Same with guildies on my realm when chilling in Oribos. It’s actually frustrating to me personally but like you said it’s not going anywhere. They’re in too deep to go back.
A lot has to do with guild leadership and also the community chat default settings. Blizzard needs to nurture/teach how to be an effective leader and deal with conflict. Human psychology. I have utilised those tools and been as extroverted as I can with that but it is tiring. It is a large part of the game and what keeps people coming back, but gamers can only hold on for so long. Blizzard needs more focus on this and less about increasing prices. It’s not the game that keeps people in the game after they have achieved everything, its the comradery. Leaders don’t know how to lead people and given no incentives to lead and resolve drama, except the easy solution is a gkick button. Its not very nice and shrinks everyones morale over abusive power trips. Have played for 2 years, guild hopped all that time. When I think this guild could be my forever family, it never ends well. All guilds are the same. They take the abuse they received and pass it on. They dont realise how to build a tribe and find common ground. If I know I dont belong, I leave. When I think I belong and make so many friends the leadership team have their own agenda, even breaking up M raid team. Yes it happened. Also I dont raid, but i want to be helped in M+ and help others in M+ dungeons. Even tried transferring but been told that its only worth transferring for a guild if you want to M raid. Where does that leave a lot of us??
BLIZZARD OPPORTUNITY RIGHT HERE! Save wow! Even Asmongold has been saying its a solo game, queing with randoms, getting what you need then never chat to those people again. A famous streamer he was watching said they are trying to build a PVP guild and that was met with Asmongold’s full support! People that are stuck in my situation dont have anywhere to go. Have played everyday for 2 years and I have had more breaks in SL than i ever have and SL is more aethestic than other areas IMO! I get excited to play, but once i’m in the game, I’m lost and bored and lonely. Sad state of affairs rn. No achieves pop up in the community chat i built with friends on different servers and nobody see the chat, they dont think about having to change settings, even though I put in notes. So that died too. When friends got kicked out of their family M Raid guild, they quit wow. Other high level players all split up. It was SO SAD. It’s not just a game anymore. It feels like a breakup with some miscommunication/no communication and betrayals laced in there somewhere. Its really sad.
Idea: Guild reputation should not be so easy if you want longevity and be tied to how much they have actually done for and with guild. So this will give visual information for leaders rather than going on “how they feel” at any given time. There should also be credits given to positive social interactions leaders can score once per week. If guildies remain quiet then obvs they don’t care to being interactive with guild. A more transparent reporting system can show due diligence of the leadership and who is close to the leadership team. Yes another system, but this is very important and most neglected. They should be able to lose points if they don’t follow a rule. So good to build up as much as you can when you’re bright eyed and bushy-tailed. It should be encouraged to keep people in the game and not patronised. This might also show big guilds with a small core clicky group when they are complete thoroughfare for members. It’s the lack of care for others and building anything in the game.
A time machine. Or another super new way of connecting with other people, similar to the internet. Something like the holodeck from Star Trek, or Westworld.
There’s no silver bullet but various things that might improve the situation.
The biggest one that comes to mind is simply ending CRZ. Why? Because it’s almost singlehandedly responsible for the players you see out in the world and even in cities being an ever-rotating set of randos who you never cross paths with twice. It might seem inconsequential but those chance encounters used to be a significant source of recruits for guilds, and as you came to recognize the various names it really solidified the idea that your server was its own little world.
Another is to make more people want to join guilds. Used to be everybody wanted to be guilded but somewhere along the lines something changed and now many fly solo. It’s worth figuring out what when wrong there and fixing it.
It may also help to add downtime activities that people actually want to do, so it’s no longer a goal to spend as little time as possible in the game. It’s hard for a community to grow when players are tied up behind instance portals for 95%+ of the time they’re logged in.
Make one accountable for their actions (closed servers). Reputation on that server would be a thing. Perhaps labelled for the content they’re intended for whether it be RP, PVP, PVE. When one is held to account for their behavior by their peers there are consequences to how one conducts ones self that reign them back in line.