Hey, it happens.  All of a sudden you’re without a guild. 

I’ve been playing this game close to two years and I’m on my third guild.  No drama, no guild meltdown, just life.  My first guild had a couple officers leave due to personal issues, which resulted in several sub-segments of the guild forming their own new guilds.  My second guild saw several of it’s officers leave to start a more hardcore raiding guild, which resulted in a mass exodus.  There were no hard feelings either time, just time to move on.

My second guild breaking up happened early fall 2007.  I say it broke up, which isn’t really true.  Once the officers left, then the second wave left to either join the new raiding guild or move on.  The guild (which was once 500+ strong), dwindled down to around 50 or so folks with only a handful of 70s.  I ended up leaving the guild to go solo for a while.  I had some personal issues going on and wasn’t playing much anyway.

Fast forward to early 2008 and I was ready to get back into the game.  I really needed a guild, having fallen so far behind in so little time.  People talk about how quickly players eat up new content, but I think the reverse is also true.  You can take just a couple months off from this game and really fall far behind.  So I started the process of looking around for a guild.  I really wanted to find a good guild that fit my play-style, my play times, and had the kind of attitude that matched mine.  I wrote briefly on this topic before and got a lot of great comments.  At that time, I promised to make this topic into an overall guide and here it is. 

Obviously, there is no right or wrong way to find a new guild, and this writeup simply reflects my experiences.  Use your own best judgement as to what works for you or not.  If I’ve missed anything or you would like to add to what I’ve laid out here, leave me a comment and I’ll consider including it.