Guild Wars 2

OP was TL;DR but I like the multi-guild system.

teviko.6049:

You didn’t read my first post. I was ALWAYS inviting players to join me, or ask if they needed help. I was always trying to organize events and get things rolling. I was always talkitive and ALWAYS doing my best (when I saw someone new log in) to say HI when they log in.

My attitude on the forums does not represent who I am in game. IF I say: “Does anyone need help?” And noone replies, and then leave because ‘noone would help them’ is that really my failing??

You can see the roster. If you see someone has been on Forging the Pact for the last hour, do you PM them to see if they are having trouble? If you notice someones craft has been sitting at about 200 for a week or longer do you pm or mail them to see if they hit a snag and need a hand?

Lots of people miss guild chat. You cant just say “Hey lets do this…” and expect 20 people to answer. And a lot of people are hesitant to ask for help. A great many guild SM dungeons, missions, and zone clears have come about from me noticing something on the roster and sending a PM to see how a person is doing.

The game gives you the tools to see how members are doing on an individual level. If you aren’t using them, and just posting a message in /g every half hour or so, then that could be a problem.

@Acidic

Your alliance is the perfect example of how it should work. (i.e these members are actually SWITCHING their representation when expected of them…because would you run a dungeon with them 9x a night if they weren’t giving you influence. Ibet a shiney nickle, you wouldn’t)

For the rest of the 90% of the population, it is not working.

teviko.6049:

The type of people I did want, have (mostly) left the game altogether.

So, is that a failing on my part? Or the game?

Considering that more and more people are complaining about the state of the game. I’m gonna put my money on the latter.

You might be getting off track here a bit, if we go on about the state of the game as a whole, not just the problems with the multi-guild system. I guess I’m more interested in what you find to be a successful guild? Is it a numbers game or is it enjoying your member base, even if it’s only 5 or 6 people?

As a leader i choose the latter personally. Sure i can offer more incentives for people to play or i could enforce rules to try and keep the required presence up, but to me all that seems forced. In GW1 with Factions and Alliance Battles we really did put the pressure on the members to faction farm, in the short term it really hurt us as a group that enjoyed playing together. I struggled for a long time, going back doing low-level content over and over with newbies, not doing the stuff i wanted to do, but in the end that’s where my roster is now, with people that i’ve gamed with for years and i enjoy playing with. The guild system to me is just an easy way to keep that together.

AcidicVision.5498:

teviko.6049:

You didn’t read my first post. I was ALWAYS inviting players to join me, or ask if they needed help. I was always trying to organize events and get things rolling. I was always talkitive and ALWAYS doing my best (when I saw someone new log in) to say HI when they log in.

My attitude on the forums does not represent who I am in game. IF I say: “Does anyone need help?” And noone replies, and then leave because ‘noone would help them’ is that really my failing??

You can see the roster. If you see someone has been on Forging the Pact for the last hour, do you PM them to see if they are having trouble? If you notice someones craft has been sitting at about 200 for a week or longer do you pm or mail them to see if they hit a snag and need a hand?

Lots of people miss guild chat. You cant just say “Hey lets do this…” and expect 20 people to answer. And a lot of people are hesitant to ask for help. A great many guild SM dungeons, missions, and zone clears have come about from me noticing something on the roster and sending a PM to see how a person is doing.

The game gives you the tools to see how members are doing on an individual level. If you aren’t using them, and just posting a message in /g every half hour or so, then that could be a problem.

maybe they went afk in the middle of their story mode. Maybe they didn’t want to advance crafting anymore because they discovered they didn’t like crafting.

We’ve had one member who has a) asked for help and b) needed help with farming to advance their crafting.

In both cases I came and helped and anytime I got a mat that they needed I gave it to them without asking for recompense. When someone wanted to do dungeons, I was always the first to go: Me! Me!! ME!! I’ll go!! Only to get 3 of us, standing around, asking other members, and then zone hopping to see if we couldn’t fill our group, only to have original member ‘claim’ he was tired and log off less than an hour later.

I busted my behind for my members, and at first (if you read my posts) we didn’t have a required representation requirement. That didn’t come until later, and even before then, people were already not logging in, leaving or simply off doing their own thing.

AcidicVision.5498:

teviko.6049:

But ultimately, it comes down to that if you don’t represent MY guild, you are not earning MY guild any influence. I don’t benefit you, you don’t benefit me, WHY bother taking up a spot in my guild? As a guild leader, I don’t know who you are, you don’t know who I am, and serves to further the gap between us, especially since, you cannot see chat with my guild so you can’t get to know us, or know when things are going on.

Seems to me your guild might be suffering more from your attitude than from the multi-guild system.

Look at it more this way, being able to join multiple guilds means the guild leaders are more accountable for the satisfaction of their members. As i said before, if you are having trouble keeping members representing or they are joining a second guild and forgetting about you…then maybe you should look at why.

It might have something to do with the “My, My, My” attitude.

Ill reference my previous post again since you never responded…the guy that gives you kitten that doesn’t know you: did you know him? The progress of his alts? If he stalled and needed help on his crafts or story? What role did he fill in groups and did you ever ask him to join one?

See, that’s the thing that separates guilds and leaders that people want to represent from the ones they don’t: You can pm people to tell them they need to represent your guild, per your rules, but how often did you pm that same person for a dungeon run, or karma farming, or any other guild event? I would bet a shiny nickle…never.

A guild leader is accountable to the players. Not the other way around. If your members are leaving or not waving your banner, then its a failing on your part. Not the games.

I disagree with this. If the game content is compelling enough to keep people logging in and involved with guild activities then guild leadership should not have to pander to the whims of every member who feels they want to be treated extra-special ‘or else’.

The problem with GW2 and guilds in general is the fact that the game is not holding players due to a wide range of systemic failings that ultimately render most achievements meaningless and, after very little rationalization, a waste of time.

The multi-guild system is only one of these things and I do agree with the OP that it should be removed or heavily modified. In the very least, guild leadership needs better administrative tools and controls within the game to properly deal with day-to-day guild activities.

