World of Warcraft at it’s core is a social game. One of the pillars of the social structure is the Guild system. In Patch 4.1, Blizzard introduced the first iteration of the Guild Finder. With the release of 8.2.5, they gave the UI a touch-up, as well as a search tool. While the tool is a nice start, it leaves a lot to be desired and I’d like to throw out some ideas to improve this.
Currently, you can filter your search by using a few options:
- Focus (Social & Leveling/Dungeons/Raids/PvP/RP)
- Language
- Guild Size (Small/Medium/Large) (What are these sizes in numeric terms?)
- Your role (Tank/Healer/DPS)
and Guild Leaders can toggle similar options including:
- Focus (Social & Leveling/Dungeons/Raids/PvP/RP)
- Language
- Looking For (spec selection)
- Max Level Only (toggle)
- Minimum Item Level
Players looking for a guild also have the search tool, which allows you to search for keywords in the guild descriptions.
Right now, when you look for a guild using the in-game tool, you can see the guild banner, guild name, a number that I assume represents how many players are in the guild (this is not clear), a portion of the guild description (can’t quite read the whole thing), and a single focus (even if you have multiple selected). When you hit the Request to Join button you can then see the full guild description, leave a note to the leader, select your spec, and see if the guild is looking for any specs for the class of the character you are on.
I’m going to assume that this may be enough for the casual playerbase (please let me know if I’m wrong in that assumption!), but as someone who has raided for some time, I think we can do better. There are a bunch of 3rd party resources, in addition to the Recruitment Forums, such as the Recruitment & Community Discord run by Siearalol and co., WoWProgress, Raider.io, and Warcraftlogs. While these are great resources, fleshing out the in-game tool would be a welcome addition.
Below is a list of some features I’d love to see:
- A more in-depth tool with search functionality rivaling the Auction House
- Raid day checklist
- Raid time checklist
- Raid difficulty checklist
- Current Progression information
- Previous Raid Tier progress information
- Select multiple characters from account on application (multiclass players)
- Mythic Plus Score, Raid Progression, and/or PvP rating requirements (not just ilvl)
- Online-status when attempting to reach out for discussion
I love the social aspect of the game and think Guilds are such an important piece of that structure, so let’s work on improving this tool! Would love to hear any and all feedback from others 