Guild Wars 2

Adine.2184:

Here are a few reasons its a good thing

1) if your "main guild " only really does PvE and has no intrest in PvP you can have a PvP guild . This way when you are doing PvE you rep one and when you are doing PvP rep the other . I cant really see a down side to this .

2) if a friend decided to make their own guild for one reason or another you could give them a boost in the influence department to get it off the ground .

3) It makes Guild leaders/officers actually have to work to maintain membership . Face it if your not doing your job as officers and leaders ( part of which is establishing a good rapport with members ) your not going to keep members very long .

If you really think about it it encourages community more as you’re more likely to make friendships with more people being in multiple communities .

I agree with all of your points however the last sentence is something I can’t really agree with. Your points are all valid but as far as it encouraging community I can’t really agree with.

Kromsin.6359:

I only represent the guild that offers me something. Not sure why this is a touchy subject with some of you guild leaders.

Care to.. expand a bit more? It seems most guild these days have every guild perk and have them activated quite frequently from what I hear. Why not expand a bit more on what you said.

teviko.6049:

Hycinthus.6483:

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.

Well, maybe this is fair but maybe this is not. I feel like I am being recruited by guilds often, and I join many guilds as well, but I sure hope I am not trash. I feel like trash though, because I am in guilds where there were no vetting process, no quality control, but please don’t blame me, because when you offer perks and advertise, I will take up the offer.

And then if I see the guild does not live up to its expectations, then I quit. Perhaps I am trash, but there are also a LOT of trash guilds also out there.

You are not trash, and if you look for a guild and it doesn’t live up to its hype, I would be teh first one to say: “Hope you find what you like”. I am not upset at the people who leave, nor the ones that don’t log in, its the non-representers. How do you know what my guild is up to, doing, or even talking about when you cannot see? If you cannot get to know us because you don’t see our chats, or we cannot get to know you because you are hiding behind autonimity?? If you accept my guild invite, but don’t represent the guild, how is it my fault as a guild leader, because you weren’t interested in a guild you asked to be a part of.

Part of that is the lack of loyalty. Players don’t really get to know a guild. They join, don’t bother to represent, and then get upset if badgered by ‘us’ the guild leaders when we ask (not demand) that they represent. Again, the decision by my guild to require membership came a long time after we were trying to establish a foothold in the world of Tyria. But oh so many joined, never represented and shot us snide remarks when asked if they would even consider representing us.

Again, its not ALL the guild functionality at fault (and nor is it Guild leaders…unless your that french guild) it is largely due to a large symptom of the game not having a rallying cause for guilds to form cohesive units to take down greater threats to earn your guild reputation and status (even if its…that guild took down XX mob, way to go…..(even if it has been done by other guilds before hand) ) its just a way to attribute a guilds success with their name.

In this game, there is no such…achievement. Not for PvE anyways….WvW might be different.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. As a fellow Guild Leader i feel the same way.

Hycinthus.6483:

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.

Well, maybe this is fair but maybe this is not. I feel like I am being recruited by guilds often, and I join many guilds as well, but I sure hope I am not trash. I feel like trash though, because I am in guilds where there were no vetting process, no quality control, but please don’t blame me, because when you offer perks and advertise, I will take up the offer.

And then if I see the guild does not live up to its expectations, then I quit. Perhaps I am trash, but there are also a LOT of trash guilds also out there.

Thank you for the insight there. I always love hearing how players not leading the guilds feel about this and for you to say what you just did brings to light a good part of the problem.

Ayan.1750:

I haven’t gone through all the replies so I don’t know if it was mentioned or not, but here’s the problem: (hint: it’s not with the guild system)

The game doesn’t have anything in it that REQUIRES a good group to complete. Anything can be half kittened and completed 90% of the time. That’s why you don’t see people who need to belong to guilds that can accomplish things that you otherwise can’t with pick up groups. Such a thing doesn’t exist.

