers,

GS.


* Disclaimer: Please don't tell me that the PvP meta in this game sucks. Yes it does. That is besides the point.

I never understood pve Guilds. So basically there one big glorified friends list? You need a guild to gvg you don't need a guild to see who of your buddies wants to DoA or FoW with you

Its much more than a "glorified friends list". PvE guilds are about community, and a real community doesnt stand there talknig in groups of 2, they share information ,experiances, generaly socialise.

And just because you dont understand it, doesnt mean you should undermine it. Personally i think PvE guilds are more appropriate than pvp guilds just because everyone tends to be more friendly towards one another.

I guess then you don't understand the fun of shared experiences. PvE guilds are basically social groups, not a small dedicated group to achieve a specific goal (PvP). In such a guild you can have a degree of conversation and fun that you just can't have over "all" chat without being interrupted by some random gamer that gets jut plain annoying. It's easier to form groups, since there is a dedicated chat for it. And you can chat with multiple in-game friends even when you aren't playing side by side. Plus with a shared Guild website, you can interact outside of the game as well. This is how it contributes to a "community" feel. Of course all guilds are different, and the experience in one is not necessarily applicable to another. It all depends on the people you have running it and the people they choose to recruit. But I can tell you I would have quit this game long ago without the wonderful friendships I have made within my guild. So chalk that one up for the PvE guild.

I think the need for good PvE guilds still exists. As one who has never been a guild member (guess I'm one of them isolationists), I know there are times that I wish I were. Having played 14 months and never having seen uw/fow, the deep, urgoz' warren or doa because you can't just find a pug to join in those locations. Everyone wants this build or that build and very few are willing to take along people that they haven't played with. Personally I could care less if I went into those places and got killed...at least I would have attempted it. Farming groups are ok but they need to relax a little...lol.
I have teamspeak and a mic...never used it because I'm not sure how to set it up and don't have anyone to try it with. I'd like to try to make my own builds but need help with testing. I'm sure there are others out there like myself and most would be interested in a guild, at least to see what it's like.

Well first of all it ads a sense of community, its not just about a glorified friend lists.
Pve Guilds are not soley pve either, they still do GvG, HOH, ab, ect...
they just don't put it as an extreme priority and see to it being done every single day. Nor do they have ridiculous Faction per day reqs ect.. In my opinion PvE guilds are for people who like to enjoy the game rather than spend the whole time faction farming just so they can stay in. It gives you more freedom to do what you wish as well, and allows you to meet new people.

Build a solid frend's list, and then create a guild. My current guild is composed ENTIRELY of my friend's list, and we mainly PvE. Although we rolled a team in a GvG in 4 minutes (killed their Guild Lord in 2 minutes), so we're getting into PvP a little. We do MMs in DoA as well, so we have a butt-load of fun with that >_>

You could say the same thing about pvp guilds as well.You only need a 2 or 3 persons guild and then have more on your Friends list to invite to your guild hall for a Guild Battle.You really don't need to be in a guild per say when it comes to pve because of pugs and others you may meet in game and have some ppl on your friends list.This is unless you are casual gamer that only plays a few hours per week.Then there is RPG guilds out there that do fine.

We of the Scouts of Tyria are the Leaders of a predominant PvE 6 Guild Alliance covering the American and European Servers and are incidently having our 'Second Birthday' today.

Alliances are not just about 'Faction Points' or 'owning towns'. We have never owned a town and probably are not likely to either. An alliance is an extension of your 'home' Guild of other like-minded players. It is a further support system. As well as our 'own' individual Guild websites, we also have a joint Alliance website.

Groups are regularly formed from our Alliance Members to either tackle some quests, missions, elite areas and even 'green weapon' and skill-capping trips.

A good example of one of our recent Alliance Co-operate Missions was the 2007 Canthan New Year event whereby 'ingredients' were needed for the Chefs. We combined forces, split into groups and gathered these ingredients as an 'Alliance' and then ALL mapped into the Monestary to hand-over our booty and share the spoils.

This is what a PvE based Alliance is all about. Long live PvE based Guilds and Alliances.

Regards
Dana Hawkeye - Ranger
Officer - Scouts of Tyria

I'm in a pve guild and like it alot more than my old pvp only guild. The people are nicer and there are less strict requirements dealing with playing time and practice and battles. You have the freedom to do pretty much what you want when you and want and if you need help for something they are always there to call upon.

this was probably the most brilliant and creative way to recruit. Bravo for your efforts