Finding a Guild in Wildstar (and anywhere else)

I remember a time when this was easy: jumping into a new MMO, meeting random people questing or selling goods, partying up for quests or dungeon runs. Then, writing their names down when the company was particularly enjoyable or adding them to a friendlist if such was available. Soon enough, you would decide this was a promising bond, once personal plans had been examined and longterm intentions seemed to match. There was potential for a common venture here – a guild. Either they already had one you could join or you would found one together, after you managed to agree on a suitable guild name, that is.

It doesn’t work that way anymore. Or maybe it’s just me. I never seemed to struggle to find guilds the “natural way” in FFXI or Warcraft but ever since, it’s been a really rocky road and not for lack of trying. I was in two guilds in GW2 which both faded away quicker than a Skritt’s courage. In LOTRO, I resorted to creating my own LFGuild thread on the realm forums because the game was way past the stage of guilds spamming global chat. Early this spring, I finally joined a friend’s non-committal multi-game guild, only to realize they truly didn’t give a toss who came or went, not even the GM. There were also hardly any women which is a red flag in my book nowadays.

Now in Wildstar, I created a guild for myself and four old WoW buddies to hang out while leveling up. The plan has always been to sniff the air on our server first and actually find out if this MMO was for us. Being five people with different work schedules and real life commitments, we hardly ever manage to be online at the same time, so dungeons are pretty much off because PuGs are hard to find before max level (and even harder to go through with). Yeah, we need a bigger guild and soon. I’ve no intention to recruit myself – been there, done that.

Since dungeons aren’t happening and there’s also not much cooperation going on during questing (the odd 2-min silent quickie aside to kill an elite), nor is there any reliance on player crafted goods or services the AH couldn’t provide, meeting random people in Wildstar is kinda hard. Damn the solo friendly, self-sufficient times we live in or something. That only leaves me with following options:

  • Check the official guild forums or wildstar.guildex.org
  • Create my own LF thread
  • Pick a random guild spamming global chat
  • Ask on social media (oops, no global servers so scratch that!)
  • Sit in a prominent corner in Illium and sing “All by Myself” with a sad face

Not very appealing options all of them, not if you generally cringe at “blind guilding” the way I do. There needs to be a personal touch or buzz for me before I join a guild, a reason to choose a particular group of people. At the very least, a recommendation by someone I can trust. If I have to switch guilds several times over, my enthusiasm for an MMO is generally at an end.

But then housing chat happened. One of the seriously enjoyable features in Wildstar, players can globally converse with the neighbourhood when logged into their home instance. For no better reason than to be social and friendly, I usually say hello whenever beaming up to my plot and it appears all the nicer RP people of my server are hanging out in the housing channel more than anywhere else. After visiting a few people’s plots, one particularly awesome house by the GM of a popular guild on the server, we got into talking. It so happened that this was also Kadomi’s guild since the Wildstar beta which added instant extra credit, and after checking out the guild page and policies, it feels like my buddies and me might actually have a place to head next. I was told we would be most welcome.

Here’s to hoping it will turn into an extended stay. I won’t need to write a new introduction post on the guild forums, I have one stored away in a .doc file on the computer. If it was written on real paper, it would be a worn and wrinkly document full of coffee stains but in our virtual worlds, hope dies last and paper is patient.

10 comments

  1. I fully endorse this guild. It’s full of great people, it has a couple housing fanatics with utterly astounding plots, there are lots of guild events, many RP-flavored, and the guild officers actually take the time to mentor lower level people through leveling dungeons. There’s a guild twitter list as well, and really, they’re good people. I think you’ll find a good home there. 🙂

  2. Oh, I know this feeling. I agree, finding a good guild is tough now days. I’ve gone through 4 different FCs in FFXIV before I helped to found the one I’m in. Happy where I am now, finally.

    Best wishes and hope you find a home with your new guild!

  3. I miss the oldtimes in many ways, as to meeting people, doing things with them and getting into guilds because of that. But I am not complaining tho, I have found myself a good guild and I would not want to change it. Still it’s some good memories I have made from earlier days when meeting new people for dungeons, quests and just randomly standing and chatting.

    Hope you will enjoy your guild 🙂

  4. Oh finding guilds.. yeah that’s not a fun part of an MMO. I found, by luck really, a fantastic bunch of people in Rift I now call friends. They are a “cross-game” community, currently only residing in Rift and SW:tOR but time will tell. I started out a twig from that community in GW2 but folk aren’t really active there, also joined a couple others but seem settled on Dragon Season, who are lovely. And WildStar.. we opted for a circle until we could found or join a guild that suited our wants and needs and together we found somewhere quite nice (see: Missy’s comment). 🙂 Sadly now I have three guilds vying for my attention when I want to play something different but that’s why we have forums and Twitter.

    I’ve found that the official forums are the best place to find a guild these days if you don’t somehow fall inline with a lovely guild ingame somehow, the way you did with Kadomi’s guild. You can peruse all of the adverts and work on a process of elimination through which guilds seem to suit your needs most, who is the least spammy and seemingly warmest. Best way. 🙂

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