This may well be a problem that only I experience, it may be a gripe better suited to the Pet Peeves thread, but personally I’ve found this to be an issue for quite a while across a number of different guilds, and I’m starting to find it somewhat disheartening.
The issue is talking to roleplayers who will immediately try to get your character into their guild, or roleplayers who approach your character only for the purpose of getting them into the guild.
Now this isn’t objectively a bad thing, obviously most guilds benefit from having a greater number of members because you increase the number of people who can attend events or hang out for casual roleplay, and you allow extra people in to contribute to the guild’s story or stories, while forming their own tales in the process - I get that.
The problem I have is that it can feel really bad to just want to hang out in Stormwind, or any other hub (although Stormwind is of course the main RP hub on Ally side IMO) and talk to someone’s character, find out what they’re like, have a bit of an interaction and just roleplay, only to have them to say something akin to ‘you look like you could use employment,’ or ‘I see you are without surcoat.’ From there, it feels - to me at least -like any chance of roleplay is completely killed off, because the tone set is ‘I’m only interested in roleplaying with you if you’re willing to commit time and effort into the guild’ which just feels bad.
Maybe this is just a me problem and it’s not something that should be vented about on the forums, in which case I apologise for making myself look a bit silly, but at the same time I’ve found it increasingly frustrating to walk up and say hello only to be slapped with the same rhetorics, all because I’ve not got a little green tag on my character.
It just makes me feel disheartened and puts me off trying to approach new characters in case I’ve got to go through the same option of making up IC excuses as to why I don’t want in on a guild.
Some folks only want you to pad their guild. Others want to bring you into their circle because they generally don’t RP outside of it. We need incentives for more unguilded interactions and events not bound up in concentric circles of insular communities.
In my case I’ve always been able to solve the issue with a variation of “nah I’m aight thanks”.
Stormwind is recruiting grounds for most guilds, even those who roleplay outside of Stormwind. It is the toll to pay for random RP and weekly guilds that come and go and depend on gaining a minimum of popularity quick in order to stay active and survive the month.
Sometimes that’s the case and I’m often glad when it is. I’m not wasting their time, they’re not wasting mine, we can both go off and look for what we want.
But sometimes you just approach someone, and you just wanna hear what their character’s been up to, you just want to roleplay, you just wanna have these interactions back and forth and instead what you end up with is the same sort of interaction you get from those overly-invasive charity donators who’ll bumrush you from half a street away to try and get your money. “No, go away please, I don’t have the money to spare, no.” And that’s not a pleasant interaction.
And I’m okay with this to some extent, I understand that guild recruitment has to happen somehow, and if it’s not on the forums then yeah cath square in Stormwind probably is the most likely place you’re going to find people, but at the same time it sucks to be think ‘this character is interesting, I’ll go say hello’ only to find out that to roleplay with said character you need to sign a contract that says “I’m now going to invest time on the evenings to join your events despite the fact that I know barely anything about your guild or your character beyond the blatantly copy-pasted introductory message.”
Also shoutouts to one person a year or so ago trying to recruit my warrior for over half an hour while he repeatedly said he didn’t want to join. How I didn’t just /camp right then and there is beyond me, frankly.
A problem I have personally noticed with recruitment has been that a number of guild members would come online and the Guild Leader would simply state to the member to go seek new potential recruits. When the Guild Leader sits back, AFKing or logging off. Which I have noticed now upon joining guilds before and observing.
It’s pretty hit or miss IMO. Sometimes people will respect it and not try to go for it, and some will just barrel on through, no care given and hit you with the YOU LOOK UNEMPLOYED remark.
This is something which is very welcome to discuss, recruiting bodies of guilds may not realize it’s quite annoying to throw around guild recruitment invites like you’re getting paid for it. Hub Roleplay should welcome the walkup or “random” roleplay scenarios without the need of recruiting or getting recruited, there is nothing inherently wrong with whispering OOC or out-right asking IC to recruit someone but it shouldn’t outright stop roleplay between the guilded and non-guilded player. Sure if you’re trying to chat up with Recruiting Sergeant Jones in the Cathedral Square with his back turned towards his guild banner, chances are you’re probably not going to get a lot of memorable RP if you’re not interested in being recruited. It all depends on the scenario you find yourself in.
In my eyes, if any character I have ever RPed with mentiones the need of coins, yes, I will ask them what would they like to do. This of course happens IF that mentioned character is seeking employment.
In the case simply RP is happening, would not try to recruit them. I’m often looking at guildless people in Stormwind, (yep) and first of all asking them OOC in a whisper if they are interested. If they are, then lets meet up and think of something.
It is up right abusive to walk up to people and ask them “Looking for work?”. No, leave me alone you are ruining my RP. There was a moment where I was courting a player that was interested and two draenei stood near me and started to talk to that player “Oh yes, we can offer you the perfect spot!” Like, really?
What happened to choice?
But on the other side I see it from the recruiter point of view. Yes, I do want more members coming my way, but that doesn’t mean I should push if they don’t feel like it. Just RP for the fun of it. If they want they will come looking…
As somebody who has officered in the past ( Dirge of Teldrassil) and is officering now ( Highblood Myrmidons) , I can say that in some scenarios / periods of life a guild simply needs recruits because the regulars are dropping off and the recruitment pool is too thin.
I do not think coming after people specifically for the purpose of recruitment is evil per se, it’s a natural part of guild activity. And when you’re doing it and have a number of people to go through, it’s also instinctive to move on to the next person. There is only so much time a person can dedicate daily to WoW, let’s be real. And you realistically can’t be interested in every character you meet either.
However, I can see where Obahar is coming from, which is why I’m going to add that what is instead wrong is when the recruiter becomes unable to be interested in other characters unless they’re in the guild.
As an example, I’m going to mention an encounter I had last week - it was a normal and slightly dull evening in Orgrimmar but then I encountered an exotic Nightborne botanist who was slightly on the nutty side (or as she said, pretended to be). Despite the rejection of joining the guild, we still chatted for a bit IC and the character still sticks out in my memory as somebody I wish to interact with further at one point or another.
oh hey, i believe this was me on an alt and I was just about to bring this up as an example of how this situation can go well xD
I encounter this a lot, since I have a lot of alt and character ideas I love to rp, but not necessarily the time to commit to guilds outside my own, without feeling it’d be unfair to that guild. If the recruiter can have a nice chat with you, not take it personally and genuinely be there for the rp even after a rejection, i think thats the best way to go about it and I love those situations! they make for great rp imo, its only a shame when people are so recruit-minded that they sort of stop caring when you say you don’t want to take them up on their offer.
Dirge of Teldrassil) and is officering now (