Guild Wars 2

I initially posted this in another thread, but removed it as it derails the topic OP had set.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-and-the-Death-of-Small-Guilds/first#post4966407

Having read the offsite link in the above thread, I’m kinda envous of those who have other guild experiences from different games. I eventually lost sight of the purpose of being in a guild in GW2.

When advertising to run a dungeon in guild chat, most people had either already run it or didnt respond. I soon stopped asking, it was way easier (and felt safer for the successs of the run) to use the lfg. And this is guilds of around 200 total members or more.

In the end, i viewed membership solely for getting ascended trinkets through Guild missions on the weekend. Maybe i got it all wrong and have the wrong personality, but i just didnt get it. Being in guilds has overall had little impact on my engagement with the game.

Especially after megaservers when server pride or topics to do with wvw becamse a non factor. Thinking back, that was the strongest time being in a guild gave me any sense of identity or meaning in GW2. Cos no matter what, we were all Deso and could all moan about Viz together. Even tho I personally barely played WvW, i felt that identity and community. But i guess this veering to a different topic. So um, yeah.

How much do you guys feel that Guilds are a significant thing in peoples play and enjoyment of GW2? To me, it seems that they are primarily there because MMO convention says they should be. And little reason beyond that.

It is interesting to see that the larger the guild, the less sociable they seem to be. From what I’ve seen most guilds just mass recruit simple to gain passive influence from the members and have a higher chance of people showing up to events. With GW2 not really having any sort of endgame either from a player standpoint or from a guild standpoint, guilds seems to primarily be for bonuses and a extra chat channel, due to lack of purpose.

This has always been a issue in guild wars 2. There is a lack of guild oriented goals in this game. In which I hope gets addressed in the yet to be revealed guild content in HoT.

As of right now guilds lack in significance outside of a social purposes. As the only content guilds are good for is as you said Guild Missions and raid like bosses like Tequatl and Triple Trouble. Most content is designed for 5 man groups. As you indicated it is hard to include and entire guild or be included in the guild when it comes to this content. People miss out for not being on at the right time or simply not having the room to take everyone.

As how significant they are now depends how social you are in your gaming. I myself wouldnt be in the game still if it wasnt for my guild. People in my guild really log on to enjoy some time with thier friends than to play guild wars. I hope this changes soon because it would be nice to have some tings besides guild missions, world bosses, and LS2 maps to enjoy on a large scale together.

There is a pretty massive split with how relevant being in a guild is: if you WvW on a consistent basis. If you don’t WvW, there’s very little in the game that really warrants what would be expected of you having a far more organized group of people. Yes the guild-based challenges are there, but the times that you are allowed to them in the first place greatly limit how much you really can do them. While the guild puzzles are definitely harder than the average PUG could handle by a pretty massive margin, the fact that you can really only do them once per week greatly diminishes just how relevant they are from a guild perspective. Sans the Guild Rushes, the rest are sort of like this: having a PUG for this content just wouldn’t really work at super well (though I’d say that you could potentially clear them in a PUG… with the Guild Rushes you could pretty much do solo). After doing this once-a-week content there’s very little keeping you in this more organized formation. The rewarding content in this game requires very little coordination, and the skill requirements are so low as to be negligible in many cases. While doing this content with a guild is obviously going to be funner/faster in the standard scenario, there’s just nothing that really requires it. That just leads to people just not necessarily doing it that way.

On the flip side, WvW is an entirely different game when you play with a moderately sized guild. When your group is highly organized, the large scale fighting takes on a whole new life, and becomes significantly more interesting than any other available method for WvW. Strategy becomes more in-depth, the combat becomes more exhilarating, and the personality of the guild becomes pronounced (just like how the linked topic wishes it was like for them). This is why the whole “zerg-busting” guild style has become a thing. When your coordination becomes a massive boon, and not just a bit of gravy, people will immediately jump on board (see TTS for a PvE example, as Triple Trouble is the only PvE content that really requires relevant coordination to accomplish).

I totally agree with you. I really love being in a smaller, more tight knit guild and it’s not on ArenaNet to provide that. In fact, they have nothing to do with it. They can however provide tools to smaller guilds and design philosophies that can aid smaller guilds. This game seems designed from the ground up with convenience in mind and 9 times out of 10 I love what they have done in that regard. Small guilds and the lack of Alliances being brought over were a major oversight on their part. heck, I feel like an easy fix to this situation would be just to implement alliances again and let everyone reap the benefits. Guilds can be small or large and if done right, the whole alliance can be rewarded like a larger single guild.

It depends a lot of each guild and also the player.
My guild is quite large, over 250 member and about 100 logged in the last week at least once, but I use the guild mostly to chat and occasional help with something, and seems that most also do that, dungeon runs takes a while to fill with just guild members, we are not really into PvP or WvW even though we do have players focused on both.

