I started playing soon after TBC launched. A co-worker invited me to his guild - Fist of the Fading Sun, Horde on Ravenholdt US. A couple weeks later, I learn that almost half the guild all live in the same small Alabama town I lived in (at the time). It was pretty awesome. We would meet up for drinks, hang out at each other houses, and many of us even worked together. I even had multiple guild members that lived in the same neighborhood. At the time, I don't think I realized how rare it may have been to be a part of a mostly local guild in a town of only ~80k people.
I'm curious how many people were in local guilds? How often did folks really meet and hang out with their guildies?
Sounds awesome man. I love your story. Personally I was in a guild of brits (I was a teenager but they were mainly married couples who knew eachother IRL), so I can kind of empathise. I wish that kind of thing could happen again. Seen a few londoners on here already so perhaps the idea of a london boy guild is not too remote! 
In Vanilla I played with a guild that was concentrated about 45 min away from me in Raleigh, NC. I met up with the GM and a couple of his crew from time to time for drinks.
When I moved to CO, I had 4 other WoW players in my company. We all consolidated on Kil'Jaeden and pushed for server firsts, sometimes partying and doing raids from 1 apartment. It was a good time for sure. Killed KT with those guys, sadly, as TBC came around it died. This <Insurgency> was born and that's where my brother and I have been (for the most part) since then.
Council Chairman
US-Horde
Blaumeux
I played Pandaria and WoD with a guild made up of only members from my city, some of my finest moments in gaming have been from that… In a city of ca. 70k - 80k people it was quite impressive to gather around 40 - 50 likeminded people to play with.. We even held our first guild lan with 15 - 20 members on WoD launch in my old appartement. What a mess that was! :)
Alliance Warlock
Playing on Oceanic server meant I met a lot of Aussies, ended up road tripping interstate to see my guildie. Still friends with a few.
Lvl 60
Lvl 35
I guess it might be a different thing for non-English native folks. I had lots of people around me playing the game at the time but I was never interested in joining those guilds.
I thought they always catered to the kind of person who's terrible at speaking English and doesn't want to get better at all. After many years of gaming, I'm capable of doing translations, poetry, live interpretation and I frequently talk to people from all around the world - and I owe it mostly to Warcraft and sticking with a non native-speaking/national/local guild.
/agree
for me playing on a german realm, and germany not beign that big every guild that was a little serious had these regular meetups. usally you would drive to a central location (somebody always lived there) and get drunk.
My guild had pockets, one in my hometown that made up a handful of players, one in California with another group, three or four of those groups of friends came together to make something better than any one of us. Not only did it knit our local friend groups closer, we still stay in touch, go to weddings, talk to one another on a regular basis. It was a pretty cool phenomena.
I personally like the idea, but it didn't play out that way for me since I was from a rural area in Mississippi. Now I'm in Dallas, so odds are better. Definitely cool when you can meet up with folks that share the same passion as you irl.
Fellow Dallas person here :D
I used to raid with my brothers back in vanilla. But they kept rerolling on fresh servers..
Noone else I knew around me played wow. Always ended up in guilds full of brits somehow. Always good for a laugh♪ wouldn't be too bad to be able to go for a few beers or 20 with guildies sometimes..
I've played from 2.3 till 4.0 on EU. 3 years ago or so I started playing vanilla on private servers but no raiding experience on classic. I'm looking forward to play in a spanish guild that isn't hardcore but clears all the content on time.
Troll 
Protection 
WarriorEU PvE - Pyrewood Village -
Horde
I had local friends in the same guild as me, but we never really did big meetups. Occasionally a friend of two might come over to drink beers while we played but it was never lan party status or anything.
Played in a Guild with people mainly around Northern Germany, only had to guys from Bavaria, so we did some meetups but i just was by one of them because i was 16 when Vanilla was around had had no chance to get there. Was really a cool guild.
Manofwar
Kampfzwerg
Mojo
Not WoW related, but when I was like 11-12 years old, I used to play Lineage II (which was my first mmo). And the clan I was in was called "Band of Brothers". Lots of grown man, like 35+. We lived like 90km aways and sometimes they travel to my small town and we drink something together. (Coca-Cola and pizza for me and my brother and beer for them) it was a healthy family of 15-20 only men.
Loved every minute I spend playing that game, and I feel sad everytime I try to catch that feeling in moderm days.
Herod - PvP