Thank you for your reply, it has been discussed in this thread a bit. It’s one part of the huge problem. Multi-guild isn’t THE problem, it’s also just another big part of the bigger issue.

teviko.6049:

After deliberating some more, another reason that this multi-guild system doesn’t work (imho). Sorry, this will seem like a rant on the game in the whole, but the symptom the OP is refering to is a direct result of the rest of teh game.

Why do you need to be a guild. You don’t need to be in a guild to:

a) do dungeons
b) do WvW
c) do sPvP/tPvP
d) do zone/map completion
e) dynamic events
f) anything pve related

Without some ‘thing’ out in the world to bring people for a single purpose, most people don’t flock to guilds to be a part of a guild. It’s more to have a tag, or ‘say’ you have aguild mainly. No need to be loyal, to stick around to see your guildmates (or firends) advance.

Agreed, thank you for your post. Would you rather say you’re in a tight knit guild of people nobody has ever heard of or a member of the largest guild on the realm? I know most would choose the latter. Thank you for your insight and response.

Hycinthus.6483:

I have only read the first page, but I’d like to offer my perspective as a guild member.

Yes, I am guilty of many of those things the OP mentioned due to the multi-guilding feature, and it is not really intentional. One morning, I actually asked a question, and was being helped and shown places by this one person, and not until 1 week later I realized that was the Guild Leader. Also I don’t remember the name of my guild at the top of my head, nor do I know any of the officers, and I feel bad now saying this, because I feel like a bad person now.

Yes, you can tell me it’s all my fault for not caring, and I agree and I apologize, but I also feel there are many people like me and the problem has been exacerbated by the multi-guild feature. I have to say whenever I hear someone recruiting, and it sounds very nice “we have upgrades, vent, etc etc”, I immediately sent a tell to join, and voila just like that I got an invite. So since the joining part is not a big deal, then I in turn feel that the guild itself is not a big deal.

Then after joining, sometimes I realize there’s only 5 people representing, and it does look bad on the guild, because basically those people can’t even hear what my chat, and no one welcomes me once I joined.

The conclusion is, the problem is multi-faceted. One is the attitude of casual players like me, and the other is the multi-guild feature that is enhancing the ‘casualness’ of everything, so nothing seems too serious anymore. Getting /gkicked is no longer a big deal.

Also one thing I’d like to discuss is, perhaps the attitude of many MMO players are changing. I feel we are in the phase of many “MMO-hoppers”, of many players hopping from one MMO to the next. Back when it used to only be EQ or WoW, people were loyal to the MMO, they cared about their reputation, they had nowhere else to go. With so many MMOs to choose from, casual has become the new thing, just like where the gaming industry is headed today.

Thank you so much for your post and I’m glad you were honest in the way that you treated this feature and gave us some insight as to how you feel about it. Seeing it from the point of view of the players who make up the guilds rather than just the leadership is something we need here and I appreciate your honesty.

Kaleden.9386:

I don’t think you can pin it solely on the multi-guild system. FFXI had a multi-guild system which functioned quite well. For instance, I had roughly 3 linkshells: one for friends, one for Dynamis, and one for Limbus.

The question is why aren’t your players representing your guild? Perhaps they joined for a purpose which your guild no longer fulfills – be it social or activity based. Unlike FFXI where you needed a guild in order to experience content, GW2 is extremely accessible to all. As such, players get to go where they please. The only real exception might be WvW where keep upgrades and siege equipment can have considerable cost, but PUGing is still a very viable option.

Thank you for your reply. It is not the only problem nor is it the sole reason these problems exist, but it’s certainly harmful rather than helpful in most cases that I’ve seen.

Norelation.3067:

In my personal opinion the degradation lies not with the feature it’s self but with the community of people who use it. You have guilds who want a lot of active members who are all out to help each other and have a good time. Great. The problem comes in with the “A lot.”. I can’t speak for everyone but I meet a lot of people on this game whom I can nearly consider “The dregs of society.”. Guild recruitment is a science, it requires screening. I my self am a member of a guild in which there is no screening process. Invite a horde of people and encourage them to do WvWvW, and that’s it. In other words, I think because of the system people have stopped treating guilds as a given instead of a privilege and a formality. Hence the problem.

