i guess i'm fairly new to mmorpg's since ao is my first. having said that, i'm also one of the left-at-12.6-just-came-back guys so i'm not really an ao newbie. my background is more in fps type games(ut in particular) and i was in a clan there, but guilds in mmorpg's always seem like a different animal altogether.
in fps games(well, ut, anyway), the process of joining a clan was pretty straightforward. you play with people from different clans on public servers. if you liked playing with a certain group, you'd go hang out in their irc channel if they had one. then if it seems like a right fit(skills and attitude-wise) you'd ask to join or more likely they'd ask you to join. of course you had clans that weren't so personal and just let in anyone who was skilled, but you always had that opportunity to develop a relationship with a clan before you joined.
guilds in mmorpg's, on the other hand, seem to be extremes. some people have been playing together forever and moved from other games. others just seem to be almost strangers that just joined a guild because they wanted to be in a guild.
i've been asked to join 1 or 2 guilds in my time on ao, but i never really felt comfortable accepting. even if the person asking seemed nice, i'm hesitant joining a guild without at least knowing what the rest of the people in that guild are like.
so i guess my question is, how does one become framiliar with the different guilds in the game and what the members in those guilds are like? it seems a lot of guildies know what the other guilds are like, but for the unaffiliated like myself, where do i go to learn more about this or that guild?
how did everyone else get into their guild? i'm sure a lot of mmorpg veterens knew they wanted to be in a guild when they started this game, so how did you find the right one for you?
just a few questions i thought i'd throw out there.