Anthony: you’re sounding a little exasperated here, and I’m sure there’s alot on your plate — but hopefully you can understand the exasperation leaders of small guilds feel right now.
So I’d like to take an opportunity to provide you some background —
Guilds in GW1 — had alot of options when it came to accessing content. Alliances (which is apparently outside of your department.. but since alliances pertain to guilds shouldn’t it be?) was one of those options. It provided better co-ordination, and it did not matter how small each guild in that alliance was — we kept our own rules individually and were allowed to keep our individuality. There were strong bonds of trust, loyality, and friendships. Guild pride was an important thing. It boosted morale for one, and at times kept people playing content, even when that content slowed down. When some guilds from GW1 made the switchover to GW2 we had members at first. But there were a plethora of mechanics already put into place that slowly and surely hampered and ate away at those smaller guilds. The lack of alliances, the ability to represent multiple guilds, a lack of guild features, smaller restricted content access/party size, seperated servers, a lack of a working guesting feature — all were obstacles in many a guild’s way. Surely, I hope you can understand and empathize that this provided considerable challenges. Eventually many individuals became frustrated and moved on. Guild size, of what was once a delightful place, sadly grew dark. People ran off to large guilds, and stayed there, and the rest stopped playing. For lack of a better term — guilds seem to be in a reccessionary phase, just as bad as our real life economy.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but if i’m understanding you: your position is that small guilds can now have access to some features, but that large guilds should have better access to features, even extra features/rewards — and small guilds cannot. That is certainly not a balanced approach. Your player base is simply not used to that concept. A guild, no matter how small, could accomplish anything they wanted to in GW1 — even if they did not have an alliance to assist them. After a great deal of time you gave us heroes so that 99.9% of content could almost be done solo (not saying it wasn’t quite a challenge but it was doable). Everything became free and fair access.
You have made a small step in the right direction with adding this new content for a smaller guild. So there is kudos for that. But this, sir, does not negate the problem. Guilds of our size still face the impossible dilema. To gain access beyond this gated content — we have to guild hop to a size of a guild that would allow us to do it. This means that being part of a guild is not anything to be prideful of or to maintain a strong bond. It has become that guilds are a means to an end. Merely existing for their ability to unlock that content. Members are merely numbers.
If my friends in larger guilds ask me to come along to a guild mission, I’m currently opting to say – no. Because there is nothing that I can contribute to my own personal guild that says — ‘’we did this together!".. ’’we accomplished something for us’’. I have a greater sense of pride and happiness when I walk into WVW (where I don’t have to join some other guild to do content or to help someone out!) In GW1 if you wanted to do something together as a larger unit — say oh.. Urgoz eg, everyone could still be in their own guilds and be rewarded equally. There was no fuss and no mess.. except for coordinating people. That sir, to me, was a spirit of fairness and equality. It didn’t matter if big 100 man guild could gain access to that content faster than a smaller alliance of 50 could — we could still get to that content and be representing our own guilds at the same time.
Guilds now, feel virtually worthless and a chore, and their only use is for wvw at it’s present state. As it stands now, we will not be doing this guild mission content, as it’s still beyond our reach. We will not compromise our stands to invite just any body for the sole sake of gaining numbers to accomplish it, nor will we demand our friends and old alliance members must be forced to represent us in order to achieve it. And our small guild is not ‘casual’. We spent over 7 years contributing to this franchise — and now, it sort of feels like we’re nothing more than a tiny town of Mom & Pop businesses that got obliterated by Wal Mart.
