Guild Hex

After writing my first WoW guide, “World of Warcraft- 10 tips to maximizing your game play,” I decided that one guide for a game of this size just wouldn’t be enough. While a few tips on how to play the game and understand your character is a valuable resource there are many more aspects of the game that you will be able to utilize. The feature of choice today is how to build your own guild and not let it go to waste.

A lot of people start guilds on a daily basis in WoW without ever really considering what it takes to start, and run a successful guild. I’m sure at some point in your play time; you’ve been assaulted by random people trying to get you to sign their guild charter, or seen in chat while sitting in a city, people offering gold for signatures. 9 out of 10 times these guilds won’t last very long. Running a guild, even a casual one, takes a level of commitment to the game and your members. Below is what you can consider starting points or a checklist if you want, of what to look for and do while starting your own guild.

1. Choosing a guild name- This will be the foundation of your guild. When first obtaining your charter you have to come up with a unique name for your guild. This may seem like an easy task, as you most likely have one in mind already, but really consider what you’ll be naming it. Remember, this is the name you and everyone in your guild will carry on your server and in the WoW community. Pick something that best suits your preference, whether it’s role play oriented, humorous, or even a clever use of gaming terms. Just remember to keep it appropriate, sexual references, vulgar, or offensive terms and names will be quickly removed by Blizzard GM’s.

2. Purchasing your guild bank- Assuming you have already gotten your signatures, the next step to forming your guild is the purchase of a guild bank. After you formed your guild you can head to any city bank and at the guild bank location select it and purchase your first tab and bank for 100 gold. I would advise purchasing one more tab in the case of having a new guild (though if you have the gold for it you can always purchase a third). After you have them, set their descriptions and what types of items they hold, maybe put some money in for repairs for other guild members or purchasing more items for the bank, and get your desired rank restrictions in place. A guild bank is a good way to get guild members to help contribute to the success of your guild as well as add another incentive for others to join.

3. Guild Website- A guild website is a reflection of who you are as a guild to the rest of the community and the world. Your website will be one of the many factors that will separate your guild from those that don’t make it. It also provides a place for people who might be interested in joining, to get a feel for who you are and what you represent in the game before they make any decision. To that extent, you’re more likely to get new recruits when needed and during the roster filling process, with a guild website rather than guilds that don’t utilize this option. While it may seem like a lot of work to start your own website, alot of sites on the internet already offer both free and paid guild hosting. Offering features like customizable templates, integrated DKP systems, and forums these sites are probably your best bet.

List of free and paid guild hosting services:
o guildomatic.com
o guildlaunch.com
o guilduniverse.com

4. Setting up a Vent server- One of the most common and sought out means of chat in both PvP and PvE, is the use of a voice chat hosting service provided by Ventrilo. It’s a third party program and doesn’t integrate itself into the World of Warcraft UI, but it’s easily setup and runs smoothly in the background. Now having vent is one thing, but if you’re gonna run a guild, you may want to consider actually purchasing on a monthly basis, a Ventrilo server from its website. They are fairly cheap to run, offer customizable channels, moderator privileges, password protection, and the server can be left running in the background without interfering with your other running programs. I highly, highly recommend getting a Ventrilo server for guild use, as not only does it provide a nice outlet for people to chat, knowing a guild has its own vent server can entice them to join.

5. What your guild focuses on- One of the mistakes people make in starting up a guild, is they fail to actively pursue one aspect of the game. While it is important to immerse yourself in all the features and aspects, your guild should represent, or focus primarily on one aspect of the game. There are 3 main areas of the game in which you can focus your guild on, PvP, PvE (raiding), and casual leveling. Though casual leveling is generally a guild for those who haven’t reached endgame, it’s potential lies in the dedicated members having spent so many gaming hours leveling with each other, and the option later on to become a guild focused on one of the more advanced areas of the game.

