Here you can discuss anything and everything pertaining to ESO in general.
Good morning, this week's post is short and sweet. Well, at least it's short. Like everyone, I am feeling the stress and worry of the current coronavirus outbreak, and spending a lot of time indoors and away from society. This seemed like a good week to re-emphasize the central role that guilds play in an MMO experience and why you will be SO much better off joining a few terrific guilds and making the effort to get to know people in them.
ESO is very playable as a solo player. You can do 99.9% of the quest content on your own (it's actually 100% but a lot of people struggle with Shada's Tear in Craglorn LOL), and you can use the dungeon finder for pledges, join pickup groups for dungeons and trials and PVP, play PVP solo...et cetera.
HOWEVER, there are issues with this approach. The biggest tangible issue is that you are leaving the quality of players in your group to chance. We have all queued for dungeons only to be grouped with a 10k health sorc with 47 CP, calling himself a tank. You just joined a vet Cloudrest group made of random puggles in Craglorn? Good luck. TThat group you just joined in Cyrodiil by typing "lfg" is probably not going to beat a PVP guild at anything. The better you get at the game, and the more you want to pursue no death achievements, hard mode completes, speed runs, etc., the more frustrated you will be without a strong bench of dependable players that are used to playing with each other.
The biggest intangible is, if you will forgive my cheesiness, that you are giving up on making some great friends and joining a great community. If you are reading this and you are an active member on this site, you already belong to a guild. This site is a guild, it is a community. People help each other, they joke around, they do activities like events and contests with each other--it's a guild. That's what you get from a good guild in an MMO--the only difference is that sometimes you commit mass murder on pixelated entities. Virtual communities like guilds are always a lot of fun, and when you are locked inside 24/7, these things can be a lifeline to help cure your isolation, loneliness, stress and all the other things we're all feeling right now.
SO JOIN GUILDS! And when you join, really join--participate, talk to people, and so forth. That is all. Here are a few recommendations for how to fill out your five guild slots, but picking guilds is highly personal, so keep trying guilds until you find ones that really click for you.
JOIN A TRADING GUILD. As you play more and more content, you'll start collecting gear, crafting materials, style motifs, recipes and all kinds of other stuff that sells for thousands of gold pieces. Play some more, your best drops will be worth tens of thousands of gold; play still more and you'll get stuff worth 100,000s of gold. Unless you want to stand around hawking your wares in zone chat (and maybe you're a khajiit and you want to sell your wares, lol), you want a good trading guild where you can just list this stuff for sale and watch the money come in. Your best bets are the guilds with spots in: Rawlkha, Wayrest, Mournhold, Grahtwood, Vivec City, Alinor, and Rimmen. Those are among the highest traffic spots in the game. Look around at the guild names and try a couple out!
JOIN A PVE GUILD. Maybe the most common type of guild? There are many, many guilds dedicated to completing endgame content. A few of these guilds span the gamut of skill and experience levels, but most of them cater to people at a similar level--there are beginner-friendly guilds designed specifically to teach people the ropes, midrange guilds that focus on pledges, vet dungeons and some easier trials, and high-end guilds that focus on leaderboard scores for trials and have tough requirements to qualify. If you want to get better at the game's primary "challenge" content--if you want to "see some gains"--join a guild with folks you like and that forces you to stretch a bit and helps you improve. Specifically, I strongly recommend a guild that is active in PVE content, because the vast majority of the best gear in the game--and a lot of the highest-value loots like new style motifs-- is locked behind difficult vet dungeons, arenas and trials, so one way or another you're gonna want a reliable posse to help you with that gear farming.
JOIN A HIGHLY SOCIAL GUILD WITH FREQUENT EVENTS AND ACTIVE VOICE CHAT. MAKE FRIENDS. I can't recommend this highly enough. This suggestion may overlap with any of these other suggestions--your PVE guild, trading guild, etc., may be the guild that you end up calling your "home" in the game. For me, it's my PVP guild, Fantasia--we are a tight-knit group and we talk every day, some of us have met in real life--the scientific term is "good buddies," I believe. Jumping in voice chat for the first time can be offputting for many people, but just do it. I mean, PLEASE I SUGGEST just do it.
JOIN A PVP GUILD (OPTIONAL). This is, quite obviously, only if you are interested in ramping up in PVP. There are "zerg" guilds that just soak up warm bodies to swarm the battlefield and win with numbers; there are higher-skill groups (again, varying levels of skill) that focus on doing strong work with a limited number of people in complementary builds; there are guilds that focus on setting up one-on-one duels--lots to choose from.
JOIN A ROLEPLAY GUILD (OPTIONAL). Like PVP, this is another activity that is a ton of fun for some but not all people. I don't have much experience in this area. We have a real veteran here in the Sky Forge community in Tae-Rai, and our fearless leader Curse is another big supporter, they've answered a bunch of my questions recently and can help you if you're interested. If you've played tabletop games before, you'll have a sense of what RP is like in the game--there are really creative guilds out there with darker themes, paladin "smite the wicked" themes and everything in between.
I think that covers the basics--I feel like I'm forgetting a big category, but if I am, I'm sure that someone will unfurl their rage at me in the comments, this is the internet after all. ;) There are other specialty categories--there are crafting-focused guilds, there are even guilds that focus on getting fishing achievements in game. If you have a specific request for a guild suggestion, post your server/region/faction/category of interest/general level of skill and experience below and we can try to make some suggestions. Have fun!
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Replies
I can’t endorse what Avi has said enough. Do yourselves a favor and join some guilds.
Join that trading guild even though you’re the furthest thing from a master merchant. Join that RP guild despite knowing shit all about writing/role playing. The best guild’s don’t care how good you are at what they do. It’s all about fostering that sense of community.