I rolled my first character the night the servers went up. I leveled him quickly, being the 4th or 5th level 60 Warrior on the server. This made me highly sought after as a person to come tank all the “hard content” like Stratholme, Upper Blackrock Spire, and the like. But around level 57, while I was leveling and farming for Hearts of Fire to level my blacksmithing, I was approached by a Night Elf Hunter who wanted me to join their guild.
He told me how his guild was awesome, about how they helped each other, and were a great group of folks. And then he gave me 3 Hearts of Fire and said if I was interested to send him a tell. At the time I had a few real-life friends playing so I talked about it with them. I ended up joining that guild and my friends join just a few days later.
And from that point on, we were members of Ravencrest Watch on Deathwing. I became the main tank for tons of the early content, my friend playing a Mage named “Prudence” became our raid leader, and we rocked. In fact we rocked for years upon years. The guild didn’t “die” till the beginning of Serpentshrine Cavern content, which is about the time I rolled Drotara. We had the same group of raiders with very few changes for years. And many still play, with our old guild leader (who originally was a Warlock) heading the reigns of “Might” on Turalyon with at least a couple other old friends still playing. I became such good friends with some of them that a few of them were invited to my wedding. I remember some of their children being born and thinking that they are starting kindergarten or first grade now.
Before server transfers your choices in guilds relied on the quality of your server and your reputation. Create a bad reputation for yourself severely hindered your ability for progression. For example, there was a Druid who rolled on and won a Deathstriker (now affectionately known as the Felstriker). The person ended up quitting or rerolling because no one on Deathwing would take him.
I used to do create random items during the Winter’s Veil event and give them away as gifts to the random people in Ironforge because it made me smile. But the long-lasting effect it had on people was immeasurable I think. We had a Paladin in our guild at the time named Gull. He was absolutely hilarious and a blast to have around. He was pretty good too. But he told me once that during one Christmas he was the random recipient of one of my wrapped gifts, which happened to have a pair of Truesilver Gauntlets. As he was only level 41 or 42 at the time, they were amazing. He said that he knew he wanted to be in the guild that I was in.
Ravencrest Watch had a fabulous reputation on Deathwing. It was revived and still exists to this day, although with a much different core of people.
But that mentality is long gone. Are there guilds that survive for a long time? Absolutely. Has server and faction transfers opened up the ability to play with friends who you never knew played? Of course. And it helps prevent some servers from having stagnant progression, at least in theory.
But at the same time, most people would never think twice about hopping to a new guild. Stagnant progression because of bad players? Hate your guild leadership? 5 friends on another server?
Guild change. Server change. Faction transfer. The solution is there, but despite how many friends I have in-game right now, there has never been the camaraderie I had in the original Ravencrest Watch.
Do you still experience strong ties to your guild? Is it a social guild or are you looking for progression? Maybe this is an issue only in raiding guilds and not experienced in social guilds for friends and family. I would like to know what you think. So, thoughts, comments, etc. Post ‘em!
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I hold a firm belief that guild loyalty died with the advent of WoW’s popularity. Never before have I seen such selfish behavior from people in a game. I am usually someone that is in it for the long haul, sticking with guilds until they inevitably die. I’m a different generation of MMO gamer, though. Back in EverQuest, I had to spend over a month applying and raiding with guilds to even get invites!
Stuff like that made you stick around and do your best. No one ever went through a month-long app process and then decided to leave a month later because they weren’t getting enough loot.
I know how you feel. I think every guild I have ever been in I was with until it blew up. It just so happened that the first guild had a really long fuse.
Amazing arc you had there, Dro, and you make an interesting point about how the transfer and character change system has affected guilds. I think you could even argue that the focus that Blizzard is placing on guild cohesion and longevity in Cata is a response to the adverse impacts that you mentioned, an attempt to counterbalance the pick-and-choose mentality which seems to be prevalent.
In my mind, guild loyalty ultimately depends on your perspective. I always fall back on the hypothetical of the long-term member versus the new guy … The long-term member has been in the guild since inception, he’s a good player, but because of his external commitments or personal preference, he has sporadic raid attendance. When he’s there, he does good; but he can’t be counted on to be there all the time. The new guy, on the other hand, has shown up every night for the past 3 months. Rain or shine, holidays or finals week, he’s been there, and he performs near perfection. But after those 3 months, he inexplicably qguits, taking a couple pieces of loot with him. Which was the more “loyal” player?
That is an excellent point and will ultimately come down to how someone defines “loyal.” At this stage in the game, some people would consider being a member of a guild for 3 months a pretty long period of time. But if your guild has far reaching goals, does either member actually make the cut? Consider how long some guilds wipe on something like heroic Lich King, is 3 months of progression enough? Or is the sporadic attendance enough?
Many “hard core” raiding guilds wouldn’t consider either member consistent enough. But that returns to the idea of how you define your guild.
So I think the better question may not be “Which was the more loyal player” but which player do you value more for their different versions of loyalty.
