Tag: guilds

How to Find a Guild for WoW Classic

Greetings!

Now that we are in the home stretch for the Classic WoW launch, it’s time to start thinking about what you want to do in-game, and to find a guild that will be the right fit in which to do whatever that is.

That’s where I found myself a few weeks ago, when Blizzard announced the timing for the Classic WoW name reservations. Because if you only have three names you can reserve, well, you need to know *where* you’d like to reserve them.

In expansions past, when I’ve looked for a new guild, I’ve always started my search through my @Anexxia Twitter account. I tried that for Classic but didn’t find what I was looking for. I’m sure many others are in that same boat, so here is how I found my Classic guild.

TL&DR

You can play Alliance-side with me on Pagle by joining up with the Grievance Gaming guild. Read the call for members on the Battlenet forums, then submit your application on the Grievance Forums, and note that I sent you. And don’t forget to let me know you submitted your app!)

What’s Your Ideal Classic Guild?

In Vanilla WoW, I was in a raiding guild that was the 3rd progressed Alliance-side on our server. And it was a huge time sink. I know that raiding is still a priority, but I can’t commit to the same perfect attendance record. That’s why I went looking for a casual raiding guild.

To figure out the right guild for your Classic adventures, ask yourself these questions:

  • How much time do I have to play Classic WoW each week?
    • Do you have a big blog of time one day per week? A few hours each day?
  • What kinds of activities do you most enjoy in-game?
    • Do you like World PvP? RP? Raiding? Dungeons? Crafting?
  • What will your most likely play days and times be?
    • Does a Pacific or Eastern server and its typical playtimes work best for your availability?
  • What is the class and role you want to play?
    • And make sure it’s actually a thing. For instance, I’d blocked out that my first shadow priest wasn’t actually a gnome…because that was not possible!

Finding a WoW Classic Guild With the Right Fit

I’ve written many times in these pages about the importance of finding a guild that’s the right fit. In Classic, like Vanilla, you’re going to be spending a lot of time playing with people on your server—rather than Group Finder’ing it up with randoms from other servers. This makes finding a server with a good server population and community equally important to finding a guild you love.

Here are the Americas and Oceanic realm names and types:

PVE Servers

Name Type Time Zone
Atiesh Normal Pacific
Mankrik Normal Eastern
Myzrael Normal Pacific
Pagle Normal Eastern

PVP

Name Type Time Zone
Faerlina PvP Eastern
Fairbanks PvP Pacific
Herod PvP Eastern
Stalagg PvP Eastern
Thalnos PvP Eastern
Whitemane PvP Pacific

RP

Name Type Time Zone
Bloodsail Buccaneers RP Eastern
Grobbulus RP-PvP Pacific

Oceanic realms will be:

Name Type Time Zone
Arugal PvP Australian Eastern Time
Remulos Normal Australian Eastern Time

For EU realms, see this post on the forums.

New Ways to Build WoW Classic Community

In Vanilla, we had server-specific WoW forums. Today, we have Discord servers and WoW Classic realm subreddits to unite the Classic server communities. Here are the ones I’ve come across:

(A HUGE thank you to folks behind Classic Discord for making it easier to share Discord realm links. B/C I would not want to be updating the above list with expiring Discord invite links every few weeks!)

I highly recommend joining the realm subreddit and Discord to get a feel for who is playing on the server. If the conversation feels like a good fit, then check out the recruitment posts to see which guilds are a match for what you want to accomplish in game, and when you will be looking to play.

How to Make Your Classic WoW Guild App Shine

It’s likely that whatever guild you are applying to for Classic WoW will have their standard application that will be asking who you are, what you want to do in WoW Classic, when you are available to play, and what your gaming history is.

Some applicants shoot for getting through the app as quickly as possible. While you can still get an invite with a brief and to the point application, I always look at a guild app as a way to find your niche within the guild. Share a little bit of color about who you are IRL and what you consider to be some of the best times to be had in-game. give the guild members reading your app a reason to smile, laugh, or reply to your app!

Shameless Plug for Joining Grievance for WoW Classic

If you’re looking for a casual Alliance raiding guild for Classic, I encourage you to consider joining Grievance Gaming’s Classic guild on Pagel. Grievance is a family-oriented online gaming community with a very rich and honorable heritage that spans numerous online games over the past 19 years, during which Grievance has proven that one can have a very rewarding gaming experience, yet have a life as well. The concepts of family, honor, and loyalty are hallmarks of Grievance and are expected to be upheld and respected by all members. Read our official recruitment post on the WoW forums, then head on over to the Grievance Forums and submit your app, especially if you are a healer who wants to raid in Classic.

See you in (Classic) Azeroth!

P.S. If you’re a gnome and playing WoW retail, check out Gnomeregan Forever—it’s a guild that’s just your size!

Waiting it Out

shadow priest hiding in plain sight

Right now, I’m playing the waiting game on my undead shadow priest Anexxia. Specifically, I am waiting to see how our raiding schedule shakes out. And this is why I have had a sad as of late.

You see, I love raiding. I’ve been raiding ever since my first character hit 58 in vanilla WoW days and was goaded into coming along to a guild alliance’s MC run. I’ve been hooked on it ever since. Fast Forward to WotLK. I finally found a good server and home for my shadow priest, in a guild for whom I am currently serving as an officer. I managed to complete all of the WotLK raid content, including getting my Starcaller title. Some pretty amazing and rewarding accomplishments.

I’m still wearing my Starcaller title but I don’t feel much like a raider at the moment. My work schedule has been erratic and unpredictable, and we’ve done some changing up in our schedule.

