Guild Wars 2

One of the features of Guild Wars 2 is the ability to join multiple guilds although one can only represent one guild at a time. I just wanted to get a better understanding of how you guys are involved with this feature.

1) How many guilds are you currently part of?

2) Are guilds generally ok with you joining multiple guilds and switching between representing the guild at will?

The reason I asked #2 is because I was browsing the guild section of the forums and saw one guild’s requirement that you had to represent the guild, so just wanted to know if it was “taboo” or not loyal to join multiple guilds when it’s a feature implemented in the game.

In GW when I joined a Guild it mattered. In GW2 I can join many and now it’s like adding imdb to my favourite websites. Whats the point?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down

It belittles Guilds and loosens relations

I’m of two minds on this, I’m the leader of a smallish guild of pretty tight knit people, I’d be a little put off by someone wanting to join another guild as well. IMO a guild is not meant to be a place where you “get stuff” it’s meant to be a social group of like-minded individuals who get on well together. It’s what its members make it, so if people want to join another guild that does X,Y, and Z, I wonder why they couldn’t be bothered to try to organize X, Y and Z in this guild…

On the other hand, it is a cool feature for a player. If you really like two groups of people, it’s cool that you can effectively join with both. It’s also nice to have this as a de-facto “alliance” since for some reason devs of most MMOs seem reluctant to implement this feature.

So yeah, I kinda conflict with myself on this. We have one member in our guild that reps another guild primarily; but in this case it’s due to the fact that he was the guild leader of a GW1 guild, which the rest of us didn’t play. We knew going in that this was going to be the case, and I don’t have a problem with this at all. The multi-guild thing is actually pretty nice in instances like that.

I guess at the end of the day it opens more options, and options are good. It’s up to players and guild leaders to decide how/if these options are going to be acceptable to them.

It’s a terrific idea actually, allows you to join a smaller less active guild that may have friends. But at the same time you can also join a larger one that into WvW and such.

I believe when used correctly it serves a great purpose to be able to join multiple guilds.
For me it goes hand in hand with the concept that no guild can adequately cater to all aspects of gameplay, I think guilds do best when they specialise.

For a player that enjoys all the different aspects of gameplay then being able to join multiple guilds lets them have a guild which caters to that aspect of gameplay which they can represent when engaging in that activity.

I believe if a guild specialises in a specific aspect of the game (WvW, sPvP, Dungeons etc) and chooses to allow part-time representing, and if players respect the guilds they are in by actually representing them at the appropriate times and for a good portion of the time they spend in game (aka frequently) then a great balance can be achieved which will benefit everyone involved to the greatest degree.

Guilds which require full time representing are of course entitled to have that as a requirement but I believe they are missing out on some great contributions from players who want more from the game than any individual guild can offer.

I just use this option to make a personal guild for bank slots

1. I belong to one real guild, and one that consists only of selected representatives from our WvW allies.

2. My own guild is happy to allow members to join multiple guilds, although sometimes you wonder why a few members bothered to join, since they never seem to be representing us.

Since there is currently no way to form a custom chat channel, some allied guilds share members (or even create an artificial third guild) simply to allow their players to share the same guild chat when running together in WvW, dungeons, etc.

Honestly, I can understand a guild setting their policy either way.

Casual, social guilds have fewer problems with players belonging to more than one guild. But guilds that invest heavily in providing members with training, gold, gear, weapons, etc., to build highly organized WvW or sPvP teams might feel their guild members owe the guild their in-game time in return.

If all guilds were equal (i.e., they all ran dungeons, they all socialised, they all RPd, they all played sPvP and WvW, etc) then 1 guild could well meet all of a players needs.

So many guilds these days are focused on one aspect. And with the lack of any useful group finder it makes sense to have a guild which you can switch to to find people to do certain activities with you.

But I’d never force it on anyone and have no problems with a guild deciding to not allow members to represent other guilds.

It really all depends on the guild. If it is a large guild there would be no reason to be a member of more than it. After all the amount of people online and diversity of activity interests within should be enough to be able to do everything you want to do in that guild. But lets say you are in a small guild with real life friends and their real life friends who all like to play together. But there is one or more activities they aren’t interested in doing. Then there is no reason not to join more than one guild to be a part of those other activities the one guild lacks. It is silly to want players to be exclusive to your guild. That’s like telling people they can’t join more than one forum on the same topic. There were alliances in GW1 and those multiple guilds socialized together and did stuff together accross the guilds to meet desires that each other guild lacked. The only difference in GW2 is right now there is no alliance mechanic and no way to chat with all the guilds you are a member of at the same time. So you have to switch around between based on what you have logged in to do. Hopefully we see improvements to chat to allow for chat with all and also have alliances so multiple guilds have a chat channel to socialize on that level.

I prefer guilds how they are here. Most of the current members of my guild, are guild members from the game we migrated from. We all have different things we want in the game. Also our biggest issue in our previous game, is that many of us were not your standard hardcore run dungeons all the time players.

That meant when we recruited new members, we constantly got complaints about not helping. Don’t get me wrong, we help, but running the same dungeon 4 times a day when we don’t like the stupid dungeon to start with just isn’t gonna happen.

With this system, I like the fact that we can have our social, casual guild, and if any member needs something specific they can find a guild for that without breaking up our little family. However I do specify that yes, we do allow multi-guild signups. I know many guilds do not condone it, simply because they need the influence.

However with just a few of us, we don’t need anything amazingly large, and we still get a decent amount of influence. Also since it requires no upkeep, there is no concern about losing anything if players aren’t active enough in our guild.