Why are WoW guilds so (generally) unfriendly to new members of their own guild? In other games I play, new members are greeted heartily and embraced by members of their “guild”, but in WoW… new members are often ignored or shunned due to guild cliques. It’s very strange and I can’t figure out why it’s a thing.
In every guild I join (which lately has been several different ones in an attempt to find any that are actually friendly), nobody even welcomes me when I join and ignore everything said in chat, but seem to only respond to their friends (usually officers). It’s very isolating and lonely. Is this just a “me” experience or what is going on? It’s so damn hard to find people that are friendly to actually play with.
EDIT: here’s my conclusion on the topic. Just updating it up here since I know most won’t read through everything:
It’s probably some weird insecurity since I’m so new to this. The biggest thing I’m taking away from this, and I appreciate all the responses, is that it takes time and I need to be patient. The social climate is not what I expected or remembered, so it was very quickly isolating and I probably jumped to some pretty extreme conclusions.
It’s WoW culture. What I theorize is that with the rise of social media, the desire to chat has gone down. You can get some good socializing done on the forums. And I’ve been playing New World lately and have noticed chat happens more there. A lot more.
I wish you luck in finding a good social guild though. I’ve had it happen a couple times in my WoWing days.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to prove. I simply wanted to note that the beginning of your conversation came across differently than the rest of your post.
Dude, go away. I don’t care about your semantics. You do this a lot. Just leave me alone and go bother someone else. I’m asking a question about a game I love because I’m having a hard time finding friendly people to talk with. You are not someone I want to talk to.
idk tbh. maybe they antisocial but want to join a guild so they are not lonely?
i’ve gotten in many like that. just got into a guild kind of like that i suppose. doesn’t bother me though because im low level anyways and leveling my new main. not many if any talk though likely will cause people to leave in the end.
i mean i can understand people are busy or afk or w.e. but all the time? me i just got home from work when i logged in today thus why im quiet. i want to unwind and dumb down. don’t like to think about bs after work or talk to people tbh on my days off sure but not when im mentally and physically drained. so yea i can somewhat understand
Not wanting to talk with a forum bully (which you do constantly to people) is a bit different than the situation in my original post. Please, just leave me alone. I’d rather talk to literally anyone else on these forums than you.
Sorry, but I’ve never bullied anyone. If you didn’t wish to speak with me, you culd have easily fixed that situation. But you do keep replying. I was never nasty to you, but you have come back at me for simply wanting to clear up the beginning part of your post so that others understood better, in case someone didn’t read it all. I was attempting to be helpful to you. My apologies for trying to do such a thing.
Yeah. I view as people are ‘gun shy’ and probably have been burned too many times to invest in someone new.
It’s easy to meet people, harder to make friends. Especially long term friends that lasts through multiple expansions.
Just keep trying to find that one person/guild who has a play style and personality that closely resembles your own. Don’t be upset if you’re still looking, a lot of people are.
I’ve been in zerg guilds and ones that require you to apply, across three separate realms (Thrall, Proudmoore and Area 52) and both factions. The only ones that are very friendly are the insanely casual ones, which don’t line up with what I do so much. I’m casual, but not “cool I hit 60, time to sit around and dance in Oribos until next expansion” casual like these guilds are, lol. Any guild that matches or surpasses my progression are very standoffish, even when I pass their application stages.
Yeah, that makes sense. I assumed it was because these guilds are long-formed and the core people have known each other for a long time and are more comfortable with each other. That said, other games (like ff14) are the same way, but infinitely more welcoming, so this is definitely a WoW thing. Being gun shy and not even saying “welcome” to new members is a big gap. I’m just trying to figure out why it’s so prevalent (IN MY EXPERIENCE - BEFORE THE FORUM POLICE STRIKE ME DOWN) in this game.
Its about merit too, in my experience you generally get less out of helping a new player then what you get so its easy to get used to “ghosting” them. And I’m not saying thats a good thing. It doesn’t help that many wow systems are tied to specific group sizes in addition to there actually being a knowledge component to most content in this game. Its all fun and games until you say sure to doing a key and you suddenly are wiping on halkias because the new player didn’t listen the first few times you said that there is a circle and stay in it or be feared.
Another common one I know is the case where a group is forming for m+ and its real common to exclude people based on what most of the group wants to do since some folks will have trouble handling the affix/damage check/key level/basic mechanics and so on but the group in general wants to push because there really isn’t much else to do anymore. Raid is similar in that it feels bad to exclude but sometimes you have to choose between bring the inexperienced player or not deal with reprog, something I might add I generally push to dealing with reprog since the point of a guild to me is to have a place to raid with the same people and improve.
Ironically the problem you are seeing is somewhat similar to why you are looking for a good guild in the first place, a lot of people really want to play with people of similar skill levels and do content that fits or is even slightly above that skill level. Another big one is that morale across wow is at an all time low, at least in every circle I’ve been in. People not saying welcome is in bad taste sure, my devil’s advocate reasoning for that is that its far more likely for a new character to be an alt then a genuine new player in a lot of mid tier guilds that most people just assume its an alt before even checking. Keep it at though, cliques on their own aren’t an issue and a lot of the time its possible for them to get new members, just be persistent and don’t be discouraged by players being surly, and everyone likes playing with solid players.
Thank you for your response. It had several good points. I think the only part I’m hung up on is the… lack of human-ness (or whatever word is supposed to be used there) of it all. When I join a guild, I’m very friendly - I say hi when I log in, I join the discord and introduce myself, I try to interact and engage with conversations going on… but 9/10 times I am completely ignored. I guess my personality just doesn’t line up with a lot of these guilds I keep getting into? I like to progress my character, but also love to hear about how someone’s day was. It seems like if you aren’t talking about mythic+ keys or your sick raid DPS, nobody talks about anything at all. I genuinely, as a human, don’t understand it. The game doesn’t feel very social at all. Like, if you invite me to your guild - treat me like a person. Otherwise don’t bother, you know?
I didn’t even know EVE was still a thing. My roommate use to play it over 10 years ago, and I haven’t heard anything about it since, lol.
It might be a server thing. I play on RP realms, so it’s exactly what you seem to be looking for there. Maybe Normal realms are more concerned about that? I’m not sure.
It might be difficult to find that balance between progression and casual with some places. I’ve not had this issue, but I’m only one person on RP realms.