I do join guilds but I tend to lvl my character to a pretty high level before doing so. Id like to be aquainted with the game and the class I am playing before I look for a guild. When joing a guild I always feel like a sort of outsider in the begining but If I am knowledgable or can play my class well and can be usefull to others I have an easier time becoming a part of the guild.
I do join guilds but often social guilds It's what has been holding me back from doing end tier raiding in WoW for instance. Simply because a guild is for me a social aspect of the game and , well , social guilds are often more social oriented .
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Well firstly, there was always a reason why I was MT in a guild I ran. Secondly I have played games with 6 of my RL friends all in the same guild and none of us ever caused a guild trouble *shrug*, and finally there is always more people in a game to replace others with. It might take time and it might cause you to have to rebuild on your progress. Yes a lot of people do burn out when running guilds. I will probably find that once I do finish up college and have to have a real job my online gaming in the MMO world will probably stop completely because in law enforcement I wont be able to have the nice 9-5 schedule of sorts.
I completely understand where you are coming from. I have seen everything you have said but I have personally made it through all of it and still managed to keep a great guild running until I decided I didnt want to play anymore.
Guilds are still great things and interaction with others on a regular basis is something a lot of people look for when playing an MMO. Hence the Massively Multiplayer part, and guilds give us more of a set group that we can play with then just meeting your average pug and then maybe after that one time playing with them never seeing them again.
Each person will take it their own way and I dont have any problem with that.
I do like joining good guilds but they are pretty hard to find. At least for me. I like the environment of small "family" guilds but of course need one thats big enough to take on raids. Also I think that whole application process is a bit silly. :P
Also I look for mature 18+ aged guilds but a lot of those tend to be way too casual. Not to mention how their "recruitment ad" sounds anything but mature. I read things like "If you say things like ROFL, pwn, etc ... this guild is not for you" ... Are you kidding? I mean I rarely ever say that, if at all, but still ... way to sound like a total douche.
I've been a guild leader a couple of times in WoW and seemed to have a knack for attracting like-minded people and keeping the guild running in a friendly, sociable, helpful way with no drama. It takes up a lot of time though, and when I hit a bad patch in real life and didn't have the energy or focus to run the guild, and tried handing it over to officers to run, it fell apart I felt quite bewildered, really, because I thought we had a community thing going where the group would survive and the leader (me) was playing a very small part in holding it all together. I felt disappointed, let-down and I suppose a little bit validated for having been a good leader, but not a good way to find out.
The two guilds I led, I really enjoyed. The atmosphere was chatty and helpful and people were not offensive in any way (or they got kicked). My goal was simply spending my time in an mmo with like-minded people and it felt great while it lasted. Since those two guilds, and previous to them, I wander round lonely as a cloud ... searching for a community which might feel like home.
Reading all the posts here has been really heartening for me because it seems my experience is actually very common. The games have changed, the goals and behaviour of a lot of the players seem to have changed, and the communities definitely seem changed (for the worse). Most players can't even be bothered to be civil, never mind friendly or helpful, and a lot of them seem very self-serving, ie they use other players to achieve a goal, but can't be bothered to even reply to "hi" in party chat.
What seems to happen for me in games now is that I will find one or two people I can chat with, and that's about it. I often harbour vague notions of getting these separate friends together, and starting a guild, but then I remember what's involved. So these days, I drift from game to game, and hope to eventually find a guild (and a game for that matter) I can feel at home in, but I'm not holding my breath.
But lately I haven't enjoyed guilds as much. I'm not seeing the same esprit de corps and quality of friendships as before. Now I am much more likely to be unguilded, or if I am guilded it is more for the raiding and little else because I don't identify with the members as well as I used to.
What about you? Do you belong to a guild, and if so, do you enjoy it? How important to your game experience is your guild?
Same for me. My first MMO was SWG and the guild experience there was unbelievable. I have maintained friendships with my guildies for years now. But, it seems like guilds in WoW and other MMO's now are full of elitists and immature jerks. If someone messed up in a group in SWG, we laughed about it. Try messing up in a WoW group and you are browbeat and ostracized for it. The last guild I was in I quit because I got tired of the GM hazing one of the poorly geared casual guildies. I usually always run solo in an MMO now because of horrible guilds.
I used to love being in guilds. I liked getting to know the people and playing with them. I even formed some guilds of my own, one of which became popular.
