I’m trying shadowlands after being away playing classic since classic launch but struggling to find a guild.
On classic there are many many guilds that are active communities. There’s always someone in game to chat and play with and hearty discussions on discord. I have been unable to find that in retail.
Am I just unlucky? Am I on the wrong server (horde The Maelstrom)? Or is it normal for retail guilds not to have much chatter and activity?
E.g. I joined a guild and posted “hi” on their discord general channel and no reply 12 hours later. On any classic guild there would be lots of replies.
Advice appreciated
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UPDATE
Reading a lot of posts asking which server new players should start on, all the advice is to join a “full” server like Dreanor or Silvermoon or Kazzak. And looking at the guild recruitment forums, most guilds for horde are on one of those servers so that seems like good advice.
So am I better off creating a new character on one of those servers than sticking on The Maelstrom?
And if I do create a new character having already nearly completed the Bastion storyline, should I complete the shadowlands story first with my current character and then create the new toon, or create the new toon sooner rather than later?
And what other considerations go into making a new toon these days? Does race matter other than cosmetics (I have all allied races unlocked)? What classes are more in demand for raids and will give me shorter dungeon queues? I’m extra cautious in creating new characters having leveled an undead warrior to 60 in classic before realizing I should have chosen orc.
And finally, if I create a new character on one of those servers, can I still play with friends on The Maelstrom?
I don’t know of any busy, active guilds like you describe in Retail except maybe very very high perfomance ones, and then that’s only among the raid teams.
I haven’t been in a guild of that type since realm communities were killed by CRZ in Mists. I think guilds died with realms.
For Horde, Draenor, maybe Kazzak (server doesn’t have a great rep), maybe Stormscale, maybe Tarren Mill.
IF you can find a guild of the type you want, and it’s stable, then it might be worth transferring or rerolling, even with some starter progress.
Races not a big deal. Maybe make 0.5%-1.0 difference in some cases.
In Retail, the devs spin the wheel and throw darts at the classes in a regular buff-nerf cycle, so it’s not safe to say anything about classes in the longer term, because they will change.
See also the Parses column below, which gives you a sense how popular each class is.
Horde can form parties and play anything with other Horde on servers anywhere in EU, except Mythic Raids for a few months until 100 guilds each side have completed them. So yes you can play with your friends across realms.
i’d say my guild’s like that. discord and guild chat are both pretty active, and yesterday we did a normal castle nathria achievement run with some raiders, some socials and some other friends of people and then some of us watched blizzcon together. so definitely active outside of the regularly scheduled raids.
but i think it’s difficult to build a community if you don’t have something that pulls you together. a raiding guild is a good example of that. you are automatically playing and spending time together, and a community sort of forms naturally as a result. it’s hard to force that kinda thing, and if the guild’s only real purpose is to “be social” then it’s a bit like putting 20 strangers in a (very covid safe of course) room and telling them to socialise. it’ll be weird and awkward, and most of them will just look at their phones until they can leave.
i wouldn’t worry too much about what class you pick. warlock is the safest class probably.
In Classic, there are challenges in the world that everyone is happy to get help with, and you are dealing with a closed realm where you can both get and give help to the same people.
In Retail, there are no challenges in the world, the people you meet are randomly swapped in from other realms and won’t be there tomorrow, and the group finder supplies an endless stream of anonymous people from other realms for instances. It’s hard to form a group, except around an activity like raiding.
I don’t know about other guilds, but we do tons of stuff together.
Last night, for example, some of us spent a few hours in Nathria HC with a cross realm community that we’ve been raiding with since last summer (we don’t have enough active raiders to make our own raids).
Then a group of us did a high (for us) mythic key.
Then 3 of us pulled in a couple of pugs for a weekly dungeon quest.
After that (getting to 1am now), a guildie and I did a Torghast campaign quest on alts, then I carried on with the campaign while they went and farmed some old content with another guildie.
I was on discord voice from 6.30 until I went to bed at about 3am, and some of us were always there and chatting even if we weren’t doing the same content.
Guilds like ours are not easy to find, but they do exist.