Guilds system

I have played many mmo's and joined (and left), many guilds in my time, however I admit I am baffled by the guild system in Guild Wars 2.I mean, 5 guilds?Taking Black Desert Online as an example, one is expected to join one guild and give one's life blood to help the guild grow and do unmentionable things to people who have the effrontery to join other guilds and compete.For this, one gains a number of buffs, companionship and assistance to progress in one's bloodthirsty career in the game. Oh, and lots of guild goodies depending what guild activities one takes part in ... all good.

So, obviously I don't have to join 5 guilds ... what I'm querying is why this system grew (different from any other mmo I have played) and how it is meant to work .i.e. pros and cons of having 5 sets of pals to contend with.

I'm not trolling, honest, I am really keen to know how a player can use this system to best advantage ... so far, I have only figured out it might be a plan to have different guilds for different activities e.g. PVE, PVP, Crafting, Raids, Fractals, WvW, exploration, yada yada ...but why? surely some guilds cover all these activities? What am I missing?{Well, apart from the fun of having different people and flavours of guild to interact with, looking on the bright side}

Sorry if this has been discussed as nauseum elsewhere, a friendly steer to the guild gurus would be much appreciated.Thanks and cheers ...

That's pretty much it - this way you can join different guilds for different reasons, whatever those might be.

For example role-players might be in one guild that's their charr character's warband and another which is their human character's drinking/adventuring buddies. Or one guild who are working to achieve a goal and secretly they're part of a sub-group who are working to subvert that goal - they want this plot twist to be a surprise for most of the group and a guild is an easier way to organise it than forming a squad each time (especially since they may need to be in a squad with the people they're currently playing with). Someone else might be in one guild for general PvE and social activities, a second one to play WvW because their first guild is spread across multiple servers and a third for Tier 4 Fractals and raids because the first two don't have enough people who want to do those. And a third person might be in 2 or 3 social guilds because they prefer small guilds to big ones but their schedule is erratic and they're often online at different times, so they join guilds focused on different time zones to ensure they always have someone to chat to.

You're not required to be in more than one guild of course, and some guilds will insist their members must represent them at all times, effectively making it impossible to be in more than one. But this way players have the option to choose between one generalist guild who does everything (or at least everthing they're interested in) or a few specialist ones.

It also used to be popular to use one of the slots to make a private guild for extra bank space, but I think that's died off now you have to claim a guild hall before you can work on the upgraded needed to get a bank. But some players still have one and, especially if you have more than one account, it can be useful for transfering stuff or for extra storage.

• We do not have alliances* in GW2, guild-size is limited to 500.
• Guilds in GW2 usually have different purposes. There exist guilds that offer several activities at once, but in some cases it makes more sense to join a guild for a special reason. For example Fractals & Raids. Reason is simple: Guild which focus on instanced content are specialized for that. Some are dedicated to introduce new players and train them, while others work with maximum efficiency to get the job done in record time. You can try both via LFG as well, but there is a chance to meet some people with special understanding of how things should work. These guilds also offer advantages like scheduled runs and static groups.
• Social guilds for communication and relaxing. Important: Social Guilds are NO DATING PLATFORMS.
• Timezone issues due to your physical location on the world. You may want to join a guild that plays at the same time you do.
• Personal Guild: For own emblem on capes and armor, own "title" and own bank. Creating a guild costs 2 gold. You can have a sheet of 1000 characters at your disposal, an own guild emblem, a name and an up to 4 letter shortcut. Personal guild bank costs another 50 gold and some special currency, easy to get. Then you have 50 slots bank at for your own use. Additional bank tiers sadly require you to claim and build a guildhall.
• If you are into WvW, you want to join a guild on your home-server maybe.
• In WvW you can claim objects for your guild, camps, towers, keeps. Sadly only one object at a time. So you can use some of the additional guilds to claim those objects. If the correct upgrades are unlocked, you can grab more supply at the camps or gain more buffs when you are within a certain radius around the object.
• In PvP, you can make own guild-groups in the guild-panel with own statistics.
• There are even certain guilds dedicated to certain PvE objectives like Worldbosses, maps or just difficult events.

*) "yet" When do alliances come to GW2? SOON

As @Danikat.8537 mentioned, if you are fine with just one guild, stick to that.

The others explained it well. I'm in five guilds though three belong to friends, another one I had started up with my brother but since it needs the guild hall exploration and spending a lot of money- didn't go any further (started it before guild halls existed), and the last one I was invited to from someone I ran with that also did PvP. That would be the one I'd switch off if decided to go with a raid or fractal guild.

I'm sorry to ask here, but I'm not sure where else to post this question: How can you tell who the guild originator is, or is it not important? My husband and I are trying to get something changed w/ one of our guilds, but we forgot which account started it. Would be so nice if it were a permanent first line in the "history", but the history page doesn't go back as far as we need it to. Thanks for your help!

@"Cylent.6078" said:I'm sorry to ask here, but I'm not sure where else to post this question: How can you tell who the guild originator is, or is it not important? My husband and I are trying to get something changed w/ one of our guilds, but we forgot which account started it. Would be so nice if it were a permanent first line in the "history", but the history page doesn't go back as far as we need it to. Thanks for your help!

Have you checked the guild roster? The guild Leader should be noted there as such via his rank.

It's strange people find this strange, because in most games, you can have different guilds on different characters anyway. In Rift I had characters on different servers and in different guilds. One guild I had was active during US hours and one was active during Australian hours. They didn't know about each other, because there was no reason to. I only played a character on each of them.

Guild Wars 2 you have an account on a server and you can only join one guild on that server. So it makes sense to be in multiple guilds. Not like you can't do it in most other games, just not on one character.

@"Cylent.6078" said:I'm sorry to ask here, but I'm not sure where else to post this question: How can you tell who the guild originator is, or is it not important? My husband and I are trying to get something changed w/ one of our guilds, but we forgot which account started it. Would be so nice if it were a permanent first line in the "history", but the history page doesn't go back as far as we need it to. Thanks for your help!

It doesn't matter who started it, what's important is who is currently the leader. That role might not necessarily be called leader as the names can be customised, but it will be the top rank in the list and the one with full permissions.