Thank you! Yes, I agree completely with your reply and I’m glad you worded it that way as I’ve been having a bit of trouble finding the right words. Thank you for the reply, I can’t stress enough how much I agree with you.

Norelation.3067:

I think because of the system people have stopped treating guilds as a given instead of a privilege and a formality. Hence the problem.

That right there is the biggest aspect of what I’ve been trying to say.
Thanks!

I will be back in a few hours or so to continue my side of the discussion. I look forward to seeing the replies that pop up while I’m gone and will read each one when I return.

Thanks!

fizzypop.6458:

Mkalafut.1273:

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.

What is your idea of quality control? Do you have them submit an application and accept them if they do so? How many people do you deny memebership too? I’ve read this whole thread I haven’t seen anyone really say outright they have any real quality control.

For my guild specifically, the process for gaining entry is as follows.
Say we get a whisper from someone interested in the guild. We go over briefly some of the rules to ensure that they at least agree to some of our basic rules like Ventrilo being required for runs, etc.

Once we’ve established that representing and ventrilo is required, we then send them to our website to fill out a short Q/A about themselves in which they also agree to have read our rules page, which there is a link to.

Depending on the specific answers to the questions along with the manner in which they are answered (and yes we do take into account basic grammar and punctuation ( you’d be surprised at how many blocks of texts without periods we see )) we assess them and determine as a group of myself and my officers whether or not this individual is right for our guild.

In my specific case it’s people who were previously offers (Note PREVIOUSLY) being lazy and just inviting anyone with a mild interest in the guild. And we’re largely playing catch-up with the stragglers from that ordeal.

As far as other guilds go I can’t really speak on their behalf but I hope that gives you some insight as to what people agree to and claim to have agreed to to gain entry into our guild.

Eileithia.5246:

Mkalafut.1273:

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.

If something like this happens I would say it comes down to the leadership and vetting process. People should play together because they WANT to play together. Every guild I’ve been in over my gaming history has had very different rules, and playstyles. I’ve been in the hardcore, phone-tree raiding guilds, and the complete laid-back casual guilds. The one thing that kept these guilds together more than anything else was that each member WANTED to play with the other members of the guild.

I’ve never logged in and seen more than 50% of my guild running with someone else. It just doesn’t happen. But every “real” member (See my previous post about a few we’ve added for PUG convenience) of the guild is vetted with the officers, and goes through a trial period to see if they jive with the group. I don’t understand these guilds of 100s-1000s of members. What’s the point. there’s no personality, and it’s just a massive chat room and way more drama than what needs to be in a video game. Hell, our EQ2 guild had 28 members, and raid size was 24. EVERY member attended every raid, and we rotated out the 4 that sat. But every single one of those guild members had a trial period, and testing period to make sure that they were good players as well as good people.

I consider almost all of the members of my current guild (we have some new recruits) to be personal friends, not just random people we’ve picked up for the sake of “filling the ranks”.

Thank you for another reply. I agree with you 100%. That example of mine you quoted was a hypothetical example and I’ve never seen it happen. I am on the same page with you. Ventrilo, doing events, and a guild forum site have assisted in making sure that most of the members are on first name basis with each other and actually enjoy playing with each other.

This thread is a compilation of other leaders, members, ex members, and my experiences over the course of this game’s short life span to date. Unless I specify otherwise, these are general examples not really partaining to any one guild specifically.

Their shirts are awesome but as far as I know only launch a parties and conventions were the way to get the authentic t-shirts. Or be an employee. I’d love if they sold them though.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

(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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m definitely excited for this event, and it’s amazing what some of you have uncovered about it already, good finds!

Farzo.8410:

The only reason they did this was because they want us to buy gems, to buy additional bank and/or bag slots.

