There never used to be a guild limit. We can just invite anyone and everyone. We got guys that havent come online in 14 years, but I really don’t wanna kick anyone. Who knows? They might come back and some did just that. Havent played in over a decade only to come online and start playing again.
Why put in a limit now?
Pretty sure it was done back in Cata to deal with the Mega Guilds inviting quite literally everybody they could, to abuse the perk that matched X% of gold made by members and sent it to the guild bank.
Let us have 10,000 members.
Also bring back the guild leveling system.
While you’re at it, allow guild masters to assign specific powers to each rank. Glomping all the access into a default officer rank is just too much trust to give some of these people.
One guild I’m in made an “alt” sister guild so as not to have to limit guild members
We previously announced in the Cataclysm Beta forums that we’d be enforcing a 600 guild member cap with patch 4.0.1. We’ve reevaluated what we believe the realms are capable of supporting and instead will be enforcing a guild member hard cap of 1,000 members. This means that guilds with more than 1,000 members will no longer be able to invite new members until they drop below the cap. For example, if a guild has 1,500 members they’ll be able to continue as-is, playing and earning guild achievements for as long as they choose, through Cataclysm and beyond, but they will not be able to add new members until they fall below the 1,000 member cap. If a guild has fewer than 1,000 members, they won’t be able to add members above that number.
This new guild cap is being enforced for several reasons, but they all factor into a need to control guild sizes in light of the new guild systems, including guild leveling and achievements. Previously, adding players to a guild was as simple as adding people to a chat channel. While approximately 500 members were visible in the UI, there was no real need to limit guild size. That is no longer the case. Guild leveling in Cataclysm features unified progression powered by a series of complex systems that track the contributions of all guild members. The larger the guild, the bigger the impact on these systems. We found it necessary to determine a maximum guild size to ensure continued performance now and into the future.
We want to reassure the few guilds that this does impact that they have ample time to plan and rearrange their guilds as they see fit. While this hard cap will go into effect with 4.0.1, guilds should feel safe rearranging members as necessary up to the release of Cataclysm on December 7 when the guild leveling system goes into effect. There will be no impact on guild leveling progression before then. If a guild were to disband after Cataclysm, or a group of people were to leave and start a new guild, they would lose the time and experience they previously contributed and potentially extend the amount of time it would take to regain the new guild perks.
While some players have used options including mods and custom chat channels to support large player and guild alliances that number multiple thousands, groups of that size aren’t ideally suited to our design philosophy. As always, we’re continually looking into adding new features to help facilitate guild management, scheduling, and player communication.
I’m in favor of this. Just don’t attach utility to the levels 
Yep. It’s been in a while. That is why guilds like AIE and Convert to Raid have subguilds.
The greenwall addon was even created to help with communications between all the subguilds. It puts all guild chat together.
Our Alliance side which is rather new just has the one guild right now, but I think horde side we have 6 or 8 subguilds.
The limit has been in place for quite some time now. And if someones not been online in over a decade, its probably time to give up on them…
That is what my guild does. I don’t really like it because I only have like 2 relevant alts that I am on just as much as my “main” , but eh.
the game came out 16 years ago if they havent played it in the last 14 i doubt their ever coming back
I still remember these guys even though they haven’t come online in 14 years.
Just open up a community for the spill over.
Heck, I did for crossrealm folks that wanted to join the guild without having to spend gold to server transfer. It works fine for it.
This is a good idea.
People always say “kick the inactive ones” then they complain when they come back and they’re not in the guild.
Just wait a bit, until Shadowlands is released, and delete all player who do not choose the right Covenant according to your standards!
Also, try to extort gold from them before you send them to the trash.
Here is an example of a message you could use:
Bow down before the Dark Lady, Goddess of Death!
For the Forsaken!
Death to the living!