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The effect of Guild Politics on the MMO genre?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
I must say, I havnt been closely attached to a Guild in a MMO since the end of Vanilla WoW. That was my first real experience with being close with a guild. But I remember with the release of the first expansion of WoW ( TBC), The Guild Merged and the original leader left the game and guild. I saw how the smaller raid structure (40 man norm to 10 man Karahan norm) there was lots of conflict in the Guild for spots in the group, and play style restrictions. It was a big mess! Thats really when I started paying attention to how certain people would get certain privileges over others. Favoritism. I just couldnt deal with that and left at some point. Never got into a guild and became attached like that ever since.
Guilds play an important role in many modern day MMOs and their game designs. Lots of MMOs have hardcore endgame raiding ( or another name it may be called, but pretty much the same thing), and this style of game design always lead to having a guild as a requirement, since this content is never really designed to be pug friendly.
But thats the thing. Fast forward to today, I play mostly Guild Wars 2 now. New features get added such as the Guild Keeps and Raids. Two features that when you stop and think about it, are always limited to the top guild players.
But is that good game design?
In Rift there were Guild Dimensions that were larger than normal Dimensions but problem was normally only top members in the guild were allowed to do any customization at all. But luckily we had personal dimensions. But with GW2 there was no personal player housing feature. So I could never actually try out features like this. And same for Raids, since most of it was carried out by Guild Groups.
What sparked my to make this post, was reading over threads of how people got kicked from guilds over many stupid small things and some emotional leader of the guild that swings the ban hammer over anything. I just dont understand how people can put so much of their time and resources into a Guild other than their own, with the possibility of being banned for little things like that. And with gameplay built around pretty much the Requirement to have a guild, that seem like another real life aspect of drama that you have to deal with on the fantasy world that you play to escape the real world drama of office politics.
Guilds play an important role in many modern day MMOs and their game designs. Lots of MMOs have hardcore endgame raiding ( or another name it may be called, but pretty much the same thing), and this style of game design always lead to having a guild as a requirement, since this content is never really designed to be pug friendly.
But thats the thing. Fast forward to today, I play mostly Guild Wars 2 now. New features get added such as the Guild Keeps and Raids. Two features that when you stop and think about it, are always limited to the top guild players.
But is that good game design?
In Rift there were Guild Dimensions that were larger than normal Dimensions but problem was normally only top members in the guild were allowed to do any customization at all. But luckily we had personal dimensions. But with GW2 there was no personal player housing feature. So I could never actually try out features like this. And same for Raids, since most of it was carried out by Guild Groups.
What sparked my to make this post, was reading over threads of how people got kicked from guilds over many stupid small things and some emotional leader of the guild that swings the ban hammer over anything. I just dont understand how people can put so much of their time and resources into a Guild other than their own, with the possibility of being banned for little things like that. And with gameplay built around pretty much the Requirement to have a guild, that seem like another real life aspect of drama that you have to deal with on the fantasy world that you play to escape the real world drama of office politics.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
I am the "guild leader" of one of the oldest guilds in World of Warcraft. I use quotations as I started the guild when I was 18, and and I'm now in my 30s. Other people run nearly every aspect of the guild, however I am still the ceremonial guild leader with the title and what not. I changed my life up pretty significantly, and now spent the vast majority of my free time exploring nature, mountain biking, and skiing, after frankly dedicating years of my life to my guild.
I put immense effort into making the guild, building its social structure, organizing my server's community in what I can really only describe as a political game. It was probably far more engaging than World of Warcraft actually is. Guilds would actively try to sabotage my guild, because we had a pool of players that people wanted. Curating who and what compromised the guild was frankly tantamount to its continued longevity. I have played with these other people, in both Warcraft, and other games, for nearly 15 years at this point. Like other guilds, we built a community with our own, per say, "government structure". It's something that the members of the guild, and myself, helped to build. At some time in my past, I realized I was managing over 120 people, having them raid for what amounted to an additional work week, for no pay. That's the kind of investment people have in guilds.
Why, and how does that even happen? The answer to that is, even if people aren't in the officer structure of the guild, they've still invested themselves into it; it's part of what they helped to create.
Social situations cause at least mild feelings of anxiety for an overwhelming portion of the population and, as such, most will opt to avoid it if they can accomplish the same goals without putting themselves out there. However, it's healthy for us to interact with one another. Specifically, it breeds civility and community. It helps provide perspective and broaden horizons. But most folks need some kind of nudge (whether it be a challenge that has to be handled by working with a group, or by attending social events with a small group of folks they're already comfortable with in case things get awkward) to actually partake. It's nothing special or unique to video games. The only thing unique to video games appears to be how often people want to try and scapegoat other things to justify having no requirement to interact.
