With a little over 24 hours to go before the headstart event for Guild Wars 2, I'm trying to find ways to pass the time in between helping my wife pack for her 10-day visit to New York City with our son to see her family. Of course most of this time is spent reading about various things concerning GW2 and I've found myself studying closely how guilds will work. Let me just say that I LOVE how guilds will work in GW2. If any of you are familiar with FFXI's linkshell system, that's essentially what GW2 has done. I'll explain!
I can be in as many guilds as I want to be in. Let's say I'm in a PvE-focused guild that works together questing, dungeon-crawling, etc. I can ALSO be in a PvP guild and a Raiding guild and a Fashion guild and a... you get the picture. All of these memberships are kept in a list and, when I log in, I simply pick the one I wish to be "representing" at the time. I show up on their guild list and the guild itself gets some xp points toward upgrades. I'm under the impression that I can switch between each of these guilds on the fly and so now there's no real need to be a jack-of-all-trades guild where you have to eventually worry about organizing raids or PvP events or PvE groups because if your guild isn't really into that, a member doesn't have to leave in order to pursue that.
My old guild has been on my mind quite a bit lately because of this system and I'm sure it comes as no surprise that there has been a Boon and a Guardian Knights guild in every MMO I've played. This includes The Old Republic, Rift, TERA, Everquest 2 and even The Secret World. However! While I knew that SW:TOR would be a home of sorts and that even now I'll still be playing it to finish the storylines and enjoy some science fiction MMO-age, I believe that GW2 is going to be my primary MMO home for quite some time. This means that it's probably time to seriously give some consideration to fleshing out the guild more than just what it's been in those other MMO's.
Your brain tends to gloss over the "glory days" of times you enjoyed, often making them seem shinier and more perfect than they actually were. I've been giving this some consideration these past few days as I start to really give the structure of the new Guardian Knights some real thought. And the one thing I keep coming back to is that I'm unable to find, in the foundations, a flaw with the original guild on Alleria. I'll outline its structure a bit and why I think it will work in Guild Wars 2.
Firstly I think the key to a successful and well-rounded guild is leadership. Not just a guild leader but officers that are grounded in the well-being of the guild. Anyone, from the lowest ranking member up to the guild leader wants to belong. Wants to feel like they contribute, that they have a say. In the Guardian Knights this is the case. Officers are leaders who have equal say to the guild leader (who is just another officer but someone has to have the actual title I think). This means that it isn't the guild leader that has final say but the entire officership. When I was the leader of the GK's on Alleria, if I was in the minority as to how we thought we should proceed, it wasn't in my power to simply say "Forget that, I'm the guild leader! We're doing it my way because I said so!". A round-table of officers lends a more balanced guiding force for a guild than a single person. It also alleviates the strain of being in a leadership position which, for the most part, is a pretty thankless job on the internet.
Let me say that I've been in quite a few guilds in my tenure as an MMO player and in every instance have, at some point, been asked to take an officer-like position. I've always tried to do right by the guild in these positions and the only time, and I mean the only time I've ever left a guild was when we had a guild leader who believed that their role as guild leader was similar to a general leading troops. In the end, leadership such as this (and I'm not saying it's a wrong style, just not one I agree with or find inspiring) leads to a migration of thinking, mature players ...elsewhere. After all, who wants to be told what to do and expected to do it without question because someone with an arbitrary title said so? This isn't the way that leadership should work and I let my feet express my opinion. Lost a good friend over it too but in the end, if that sort of situation causes the end of a friendship, it was likely going to end sometime soon anyhow. Ah well, ONWARD!
I'm not sure how it'll lend itself but the GK were also an RP-lite guild. I sat down one afternoon and started thinking about how to do ranks and came up with a rank for every 10 levels a character could achieve. In vanilla WoW it was 60 levels, so there were 6 ranks. Each rank was bestowed once the character did two things; get to the appropriate level AND complete the rank quest. You read right, I had rank quests for every rank. It took some thought and some flexibility, and I implemented some crafting alternatives, but almost all of the feedback from the guild members was positive. You had to earn your ranks consecutively so you couldn't just go to level 60 and do that quest. Maybe I'll do something similar but I don't think I'll do it the exact same way (I'm looking at those 80 levels!). I think it'll depend on player interest and officer input.
The core of the Guardian Knights of Tyria will have to be PvE focus. Getting players playing together, tackling content, explorable dungeons, jump puzzles. Being a community instead of everyone doing their own thing all the time. Not to say that it'll be a requirement and also not to say that we'll be wagging our fingers at players who do primarily want to play alone and chat on the guild channel... but if everyone feels a sense of community, I think we'll have a successful guild to call home.
Recruitment. Again, I emphasize that once we're established with an officer's council, it'll be decided but man I couldn't advise against blind recruitment more. In every instance of it that I've experienced the broadcasting a general invite on general chat channels yields little to no quality players. Primarily you get players who join just to see what sort of goodies are in the guild bank, how many mats and gold and walkthroughs of dungeons they can get from generous guild members... and then they move on to the next guild. Usually after scarring guild chat with horrific statements and drama for a week or more. With the GK's general 'party with them and if they seem cool, offer an invite' or just the whole 'this guy is good people' vibe, we only ever had to boot one player. I can still remember it to this day because I was the one that did it. It was NOT a surprise to the entire guild. He was... well, not for us.
In the end a guild is what you make of it. Literally. You're a part of a community, and if you're lucky, a family. It shouldn't be a military unit with a single general barking orders. It shouldn't be a collection of cliques and pariahs, though groups of people who mesh well and like each others' company should also be allowed and encouraged, as long as it doesn't do harm to the community over time.
If that sounds like something you'd want to take part in, something you'd like to help build, and you're reading this, I'm certain you know how to find me. You're welcome to come see if we're for you.
See you in-game! (Man I hope I get Boon.)
--Boon
