Brotherhoods Explained

The Brotherhood is a system that was designed with the goal of allowing friends to play at different times, and / or different amounts of time, but still be able to stay within the same level range of each other.

As with every answer here though, if only it was that simple...


Understanding how it works:

A brotherhood works exactly like a group. Any experience brought into the brotherhood will be divided among all members. Knowing this, any member who joins one must accept the fact that you may not receive what you put in. In order for every member to get exactly what they put in all members must maintain the same brotherhood experience contribution.

Members that tend to fit well in "friendly" brotherhoods usually play about the same amount of time during a week whether or not that time is spent together. If you are an experience minded individual who is trying to reach specific level goals most brotherhoods will slow you down and you would want to choose one with a power-leveling base.

Brotherhood for Friendship:

This type of brotherhood is great for people who enjoy following quest-lines and achieving goals with friends. No matter how much each member plays no one will be left behind and all backtracking and "re-doing" of quests benefits the entire brotherhood. It is a great way to establish long lasting friendships and get to know people better than you normally would in a regular group.

Be warned! Experience may not always be what you want it to be. During specific periods members may change play schedules or work on another sphere while you may be grinding out the experience for the entire group. This could prove to be most discouraging depending on what is important to you.

This type of brotherhood is a selfless brotherhood one where individual gain is far less important than the group and fellowship and friendship are regarded as top priority.

Brotherhood of Self:

People who have more than one character are allowed to self-brotherhood. To do this, you'll need one other person to invite your alt characters. Simply have that person invite you and each alt in level range into a brotherhood. (All characters must be within 5 levels of each other) Your friend can leave the brotherhood and you will be left with only your characters all sharing equally from your experience.

Brotherhood for Experience

Power-leveling is the main goal of this type of brotherhood. You join this brotherhood with one of two goals in mind: to gain levels quickly, or to help a friend gain levels quickly.

It usually consists of one or 2 players of higher level and one or 2 players about 5 levels behind. This type of brotherhood is hard to make successful. One must remember that yes, the higher levels will bring in more experience per kill, but if the lower members play more and complete more quests then their experience loss will quickly over-power the experience gain.

The fasted way to test if this type of brotherhood is actually working for you is to add up everyone’s brotherhood contributions and divide it by the number of members in the brotherhood. If that number is less than the number the lower members are contributing this brotherhood is not working as intended and should be disbanded.

This is a great tool if used properly. This is how guilds can strengthen numbers and help members become sufficient level to obtain goals.


Update: As of December 2008 it is no longer possible for a level 50 to gain brotherhood experience for somebody else by turning in quests. This was a stealth nerf, and not noted in any patch notes.
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[Some parts quoted from TenTonHammer -- original link here!]