What is a guild?
A guild is an in-game group of characters formed to make grouping and raiding easier and to give players a social home. Guilds are run by players, not by Blizzard, so every guild is different and its quality depends on its members.
- A social group to chat and play with
- Help with hard instances
- Guild perks, introduced in Cataclysm
- More reliable information than general chat
- A guild bank to share items
Finding the right guild
Look in the Guild recruitment channel, in Trade chat or on the official forums. What counts most is how many members are active, not the total size, because many members can be unused alt characters. Most players call a guild with fewer than 100 members small and one with more than 100 large: small guilds feel more personal, while large ones make it quicker to find a group.
| Guild type | Focus |
|---|---|
| Raid | End-game raids, with a schedule, required attendance and a loot system (dice rolls, a loot council or points). |
| Social | Friendly play and making friends; usually 20–150 members. |
| PvP | Battlegrounds, arenas and world PvP; a good place to find arena partners. |
| Roleplaying | Playing in character, mostly on roleplaying realms. |
| Leveling | Helping new players and alts level up; often very large. |
Creating a guild
Buy a guild charter from the Guild Master NPC in a major city and get 4 other players to sign it, each from a different account (since patch 4.0.3a a guild needs 5 signatures in total, down from 10). Then hand the charter back to create the guild. Names can be up to 24 characters long and are case sensitive.
Ranks and rights
Every guild has at least 5 ranks (by default Initiate, Member, Veteran, Officer and Leader) and can have up to 10. The leader renames ranks and sets what each one may do, but ranks cannot be moved into a new order. Possible rights include:
- Invite and remove players
- Promote and demote members
- Read and write in guild chat and officer chat
- Edit public notes and officer notes
- Change the Message of the Day and the guild information
- View, deposit or withdraw in the guild bank tabs
Guild bank and communities
Guild banks arrived in patch 2.3 so members could share items. Each tab has 98 slots: six tabs can be bought, and Cataclysm added two more, for 8 in total. The leader decides who may deposit or withdraw, and gold kept in the bank can pay for repairs.
The Guild & Communities window (patch 8.0.1) also lets you create Blizzard Groups with text and voice chat, roles and calendar invites, which you can also see in the Battle.net desktop app. The War Within added cross-realm guilds. To find people for a single dungeon or raid instead, use the Group Finder.
Sources
Game pictures: © Blizzard Entertainment · worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com