I hope they at least try to make a costume maker NPC.

Yeah like I said I could definitely see this as a reason why they wouldn’t give us these things. But for players like me and countless others who actually buy the extra bank slots and bag slots and STILL are out of space because of the materials and costumes, what then?

Guild Wars 1 allowed for the same thing. You could buy the extra bank tabs, or not – that didn’t effect the existince or lack of existence of a material storage that included every material as well as the costume / hat collectors.

Hell, they even gave away a free anniverssary bank tab to everyone at one point.

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).

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

Mkalafut.1273:

VirtualFrog, thank you for your reply! I’m glad you were able to find a good guild that you were looking for. We also have those requirements and an organized website with information about our guild plastered all over the thing so people know what to expect from us and from them before entry.

Unfortunately, people can say whatever they want and then go do something else 5 minutes later. And I’m glad to see that you pointed out the huge issue with it all – the representation and people forgetting they’re even in certain guilds. They do, literally become meaningless.

Thank you for taking the time to answer. The delicate care with which you manage this topic to keep the ball rolling while remaining diplomatic really makes you shine as a leader even if I don’t know you personally and have never been in your guild. I hope you are able to succeed with your endeavors as head of the clan.

The multi-guild system that encourages consequence-free hopping and primal human nature certainly dosen’t make it easy but from what I see in your posting history it’s either people like you that can make it work or no one.

Keep on fighting the good fight! (:

Thank you again for your input and compliments, I really do appreciate it. I’m not just speaking on behalf of my guild or any one guild, but for all the people who have expressed concerns about this to me – leaders and members alike.

One last note before I head off to bed, I will do what I can regardless of the outcome. I can see both sides of this thing as it has directly effected myself, friends who run guilds, and people I’ve never met who I’ve just had conversations in passing about this with.

Thank you again for your kind words of encouragement and contribution to the topic.

PaWryce.9702:

If they would use guild alliances and alliances chats it would solve all(?) of the problems people in this thread have.

Agreed. Future feature, maybe? I’m definitely open to having that come back again from GW1. Though you’re right to put the (?) there, as who knows how it’d work. I get enough of a headache trying to rationalize the current system in place without adding in other things to consider.

Though I’m not sure that’d completely eliminate the issue entirely, if at all.

Ok seriously heading to bed now. Thanks everyone for the constructive replies. I look forward to continuing this tomorrow.

Cures.7451:

We just dont allow multi guilding, and i personally dont know anyone who is in more than 1 guild – so i cant see your problem tbh. If representing is a guild rule, you just have to enforce it.

And we do enforce it. Once again, it’s not a problem specifically with my guild. Or any guild for that matter. It’s the fact that the system essentially makes guilds pointless and takes the entire meaning of them away. No matter how convenient it is for some and whether or not it’s used correctly or not.

Haishao.6851:

Mkalafut.1273:

I’m sorry, I figured the part where I mentioned I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years would have given the impression that I knew what I was doing and am still doing it successfully up to this point.

It’s an issue, regardless of current success or lack-there-of. I don’t zerg invite, none of my officers do either. We have conversations with members WHO WHISPER US about getting invites to our guild. Only to find that days later they just stop representing.

Please if you’re going to comment, read the posts people make before hand.

Maybe they thought your guild would be great but it turned out to be a typical few friend circlejerking while everyone else is only there for the look.
How can we know? So many guilds are like that, and especially the small one trying to be big. Big guild are full of circlejerking too but there’s so many people that you always find someone else to play with you anyway.

It’s easy to blame the system but If we were limited to 1 guild per character these people would simply have left. Maybe you wouldn’t even realize they left. They would join and leave guilds until they find something suitable for themselves.

It’s your job as a leader to make them want to stay.

You’re right. 10 years of top PvE status in WoW and tons of 50/50 and GWAMM in GW1 has proved we suck and just circlejerk. As I said already I’d rather the people straight up leave rather than waste my time tracking them down seeing if they’ll come back or not.

