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[Column] General: A Guild Management Suggestion Box
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Guilds are an integral part of most MMOs yet the tools for running them are often lacking. In her latest column, Genese Davis makes a few suggestions about how to make management and usefulness of guilds more effective. Read on and then leave your guild management suggestions in the comments.
By now many of us have been playing MMOs for more than a decade, and over the years we’ve tallied up a number of ideas on how to improve various functions in MMOs. One area of discussion revolves around organized groups, aka: clans, guilds, player associations, corporations, supergroups, linkshells, etc. I’ll use the term guilds as a global term to reference these as a whole. Guilds hold a special place in my heart. My first guild experience was a linkshell in Final Fantasy XI where I met the best kind of friends anyone could ask for. Without my linkshell, learning to navigate FFXI would not only have taken ages, but also wouldn’t have been nearly as fun. I always seem to gravitate toward group-play when I game.
Read more Genese Davis: A Guild Management Suggestion Box.
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Comments
Awesome suggestions for guild UI improvements! I especially love the multiple selection and guild mail suggestions for WoW.
Things I'd add to the list would be officer-only or rank-specific guild mail and a way to select the rank you want to demote or promote to. As it is now, most UIs have you promoting or down up several possibly unused ranks to get to the one you want for that character.
Very nice article and some great ideas to making the changes to the system. the one thing not covered in the article (and maybe you will cover this in the future) is the other side of the coin and finding a guild. Having a good guild structure is key but finding one is also a challenge.
I know for myself I have been looking for a good size active guild in WOW and tried using the guild finder. Great idea if you want a list of all the guilds on the server .. but not searchable, non filterable. and what it fails to show you is how active the guild is. i know I have joined up in the past to see some 20 or so on ... few months later the number is dropped to say 10 or in some cases 5 or less.
Just something to mull over ... but good article ...
What many games lack is given a general permission, but restricting it. Like, guild storage. Members often can't use it at all, or take out everything at one. How about limiting to specific items, like resources, or equip (maybe even based on class/level)? Or only x item per day. Or the difference (maybe even take the value of the item?) between items taken out and items put in can't be too big.
Same with guild mail. A raid leader surely doesn't need to send to send 10 messages a day, and that all week long. Or even message non-raiders. If he organizes stuff that is important for non-raiders, he surely will have the appropriate rank, like "pvp leader", too. At least if the guild is organized. And if it isn't, mail won't help.
An ingame guild calendar, where you can put up events. Many people don't visit the guilds homepage, unless you make it mandatory.
How about a guild-intern notice board? Instead of spamming the guild chat, or having to use the forum which even less people will use, people can post requests or offers there. Basically everything that now is on the guild homepage/forum, like standard raid or pvp times, collection of guides, offers to help others by high-level bored players etc. could be there. Could be in some menu, in the "physical" guild hall, or both. Very cool would be if you could actually read it standing in front, instead of going there to open a menu..
Hopefully games will feature stuff like that soon
Some games don't allow switching the founder, the one who can change everything, meaning, if he is inactive, the others have to make a new guild sooner or later.
The biggest problem i see is though that every game has a different guild system. In some, only the one and only founder can invite, others allow everyone to use the guild storage, the next needs 20 people to start a guild, and so on.
Developers should take a close look at the guild system of other games and design it well like hopefully the other features of the game, instead of doing it on the fly, like "guild system is easy, founder can invite, add guild chat, done" and later noticing people want guild storage, lets add some", then "oh, someone emptied the guild storage because we don't have a rank system, lets add it", and then only allowing officers to access it, so they have to stand ready all day because at every moment, one of their members wants something from it, because the developers forgot to allow changing rights and restrictions for each rank, and even less allow creating new ranks.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
I always wanted a "recruit" member state for new members on trial. This recruit state should be able to communicate with the guild but not be publicly tagged. This to prevent bad behavior done by recruits reflecting on the guild name.
Well actually just a anonymous state that will remove the public guild tag on anyone.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Nice article. I would say though that there are far greater challenges ahead for developers as far as guilds are concerned. IMO there is just not enough for guilds to do to warrant a guild in the first place. In addition to raiding it would be nice to see more guild cities etc in MMOs. Guild shops where the best stuff could be found at the vendor. Guilds farm crafting materials from raids and group dungeons, guild crafters craft them up, guild puts them on internal guild vendors and external to sell to the public.
Guilds need more to do together in games.
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|SWTOR|SotA|BDO]
24k subs YouTube Gaming channel
I ran a guild back in EQ that moved over to DC and a few other MMO before I stepped down as guild leader. Actually it started off with the guild leader who was just having lots a problems and me giving him advise on what I would do (which I had never ran a guild before). After while all my ideas worked thus he made me guild leader. I took the guild from a 150 players to something like 3 thousand players.
Running a large guild is a royal pain in the butt. It took up so much of my time that I spent more time dealing with guild matters instead of actually playing a game. After three years I stepped down. As of today I refuse to be a guild leader, officer or any leadership roll no matter how much people beg me to (I've been asked to run different positions with in a guild).
Though I will never be a guild leader ever again I will say this I am proud of taking a small tiny guild and turning it in to somethin.