Ask WoW Insider: Making friends on a new server

Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week Matt writes in:

Good afternoon to all the staff at Wow Insider. My name is Matt, early 20's, and am having a problem making new friends on a new server.

I recently Paid Character Transfer'd to Xavius EU from Balnazzar EU, and as they were looking for a hunter for Black Temple I was recruited to a guild without an application. Although this goes against popular opinion from a few of the people on my old server, I believe that creating an application provides a formal introduction of both yourself as a character and a person. I went from raid leading and being an important member of a T5 clearing guild to a new recruit and trial member in a T6 almost-cleared guild. The step down has been difficult for me to take, and the feeling of not being able to make decisions has shell-shocked me a little bit.

My issue is, how does one go about creating new friendships and relationships on a completely new server and with a guild that contains no-one you know? Balnazzar had a thriving IRC channel, shared in-game chat channel between members of varying guilds, and a fantastic Wow Europe realm forum - Xavius doesn't seem to have any of these: the IRC channel is unfriendly and quiet, no shared channel and the realm forum is full of useless troll posts. The guild seem to forget that I've pretty much got no-one to speak to on the new server, and I've spent more time on my other two 70's on Balnazzar than my hunter. Raids are fantastic, and I know that if I was accepted into the more social aspect of the guild I'd enjoy it a lot more than I currently am, but if the situation doesn't change I will probably look elsewhere, which is a shame because the new guild is a really solid, well structured and mostly friendly place to be.

Azuredream
70 Draenei Hunter
<Destiny Awaits>
Xavius

Slothie
70 Draenei Paladin
Mithranda
70 Gnome Mage
<International Chaos>
Balnazzar

There was brief period of time when I considered a server move. My guild had imploded and an RL friend had just started playing. Instead of starting on my server, he started on one that a lot of his co-workers were on. I told him if he got to 70, I'd swap servers. I ended up getting into a great guild and at level 70 he moved over to my server instead.

I'm not sure why you moved, but since I'm not a raider my understanding of raider issues is right up there with my understanding of tax laws for the rich -- pretty much zilch.

Therefore, I'm just going to turn this one over to the commenters who are raiders. Anyone able to help a raider out?

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