Guild Hex

Every World of Warcraft player knows that raiding at higher levels is almost impossible without being in a guild. Not that you will not be able to group up with some random people, but such pick up groups (known as PuGs) can easily end as a complete disaster. Solo playing in the end-game content is not an option either, this is why most people choose to join a guild and play with people they know and talk to often. Here is how you can find a suitable guild to match your interests and goals.

Assuming you already know your own goals (PvP, casual raiding, hard core raiding, friendly leveling etc) you should look for a guild that shares the same focus. One excellent place to find information about various guilds and their recruitment status are the realm forums. Almost every realm has a sticky post about guilds, guilds progression and recruitment. Take your time and check which guilds are currently in need of players if your goal is raiding guild. For PvP and casual raiding, you can either check the advertisements in the Guild Recruitment Channel or have a word with your friends (you probably have made some friends already) about their guilds and see if they have space for you as well.

From my personal experience, the most advanced guilds on a given realm are usually full and are rarely looking for more players to join their ranks. Even if they do look for one or two more players, their requirements are very high and you might not have a chance to join such a guild just yet. Gearing up is not as slow process as it used to be, however you still need a pretty decent kit to be able to stand a chance in joining such guild. This does not mean that you should give up – instead, see if you can make friends with some people from such a guild – join them for some heroics, see if you can get into one of their pug 10 man raids (most of the times on their alts) and try to make a good impression. Sometimes, advanced guilds do recruit players with poor gear if the player in question has proven to be a nice person and a skilled player. Do not overdo it though – just be yourself and do not act like someone you are not only because you are trying to make them like you. Fake is never good, so just stick to who you are – after all, people should like you for the person you are, and not for the person you are pretending to be.

The most important thing for me is to never give up. At the start, you might have to become a member of a smaller guild and slowly start gaining popularity and make new friends. There is nothing wrong with this. You will get a chance to join more active guilds as you become better geared and a more skilled player, and eventually you can even join the number one guild on your realm. No one said the path is easy or quick though, but it is definitely possible – you should just work towards your goals and eventually you will get there.

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.

World of Warcraft is a multiplayer game and as such gathering groups of people is something completely normal and part of the game. In World of Warcraft such groups are called Guilds. These provide many benefits – banks, chat where you can communicate with other fellow members and come World of Warcraft: Cataclysm – the guild advancement system and other bonuses. All this makes being a member worth it. Many players choose to create a guild themselves and here is how you can do it if this sounds to you like a good idea.

First of all, you need 10 people to form a guild. If you have made some friends already, ask them if they would like to help you start a new guild so you can keep in touch easier and have more fun.

There are a few things you have to decide before moving on such as a name. Think about some nice names, as very often players who are playing just for fun join guilds simply because of the cool name. If having fun is the only goal you have, go and think of a name that’s cool/funny/entertaining. If you are planning to build step-by-step a more serious raiding guild that will eventually focus solely on the end-game content, maybe something more serious will fit well as a name for the guild. If you have some friends who are interested in starting a new guild together with you, maybe they also have some good ideas about guild names so hear them out.

Next step once you have decided on a name is to buy a Charter. It costs only 10 silver and you can buy it from the Visitor’s Center from the Guild Master NPC standing there. Once you have the Guild Charter, it is time to find 9 more players to sign up for the new guild. If you have enough friends to form the guild at once you can just do that, if not – try asking some random players who are not in a guild already to signup for your Guild Charter. Normally people would help you for a small tip of 5-10 gold coins, after which they can either stay in your guild or leave it once the guild is formed.

Once you have all 10 signatures, you can go back to the Guild Master and register your guild. Make sure your Guild Charter is in your Backpack, as having it in any other bag may cause some problems when the Guild Master tries to recognize it. Once the guild is registered, it is all official – you are a proud Guild Master to your newly formed guild and it is time for you to start working on getting more people into the guild and work on your goals!

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.

A Guild in World of Warcraft is a tightly knit community of similar minded people. The guild goals can vary – from casual raiding and leveling together to hard-core end game raiding. There are also guilds focusing mostly on the PvP aspect of the game, while other guilds have PvE as their number one priority. It is a good idea to decide upfront what you are planning to do and what you expect to achieve in the game, how many hours per week you will be willing to spend and the like before you look for a guild or decide to create one on your own together with some friends.

