Officers’ Quarters: 2-player flings and 5-player content
@QuestVendor
Raiding guilds and social guilds are a dime a dozen, but finding a guild that specializes in challenging dungeon content is another story. This week, a player asks the best way to find a guild to tackle WoW‘s 5-player experiences.
But our first question this week is from Twitter, and it’s a doozy.
It’s 100% natural for people to develop an attraction to each other via WoW or any other multiplayer game. Plenty of couples have met online and formed lasting relationships and even gotten married this way. An online affair is different. Such people are risking both their guild and their marriages. The latter is obviously much more important, but that’s beyond my expertise and not the question asked, so we’ll focus on the guild here.
This situation is bad news. It can make guild members very uncomfortable, to the point where they might stop attending guild events or even gquit. If it goes sour, it can cause a lasting rift between key members that’s damaging to the guild. Losing an officer or two because of personal drama can be devastating.
As a guild leader or an officer, you really don’t want to go anywhere near this situation, but you probably have to. I recommend a (very) private conversation with the pair. You should tell them what they do in their personal lives is their business. After all, you can’t actually put a stop to their fling, and it’s not your place to. However, you can tell them that it needs to stay private. They shouldn’t talk about it with guild members. They shouldn’t flaunt it in gchat or over voice chat. That kind of open behavior makes guild members feel like accomplices, and no one wants to feel that way.
Hopefully they’ll at least keep their relationship (whatever level they’re at) on the DL after this talk. You can’t control the ultimate outcome. It will either fizzle out or detonate, and the shrapnel will hit what it hits. This is one of those things that’s 99% outside of your control. Mostly all you can do is damage control in real time and hope that the fallout isn’t too crippling to your community.
My normal policy is to join the guild of one of my friends; after all, if I enjoy playing with that person, and they enjoy the guild culture, it’s a good bet we’ll be a good fit. Unfortunately all of my friends are cross server or simply don’t play anymore, and I don’t have the cash to server transfer (unemployed college student). Nowadays I’ve lost all interest in raiding, but not in difficult content. I’d really enjoy a group to hit the harder 5 man modes with, such as mythics, Glory of the Draenor Hero, and Challenge modes. Most guilds are recruiting for raiding, which I’m sick off, or casual, friend and family types, who have no interest in committing to learning how to do Challenge modes. How do I find a guild when I can’t find any recruiting for what I want to do?
Good question, Doomreaver! You are looking for a fairly specific niche here. Rest assured, guilds are out there who run 5-player content. However, you also want to find a guild on your home realm. That might be a taller order.
Commenter Jalamenos had a great response, which I’ll quote here:
For example let’s say you want to do mythic dungeons, instead of using the group finder (LFG) try looking in trade or tanaan general to set up a group. There are usually alot of players that prefer this way over the randomness of the LFG. Do this a few times and you will probably have built up a new network of players, try asking some of them if their guilds are taking on social/casual members..
This is how most people found guilds before the Dungeon Finder put a halt on the social aspect of the game.
Going old school with trade chat might be a good solution here. You may not necessarily find one guild running the content on your realm, but you may find a cross-guild team of players who want to do challenging 5-player content and their guild doesn’t currently support it.
At first, you may find yourself blanking on responses. I recommend asking during different times of day/night (which as an “unemployed college student” shouldn’t be too difficult!). Evening hours might seem like the best time to ask, but it’s also when online players are most often raiding. 11 p.m. or so might be better, after organized raids have ended and bored players are looking for something else to do besides Apexis dailies. Finding these players and having success in dungeon runs could lead to a guild invite for you.
I also think that you should explore joining a raiding guild as a non-raiding member. Plenty of raiding guilds have “friends and family” members who aren’t actively part of the team. In fact, if you offer to lead these 5-man groups, they might see you as a greater asset than a regular F&F. Many guilds want to offer this content, but the raid leaders and officers simply don’t have the time to organize it. By volunteering to take charge, you’ll be helping them out. It may seem weird to lead a group of guilded strangers this way, but people do it all the time in the Group Finder. There’s little risk for a guild that isn’t already currently running that content. If it doesn’t work out, they are back to where they started. You’ll have the advantage over a Group Finder group, in that the guild members are used to performing as a team and following instructions.
OpenRaid and the Group Finder would be your last resort. You aren’t likely to land in a guild on your realm with these tools, but you can at least tackle the content until you can afford to transfer to your friends’ realm. Good luck!
/salute
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