“Join a guild and everything will be better”
No, it won’t. Most guilds these days are about getting other people into the guild so they can get numbers for raiding. A lot of the time the guild will consist of the GM, and a small selection of their friends who will gear up together, anyone else is left to go via pug groups. Guilds are exploitation these days.
As someone who used to be a GM of a guild, it was very hard to try and keep all the members engaged, as it was very easy to slip into a clique of favored players, if you were not careful.
So I believe it when people say they join a guild and get no real social interactions. The clique factor is a real thing, and GMs/Officers have to work hard to prevent that, and many/most do not.
Exactly. And that’s just 1 type of issue of the several that I listed previously to some of the trolls in this thread. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve seen people post in either these forums or on the wow subreddit where people join a guild and then shout into the void as no one says anything or engages with them in any way, shape or form. So then they leave and the cycle repeats. Eventually they may get lucky. I assume statistically it does happen. But it’s definitely yet another barrier to entry so to speak.
It would help if the in-game guild finder wasn’t completely garbage. We should be able to sort results based on a metrics such as whether a guild has cleared certain content or how often people even bother to type into guild chat. Basically anything that would help to indicate whether a guild that is listed is actually a dead guild in reality. Also only showing 3 guilds at a time is completely stupid. The guild finder should show a list of at least 10-20 guilds at once.
And you are so lucky if your guild even has a raid schedule these days. Lost track of how many times I’ve seen: “Raid schedule will be posted soon.” Crickets…
It also needs to have social flags to search for, to help join a guild that would be a good fit for you socially.
Something along the lines of what Star Wars Galaxies SWG MMO had.
I didn’t ask to do mythics. Or raids. But I also didn’t ask to be guilted into farming for hours and hours and hours because I hit guild repair ONE TIME.
They pitched that they were a social guild. It turned out they were a mythic guild.
You don’t have to join a guild or community, but you’re only shooting yourself in the foot by not. Does it take work? Absolutely but arguably it’s more work to be a solo player and successful in content beyond queue levels.
Yes it will mean that sometimes it won’t all be about you. Sometimes your associates may request your help or to do things with them. Sometimes even the things you do end up not working and you die/wipe. Hopefully though you at least learned some lessons and can collectively learn and get better.
Retail has no excuse for solo players not finding like-minded people. Communities exist. All but open world and queue content is cross factions. Guilds are both cross server and faction. You can add people on battle net and protect your sacred privacy/identity. Even if you add someone, you can delete them and all it’ll look to them is you went offline if they even noticed at all.
Start out doing a +2 and if the run went well, offer to add everyone to your friend list. If anyone accepts, before you do the next thing, ask them first if they want to go. Boom now you got a network started. Do it again in another group and maybe even your new friend comes along. Once you get another, boom now you got 3 people.
Talk to your new friends and see if they got friends and run together. If you mesh well, now you all made new friends. Talk to all your new friends and maybe someone knows someone else who does some raiding or PvP or something. Ask if you can tag along for easy/farm bosses. Who knows, maybe you’ll not suck and/or meet some new people and they’re cool with you coming back again. Woah…maybe even you can join their guild or make an alt there to hang out and chat.
What’s that? You realize you haven’t pugged more than a body here or there in a week? What’s that? People actually reach out to you to see if you’re available? Is this…friendship?
There’s also been a basic breakdown in in-game communication in general. Anyone who’s played wow since at least Legion can attest to that fact. Just look at /1 chat. It’s dead. It didn’t used to be this way. Back in legion and even in bfa, the in-game chat was used extensively and often. Now? It’s just dead. Even at the very beginning of the expac, it’s dead. It was the same with DF. First day of the expac back in DF, nobody talking in any /1 channels. Occasionally you might see one or two posts in the city /1. But you’d certainly never see anyone say anything in any of the zone /1’s even after prompting a discussion by being the first person to say something.
Social interaction in the game is just…gone. Now replaced by Discord and isolated camps of comms. And people wonder why newer players are having difficulty finding a wedge to get into these isolated comms or Discord servers. Heaven help the poor casuals who still rely on the basic in-game chat channels.
guilds aren’t this shining beacon of light to save all pugs
good guilds that can clear higher end content are pretty much the same as pugs in terms of mentality. i. e. if you are not good enough to beat easy content why would you assume a good guild would take you over someone better then you.
but of course every guild is different and we have what i like to call middle to lower end guilds. these guilds have good and bad players in them, and usually already have a clique group that always plays together, so why would they include you into that clique over their friends they have known for years?
then we have “social” guilds that do the easiest content and are just full of random people all playing solo that basically never talk to each other and guild chat and discord chat are dead.
in my experience this rare unicorn type guild that is the shining beacon of hope for every player does not exist, and even if it did, it would have long established cliques and limited invite spots for content. why would you be included over the long established members?
and if you are just using guilds as a smaller pool of LFG is that really that much different then just pugging?
There is a point there, but also a contradiction.
The player community is made up of the players, and a lot of players are not really prepared to be good community members. let alone leaders.
But, if a player is someone who can be a good member, those good communities exist, and can be found with some effort and time.
If I was looking for a guild right now I would not even consider one that doesn’t have a discord of it’s own and some sort of application process to get in. That’s some basic core functionality that any decently organized guild is gonna have in place well before you know they exist.
Of course you’re right.
Also, the most obvious and provable common denominator is you. You’re the common denominator.
And when you see that you know it was said in jest.
Peace man!
Sure, it is. There are millions of people on the planet. Making choices every day. Don’t presume what another person is or isn’t aware of. For most people it is a choice. That’s just a fact. Some are doing fantastic at it. On the other end of the scale, you have those that aren’t. And then you have everyone in between. All of them making choices with some degree of success or failure.
Most is the correct word. Unless now you want to tell me, we are only discussing the group of people on the failure end of that scale. if you’re telling me that, well then okay sure. If you want to limit it only those completely incapable of making a change on their own, even better. We can say 'Most people can’t". If you want to do that you can.
I didn’t. I based it on your comments. Your comments signal some amount of ignorance of the subject, while I have expert information on the subject.
We’re not going to agree, but try not to be such a hardass in the future. Humanity will thank you for it.
There are a billion people on the planet who do not have access to electricity every day.
Please tell me about their choices and their bootstraps…
I. have. done. this. five. times.
I have been a “farming member” five times. When they start asking me to give up TCG battle pets, or for large donations of gold so their best members can get tokens, I gquit.
I have done the work ALREADY. It brought less then nothing.
Do you do math ? you gave only 2 options , you see the world 2 ways . Its either this or that for you . That not how it works lolz,
Careful, if you try to convince him that the world is not black and white he’ll turn that around in his head and say that you are the one who’s saying its black/white.
To be fair, pandas are black and white colored, so I can see where his worldview comes from.
seriously, no. I’m so tired of the “fix” to poor player behavior being find a safe space. it’s exhausting. I don’t play WoW to socialize. I play it to escape. Not everyone is here to make friends.
Yeah I think I ll leave them alone , they are stuck in the wow universe anyways
some people use this game to ESCAPE socializing. Some of us go outside and spend our days socializing in some form. I don’t want to have to deal with sweaty Andy’s or autistic furries to play Wow.