Guildless – What Now?

I have been playing GW for over 9 months now, in that time I have been a member of four guilds. Three of them for a protracted period of time & one for only a few hours. I have found that, (not surprisingly), the best way to fully enjoy this game is to be a member of a guild.

Yet I am currently guildless, why is this?

Well, I’ll give you a quick run down of the reasons why I left my previous guilds and finish with a question. Hopefully the combined wisdom of the players on this forum will help me figure out why.

When I first started playing in July 2005 I was invited to multiple guilds within the first few weeks, after getting acclimatised I picked the most likely sounding guild & accepted.
I got lucky here because it was full of dedicated players trying to compete both in pve & pvp.
I stayed with this guild for six weeks until the internal bickering & politics caused it to fracture. Various core players left the guild to find there own way in the game, I was one of these.

The next guild I joined had just been formed by a former associate from the previous one. As we knew each other well I was made an officer & we set about recruiting other likely players.
This worked out really well & a small, solid guild was formed, I thought my problems were over & settled back to play.

Unfortunately, there was one fly in the ointment, this did not manifest itself until two months later when Freelancer experienced some form of problem that caused players to lose their characters.
Why would this be a problem? Well most of the guild players also played Freelancer & so they universally abandoned GW to rebuild their FL games. I stayed in the guild for a further two weeks, playing almost completely solo for that entire time. Eventually I just gave up, messaged my friend that I was leaving, picked up my bags & wandered off looking for pastures new.

By this time I had been playing for almost 5 months & decided to stay away from guilds for awhile.
For the next month I played by myself, did a lot of missions with pugs & some pvp in random arenas. As you can imagine this got old quite quickly. As fortune would have it I struck up a conversation with a guy in Ascalon who seemed to be if a like mind, he turned out to be the GL of an new guild that was looking for a few players, he invited me & I joined.

What followed was the best GW experience so far, the guild played both pvp & pve equally & had loads of experienced players. We even managed to get the guild into the top 1000 of the ladder. I was with this guild until a few weeks ago, the reason I left? Something happened that made me feel betrayed for all my hard work for the guild, I won’t go into it, but I felt that I could not stay as it would be a constant reminder of the betrayal.

Now I was stuck, no guild, Factions coming up & not sure what to do. I was almost immediately invited into another guild, probably because I was wandering around as a guildless lvl20 warrior in the Ascalon at the time. I left this guild almost as soon as I joined, the reason? The GL was a lvl13 new player who had formed the guild with some friends equally as new & I didn’t want to baby-sit an entire guild, I wanted to jump straight back into gvg battles & SF/UW farming with experienced players.

So, what do I do now? I’m hesitant to accept guild invites in case they are like the one I just mentioned & I’m really not cut out to be a GL myself.

I'm cool so I'm going to have my own guild and try to ally with people.

Umm.. im not gonna click that but I seem to remember it being trolled on slashdot.. isnt it someone covered in shit..

EDIT: What territory are you in?

Thats the same link -___-

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK, IT JUST KILLED GENTLEBREEZES COMPUTER!

Do not click that link, another one of this stupid spam posters. Please report and posts you see from this person till a mod closes it.

/report for the asshat spamming the forums

to the OP: I've avoided guilds myself because what you've experienced seems to be the 'norm' for guild wars guilds. I've met plenty of great people, but none were concentrated in one guild. Unless you have the luxury of building a guild of real life friends, I don't see a good solution to your problem. I guess the best thing I can tell you is keep trying and good luck finding a good guild. :P

Thanks...*not going to click link*

Anyways, take off your pants and yell FREEDOM

I play out of the UK, so I'm in the European servers.

Lonesamuri, you need to edit and remove the your quote with that link in it, also.

Oh come now, do tell what happened, it kind of makes the point about the 3rd guild... well pointless! Least give a load-down of this 'betrayal'.

I myself have any been in 2 guilds, I'm still in my second one. The first guild was great, I was the best ranger on the team and we got upto rank 400 at one point. Sadly internal changes made everything go to s***. Basically the leader felt the need to limit those who could GvG and made GvG devisions and stupid rules and all sorts. Needless to say people got upset and started quiting, me as well.

