The following is the list of steps one should go through when creating a World of Warcraft
guide. A more detailed explanation of each step and the considerations for it is included
further down in this section of the guide.
●Decide on a guild name: Every guild needs a name. Guild names in WoW must
comply with the terms of service and cannot be used by another other guild within
the same realm. A realm is a collection of servers like “Eastern” or “Pacific”.
●Decide if you will be horde or alliance: A guild in World of Warcraft can contain
either characters from the Horde races or characters from the Alliance races but it
cannot contain both.
●Decide on what ranks you wish to have in your guild: You can have up to 10 ranks
defined to your guild. You don’t have to use all 10 spots but you can have up to 10
ranks and you can customize the privileges each rank has.
●Find 9 friends or recruit 9 guildmates. You must have 10 signatures (with yours
counting as one) from 10 different accounts (not characters) to create a guild.
●Collect 10 silver: It costs 10 silver to create a guild. This is easy to get.
●Visit the Guildmaster NPC: You will purchase a charter for 10 silver and it will
appear in your backpack. It will validate your guild name at charter purchase but
will not reserve it/secure it until you turn in your charter.
●Find your friends and have them sign your charter. As I said above, you will need
10 signatures
●Turn in your charter to the Guildmaster NPC and you will become the guildmaster
of the guild.
2.1. Decide on a guild name
Every guild needs a name. Guild names in WoW must comply with the terms of service
and cannot be used by another other guild within the same realm. Let's look at each of
those factors individually so you can make the best choices.
First off, your guild name is the first thing other players will notice about you. It hangs, in
green text, over your head every where you go. What sort of image do you want to convey
to other players? “haX0rZ” is not going to tell people you are a mature, friendly or

sociable group. Your name is your first impression and it will be how many groups judge
you. Choose a name wisely.
Don’t pick a name that is in use by some other guild. You may well be choosing a name
that they have trademarked (i.e. own) like The Syndicate is trademarked and can only
legally be used by them in any online game. Using a trademarked name could land you in
legal trouble with the guild and with the game you are playing since all games enforce
trademark laws so all the trademark owner has to do is request they terminate your use of
their mark to have the guild closed down or possibly renamed if they are willing to do that.
Secondly, if you use a name someone else goes by or that you saw used in some other
game, then you may be inheriting their reputation, at least in part, and that isn’t always a
good thing.
Second, your guild name must comply with the World of Warcraft terms of service. While
you may not have realized it, you agreed to the ToS (Term of Service) the first time you
loaded WoW and when you created your account for the game. That term of service
contains, but is not limited to, the following stipulations:
●No racial slurs
●No profanity
●No use of copyrighted or trademarked material (unless you own the mark) So you
cant name your guild “The Lord of The Rings”, for example much like you cannot
name your character Gandalf without having it renamed. Blizzard has and will
continue to enforce copyrights and trademarks since it is the law.
●No offensive statements
It is very important that you remain within Blizzard’s terms of service. If you violate it
several penalties can apply including:
●Renaming of the guild
●Deletion of the guild
●Banning of the guildmaster’s account
●Banning of the accounts of all members
The final consideration is that the name you chose for a guild cannot be used by any other
guild, on any server, within your realm. When you first load WoW, there is a button

labelled Change Realm. When you click it you see there are several realms like Eastern,
Central, Mountain and Pacific (if you are playing on the North American servers). Each
realm is a collection of servers, some of which are classified as normal and some as pvp.
No other guild, on any of those servers, within a given realm, can have a guild by the
same name as the one you wish to use for yours. If any other guild already uses that
name, you will get a message back when you go to purchase your guild charter stating
that your name is already in use.
2.2. Decide if You Will be Horde or Alliance
The decision to be Horde or Alliance is the most important decision (after the choice of an
appropriate guild name) that you will make prior to creating your guild. This has
permanent implications on your guild for months or possibly years to come. Once you
decide you cannot change without disbanding your guild and you cannot use/reuse your
guildname so long as the original guild continues to exist. So chose Horde or Alliance for
your focus.
You may not guild Horde and Alliance characters within the same guild. The game engine
physically will not allow that. You cannot even talk to characters in the opposite faction.
Nor can you enter their towns/villages without turning pvp+ and being attackable.
The Horde side is composed of the races:
●Troll
●Orc
●Tauren
●Undead
The horde side has one additional class (The Shaman) that the alliance side does not
have. The Horde’s 3 main cities are: Orgimmar (orc home town), Thunderbluff (Tauren
home town) and Undercity (undead home town).
The Alliance side is composed of the races:
●Human
●Dwarf
●Gnome

