Just in trying to come up with a good title for this thread, I spent about five minutes. How is this relevant? Over the course of the last few months, I have been working to compile a group of friends and gamers, to create a guild for the Burning Crusade. Thus far, we have picked up several people from each class, and are working to solidify our roster and prepare for the oncoming expansion. Most have us have played together at one point or another over the last two years.

We had our first meeting, and we hit an interesting issue. We need to decide upon a guild name. Now, there are all sorts of ideas being thrown around. As of now, we're in a temporary guild that I started by the name of <Faction>.

Most of the guild members don't want to keep this name. That's cool. When I asked them for ideas, here's what I got back.

<Fluffy> (Relevance: Imagine encountering a premade, or group of Horde players that come by, rip you apart, and once they're done with you, leave. Just the image. Fluffy is intended to be ironic, but it isn't very serious. It seems to lack a fundamental meaning. Nothing to really rally around.)
<Strawberry Banana Fusion> (Relevance: I don't really know... )
<Dawn> (Relevance: A new beginning. It's what we're hoping to start.)
<Genesis> (Relevance: Same as Dawn. Just a "cooler" word for some.)


In their own right, all okay names. The issue is, what to go for? How do you satisfy everyone? How close can you get to satisfying everyone?

I'm looking for something slightly serious, since I perceive that a strong guild name helps to add to the atmosphere. We obviously want to have fun, but we also want to succeed and progress. Firetree doesn't have a lot of progression, especially on Horde side. We'd like to change that, in both PvP and PvE, come TBC.

What people don't want, is something cliché. Others are looking to have a strong, fundamental underlying meaning. Some want one word guild tags, others don't want to fit the "norm". I don't want a name that's degrading or lacks positivity. I want something we can rally around and use as motivation.

So we eventually want to get something witty, funny, AND serious.

So my final question is, how did you all eventually arrive at your guild names? Was there any process? Is it really that large of an issue? Who picked the final name? How?

The guild name itself is largely irrelevant you can pretty much choose anything. The reputation you build up is far more important imo.

Basically every single decent 1 word name will already be in use by some other successful guild on another server. My advice choose something original but not too silly or long.

I think most guilds use this web site.

We had a hard time coming up with a name, so we pitched a really awful one that we found funny to the members and told them they'd have to come up with something everyone liked or we'd go with the awful one. Pretty quickly, someone came up with Explicit Content and noone disliked it so we went with it.

I think it's a prewritten law in WoW that every server must have a guild named Rebirth, or something similar. Has your server filled it's quota?

Didn't Barnum say something along the lines of pleasing all the people, all the time? As in, you never will?

What's the saw about building consensus... it's always good to do, but it's always bad to get stymied by too? Ultimately, your guild name isn't going to kill RaidBossDeJour. That said, Digo's here led me to naming my previous guild in homage. (Didn't kill any raid bosses for us, either)

If I had it all to do over again, I'd just outright steal one I saw on a PVP server: Teddy Bear Tree Hug Club.

or this one.

We had submissions on names, we voted on 400 names, then held a runoff between the top 12 or so, and finally decided on the name we had first proposed at the start: Humility.

Derail: The Little Prince is a very well known book.

On Topic:

Most guild names suck. Most suck and suck badly.

However there's a reason why so many names one word and latin rubbish and such. It's because they're innocuous.

The thing about an innocuous name is that it allows the reputation your guild has to come from the people in the guild and the way it plays not the name itself. It might seem silly at first, but after a while then name gains associations not because of the name but because of the guild itself, and it starts to mean exactly what you want it to mean.

So just pick a name, nothing too bad, and just start playing.

My Pet Peeves:

Hyperbolic "cute" or "silly" names: Super Happy BBQ Fun Time, Teddy Bear Tree Hug Club. (one exception being the guild on my server where the name is actually a teddy bear (oh art!) )

Religious: anything with Heaven, Crusaders, Satan, Devil, etc in it.

Poor English: Bad spelling, stupid capitalisation, etc.

Avoid the pretentious, Latin, and poor grammar and spelling... anything goes really. Hell, ours is a Motorhead song I think. As stated a few posts ago it's really the reputation you make for yourself which matters. Just stay away from names which at first glimpse label you as full of yourselves or outright retarted.

To be honest, I've always thought that <Milk and Cookies> would make a great guildname. Too bad that the rest of the world disagrees.