The people worth the time and effort prove it to us and show that they care and WANT to be there. I’m not going to make someone want to be there – even if it were possible. And you’re wrong. I check the roster and log every time I see someone leave to ask why they left and what we can do to improve.

Thanks for your replies.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

I don’t see the same things you see, Mkalafut. Our members usually know each other, at least they know their officers/leaders. And if they don’t recognize a name (which can happen, especially if said officer has a lot of characters :P), they know where to find the account name and check that.

We do have an international guild, but most people know each other for a long time now (coming from GW1). And those new ones either know one or more other members or have been going to the forum where our guild is also represented.

I know of a few members who do have multiple guild(s) and who will represent that other guild some times. For instance when they’re playing WvW. But when I meet them in WvW, they’ll just as easily team up with me as with somebody from their other guild.

I also am part of three guilds. I made my own (hey, free storage!), I have my main guild, and I’m in a guild with friends I met during my time in GW1 with the same love for ranger pets. I am mostly in my main guild but once guesting is finally working, I’ll probably switch a few hours a week to that other guild, so I can play with those people (in GW1 we met once a week).

If there is one thing that is killing guilds, it is the server split. As I said, I’m part of an international guild, with people from all over the world. But some are on NA servers and some are on EU servers. And that’s simply killing the guild spirit as guild members who happen to be online at the same time can’t play together. At times, somebody says: “Maw is up”, I respond with “Would love to join, but you’re on the other server”.

We don’t have anybody on other servers in our guild as we don’t recruit in overflow. And as I said earlier I’ve been doing this close to 10 years. We’re more of a family than a guild and the first thing we do is get to know people on a first name basis.

All of our core members (the active ones that actually participate) are on a first name basis with the rest including all officers and leaders and other members. The problem lies in the fact that some individuals just flat out don’t care and don’t take time to get to know anybody in the guild because they already, from the get-go, have no intention to stay.

I have no problem allowing members in my guild to represent other guilds. I know that right now tons of my core members have guild bank guilds, guilds with their IRl friends and the like. That’s fine because they communicate that fact to me.

Not always that lucky though as people often just stop representing out of the blue and take that as their “I quit” sign that we’re supposed to magically pick up on.

I myself have 12 characters, so it’s a valid thing for a new member to not know me right away, but my account name is the same on each, I’m always communicating in our Vent server as well as in game guild chat, so they should know enough to see that I’m around and take 2 seconds to look, right? We also have our forums that have updated as we have throughout the years from various games we played.

As I said we played GW1 and WoW along side each other for the full duration of the last 8 years respectively. We are all a tight knit group of people who love to hang out and just shoot the s__ with each other and have a good time.

As for the server issue, we avoid recruiting in overflow for that reason. It’s not that we can’t play with them on other servers for dungeons or PvP, but as far as events and the like go, they might as well be in a different guild anyway.

Xarog.3172:

In my opinion the real reason that guilds aren’t working right now is due to the fact that the game is lacking in structured content. When GvG comes out and when dungeons are revamped so that people actually want to run them, there will finally be an incentive to be in a guild beyond the solo-grinding buffs that guilds are currently used for.

I know that its frustrating and there’s a lot of things I think Anet needs to fix, but if you look at the replies from the devs it really looks like they’re doing their best to make sure the game heads in the right direction. So while I agree that guilds seem a bit unworkable atm, I do believe it will get better in future.

I agree. And it’s not their faults, they are doing the best they can in the time they have. I know first hand that TONS of people went back to WoW to try the new expansion and others just are waiting for more stuff to be released before they come back.

I do agree that a big part of the problem is the lack of guild-only functions. Things that increase the incentive to be a member of an established guild are needed to increase player loyalty and activity. Until then, it will just be a slippery slope of guild hopping and guilds losing members left and right.