With that said, there is good design to having content that's exclusive to guilds/groups, and putting time into working with a guild as member. We need the experience of interacting socially and working within a group of individuals, whether we're scared of the unknown end result or not.
EDIT- for clarity of point
Everquest was the very first online game I ever played and because I wanted to advance when I got the opportunity to join the biggest guild on my server run by a petty child in an adult's body who used his guild as an instrument of revenge and purposely blocked others from accessing content. He was mean and successful and had very talented people and we had several server firsts.
The only thing I could do was help members from other guilds to port them since I was a wizard and even though he tried to forbade me I just went ahead and did it. I always joked and acted stupid and got away with it partly because I was a female they had spoken to on the phone so he never disciplined me although he threatened to several times.
I helped corpse recovery in the Planes whenever I could I even managed to get some guild clerics to do rezzes for these smaller guilds but it always rubbed me the wrong way how 2 large guilds could monopolize the content and divide the dragons between them. It smacked of absolute greed and was so wrong and unfair that to this day I hate open world content because of how it could be monopolized by stronger guilds.
I saw so much hatred for our guild and when people realised which guild I belonged to they would be unfriendly until they got to know me better. We took over whole dungeons and kept the dungeons to the members of the guild only and we were very well equipped.
You may ask why I never left. Well I wanted to do the content. I know I am as guilty as him I guess like they say all it takes is for good men to do nothing.
As an introvert I am deeply uncomfortable with the expectation that I will just join a group of people that, even though I never see their faces, I am somehow supposed to get to know them and remember them as individuals and allies. Except, you know, can't get too invested because they can kick you out or quit the game whenever they want.
Some games have multiplayer content that encourages people to wreck things for others. This could be shared guild resources that anyone in the guild can steal, allowing ninja looting, rewarding players for joining something and then immediately going AFK, allowing or even encouraging ganking low level players, or any sort of mechanics that make it so that the only way to get gains for yourself is to unduly harm someone else. The reasons why many players shy away from such things in online games should be obvious, even without any assumption that people are anti-social.
Guild politics likely means people fighting over some scarce resources, whether it's one guild trying to beat out another for it or dividing loot or other benefits among members within a guild. That encourages people to fight with their "friends", and contributes to a game's community being toxic. Guild interactions are more likely to be positive if game mechanics are designed such that players can't really harm the guild but only decline to help it as much as they could have.
Roleplayers are the best bunch of players you can game with, but that comes with "politics". We do seem to attract more than our fair share of drama queens, maybe being a roleplayer means you love drama? Well some of us like drama a wee bit too much.
1) There's the kind of guild politics that makes everybody's game better. You used to find this in the old roleplay friendly sandbox MMOs like CoH and SWG pre-CU, when you used to see guilds form around a common roleplay theme, like a knightly order, or an all orc guild, or a group of supervillains. Even if you weren't a part of them, even if you were in no guild at all, a lot of these groups created content that made your game better. Here, the politics are essential, since it adds to the intrigue, and keeps everyone doing creative things.
2) There's also the kind of guild politics that makes the developer's game better. You used to see developers bring in the largest and most prestigious guilds for beta testing, working with developers to create changes that would be favorable to them. It helps the developers, because they believed these guilds would create a core fanbase for their MMO, and they believed these guilds were the best players to consult. But what ended up happening is the creation of games that were so stacked in favor of the uberguilds, few could fully enjoy the games outside of the uberguilds. Some games, like EVE, are so beholden to the uberguilds, it is unclear who is in charge of development: the developers, or the guilds.
3) Then there's the kind of guild politics that makes the guild's game better. You find this in a lot of PvE centric old-school marathon raid MMOs like WoW. People took raiding guilds so seriously back then, applying to a guild was like applying to a job...and it was like a job. But the reason it was taken so seriously is because the stakes were so high; when you spend hours to go up against the boss for one random drop of uberloot, and bad a wipe will make all that effort count for nothing, you tend to recruit for efficiency and metrics instead of roleplaying skills. This kind of game rewarded the guilds for their excellence in management science. But for everyone else, the endgame was not designed for them.
