Casual player looking for WoW guild recommendations

February 26, 2007 1:00 PM

Can anyone recommend a World of Warcraft guild that meets my specifications?

Follow the bolds for the abridged version :)

First off, I know there's a MeFi guild in existence--used to run its earlier incarnation--but right now it seems like it's moved Horde-side and I'm looking for an Alliance guild. Plus the MeFi guild never stays very large and I'd like there to be people on most of the time - I miss EarBucket and the rest a lot, but it kinda stinks when half the time you're alone in guildchat.

I'm with a good group of people right now, but on a very young server (Vashj) and recently came to the realization that the auction house is piss-poor, and it's making it hard to level since my gear is lagging at 10+ levels behind my own. So I'm thinking of rerolling on a medium (or high) population server where there are plenty of things to buy on the AH.

Making matters worse is that I don't raid and most guilds are all about the endgame - I'm hoping for a group of people more interested in leveling, PvPing, playing alts, and just having fun than in phat lewt. Not that raiding is a bad thing, but I just don't see the point of being in a guild where <5 % of the population is below level 60. and this should go without saying, but there's millions of medium/large guilds medium/high pop servers which aren't all about raiding...but they don't all have b>cool, laid back, intelligent people. Since most MeFites fit this description, I'm hoping some of you have found similar groups of people to hang out with.

If possible I prefer RP or RP-PVP servers, since it usually means about 5% less idiocy from the pubbies, but that's definitely not a requirement at this point. Ditto for my timezone - EST is nice but not necessary.

And I could just suck it up and try to deal with the situation on my current server - for example, I could run lots of instances to get gear drops - but for now let's assume I don't want to.

posted by cyrusdogstar to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total)

Uther is good for the loot, but most guilds are end-game. Also, it's a West Coast server (but it's never caused me any problems and I'm on East Coast). The drawback is, of course, that many of your guildies are up much later at night than you! It hasn't had any login queues since the first week after the BC came out.

You might want to browse around on http://www.guildportal.com ?
posted by matty at 1:37 PM on February 26, 2007

I think your best bet would be to scope out the Role Playing forum on the WoW site. A quick survey of the active posters would show you which servers/guilds are established. Then you can start making server posts or tracking down guild masters in-game to see the following traits which will matter most to you:

minimum age requirement
Peak play times
Active population in guild
Group activities (RP or otherwise)
Utilize voice-chat software (ventrilo -- I find this is essential to forming real friendships)
Application process (usually based on trial admission, experience in past MMOs and RP games, familiarity with warcraft lore etc.)

Just remember to sell yourself as a mature player who will be very active. The rest should fall into place.

Also, to ease leveling, you can use wowhead.com to list armor/gear by level and then filter to see only quest-obtainable items. Those are sure-bets and may only take a few hours to complete to insure that your gear stays up to snuff. Keep in mind that some talent specs are more gear-centric than others as well. A beast-mastery hunter could run around naked, while an arms warrior would be SoL without the right weapon. There are useful guides in the new Guides Forum on leveling specs if you needed advice there.

I'm a phat lewt raid whore personally. But I wish you luck.
posted by cowbellemoo at 1:49 PM on February 26, 2007

I'd suggest just visiting realm forums and finding a server you like and a guild you like on that server, or asking there. Most of my good experiences have been horde so I can't really recommend anyone to you. Seriously... most alliance if they're into the game enough to be in an active guild tend to be Really. Serious. All the time. Something about cannibalism, bits of flesh falling off, green skin and giant cows makes the horde less likely to do this.
posted by dagnyscott at 1:59 PM on February 26, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks for the replies so far =)

cowbell, I did look at wowhead/thottbot, it just seemed that most of the stuff for my particular class/level range drops in instances, which I tend to avoid. However I just went back and I must've screwed up that first time as there does seem to be more than I found the first time (probably was just doing stuff that drops insted of quest rewards).

dagny and matty, thanks, and dagny is right - it does seem that Alliance players tend to be more into poopsocking. I've already found a good Horde side guild for when I want to play on that faction, problem is that I just have a hard time identifying with Horde races. I don't really RP but I guess I still mentally need to feel like I "am" the character I play :)

Was talking to some of the folks in my current guild and now I'm thinking I might just need to suck it up, try hitting up whatever crafters are around, and look more closely at the Wowhead/Thottbot results. We'll see.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 2:23 PM on February 26, 2007

The drawback of a high-pop server is that you'll have login queues during peak times -- it's the primary reason why I took a free transfer to a low-pop server. However, the server I'm on now (The Scryers) is too low-pop, and the AH is pretty much useless.

I just guilded up last week; my guild has 110-odd people in it, but it's not enough. I've yet to find anyone who's willing to help out with non-instanced quests.

Sounds like you and I are in exactly the same boat, and I suspect that we'll never find a guild that's right for us because what we're looking for appeals to a very, very tiny minority of players. Plus, some of what we're looking for nearly precludes other things we're looking for: 'Casual' guilds don't tend to get large enough to provide needed quest support, for example.

(Dagny, generalizing play styles based on faction is spurious at best, I think.)
posted by solid-one-love at 2:30 PM on February 26, 2007

Response by poster: solid-one-love - yea, you're spot on. I don't expect to ever find something that fits perfectly, for that reason. Ironically I was in a guild soon after I started the game (and got my only level 60 character while there...yea...I only ever got one. Altitis sucks, what can I say) and they were overall greatt, as was the server (Kirin Tor). Unfortunately the guild leader ended up over-recruiting and the guild got semi flooded with pubbies and teenager types, when previously it was mostly adults, so once guildchat got annoying enough I said bye and left.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 2:51 PM on February 26, 2007

You did say that you are already with a good group of people now, so you mainly seem unhappy with your gear, and I don't quite see how a guild will help you with that without raiding together. Unfortunately the gear on the AH is never going to be nearly as good as you're going to get from running instances.
posted by of strange foe at 3:02 PM on February 26, 2007

Unfortunately the gear on the AH is never going to be nearly as good as you're going to get from running instances.

Exactly. Blizzard made it so that except for levels 61-->69, your gear will never be as good as it could without running instances.
posted by jmd82 at 5:00 PM on February 26, 2007

While I don't have a specific Guild recommendation, you might try The Scryers - many of the Feathermoon RP community recently took a free transfer there.
posted by ApathyGirl at 5:25 PM on February 26, 2007

The guild I run on Muradin is quite a bit like you describe. We do some business on the AH, although most of our guildies get geared up without having to rely on retail purchases since we're pretty free about passing around stuff people might be able to use, and I get a great deal of enjoyment from lugging everyone into the dungeons when I can.
posted by majick at 7:30 PM on February 26, 2007