Loyalty is lacking in many guilds because there is no real reason for people to come together and need eachother in this game. Guild perks are anemic at best, being nowhere near as robust as they should be and mostly all group activities in the game are achievable via PUG’s.

The main charge of guild-leadership, no matter what the guild or focus, should be community building and the administration of guild goals/activities. Guild-leadership should not be held accountable for a lack of meaningful content that could have added the necessary value to the guild unit in this game.

This multi-guild system benefits guild-shoppers and ego-centric, opportunistic coat-tail riders more than it does the guilds themselves, IMHO…and let’s not even get into the skuldugerous possibilities with this system if they ever do implement something like GvG.

Sincerely,

It sounds as if it’s more a problem of who you recruit than the guild system as is. If you recruit people, and they never represent and don’t know who you are, why are you keeping them in your guild? Why did you recruit them in the first place? Was it an instance of you advertising in /m and he whispered you for an invite? Ok, well if that’s the case you went into it knowing nothing about the character, as most recruits end up being.

That’s why I have a “Recruit” rank in my guild. For the first 2 weeks anyone is in my guild they are set to “recruit” status. They can do nothing in the guild besides represent and chat. If, after 2 weeks, they’ve represented at least some of the time and have proven that they aren’t a total kitten, they get bumped up to Sergeant, my lowest member rank. Here they can get items out of the and deposit into the guild stash as well as the representation privileges of recruits. If they stick around, and prove themselves loyal members, I give them more perks and power within the guild. That’s their incentive. If I, or anyone in my server (notice I said server and not guild), are ever disrespected by a member of my guild, they will be demoted to recruit for a period of time determined by the level of infraction and will be told why.

If they decide to leave, they’re free to do so. If they continue such behavior, they will be kicked. Not everyone is cut out for guild loyalty. If they want to join a guild with all the perks and the leader of that guild is ok with having some immature, disrespectful child in their guild then all power to that GL. I won’t have crap like that in my guild. There are people that are loyal to one guild in this game. You just have to keep them around and boot the free loaders (who will usually show their true colors during my first 2 week trial period). Usually the freeloaders will complain about the “recruit” rank not having any privileges or will just leave before the 2 weeks. Others still will stick it out for 2 weeks, and then complain that they only have access to the stash, but cannot activate guild upgrades after the 2 weeks. They too will bounce, or be booted for harassment. Have something like that in place and you’ll never have to deal with these people longer than a few weeks. It’s all about weeding the garden. Keep the best plants alive and growing and pull the weeds early, before their roots are too deep.

Aenigmo.1754:

This multi-guild system benefits guild-shoppers and ego-centric, opportunistic coat-tail riders more than it does the guilds themselves, IMHO…and let’s not even get into the skuldugerous possibilities with this system if they ever do implement something like GvG.

Sincerely,

While i don’t disagree with your argument about overall game content not being compelling enough for many people, i, in all sincerity don’t find that to be an issue with the multi-guild system.

I do however disagree that it promotes what you say. Many people are like that, there is definitely an underlying social issue, the “what can you do for me” attitude, that is prevalent in just about every game i’ve played that was multiplayer. We see it now with world transfers and the people that jump ship to the winning server. It’s sad, but it’s a much deeper social issue than what removing multi-guild options in a game would fix.

I also disagree with the lack of tools/buffs and promotion options a guild could provide in it’s current state. I think ANet did well with incorporating some nice buffs and status tools to make guilds seem more than just a social organization of random people. It’s not perfect, but it’s a nice change of pace. There are plenty of ways people can handle the lacking features one might want/need to fill up the gaps, and i’m not certain that adding those features would be worth the development time on ANets behalf. Many guild offer websites, schedules, VOIP options for their members. We even give our friends not in guild access to all the stuff we use. So in that sense, Guilds will always need to fill in the voids that most games have.

As a casual player I like multi-guild. I haven’t found any guild with enough for me to be loyal to. So my suggestion to you if you want people to represent,

1) Add more value.
2) Find out why they aren’t representing.

I’m in two guilds right now. One for WvW/Pvp, and when I do those activities I represent. When my RL friends are online and we want to use guild chat. (because I’m in TS with the first guild) I represent them.

If I’m pugging and instance or something, I’ll represent whoever I’m chatting with, because it frankly doesn’t matter. It’s a PUG. If you want me to represent, run the content with me.

You may think people are telling you to kitten off because they are immature, but it might be you aren’t really adding enough value.

Oh wow, thank you all for the responses. I’m happy to see people who both loathe and enjoy the guild system. Let’s keep hearing your experiences / opinions on it.

Thanks, everyone!

Edit: I’m going through and I’ll try to read everyone’s response from the time that I left the thread last night, but for the sake of keeping this thread on track and keeping it clean I probably won’t reply to many of them (unless they’re more recent).

I use the multiguild system as it allows me to get more people together for dungeon runs. I dont have many friends who can play often as i do so i rely on PUGS or fellow guild mates to help me through dungeons. If one of my guilds doesnt have anyone wanting or very limited number of people wanting I switch to the other guild and see if anyone there wants to do the dungeon. With 4 guilds in the roster (they are considering allowing more i hear) i can make a group using guild mates even though they are from different guilds. I then represent the guild i have most people in my party. I always have a main guild that i switch back to afterwards since that main guild will have the most interesting convos.

I see where the OP is coming from.

I always felt that being a member of a guild was like being a member of a family. A commitment to your fellow players for whatever reasons. The whole multi-guild system never made sense to me and I never understood what problem ANet was trying to fix by implementing it.

It’s like they wanted to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.

With the multi-guild system and easy server transfers social ties in GW2 are just as lose and liberal as they were in WoW, just for different reasons.

Dee Jay.2460:

I see where the OP is coming from.

I always felt that being a member of a guild was like being a member of a family. A commitment to your fellow players for whatever reasons. The whole multi-guild system never made sense to me and I never understood what problem ANet was trying to fix by implementing it.