Choosing what you’ll be focusing on will ultimately determine who joins your guild and their chance of staying. Just make sure that whatever you choose, you have experience in. Guild members want a guild leader and officers who know what they are doing when it comes to their preferred aspect of WoW. You wouldn’t want to join a PvP guild with a leader who’s never officially stepped into the arena now would you?

6. Advertising your guild and getting new members- Now that you have an established website, a vent server open to your guild members, a guild bank (hopefully you have a few things and some gold in there by now), and have decided which area of the game you’ll be progressing in, you are now ready to push for new members. Hopefully you’ve already determined or have gotten your guild officers by now (you should always try to have trusted friends or players join to help you in running the guild), but may not have the amount of players, or the right classes to really get going in your guild progression.

Take the time to utilize things like trade chat, guild recruitment chat, pugs (pick up groups used in raiding, dungeons, and even pvp), and your battlegroup or server forums to find the classes and people you need to get your progression rolling. Clarify who you are, what your guild is about (raid or premade times, progression feats, etc), and what you are exactly looking for. Make sure to provide all resources of communication, guild website or forum recruitment page, in game characters to message, or even to clarify to leave a post describing who they are and what they are looking for in a guild right in your post comments.

Now that you’ve accomplished these goals all that is left is to dive into the game and run your guild! With features like scheduling on the in-game calendar, you can setup raid and premade times, or even meetings and fun events with your guild. Running a guild can be a very rewarding experience if done correctly, and will give you a group of trusted and reliable players. But as stated above, do not take this lightly, running a guild properly requires a high level of commitment to the game and to your members, and will push you to monitor requests, disputes, and the guild bank, along with any expense you may have for guild websites or Ventrilo servers. Regardless of things like that, remember to have fun and enjoy this experience.

Author: Dustin Casano (Zaiaku) 2009

Blog: http://www.whatthereviews.blogspot.com

At the very beginning of World of Warcraft, there were no guild banks. Quickly, Blizzard realized the need for such a tool, as the guilds were struggling storing their materials collected from various raid instances. As a result, these new banks were officially introduced to the game.

Guild bank is an in-game storage interface accessible for everyone who is a member of the guild. Additionally, some access rights can be given in order to make sure that only certain rank guild members can withdraw money and items from the bank. It is the guild master who has the option to set view/ deposit/withdraw rights for the different guild ranks and this makes the bank interface completely customize-able by the guild and not by Blizzard.

The guild banks were placed right next to the players’ banks areas in all major cities and are accessible the same way as the personal banks. The difference is that the guild bank tabs are much larger and it is much more expensive to buy additional tabs. A guild tab has 98 item slots and the first tab costs 100 gold to purchase. After that the prices for each successive tab increase – 250, 500, 1000, 2500 and 5000 gold, which makes a total of 9350 gold for all tabs.

One of the differences between player bank and guild bank is that the guild bank can store money and players can use the money from the guild bank to pay for their repairs. A special interface was also added at all repair vendors, allowing the players to use not their own but the guild money to pay for their repairs. Most of the guilds use this option only for repairs during raids – it is again the guild master who can turn this feature on and off as they see fit. In my guild, we use the guild money for repairs only on progress raid evenings – when we are working on defeating a new boss and we wipe numerous times while learning the fight. After we have managed to kill the boss, we no longer use the money from the guild for repairs; we pay with our own money. Some guilds also use their guild gold to buy materials to craft flask, food buffs and everything else needed for successful raid. I’m not sure if casual guilds use guild money for something like that, as most likely they do not run strong guild economy to produce this money in first place. For example, my guild was making money for the guild bank by selling patterns, cartables and other rare items obtainable only from the end game raid instances and this was helping us have money for repairs and flasks.

The access to the bank is fully controllable by the guild master – he or she can decide which ranks from the guild can view, deposit and withdraw items and money. This can be done for each separate tab and additionally a withdraw limit can be set. This all makes using guild bank easy and stress free for everyone, so we are very thankful to blizzard for introducing the guild banks in patch 2.3

I’ve been playing WoW for more than four years. You can tell whenever I’m offline because I’m writing articles instead to stay in the zone. Support my habit (and yours) at http://www.getfreewowtips.com.