“Why be in that smaller guild with less orange chat when I can be in that bigger one? Oh they’re more skilled and more friendly? Meh, PuGs can clear the dungeons I don’t need a skilled guild.” was something else I saw earlier in the week when I asked someone how they felt about it.

I’m off to bed. 6am is my limit. Please send me a PM if I don’t get to your post or if you feel compelled to. I will check back here first thing when I wake up because I like the discussion going on.

Thank you everyone for posting, see you tomorrow!

I don’t even look at loot anymore. I see blues, whites, and greens, and then I head to a merch. Only for rares do I ever even look at the stats anymore.

Xericor.9103:

The trouble I see is player greed.
People want all the bonus from flags that a big guild can give.

The actual system is fine. With a multi guild system you can represent specialist guilds and normal guilds. For instance I am in a social guild, but when I want to share a tag with a pro pvp guild I switch over, without quitting on my friends.

Perfect example of the system being used correctly. Not as many players have the control you do and mostly just abuse the system going from 1 to the next, often having a full list of available guilds to represent until a bigger / better one in their eyes comes along.

Ykfox.3825:

Mkalafut.1273:

Quickhit.3620:

I don’t see any point changing guilds daily.
Except you are a lone wolf and you just want the bonuses or something.

To my eyes guilds are a group of people that you stick together.Otherwise gt_o.Ryit?

If only every guild had more members like you, the situation wouldn’t be nearly as dire. Thank you for your input, Quickhit.

I have to say, it sounds to me like the problem you have isn’t the multiple guild system, it’s that the people in your guild are the kind you don’t want in your guild.

Not so. I have no problem with anybody in the guild. And as I’ve said this post isn’t specifically about any problem I am having with MY guild, but just problems as a whole that I’ve seen first hand.

Granted I listed a few examples of my own, and as a caring individual for what guilds stand for, I made this post on all their behalfs as well as my own because I feel this needed to be brought up.

Lethalvriend.1723:

I can see where you are coming from if you have such a large guild, to be honest. In the other games I’ve played guilds were very very rarely as large as 200+. Most guilds I’ve seen had perhaps 50 members of which 30-40 were most active. I think a part of the problem occuring right now is people handing out invites far too easily. I personally run a guild of 7 right now, yes that’s very small. But we only invite people we really enjoy playing with PLUS we make sure everyone in the guild will enjoy playing with that person. My guild doesn’t have so much guild chat spam as big guilds but we all talk to eachother and we all play together, there is no guild hopping or anything destructive currently. I think it is generally an issue with guilds just trying to get ‘big’ and inviting strangers without knowing anything of them. I am personally strongly against advertising in map chat etc because you will essentially invite a person that may not fit in at all. This can work both ways, but if you instead decide to only invite people you encouner while questing, doing dungeons or pvp you will see they won’t have this behavior.

Thank you for your reply. Don’t be fooled, in WoW we only kept around 60 members or so on the roster. After 2 weeks of not logging in we kick for inactivity. We only needed that many members to accommodate our raiding and PvP schedules and rosters.

In GW2 we currently have a little over 120 members. I’d say ~30 or so are actually active. And that’s ok. As soon as anything is put into the game to show inactivity time, we will clean house a bit.

I can’t say it enough in this thread, not ever have we handed out invites. Most of the time we don’t even spam a recruit message in global channels, we have people ask to join our guild from word of mouth or various recruitment posts on gaming websites.

We are not a zerg guild nor are we concerned with quantity. As long as we have quality members we enjoy playing with that makes it worth while. As I said earlier, just because my situation isn’t as bad, doesn’t mean others are in the same position.

I’ve taken in more than a couple ex guild leaders, members and officers of guilds that just didn’t last because of one reason or another and got sick of player’s attitudes towards guilds.

Ameepa.6793:

How have you managed to fill your guild with people you do not know? If they don’t know you, it means that you don’t know them either.

I have had my share of running guilds in the last ~10 years and even when I’m not running one in this game, I can agree that the guild system is different here than in other more traditional MMOs. I’m not saying that it is worse, just different.