It’s like they wanted to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.

With the multi-guild system and easy server transfers social ties in GW2 are just as lose and liberal as they were in WoW, just for different reasons.

Thank you for your post and I’m glad you pointed this out:

It’s like they wanted to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.

That right there is my biggest issue. Even in WoW and Guild Wars 1, the social ties created within guilds was something people valued and if someone left, they lost that and even in WoW it had consequences in the form of losing perks and reputation.

I can see where they are coming from with the multi guild system, but it just seems like that coupled with the fact that guilds are largely incomplete and lack a ton of functionality and features (until that huge patch I keep hearing about) makes guilds seem meaningless.

NoOneShotU.3479:

As a casual player I like multi-guild. I haven’t found any guild with enough for me to be loyal to. So my suggestion to you if you want people to represent,

1) Add more value.
2) Find out why they aren’t representing.

I’m in two guilds right now. One for WvW/Pvp, and when I do those activities I represent. When my RL friends are online and we want to use guild chat. (because I’m in TS with the first guild) I represent them.

If I’m pugging and instance or something, I’ll represent whoever I’m chatting with, because it frankly doesn’t matter. It’s a PUG. If you want me to represent, run the content with me.

You may think people are telling you to kitten off because they are immature, but it might be you aren’t really adding enough value.

From my experience, this is the usage the multi-guild system was designed for. A player can have different guilds with different focuses and switch between them when participating in the events. It’s the same thing that happened in the last mmorg I played with multi-guild ability.

Usually people end up with a social guild, a pvp guild, and a dungeon/endgame event guild. They swap between them based on what they’re doing.

Forcing guild loyalty is a player driven aspect of the multi-guild system it wasn’t designed for. Guild members shouldn’t be treated as influence gatherers, if you want them to -only- represent you that’s your prerogative, not the games’.

Well, if the guildie responds to you like that, the system doesnt have anything to do with that.. in fact, thank the system because it let you found someone undesirable at this early stage of the game and not when he is promoted to be an officer. Many guilds in other games have been destroyed because of people ninja the guild bank or similar things. I for example, am not a bad WoW player and some guilds wanted me to play with them, but as I played with real life friends, I never leaved my guild (I run raids with other people but still in my guild). This system allows me to run a dungeon with other guilds (having asked permission to my GM of course), and represent their guild while doing so if they want (especially usefull when you are doing some WvW and your beloved guild is focused on PvE content).

Yeah, I hate the whole representing/not representing, belong to multiple guilds thing too. My daughter and I finally shut down our guild because it was a major pain in the kitten’s rear end for all the reasons in the OP. We wanted a core group of people to party with and what we got was an amorphous, constantly changing pool of people who we never felt we knew. So we said “Screw it!” and closed the guild. I’ve only just joined a new guild and now I feel the problem from the reverse direction.

pdg.8462:

Yeah, I hate the whole representing/not representing, belong to multiple guilds thing too. My daughter and I finally shut down our guild because it was a major pain in the kitten’s rear end for all the reasons in the OP. We wanted a core group of people to party with and what we got was an amorphous, constantly changing pool of people who we never felt we knew. So we said “Screw it!” and closed the guild. I’ve only just joined a new guild and now I feel the problem from the reverse direction.

Thank you for your response. I’m sorry for the troubles you and your daughter had and I’m sorry to hear a similar thing is now occuring again. I do agree with you on your description of what the system of representation and multi-guilding does to guilds from your point of view.

luchifer.6401:

Well, if the guildie responds to you like that, the system doesnt have anything to do with that.. in fact, thank the system because it let you found someone undesirable at this early stage of the game and not when he is promoted to be an officer. Many guilds in other games have been destroyed because of people ninja the guild bank or similar things. I for example, am not a bad WoW player and some guilds wanted me to play with them, but as I played with real life friends, I never leaved my guild (I run raids with other people but still in my guild). This system allows me to run a dungeon with other guilds (having asked permission to my GM of course), and represent their guild while doing so if they want (especially usefull when you are doing some WvW and your beloved guild is focused on PvE content).

This is where the inconsitency lies…imho.

You stay with your guild out of loyalty. I do not have an issue with this.

then you run a dungeon with 4 other people and represent them while doing it.

Where is the guild loyalty? I get that you are helping them but why not this guild you are supposedly loyal to

Its…two-faced. I chose to stay with guild a because I didn’t get brow beat into staying, I chose to because I wanted to, and I want it to reflect in the form of influence I gain doing activities.

I don’t see how you representing guild b and earning HUNDREDS of influence for a dungeon run reflects guild loyalty because you still, what…chat with them? What is influence if it is not an indicator of a person’s activity in a guild, of their support and dedication??

If influence is not a way to ‘build’ a guild, then why bother having a representation system.

No, there is a failing with this guild system, especially for people who say that they can bounce around and share their influence but are ‘loyal’ to one guild. I don’t see it.

And in the case of some people, yes, it works…but you have 100’s of people in those guilds, with maybe 20-30 core active people across the alliance. It works because there is not mass, not because it’s ‘working as intended’.

luchifer.6401:

Well, if the guildie responds to you like that, the system doesnt have anything to do with that.. in fact, thank the system because it let you found someone undesirable at this early stage of the game and not when he is promoted to be an officer. Many guilds in other games have been destroyed because of people ninja the guild bank or similar things. I for example, am not a bad WoW player and some guilds wanted me to play with them, but as I played with real life friends, I never leaved my guild (I run raids with other people but still in my guild). This system allows me to run a dungeon with other guilds (having asked permission to my GM of course), and represent their guild while doing so if they want (especially usefull when you are doing some WvW and your beloved guild is focused on PvE content).

Thank you for your reply. You did point out some very good and valid points. However, the problem lies not in the representation or lack there of, it’s the fact that it’s a slippery slope that eventually leads to you losing that guild members.

Because of the way it’s set up (and I’ve joined some guilds occasionally that invite me just so I can see their situaton) most guilds have the typical 50-200 member mark, with less than 10% online and less than 10% of that even representing.

