I’m in a Guild of One, and I’m wondering how many more there are out there who are like me.

If you used to be in a Guild of One but went back into a more social guild environment, how long did you stay in your Guild of One?

About My Guild Of One

After I left the raiding guild I got into back in February, I wandered around guildless for a little while but started to notice that guilded players were, on occasion, behaving oddly towards me as I did some fishing and questing in Zangarmarsh.

I started to wonder if, perhaps, these individuals were thinking that I was a Gold Farmer, and they were attempting to grief me as I played.

What type of griefing? Well, in less than two days of playing unguilded, I saw no less than four attempts to “train” a bunch of mobs onto me.

If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s the name given to the process of gathering up the aggro of a bunch of mobs and then running out of their battle range in such a way that when they go to run back to their reset spots, they run past a target player in battle. If done correctly, the mobs running back to reset will join into the battle with the target player. If the target player isn’t paying attention or is actually a bot with very little human guidance, this strategy can be used to kill a target player, whether they’re Alliance or Horde.

So, since I was dual-boxing and dragging my low-60s healing-spec’d Priest through her Zangarmarsh quests by my 70 Hunter with a lot more firepower, I figured the least I could do to avoid being griefed while I quest on my own would be to have a guild tag.

But I have non-social goals in World of Warcraft right now - wanting to do more video recording and video editting and PUGs with strangers… all things that will result in more writing in this blog, and more regular socializing out-of-game than in-game. And I don’t want to offend anyone with my lack of conversation in-game, which means to me I shouldn’t put myself into a social guild environment.

“Silence Is Golden” is born

The decision was made, and a guild name of Silence is Golden was selected. I picked up a Guild Charter in Orgrimmar and headed to the Auction House to buy some supplies.

10 minutes later, I rode into the Valley of Trials on my Black War Kodo, and my bags full of … more bags.

I advertised on the General line in Durotar that I was looking to buy Guild Charter signatures, and I offered 1g + a 10 slot bag in return for the signatures.

It took less than an hour to get all the signatures I needed, and the guild was formed in Orgrimmar to complete the cycle of creation.

Thank You, *boot*

I then headed to the mailbox and sent messages to each of the charter signers, thanking them for signing the charter, and letting them know the guild is not meant to be a “real guild”, and therefore that I wish them luck in their adventures on this realm.

I attached another two 10 slot bags or a couple of pieces of green equipment to each thank-you letter, and sent another 5g to each of them as well.

Then, when everyone was logged out the next morning when I logged in, I removed all but my own toons.

Benefits Of My Own Guild

If you’re feeling more social in-game than I am right now, you’d probably be wondering what benefits there are, other than having a guild tag, to belonging to a guild that is shared with nobody else on the game.

• First, there’s that Gold Farmer issue - guildless players are viewed with more suspicion than guilded ones. Even though my guild name isn’t well known, the fact that I’m able to “get into a guild” (ha ha) seems to speak something on its own. The fact that other players won’t have had a poor experience with someone in my guild already will also give me more credibility for an odd reason.

• Second, there’s the Guild Bank. A central place to store items shared by my toons - potions, elixirs, raw materials for professions and the likes - and an easy way to track Auction House profits and repair expenses on a regular basis. Plus, since I have two WoW accounts, I can use the Guild Bank to get past the one-hour mailing delay of items, yet still don’t have to dual-box to trade.

Not a whole lot of benefits, but since my play time is not going to be social time for the most part for the next little while, this serves me well.

Expect to see a whole whack of videos coming out soon!

I’m also looking at getting a more professional WordPress theme developed for this site and I need to clean up the categories and tags, so stay tuned for updates over the next few weeks.

Tags: casual player, creating a guild, gold farmer griefing, guild of one, guildless, guildmaster guide, how to create a guild, world of warcraft, wow videos

There is a very interesting discussion going on over on the Guild Relations board yesterday morning while the servers are down - it spawned from a post that was a little off-topic for the forum itself, but turned into a very informational thread on the topic of Protecting your Guild’s RaidID from Hijack.

What Is A RaidID?

At a Heroics and Raiding level, Instances in the game will “lock” your character to that instance for a period of time that spans from a day to a week, depending on the difficulty of the instance. The “lock” itself is saved as a RaidID that is viewable through your Raid communication tab.

What Does A RaidID Do?

Extremely simplified, it is designed to allow for the completion of difficult instances over a longer period of time (a day to a week) than normal instances, giving guilds and players a chance to take a break and go back at the tough bosses they’re hung up on, later.

Its secondary function is to prevent players or groups from farming these difficult instances over and over in one day like can be done with the lower instances. Gear upgrades therefore take longer, and keep players and the guilds they join entertained for longer, hoping to make for a more stable social environment, I guess.

How Are RaidID’s Shared? How Can They Be Hijacked?

A whole heck of a lot of ways.

Check out the forum thread linked above as there’s some interesting discussion on the topic.

Another day I’ll summarize all that great information and write up a follow-up post.

Tags: about raid id's, about raidid's, avoiding wow scams, Battlegrounds, Dungeons, guild relations, guildmaster guide, hijacked raidid, how to hijack a raid, how to protect your raid id, how to steal a raid ID, instances, karazhan, mount hyjal, pick up group, pick up group strategy, protect your raidid, pug raids, pugging, raid leader guide, RaidIDs, raiding guide, raids, serpentshrine cavern, Warcraft Tips and Tricks, wow drama