Now my curren guild is ok, but hardly ever GvG and never bring rangers along, so most likely I'll be looking for a new Guild come Factions, one with access to Elite Missions.

First of all,

WTF are you guys doing replying to this guys thread about a completly different thread that has nothing to do with this one and spreading that lame shit even more?

Poor guy has just spend along time writing up this post... have some respect!

Well, you have two options!

A] just keep trying guilds until you are satisfied!..

there must be one out there! try using one with teamspeak!.. you get to know what people are really like much better.

B] Form your own guild

Just give it a go!... even if you only have 3/4 good members, its definatly worth the experience.

I formed my Guild over 10 months ago.. its gone through hell and back ... its only a small guild but im proud of it and want to build it up!...

Hope this helps.

Actually, there would be three, if ArenaNet would do something to address the fact that some people just don't like playing with immature groups. No, not all guild are immature, but that has been my experience so far (even with a group of adults older than myself!)

There's only so long that you can "keep trying" before you get sick of looking and stick to playing solo/PUG/henchmen.

<--- almost 5 months without a guild

So far, I've only come to realize that, deep down, people are greedy, rude and vile pigs (if anyone gets that reference, have a drink), even moreso when they're able to hide behind the anonymity of "teh intarwebzorz."

Easier said than done. Actually, telling someone to "find a guild" or "join a new guild" is easier to say than to do. The problem here is that ArenaNet isn't doing anything to address the userbase that doesn't like dealing with crap when they login ("lawl U CUM HE1P ME NOW!!!111" or those that are unable to find/stay in groups for some other reason).

I feel your pain,i as a new player started my own guild recruited heavily and lost lots of gold as players quit quickly.so recently i went guildless for a month and got bored....then i joined a guild with 40+peps that gvgs every weekend and is filled with new players.ie level 13 officers and such.i just explained how to get into fow to an officer and i want to quit,but remembering the frustration of being a guild leader has stopped me.well i hope you find your niche/guild as i am appathetic to your situation. btw i have 4 level 20 maxed chars and am not a noob.i remeber when firestorm was a good spell..............

Yeah I was a kind of nomad the first several months I played this game. I joined in May 05 and at first was inundated with guild invites (of course that was before the 100g invite fee) but most of these guilds were full of inactive players. I then joined a nice guild with some friendly players but alas they disbanded as the guild leader stopped playing. So after that I just got on with things on my own, doing missions with henchies and a little bit of RA, but I got to the stage I was thinking about quitting altogether.
Luckily I just decided to make a new char and was questing one day when another player starting chatting to me. A week or so later I was invited into his guild which at first only had around 12 players or so. That was in November and I'm still there as an officer. While we're not the biggest guild, we've got over 40 members and I for one am a better player for joining them.

I would say don't give up on finding a good guild yet, however, be cautious about accepting random guild invites. Ask questions about the guild before you accept the invitation so you'll be able to see a bit of what the guild is all about. If the person is genuine about making a good guild, then they won't mind answering them.

Good luck and I hope you find a good guild soon.

Yeah, a good Guild can make the whole experience so much better. I have been playing for about 8 months now and I have been with the same Guild since day 1. I actually have been promoted to officer recently too!

Everyone in my guild, save like 3 people, are in some way connected. Friends in RL or relatives, and only 1 person is younger that 16. Its a very close knit group which is awesome. We help each other out as much as possible and freely give items and materials to each other.

We havent done any serious PVP as of yet but we want to start looking that way soon.

Play with memebers of prospective guilds for a while before committing to them. Spend time getting to know the members, if you can do it on TS or Vent., even better. They're the best method for really getting to know the people you're playing with and can add to the enjoyment of the game.

A second tip - a guild that is selective (not to the point of elitism) in its recruiting will be a better bet than the one's that have "really cool capes."

make your own guild. it's not as hard as it seems. once you have a few officers you trust to keep things going while you're not online it goes smoothly.

occassionally silly things slip up but it's easy to just kick out the idiots and recrute more mature players.

i didn't think i was guild leader material but i tried and it's working quite well. i started my guild Here Be Dragons in november last year and all the officers i recruted at the begining are pretty much all still there. it doesn't have to be a big guild to be a good guild. *grin*

I've just left a guild that I really liked for personnal reasons so I guess I know what you feel... I need some time to decide myself to join another guild, but one thing is sure: I wont try out all the random guilds looking for players. Instead, I'd rather ask the very good players I prty with if their guild is recruiting. Most of the time a good player won't stay in a guild of inexperienced players so I guess it's the better way to find a good guild.

I should change my profile btw >.<

hmm, well thats not really a choice than anyone can excercise

well, I must admit having my own guild and kept it going, so I dont really speak from experience, so you may have a good point here.

However, using Teamspeak you quickly get to know what people are REALLY like, just by their attitude, tone of voice .etc.. I maybe wrong but I really do feel this helps alot.

hmmm, well I understand that to be in a guild is the point of guildwars, maybe its not the most perfect system in the world, but you have to persevere.

Again, Im not sure what its like swapping guilds etc, all I know is that, in my experience, working harder for something is always more rewarding. Forming a guild isnt easy, but its very rewarding

--

I just noticed you said that your in the UK (OP)

Have you thought about Joining a UK only guild?..

My last guild was 98% UK, I guess I'm looking for another guild like them I just don't seem to be having much luck at the moment.

It's a lot harder than it seems to find another guild when you've been in such a good one for a long time.... I guess I should get used to the idea that I will be solo'ing it for awhile. *shrugs*

I've been surprised at how many players don't belong to guilds. I've been PUGging a lot lately, and about 20-30% of the players I go out with are guildless. These aren't new people--they're all level 20's.

I have two accounts. Joined a guild with one account and haven't really seen any benefit yet. Second account is still guildless.

You'll most likley have to join a grass roots guild and help build it.

How were you recruited to the Guild? Was it a "XXXX is recruiting! Have cool cape and hall!" or did you research into your Guilds?

I was suprised to find out just how many people join Guilds from those damn chat spammers...

Try researching a Guild before joining it, play with a few of the members, invade their forums, etc.

There's not such a thing as 'the ultimate guild'. Even the best guild will have members you won't like. Listening to your story I can only give you this advise: try to accept people make mistakes and stop searching for the perfect guild. Because that does not exist! I'm sorry but reading how good some of your former guilds were I don't expect you to find any better. Unless you manage to unite the perfect group of players yourself!

I did enough guild-hopping since I started playing. Finding a guild that you like is hard, but keep trying. Personally, I've been happy with almost every single guild I was in during the time I spent in it.

When the game came out, I was invited by a friend into a guild of his friend. Naturally, we were all new. The guild leader didn't play much because it turned out that GW didn't support his graphics card and often crashed. The guild didn't last long... I think about two weeks. I only managed to complete the game with my first character at that time, ahead of everyone else in the guild.

So, I made my own, dragging a few people from our first guild and away from the inactive leader. We played PvE together and had fun for about another 2-3 weeks. I got into pugging UW quest groups and trying to get as far as possible and one night stumbled into a guild group that just happened to need a nuker. We spent over 4 hours down there, getting wiped at the chaos planes. The last of those 4 hours, they were trying to convince me to join their guild and I replied that I couldn't because I was a leader of one and had about a dozen friends in my guild. I took their offer to merge the guilds and I ended up in "Chaos Horde", a pretty big group of 50+ people, roughly half of whom were active. (I learned that UW and FoW quest groups is the best place to meet people )

We played a lot of GvG, but were never too organized. The highest we've been on ladder was ~200, most of the time floating around 500-700 ranger, which wasn't impressive at all back then, but we had fun and I slowly shifted from mostly PvE to mostly PvP. Then the guild started dying due to inactivity. We played less and less, dropped off the ladder (henchway ftl) and I abandoned ship and walked around without a guild for a couple days.

Then I learned that most of my old friends who were still active left as well. I decided to look for a good guild to join and meanwhile formed "The Simic Combine", just to have a chat channel with some friends while we together looked for a guild. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one and after a week or so lost interest in the game. This was in the beginning of last September, I guess.