One main difference is that people have much more freedom to choose how they want to play and do they even want to be in a guild. It may sound a bit harsh but in traditional MMO guilds are pretty much forced on the player even if they do not want that. If you are not in a guild, you pretty much cannot play the game. It is much harder to switch guilds in that kind of system because there is a risk that you may lose your ability to play the game, so people tend to stick around even if they would not like to.

Here it is not like that. You can enjoy the whole content even without a guild at all. As I see it, the main reasons here to join and stay in a guild are the buffs and purely the social aspect.

If player is only after the buffs, he will be in a guild that offers the best. If the player wants the social aspect, it is pretty much guaranteed that they will continue to look until they find one they like. They are free to do so. There is zero risk to switch and try other guilds if they are not enjoying themselves in some.

Nice social atmoshpere is much harder to create than objective based system. Leaders might be able to make people achieve some objective, but they cannot make people enojy each others company. It happens almost by accident, if at all, just like in real life.

In some ways the chances of it happening can be improved by carefully planning on what kind of people you are trying get together. Is it the age? Nationality? What is the commong thing between your members. You simply cannot just invite everyone.

Ok, enough rambling. :P

Thank you for your reply. A few things I’d like to comment on. I run the guild with one co leader and no more than 4 officers at any given time. When an officer invites a member and I’m not online, because of the lack of visual notifications of any kind on the guild interface, I’m not always able to introduce myself as the leader right away.

Even when they aren’t introduced to me straight away, you’d think any member would look through the roster to see who is who, right? We do not invite everyone and never do we randomly invite either.

There is an initial screening process as well as in writing requirements that must be met to get in. The problem is – when you have all upgrades unlocked, yet a majority of the players invited don’t care enough from the get-go to participate in guild chat, VOIP, events or anything, it’s no longer about something objective. It’s about people having that certain way about them over the net.

The system just doesn’t help with that attitude in a positive way. It does for some, but for more in my experience, it does nothing but harm.

Quickhit.3620:

I don’t see any point changing guilds daily.
Except you are a lone wolf and you just want the bonuses or something.

To my eyes guilds are a group of people that you stick together.Otherwise gt_o.Ryit?

If only every guild had more members like you, the situation wouldn’t be nearly as dire. Thank you for your input, Quickhit.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Kana.6793

I want a guild like my WoW raid guild. 30-40 people who are online regularly and an active guild chat where you actually know each other. Those massive guilds are like map chat imo and I don’t like them at all. I’m not the only one.

I want this too. My GW1 guild had “only” 20-30 members, but they were active members and guild chat was always a blast. Too bad they’ve all succumbed to RL.

It’s very, very difficult to find such a guild in GW2 though.

Though our roster is currently over 100, we are generally the same way. As soon as they implement “days since login” to the guild interface, we will be cutting our roster down tremendously. We have all of the upgrades already so it’s not like we need the influence, nor do we care about how many we have.

We know as well as our active, long time members know that we offer something most guilds do not, and frankly if people don’t see that it’s their loss. That’s just our situation though, and unfortunately it’s more dire for some people who had a good thing going for them until their guild hit Guild Wars 2.

deriver.5381:

Korrigan.4837:

Well, to be honest, in other games, people will just /gquit and join the bigger guild.

Hey Korrigan! =)

You see, that is the kind of people that makes a tool like the multi-guild system, looks bad. Back in WoW, can’t remember when exactly, but I managed to join one of the biggest guilds of that game. I was happy for some time, but as soon as some RL friends decided to start playing and thought about starting a small guild just for us, I promptly left my former guild, thankful for the time I had there, taking my time to explain to everyone my reasons, and joined the tiny 8 man guild my friends created, to never leave it.

Commitment is not something you can relate to a game’s sytem. This system does not promote jerk behaviors. People are jerks because they can, and internet allows them.

Thank you for your post. I couldn’t agree more.

