Edit: People questioned Elixabeth’s ability to quote what was said in the PAX panel, so bookahnerk looked and finally found a video of it:
I have finally received a reply to my support ticket and it’s not a good one. I’m going to include the relevant parts. So if you do get “Network error . Please check your internet connection and try again. (Code=3040:1002:3:1930:101)” when trying to accept a guild invitation, you need to make a decision: Do you really want to be part of this guild? Then leave another one! If you don’t, then decline, because according to that support reply, we’re only allowed to be in a very limited number of guilds as opposed to the “as many as you like” as they had announced.
I am mostly disappointed that the only number I have ever heard was “as many as you like” and I thought that it’s a great idea because no longer do we have to restrict ourselves with which community we want to be a part of. In my last entry I’ve already written about it and about the communities that I want to join. This, however, does not seem to come true. I need to make decisions anyway. It doesn’t seem to be the revolutionary feature that I thought it would be. One where you can be part of so many different circles and communities just like in real life. 4 – or 5 – just doesn’t seem high enough for that to work. At least, not if you’re a chatty person like me who likes being in different communities.
Here’s the response (and once I do get back to work, I’m going to post a suggestion – if anybody else does so in the meantime, please let me know):
The error 3040 message means that you are already a member of too many guilds. There is currently a limit of 4 guilds per account. My understanding is that the intended limit is 5, so you may be able to add an extra guild in the future, but at this point I don’t have an ETA for that fix. Also, the limit includes guild invitations as those are potential guild memberships. At this time, there is not any way for you to increase the limit on the number of guilds that your account can belong to. The best suggestion that I can offer right now is that you leave a guild or decline some guild invitations that you’ve already received.
If you’d like to see a higher limit, please consider posting your feedback in the suggestions area of the official forums, which you can find here: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/suggestions
Nerdy Bookahs 
I am very disappointed about those news too. Like you I thought it was one of the greatest features of Guild Wars 2, one of those that makes you think “Why nobody else did it before?”. Even if it is unlikely that I will even reach this current limit giving my circumstances (I am shy and right now the guild with my old friends is in full swing, so they need me more there) it will certainly make me think twice about any guild invitation if the opportunity ever presents itself. It also is making me hesitant to make my own one-man guild for the purposes of having my own guild hall whenever it gets implemented.
Hopefully that limit was only a temporary measure so their databases don’t explode with the number of people creating guilds and joining every guild they can until things stabilize more and their developers aren’t working non-stop to solve issues.
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I usually play in my main guild only. But there are circumstances where you want to join others.
An alternative I’d see would be the possibility – including a better chat system ^^ – to be able to have custom groups with inviting certain players only, etc. Because the main reason I want to be in more guilds is communication. I want to chat and talk with those people but with the current restrictions, it’s just not possible. :(
I’m also still hoping it’s just temporary. But the reply with “intended limit” and “leave a suggestion” leaves me rather pessimistic here.
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A better chat system that would allow custom channels would be definitely better and would also solve the problem for me.
Yeah, the way the reply you got was worded doesn’t lend itself well to much hope. But we’ll see! The game is still new so there is some time for ArenaNet to change things around and implement new cool stuff. :)
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Definitely! It’s all about doing stuff together whenever we feel like it without arbitrary boundaries… just like they said. It doesn’t make sense to put in a limit that simply doesn’t exist in our lives when it comes to friends, circles of friends, co-workers, family. Ha, just imagine always having them all around, in the same place. GAH! What a nightmare. ;)
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First thing I thought was, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”
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It’s not that bad. It can be black, white, red or silver. Which should be great for most people buying a car but still excludes those with a different taste than that. ;)
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I personally don’t get the multiple guild thing. Just seems like a logistical nightmare unless people don’t care about things like guild upgrades. It also seems like it just hurts smaller guilds in the long run since most people will more likely be representing the bigger and more active guild,then other members sign on and see that nobody else is around, etc. I would worry that I was never were the action was. I definitely don’t see the reason for membership in more than 4 or 5 guilds. Talk about spreading yourself too thin.
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But this isn’t about liking or disliking a certain feature. It’s about them offering a certain feature and saying it’ll be unlimited and then having a rather low limit in without telling us or communicating it to us and the error message being rather ambigious.
I’d say leave it to the guilds that I am in to decide whether it hurts them or not to have me as a member and leave it to me to decide whether it’s a good feature for me or not. I know what I’m doing and I know why I like it. If you don’t: Fine, then this whole thing doesn’t concern you either way.
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That is interesting that they have not advertised that there is a maximum guild limit, sort of like they knew it might make a few people upset when they found out? (Maybe I am just being overly suspicious though.) Although I empathize with you, I am not in your shoes, I belong to one guild, and usually when I log on a bunch of them are heading to bed so it isn’t exactly a chatty experience for me right now! Hopefully they read your feedback and come back with something productive from it. :)
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Yeah, I’m just annoyed that they didn’t tell us. At PAX, they were so enthusiastic about this feature and while I was skeptical at first, I became a huge fan of it and now that I want to use it, I find out through their customer support, that the feature isn’t working as it was announced. That’s the disappointing part here.
I assume that for most people, one or two guilds are more than enough. For me – well, I am active in a lot of different communities and as I wrote in another comment above, having a better chat system with custom chat channels, etc. would probably already help it. We wouldn’t necessarily need real guilds. We’re just looking to stay in touch, communicate and network with each other.
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