Hello there,

I posted about three weeks ago in this thread, unsure if my group of six was going to find a solid and reliable raiding guild that we fit in well with. My spouse and I literally must have done at least 20 hours of research into finding guilds. We initially pored, line by line, over the WoW Guild Recruitment forums, and went line by line over the bosskillers recruitment section, visiting every guild's website to see if they were looking for the right classes, with the right times, were in the right place in progression, and initially seemed to be a good fit. We went through the forums of the realms starting with the letters A and B, line by line. We kept a recruitment thread up on each of several sites and kept it bumped.

It seemed like a never ending uphill battle. We developed a list of about 30 guilds whose requirements roughly met our needs and then went onto each and every guild's server to speak to them personally about it. We would come on about 1.5 hours before scheduled raid time and sit until 0.5ish hours before their scheduled raid time.

If the guild did not have at least 20-22 people on to raid 15-30 minutes before raid time, they got crossed off.

If the GM was not online at 30 minutes til raid time, they got crossed off.

We would introduce ourselves and ask if they had about 20 minutes to talk. If they said no, we would offer to come back at a time of their choice; if they were rude at all, we would thank them for their time and leave.

If they talked down to us, they got crossed off the list. If they talked up to us, they got crossed off.

The list slowly but surely dwindled down to two. The first of the two, Guild A, spoke to us arrogantly and told us that two of our players would be sitting 80-90% of the time regardless of attendance or member/initiate status but that we should consider ourselves lucky because no one else was going to take us, and was extremely rude at first. I then said, "Alright, well then, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you sitting down to chat with me; have a good night."

I logged off and went back to my old server, dejected at the prospect of searching through 1000 realm forums guild rec threads. Less than five minutes later, a different officer from Guild A logs onto OUR server, and proceeds to tell me that they are 'willing to negotiate' and are willing to knock two of their people off to put ours in, if they perform well enough and they apologize for the rudeness. My husband and I talk for awhile to this person; and we hop on Ventrilo to talk to all four of their officers. They refused to give us specific details about much of anything and continued to be arrogant, and reiterated over and over again about how 'we won't be able to find anything else so we're passing up a huge thing.'

I initially agreed with these people, and thought that, ya, we probably will not find something better for a very long time. My husband, the tank in question, wanted to hold off to talk to this very last guild on our list, Guild B.

He liked what they said on their site and liked where they were in progression. He liked everything about them. I hadn't really studied them. They just happened to be the last guild I added to our 'potentials' list, not last because of importance or criteria or anything.

It was SO worth it. The very last guild, Guild B, we had on our potential list was extremely polite, nice, respectful, up front and honest about their expectations, not kiss-ass, not totally carebear, asked us intelligent and thoughtful questions, showed strong raiding & management knowledge and a desire to succeed, and even checked out our gear and talked with all of us on Ventrilo before we applied. Their 'officers' took a look at our stuff, told us what their few issues were right then and there, and gave us a chance to address them/talk about them. At the point where we applied, we had ended up talking so much that it was a formality. We got the go to transfer while on Ventrilo, just on condition that we fill out an application.

Initiate status will be over here in the next few days for better or worse results for us; but the entire tedious, stressful, and sucky process and hard work our group went through to find this guild was totally worth it. It has been, so far, the best guild I've ever been in, bar none. Each one of us is completely happy about how it's turned out for us. They tell us we are doing stellar, fwiw.

Guild B's server as a whole is not progressed; they are one of two guilds doing acceptably well on their server. However, seeing as we were looking for the guild to be a permanent home; having other options on the server was not an issue with any of us. Plus, none of us are that poor that we can't afford to transfer if (hopefully not) that time ever came again. Server progression was a non-issue for us. Because they are one of two decently progressed guilds on the server, there are hardly any guild hoppers in this particular guild. It's just; been so damn perfect. Now I really know what it means to 'fit' into a guild.

Funny enough, a couple of days ago, a person from Guild A HAPPENED to come over and apply at one of the top guilds of my old server. Well, the top guilds are usually all friends with each other, as you know, and we were able to hear about some long, long piece of drama going on in this Guild A that had chased us and attempted to negotiate with us. It really made us glad we decided to go with what we did.


Edit: As an afterthought, this last guild, the one we are initiates in right now, we found them from an ad they placed on the WoW Guild Recruitment Forums.

From the sounds of it, you guys did a dedicated and thorough job of looking for a guild who was right for you in general, but I am curious about these two criteria... I'm not entirely sure what you were hoping to accomplish with them.

It could mean that they want a guild with people that play somewhat substantially outside of raid times, but I'm not sure how good a measure looking at those specific things can be. I know that many people for us tend to get off work and get home just in time to get on for a night's raid, for example.

While the first one is probably a decent measure, you'd probably have crossed off my guild (where I am GM) as I am always never on 30 minutes right before raid time. Most of the time I am frantically rushing home from work at that time - but our raid leader is always on 30 minutes before raid time. I think "GM" should be replaced with "Raid Leader" - it's probably far more important for the person leading the raid to be on 30 minutes beforehand, and this person may or may not always be the GM.