But lately I haven't enjoyed guilds as much. I'm not seeing the same esprit de corps and quality of friendships as before. Now I am much more likely to be unguilded, or if I am guilded it is more for the raiding and little else because I don't identify with the members as well as I used to.
What about you? Do you belong to a guild, and if so, do you enjoy it? How important to your game experience is your guild?
If I join a new MMO I usually sit back for a month or two first to see if I'm going to be in the game for any length of time. If I like the game I then begin to look around for a potential guild. Unless I actually know someone playing the game finding a guild is a bit like a crap shoot. Basically you won't know how you'll like the people until you start grouping/raiding with them.
I've always enjoyed being in guilds with good people working through the content. I've made many friendships which have lasted years. On the downside I've also quit games due to drama or some nefarious deed done to split up the guild and in some cases friendships. So you kind of take the good with the bad, I suppose.
I think guilds now adays are facing a bigger struggle due to the amount of solo content in games versus group content. Back in the EQ days you needed a guild, needed to make friends in order to progress through the game. Now you really don't need to do any of that to get a full feel of the game. I think that's the part of guilds that I miss the most and I think that's why the guild has taken a back seat for many people.
If you don't join a guild you are missing out on half of the fun in a MMO. MMO's, even if you group a lot and do roleplaying, can be a solitary affair without a guild.
I used to love being in guilds. I liked getting to know the people and playing with them. I even formed some guilds of my own, one of which became popular.
But lately I haven't enjoyed guilds as much. I'm not seeing the same esprit de corps and quality of friendships as before. Now I am much more likely to be unguilded, or if I am guilded it is more for the raiding and little else because I don't identify with the members as well as I used to.
What about you? Do you belong to a guild, and if so, do you enjoy it? How important to your game experience is your guild?
I think guilds now adays are facing a bigger struggle due to the amount of solo content in games versus group content. Back in the EQ days you needed a guild, needed to make friends in order to progress through the game. Now you really don't need to do any of that to get a full feel of the game. I think that's the part of guilds that I miss the most and I think that's why the guild has taken a back seat for many people.
Well, people want different things from a guild, of course. I wouldn't want to join a guild simply because I needed to in order to progress through a game, in fact I wouldn't play a game where I had to group in order to progress. I like to group when I'm in the mood, and I enjoy solo, too. I join guilds for the social aspect of gaming; for chatting, doing fun things together, perhaps a little roleplay, that sort of thing. It's also great to run instances with guildmates, but, again, for me that is more for the social aspect of doing the instance together.
I think guilds now adays are facing a bigger struggle due to the amount of solo content in games versus group content. Back in the EQ days you needed a guild, needed to make friends in order to progress through the game. Now you really don't need to do any of that to get a full feel of the game. I think that's the part of guilds that I miss the most and I think that's why the guild has taken a back seat for many people.
Solo content in MMO's isn't the problem. While MMO's have adapted to changes in the genre, and yes more solo content was added over the past few years, it isn't why people stopped wanting to guild. There are many posts in this thread alone that lists why people dislike guilding anymore. In my opinion, it's people that have changed more than anything.
Many of us started gaming in our teens, or early 20's. Now we're heading into 30's or past 30's, and many of us don't find it attractive to deal with drama anymore. We get enough of that in another game we all play....RL. Honestly there are just things you can't avoid when you get a bunch of people together, like a group of RL friends you always got a troublemaker of some sort in the mix, or someone that complains that drags everybody else's moods down. I know my group of friends we've always had someone like that, and we would be forced to play a different game because 1 person doesn't like this or that. Our times are more valuable these days, many simply don't want their time wasted by some stranger on the internet anymore.
You are free to try force grouping in a game, but I can guarantee your game would not be well received these days. Not even old timers or old school players want forced grouping anymore. Forced grouping will not make people want to group, it will make people leave the game and find other games where they can play without being forced to group or guild. It's people that have changed over the years, and the developers simply followed what people wanted. Even in EQ1, people were starting to get tired of the raid or die attitude in PoP expansion when tons of content were locked behind flags, keys, and raid progression. This was a long time ago.
In general I try the game and meet the people in-game. I don't use forums for guild matchup. For me it's still a game and I don't see the point to submit a resume to participate in some guild activity. If there is no decent pugging possible then it's an additional game killer.