In my eyes, what is the point of someone being in your guild if they never represent your guild or do anything with yours? They might as well not be there at all. And that’s essentially the attitude that’s created because of this. Not to mention the fact that instead of just leaving a guild they lose interest in, they just flat out don’t represent as if that’s somehow better for the guild they gave up on.

I still have to say that it’s far less a function of multi-guild than it is an underlying social issue. It makes me sad to say, but there will always be people i’d just rather not hang out with. I’d also shy away from using “family” in describing an online community as there are very few people i would consider cared about me enough to be included in the idea of family, and i’ve had several online friends at my wedding this past year.

I’m really not sure that there are that many people in the world that would even consider they had as many RL friends as they might online ones. It’s not easy to make connections with people, regardless of how many people there are available.

teviko.6049:

luchifer.6401:

Well, if the guildie responds to you like that, the system doesnt have anything to do with that.. in fact, thank the system because it let you found someone undesirable at this early stage of the game and not when he is promoted to be an officer. Many guilds in other games have been destroyed because of people ninja the guild bank or similar things. I for example, am not a bad WoW player and some guilds wanted me to play with them, but as I played with real life friends, I never leaved my guild (I run raids with other people but still in my guild). This system allows me to run a dungeon with other guilds (having asked permission to my GM of course), and represent their guild while doing so if they want (especially usefull when you are doing some WvW and your beloved guild is focused on PvE content).

This is where the inconsitency lies…imho.

You stay with your guild out of loyalty. I do not have an issue with this.

then you run a dungeon with 4 other people and represent them while doing it.

Where is the guild loyalty? I get that you are helping them but why not this guild you are supposedly loyal to

Its…two-faced. I chose to stay with guild a because I didn’t get brow beat into staying, I chose to because I wanted to, and I want it to reflect in the form of influence I gain doing activities.

I don’t see how you representing guild b and earning HUNDREDS of influence for a dungeon run reflects guild loyalty because you still, what…chat with them? What is influence if it is not an indicator of a person’s activity in a guild, of their support and dedication??

If influence is not a way to ‘build’ a guild, then why bother having a representation system.

No, there is a failing with this guild system, especially for people who say that they can bounce around and share their influence but are ‘loyal’ to one guild. I don’t see it.

And in the case of some people, yes, it works…but you have 100’s of people in those guilds, with maybe 20-30 core active people across the alliance. It works because there is not mass, not because it’s ‘working as intended’.

Thank you for your post. I agree with you on just about every point you made. Very well put! I agree the systems in place seem counter productive to one another in creating a strong, unified guild. I don’t know how they dropped the ball so badly on guilds.

Thank you again for your post, you really hit the nail on the head.

As a regular player I can say that I HATE overly full of themselves guild officers\leaders. Especially when they start demanding some special behaviour from people.

This is just a game for kittens sake. No one owns you anything.
I saw this too much times in other MMOs when guild officers bullied players in guild by threating them.
They can’t do this in GW2 and I like this liberal guild system very much.

Mkalafut.1273
I made a simple request for a member to represent us, as it is a requirement to be in the guild which everyone agrees to before joining. I get a whisper back with “Listen I don’t know who the ____ this is, but I’ve been asked this question every day for a ____ing week, enough already. kitten ”

Me: “Excuse me? I’m sorry if I messaged you previously about this, it’s just that there’s no way for me to tell who I already talked about without a note feature and I just go down the list and send the same message to anybody not representing. It’s a guild rule you know, as well as respect and I don’t think it’s wise to talk to your guild leader that way – or any player for that matter.”

“LOL Like I give a ____! I’m in plenty of other guilds, go ahead and kick me, see if I give a s___! Hahahahahaahahahah”

Doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the multi-guild system, firstly it just seems to show you aren’t very selective / thorough when it comes to recruiting, and secondly the same could happen in a normal guild system, the idiot in question, could just say “Go ahead and kick me, I’ll just join some other guild”.

teviko.6049:

Its…two-faced.

This just seems rather stuck in the past and agressive.

The game has changed. It is okay to talk to people outside your guild, it is okay to play with people outside your guild, it is even okay to represent guilds other than your main guild.

It is not two-faced. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t lessen your feelings about your main guild or remove the fact that that you feel that is your home.

Giving these comments and this attitude suggests that the guild system will never suit you. That is okay, not everything will suit everyone. It doesn’t make it a bad system though it just means it is not one that suits your personal play style.

Erin, again, you’ve picked one thing out of an entire post and not the entirety of the post.

I never said you can’t group with others, or be friends with others outside your own guild, or even go off an do things in your own little pool.

WHat I said, is…if you are loyal to ONE guild, but earn influence for another (100’s of influence not 10 or 20 points in an hour…but HUNDREDS) how can that be loyal to a guild you ‘claim’ to be loyal to.

It is two-faced. Because you can’t. You can say yoiu are helping two guilds, but loyalty…not a strong suit…

Erin.7521:

teviko.6049:

Its…two-faced.

This just seems rather stuck in the past and agressive.

The game has changed. It is okay to talk to people outside your guild, it is okay to play with people outside your guild, it is even okay to represent guilds other than your main guild.

It is not two-faced. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t lessen your feelings about your main guild or remove the fact that that you feel that is your home.

Giving these comments and this attitude suggests that the guild system will never suit you. That is okay, not everything will suit everyone. It doesn’t make it a bad system though it just means it is not one that suits your personal play style.

Erin, thank you for your post and feedback. I can definitely see where you are coming from, but try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who has lead the same gaming community for years and years and suddenly getting to Guild Wars 2 thinking it’ll be the next adventure for your guild only to find that nobody really feels a sense of comradery anymore because they can just join any number of guilds at will.

That’s an extreme case, I realize this, but it has happened before. Just try and look at it from someone elses point of view who has been negatively impacted by it. It becomes more than a matter of preferred play style, doesn’t it?