4) Then there's the kind of guild politics that makes nobody's game better. The last guild I was in didn't play any game in particular, but dozens of games, and we all pretty much hung out on the Ventrillo server with one guy playing Smite, two guys in Guild Wars II, and a guy in Minecraft saying "everyone come in here now to see what I built!" When the essence of guild politics becomes getting people to care about the game you are into, rather than the game they are all into, you really have a system that undermines a developer's ability to retain a playerbase more than it facilitates it.
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--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
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Further more Blizzard added the automated tool to enter dungeons,so the ANTI guild tool.That and pretty much the very design states the game was 99% solo oriented,from all the solo questing to jumping in auto dungeon finders.
Now my experience over MANY years and many guilds,MOST of the people within them are SELFISH,me me,what can the guild do for ME.How often does someone ask others if they can help them,often they'll help someone IF they can do THEIR own thing,like ok i'll take you with us on this raid...we are going there anyhow.
I sort of liked how EQ2 did the guild idea,invest in your guild,you lose your investment if you leave,it is more of a help everyone idea and not all about ME.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But the issues you raise are quite genuine particularly about clique's. That is normal though, when you have some people in the guild longer than others, they are roughly the same level and so on. Today though with Discord and so on I think an element of who sounds and in this day of social media looks best can form clique's.
It is something all guilds should be aware of and try to balance out, everyone I have been in addressed the problem. But they are no magic bullets, you just have to try to handle it the best way you can.
I'm not looking for friends, so I have no issue changing to a new guild when it suits me to.
That said I always fully support my guildmates and the guild in general because it's the right thing to do. If in fact I no longer find myself no longer wanting to do so, its time to move on.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Now fast forward to today and I find it much harder to create or join a new guild. I think part of the problem is how gamers today move from game to game so unless your guild has 50 or 100s of players they tend to fall apart. I may not be "old school" enough for some here but guilds are different than they were 10+ years ago.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I can't speak for WoW, but I've been playing Gw2 for years: guild only content (Guild Hall and Guild Missions) are nice but not essential. The multi guild system comes in your aid when you want to do start doing high end content: I would almost dare to say that you want to avoid doing frustrating content such as raid with regular "friends", cause arguing and getting mad over a wrong skill is much more common than somebody might think.
A lot of people (talking about guild leaders mostly) should swallow their pride and do more reasonable choices: if you are a group of 4 casual friends that wants to form a guild, you can't expect developers giving you the same benefits of larger ones.
There's no other reason that "vanity" in making a 4 people guild, just look for a bigger one: you're not forced to interact with everybody all the time, subgroups into guilds are quite common in my experience.
Same thing if you had a guild with 25 active members but now you're down to 5 cause a lot of people left either the guild or the game: disband, find a guild with rules that suits your group and join!
Welcome to the boards!
Some good advice there, I find raids are where you find your true friends in in game.
Welcome though be careful some of these posters that have been around for awhile dont like us new guys.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I tried making events for PvE/PvP, mount runs, Dungeon runs, 'Chieves runs, cosmetic runs, etc... I tried cultivating an easier time for crafting professions so we could all enjoy the benefits, and designed the bank and ranks around as much as possible. And even though I wasn't a fan, I made sure Raiders had the tools they needed to as well, with the understanding it wasn't my main focus at least, for the guild.
It was a lot of work, but helping new players or old players experience new things that they weren't able to before, was very fulfilling to me. Of course we dealt with those that tried to join and rob us blind, and it was obvious some people tried to foster drama as well, as either trolling or due to a character defect.
I eventually left WoW after 1.5-2 years, and I still come and go from time to time, but the guild was never the same for me. I'm not sure it felt as inclusive as I had left it, and there weren't any events or guild activities any longer.
If a game has a mechanic, and devs introduces new gameplay toward that mechanic, it helps us GM's build communities around that. And if they add a reward or gamification to a process all the better. It just seems like, through no fault of their own sometimes, devs have a 'set it and forget it' mentality about some aspects of games. Maybe they have to. If they only have limited resources and they can tell where all the players spend most of their time thru stats, then maybe they have to cater to those areas.
BUT maybe players ignore other aspects of a game, because the mechanics aren't fleshed out or rewarding enough to waste time on them.
So do you use the stats, which may not tell the whole story, or do you listen to the always vocal minority when deciding on new mechanics or changes to current ones... Or do you spend a lot of time and resources on polls all the time, before making any changes?
Is anyone still reading this? What were we talking about?
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What, me worry?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests