Editor’s NOTE: This post is from August 2011 and thus is outdated, as the Official Community site’s guild forums closed down in mid January. Stay tuned for an updated set of resources!

Even though Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) lacks a publicly known release date, folks are already starting to feel like they want to get the age-old top MMO to-do item out-of-the-way: finding the guild they’ll start the game with.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a solid group of MMO-playing friends who are planning to start a SWTOR guild, there are still a number of ways to find a guild.

Start with the Official Community Site

As of this morning, the official community site’s guild search utility found over 30,000 results when searching for an Empire guild, and over 24,000 Republic guilds. The tool allows you to search by affiliation (Republic or Empire), or by primary activity focus (PvP, PvE, RP.) Many guilds already have some public forum chit chat going, which gives you a taste for what their culture may be like. Other have already started recruitment threads in the Guild Hall forum to give prospective applicants a better idea of what they’re looking for.

Once you find a guild that look appealing, just hit the “Apply to this guild” button, and you’re set. Now your guild homepage will show that you’ve applied to the guild. Should you have clickers remorse you can easily hit the “withdraw your application” button, and start over again. Kudos for EA/bioware for allowing the guild formation process to start ahead of the live date.

My only complaint (and it’s a small one) is that the guild application process is not customized. There is a big “apply” button on each guild’s primary page, and hitting it submits your application to the guild owner for approval, but there isn’t a formal application or any way to tell your potential guild anything about yourself. [NOTE: as Guld notes in the comments, in your account settings you can fill out what amounts to an application resume that is submitted to prospective guilds when you hit the “apply” button.]

Check out Fan Sites and Gaming Publications

Another way to find a guild is by checking out the many SWTOR community sites, and the gaming publications that are already covering the game. Many of these sites have some sort of guild classified or guild recruitment forums you can browse. Just a few of the ones I’ve seen include:

• Ten Ton Hammer
• TORBB
• TOR Syndicate
• reddit

Put Your Social Networks to Work

Probably the best way to find a guild of like-minded people is simply to put it out there in your social media channels of choice that you are excited about playing SWTOR and see who responds.

Another easy way to get a pulse on interesting people you might want to be guilded with is to follow the #SWTOR tag on twitter, tumblr, or other social networks. In addition to a steady stream of news and blog post links, you are likely to see a number of guild promos as well.

If you have other ideas or resources for finding SWTOR guilds, let me know in the comments.