I know people who have quit playing the game altogether because their guilds that they’ve worked hard on over the course of months or years has fallen apart in the game. Could be for any number of reasons, mind you, but the fact that when someone logs on to find NONE of their members representing is discouraging and disheartening to say the least.

teviko.6049:

Erin, again, you’ve picked one thing out of an entire post and not the entirety of the post.

I never said you can’t group with others, or be friends with others outside your own guild, or even go off an do things in your own little pool.

WHat I said, is…if you are loyal to ONE guild, but earn influence for another (100’s of influence not 10 or 20 points in an hour…but HUNDREDS) how can that be loyal to a guild you ‘claim’ to be loyal to.

It is two-faced. Because you can’t. You can say yoiu are helping two guilds, but loyalty…not a strong suit…

Thank you again for your post, Tev. I agree it’s a little convoluted to say the least.

Here’s my take on the multi-guild system—

It works in some ways and doesn’t work in other ways.

It works well in that it gives the player a bit more freedom to choose which guild they want to be apart of whatever appropriate moment. Assuming the guilds have very little overlap amongst activities, this player could represent one guild while doing dungeons, another guild while doing WvW, another guild while doing in-game events, and another if they just want to socialize with a niche group of members (for example, a guild full of Bronies).

I think that’s the intention of the multi-guild system. This would work if guilds had a focus on a particular facet of Guild Wars 2 (eg. a WvW guild, a Dungeons-only guild, etc). I’m guessing this reason because of the imposed member-caps that guilds have (which of course could be raised with money).

However, I could see how it could be a problem if someone is trying to build a guild that relies on a high level of loyalty; or a guild that does everything . A jack-of-all-trades guild with 200+ members in the guild would be an example of this. I suppose their focus is to get as big as they can, but is there a sense or logic behind that? The only reason I can think of why a guild would be that large is if the community of that guild was established from GW1 or even other MMOs. Brand new guilds of that size makes me wonder if all the guild leader did was invite any interested schmuck from /map chat in Lion’s Arch.

Of course, loyalty is another thing to consider. How loyal do you want your guild members? If you want to keep them loyal for a long time, perhaps you should do something to keep them interested. For instance, activating guild perks, like 24 hour Karma and Magic Find bonuses. Those might be enticing incentives for members to keep representing.

With that said, I do know that there is downtime between activating the buff and building a new one. For instance, the Karma buff lasts for 24 hours, but requires 48 hours to build one. Meaning that there is a 24 hour downtime in which your guild is not receiving this bonus. This means that one person could represent one guild who has this buff enabled and when it wears off, that same person could represent another guild with this buff on. That could be a bad thing depending on how much you value the loyalty of your guild members. I guess a suggestion to Anet would be modify the build time or buff duration so that there is little to no downtime between activations.

At the meantime, it’s best to set some ground rules when it comes to guild representation; and what kind of criteria do you expect from your members. I suppose you could impose everyone to fill out a short “guild app” from a website like Guild Launch or Guild Portal. You don’t have to ask a whole lot of questions, but it should ask questions related to how you value your members.

teviko.6049:

Erin, again, you’ve picked one thing out of an entire post and not the entirety of the post.

I never said you can’t group with others, or be friends with others outside your own guild, or even go off an do things in your own little pool.

WHat I said, is…if you are loyal to ONE guild, but earn influence for another (100’s of influence not 10 or 20 points in an hour…but HUNDREDS) how can that be loyal to a guild you ‘claim’ to be loyal to.

It is two-faced. Because you can’t. You can say yoiu are helping two guilds, but loyalty…not a strong suit…

Sounds more like an issue with the influence system you have than the multi-guild thing. Would the system be better if you earned influence for more than one guild at once? As it stands now, that person can only earn hundreds of influence if he’s grouped with the guild he reps, doing events or dungeons. I’m not even sure why the quantity of influence that person earns is even a factor. Say he/she earns a million in a day then reps you and earns another million the next… I just don’t see the disparity.

We need multi-guild system, if for no other reason, because ANet set a very low cap on the max size of a guild. My guild has several component guilds, and the officers jump between them.

mulch.2586:

We need multi-guild system, if for no other reason, because ANet set a very low cap on the max size of a guild. My guild has several component guilds, and the officers jump between them.

THIS is the only debatable reason for representing multiple guilds.

Thank you Mulch

Add multi-guild chat: For example – Guild 1/2/3/4 (in order of your guild window)
Guild: Jake – Hey guys
This will go to anyone who is representing.
Guild(1):Jake Hey guys
If you are representing guild #2 you still see jake talk but know it is from guild “X”.

That about solves it. It makes it a huge multichannel chat box.

munkiman.3068:

teviko.6049:

Erin, again, you’ve picked one thing out of an entire post and not the entirety of the post.

I never said you can’t group with others, or be friends with others outside your own guild, or even go off an do things in your own little pool.

WHat I said, is…if you are loyal to ONE guild, but earn influence for another (100’s of influence not 10 or 20 points in an hour…but HUNDREDS) how can that be loyal to a guild you ‘claim’ to be loyal to.

It is two-faced. Because you can’t. You can say yoiu are helping two guilds, but loyalty…not a strong suit…

Sounds more like an issue with the influence system you have than the multi-guild thing. Would the system be better if you earned influence for more than one guild at once? As it stands now, that person can only earn hundreds of influence if he’s grouped with the guild he reps, doing events or dungeons. I’m not even sure why the quantity of influence that person earns is even a factor. Say he/she earns a million in a day then reps you and earns another million the next… I just don’t see the disparity.

partly…yes. Discussed this with my friend today, if say…you earned 50% of earned influence for guild a (teh one you represent) and 20% for guild b (the one you represented last, or put in a structured priority for guild heirarchy) and 3 and 4 get a split 15%, I guess, yes, I’d be a bit more…I dunno, relaxed in my policy??

Still don’t like it though, because it still doesn’t build a cohesiveness, tight-knit community I was looking for.

@Isslair, I’m sorry for your experiences in other games, but noone is looking to bully anyone here. I wanted to build a community of friends in my game, and aside from what Aenigmo said…about the game lacking compelling reasons for people to log in, the guild tools available to build that social enviroment…that sense of guild loyalty, are lacking. (imho)

Ari Kagura.9182:

Here’s my take on the multi-guild system—

It works in some ways and doesn’t work in other ways.

It works well in that it gives the player a bit more freedom to choose which guild they want to be apart of whatever appropriate moment. Assuming the guilds have very little overlap amongst activities, this player could represent one guild while doing dungeons, another guild while doing WvW, another guild while doing in-game events, and another if they just want to socialize with a niche group of members (for example, a guild full of Bronies).

I think that’s the intention of the multi-guild system. This would work if guilds had a focus on a particular facet of Guild Wars 2 (eg. a WvW guild, a Dungeons-only guild, etc). I’m guessing this reason because of the imposed member-caps that guilds have (which of course could be raised with money).

However, I could see how it could be a problem if someone is trying to build a guild that relies on a high level of loyalty; or a guild that does everything . A jack-of-all-trades guild with 200+ members in the guild would be an example of this. I suppose their focus is to get as big as they can, but is there a sense or logic behind that? The only reason I can think of why a guild would be that large is if the community of that guild was established from GW1 or even other MMOs. Brand new guilds of that size makes me wonder if all the guild leader did was invite any interested schmuck from /map chat in Lion’s Arch.

Of course, loyalty is another thing to consider. How loyal do you want your guild members? If you want to keep them loyal for a long time, perhaps you should do something to keep them interested. For instance, activating guild perks, like 24 hour Karma and Magic Find bonuses. Those might be enticing incentives for members to keep representing.

With that said, I do know that there is downtime between activating the buff and building a new one. For instance, the Karma buff lasts for 24 hours, but requires 48 hours to build one. Meaning that there is a 24 hour downtime in which your guild is not receiving this bonus. This means that one person could represent one guild who has this buff enabled and when it wears off, that same person could represent another guild with this buff on. That could be a bad thing depending on how much you value the loyalty of your guild members. I guess a suggestion to Anet would be modify the build time or buff duration so that there is little to no downtime between activations.

At the meantime, it’s best to set some ground rules when it comes to guild representation; and what kind of criteria do you expect from your members. I suppose you could impose everyone to fill out a short “guild app” from a website like Guild Launch or Guild Portal. You don’t have to ask a whole lot of questions, but it should ask questions related to how you value your members.

Thank you for your well thought out post. I want to touch on a few things real quick about the background of our guild. We were part of a huge speed clearing alliance in GW1 since alliances were introduced. We ran those practically religiously on that game.

My specific guild was always at cap, kicking members with more than 2 weeks of inactivity and for obvious other infractions (which was rare). In WoW, however, since establishing our name in 2005 and working from the very beginning, we had ~600 active characters in the guild (obviously including alts since that’s the way guilds worked in that game).

In WoW, we did Arena, BGs, RBGs, Raiding, Dungeons, farming – you name it we did it. In Guild Wars we were very specifically PvE and HoM oriented, and even once the game died down we gained a following of being known as a helpful HoM oriented guild that even offered help to players who just whispered me about helping with a mission or part of War in Kryta they were stuck on or something.

After WoW, I lost the desire to have such a large guild as I will admit, it was largely impersonal. I loved the atmosphere that the Guild Wars 1 guild had and the fact that it kept everyone together focusing on 1 goal.

In Guild Wars 2, we do WvW (we often have an outpost and defend the crap out of it when we do), tPvP, sPvP for glory, dungeons, world completion, and again – just about everything.

As previously stated, we do not zerg invite and most of our members come from people whispering us about getting in to the guild. Though even our guild is on a decline of members from people leaving to play WoW or people who just stopped caring.

(continued)
We have daily events on our guild website, Karma, Magic Find, EXP, and Influence boosters up 24/7 and we even place banners in Lions Arch every couple of hours for everyone even not in the guild can gain some perks.

We have an active group of people who use Ventrilo and our forums daily, yet we still have people who don’t care, don’t ever say a word, don’t ever represent – who end up getting a whisper from one of us asking what the deal is. And that’s where we go back to my original post with the kid who had no idea who I was.

It’s just a viscious cycle that seems to be spreading rampanty among even the larger guilds. The difference being, in the larger guilds, even the leadership doesn’t care. As I said, I tend to whisper everyone who leaves the guild and find out why and ask what we can do to improve. The people who left just because they ended up moving servers were more than happy to have a chat about it and about how they felt. Others, not so much.

It just seems to vary as much as the guilds themselves do whether or not people care at first (if at all) then sort of steer away because of the amount of other guilds they’re in. Being a member of 5+ guilds instills in the player that guilds are meaningless and that there’s no reason or incentive to be loyal to any one guild since there are so many others out there willing to invite them so they can earn that guild influence.

It’s just the way the current system is and what it does to a majority of the players.

Isslair.4908:

It’s funny how insecure these little game dictators feel in a free environment, where players can actually do what they want.

That unhelpful statement says more about you than it does about the problem at hand.

Isslair.4908:

It’s funny how insecure these little game dictators feel in a free environment, where players can actually do what they want.

That’s not what this is about at all. Lead the same community for almost a decade then see if you call yourself a “little game dictator” for building something that just ends up seeming useless in the game which you thought was going to be the future of your guild for a good portion of time.

Thank you for clearly not reading anything in this thread and getting your 2 cents in. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, would you like to actually discuss what makes the feature good or bad in your eyes instead of flaming?

Personally I feel guilds are only for the social aspect of chatting with other people in GW2. Without any sort of opposing factions you will never get one guild going up against another guild. My guild loved to do that in WoW. We would always look for some Alliance guild to start something with just so we could have some fun world PvP. Here there is nothing like that. There really isn’t much competition at all in that aspect.