I don’t think that guild loyalty is dead, it’s just much harder to find due to WoW being so popular. When you have a larger population, you’re certainly bound to run into more jerks (and you remember them more too).
Having said that, I believe that I have found one of the rare awesome guilds. Our guild loyalty is very high in general. Sure we have a couple of players who come in and find out within a month that they’re not a good fit. Other than that, people usually only leave because they’re quitting WoW altogether or they want to transfer to spend more time with RL family and friends. Many of them have told me just how great our guild is and that they’re so happy to have met us.
Having said that, I have noticed that things have become more strained since we became more of a raiding guild and are actually on relatively current content. So whether that goes to show that raiding guilds do have more problems than social guilds is hard to say. After all, raiding guilds must work together as a team and there will always be conflicts in that sort of environment.
I think the challenge with a raiding guild is you generally have to keep the raiders happy. With a social guild for friends and family, you are under no obligation as a guild to perform or meet any expectations other than being fun.
As you recruit people for raid progression, a certain expectation comes into play. They came to your guild with the intent of killing dragons. And if that expectation isn’t met in the form of learning and progression then they will start to look for a guild that can meet their personal requirements.
That makes sense if you start off as a raiding guild. We’re an old RP guild that has morphed over time into a social/RP/raiding guild. As most of our members don’t come looking specifically to kill internet dragons, perhaps that’s why it’s easier for us to find loyal members?
My views are probably skewed because I’ve never actually been in a guild whose main purpose was to raid, so I guess I can’t really comment on how “hardcore” raiders operate. All I know is they don’t stick around with us very long. :P
My raiding community also held into bc, i was on every first kill in mc bwl aq naxx, Though back on my server Argent Dawn raiding guilds werent common, since all people was in their own rp guild and we joined raid communitys.
I’ll be brief and say that I do not like the term ‘guild loyalty’. while loyalty is a god thing and I certainly expect some of my guildmates (especially those that have been around for longer), it implies the notion of binding yourself and ‘belonging’ to a guild no matter what. guilds are always about give and take: the deal is rather clear in raidguilds but it’s there in more casual guilds too.
there needs to be a balance between what you do for your guild and what the guild in return provides you with. in the end you play this game for yourself and your enjoyment. if you end up in a guild that for whatever reason cannot satisfy what you’re looking for, by all means you are free to leave. you should never stay in a guild out of feeling of obligation. you should stay because it’s where you WANT to be.
I’ve never had an issue with a guildmate leaving us for his own good reasons. as for the ‘guildhopper’ type, I feel no loss whatsoever to see such a person go, the sooner the better. that said, my guild has very rarely attracted this sort of player, I actually believe it is also about your guild’s leadership and how it promotes itself on a server that influences what sort of recruits you take in.
I started playing 2 years ago and I’m still in the same guild. Course now I’m GM. We still have some of the same players from when I first joined. But I’ve seen literally hundreds of players come and go. I think whether or not a person is loyal to their guild has a lot to do with whether or not they view guilds as communities or as a means to an end. Those that think the former way tend to tough it out those that think the latter are more likely to search for greener pastures.
A guildy of mine once got booted from a PuG due to his Guild affiliation, so guild reputation does matter still within realm communities, and some have left for other guilds due to this very reason, I myself feel loyal to my flailing guild, which has definitely seen it’s prime and approaching retirement age, but as long as there are new raiders joining we still have life. What is more important really depends on the person, I probably won’t leave them, they taught me how to raid, and gave me a chance to prove myself, challenged me to improve and not be a scrub Huntard, I am thankful for this and am rather fond of them, however I value the well-being of the group myself, and choose to stay even though I think I could quite easily get into one of the more active guilds, so what If I gimp my progression, at least I’m enjoying myself on vent joking around, my running joke to keep spirits up is that as a hunter I’m always responsible for the wipe, even if the tank forgot to taunt, my fault anyway.
BUT… for others they want to achieve, and this is OK as the game provides for this too, so for the more progression minded a guild is merely a tool, and top end raiding guilds counteract this anti-social mind-set by the fact that it’s made up of people who regard the guild as a tool, and therefore they are really only combining forces temporarily until a better offer comes along. So while I feel loyal i can understand why others may not. So all guilds will have loyalty issues, some more than others, my example is my guild which has fallen on hard times and people are drifting away due to their needs being fulfilled.
If a guild has got enough people in it that care about a the guild for whatever purpose be it a tool or a forum for social interaction, it will succeed. as for accountability, and responsibility when with others, we lost that in the community with the advent of random dungeons and cross-realm groups sadly, such is human nature. In the right circumstances anybody will willingly step on others to reach their goals, that tendency is sadly part of being human.
While I think these points are valid, and common, they are not all-inclusive.
I am in a guild that I joined at the end of BC, which was when I started. I did jump around to a few guilds (~15 server and faction changes) for the sake of progression, but after around 6 months of being in “good” guilds with poor social aspects, I returned to my home, Arisen. Arisen has been around since vanilla, and has always had a RL>WoW understanding. We might not be doing progression raids, but we have *fun* while we play.