There's a real split in how people judge this, so let me lay out both sides before I say where I land.
One camp says it's about the paperwork and presentation: does the guild have an actual Guild Charter that got filled out properly, and does it bother with a Guild Tabard so people look like a unit instead of randoms standing next to each other. The logic is simple, if the founders cared enough to sort out the Guild Charter and design a Guild Tabard early on, they probably care enough to keep organising things later. Structure first, culture follows.
The other camp says that's surface stuff. A guild can have a flawless Guild Charter and a sharp Guild Tabard and still be dead inside, no one answering when a raid falls apart, no one stepping up when attendance drops. For them the real test is what happens on a bad night: does someone reshuffle the lineup and keep spirits up, or does everyone just log off.
I lean toward the second view, but only up to a point. My condition for switching sides: if a guild can't even be bothered to sort out its Guild Charter or get a Guild Tabard together, that's usually a sign nobody's steering at all, and the bad nights never get handled either. So I want both, the paperwork as a baseline, the behaviour as the real proof.
Where do you draw the line? What's the first thing you check before deciding to stick around?