But the cool thing are events, the guild organize some events like, every Sunday we pick a dungeon, JP or LS achievement and we end making several parties to do that, such experience you just can’t get without a guild, we also ally with other guild to do WvW events, such as themed WvW where we pick a theme and everyone goes following it, like all guardians or all asuras, all in pink, all minion necro and so on, among other events, those things makes guilds so great and bigger guilds is harder to manage but when you have a big stable guild everything is epic, luckily that is where I find myself now

My guild is pretty sizable, in the 250-300 range. We have a core cliche of members/officers who have been around years. I’ve been around a few years myself, though I’m admittedly not all that social. Sometimes I feel I should make more of an effort for that sort of thing. I’ve always been a member, and sometimes co-leader, of smaller guilds in past games. I think guilds of all sizes have their place, but ultimately, it’s more about what you can actually do with a guild. What content / features / options exist to make guilds matter?

This is something I think I’ve actually changed positions on over time. There have always been some games out there where you pretty much NEED a guild to get anything done, or you’ll probably have a much harder time going solo unless you’re really good/dedicated or lucky with random people.

I’ve always been fairly anti social and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like having to rely on other people. I wanted to just do my own thing, in my own way, in my own time. Sometimes teaming up with a friend or so, but more often than not, I’ve been a solo player and I was fine with that.

I’m still like that to a big extent, but I’ve actually opened up on that in more recent times. I actually think it was Archeage that opened my eyes, or made me remember something I missed.

There’s plenty I don’t care for in that game, but some things I very much did. I had social experiences there that I’ve never had in the GW/WoW type games. I found that I rather like actually needing other players, having to form relationships with people you can trust, etc. That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a social butterfly or anything, but it means I am much more likely to “come out of my shell” if I feel the need to, and when I do, it’s kind of exhilarating.

In GW2 and most games, being in a guild is fine and all, but what can we really do that is so different than just running with a random zerg / pug? What risk do I face where I really need to have a relationship with someone and trust them not to kitten me? What can I do for them that makes me so valuable? We can all rez each other, yay! What else? And I don’t mean skills like Mesmer portals, etc. I mean interpersonal things that feel significant. Is there some actual loss you’d be facing without my help? Is there something important I can do for you that you wouldn’t want to trust to some stranger?

My first real guild experience was in Diablo II. Guilds didn’t even have in-game support, but even as limited as that game was, there were things that could happen where it actually mattered if you had friends. Even something as simple as transferring gear from one alt to another, you either needed a friend you could trust, or risked it not being there when you got back. To this day, I still play with a friend I made in there. We’ve played games together now since 2001. But in most games since, I just haven’t felt much need for bonds like that.

I’m not generally social enough to force friendships. I’ll admit I can use some encouragement now and then, and it’s nice to have game mechanics that give me reasons to feel that encouragement. If it weren’t for certain things I disliked about Archeage, I could very easily have made some good long lasting friendships in there.

For the guild I was in, I needed them and they needed me. There were things we could do that were of value for each other, and that’s just as true for small or big guilds. It’s simply more important to have “your people” in a game like that vs games like GW2 and WoW (carebear themeparks, to put it bluntly).

Maybe my tastes have changed as I’ve gotten older. Maybe I’m actually a tiny bit more socially-inclined than I used to be. But where I used to shun that kind of social dependence, I’ve now come to value it.

Needing others, and being needed ..it’s just a different experience. More intense and meaningful than “oh look, here’s 30 people with the same nameplates as me, but they could just as well be anybody, and I’m basically nobody, and we’re not doing anything important anyway”.

I like the world and lore of Tyria, but I really am interested in a more satisfying experience where there are reasons for those social bonds to matter more.

There’s an important social aspect of guilds: RP. Guild chat and sites make it easier to track interweaving plots. Guilds have “themes” as to why the characters are together in the world. They could be a Charr military unit, a Sylvari gathering, a rag-tag group of mercenaries, a Norn household, an Asura krewe, an entertainment troupe, a noble House, etc etc etc.

At that point the nameplate means more than “people to do a dungeon with.” It unites personalities and enriches creative game play immensely.

Back when the game first came out I played with a rather small guild. They were very sociable and we did just about everything together, fractals, dungeons, world bosses, etc. Then guild missions were introduced and everyone needed the commendations, so we joined bigger guilds. Those same people ended up drifting away or stopped playing all together, and I ended up stopping as well. Came back last month and got invited to a megaserver guild, so I figured sure I need commendations.

Still looking for that fun guild though.

I’ve been guildless most of the 2 years I’ve played and only recently got into a guild. For the most part I don’t do anything with them and still consider the entire guild thing to be worthless.

I’m a very big solo player and honestly guilds don’t do anything. The only thing you need to be in a guild for is missions. Triple Trouble gets done by TTS and other large guilds that exist solely for world bosses, and they usually post when they do it. So I just go and tag along.

Guilds are useless and really only there for social aspects, and if you’re asocial like me they’re useless entirely.