With the new Looking for Group tools and the ability to quickly gear up a toon, I am beginning to wonder why somone would need to be in a Guild anymore. Add in the increased availibility of Enchanting mats and the ability to buy pretty much any Enchant on a scroll in the Auction House and well, what are Guilds for nowadays?

The reason I am asking is that I am in a Guild that I am just not happy with anymore. It was a social Guild that ran good Raids (which is what I was interested in) and is now (thanks to some of the newer members) attempting to transform into a "hardcore raiding" Guild. Almost all of my friends have left and I keep finding excuses not to run with them. I am thinking of leaving and running without a Guild since right now I do not want the drama and see few reasons for belonging to one at all.

This is partly venting and partly an attempt to provide some discussion on what a Guild is for.

Thanks in advance!

Talexei - Bladefist

Both guilds and PUGs are social organizations. A Guild is a long term organization, a PUG is a short term. In order for a guild to be successful, there must be some common bond which causes its members to want to remain together. A PUG, particularly a cross server PUG, will never exist for longer than the immediate goal.

Why be in a guild? Because you want consistency in who you group with. Because you want predictability in your raid team. Because you want people who will be tolerant of you while you are learning to play on your alt tank/healer/dps. Because you have access to crafters who cover every profession and will make stuff for you without you worrying about losing mats. Because you want people who will put up with your puns in gchat (a personal favorite). In short, there are raiding, economic, and social reasons for belonging to a guild.

I believe your our issue is not with the concept of a "guild". Your issue is with the changes that your current guild is going through. Guilds change and evolve over time. Mine has gone from a small pvp group to a casual raider to a hard core raider over the course of the last 5 years. Membership changes as a guild does.

If you are looking for a guild that is social and still puts together good raids, you can find it. You just have to look. But I suspect the reason why you thought they were "good raids" is because they were led by the same people each time and had the same group of participants each time. If you PUG exclusively, you will be subject to extreme variation. You may get a great team one time, and a terrible one the next. Are you willing to put up with this?

Try other guilds on before discounting the notion all together. WoW is a MMO- one of those "M's" is multiplayer. The game can be played solo, but to be experienced, it has to be as part of a group. The right group will make your experience more fun and rewarding.

Guild's really have one (or both) of two reasons to exist.

The social element and the progression element.

If you're in a social guild and you don't enjoy the social atmosphere, then there's little to no use for you to stay with that guild. If you are unable to find a guild that suits, then you may be more happy being the lone gunman.

The Progression element is a more fickle thing as it contains many elements. Most of which is a collection of like minded and like-skilled raiders with similar goals. It often works with a time and a loot structure. Most importantly the raiders get familiar with each other. This means runs are often faster and contain less drama. This is often needed to achieve hard modes, especially 25 mans.

If neither of these suit you, then, for sure, go solo.

Down the track, Blizzard is introducing a lot of new features for guilds. The front page of MMO-Champion currently has a recap of these.

I will be interested to see how the guild levels and guild talents play out in terms of customization, and whether they allow guilds to market themselves as more casual/hardcore, pve/pvp, etc. The introduction of guild items that vanish if you /gquit will also be intresting - what's the point of being a gbank ninja if everything you take melts the moment you get your /gkick?

All the new options also make me think that the early days of Cataclysm will be a case of "let a thousand flowers bloom" for new guilds. People will look at the new options and think, 'thats cool, lets try setting up a guild'. Some will prosper, some will fade.

For me, the guild has always been primarily for progression. First in Vanilla when that was the only way to get in, then in BC and Wrath when it was the best way to work with a group of people and overcome challenges. Teamwork is much better with familiar people, and a pug won't wipe week in week out on a boss like Anub HM or Yogg+0.

Aside from that, being able to relax with the people you've been bonding with under stressful situations is a great way to be able to relieve the tension when the pressure is on. Mucking around with people outside raids gives you plenty of easy jokes to make because you're friends and know more than just what the other guy's DPS is.

The sporting team analogy works well. Its the difference between a bunch of people who get together in the park and play a muck around match, including random strangers walking up and joining in, versus the organised team who plays and trains together every week.

