Today I decided to start a new type of blog post: Ask EQJunkies.com (similar to Ask Slashdot) - a post looking for comments from the community.

Today’s topic: Creating your own guild vs. joining an existing guild.

Both have their benefits and their disadvantages.  Here is my brief list:

Benefits of starting your own guild:

1. Control over guild membership and officers
2. Control over guild bank
3. Control over the type of guild (casual, raiding, etc.)
4. Good feeling from investment in the community.  Doing writs for the guild is helping you build upon your investment
5. Sense of ownership

Disadvantages of starting your own guild:

1. Timesink
2. Managing drama and guild members
3. Managing guild bank
4. Convincing people to work on guild progression
5. Managing website, vent server, etc.
6. Not many players at the beginning

Benefits of joining existing guild:

1. Can jump right into a well oiled machine
2. immediate access to guild status benefits
3. Large group of players to play with

Disadvantages of joining existing guild:

1. Don’t know many of the members
2. Most likely limited or no access to guild bank
3. Have to work your way up the ladder to gain trust of members
4. Have to break into potential cliques
5. No sense of investment or ownership of the guild

These are just a few things that come to mind for me - after weighing all the pros and cons, the EQjunkies decided to make their own guild.

Did I miss anything?  What have you done in the past?  We would love to hear your story!