Hey all, I may be a little confused or dumb, maybe both

I read somewhere that when you join a guild the other characters you have on your account, despite faction, will also join. Is this true? Does this mean that you cannot have characters join different guilds if you want to play one character with a raid guild and one in a casual friend's guild? Any clarification would be great, because I've searched around and can't find the original article I had read. Thanks!

I saw someone post we can have 5 guilds per account. I have no source, so if you want just google for more info with that as start point.

From what I've heard, you can be in multiple guilds on a single character. you choose which guild you want to represent at any given time.

NDA prevents us from answering your question properly but you can be in 5 guilds at the same time

I am pretty sure this has already been released by ZOS, so not under NDA (especially since I didn't learn it in the beta). You join guilds with your account, not individual characters, and you can join up to 5. It's similar to the way GW2's guild system works, with some exceptions (which actually may be under the NDA, so I can't be more specific).

Thanks for the clarification, and this is a little depressing. I was hoping to have the opportunity to roll two characters in two different factions and be able to role play with guilds in those factions, but if I join a guild with my entire account I don't have that option.

I agree here, on one side its nice to don't have to enroll alts in a guilds and don't having alts filled up with alts, on the other hand you might want to have an alt in another faction.

This might be worth throwing at the twitter account for the game as I have to admit I am as uncertain as the rest of you.

Remember, you can join up to 5 different guilds, and guilds are not restricted by faction. The only restriction is that your alts in different factions can't be in the same Cyrodiil campaign. So, you can have two different characters in two different factions, and treat them like they're two different guilds (shut off the guild chat for the other guild, for example). They'll still BE in that other guild, but you don't have to interact with them.

For the record, I don't like it, either. I prefer my alts to be completely separate, unless I specifically enroll them in the same guild as my main. Some say that allowing you to play as "invisible" or "anonymous" affords pretty much the same thing, but I disagree.

Yeah, years ago when I played WoW I belonged to a raiding guild which I loved, but sometimes needed time away. So I rolled an alt on a different server and joined a much more casual guild, and got the best of both worlds and made a lot more friends that way. Just going 'anonymous' isn't enough, especially for a role play. If I want to have a champion of light fighting against the forces of evil and an alt character who is a murderous cutthroat, they're not going to mesh well in one guild, even in a different faction.

GW2's system is alright for a game with no factions. I think it is not the ideal system for this game, though. Of course, I will not start complaining before actually playing the game and discovering which are the exceptions you are talking about. That would be silly.

As long as the guilds don't go "full represent or kick", I'm ok with this. I mean, I will just have different guilds for alts on different factions (and a character part of the AD won't represent a EP's guild, for example) if I ever make a character that is not part of the Aldmeri Dominion.

That's the problem though- from what I read and what someone above re-affirmed is that the player guild you join with one character will be the guild you are put into with any other character you create. Guilds are not tied to factions, they're tied to accounts. So If you create a character in the Aldmeri Dominion and join a guild, then create a character in the Daggerfall Covenant, when you start playing that character will already be a member of the guild you joined with the other character.

Yeah, but if it is like the GW2's system, then you can simply not represent that guild with that character. I have no idea of how the system will be like in this game, but on GW2 the guild that you are not representing won't get influence from you and you won't be able to see the chat. Anyone that pass by you won't even be able to know that you are part of that guild that you are not representing. However, people on that guild will see that you are online and not representing, which can lead to drama and kicks if the guild has a "100% rep" policy. As I say, I don't think it is the ideal system for this game, but it is not so bad if you can just choose not to represent that particular guild on that particular character.

I would prefer having guilds tied to characters instead of to accounts any day just to avoid the drama, though.

The way to think about it is not "all your characters are put in the guild".

The way to think of it is "the PLAYER is in the guild, not the CHARACTER".

However, since you can have multiple guilds, there's nothing keeping you from only chatting and doing activities with whichever guild you want that specific character to be in. You don't have to be in touch with all your guilds all the time.

Personally I prefer it this way... since if I'm playing an alt, I might still want to be available to play with my main guild, and it's nice if they can contact me if they need me for something so I can switch over and join them.

In MMOs that don't use this system, it's been a real headache keeping track of all my friends' alts and their guilds, and my alts' guilds and friends. This solves that problem.

Yes guilds are ACCOUNT-based, not character-based so all your characters are in the same 5 guilds. This is public knowledge.

Hopefully there is a way for guild-leaders to hide certain race/faction characters from the roster and to assign individual ranks to characters and not just to all alts.

Our guild is Dunmer-exclusive and I don't want to have to force guild-members not to have Dunmer characters.

This is a mixed bag for me too. I like the WoW system where you join a guild based on a single character, say for a raiding character or another for a social character (or one just to get away), but at the same time this system, similar to GW2, works for it's own respects where I can join up to 5 guilds, one raid, one social, one etc...but for all of my characters. I do often wish to bring my alts to my main's guild but can't always muster up the motivation to whisper/ask for invite/etc...so this is nice but one thing I noticed lacked HUGELY in GW2's system is the lack of sociability with being part of multiple guilds. Almost no social activity I think because players in the guild didn't necessarily feel part of a single entity or contributing to so many guilds at once. Hope ESO pulls it off well.