whats the deal with Guilds??

[Boneshaker]

Have only been Playing WOW for about 2 weeks and Im a lvl 15 Tauren Warrior. Well yesterday I recieved an invite to join a guild fro an random player I just ran into. I said OK and now Im part of a guild. What exactly does that mean? I notice at Thunder Bluff that there is a "Guild Vault" and when I clik on it its loaded with all maner of stuff from weapons, armor, to potions. I didnt try to take anything because I wanted to find out what the deal was first. Can someone explain this to me? Advantages? disadvantages? expectations??

thanks

[Khab]

A guild (in a basic sense) is just a group of players. The guild vault is a way to share items you don't need with other players and can serve to store gold and items for raiding.
The pros of a guild are that you can quest with people who you get to know in the guild. They may have guild instance runs or raids. The guild bank is nice to have too. The guild can have its own tabard which each member can wear.

The cons of a guild would probably be the drama that can occur.

[Superspam]

Guilds are groups of people that consistently play together for organizational or social reasons. There are multiple types of guilds from levling guilds (groups that level together) to social guilds (just a group of people to talk to and hang out with) to pvp guilds (running premade BGs as well as arena teams) to end game raiding guilds. The further you progess in your wow career, you'll find that you'll be grouping more and more with members of your guild. When you reach the point of raiding, you'll be doing this almost exclusively with members of your guild. This is because it's easier to coordinate a group of 10 or 25 people (40 back in vanilla WoW) that constantly play together; as opposed to trying to get 25 random people to group up and be affective.

[Boneshaker]

Ok, So its cool to take things from the guild vault? Do you have to replace items with another item or how does that usually work?? I guess an item wouldnt be there if it was that important to someone. Its just at the lower level that I am at some free weapons with more power than what Im swinging now looked to good to be true and i didnt want to piss off anyone..

[Superspam]

Ok, So its cool to take things from the guild vault? Do you have to replace items with another item or how does that usually work?? I guess an item wouldnt be there if it was that important to someone. Its just at the lower level that I am at some free weapons with more power than what Im swinging now looked to good to be true and i didnt want to piss off anyone..

The guild leader can restrict withdrawls based on guild rank, so you may not even be able to take stuff (does it say "deposit only" at the top of the bank window?). So IMO, if you can use it and have the privleges to take it, then take it. HOWEVER, it wouldn't hurt to ask in guild chat (/g) what the policy is. Some guilds ask that if you take something you throw some gold into the bank based on the items value. Also, it can look bad if you're always taking things and never putting stuff in.

[pearcehart]

When you are playing with that character try this on you chat bar: /g

This will show you what the Guild members are saying and you can ask THEM what the rules are for that guild. Also, press key O and click on the Guild tab, that will show you who is in the guild and other info.

[clevins]

Ok first off... don't take anything from the guid bank, even if you can. Its like any social relationship - if the first thing you do it start taking, the impression is that you're a greedy person out for themselves. And, don't take this wrong, but I find it... interesting that that's the first thing you focused on.

Ffrankly, at level 15 you don't need anything that you won't get from quests rewards. Oh and NEVER take stuff from the bank to sell. Huge no no.

Now... a guild is partly social - people you like to chat with in /g (guild chat channel). That comes easier as you stay there longer and get to know people. If they're not your kind of folks, you can leave the guild of course (I'd leave a guild that's full of 13 year olds because it would annoy the heck out of me).

It's also a group of people who can answer questions for you i.e. "hey, is item X or item Y better for my class?" etc. Do try to find stuff on your own and not ask 8 million questions, but also don't be afraid to ask at all. Just like you would with any group of friends who shared a hobby.

Finally, a guild is people to do stuff with... instances, group quests, etc. "hey does anyone want to run (Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Mauradon, etc)" or "ANyone else doing (group quest X)?" This becomes more relevant as you level up and t here are more people close to your level, but a lot of more experienced folk have alts, so it doesn't hurt to ask.

Oh and many guilds have websites with forums etc. Some are pretty active and can be a good place to post questions, find info, etc.

[Boneshaker]

Thanks for the good advice. THATS why I asked these questions. I wasnt so much focused on taking from the vault as I was curious about the propper etiquet and expectations from the guild members. Again, thanks

[Beruen]

Yeah, I took the focus on the guild bank as being you not knowing what guilds were, and the guild bank was the first guild function you came across, so that's why you were asking about it.

I'll agree that someone that's new to the guild that almost immediately starts saying in guild chat "Can I have X from the guild bank please?" isn't going to make a good first impression, especially if the items they're asking for can't be used by that toon. There are people that have alts that do nothing but go from guild to guild, finding out what they can get to benefit their non-guilded main.

Someone who asks what the rules are, on the other hand, I take in a different way. That's because different guilds use their guild bank in different ways, and knowing the rules are good.

For example, my guild has six bank tabs, and we've got different rules for almost every tab. We've got one "almost anything goes" tab. This is stuff that's been sitting around for so long we just want it gone. The only real rule on that tab is that the blues are to be used by a guildie or a friend of the guild, not sold or DE'ed. (Yes, that means that vendoring/DE'ing greens from that tab is perfectly fair use).

Two tabs of misc stuff. The rule there is that it is for guild use, not for selling/DE'ing. Grabbing crafting mats from there to get skill points is considered fair (as long as the recipe is yellow or close too it), and what the player does with the resulting items is usually up to them.

One tab of crafting mats. The rule is that this stuff is for crafting things for immediate use by guildies. So this stuff isn't for skill points, unless you get the skill points as a side effect.

One tab of raiding supplies and nice blues/greens. This stuff is there for use by guildies, and all someone really needs is to be able to justify a need for it.