After a 2-month break, at the end of October, a RL friend dragged me back into the game. I reformed The Simic Combine and found that some of my old friends were still playing, so I invited them back in, promising that I'll get the guild off the ground instead of looking for one to join this time. Guess where I went for recruiting? UW pugs. Yeah, you get about three people you'd like to invite per day. One of those happens to be unhappy with his guild and joins yours. You still find more quality players this way, than throwing out 50 invites per day in Drok's. We did get off the ground and kept together until February. For one ladder season, TSC was on the second page of the ladder by games played. We were never high-ranked, but we played a lot and had fun. Our record was something like 74-68. I tried to get the guild into competitive spirit and doing HoH. I said "Wouldn't it be awesome if you one day saw 'The Simic Combine has won a battle in the Hall of Heroes'?" People agreed, but didn't do much about it. And, as always, before the next season the guild broke apart due to internal squabbles. An officer of mine throught he could do better and formed his own guild. As far as I know, that died recently. Myself, I felt that the casual GvG was keeping me and about 3-4 other members down and we could do better.

So instead of trying to rebuild the guild, I joined another one. Because of the lack of GvGing, I started playing tombs in February and met a guy from nOp (back then WTF) who wanted to make his own guild. When nOp died, he started "Moonlit Haven" and I joined. We had about 20 members, most of whom were freelance tombs players. Yeah... a group like that doesn't cling together much. Lasted about 3 weeks. I mean, they weren't bad people, just being all in a guild together didn't work out for us. Everyone had priorities outside the guild and it was bloody impossible to drag 8 people out of their own pugs to form a team.

Currently, I'm in Legend of Pi. I met them in tombs a little more than a month ago and played with them pretty often. Moonlit Haven wasn't doing too well, so I hopped over to them. Can't really tell how long it would last, as guilds do have a tendency to break apart out of the blue, but for as long as we're playing as we are now, I'm sticking with Pi. Sadly, the hop from MH to Pi split me away from the last of my orginal GW buddies, but I suppose that's what friend lists are for.

I never got to see the message "The Simic Combine won the Hall of Heroes", but Legend of Pi has multiple times.


Well, that came out longer than I thought. As you (OP) can see, changing guilds seems to be the natural state in this game. So, best of luck looking for a new one!

I also recently had a falling out with my guild of 11 months, so I know the feeling. I honestly feel naked without my cape after so long.

But, I also think that this will give me a better chance in the long run. The way I look at it, there's no sence in letting something drag you down, even if it was something you enjoyed. There's a lot of guilds out there, you just have to find one that suits you. And, I know, easier said than done, but if you never try, you'll never succeed.

personally i dont 'look' for a guild nowadays. I now work on the theory if if they like my playing style in a PuG then i'll join. And thats lead to my current guild. They invite any members of PuG we start/join that a) are good team player and b) have a similar sence of humor.

Unfortunatly if your wanting to get into a guild this wont happen very oftern but it's one way of getting to know the guild beforehand.

No, with the exception of the first & last I was very carefull about the guilds I accepted.

Right now I'm just trying to find that mythical blend of mature playing & real sense of fun that I found in my third, & longest, guild...

I guess something will show up sooner or later, I just hope it's sooner. Factions is not going to be nearly as much fun for the guildless players...

Only suggestion I have for you, is don't accept random invites. Join guilds you have had personal expirence with, to see if they aren't a bunch of idiots or immature players. Like, on quests, for example.

In my opinion, that works best for decent guilds, but it takes time.

Go into UW. Best place to meet people. :P

Who would have thought a game like, "Guild Wars" would be better with a guild.

Most of the posts here give good suggestions..but really it all comes down to what you want. You've got to consider if you are aiming for a Pvp or PvE guild, (I think you'd want a little of both) and the activity of the guild. Those are things that are best to find out before joining any guild. my .02.

As for me, I joined my friend's guild upon getting the game, but we both left once I was on my feet and Joined what would be my second guild. It seemed good, with mostly older members, with 5-9 active people, especially on the weekends. The officers helped with anything PvE that was necessary, and Pvped on the weekends. Due to some dispute I left we left that guild a little later..

Back to the point..The activity of a guild is probably the most important thing. Right now, I'd be more satisfied with lots of active (that means everyday or close) "noobs" than our current lot...I'm the only person on at the moment, and when my friend gets on that will be two. :/ That, and without any emphasis on PvE at all, things are pretty meh.