Some of my most boring gaming experiences were with guild only groups that just farmed quests and raids for some equipment. If it doesn't "click" for me while grouping with the guild, then I'm not going to waste more time. The saying that "everything is bearable with a good company" might be true, but I'd still play something else instead of repeating the same old content for a 1'000th time. Especially if I get the feeling that the guild or its guild members care more for some virtual items rather than an individual.
In general I try the game and meet the people in-game. I don't use forums for guild matchup. For me it's still a game and I don't see the point to submit a resume to participate in some guild activity.
OMG I dont want to join a guild if i have to send application! I think it is better if I meet some people inisde the game and they are nice and fun and they invite me to join a guild with them.
I do usually end up joining a guild. I read the recruiting tells in chat and if a guild sounds like one I could cope with, I'll join and give it a try. I like guilds that generally stick to game topics and are helpful, as in telling you where to find something you are looking for. Not helpful in the "run me through every dungeon until I'm capped," helpful style.
I'll leave if it doesn't suit me, but I generally do end up finding guilds that I enjoy being part of.
Playing | GW2 Wanting | Pantheon Watching | Crowfall Retired | WAR, Cabal, MO, CO, SHK, WoW, FFXIV: ARR
Well, people want different things from a guild, of course. I wouldn't want to join a guild simply because I needed to in order to progress through a game, in fact I wouldn't play a game where I had to group in order to progress. I like to group when I'm in the mood, and I enjoy solo, too. I join guilds for the social aspect of gaming; for chatting, doing fun things together, perhaps a little roleplay, that sort of thing. It's also great to run instances with guildmates, but, again, for me that is more for the social aspect of doing the instance together.
Agreed. Way back in the day, when I was playing Anarchy Online, I was part of one of the largest guilds in the game. However, because the person running it had a lot of RL problems, he was hardly ever around and when he was, he wasn't doing much to help the guild so it basically devolved into a purely social guild that never did anything else. That was fine with me, I didn't want to raid so it didn't matter, but the rest of us "second in command" people started noticing that more and more people were leaving the guild because they wanted to do things and the guild just... didn't.
So we started talking amongst ourselves about how to improve the guild and eventually decided that the only real way to do it was for the leadership to be more active and more diverse. It couldn't be just one guy doing it all, it had to be a team. However, the leader didn't like that, he was on an ego trip and wanted everyone to look up to him as a godhead. He tried to do a few things, most of them self-contradictory, then gave up again and the guild started hemorraghing more people. Eventually, I said the hell with it, told him what I thought of him and his policies, quit the guild and the game at about the same time.
I got really tired of spending 99% of my "guild time" playing parent to the immature twits who spammed the guild channel. I got to be known as a hardass because I didn't let people get into fights, try to sell gold to other guild members, etc. Unfortunately, that's what most guilds are really all about now, just a bunch of immature twits whining at each other and tossing out drama.
No thanks. I'd rather not be a part of a guild than put up with that anymore. There are plenty of upsides to being a part of a guild, but there are massive downsides too.
I have played in a guild where the minimum age was 24, that cut a lot of that nonsense out. It also meant that the reason people where playing was rather different, which in turn helped with those issues and broadened what a guild is meant to be.
But you cannot totally escape drama, anything online breeds it, it was very rare though, and that is a major advantage.
Comments
I do join guilds but I tend to lvl my character to a pretty high level before doing so. Id like to be aquainted with the game and the class I am playing before I look for a guild. When joing a guild I always feel like a sort of outsider in the begining but If I am knowledgable or can play my class well and can be usefull to others I have an easier time becoming a part of the guild.
I do join guilds but often social guilds It's what has been holding me back from doing end tier raiding in WoW for instance. Simply because a guild is for me a social aspect of the game and , well , social guilds are often more social oriented .
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Well firstly, there was always a reason why I was MT in a guild I ran. Secondly I have played games with 6 of my RL friends all in the same guild and none of us ever caused a guild trouble *shrug*, and finally there is always more people in a game to replace others with. It might take time and it might cause you to have to rebuild on your progress. Yes a lot of people do burn out when running guilds. I will probably find that once I do finish up college and have to have a real job my online gaming in the MMO world will probably stop completely because in law enforcement I wont be able to have the nice 9-5 schedule of sorts.
I completely understand where you are coming from. I have seen everything you have said but I have personally made it through all of it and still managed to keep a great guild running until I decided I didnt want to play anymore.
Guilds are still great things and interaction with others on a regular basis is something a lot of people look for when playing an MMO. Hence the Massively Multiplayer part, and guilds give us more of a set group that we can play with then just meeting your average pug and then maybe after that one time playing with them never seeing them again.
