To me, guilds in most MMOs seem very restricting rather than connective. This is in part due to the inconsistency of guild types and the limit to just one guild.


I think it's important that more individual guilds are connected, or that players can be connected to multiple guilds. When you've got a guild that actually functions as a Criminal Guild, you've got a bunch of criminals with nobody to commit crime against. When you have a general RP guild, it tends to be without direction and stales quickly. Connect the two together though, and you coordinate roleplay between the criminals and the general masses of RPers. Connect that, then, with a Political or Law Enforcement guild, and you have someone for the general folk to rely to combat the criminals.

What do you think about connecting guilds together? What about players having multiple guilds? Have you played some games that did this well?

In addition, do you think the community should have some sort of structural guidelines to help new guild founders to give their guild some direction?

You have some great points there however I think guilds will be guilds . . .

In CoH (City of Heroes) they had it where you could "ally" with another guild and you would be able to see who was online in the other guilds and also had a shared chat channel you could all use. Always liked that idea and wondered why no other MMO used such a thing.

We dont know until they explain, but I wouldnt count on traditional player made guild style for TESO. Premade guilds, and good faction/alliance chat, hell even faction/alliance structure is all you need! Its already 3 way PVP, we're connected, guilds are only obstacle.

This was both useful and a pain in the [censored]. SG1 allies with SG2, each can see each others chat posts. But if SG2 then allied with SG3, SG1 only saw the posts from SG2 and not SG3's replies. *shrugs* Made for some really confused conversation at times.

Brian

Perhaps a hierarchical format could work. One Master guild is for coordination between the lesser guilds, and can serve as a center for news, pvssyr, and whatnot. The lesser guilds get their own chat and can be dedicated to whatever they choose.

Example, there could be a master guild called United Roleplay which invites newbie roleplayers who want to find their way in the world, or want a commoner's life. It's got a main plot behind it. Let's saaay... there's a group (secretly Necromancers) trying to work their way into political power in Daggerfall. Commoners are freaked out.

A sub-guild is the necromancers themselves, and another is Daggerfall Covenant guards and soldiers trying to find out who's behind the mysterious goings-on. The United Roleplay also features a Mages' Guild, which the guards can call on when magical expertise is required.
All of this would be coordinated through the United Roleplay guild.

I tried something like this on WoW once, and it didn't work out in the slightest, even on the largest RP server.

I don't think you really need such an elaborate guild system, honestly, though in some PvP sandbox games it's certainly helpful (EVE I think did this sort of thing the best). What you need is a custom channel. Back on my old WoW server, we had a general "looking-for-RP" channel and a channel for heroic groups and all that, alliance-side, and it helped the entire community coordinate internally without having to be bound to any particularly stringent guild structure. A shared public channel like that allows everyone to work together on their own time and in their own ways, and is faction-universal, rather than only involving those within the supra-guild.

Imagine if you could actually become the head of a guild/Great House and then you choose which quest packages your guild members get to do and other high-ranking members challenge to duel you for the guild or goes to a vote.

You could also choose membership fee (ingame gold for guild membership) systems to raise money to buy quest packs for your guild, which would make for politics in voting.

I think this would work even better if it was with "proper" guilds (ie. Companions, Fighters) rather than user made ones so that there was a huge voter base.

This could be so easily used for boosting and power leveling.

How so?

One player chooses a "package" for his fellow members.

Gives all his member really easy, really quick quests to build up their exp and gold quickly.

Requiring a fee that goes to the guild, easily could be used to power lower levels, perhaps even smurfs, to higher quality items quickly. Or the guild leader could just let the gold stagnate and never actually use it for anything.

Hence the vote/duel idea. If he is just catering to his friends another candidate can build up support and challenge him, and if it's stagnating and killing the guild the leader will be challenged.

The gold would be guild specific, so it couldn't be used for anything else (or only used for something else when put to a vote ie. giving a helpful member a house/item)

It would be a good mechanic, but perhaps only for RP specific servers where people are willing to play along with it.

Rift?

I dont think guilds fits in 3 faction game, sure for factionless game, but basically player-base is already divided by 3 already. There isnt that many player per side.

Guilds don't fight each other, they are PvE.

Hmm, what did I do. Rift has amazing tools for guild leaders if thats someone wants.

Ugh, that was crazy [censored], I couldnt see my post.

This forum is lagging?

The vote/duel idea falls apart when the guild is a cohesive unit. And a cohesive unit could very much make it so that the entire group flourishes very quickly by exploiting a system that gives players control.

Look at EVE. Honestly... I'd rather not see guilds become major corporations where it becomes "join us or die," especially in the PvP areas.

Just loving it, fun to see some old classic "old school" fantasy monsters. Reason why Im so interested of Neverwinter Nights later this year. Hopefully theres lots of them and they keep it like that way!

Hence it only working on roleplaying servers.

Not quite. Guilds are going to be a pivotal mechanism for overall faction identity and dominance. Assuming players are smart, the best guilds within a faction will build strong ties so that they can call upon their allies at any time if there is need of help to siege a castle/outpost/etc. Factions will be far too large to fully coordinate without some sort of hierarchy. It will be up to the best and most influential guilds on the server to unite and bind the faction to be effective in RvR and have a chance at crowning their top player emperor.

I'm hoping ESO will take the need for alliances within factions into consideration and give us a variety of tools to link allies and make communication between other guilds as easy and seamless as possible. The more guild features and functionality this game has, the better.

In that case that is a nonfactor then in terms of them dividing the player bas.e