Over in this thread in GD, there’s a discussion about racism and the use of the n-word. ** rachelellogram** discusses an issue going on in her WoW guild. While I’ve never played it, nor care to, I’m pretty sure that WoW is “World of Warcraft”, a video game I have heard of. But what is a WoW guild; what’s it’s purpose; how often do you meet; ever meet in real life or just online; whatever else that’s unique about a WoW guild.
I can only answer the base question: http://www.wowwiki.com/Guild
Alerting a certain Doper I know who is also a gamer.
I don’t play WoW so don’t know the game specific details, but “guilds” in games like this are essentially clubs for groups of characters. Also called clans and in City of Heroes (which I do play) supergroups. They have shared resources (a CoH supergroup has an instanced customizable supergroup base with storage and teleporters and so forth for example), a dedicated chat channel, and are often formed for the purpose of cooperating on large scale tasks that need more than a normal sized team.
So are these just online groups that are just adjunt to the game?
It’s a social group that gathers, generally only in the game, for the explicit purpose of playing the game. That the purpose is to play a game in no way diminishes the social aspect.
It’s the online equivalent to a bowling team.
According to my, at various times, more important than eating or breathing.
When he was going to leave for Costa Rica for the summer and then to camp for CIT training they did a farewell raid that night and a welcome back raid when he returned. One college-aged member is teaching him calculus through chat while they raid and the guild leader is a 40+ something mom who harasses him to get off the game and do his homework. 
It’s already fairly well answered, but I’ll go a bit further since I used to play WoW.
While you can do a lot of the content in WoW by yourself, there are some things you need a group for. Some of these only required a 5 person group or so, for this you don’t really need a guild and can do the content with a PUG (pick up group), which are just other players hanging around the area that need the quest in question.
When I played, there were other quests that required a group of around 40 to complete. In this group you also needed the proper mix of skills and talents for the group to be successful. For this you needed a guild to draw the proper mix of characters to complete the quest.
I never met a single person in the guild I was in. We talked in game using Ventrillo and we did have some people who did not fit in, and they were dropped from the guild.
Not adjuct necessarily, as far as WoW goes - there’s an entire in-game interface and structure to handle guilds.
Simply speaking, a guild is a group of people who play the game together. They share knowledge and in-game resources, and team up to take down challenges. Some challenges may require only a few people, some 5, 10, 25, or even 40. The games have a manner in which to find these teams as needed, but the camaraderie and familiarity of a guild makes the process smoother.
Guilds range in all sizes from very small (with some finagling, you can have a guild as small as 1 person) to very large (over 1000). Some meet only in game, or in voice chat, others may have large yearly meetups like a family reunion. Some charge dues, most do not. Some will take anyone who applies, some have a strict process of application and strict requirements to stay in the guild. Many have websites with active message boards.
I would say the key function of a guild is to provide the social aspect of the MMO. The fact that they help players level, PvP, or defeat the hardest bosses is sort of a natural result of that.
Just to be clear, guilds (or whatever they’re called in the game you’re playing) are built in to the game, not an external club. The game designers release tasks (like the aforementioned “raids”) that require cooperation to complete. There are other aspects (like dedicated in-game chat channels) that help the guilds organize. They are intended and foreseen by the game designers, and would have a hard time functioning without the built-in aspects of the software, but are player driven and social as well as allowing the player to explore more complex areas of the game. Larger guilds may have their own webpages and forums that are external to the game, and may even hold meetups, but the core is built in.
Moving to The Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Imagine the lamest thing in the World, now times that by three.
What, your pants?
And of course, many guilds are formed by folks who know each other (in some way) from outside of the game, precisely because they already know each other. I think there are a few guilds formed by and mostly composed of Dopers, for instance. And there are probably some guilds formed by real-life extended families, or groups of co-workers, or the like. Such folks might meet in real life, but it wouldn’t be because they’re guildmates, but rather, they’re guildmates because they meet in real life.
CECIL and The Urban Legends in City of Heroes/Villains; there are several others listed in the sticky at the top of the Game Room.
Burning Dog Legion on the Cairne server is the main one. I don’t know if there are any others, but that’s the one that’s most active in the WoW threads. I actually belong to the Daily Kos guild, Wreck List, on Garrosh.
I think this is the most famous Guild. It’s a web series called The Guild and it’s pretty good, even if you’re like me and don’t get anywhere near online games.
I was in a WoW guild. It definitely had social aspects, and I have met several of my guild mates outside of game.
To me, doing quests (in game challenges) with a guild versus some random people is the difference between a pick-up game of basketball, and a league basketball game.
You can still play the game, you can still be on the winning team. But when you game/quest with the same people continually - you can fine-tune your in-game skills/abilities to compliment each other. You start to know each other’s playing style and where you need to compensate for each other, and where you can rely on each other to pick up the slack.
It makes for a much smoother and more successful playing style. And adds to the camraderie of the game.
Just addressing what you can see in the game WoW from being in a guild:
- Private guild chat channel where you can talk with other guild members and see the announcement of the day (if any) from guild officers. You can use this to chat or find people to take on challenges with.
- Guild bank which holds deposits of useful items - gear, potions, crafting materials. Officers set limits on what/how much people can withdraw per day. There may also be money available to help with your gear repairs or raiding costs.
- A possibly nifty tabard to wear over your armor, showing off the guild emblem and colors.
- Guild perks based on the guild’s ranking. Members can work together to get various tasks done, which unlocks bonuses as you accumulate more “points” toward certain goals. You can get things like faster travel speeds while riding or flying on mounts, more raw materials when hunting for items to craft with, special food or potion recipes that give extra-good bonuses to your stats, special cool-looking “vanity” pets or mounts to let people know how advanced your guild is, a spell to summon all your group members to a dungeon at once (or another one to resurrect them all at once, if things went badly), and so on.
Just FYI, guilds are more of a WoW thing.
A lot of other games have what are called “clans”, which is the same idea of collective play, but usually without the in-game support. On PC games, there are frequently clan servers where they can get on and play, as well as websites, rankings, etc…
or to cover up high-specced but very ugly gear . . .