Sunday, August 28, 2011

Guild Wars 2 Announces Account Wide Guild Join: My Fix

Yesterday during a Pax 2011 panel the developers from Arenanet announced some news about guilds. The developer proposed that when you join a guild, it's account wide and you can join multiple guilds.

The way the system appears to work is your account can be a member of multiple guilds but you can only be tagged with one at a time. You can change this on the fly, although the exact mechanic is not known.

I personally think this is a horrible idea. Guild pride means something. I am a Council Member of and a very proud member at that. I will never join another guild, and I can't see how this system will benefit guilds at all.

What I propose is that guild leaders be given the option of joining Alliances with other guilds. Where if two guild leaders discuss it, they can together both go and form and alliance. As they see fit they can invite other guilds into the alliance, and when it comes time for raiding, or whenever the members see fit they can tag UP to the alliance, and tag back down to their guild.


This way guilds keep their guild pride, and strong alliances are formed allowing for an even greater in-game community. When WvWvW starts, guilds can tag up to alliance, and use their alliance to take over the same objectives that guilds can.

5 comments:

  1. I couldn't disagree more. Influence points relegate the significance of guild loyalty. Think of it like brand loyalty.

    There are some brands we trust and prefer, but there are many other brands that we will happily consume.

    There are also brands we avoid. This does not mean we should be loyal to one brand of something, and that should never be the case.

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  2. If you value loyalty, if you believe so strongly in (your definition of) Guild pride, you can be part of one guild only - GW 2 is not going to stop you. We are part of more than one social group in real life. In every MMORPG I have played, I have always felt the necessity to be part of more than one guild on the same character. It is amazing that ArenaNet gets it.

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  3. Judging from my experience with ArenaNet, I imagine the system will function a lot like the alliance system in the current Guild Wars. However, guilds aren't allied with each other; rather, guilds allegiances lie with the player.

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  4. Hexwise the issue that I have is that this new system will create a new class of greedy selfish players, and will work against normal community building. There will create another class of zerg guilds, and players will no longer be encouraged to behave because they will be less likely to be held accountable to their guilds.

    Good community needs accountability. This system removes a lot of accountability for the server population. If your guild does pvp and you need pve, then your guild should form an alliance with a pve guild, or you can just go group with your friends.

    Or if you need a guild that does both then join a guild that does both, or start a guild that does both. Community needs to be built up through friends, through guilds through alliances, through server.

    Letting players be members of multiple guilds is going to be a nightmare for community building.

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  5. I discussed the same matter on Google+ one or two days ago, let me paste part of my initial thoughts here:

    "I wonder if the "advantages" of being in 20+ guilds can really outweigh the true social connections. You can only be involved in one or two guilds, after all. But I already smell the social media kind of person trying to get into EVERY guild they can get into.

    I can only speak for myself but I will prefer a small group/guild to an infiltration of this pervert kind of "socializer". But I also seen the benefits. Some people might indeed be torn between two guilds. But I think the GW1 Alliance system worked nicely for that."

    It smells like "overcasualization". What's next, the dungeon finder for anonymous dungeon running?

    That would be a sad joke, an open world where everyone does his own stuff because there is simply no need to care about anything else but doing events for yourself.

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