Article Series: Getting into a great guild. 5 Steps to getting into your dream guild: Part 1
Getting into a great guild: 5 Steps to getting into your dream guild: Part 1. Blizzard have change the way that World of Warcraft works. Raiding is now open to most players. Due to this, pugs are even worse than ever. It's becomming even more important to find yourself in a great guild. We'll cover Step 1 and some basic topics.
There are some basic topics to understand before we get started.
Most people hate writing out applications:
Yes, most people hate writing applications. They require both time and effort to do. Guilds have learned over time, that those who refuse to do a written application are often unreliable raiders. It's kind of a rite of passage... Proof that you've earned your raiding spot.
People are horrible at applications:
It's more of a rule than exception. Most people are horrible at doing an application. This is a good thing for you.
If this is the case, just knowing a few little tricks will help make your application so much better than the others.
Good Applications take effort:
This is a truth that you're not going to be able to get around. If you find a guild that you really want to apply for, it's going to take a lot of effort on your part to solidify up your trial.
Finding the right guild for you can take time:
You're going to spend a lot of time in your new guild, so it's in your best interests to ensure that you're trying to get into the guild that's just right for you.
There are many kinds of guilds in wow:
There is. The types of guilds include:
- Leveling and Social Guilds
- PVP Guilds
- Raiding Guilds
We're going to concentrate on the raiding guilds. It's usually only the raiding guilds where you have to apply to join. These Raiding guilds fall into some categories.
- Beginning raiding guilds
- Mid Level raiding guilds
- Social raiding guilds
- Hardcore raiding guilds
When you first hit level 80 and want to get into raiding, you should be looking at getting into a beginning raiding guild. While attitudes and knowledge of the other raiders is limited, it'll be matched by your own level of cluelessness. This suits people who don't read forums or strategy web sites.
Mid level raiding guilds suit more when you have a clue but need to get more experience, and even some gear. This is often where you get the basics of things like raid awareness and how the classes work together.
For both Beginning and mid level raiding guilds, applications aren't usually needed. It's often as simple as finding a guild where they need a spot filled that you can fill.
After you go through and get the experience needed from beginning and mid level raiding guilds, you're about ready to choose whether you're going to go to a social raiding guild or a hardcore raiding guild.
So what's the difference between social and hardcore?
Most of the time it's about the minimum attendance, attitude and expected performance. You have to work out what suits you best.
Minimum attendance: Most hardcore raiding guilds require 75% attendance or higher. Some even require 90% or more. Social raiding guilds often don't have attendance requirements, or numbers that are so low, they might as well not be there.
Attitude: In social guilds, it's often more laid back. People telling jokes or stories and having fun. In Hardcore, while there may still be some fun, the priority is about progression. Hardcore fun involves downing a lot of new and tough bosses.
Expected Performance: This is often the hardest pill to swallow. Even in social guilds, raiders are expected to perform, but the performance requirement is way less than in hardcore guilds. Those who perform at the top of a social raiding guild, often find themselves as average or underperforming against their hardcore counterparts. Hardcore raiding requires a lot of constant work.
You'll need to ask, which guild suits you more?
Concept: Applying upwards:
It's never really written about, but almost everyone who applies to another guild is trying to apply upwards. This means applying to a better guild than you previously were (or currently) in.
This will mean that when you apply to a guild, you're often going to have to hit the ground running and work like hell to catch up. Most raid leaders and/or recruiters understand and appreciate this.
Standing out:
The best thing you can do when trying to get into your dream guild is to stand out. The best way to stand out is to go the extra mile, in other words, to be exceptional.
There are areas where you can stand out. Your knowledge of your class, experience, gear, attitude and even your personality. A great personality that fits in is a great thing to show on your application.
Follow directions but go the extra mile:
If you follow nothing but this, when you apply to a guild, you'll already be in the top 5%. What I mean is: Most guilds have an application process. Questions you have to answer as part of their process.
Simply put. Answer all their questions as thorough as you can be. Not only that, anticipate other questions that were not asked to help show that you'll be a top applicant.
Step 1: Where are you currently? Be honest.
- Experience
- Gear
- Knowledge
- Skill
- Attitude
- Intelligence
- Performance
- Availability. what times and how many hours can I devote to raiding each week.
- Reliability
- Proof
- Willingness to transfer to another server.
- Your age (maturity)
- Language
- Seriousness
- Your circumstances. If you're a student, you might not be able to raid during exams, or if you travel for peroids of time with work etc.
There are all things that will help both you and your prospective guild decide on what's right for you.
Why is it important to work out where you're currently at. It's the first step to getting into your dream guild.
The most important parts are your experience, availability and your circumstances.
Extra Topics:
Advantages of being a healer:
The biggest and most obvious advantage of being a healer is that you're playing a class that a lot of others are both incapable of doing and unwilling to do.
Good tanks are worth their weight in gold. Each guild need a small numbers of exceptional, dedicated tanks with great attitudes.
Healers are like tanks, but healers are needed in higher numbers. This often means that healers are in higher demand than tanks.
This means that good healers are always in high demand.
But what about newly rolled healers? As you know, healing isn't quite like DPS. There's a feel about healing that you gain from experience. Even though good healers are always in demand, 1 good healer will often be able to fill the shoes of 2 ordinary or new healers.
What about DPS? Almost everyone wants to do damage. Recruiting DPS isn't that hard. Recruiting good DPS, is a little harder.
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