Also I have found that being able to join more than one guild at a time is somewhat pointless seeing as you can only represent one at a time. Adding the ability for one guild member to have a character on another server then where the primary guild is located is even worse. What’s the point? Chat and guild bank usage. Can’t do anything with your guild in the world at all.

On a side note, if I see a guild member not representing, I kick them out. Just how we do things in my guild.

I co-lead a guild of players who have been playing together, in some cases, since EQ1. We’ve picked up and dropped a number of players over the course of years we’ve been playing together.

With regard to the multi-guild system. I think it’s great. As a fellow leader I can understand how frustrating it can be when someone is not representing and you’re trying to get something organized, but on the other hand if these players have other friends or groups of people they play with, I have no problem with them representing that guild if they are playing together.

We have a few people that we picked up in GW2 that are members of other guilds. We found them when doing PUGs for dungeons, and added them to the guild as an easy way to get a hold of them without flooding individual contact lists. Our members reach out to these people when they need to fill extra spots in whatever they’re doing. I think this is a huge benefit to all the members of the guild.

We also have a few long-standing members who have joined other guilds who focus more on WvW or S/TPVP as we’ve always been a PVE centric guild, with a number of members who don’t want anything to do with PVP. I think it’s great that these members are able to join a WvW guild and pop over to their guild chat to see what’s going on in an off night. If they’re doing WvW, I think the guild they’re doing it with should gain the influance from that. We don’t force people to represent our guild 100% of the time, just the time they’re playing with us.

Honestly, unless your guild is focusing on all aspects of the game (PVE, WvW, PVP)and running consistant events in all aspects of the game at all times, I don’t think it’s fair to demand that your members represent your guild 100% of the time. Now, if they’re running dungeons all day with your members, and not representing, then I think it’s something to bring up, but representing for the sake of representing and gaining influance for YOUR guild even if they’re not running with you is quite honestly selfish.

As to the OP talking about the member who told you to kitten off. I would have booted them in an instant. Guilds are about players helping eachother. I honestly don’t think you should be demanding that these people represent you unless they’re doing something with the rest of the guild. However, if I got a response like that from any of my roster they wouldn’t be in it very long, and I’d be better off without them.

We have about 30-40 active members and I’d say of the active accounts, they’re repping our guild 80+% of the time because they enjoy eachother’s company, not because we force them to.

MMOs have been doing this for years…ya’ll just don’t see it. In every single mmo I’ve ever played I could just create alt and join another guild! I did it all the time! Guess what? A lot of people did it too! Even guild leaders. The difference is you didn’t see your friend on interacting with the other guild because their alt didn’t show up on the list. Anet just hide us unless we are representing and remove guild size limits. Then ya’ll can stop kittening about it.

Btw…there are mmos out there who have multi-guild system this isn’t new.

krojack.4920:

Personally I feel guilds are only for the social aspect of chatting with other people in GW2. Without any sort of opposing factions you will never get one guild going up against another guild. My guild loved to do that in WoW. We would always look for some Alliance guild to start something with just so we could have some fun world PvP. Here there is nothing like that. There really isn’t much competition at all in that aspect.

Also I have found that being able to join more than one guild at a time is somewhat pointless seeing as you can only represent one at a time. Adding the ability for one guild member to have a character on another server then where the primary guild is located is even worse. What’s the point? Chat and guild bank usage. Can’t do anything with your guild in the world at all.

On a side note, if I see a guild member not representing, I kick them out. Just how we do things in my guild.

Thank you for the insight and reply. I am the same way, and instead of kicking right away I do my best to whisper people first to see if they’re just running something with friends, made a new character, or whatever the case may be and see if they have intentions of representing again soon. If not, they’re gone – and most of the time they’ll say that they will just leave because they forget they were even still in the guild (A problem in itself with the system in place).

Other times, people may just have forgotten to do it on another character – which is fine too. The problem, I agree, is also largely due to the lack of guild oriented functions. You can pug dungeons, solo queue for PvP, there aren’t large scale PvE raids (I hate using that word in GW2 forums).

There’s nothing really to incentivize players from staying in one guild or another aside from its size or the perks they have. Thank you for your well thought out and constructive reply.

Eileithia.5246:

I co-lead a guild of players who have been playing together, in some cases, since EQ1. We’ve picked up and dropped a number of players over the course of years we’ve been playing together.

With regard to the multi-guild system. I think it’s great. As a fellow leader I can understand how frustrating it can be when someone is not representing and you’re trying to get something organized, but on the other hand if these players have other friends or groups of people they play with, I have no problem with them representing that guild if they are playing together.

We have a few people that we picked up in GW2 that are members of other guilds. We found them when doing PUGs for dungeons, and added them to the guild as an easy way to get a hold of them without flooding individual contact lists. Our members reach out to these people when they need to fill extra spots in whatever they’re doing. I think this is a huge benefit to all the members of the guild.

We also have a few long-standing members who have joined other guilds who focus more on WvW or S/TPVP as we’ve always been a PVE centric guild, with a number of members who don’t want anything to do with PVP. I think it’s great that these members are able to join a WvW guild and pop over to their guild chat to see what’s going on in an off night. If they’re doing WvW, I think the guild they’re doing it with should gain the influance from that. We don’t force people to represent our guild 100% of the time, just the time they’re playing with us.

Honestly, unless your guild is focusing on all aspects of the game (PVE, WvW, PVP)and running consistant events in all aspects of the game at all times, I don’t think it’s fair to demand that your members represent your guild 100% of the time. Now, if they’re running dungeons all day with your members, and not representing, then I think it’s something to bring up, but representing for the sake of representing and gaining influance for YOUR guild even if they’re not running with you is quite honestly selfish.

As to the OP talking about the member who told you to kitten off. I would have booted them in an instant. Guilds are about players helping eachother. I honestly don’t think you should be demanding that these people represent you unless they’re doing something with the rest of the guild. However, if I got a response like that from any of my roster they wouldn’t be in it very long, and I’d be better off without them.

We have about 30-40 active members and I’d say of the active accounts, they’re repping our guild 80+% of the time because they enjoy eachother’s company, not because we force them to.