Well, I too sometimes log onto WoW right before raid; but I am also not an officer, RL, or GM. And it's definitely not a habit for me. 95% of the time I am logged on by 30-45 minutes before invites so that I can get regeants, consumables, bags, gear, whatever, ready to go for that day.

If they have four to five people listed as officers/GM/RLs and none of them are on fifteen minutes to a half hour before raid time; well; since we obviously didn't know anyone from their guild, let alone on their server; we used that as a guide as to whether or not they actually get started on time, when they say they start. It was important to us to find a guild that starts when they say theyre starting and ends when they say they're ending. If I come on at the designated time, and we get stuck waiting for someone who is late, or if I have to sit for someone who showed up late, or if we have 22 people on to raid at start time and have to wait for the late people to get there before we can start, well, that would be an issue for me. As well as it would be for the co-raiders in this story.

In every guild I've been in, the RL/GM/Officers always, always, always have admin stuff to do before raid. If they aren't logging on before raid to take care of it...


We crossed off a few guilds because none of their listed contacts (usually four to five were listed, sometimes one to two) were on 15-30 minutes before raid time; maybe if we weren't transfers, we wouldn't have crossed them off but since we had no way of truly knowing what we were walking into, and although they didn't know this until we arrived, we all have 90-100% attendance, we felt justified in doing so.

I wouldn't want to get into a situation where the rules are more lax or less lax than our own opinions towards raiding; it would make a mess of things for both parties/sides. I guess that's part of finding a guild that fits, though, really.

And what if, like me, they tend to take care of that stuff -after- the previous raid instead of right before? Or what if the officers are all available in Ventrilo but are mostly out of game, on alts, or on different servers doing followup work on applicants?

We start raids at 5:30 server and we frequently go from 18 online to 40 online in the last 10 minutes. That doesn't mean we don't start forming at 5:30, and it doesn't mean that people come to raid unprepared--simply that we don't wait until the last minute to do these things.

And I'd also ask how you knew the officers or guild leaders weren't online... did you /w someone from the guild and ask? Our recruitment officer is nearly always online... but he has many alts and isn't always on his main.

You've made your choice and you seem happy with it so far, so kudos to you! But at the same time I'd caution others about making assumptions. There's more than one way to do almost anything, including run an organized and serious raid guild.

I've been in a guild where the GM was a level 1 barefoot dwarf wearing a tux in Ironforge on a account shared among the officers (worked more like a council) ... so looking for the GM may not always be successful. But as other said, find out who among the players are those who leads the raid and look for them instead ... in our case it's a bunch of players caring for different tasks at any one raid. I guess I'm trying to say that different guilds are handling their stuff in different ways so without some fairly extensive research you'll probably end up making assumptions in the wrong direction.

But since you found a guild in the end I guess it worked for you

WowJutsu: World of Warcraft Guild Rankings: All Realms


pair that with the wow realm forums and you should be fine.


you can see what guilds are ranked where...and you can see the entire realm's overall progression, and then check their realm forums, then app to the guild.

verifying recruitment isn't even really a necessity, find a guild you think will work well for you, on a server where you have other options if that guild doesn't work out in the near future, then talk to the guild.


this method led me to my current guild, <Doom>, and I absolutely feel right at home

The tux clothes used to have a level 25 or 35 requirement on them. I once tried to dress all my banks up, and couldn't. Did they change this at some point?

Tonight, we got to the point where the officers stepped aside after the raid, and agreed it's time for a transfer. Our server is dead. We've got about 10 people to come with us, for a total of about 15. Most guilds recruit 5 people at most, and the ones who recruit more are generally the kind of scrub guilds were trying to move away from. I honestly don't know what to do as a GM anymore. I try and post on guild recruitment, but topics move so fast there my post quickly goes unnoticed

Don't just post an ad. Look for people who are looking for a guild and appear to be a match for your needs. Post on their threads. It gives you a chance to contact them directly, but also another chance to advertise your guild to other people trolling through all the posts.

I would say check out wow jutsu for guilds that are at your level of experience. And then whichever ones apeal to you just look into them more. Find out from their realm forums guild listing if they have a website. You are going to have to do some searching around no matter what.

With that many people, just start a new guild on a popular server. You'll be able to recruit enough players, especially as its pretty regular for mid-guilds on the popular servers to break apart pretty often.

Most of the top servers also run pretty advanced PUGs, for example on Korgath there is currently a horde PUG that kills Maulgar/Gruul/Magtheridon, and may have downed Void Reaver and Lurker as well.

WowJutsu: World of Warcraft Guild Rankings: Ranked US Realms is ranked (PVE) US, just replace us with eu for Europe. Make sure the realm your moving to is balanced, horde-alliance wise.

This kind of hits close to home, since I'm trying to find a good guild off-server at this point. I just keep running into the brick wall of "You must have your Vashj vial."