Xericor.9103:

Mkalafut.1273:

the guild shows that there are 320/500 members online, and your other one you are in has 20/120 then… well.. you can pretty easily figure where the average person will go.

So, you still say its a problem with the mechanic and not with the player?
Tell me the difference between a tradtional method, of accept and /gquit to join another,

And to answer your previous, yes I have been a guild leader (swtorguild.co.uk), same user name, at one point we had 250 members, which we whittled down to 60 actives. We then took those 60 activies and cut it down again to around 25 genuine active, social members.

Those 25 made the guild, those 225 we lost along the way did not. Players make a guild not mechanics

That post was not representative of what I personally think – but what the average player does (based on experience). Out of our 120 members I’d say nearly 30 of them are genuinely active, social, assets and members of our community. The rest are either inactive or pop on every now and then and don’t bring anything to the table.

Please don’t nit pick posts. That sentence you quoted was part of a larger paragraph explaining the context which seemed to have been left out of your reply.

Kana.6793:

Mkalafut.1273:

The problem with a /who feature or something similar is the fact that in a medium to small sized guild that values quality members over a ton of them, they generally don’t have all that many on at once.

That’s not necessarily a problem. I was looking for a more active guild recently and I found myself wishing for /who repeatedly since there’s no way to tell how active a guild is or how many are normally online at once. I, and a lot of people I know, don’t want a massive guild with 700 online at all times. I experienced that in the form of my GW1 alliance and I hated it.

I want a guild like my WoW raid guild. 30-40 people who are online regularly and an active guild chat where you actually know each other. Those massive guilds are like map chat imo and I don’t like them at all. I’m not the only one.

Thank you for your reply. As I’ve said to others I do hope you find what you’re looking for in a guild. Those guilds are out there but deteriorating fast from what I’ve seen and heard from other guild leaders. People simply don’t care anymore.

deriver.5381:

I really can’t understand how a person could “forget” who the leader of one of his guilds is unless he never cared about that guild from the beginning.

We have a reasonable large guild, with about 150 members… Not once we had something like you mentioned happening to us and we are not against multi-guilding. Our only request is that when someone is doing something with us, that they keep our guild represented.

But we don’t spam chat channels for new members or things like that. We never worried about numbers. We had a set rule of only accepting people who knew someone from our initial core of players at the beginning or friends of friends of that same core after.

I believe the tool is good, and you can’t blame it for the people who misuse it.

Thank you for your reply. It really was a wake up call for me that something was wrong when the guy sincerely had no idea who I was. I agree, and have said that if the tool was used properly it’d be an asset but as it stands it’s horribly destructive.

Again thank you for your reply, and I can’t stress enough how against this I am. Unfortunately there’s not much you can do except ask the people who aren’t representing why they aren’t and if they have any intention to ever do so again.

Afternoon.8236:

My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI, which has a Multi-Guild-System, so I’m pretty much used to it.
In that game, basically every Endgame-Guild had the rule, that you had to be a member of that one guild alone.
That rule actually worked. It was a little bit different for social guilds where some Guild-Members just jumped between the guilds only to ask for help/money. But even some of those guilds had the “One guild only” rule. Members of social guilds usually had different Guilds for endgame activities, with the social Guild as their main guild.

It did work for the community of Final Fantasy XI (black sheeps are in every game though) and for me it also works for Guild Wars 2. That said, I’m a member in one guild, as I don’t need another, the people are friendly and talkactive (though we’re only a small guild). But if there’ll be ever any guilds for any endgame-activities I’d love to do but can’t do with my current guild, I’ll be more than happy to have the Multi-Guild-System. That way, I can do the desired content without leaving my main-guild.

Thank you for your reply. I didn’t know that’s how that game worked as that’s one MMO I’ve never touched over the years. You are an example of an ideal guild member and your guild is lucky to have you. I just wish more people valued a guild like you do and actually didn’t think of it as just another name in a list when they hit G.