Non-guilded players that wish to join a faction will need to find the faction stone for that particular faction. The faction stones are located within the stronghold for that particular faction.

The player can double-click the faction stone, and select the "join" option that will appear, as long as the following conditions are met:

The player must not be in any Faction with any other character on the same account.

The player’s account cannot be a “young” account (have young account status) or be less than 30 days old.

Characters on "young" accounts or on those less than 30 days old cannot be invited to join a faction guild.

Only the guildmaster of a guild can use the “join” option on a faction stone for that guild. None of the other members will be able to join the faction alone unless they quit their respective guild.

The guild to join must be of the “standard” type. Chaos and Order guilds cannot join a faction.

When the guildmaster for a guild joins the faction, all players are added to the faction whether online or offline.

When the guildmaster attempts to join a faction, each member of that guild is checked.

If a particular member of the guild has another character elsewhere on that same account and same shard in a faction, then that member will be removed from the guild attempting to join. This is to allow the guild to go ahead and join the faction without overlapping the system of one character per account per shard within a faction.

The ejected guildmember can quit the faction his or her other character is in and re-join the guild they were ejected from if desired.

If a player has two or more characters within the same guild from the same account, and that guild then joins a faction, then one of their characters will be joined to the faction and remain in the guild. The other character or characters will be removed from the guild.

If the guildmaster of the guild falls under this condition, then their guildmaster character will remain in the guild, while their other characters within that same guild, and on the same account, will be removed from the guild.

If a guildmember has "young" status or their account is less than 30 days old, then they will be ejected from the guild upon the guild's joining of the faction system.

The faction system itself has a load-balancing factor, for all members within the faction (guilded or non-guilded). This load balancing is used if any faction contains over 200 members.

If any faction contains 200 or more members, then the load balance system will perform a check every time someone tries to join any faction. The system checks to see if the if the largest faction is as large or larger than three times the size of the smallest faction.

If the largest faction is in fact three times as large as the smallest faction, then the player attempting to join will need to choose another faction to join. So for example, if the Shadowlords Faction had 200 members and the other three factions each had 1 member, then players trying to join the Shadowlords would be informed that they must join one of the other factions. To continue this example, if the Shadowlords had 200 members and the other factions had between 68 and 200 members each, then players could join any of the factions. This range can go up above 200 members, but the largest faction must remain no larger than 3 times the size of the smallest faction. If a large guild attempts to join a faction, and that join would put that faction out of the range (no larger than three times the size of the smallest faction), then that guild would not be able to join that faction. However, they may try to join another faction.