guilds were increased to 200,000,000 by August 2017.
Guilds (sometimes mistaken for Clans, especially when talking about zOMG!) are a means for Gaians to get together in a private place, away from outsiders, to do their own business. Most Guilds are for just talking, spam, making gold, etc.; however there are guilds specifically for people 18+ of age, people of certain races, roleplay, speakers of specific languages, fan clubs, and many other groups. However, the fact that Guilds take a lot of Gold and time to maintain and the fact that many die out quickly has been a small concern.
Initially a guild cost 
20k to create. The price was massively increased to 200k by August 2017. This is only 20 Platinum though.
Starting a Guild[]
To start a Guild, a user must first build up enough gold, whether by posting, selling items in the marketplace, selling to NPCs, or receiving donations, and then go to the Guild building in Barton Town.
Once there, the user needs to create their own Guild, paying the gold for it, and create a name, description, and search tags. Then they have a guild; however, there are some steps that still need to be done.
First of all, they need to create the first threads, usually Rules and/or Introductions. There should also be at least two Sub-Forums, which cost 2.5k each. The Sub-Forums are for talking about things that branch away from the main category, or for roleplaying Guilds, to roleplay something privately. There are even sub-forums for when the main forums get too big and need to be split up. The last thing to do is invite friends, make a banner, and start recruiting.
Status Level[]
- Owner: Someone who started a Guild, or had ownership transferred to them. Has the power to Promote or Demote a member. And can choose the setting of Forum Access for each subforum.
- Captain: The person in charge of a Guild, often the owner.
- Vice Captain: If something happens to the Captain, such as a grizzly bear mishap, the Vice Captain can take over.
- Crew Member: Someone appointed by the Captain or Vice Captain to help moderate the Guild.
Forum Type[]
- Public Guilds have forums that can be viewed and posted in by anyone.
- Private Guilds have forums that anyone can read, but where only members can post.
- Hidden Guilds have forums visible only to members.
Categories:[]
Users are able to narrow down their searches for a Guild to join, there are 21 total.
Anime / Art / Breedables / Commerce / Discussion / Entertainment / Foreign Language / Gaming / General / Interest Based / LGBT / Manga / Military/Army / Music / Political / Regional / Religion/Morality / Role Playing / Spam / Sports / zOMG!
Guild[]
On the Guilds Homepage there are seven buttons (eight if viewed by an Owner) that are visibly labeled:
- Guild Home
- View Forum
- Guild Members
- Moderator Panel
- Report Guild
- Recommend Guild
- Quit Guild
- View Guild Announcements
Controls[]
- Crew Controls
- Invite users
- View current join requests
- View logs
- Captain Controls
- Edit settings
- Edit forums
- Change ownership
- Send Guild Announcements
The cost of sending group announcements for a guild depends on how many members there are, sending an announcement will cost the guild some pieces of gold. The amount of gold may differ in the event that new members join the guild. Guidelines for using the announcement system:
rules copied verbatim
- Please do not include html tags in your message.
- Maximum size of message is 1500 characters
- Maximum size of subject is 128 characters
- Adult content (above a "PG-13" level) is not allowed on Gaia. Anyone reported for violating this rule may have his/her membership revoked.
- Gaia will not refund your gold for messages sent.
- Only one group announcement may be sent per day per guild, no exceptions.
Criticism[]
Naturally, as with everything else on Gaia, there has been criticism of the Guild system. Major complaints were that the Guilds cost 20,000 gold, which was quite a lot for a non-item. The increase to 200,000,000 gold only worsened this.
Guilds are meant to be started by a group of people, not only one person. There are also complaints about how each sub-forum costs 2,500 gold; even with donations, smaller guilds might have a hard time raising enough money. Glitches, of course come in, such as when Guild searching went down, and a few days when Guilds were completely down.
Another criticism is the discrimination in some Guilds. Some Guilds are for users 18+ only, while others are for religious or ideological groups, and some are discriminatory against other beliefs or Guilds for petty reasons or just because they can get away with it. Because a Guild is just a group of people gathered around one subject, such behaviour usually isn't frowned on by the admins.
Some minor criticisms include the amount of time it takes to manage a guild, the gold it takes, and the fact that if a moderator invites all of his friends to join a guild, it can get spam-filled and messy because of abuse of trust. Another concern is that some members post inappropriate things on the Guilds, hoping they won't get caught because of the large amount of guilds.
Additionally, many Gaians find making use of guilds somewhat outdated and lackluster—as the BBC that functions within guilds is an older model, unlike the often updated one used for public forums.