One of the things that I really liked about our guild’s raiding schedule was it offered up 4 or even 5 possible raiding nights per week, all of which started at 6:15 Pacific. Even if I got waylaid a bit at work, I could get home in time for the raid. But even before the expansion hit, we had some East Coasters lobby for an earlier start time. And thus, we now have a 5 Pacific start time raid night, soon to be 2 raid nights.

So, depending upon how things shake out, that leaves us with either 1 or 2 Pacific time raid nights during the week. And Saturday which starts at 6 Pacific. There aren’t too many folks who work on the weekends, and for those who do, 6 Pacific on Saturday is no better or no worse than any other time on Saturday. Although I used to count Saturday as one of my raid nights, RL schedule changes on my SO’s part mean I would be choosing raiding over the one weekend night we both have to go do something, so that’s out.

This leaves me at 1 or 2 nights per week I could possibly raid. Which is usually about how much I want to raid. but here’s the wrench: we’re going back to our old seating system that seats you based upon how many times you sign up and seated versus other folks. So, back when I could sign up for 4 raids per week, I’d get seated once or even twice depending upon signups. Now, I could sign up for our 1 or 2 nights, and be sat half the time or more often depending on how the math works out. That could put me at raiding 4 times per month on Anexxia. unless of course, like my schedule for the next 2 weeks, I have work-related events that either spill over past 5 or mean I will be stuck working late to make up the time after 5 on those few possible raid nights.

That’s just not going to work for me. I don’t see that I can improve my character, learn the fights, and be a rel part of the team if i am seated in 4 raids per month. I get that could work for other folks but for me, it’s like being a visitor, not being an active member of the team.

So for now, I wait and see what happens. I am signing up for raids when I know for sure I can attend, and I am crossing my fingers it will work out. I’ve spent the entire weekend stressing and bummed about this. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do to influence the outcome one way or another.

Wish me luck.

You Can’t Fix Everything, But It’s Still Good of You to Try

Since the beginning of my WoW time, nearly 4 years ago now, I have recognized that I am never content to be a player who logs on, piddles around doing something for themselves for a half hour then logs off. I want to be part of the action. Part of contributing to making the guild a more fun and successful place. In short, I'm a player who gives a damn.

And sometimes, I wish I weren't that player.

Why? Because in my grass-is-always-greener scenario, I imagine how freeing it must be to selfishly evaluate every raiding opportunity from a "what's in it for me?" standpoint. To loot whatever you can equip (others needing an upgrade more than you do or having worked for it longer be damned.) How easy it is to never look at a process that's not going so well and think "I could help fix that." To be a happy grazing guild member, asking with faux innocence what the guild is going to do with the runed orbs in the gbank that you've noticed languishing there.

But try as I might, I am never that person.

Instead, I often raise my hand to help, usually with tasks raiding / recruitment/ profession related since that's where I have the most experience to offer. I've done class leading in multiple guilds, and framed recruitment strategies as well. The latter is a personal favorite since I did it IRL for a 5,000-member non profit for several years and understand what it takes to recruit and motivate volunteers to give their time and effort for the good of a greater whole. 

I don't volunteer IRL or in WoW to see my name in lights or to have folks toady to smooch my butt. I make these efforts because I find it to be very much personally rewarding to spend my time in a manner that creates something positive that is larger than myself — be that an experience or an organization. I like to apply what I have learned from the game and IRL and help make a difference.

Sometimes, the passion I have around these topics has ruffled some feathers. But any organization that wants to do things they way they've always done them and that views a person raising their hand to help as them being pushy and not knowing their place is an organization in which I am a square peg being jammed into a round hole.

Good leaders are not afraid of change, and recognize the value of having passionate, enthusiastic helpers. I look for those types of organizations for my RL work and my WoW guilds. And I have successfully found them more times than not. But that hasn't been due to luck — it's been to doing the self-reflection to recognize that is what I want in order to be happy, and being willing to take a leap of faith and to be willing, when necessary, to fold my cards and walk away.

Life is far too short to be unhappy. Or bored. Or wistfully dreaming about things working out differently.  And thus, I keep at it. Proposing new ideas, and trying to keep things moving in the right direction whenever I can. And not-so-secretly-hoping to see more folks get fired up and do the same.

Friday Five: Five Easy Ways to Give Back to Your Guild

At the end of a busy week, it’s easy to veg out at the computer playing baby alts or farming for pets. All worthwhile pursuits, mind you. But you could also just as easily take that chill out time and use it for the common good. Here are some ideas for ways to give back to your guild that can keep on giving:

  1. Make a list of all the rare patterns you have, including links out to the materials required for crafting them, and post it on your guild forums.
  2. Clean out the excess fish/meat from your bank and use up some of the Dalaran Spices you’ve been hoarding and donate the resulting feasts and specialty foods to the guild bank.
  3. Drop your raid leader or GM a note to let them know you appreciate their time and efforts. You would be surprised how infrequently they receive a thank you rather than a wall of whining in their mailbox.
  4. Put your crafting professions to use and add some items to the guild bank: craft netherweave bags, gems, less expensive but still viable enchants, glyphs, or whatever common item you can make that folks need on an ongoing basis.
  5. Take some alts on a run through a lowbie instance. Leveling sucks! Be an alt’s hero for the day by taking 15 minutes to run them through SFK/VC (or going on a regular Northrend dungeon run for that matter). This good karma may even come back to you some day.

What are some other ways you’ve given back to your guild?