Guild Wars 2

I think its about time guilds get another revamp and purposing. With the introduction of the mega-servers they seem to be out of place now and not considered in the full scheme of things.

Problems:

While Mega-servers solved many population problems in PvE it has hurt guild play and community cohesiveness. It has made in-game recruiting outside of WvW nearly out of the question if you want to keep your guild server based. Some guilds have taken on recruiting across servers but then these guilds have members that are excluded from participating in WvW.

It has also made guild missions more about getting everyone in the same server than the time actually spent doing the missions. This is a nightmare especially for bounty when you have different groups hunting the same boss. Also mission areas are extremely crowded with other guilds taking away from the entire experience.

Currently there is little reason to have a guild outside of guild buffs, WvW organization, and once a week for guild missions.

Solutions:

WvW needs to be brought back in line with the mega server idea and end the segregation guilds must consider when recruiting and place more importance on guilds and let them to be able to play together. Now I know we will still need to have some way to make teams in WvW. I propose that a new rating based on “WvW Influence” that is non-spendable be added to guilds and cumulative WvW rank of active members. This will be earned in similar ways that normal influence is earned but be exclusive to normal WvW. There would be a time period of measurement where influence would be reset before every season and players will have to select a guild to represent during the season or have them automatically placed in the guild with the highest WvW Influence. (If players would like to switch or join guilds after the season started, charge them gems.) Guild’s would be placed in “worlds” and “leagues” based on their WvW Influence earned, cumulative WvW rank of their active members, and the amount of players that participated in WvW during the measurement period. Guildless players would be random placed into any given world distributed equally. This would bring some importance back into being in and participating in a guild and make this more of a Guild War than a “lets hop onto the free server to band wagon it” war. It could also bring some balance to coverage wars if you mixed in guilds internationally. Between seasons guilds would stay in the same match-ups until measured again, or it could be randomized every week.

Guild’s also need some more meaningful and exclusive PvE content. We have had the same missions since March 2013 and they are very dated. They last maybe 10-15 minutes each, but take up to two hours to complete them all because most time is spent making sure everyone is in the same server now. We need instanced PvE content for guilds and more mission types. I suggest introducing challenge like missions like there was in Guild Wars 1 and exclusive raid like bosses. Where the mission doesn’t end until your team fails and bosses much like the marionette balanced for guild play that requires coordination and team work, not zerging. You could even make a leader board for each challenge mission score much like GW1 These are just a few ideas… but please add something we have been doing to same missions for over a year now, people have lost interest.

Now I realize there might be some things or consequences I may not have though of, feel free to criticize or add ideas of your own. But one thing I am certain, I know I am not the only one that feels like guilds in this game have little or no importance and that their role should be improved upon. I hope Anet does something to add to guilds soon. This is a great game but not perfect and can be improved upon.