Guilds are useless if you don’t care about raiding .
it’s hard to get into good guilds too , some people play in the same guild since 15 years together .
i have joins some randoms guilds , type of guilds , who spam invite the whole server and it’s just pointless , nobody talk because everybody do different contents , guilds are just good for passive hearstone buff
I see one guy asking for a +5 , when i’m doing +20
pug is life
Blizzard tried giving guilds incentives back in Cataclysm, it didn’t help things at all. It just created a snowball effect where smaller and newer guilds were unable to actually establish themselves because big guilds had every guild perk and the pets, mounts, heirlooms, and exclusive recipes unlocked within a week.
that’s a very, very small amount. it can take time to find a group of people you mesh with 
and it can be intimidating. if I’m being honest I don’t know that I’d be willing to put myself out there if I ever lost my guild, so I get it.
I can understand how something like this would be upsetting, but I think it’s kind of a natural thing. people change as time goes on. they develop new/different interests. that some people in a group branch off to do other things, while a few others who aren’t interested don’t doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.
I had a friend, we were very, very close. we did everything together. Then she got married, had a kid, and moved to california (very far from me). now she’s a completely different person than the person I remember her being, has a different life, and we have very little in common. While I still consider her a friend, we’re no longer close, don’t see each other, and have only a very casual relationship.
but that’s just life. just like friendships change irl over the years, they change in-game too. people develop interests you might not share, and want to grow those interests.
There are ways to counter this. Other games have done so. Old Republic has perks, but they rotate and they’re very small.
It also has a weekly system to earn points by doing literally anything in the game and it gets you a personal goal for a box of goodies and at the end of the week, if the guild reaches the guild goal, you get another box of goodies. It’s an easy goal to reach, so not leaving out smaller guilds. And it works on alts.
Boxes aren’t huge upgrades, just some useful things like mats and whatnot.
It’s not mandatory, it’s just something to work towards. And perks can be given and not necessarily earned.
This is false.
I covered this had you read the OP.
litteraly it is useless i don’t see the point , you have so much things to do in the game that nobody play together in the guild at the end ( this is my opinion )
some guy are mount farmer
some are m+ player
some are raiders
some want leveling
but i joined some random guilds , so my opinion is garbage , i did not experience good guilds
Blizzard should do some guilds vs guilds pvp event , a new game mode
Before i play WOW , iwas playing another MMO and guilds could recolt ressources in zones , and others guilds or randoms players could engage a fight to steal the ressource , that was so cool
Wanna know why? It’s because people, especially online are progressively not very fun to be around and dealing with already formed cliques within guilds is annoying. Where most of the ‘chatter’ comes from Discord and they want you around on there and in VC a lot in the first place.
I was able to pug in Vanilla-Cata far more easily than I can now, so not true.
Not really, in fact everyone just gets told ‘lul join a guild if you want that’ without people addressing issues people have with guilds. People that are burned out on bad guild after bad guild and finding the ‘right’ guild especially when so many guilds will treat recruitment like a job and treat the people they’re recruiting poorly. (Previously, it was trials not getting loot, etc.)
Not really, see far more toxicity from within guilds than anywhere else. It would appear someone forgot the posts about how horrible it is in most ‘top end’ raiding guilds online a couple years ago?
Many do, if they’re the norm… That’s the issue.
Not sure what can be done by Blizzard especially since now most social activity is on Discord, which cannot and won’t be moderated by Blizzard.
It would not have to be. I would like to see something like guild currency that you were earn by doing guild activities. Those activities could be guild runs, being a guild group while questing, donating items to the guild bank, or guild pvp activities. That guild currency would be used to buy cosmetic things like transmog, pets, mounts, and toys.
Now you could use guild currency as an alternative way level heirlooms, or get xp boost to make leveling alts faster, buy vendor crafting items, or bring back those MoP portal seeds for people to buy. These would be more meaningful things but we will never be able to avoid someone feeling like getting guild currency is mandatory.
I see that turning out like the gold % thing we had in Cata. Guilds recruiting for perks.
I could also see guilds requiring you donate your “perks” to the gbank or you get kicked since you only get them by being part of the guild.
