I don't want to join a Free Company because...

[EdwinLi]

All my free Company ever do is talk about things in the game and sometime share tips about what to do in dungeon and primal fights.

[Conradus]

No single FC can be appealing to everybody. Some are casual, some are hardcore endgame, and so on. And you can only belong to one FC. It may be that the people who turn you down aren't against joining an FC, they just don't want to join *your* FC. And that's not necessarily an insult to your FC.

[Returnee]

I like to play with everyone; I wouldn't want people to feel like there was the barrier of a guild between us. I actually loved playing in pick up groups in City of Heroes; maybe I'm crazy, but it kept things interesting. I don't know if it's possible, but I wouldn't mind if I could be a sort of free agent that people know they can go to should the need arise; this game's mechanics may not be very supportive of that.

I'd also like to see what kind of reputation guilds earn before associating myself with them. Likewise, I'd like to know what a guild is about; I'm not looking for some guild that turns a game into a second job or is filled with unreasonable people.

A good guild can make a game great though; probably the best run one I experienced was the Knights of the Forgotten Order in Diablo... I had a good time there. My corp in Eve Online was also indispensable, and a great deal of fun, until they got too serious. Still like the guys, but in the end I no longer fit in.

[hours]

Because of the potential drama.

I find that a lot of players in the game have great difficulty regulating their emotions and tend to subject other people to their immaturity. It's not fun having to deal with people who constantly try to guilt trip you ("you didn't say hi to me! you hate me!!", "omg why can't you study later, I need you in my group, you're a crappy friend") and other things on the same scale. I play this game to enjoy myself, not to be someone else's emotional punching bag.

[Kennar]

I don't even get tells. I just get blind invites. Which is extremely annoying.

Yep. I've ignored four blind FC invites so far. I find it rather rude and presumptuous to send an invite without even a simple introduction. I want to know who is inviting me, and what kind of FC (or LS, or whatever) is wanting me to join. I think of a FC as a business. If I know about a business and think I might want to buy from them, I'll come in the front door and ask. If I don't know about the company, but the salesman is pestering me with cold calls, then they're just wasting everybody's time.

Back in my FFXI days, I hated blind party invites. When I was party lead and had to invite a replacement, I always sent a /tell first with a greeting and a simple personal invitation. First impressions are important, and I found that people who showed a little politeness with something as simple as a party invitation were the most fun to hang out with.


edit: This thousand character limit is killing me!

[dragonflie]

I'm a soloist and a bit of a loner, so I don't typically enjoy large gatherings. I only just recently joined one since I starting to get tired of random pugs, but it is a small fc of only 40 people so far, with about 10 people online. Not too much spam, and mature enough so hopefully no drama.

Blind invites are so rude.

[ZyloWolfBane]

Since I have yet to be in a guild in ANY MMO that didn't have issues with drama and bias towards certain people over others no matter how much you've done for them just make it unappealing for me.

It's simply not worth it, plus queue times are the same solo as they are with a pre-made group, so with that being the case why bother with a FC? Easier to just find a group in /shout and just go when I feel like going rather than waiting for specific people in a FC to stop screwing around and start a group.

[Shiyo]

This game makes it incredibly hard to recruit players for your FC or join a FC of like-minded players because of how anti-social it is. Between duty finder, fates, and soloing to 50, there's little to no way to actually meet players on your server and interact with them. This is even a problem at level50, I have to go out of my way spamming mor dhona, making a LFG LS(yes, I made a LS that's basically a cross-zone LFG channel and it's maxed on people now) and trying to do dungeons via /shouts to find competent and cool players for my FC.

Can devs please stop making it so hard to make friends, find cool people, form a FC, form a linkshell, and form a community in MMO's please? Thank you.

[Sylvanoshei]

Bad experiences with linkshells/free companies.

[tukuiPat]

I generally don't join guilds in MMOs unless it's with my friends, as many people I've meet through MMOs and online gaming and talk to a lot outside of games. I'm mostly just a shy introverted gamer, face to face meetings with people are even if they're like minded gamers, I just have a really hard time talking, it's the same thing when it comes to joining a guild where I don't know anyone, it takes too long for me to even talk to someone. As hardcore as I can get when it comes to gaming, I just don't do well talking to strangers.