I will give you some tips about what you should do if you have decided to start your own guild and how to tackle the guild recruitment process in order to get people who will share similar goals and interests with you and will build a good team.

Choose a goal: decide what the focus of your guild will be. Will you spend many hours each evening trying to beat the hardest bosses in the game or would you rather go more casual style and clear some instances whenever people are up for it? Will you focus on PvE or PvP content? Having an answer ready to these questions is important; as players have different interests when it comes to World of Warcraft and a guild composed by players who have totally different interests will not work too well in the long run.

Decide on Recruitment Requirements: it is important to know what players you are looking for to join your guild. If you are looking for fast progression, it is probably best to recruit players who are soon to reach the level cap or are already there. If you are looking for fun and friendly leveling atmosphere, the level of the players might be of less importance. Also, get real – you will not be able to recruit players who have superior gear to everyone else in the guild and expect to get carried through the content. The key is the right requirements and the right attitude – no one should expect others to carry him through the content, as this almost never happens in World of Warcraft. If you are creating a guild with focus on PvE raiding, make sure people are clear on your expectations upfront – how many hours a day they will have to be available for raids, how many days a week the raids will happen, what classes are you looking for and so on. Be as exact and precise on your requirements as possible – this will save a lot of disappointment and frustration for both you and your guildies in the long run.

Focus on your guild members: after all, World of Warcraft is a multiplayer online game, meaning that not everyone will always be able to come online – people have work, school, get sick, go on vacation or just need time off the game. As a guild master, you must be able to understand all that and focus on your guild members and make them as happy as possible with the online gaming experience when they are able to come online and spend some time playing with you and the other guild members.

No one says that running a successful World of Warcraft guild is easy, but depending on your goals, it may prove just doable – all you need to do is set your goals straight and look for similar minded people to share the experience with.

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.

Any well organized end-game raiding guild focused on PvE progression needs to have a method for distributing the loot. The reason such system is needed is because often the players wish to put a lot of effort, money and time into raiding only if they know that they have an equally fair chance of obtaining the items they want from the loot. It is only fair that the people who work hardest on learning the new encounters and eventually beating them deserve such items more than players who have showed for 1 kill only after the boss is already on loot status. However, sometimes less geared players do benefit more from items than the veterans who have pretty much everything. So how should the guild be able to make it fair for everyone?

The short answer is that there is no simple solution. The long answer is that it takes a lot of team work to make things as fair as possible, but there is no ideal solution for everything and the lead of the guild often has to make decisions on the go when it comes to loot. Here are the loot distribution systems which are used more often with their down and up sides:

DKP (Dragon Kill Points) – this loot distribution system has been known in MMO games ever since Everquest and is quite popular. How does it work? The players earn DKP for being in the raid and these points are stored in a database or addon, depending on the choice the guild made. When an item drops, all players who are interested in getting it express interest in some way (placing a bid in a bid channel, whispering to the raid leader and so on) and the player with highest DKP or willing to pay most DKP for the item wins.

Downside: the more active players will get large DKP pool and will be able to take an item any time they wish even if it is better suited on another player’s character.

Upside: makes it all clear and obvious and everyone knows how much DKP they have / can spend as well as the players from the guild who have better chances in getting the items before your turn comes.

Loot Council – some guilds use this loot distribution system which consists of group of players (raid leader and officers) who decide which member of the raid group will get the item depending on who they think will need it most. This loot distribution system is easy to maintain as it requires no record keeping, but it is difficult to ensure that it is fair to everyone. Normally, the goal of this system is not to be fair – it is to ensure the success of the raid by awarding the items to key players first such as Main Tanks gets all the tanking bits first.

Downside: it is very difficult to convince everyone in the guild that the loot is distributed in a fair way, especially if there are people who also wanted the item and think they need it most. In order for Loot Council system to succeed, the guild needs to be similar minded and the Loot Council members must have everyone’s trust and support on their decisions.

Upside: you can gear up your key players easier and ensure some quicker progress – gearing up your main tank that is there for every raid is much more beneficial to the raid group than gearing up someone who shows up now and then.

No matter which loot distribution system your guild chooses, there is no magic formula for success. There will always be players who are not completely happy with the loot distribution; however minimizing the number of unhappy people should be doable. You can’t make everyone happy, but team work requires some hard decision to be made for everyone’s good.

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.