I keep looking for guilds at or just past Vashj, since that's my level of experience and I'm not really looking to bypass content. I just want to get back into the raid game without falling behind where I was before I took several months off for RL reasons. Coming back and finding out no one runs SSC anymore, but you have to to key to Illidan was a shock. It's like needing to kill Rags to get into Ahn'Quiraj. That aside, I'm just not seeing a lot of guilds in the recruitment forum that are still going to kill Vashj unless they are only 1-2 into SSC. I don't want to relearn Leotheras... All the guilds I see on Kael are either PVE server or raid at times I can't make, or raid 6 days a week which is just too much.

Maybe I'm being too picky?

I don't know how helpful this would be for you, but the Vashj vial requirement can be overcome if the guild you're looking into has a few applicants in the same predicament. Depending on the phrasing in the application process you might want to send in for it anyway. "Vashj vial" at the bottom of a requirements section is more likely to be flexible than "If you don't meet our requirements exactly you might as well drown in a sack of kittens" at the header.

Guilds that killed Kael in the past month would probably not mind too much either, and as long as they don't disband, any guild capable of doing Kael will probably be farming Illidan by the end of the year.

Personally, when I started looking for a guild a few weeks ago, I looked mainly at the Guild Recruitment forums. Then I started looking through the progression threads on each of the realms on my Battlegroup (Whirlwind) and making a list of all the alliance guilds that were either just starting BT/Hyjal or were well into it . I felt that I should also look into guilds in my battlegroup as I've experienced most of the top guilds in PvP/Arena, had many friends on some of the servers in it and was kind iffy on xfering to a realm on where I don't know anyone in the battlegroup at all. My previous guild was stuck on Kael for 6+ weeks so I didn't want to transfer into another guild like that, so that narrowed the list down quite a bit.

Luckily for me, one of my good friends transfered off the server I was on after our previous guild broke up and joined Casual on Hyjal. Fortunately for me, one of their warlocks emo'd out and ebayed after being beaten by a feral druid in shadow resist gear during a duel...so I saw their post on the guild recruitment forums when I was talking to my friend in that guild and he asked me to apply. I sent in an application and was accepted within a few hours. Myself and a few other applicants were taken through TK so we could get the item off Kael for attunement and then we did SSC so a few others could get that item. Since then recruitment was changed to BT/Hyjal attuned players, so I got in at the perfect time.

Wowjitsu was damn helpful as I could easily check out guilds rankings. gear level and the progress each has made.

Just make sure to put some time into research on the guild & server before you transfer over as you're pretty much screwed for 3 months if they're the only progressed guild and you don't fit in at all.

I have to disagree with the "GM must be online 30min before raids".

I'm generally on a bank alt sorting out raid materials at that time.

I've wondered how people transferring with multiple players find a guild. We've taken group transfers in the past - but its always tricky integrating them into the guild.

If the host guild has 5 raid slots for you - it usually means the host guild is on the verge of breaking up because it's been canceling raids for a while. Usually a guild will have maybe 2-3 active slots open but other people that come along with you will be sitting out initially.

It's very helpful to have a WWS report these days when applying. For example, I received a group app with 3 people. I can use one of them immediately, but I have enough of the other 2 classes. Yes, I could use another exceptional rogue or mage, but the gear isn't outstanding and I wouldn't expect it to be. A WWS report would let me know how effectively they play their characters. Instead I have to take a guess and compare them to the mages and rogues I have currently.

In all likelihood, the honest thing to do would be to decline this group. I could take 3 of them on, but who pays $25 to transfer and sit out on raids?

This is a little bit off-topic, but sometimes I wonder what effects the server transfers will have on the overall population balance for many of the WoW servers in the long run. Currently, it seems that server transfers are creating a slow but steady population shift from the low population, poorly organized "have not" servers to the high population, well progressed "have" servers. Reasons for this could include slow PvE content releases and problems with bosses like Kael'thas (which create guild volatility), glorification of BG9 for PvP, Blizzard's apparent apathy for the difficulties of finding groups and achieving PvE progression on small servers, and ranking tools such as WoWJutsu Realm Rankings which provide a way to quantify the "best" servers in WoW. So what happens when the "have" servers become overpopulated with transfers and the "have not" servers become more and more empty? Is Blizzard willing to possibly give up some of its gaudy $25-per-transfer profits to do something about it?

Also, I wonder if the number of character transfers is clearly noticeable for residents of servers like Tichondrius, Mal'Ganis, Korgath, etc, which are probably among the most common destinations. Any thoughts?

I know most of my transfers come from lower population servers because the one "end-game" guild in town didn't have openings and the diversity of players left them few options to progress.

Is it analogous to people from small towns moving to big cities for more opportunities? Maybe.

You have the reverse happen sometimes. Mid-range guilds transfer to a smaller server to become the dominant force there.

On a whole, based on my observations (anecdotal evidence), transfers have had a negative effect on small-population servers.

I don't think there's an issue with overpopulating the high pop servers. We're on a medium population server and applicants seem to find this to be the right fit.