Thank you for your post! Very well thought out and done. And yes, rest assured he got the boot immediately. I just couldn’t believe it. As for the other parts of your post I do definitely agree that if used correctly it could be a valuable tool for guilds. However with the current lack of other helpful features it seems more of a destructive tool rather than a helpful one for most small – medium sized guilds looking to keep players.

You are going to see exactly what you are stating as the MMO genre ages and as the player base grows. You’re talking about games that are at least 8 years old, having a different sense of community. I can look back on those days in a similar light, but as these things go on, it’s less important to players to fret over their guild choices. All that is another issue, simply because of the pure bulk of guilds available, large or small. It’s still not a multi-guild function, you may be thinking it makes things easier, but in reality anyone can stand in LA or read guru (or here or facebook) and find another guild in about 2 minutes. I remember GW in the early years and how it was either be in a guild or not, the choices were much more sparse.

munkiman.3068:

You are going to see exactly what you are stating as the MMO genre ages and as the player base grows. You’re talking about games that are at least 8 years old, having a different sense of community. I can look back on those days in a similar light, but as these things go on, it’s less important to players to fret over their guild choices. All that is another issue, simply because of the pure bulk of guilds available, large or small. It’s still not a multi-guild function, you may be thinking it makes things easier, but in reality anyone can stand in LA or read guru (or here or facebook) and find another guild in about 2 minutes. I remember GW in the early years and how it was either be in a guild or not, the choices were much more sparse.

Thank you for your post and I do agree that times are largely changing for the community aspect of most games – including this one. The previous examples and posts I’ve made are just how myself and some other long time guild leaders have felt along with the recounts of some members and newer guild leaders.

I understand where you’re coming from but I’m not sure how I really feel about it just yet. Thank you again for your reply.

I would like to throw a couple cents in here as well if it’s okay.

I agree with a lot of the points made in this thread. When I first heard of this “Multi-Guild” thing I had mixed feelings. What it does is allows me (the PvPer) to be in multiple guilds and main a different character for each guild, which is kind of nice. The problem comes from a couple of issues though;

1.) You’re not actually in multiple guilds, you’re simply “queued up” for many. When you are not representing one you are effectively not in it.

This harms mainly the large scale PvE/WvW guilds who are less focused on individual characters than sheer size scale. My guild to counteract this, as it is mainly a PvE guild atm, simply does not allow multi guild memberships. If it seems to become an issue with representation for that player we talk to him, then take the appropriate action. The disrespectful nonchalance that you describe is not an example of a player corrupted by multiple guilds, it’s just a dick who you probably didn’t want in your guild anyways. If there wasn’t multiple guilds it would instead be “Kick me, idc, I’ll just find a different guild!” If you said something to slightly annoy them. That’s the type of person they are, not what they became.

2.) There is no real way to identify someone who is in a guild you currently are “queued up” for but not representing or vise versa.

This creates that unfamiliarity you described when whispering a guy. Again, this hurts the larger number-focused guilds rather than the small, close guilds.

3.) Guilds starting out and therefore cannot afford an ample amount of guild benefits have no way to maintain loyalty due to abuse of the system.

It’s very hard to get a guild off it’s feet in this kind of situation and take some very loyal, dedicated players. This can be a negative in multiple ways, but at the same time it also really tells you who is truly with you and it’s easier to promote/trust.

So, I see how this can be a terrible system for many, but at the same time, a few tweaks for “quality of life” I think it can become a very useful system. The problem is, there’s always people who abuse systems, it’s those people who you should want to kick anyways. It’s a long, hard road but from my personal experiences so far, is worthwhile. Thank you.

For some reason I can’t quote you, but thank you for your reply Sco. You did a great job explaining some of the goods and bads of the system and I agree with you. For my specific guild, numbers are quite important because of the activities we partake in.

It, as a whole, has worked out for us until recently. As of late, the problem is much more the fact that people have left to try out MoP for whatever reason. However these are all still problems with the multi guild system and the guild system as a whole as currently incorporated into Guild Wars 2.

Thank you again for your well thought out post and touching on both the benefits and drawbacks. And I do agree immensely that the system can become a great tool for guilds if it had some tweaks. Maybe we’ll see those tweaks in the future “massive guild update”? We can only hope, I guess.

I love the feature, I think the real problem is to many guilds have no sense of quality when they recruit members. If you go around picking up trash, then soon you have a lot of trash.

So many guilds will recruit anyone and everyone. Have some standards BEFORE they are in your guild.

To be honest I didn’t know that one could join multiple guilds, mainly due to the fact I didn’t research GW2 enough and never played GW1, regardless though I prefer the traditional way where an individual is loyal to one guild only. I don’t like the idea of being able to join more than one guild, it just loses its novelty.

Given this information in this thread I will still stay in my current guild, even though there aren’t as many active players like other guilds, it doesn’t matter to me, there’s more of a brother-ship kind of bond between guild mates when it’s smaller and I like that.

Xenite.7418:

I love the feature, I think the real problem is to many guilds have no sense of quality when they recruit members. If you go around picking up trash, then soon you have a lot of trash.

So many guilds will recruit anyone and everyone. Have some standards BEFORE they are in your guild.

Xenite, I’m not sure who that comment was directed towards, if any. But nearly everyone in this thread who runs or is part of leadership of a guild has expressed they have quality control when recruiting.

OrangeMint.7980:

To be honest I didn’t know that one could join multiple guilds, mainly due to the fact I didn’t research GW2 enough and never played GW1, regardless though I prefer the traditional way where an individual is loyal to one guild only. I don’t like the idea of being able to join more than one guild, it just loses its novelty.

Given this information in this thread I will still stay in my current guild, even though there aren’t as many active players like other guilds, it doesn’t matter to me, there’s more of a brother-ship kind of bond between guild mates when it’s smaller and I like that.

Thank you for your thoughts on the subject. I’m glad you’ve found a guild that you consider worth your time and choose to stick with it.