The only way those things don’t happen would be completely useless rewards, then people just won’t engage with the system.
This is just based on behavior I’ve observed over the years.
The devs also tend to be bad at striking balance with things. It’s either good or bad, they rarely land in the middle with balance.
Literally it is not. Many guilds exist that are only running dungeons, doing world content, roleplaying, PvP, etc.
Guilds are helpful for many reasons, not just raids.
Then let’s preface conversations with “my experience has shown me,” instead of flat out statements as if they were truth.
Sure, if you run into this in your experience, it’s going to suck. And that’s what I’d like to figure out how to help and counter.
The counter-point to this would be that the players/demographics themselves have changed over the years. That’s probably the real reason guilds are less and less popular.
A lot of folks just don’t have the time/schedule to partake in a dedicated Mythic raiding guild - hence the rapid rise of solo/random pug gameplay thru the LFG tool (more convenient/no “schedule” required/play whenever you want/etc).
The statistics don’t lie, Mythic raiding is a tiny % of the overall playerbase, the vast majority of players are more and more casual. The general trend seems to be more towards solo gameplay and away from “hardcore” styles of gameplay (Mythic raiding, rated PvP, etc), if the usual large forums are any indication (GD, reddit, MMO-C, etc)
Some of these changes in the players/demographics have nothing to do with WoW at all. For example, people in general are more anti-social in the year 2022 compared to 2006 due to a number of reasons including social media, the introduction of the smartphone, etc etc.
Then the amount of bouncing from guild to guild, in hopes of finding one-- You realize how much time and energy you wasted.
Blizz did go overboard on this stuff. I think the major issue was the generation of gold for the guild based on a percentage of what the members looted during the week. It was not unusual to have a few core (often raid) members that were the sole beneficiaries of gold generated by hundreds of guild “grunts”. Bringing some of them back would be nice - I think we all miss “mass summon.”
And what’s wrong with guilds recruiting to earn things together? That’s the point of guilds.
Old Republic saw a huge surge in guilds that have stayed together due to their systems.
And then that guild dies and you find one that doesn’t care. No one is forced to do anything and bad behavior needs to stop being tolerated.
This is also going to be a very small and extreme portion that would attempt such a thing.
There are other rewards and avenues to explore, as well.
This type of negative mindset is why we are where are as a community.
That’s the problem, imo. If the benefits lead to any kind of profit, you will have people trying to exploit it to the fullest extent.
Guilds only benefit should be having a reliable pool of players to play with and nothing more.
Adding more benefits to being in a guild will only increase toxic behavior if 17 years of WoW has taught me anything.
I’m not being negative, just coming to a conclusion based on history.
It’s not an issue that people want to pug and play without a guild.
I don’t blame people for wanting to play without a guild because most guilds fall into two categories:
They’re either bad or toxic, with very few in between. No one wants to deal with that anymore in 2022.
They actually had a cool thing going in Cataclysm, but of course they abandoned it. Something that could have saved many guilds who died in the content drought that followed.
what was cata guilds thing ? guild levels ? what did you unlock , the same rewards we have from guild rep ?
It is negative. Because we’re focusing on the downsides instead of the upsides.
We’re talking only about how a few make it negative to the many and not the positive changes it could bring.
The issue with so many of these conversations is that it always begins with “this is what went wrong or could go wrong,” instead of “these are the ideas that might bring more community and support.”
It’s glass is half empty perspective. And I understand why. But that’s what needs to change.
I addressed this in the OP.
Exactly. It could have been changed differently to make sure smaller guilds weren’t left out. But just like most things, they just flat out abandoned it and destroyed some guilds in the process.
I would argue against this, our guild doesn’t have a raid team but doing all the other activities is much more fun in groups.
When it comes to gearing alts, it’s much easier with a pack of friends you regularly run with.
Guilds are not only for raiding, it’s more of a social group the bans together to get stuff done.
I have over 5000 cinders on one of my characters from helping my friends get the 1650 they need. I already have my 262, and don’t have any other alts needing cinders. All I get is the enjoyment of their company doing the run.