Each person will take it their own way and I dont have any problem with that.
I was in guild in every MMO I played, was officer and sometimes guildleader too.
Atm leading guild in FE, pure Estonian guild, small but enough for this game's content.
Have been in both - hardcore raiding and familiar type guilds - tho prefer later nowadays.
That time is gone for me to be ready to raid 5-6 days per week as req-ed.
I do like joining good guilds but they are pretty hard to find. At least for me. I like the environment of small "family" guilds but of course need one thats big enough to take on raids. Also I think that whole application process is a bit silly. :P
Also I look for mature 18+ aged guilds but a lot of those tend to be way too casual. Not to mention how their "recruitment ad" sounds anything but mature. I read things like "If you say things like ROFL, pwn, etc ... this guild is not for you" ... Are you kidding? I mean I rarely ever say that, if at all, but still ... way to sound like a total douche.
Another great topic, Amathe ^^
I've been a guild leader a couple of times in WoW and seemed to have a knack for attracting like-minded people and keeping the guild running in a friendly, sociable, helpful way with no drama. It takes up a lot of time though, and when I hit a bad patch in real life and didn't have the energy or focus to run the guild, and tried handing it over to officers to run, it fell apart I felt quite bewildered, really, because I thought we had a community thing going where the group would survive and the leader (me) was playing a very small part in holding it all together. I felt disappointed, let-down and I suppose a little bit validated for having been a good leader, but not a good way to find out.
The two guilds I led, I really enjoyed. The atmosphere was chatty and helpful and people were not offensive in any way (or they got kicked). My goal was simply spending my time in an mmo with like-minded people and it felt great while it lasted. Since those two guilds, and previous to them, I wander round lonely as a cloud ... searching for a community which might feel like home.
Reading all the posts here has been really heartening for me because it seems my experience is actually very common. The games have changed, the goals and behaviour of a lot of the players seem to have changed, and the communities definitely seem changed (for the worse). Most players can't even be bothered to be civil, never mind friendly or helpful, and a lot of them seem very self-serving, ie they use other players to achieve a goal, but can't be bothered to even reply to "hi" in party chat.
What seems to happen for me in games now is that I will find one or two people I can chat with, and that's about it. I often harbour vague notions of getting these separate friends together, and starting a guild, but then I remember what's involved. So these days, I drift from game to game, and hope to eventually find a guild (and a game for that matter) I can feel at home in, but I'm not holding my breath.
Same for me. My first MMO was SWG and the guild experience there was unbelievable. I have maintained friendships with my guildies for years now. But, it seems like guilds in WoW and other MMO's now are full of elitists and immature jerks. If someone messed up in a group in SWG, we laughed about it. Try messing up in a WoW group and you are browbeat and ostracized for it. The last guild I was in I quit because I got tired of the GM hazing one of the poorly geared casual guildies. I usually always run solo in an MMO now because of horrible guilds.
If I join a new MMO I usually sit back for a month or two first to see if I'm going to be in the game for any length of time. If I like the game I then begin to look around for a potential guild. Unless I actually know someone playing the game finding a guild is a bit like a crap shoot. Basically you won't know how you'll like the people until you start grouping/raiding with them.
I've always enjoyed being in guilds with good people working through the content. I've made many friendships which have lasted years. On the downside I've also quit games due to drama or some nefarious deed done to split up the guild and in some cases friendships. So you kind of take the good with the bad, I suppose.
I think guilds now adays are facing a bigger struggle due to the amount of solo content in games versus group content. Back in the EQ days you needed a guild, needed to make friends in order to progress through the game. Now you really don't need to do any of that to get a full feel of the game. I think that's the part of guilds that I miss the most and I think that's why the guild has taken a back seat for many people.
If you don't join a guild you are missing out on half of the fun in a MMO. MMO's, even if you group a lot and do roleplaying, can be a solitary affair without a guild.
Well, people want different things from a guild, of course. I wouldn't want to join a guild simply because I needed to in order to progress through a game, in fact I wouldn't play a game where I had to group in order to progress. I like to group when I'm in the mood, and I enjoy solo, too. I join guilds for the social aspect of gaming; for chatting, doing fun things together, perhaps a little roleplay, that sort of thing. It's also great to run instances with guildmates, but, again, for me that is more for the social aspect of doing the instance together.
Yes, I usually join a guild because I'm an incredibly social person.