On the right server you will notice you don't need a guild to do anything. Sadly Blizzard thinks we all have to conform to a guild or be punished (as the future releases will make guilds have "perks" and it is wise to be in one or you miss out). Sadly guilds are usually nothing more than a place to cause more drama and problems in wow than you already have.

Yes I know some guilds are awesome, some people really lovethem, and I hope I find that someday and my opinion changes.

No one "needs" a guild in today's WOW. Pugging is now a viable way to gear your toon. I am in a 10 man raiding guild and we use pugs as subs all the time. We have a list of reliable pugs but if they are unavailable we will just grab a pugling and go. We have had great luck in doing this. It enables us to not keep a large roster of subs in the guild who have to sit on the sidelines waiting for a chance to raid.

I also pug 25 man content myself. After you do it awhile, you know who to go with and who not to. Blizzard has done a great job of making end-game content accessible by the guildless out there.

So if you haven't found a good guild or just don't like being in one, you can definitely still get good gear and see very cool content in pugland.

Guild = Social element to WoW. Not just getting gear and hording it for yourself, but working in a group to progression. Be it progression in PvP Arena standings or PvE Raiding situations.
Of course... thats my opinion so no flaming back to me
**Edit** If your only "pugging" with certain people your just about as close to a guild as you can get without naming yourself as one.

Blizzard in no way is 'forcing' you to join a guild. In fact, in Wrath it has been quite the opposite. Blizzard has done everything in their power to enable people to not require a guild to raid and see all the content, or to be part of a social guild and raid outside the guild itself.

In Cataclysm, guilds are getting more organised and effective. I think this is in part because of the success of Wrath and the lack of requirement to have a guild if you want to see raid content. Unlike a lot of Gen Y'ers, I don't see failing to be given a reward as a "punishment". Because Blizzard has added some reward for those who work together as a guild that doesn't entitle you to that reward without putting the same effort in. Blizzard is rewarding those who choose to form and maintain a guild, by giving them benefits that an unguilded person doesn't get. Its an encouragement to maintain the guild structure, as from their point of view, being in a guild gives a person a more solid basis to continue playing. In the end Blizzard is a profit earning company, but the way the choose to earn that profit is by making you want to stay, rather than making you have to pay.

As for 'needing' a guild in Wrath, as I said above, I do need a guild to get the enjoyment of the game that I desire. When Blizzard puts a challenge up I want to beat it, and to beat things like Heroic Anub, or Yogg+0, PuGs won't cut it at least until midway through Cataclysm, like Sunwell is now. Don't tar everyone's 'needs' with the same brush, as by the same logic you don't 'need' to raid, or 'need' to quest. Give everyone a level 1 alt and make stormwind the only zone, and you've met the 'needs' of an AH tycoon.

My experiences with guilds and the close knit community of the guilds I've been in, has been what's kept me playing for five odd years, and I know that the periods I've spent unguilded were generally the least interesting bits.

The guilds system in wow is horrible, even the social system I would say. Facebooking the social system (ala cata xpac) sounds nice. But the single monolithic top down guild is I think the problem.

While they have done a insanely great job of letting addons grow, they really need a serverside groupLog so addons can pull from. Also the calendar needs to be be less protected to a degree. So that the two items can be grown.

For some reason they really don't want people in more than one organization unless its a global /channel and they. Your left with anonymous LFG, friendslist, city channel spamming, or your guild.

I would like to see sub guilds personally.

I'd prefer guild alliances, personally.

I agree with one of the posters above that it sounds like your problem really is more that you aren't happy with the changes that your guild has made. My question to you is, if you could find a guild that filled the role that your guild used to fill, would you want to join? If the answer is yes, then I suggest you start searching for that guild. There is, however, nothing wrong with flying solo. If you are feeling frustrated and burnt out because of the current state of your guild, then it might not be a bad idea to go solo for awhile. There is nothing worse than bringing all those frustrations right into a new guild and having them taint your view of that guild.

If you do choose to search for a new guild, I highly recommend you read this post from the Guild Relations forum and follow it's advice in your search for a new home.