●Night Elf
The alliance has one additional class (The Paladin) that the horde side does not have.
The Alliance’s 3 main cities are: Stormwind (Humans home town), Ironforge (Dwarf home
town) and Darnassus (Nightelf home town).
Once you know if your guild will be alliance or horde, all guildmembers must chose a race
within the list of 4 races supported by that faction and all characters that you plan to guild
must be of those races. The guildmaster that buys the charter to create the guild, must be
one of the correct four races and must visit one of the correct three faction cities.
2.3. Decide on What Ranks You Wish to Have in Your Guild
You need to think about your guild ranks right now, before your guild is created, because
once it is created, adding and reordering ranks is not an easy task. All new ranks are
added as the lowest tiered rank in the system. So if you later decide that you wish to have
a new rank that fits between two existing ones, you will need to add a new rank and
rename all existing ones and promote/demote members accordingly to line up with your
new structure. It is far easier to plan things out, before hand. In my opinion, even if you
wish to add temporary placeholder ranks, it is a good idea to use all 10 rank spots now.
By default when you create a guild the following ranks are created:
●Guildmaster
●Officer
●Veteran
●Member
You can have up to 10 ranks so if you do not have predefined ranks in your guild, but
think you may have them later, you may wish to at least create temporary ranks to save
yourself the trouble of reordering people later. While this isn't much of an issue with 10 or
20 characters, even if you have only 20 members, if they make 5 chars each, trying to
reorder 100+ characters can get to be quite cumbersome. So, since no one see’s the
actual list of ranks, unless one is assigned to a member, you may consider setting up a
structure like:

1) Guildmaster
2) Temp Officer Rank
3) Officer
4) Temp Vet Member 1
5) Temp Vet Member 2
6) Veteran Member
7) Temp Member 1
8) Temp Member 2
9) Member
10) Newbie Rank
Your newbie rank should have no privileges to talk in guildsay and perhaps not even to
read guildsay. All brand new members will get that rank. All of your Temp rank positions
are simply placeholders which you can rename later, and promote members to, without
having to reorder your entire guild. And no one will see them or know they are there,
except the guildmaster since no members will yet be assigned to them.
Each rank can have different permissions which we will cover in a later section. But be
thinking about how much/how little power you wish each rank in your guild to have. Can
anyone add members? Can anyone promote members? Should anyone be able to set
the Message of the Day (MoTD)? Those are good questions to ask yourself at this stage
in the guild creation process.
2.4. Find 9 Friends or Recruit 9 Guildmates
In order to form a guild in World of Warcraft, you must have the signatures of 9 different
characters, plus your own, from 10 different accounts. This is a minor point if you have a
guild of at least 10 members but if it is just you and a few friends, this can a real pain.
However, all is not lost. Here is the trick: You and your friends will sign your guild charter.
Then, for whatever unsigned spots remain, talk to unguilded players in game and ask
them if they will sign your charter to help you form the guild. As soon as the guild is
formed, you can remove them or they can quit. Of course if you plan to remove them you
should let them know up front that you just need their help for a short time and explain the
process to them. So long as you have at least one person (yourself) guilded, the guild
continues to exist. You only need the 10 people to form the guild, not to maintain it.

While Everquest would periodically go through and remove guilds that did not meet the
minimum number of members, WoW has so far not indicated that it will do so.
If you are trying to build a longer-term guild or cannot find random people to temporarily
help you form it, then you need to invest time in recruiting. This is critical to do before you
buy your charter, in game, because if you logout with your charter on your character, it will
be deleted. That is one of the methods used to prevent someone from hoarding guild
names. So either decide to go the route of asking people for temporary help in game or
recruit 9 actual members, before you go buy the charter and have them online at the time
you buy the charter.
If you wish your guild to last, then put some serious thought into whom you recruit and
why you would like them in your guild. You should seek people that:
●Share your goals
●Play at similar times that you play
●Share your values (i.e. if you don’t exploit, you shouldn’t recruit exploiters)
●People you like being around
●People who like being in a guild
●People who like grouping with guildmates
●People who are willing to invest time to support the guild and help you grow it
One of the most common mistakes a new guild makes is to accept anyone willing to join.
The unintentional (or sometimes intentional) mindset is that ‘size‘ is needed to have a
guild therefore taking anyone who wants to join is the way to go. You only need 5 people
to have a full group. You only need 1 buddy to have a hunting partner. Your guild will last
longer and be more fun and less work, for you, if you recruit 4 good friends instead of 20
random strangers that you have nothing in common with.