There are alot of guilds! The best advice would be to join kingdom/duchy/guild discords and hang out in there to see which ones you prefer!
You can visit this spreadsheet that has all pledged/layaway kingdoms and duchies with their forum posts/discords!
Good luck!
My best advice would be to be patient.
Keep in mind that you don't have to commit to any particular group until you want to.
Everyone uses Discord, so go hang out in 10 different Discord channels and just get a feel for each of the groups that might interest you. If you find yourself at home in one of them, there you go. If not, there is still plenty of time.
Elyria will be home of many guilds probably too many to keep up with on a constant basis. There are listing for guilds in the Recruitment section of the forums. However personally I would not just read the guild posts, I would chat on discord and post my own listing looking for a home.
You did say that you have a good idea of what you want to do, which is good. I would look into the resources needed for such endeavors and try to find biomes that would provide such resources. Just post what server you are looking to play on, the biome you are looking for, and what you want to do in game. If resources are not a major concern then just concentrate on finding a guild where you feel comfortable.
As I see it no one will be able to travel safely early in the game so you may be stuck where you start for a while so pick a starting area that will be beneficial. I suggest joining a local guilds and get your foot into the door for your craft and as you level you can be looking to relocate to a higher ranking guild. Also keep in mind that you can be a member of 3 different guilds at the same time which can give you some flexibility.
With the size of the map being so huge I don't see a single guild becoming the all powerful guild in the game. There will be plenty of solo or smaller groups that will probably rival the capabilities of the larger guilds in the game. So the choice will be left up to you, do you want to be a cog in the machine of a huge guild, or do you want to know everyone in the guild and have it feel like family.
There will be time to decide on your choice of action just feel free to post and ask questions anytime you are unsure.
"Count Eldric Blackmoore of The Haven, offering direct support for the Hunters, Explorers and Gathers of Elyria"
Very true. Figuring out where you want to settle will then in turn help you to eliminate the guilds that are not and will not be present there. And if it turns out that there isn't one there to begin with then you will know that you have the choice to either, a) Form one yourself, or b) approach an already formed guild in logical proximity/realm-of-influence about joining them as a branch of the main Guild body, a chapter house, in that location.
Well there is 6 kingdoms per server, each kingdom has 12 duchies, each duchy has 24 counties.
There is no set number of towns per county. anywhere between 1 and 5 is the expectation on the forums. And that one might just be the county capitol with the counts house and the required support structures.
and there is 4 servers
most of the counties will likely be NPC for the foreseeable future.
But just for the sake of discussion let's say they all were PC controlled right now.
That would be 24 kingdoms, 72 duchies, and 1,728 counties who could all have recruitment threads,
and let's say there wasn't any other towns besides the county and higher capitols so that we don't have to factor mayor\town recruitment in since that is a number that is impossible to tie down since the # of cities per county is not fixed amount like the rest.
that is almost 2,000 potential recruitment threads there just for "regions"
before you factor in schools, guilds, and associations in to the mix.
So in short, there is and will always be a metric shit ton of them.
as others have said, your best bet is to skim thru the threads and find some that on paper sound good fit \ peak your interest.
Then join those groups discord\teams speak\forum\whatever and get to know the people until you found the group that you mesh with.
Oh, just one Enterprise. ;D
There actually aren't many "guilds" but a lot of nobles looking to fill their lands. Keep in mind, many of these "groups" are groups within groups and overlap one another. You can belong to a kingdom, a duchy within that kingdom, a county within that duchy, a school, and a guild. The people you will actually be playing with will be those in your county, maybe your duchy, definitely your guild.
Posted By Rheika at 9:51 PM - Thu Apr 06 2017
Oh, just one Enterprise. ;D
There actually aren't many "guilds" but a lot of nobles looking to fill their lands. Keep in mind, many of these "groups" are groups within groups and overlap one another. You can belong to a kingdom, a duchy within that kingdom, a county within that duchy, a school, and a guild. The people you will actually be playing with will be those in your county, maybe your duchy, definitely your guild.
Yeah Rheika is 100% right.
I joined Ruthenium Blacksmith Guild
the guild HQ is pledged members of the County of Shade
which is pledged to the Duchy of Caerulleum
Which is pledged to the kingdom of Bordweall.
So I am a member of all four and am active in all four discords. Even though I entered via a trade guild.
Don't forget that "Guilds" as we know them in most MMOs are not Guilds in Elyria. A guild will be a group of people working in the same industry. You'll probably only be in one guild at a time.
There are two other non-political social groupings: Schools (self explanatory) and Associations. The latter is for people who share a similar interest. There is no limit to the number of associations in which you can enroll, as far as I can recall.
Pile those onto the political groupings and it does get a bit overwhelming. But that's how things are. You'll probably end up in a dozen different discord channels networking with a guild, a couple of schools, several associations, your chosen county, duchy and kingdom, and others. Nothing is set in stone at the moment, so rather than "joining" a group get to know the people who are active in the community. When it's time to settle you will be prepared.
A lot.
On each server there are up to six kingdoms. Within each kingdom is 12(right?) duchies, each housing 24 counties which each have 3-5 baronies within them(not sure if that's up to date). That accounts for all the political factions; as for guild guilds, I'd like to imagine there will be local guilds springing up in pretty much every city, as well as a large handful of intercity guilds spread across their respective kingdoms.