As you begin playing World of Warcraft, it might come to your attention that there are people running around in game with a line of text underneath their name. What you are seeing is evidence that these people part of a World of Warcraft guild. A World of Warcraft guild is essentially a group of player characters who are affiliated with one another, who might share bank space and who have often come together for a specific purpose. Is joining a guild something that you might be interested in?

The first thing that you need to remember is that a World of Warcraft guild is not something that is run by Blizzard; it is run by other players and as such will vary based on how fairly they will treat their members and what they do. There are several advantages for being part of a guild. If you participate in raids and instances, you’ll be able to take on areas that you would not be able t handle alone, you will be able to get help getting up to the master level of your skills and you’ll be able to pick up trade skill ingredients through other guild members. You will also find that the social aspect of World of Warcraft can be extremely beneficial as well.

Finding a guild is relatively easy, but remember that there are lots of different kinds of guilds out there. Some guilds are completely geared towards the end game and taking on the dungeons and instances there. These guilds take their raiding very seriously and often have fairly stiff requirements for their members in terms of gear and experience. You will also find that there are guilds who are completely oriented towards role playing, where people will get into character and interact socially as the characters. Some guilds are a mix of both. Take your time and find the World of Warcraft guild that is going to be the best suited for your needs.

Especially when you are in the big cities, you’ll discover that there are people who are interested in having you sign their guild charter. A guild needs a certain amount of people to get started and in some cases, the people who are looking for their charter members will simply boot you from the guild when they have all the signatures that they need, though if they are going to do this, they will typically give you a tip for your trouble.

For many people, guilds are both the most enjoyable and frustrating aspect of the game. There is something incredibly fun about throwing in with a group of people and taking a challenging dungeon. For a lot of the endgame content, remember that it is not something that you can solo. Take some time and see how you might feel about joining a guild and make sure that when you do it, you choose wisely. Guild hopping will get pretty tiresome after a while, so see what your needs are going to be like.

Derek Smithson has written articles on World of Warcraft gold and the many World of Warcraft mods which are available, as well as a number of World of Warcraft guides.

With a subscriber base of over 9 million players, it can seem a little lonely if you join a server with nowhere to go. To help players out, a guild system was invented by Blizzard, which allows players to talk to each other and team up to do different quests. So let’s look at you’re two options: finding one, or starting one up of your own…

Finding a Guild:

If you are fairly new to the game (level 15 or lower), it’s pretty important you find a good guild to help you out. Each server typically has hundreds of them, and you need to know what to look for when you join one.

First off, look at the times the guild is online. You’ll want to join one that has most of its members on around the same times as you normally play. If you can’t play with your guild when you normally play the game, then it’s not worth staying with them.

Secondly, the members of the guild you join should be around the same level as you are. Try to pick ones with members who share your chosen professions, so you can participate in quests with the guild. It ultimately comes down to what you want to do. If you want to join a guild to do quests with them, then pick a guild whose members are similar to your character. If you just want to chat with other players, it won’t matter so much.

Starting a Guild:

If you can’t find something you like, the other option is to become a guild master and create your own guild. This is not easy, however, and many players end up regretting become a guild master after a while.

When you start a guild you’ll need to go out of your way to try and find members. The problem is that most players aren’t interested in new start-ups, and would naturally rather join large, active guilds with many members to talk to. If you have some friends who play the game, then get them to join. This will at least kick start it in the right direction.

Another thing you have to do is set up a leadership chain. Many guilds don’t last longer than a few days because starting up a leadership chain takes work. You need to set up different styles of command, and position your friends to take different roles.

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Dave Latimer runs WoW Tips For Gold. He is the author of this article and has played World of Warcraft since it was first released in November 2004, and has made thousands of gold in WoW. Visit his website now for some of the best free information on gold mining you’ll ever find.