I doubt that pugging would give me what I want from WoW, which is to do hard content with the appropriate gear ilevel (not sunwell raids in 258 ilevel gear).

You say "blizzard is rewarding those in a guild" yes that is the short version. Why should you be rewarded, in fact being in a guild is much easier to gear up. You have people to always run with, you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, and you know you will actually be in whatever raids you all choose to run.

Solo does not have any of these benefits. So....why should you be rewarded? Guilds by far are the easy way. I just feel that it really isn't fair and they aren't forcing you to be in a guild you are correct. Though if you aren't you miss out on "perks".

Actually this is completely possible even at your level. Mal'ganis (horde side) before ICC came out had successfully pugged all content, yes even hard modes. In fact 10 man hard modes aren't hard to find at all and are very common, if you have the gear and of course the skill. It's all about what server you play on and how fail it is.

Sometimes members outgrow a guild or vice versa. This is particularly true when the guild leadership changes, or the guild changes direction, or the guild either stops recruiting or starts recruiting.

I'm in a guild because I want to see all that the game has to offer and do the hard boss fights. I'm not really expecting to kill Algalon in a PUG or ToGC 25 Anub in a PUG. Such PUGs are rare. However, I also don't want to raid 5 days a week for 5 hrs at a time. The guild I was in for 2.5 years changed when leadership and members changed. The few of us who were left that had been there a long time finally decided to just split and join other guilds. I looked at guild web sites for probably 500 guilds, found about 10 that met the time criteria I wanted, listened to raids for 4 guilds and chose one of them.

In the brief 1 week I've been in my new guild, I've been very happy with it. People are interested in raid achievements, and killing the hard bosses. Even if that means spending 5 nights wiping on said hard boss. It reminds me of BT. PUGs dont like dying. They want everything to be easy.

I want a guild because I like to have a common objective with my guild-mates. I also really like the GM and the atmosphere, because I want the whole thing to be organized and fun. It's tough to find 3-day a week progression. And it's tough to find people who like raiding and don't mind or like doing the old content.

Its social engineering. Blizzard beleives, rightly or wrongly, that being in a guild will encourage more people to continue playing the game. In Wrath they decided that people being able to raid and see endgame content meant they'd stay longer. Now that they've succeeded there, the unintended consequence of this was that lots of people stay unguilded. Blizzard doesn't think this is tenable in the long run, and so Cataclysm will maintain the ease of raiding entry, while encouraging people to form more stable communities, an effort they believe will maintain the overall population at a higher level.

If you want the reward, you participate in the way that Blizzard believes will engender a higher population. If you choose to deviate from what they believe is the preferred course, then you choose to forego the rewards. Just like in say a sporting team, if you choose to forego things like training and practice, then you are choosing to forego rewards like winning.

Its not a punishment to deviate from their desired plan and not receive the reward, and personally I think that its a good thing, as the current situation in LFD has proven to me that PuG strangers are much less likely to be friendly and understanding in a 15 min instance than a guild you see every day.

Drawing from one of my flatmate's experiences, how many guilds do you know would kick a guild member from an instance run if they had to go to the door to pay the pizza delivery guy?

Perrin thanks for putting that into a different view. I see it from a little different angle and still don't like/agree with it but I understand it much better.

On the idea of kicking some random person I don't know or care about compared to kicking a guildie is a big difference. Guildie's you like to think of as friends and you wouldn't kick them, you wouldn't much less care, and that guildie should know that. If you are doing random LFG's, or wanting to pug raid and decide to order a pizza, you shouldn't expect 4-24 other strangers to wait on you. I can honestly say that I wouldn't do that to someone (pizza guy is different than someone that came over out of the blue) that I didn't know, and I wouldn't expect someone to do that to me. I hate getting into a heroic that should be done in 20 mins and waiting 7 extra minutes cause someone went AFK. Usually I'm healing or tanking, and if my other side is there we will just continue and not kick. In pug raids...this is the #1 reason I hate pugs is because there is always a coule jackasses that think they can waste my time and everyone elses by going afk for whatever reason. It's weird cause last night I was pugging TOC-25 and we kicked 3 people that went afk inbetween bosses because of this and I don't see any reason with that being "wrong".