Lately however, I've had a hard time finding one that I enjoy.
Solo content in MMO's isn't the problem. While MMO's have adapted to changes in the genre, and yes more solo content was added over the past few years, it isn't why people stopped wanting to guild. There are many posts in this thread alone that lists why people dislike guilding anymore. In my opinion, it's people that have changed more than anything.
Many of us started gaming in our teens, or early 20's. Now we're heading into 30's or past 30's, and many of us don't find it attractive to deal with drama anymore. We get enough of that in another game we all play....RL. Honestly there are just things you can't avoid when you get a bunch of people together, like a group of RL friends you always got a troublemaker of some sort in the mix, or someone that complains that drags everybody else's moods down. I know my group of friends we've always had someone like that, and we would be forced to play a different game because 1 person doesn't like this or that. Our times are more valuable these days, many simply don't want their time wasted by some stranger on the internet anymore.
You are free to try force grouping in a game, but I can guarantee your game would not be well received these days. Not even old timers or old school players want forced grouping anymore. Forced grouping will not make people want to group, it will make people leave the game and find other games where they can play without being forced to group or guild. It's people that have changed over the years, and the developers simply followed what people wanted. Even in EQ1, people were starting to get tired of the raid or die attitude in PoP expansion when tons of content were locked behind flags, keys, and raid progression. This was a long time ago.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Agreed ^^
The social aspect is half of the MMO experience, so yes.
In general I try the game and meet the people in-game. I don't use forums for guild matchup. For me it's still a game and I don't see the point to submit a resume to participate in some guild activity. If there is no decent pugging possible then it's an additional game killer.
Some of my most boring gaming experiences were with guild only groups that just farmed quests and raids for some equipment. If it doesn't "click" for me while grouping with the guild, then I'm not going to waste more time. The saying that "everything is bearable with a good company" might be true, but I'd still play something else instead of repeating the same old content for a 1'000th time. Especially if I get the feeling that the guild or its guild members care more for some virtual items rather than an individual.
OMG I dont want to join a guild if i have to send application! I think it is better if I meet some people inisde the game and they are nice and fun and they invite me to join a guild with them.
Typically I will play the game to max level and then review the top guilds in the game.
The Stranger: It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid.
I do usually end up joining a guild. I read the recruiting tells in chat and if a guild sounds like one I could cope with, I'll join and give it a try. I like guilds that generally stick to game topics and are helpful, as in telling you where to find something you are looking for. Not helpful in the "run me through every dungeon until I'm capped," helpful style.
I'll leave if it doesn't suit me, but I generally do end up finding guilds that I enjoy being part of.
Playing | GW2
Wanting | Pantheon
Watching | Crowfall
Retired | WAR, Cabal, MO, CO, SHK, WoW, FFXIV: ARR
Agreed. Way back in the day, when I was playing Anarchy Online, I was part of one of the largest guilds in the game. However, because the person running it had a lot of RL problems, he was hardly ever around and when he was, he wasn't doing much to help the guild so it basically devolved into a purely social guild that never did anything else. That was fine with me, I didn't want to raid so it didn't matter, but the rest of us "second in command" people started noticing that more and more people were leaving the guild because they wanted to do things and the guild just... didn't.
So we started talking amongst ourselves about how to improve the guild and eventually decided that the only real way to do it was for the leadership to be more active and more diverse. It couldn't be just one guy doing it all, it had to be a team. However, the leader didn't like that, he was on an ego trip and wanted everyone to look up to him as a godhead. He tried to do a few things, most of them self-contradictory, then gave up again and the guild started hemorraghing more people. Eventually, I said the hell with it, told him what I thought of him and his policies, quit the guild and the game at about the same time.
I got really tired of spending 99% of my "guild time" playing parent to the immature twits who spammed the guild channel. I got to be known as a hardass because I didn't let people get into fights, try to sell gold to other guild members, etc. Unfortunately, that's what most guilds are really all about now, just a bunch of immature twits whining at each other and tossing out drama.
No thanks. I'd rather not be a part of a guild than put up with that anymore. There are plenty of upsides to being a part of a guild, but there are massive downsides too.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I have played in a guild where the minimum age was 24, that cut a lot of that nonsense out. It also meant that the reason people where playing was rather different, which in turn helped with those issues and broadened what a guild is meant to be.
But you cannot totally escape drama, anything online breeds it, it was very rare though, and that is a major advantage.