It all depends on what you're looking for....
When I first started, I was in a guild that was really a multi-gaming clan. After awhile, they went back to other games and became inactive. At that point, I had beaten the game and was looking into getting into PvP since I'm a very competitive person. Best place I found to look was Team Arenas. After making some contacts, I convinced a friend to let me "tryout" for his guild. It was a friend from my first guild, myself, and 2 of the other guild's officers. We hopped on their vent and played TA for awhile (btw, we ran into the other guildmates in TA and "flawless'd" them ). We all seemed to hit it off and now I call the guild home. I am now very much involved in the expansion of the guild, and loving all of it. We don't always get along, but no guild out there is perfect. You just have to know what you're looking for in a guild and find people that are looking for those same things.

its really tough to find a good guild now a days unless you join through your friends. I recommend never join the ones spamming to give away officer positions or to pay you. I would say try to get tryouts to join a guild in TA if you like pvp, but guilds for pvp IMO or stuck up and all they care about winning and if you mess up you get kicked. I recently left a guild for being to pvp serious and couldnt stand when they would get mad at me for not playing 24/7 and not going to practices. Open your friends list up and see if they are willing to let you in. Dont trust guilds in ascalon or LA spamming to join...

I was also guild-less for the first 5 months of my GW experience. Well, if you don't count the guild my friend and I made to stop being bugged about joining someone's guild every 5 seconds . Anyway, my friend stopped playing mostly, so I soloed around for awhile, but got a bit bored/frustrated with getting into PUGs (with my warrior, there were too many back then). So actually stumbled upon a group of people on a site where I used to play freelancer (I feel you OP!), but they had mostly moved on from that, but had started a GW guild. I posted a bit on their forums (mind you I didn't really know any of them too well) and then got invited/decided to join their guild. It's been great ever since. Couldn't have found a nicer bunch of people.

ANYWAY, my point being is having a guild with website/forums really helped, bound us together much better, plus easier to keep in-touch out of game, and a real community feeling.

If I were you I would look around for a guild and check out their forums, talk to them there and see what they're like when they aren't in-game trying to get a PUG together.

OP, I totally understand where your coming from...

my 8 month history is much the same as yours ..

IMO the problems most common are the way people make guilds... more often than not someone buys a sigil and starts one up and promotes the first few people who join to officers...

this essentually means anyone regardless of aptitude can make a guild...I've ran into really poor leadership issues, elitism within a guild based on "join date" and who gives the leader and officers the best butt smoochings..

its rare to find a guild thats good together.. especially more difficult being 33, a professional and deaf..

my common complaints are;
1. ts/vent required for gvg
2. constant updates on what bowl your smokin now..
3. "gotta go mom is mad Im up past bedtime"
4. not knowing whats going on in guild because all conversation is on ts/vent...
5. listening to some child refer to other guildmates in a number of creative racial slurs, "cause thats IN"
6. buddy guilds aka people who have never and will never meet telling me about their wifes cheating/husband cheating/broke and cant pay the rent/ etc etc .. not to be rude but im not dr. phil... im not there to have you cry on my shoulder .... and just because im an adult doesnt mean I want to log onto a game and hear about YOUR adult issues..
7. patronization.. yes im deaf.. im okay with that.. the game is set up to cater to me as is.. use guild chat call targets etc etc.. im fine ... you dont need to spam "heal me" twenty times in a gvg, im deaf not blind...


to that end I made an ad... because I think eventually ill find a guild that works with me and allows me to be a productive member...

Deaf adult LF GUILD:

I love to gvg and pvp.. Ive gotten to gvg quite a bit through invites with people I know but with factions Id like to get a guild thats okay with having a deaf player..

im also big into making new charicters constantly and doing missions/ quests/ farming.. ( cant stand looking at the same charicter for too long) Im UAS on my account and spend too much time in random arena....

pm me in game if your interested in an adult, witty, professional 33 year old company owner who will never hear you cry on ts/vent
IGN:
uncle Samuel, holly ween


do I think ill find a guild? actually nope... most that id be interested in use ts/vent exclusively.. but if I didnt try id just be a whiner...

So, as you can see, I found a guild. Yay for me!!

Not sure how this will turn out, but I have high hopes, the GL is a nice guy & those guildies I have met so far seem friendly & helpful.

Thanks to everyone who replied to this thread, I really appreciate all of your kind advice.