One tab of hard to get stuff, world drop epics, rare crafting mats, and the like. This stuff we tend not to give out except to people that we know will use them to help the guild run instances and/or raids.

Now, you'll notice that we only focused on what you're allowed to take out. That's because we don't have a price on the items. Some guilds expect you to pay for things from the guild bank, others base it on guild participation (we could probably be considered as falling into this category for the last few tabs). Without being told, you won't know what the policy is, so you need to ask if you haven't been told.

[Boneshaker]

Again very good information. I will deffinately not take anything from the guild bank at this time. I guess the best thing to do initially is to interact with some other members of the guild and see if its one I want to be a part of. It seemed odd that this random player who I had never met would approach me to recruit me but they did so I figured I would check it out. As i said I am very new to this game but I can see how you could spend some serious hours playing it. I have been doing ok on my own to this point. I did team up with a few other players here and there to deal with some groups of bad guys but mostly I have done it all alone. I did find myself in over my head going after some tougher harpies in the Barrens area last night. It took me forever to kill enough of them to complete the quest & they killed me many times in the process. A few of them even talked some trash to me when they were fighting me!! One told me my head was going to be a nice trophy!!!:shocked:

[clevins]

Oh, some people do random invites of people who are guildless (they'll see you in IF and invite you). It's a way to get people in a new guild. There's a bias against it (versus asking if you're interested first) but I've also heard of some good guilds starting that way. The guild chat is the best way to get a feel for the guild... full of leetspeaking 13 year olds who think the Trade chat is hilarious? Or is it mostly reasonable people who are talking? etc. etc.... DO check out their website if they have one. A good guild will have guidelines and policies about things like the bank, etc.


And yes, you can spend a LOT of hours playing. I like it in that it's interactive so more interesting than vegging in front of the TV, but something you can leave alone for days if you want and not worry about it.

[dgrampa]

If the guild leader is stupid enough to allow guild bank access to someone he doesn't even know, I'd say feel free to take whatever you need. If someone gives you a hard time about it, just say you needed it. If they still give you a hard time, /gquit. You don't need a guild that is just randomly inviting people anyway.

And that's just taking the high road. If it were me I'd cherry pick any items of value and /gquit just to teach the idiot a lesson.

If you actually like this guild, feel free to ignore my advice.

[clevins]

If the guild leader is stupid enough to allow guild bank access to someone he doesn't even know, I'd say feel free to take whatever you need. If someone gives you a hard time about it, just say you needed it. If they still give you a hard time, /gquit. You don't need a guild that is just randomly inviting people anyway.

And that's just taking the high road. If it were me I'd cherry pick any items of value and /gquit just to teach the idiot a lesson.

If you actually like this guild, feel free to ignore my advice.

So you're a dick in real life too?

[prion]

And that's just taking the high road. If it were me I'd cherry pick any items of value and /gquit just to teach the idiot a lesson.


that's a good way to get a rep for bank raiding.
remember, every transaction is logged.

Always try to leave a guild on good terms or they may slander you out of spite even if you didn't raid the bank.

[dwarfenhelm]

i suppose dgrampa you would be the sort of person who would break into a car to teach the fool of a driver that he shouldnt have left his phone on the seat or you would snatch the old womans bag as she shouldnt have left it in your sight. its a sad fact of life we have arseholes like you popping up all over the place, but at least you are in the minority

[Wintrow]

I'm a-thinking' we'd better avoid upsetting the mods with this kind of backlashing.

On-topic:
Personally I don't like it when I get randomly invited into a guild. I mean, we've all had our first guild/clan/corp/... experience this way and in 99% of those cases it turned out to be a guild with very little concern for it's members and very little "group-feeling".

It is however a decent way to get going on the guild-experience and when you're new everything is shiny and exciting anyway. So I say, go with it. Approach it with an open mind and see if it works out. You may get lucky.

Later on you'll be wiser and you'll know the pitfall of a bad guild a lot faster. Or you'll stick with that first one because you struck gold :grin:.

[clevins]

...
Later on you'll be wiser and you'll know the pitfall of a bad guild a lot faster. Or you'll stick with that first one because you struck gold :grin:.

Yep. After all, you can always leave a guild that you don't like. It's not as if there's some penalty for doing so. And who knows, you may hit gold. All guilds have downsides - mostly what I want are reasonably cool, mature people with whom I can do stuff ingame. That and a match between what I want to do ingame and the goals of the guild (I like to run instances... a hardcore PvP guild would be a mismatch even if the people were great).

[Boneshaker]

OOPS double posted..

[Boneshaker]

Im looking at it as a good thing right now. I asked a few question via guild chat last night that went unanswered but I have no idea if any members were even online?? I need to find a few guild members online that I can group with to see whats what. The guild is called the "Holy Horde" by the way in case any members read this . Thanks

[Khab]

If you open the "social" window (press O) you can see your friends list and your guild. It will show members who are online. To be honest, any guild that just randomly invites low level players is prolly not a very good guild to be in.

The best way to meet new people and possibly find a guild is to group for quests. If you find someone you get along with you'll have someone to quest with and possibly join their guild if they have one.

You can also use the search function on the social screen to find players near your level, players in your area and members of certain guilds.

[Superspam]

. . .but I have no idea if any members were even online??

Bring up the social window where your friends list is (default key "O"). At the bottom, there's a guild tab. That will tell you who's online and can be set to show offline members as well.

[clevins]

Also look at the LFG (Looking For Group) interface. If you want to run a dungeon at your level there might be others also looking to do that.

[Wintrow]

And on top of that there is a GuildRecruitment channel that you join when not in a guild (at least, when your char was created)