Advice required: All your alts are belong to us
I have been looking into finding a new guild coming into Mists of Pandaria. majority of main players from my current guild have left and I find myself wanting to find a more social guild rather then the "everyone logs in to raid/do heroics/grind and little else guild that I am in now. While I have played with these people for quite a few years, and most of them are RL friends, they are not the most sociable of guildies.
I've been looking specifically for a casual/social guild with a family friendly/community atmosphere, mostly in the hopes of finding a guild with minimal hate speech/slurs and a minimal of bad language (I don't mind swearing, I just don't like seeing it in excess really) and I found quite a few really good candidates except for one thing. All of these guilds appear to have a strict "all your alts must be in the guild and if you remove one, we remove all of them" rule. All other guilds I have found are hardcore raiders or... not what I am looking for at all (my server is one of the oldest around and can be a little bit of a cesspool at times)
I have a fair amount of alts around the place, most of them are in a family alt guild (when I say family, I mean everyone in it is a member of my family or a very close family friend) and I have one or two alts in a former guild just to keep connections (though that guild has changed so much since I was a full member it wouldn't be too hard to pull them out). Most of my alts I rarely play - I have 1 main who is the toon I play the most, a few max level alts who I play a little bit when I get sick of my main (mostly dailies/farming/a dungeon or two very very occasionally), and the rest of my alts are below max level and get played every few months for maybe a week at a time, and then left again for months, or are used to play with family.
I find myself being a little concerned about being in a guild with such a strict alt policy, it seems a little... controlling to me. They say that it is all in the spirit of community, but sometimes I like to have some peace and quiet on an alt. Is it really such a bad thing to have alts on which you want to be alone or separate from others from time to time? I would have thought that such a rule might apply to raiding or hardcore guilds, but for casual guilds? Is a few low level alts really that essential to a guild if they barely get played.
Is this kind of rule common in guilds? Especially guilds that advertise as casual? Does anyone here run or live in a guild that enforces this sort of rule and do you allow exceptions beyond "bank alts are okay to leave out.?" Has anyone had an experience with this sort of rule and what did you think of it?
And lastly, while I am here, does anyone have a casual/social guild on Alliance side Eonar (US) which is recruiting or would be happy to take in a hunter who is a bit new to the whole idea of a "social" guild, but willing to be patient as I learn how to actually interact with people in a guild.
I'm a little hesitant in my guild searching because last time I found a really nice social guild which advertised as being "drama-free" it sort of... imploded in a ball of seething hate and viciousness the likes of which I had never seen or imagined in all my years of playing. As such I'm a little bit guild-shy these days.
Thanks everyone for any advice or suggestions they can give me. :)
Edit: Thanks for all the advice everyone! It threw me because I saw several guilds (and they were long established guilds which have been around for 4+ years) with this policy and having never seen it before so I thought I would check if it was becoming the norm. Maybe I will just wait until Mists hits and start again then - there are too many guilds looking for raiders at the moment to be able to easily filter the social/casuals out.
I've been looking specifically for a casual/social guild with a family friendly/community atmosphere, mostly in the hopes of finding a guild with minimal hate speech/slurs and a minimal of bad language (I don't mind swearing, I just don't like seeing it in excess really) and I found quite a few really good candidates except for one thing. All of these guilds appear to have a strict "all your alts must be in the guild and if you remove one, we remove all of them" rule. All other guilds I have found are hardcore raiders or... not what I am looking for at all (my server is one of the oldest around and can be a little bit of a cesspool at times)
I have a fair amount of alts around the place, most of them are in a family alt guild (when I say family, I mean everyone in it is a member of my family or a very close family friend) and I have one or two alts in a former guild just to keep connections (though that guild has changed so much since I was a full member it wouldn't be too hard to pull them out). Most of my alts I rarely play - I have 1 main who is the toon I play the most, a few max level alts who I play a little bit when I get sick of my main (mostly dailies/farming/a dungeon or two very very occasionally), and the rest of my alts are below max level and get played every few months for maybe a week at a time, and then left again for months, or are used to play with family.
I find myself being a little concerned about being in a guild with such a strict alt policy, it seems a little... controlling to me. They say that it is all in the spirit of community, but sometimes I like to have some peace and quiet on an alt. Is it really such a bad thing to have alts on which you want to be alone or separate from others from time to time? I would have thought that such a rule might apply to raiding or hardcore guilds, but for casual guilds? Is a few low level alts really that essential to a guild if they barely get played.
Is this kind of rule common in guilds? Especially guilds that advertise as casual? Does anyone here run or live in a guild that enforces this sort of rule and do you allow exceptions beyond "bank alts are okay to leave out.?" Has anyone had an experience with this sort of rule and what did you think of it?
And lastly, while I am here, does anyone have a casual/social guild on Alliance side Eonar (US) which is recruiting or would be happy to take in a hunter who is a bit new to the whole idea of a "social" guild, but willing to be patient as I learn how to actually interact with people in a guild.
I'm a little hesitant in my guild searching because last time I found a really nice social guild which advertised as being "drama-free" it sort of... imploded in a ball of seething hate and viciousness the likes of which I had never seen or imagined in all my years of playing. As such I'm a little bit guild-shy these days.
Thanks everyone for any advice or suggestions they can give me. :)
Edit: Thanks for all the advice everyone! It threw me because I saw several guilds (and they were long established guilds which have been around for 4+ years) with this policy and having never seen it before so I thought I would check if it was becoming the norm. Maybe I will just wait until Mists hits and start again then - there are too many guilds looking for raiders at the moment to be able to easily filter the social/casuals out.