Guild Wars 2 – Guilds: Can quantity equal quality?

Note: Written for the Blog Carnival on GuildMag

I must admit that when I just heard about the possible guild system in Guild Wars 2 I was stunned. How can you be a member of multiple guilds based on account and not character? I thought it was crazy… But after thinking for a few, I changed my mind and found it a rather brilliant idea. Mmorpgs have for far too long been locked and restricted in many ways. “Cannot do group content without X class”. “You need to do pve content to get access to pvp”. “You need to join a guild to access high-end crafting”. “You have to complete X questline to get into new area”. They try to guide us like sheep along a certain path through the game. This was all good and fine when mmorpgs were still new and the concept was strange to most. But now most players joining a mmorpg have been through the usual leveling process many times. Quests, raids, groups and so on. Restrictions and limitations are more of a bother than any help. Players know what they want to do in a game. If it is pvp, they should not be forced through pve content. Let us choose our own path, and to get back on the topic of guilds, let us choose our own way to run the community.

As I see it, it does not prevent guilds to demand people to only be member of their guild. In many games it is still possible to join multiple guilds with different characters, and some guilds forbid this. There is still the option to make guild specific rules, plus many more options, by removing restrictions in the game design and adding player control.

“Guilds are about commitment!”. This is one of the things I see as one of the most used argument against a multi guild system. However, whether you like it or not, commitment is strictly voluntarily. Even with the existing guilds system people are joining multiple guilds, often in secret and hiding on alt character or accounts. If someone wants to break a rule, they will find a way. Whatever rules are set for a guild, be it the number of guilds, level of character, real life age, spoken language or how much you play a week, I believe it should be up to the players and officers of the guild to make sure these rules are being followed, and not up to the game. People see guilds and commitment differently. Some see guilds as no more than a social entity, a place to hang out with friends. Some see it as a group of players committed to a certain goal, like raid progression. With a more open and free system it gives room for this diversity in the community.

“Planning events will be impossible.” This is another argument. But do we not already have to plan around real life plans? If a player turns down a raid because he has to go out and drink with friends, it is ok. But if he wants to join an event with online friends, it is not. Are they not both the players choice on how to spend his time? Planning things for multiple people will always be difficult. I do not think you can blame a game’s mechanic for this.

I belive that this system could actually result in better quality of guilds. Instead of having a multi purpose guilds such as “Guild of Awesome is a pve guild, but we also do pvp, we have raids sometimes and some of our players like rp.” Guilds try to cater to all needs, otherwise they lose players. But many multipurpose guilds never really do all these things successfully. An rp’er joining the above guild is most likely not going to be satisfied.  And if he joins a pure rp guild, he may not get his pve need satisfied in an enjoyable way.

Guilds can put their focus on what they do best, and not split their energy and time to find a raid leader and enough raid members, if that is not the focus of the guild. A guild focused on pvp only know that people who join the guild are there for pvp, and not some secondary objective. In the monogamous guild system, a member of a pvp guild that suddenly wants to try raiding aswell  would most likely either have to join pug raids, leave the guild or join another guild with an alt. But with the possibility for multiple guilds, he may stay in the pvp guild and join a raid guild aswell, making it harder for guilds to lose members completely in these situations.

In conclusion, I think that a multiple guild system will make guild quality better, thus the player experience better. It will take some getting use to and adjustments from old systems. But in the end, I think we will go away from having guilds function as small closed communities to being more open ones, making the entire game community seem bigger and stronger.