What is considered to be a Guild?

No, this is not a questions, but a food-for-thought-at-3:30pm-still-90-mins-before-I-can-go-home-and-play-time-killer-post.

So, what is a guild. Isn't it suppose to be an alliance formed by a number of like minded players, or at least same play style players?

Or is it just a random collection of players who have never met/grouped/talked before?

Why do so many guilds spam "guild recuiting. we have guild hall and cape! everyone welcome!" at ascalon, inviting every player who happans to be responding to that spam?

Those guilds know nothing about those players they've just invited. Those players know nothing about the guilds they've just sworn to be loyal to (at least that what I think clicking that "accpet" button mean at guild invite screen).

What do those kind of guilds/guildleaders get from this randomly invited group of players? Just to see more spams in their guild channels? More people to chat with in TS/Vent? So they can claim they have lots of active players when they spam to recuite more random unknown #player_237?

Better question, why do people always write:

"Super elite gamer! Looking for a Guild above rank X with TS/Vent! Don't PM if membership below Y people!"

People always want things the easy way. Rarely do people join a growing guild to contribute to it. Most just want everything to work out on its own. Most want to join a guild already on the top of the ladder, already with a working GvG team and sufficient active members.

What? You don't have a guild hall and a rank? I'm not joining you!

=/

My theory is that these players are newbs, and did not know what they themselves wanted in a guild. They wanted into a guild so badly, they believed their recruiter that they could become an officer if they recruited x amount of players. OR they are being paid to recruit. Not sure.

Pfft. Xonic, you are an idealist.

Only 55 mins more to go for me...

I thought I've seen everything, but just now, somebody is selling a guild in lion's arch.

yes, let me copy it: "Selling Active guild, has 60+ active members, Guildhall, and a nice rank and rating, pm me serious offers"

I think I've started to understand why some guilds are so actively working on recuiting as many random unknown players as they can...

First, my guild has 4 people in it. FOUR. Loyal and fun. THREE until last night.

Although I have been guilty of open channel recruitment, I honestly now only do it if I party up with someone and they fit well, and seem to mesh with us and we get along.

Like last evening, some guy was desperately seeking help on Althea's Ghost in piken. He was not yelling. He was not repeating more than once per 2 minutes or so, and he was being respectful and courteous.

I took him up on it, and we did it duo-style, no robot henchmen of retardation. We made it fine in one swoop down, and he was level 9 and I was lvl 8. While we were out, I realized he had no guild association on his character name, so I asked if he wanted in ours. He jumped at the chance, and I added him.

After the mission was over, he left the guild. Rather than assume he was spying on our strengths and weaknesses or something like that (common it seems), I simply whispered him "changed your mind eh? Well thanks for joining us, and good luck in the future If you ever need quest help or anything, ask."

I then proceeded to meet him at storage and hand him some stuff to help him, as he is a 16 year old and has never been so into a game like this before. He responded with a request to rejoin, and that he would stay put. We have been playing together since then, and we leveled up 2 times already from mutual gains.

I got lucky, he could have been a pain in the ass.. But then again, I played a bit with him before extending a black talon of brotherhood to him. It payed off.

Moral? Be nice always, because you just never know

*EDIT*

So in essence, a guild is people you help and are helped by. Flags and capes be damned, it comes down to solidarity and whatnot...

In the game? A guild is a group of players banded together under an official "guild". You can go to the Guild Registrar to make a guild. Guild Capes cost a minimal amount of 2 platinum, and a guild hall will cost you a celestial sigil (win from hall of heroes, or buy from someone who has). Once you have both capes, members, and a guild hall (by far the most expensive part, but not as elusive as members), then you can participate in Guild vs Guild battles by going to your guild hall and creating a party, and entering a mission. GvG battles go on the official ladder.

In reality? A guild is a group of crafters and their apprentices that regulate the trade. A little like a modern day union. You have to be skilled to join a guild, and all that stuff. I'm not sure of the specifics.

The only thing I can say is a guild is only as good as it's members and it's value system.

I agree with SOT

You can be the best GvG Guild there is but with out good friends its all forfeit

I am using Resurrection on Old Thread!

Caste "Heal Forum Area" spell

I know it's in vogue to say that shouters are evil and the resultant guild will suck but many of the top guilds started that way.

There's a saying that quantity has a quality of it's own and I think in many cases it's true.

If you throw 100 people completely randomly together I feel that 50 of them will want to be friends. I know it's happened because I have Real life friends that have found guilds this exact way. The trouble makers and scammers soon show themselves to be such and then you're left with a large core that will stick together and then it's easy to be selective. It takes strong and decisive leadership but it's possible to get a good guild this way.

There's many people that say small is better and it might be for you but I've been in a guild of 3 and I was the guy that played the most. It's pretty dang lonely when you're on for hours and don't have anyone in the guild to talk to. I never wanted help, just company.

Luckily I found a medium to small guild that has great and active members but before then the game was getting mighty frustrating.

It's hard to be a guild who really wants to PvP or something similar, but only has 8 or so active memebers, most not on at the same time and there is no decent "guild build" for battles. So ... you have to recruit some way. My guild has been recruiting usually through people we party with, but it's slow going. I agree I dislike the shouting, but at times random people become good friends (ie. me with my guild mates). The way we get around the possibility of random people who don't contribute to the guild is simply by informing new recruits of the guild rules and delete those who don't comply. It's working well, but it's still slow.

Well since my first post in here, we have apparently jimped to 16-17 people!

I spent the past 2 days playing WOW and enjoyed it, but it is NOT GW, so I'll have to play catchup now.

Our guild is our bond. Simple.

What are some of your more strict guild rules? At first we would kick anyone that wasn't online in the past 2 weeks, and demote an officer that wasn't on for a week.

sounds like the US Military

the problem on both sides of the fence is exactly what varyag said.
players with higher lvl chars don't want to work in an up and coming guild so the guilds have to recrute from those who don't have a high lvl char and the easiest way to find them is to spam the local chat... you may get lots of aspireing members but i presume that maybe only 1 in 5 will be suitable so to get the guild going people need to target new players in mass.

my guild only has 5 members (all family) so we are not big enough to be competetive but i think that if we recrute new members they may be put off by our knowledge of eachother and feel left out.

i plan on trying to recrute some higher lvls later ( i have got a few from the party method... they stay for as long as they think is polite then leave)