Join a free company? How to choose?

[Lorr]

I get invites and have read about them, but I am not sure how to choose a Free Company.

What can I expect to get from joining one? And how do I pick one to join? So far, it seems that all I can do is join one, decide if I like it and either stay or leave then repeat as required. That sounds like a crude way to do it.

I don't have a group of friends playing, so other than that method how did you guys choose a FC?

[Anova]

Free companies and guilds have a certain structure and group dynamic to them. There are the core members, who are online every day and who are either officers or personally close (as far as games go) to the guild leaders. Then there are periphery members, such as new players or those who don't play with the group.

The trick is to find and talk to one of the core members about the guild. This is pretty easy as you can just tell the recruiter you wish to speak to an officer and ask questions about the FC. Most FCs are more than happy to talk about themselves.

Ask about what the FC does (is it a raid guild or more casual), how often the FC holds events and what times (if you want to join), and ask about the FC culture. Is there a lot of drama? Are there any expectations for the members in the FC? What are their long-term and short-term goals?

For example, a hardcore raid FC who aims for world firsts will ask that its starting members be ready to devote hours every day to training on the dungeons. The culture there is actually very competitive and an interview with a member will tell you that most members are training to enter the main raid group. Some players like that kind of culture and others don't.

A more casual FC will simply say they're more social. There's fewer rules and structure for them. Such rules may include that when you're online, you be willing to help (within reason) another FC member.

You don't have to join the FC to just talk to them about them. In fact, you shouldn't feel pressured to join one at all. There is actually more pressure on the FC recruiting new members than there is for you to join a FC, so your question should always be: why do i want to join this FC? And its never the other way around.

[Vladislav]

3 types of FC in this game from my pow :
- Content Based (Hardcore) - require attendance , high skills , will do all content .
- Social based (Casual) - Requires nothing , you here just for FC acquire FC points and FC leaders spend them , social chat time to time and nothing more.
- Familty/Close knit (Poor) - req nothing , you here cause u are friend of some FC member or FC leader or you are FC leader etc , usually 4 to 10 ppl's in those .

[namidax]

I say, go to your server's message board and find posts of people who looking for fc like you.
FC officers tend to answer there what kind of fc they are and how to contact them.

i recommend fc that says they are new player friendly, casual /semi-hardcore. When you find the candidate fc, you should talk to him/her and get a feel for the fc.

[Niwashi]

You'll get a better feel for it by talking to some of the people, but for an initial idea of what different FCs are interested in, you can select players in-game and view their FC info. It will tell you things like their FC's rank, how many members there are and how many of those are currently online, what their focus is (casual, hardcore, dungeons, PvP, roleplaying, etc.), whether they're recruiting or not (and whether it's for specific classes or everyone), and a few other things. You can start with that to find some that at least have the size and focus you're looking for, and then talk to some of the people from those FCs.