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Guilds and the (de)merit system

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So, I run a guild. A decently sizable one, though it’s not massive. We’re generally a pretty casual group.

And the more time goes on, the more frustrated I get with the guild system in Guild Wars 2.

[TWIT] was created as a cross-server, international social guild. However, the way the game handles guilds has caused us to not be able to fully meet what we intended ourselves to be. The guild was formed in BWE3, when we were still all under the assumption that guesting would be in at launch, and that it would be fully universal.

The lack of guesting at launch was the first big blow we were dealt. People on other servers could not play with us, outside of the very first weeks when there were overflows in explorable zones, or in dungeons. There is also the fact that influence and guild upgrades are server-tied; the combination of these two things made it so there was very little reason for our members not on Jade Quarry to represent the guild.

I do understand why influence is server-tied, to an extent. You can’t designate one server to be the guild’s home world. However, surely there were better ways of handling it. Make it so that all influence earned is a universal pool, collected by and usable from all servers. Same with the upgrades. If you are repping a guild, you should be able to access them, no matter what server you’re on. Not to mention the various boosts you can build and use!

Oh, and when you guest, influence you earn? Still goes back to your home server, as opposed to the one you’re guesting to.

For all that the game likes to say it’s about building communities, there are a lot of things it does that fly in the face of that claim. Guesting taking so long to be implemented and then being data center restricted is part of it. The restrictions on guilds, however, are another large part of it.

Last time I checked the [TWIT] roster, we were up around 160 members. That isn’t small. However, if even a quarter of those members have repped the guild, I’d say it’s a high estimate. The fact of the matter is, there’s absolutely no reason for members outside of JQ and certain other servers where we have a good number of active members to rep the guild, and there’s nothing that myself and my co-leaders can do about that.

I mean, I suppose we could. We could make being on JQ or repping a certain amount of time a requirement…but that’s not something we want to do. That goes directly against why this guild was created and what it’s meant to be. Guesting has helped some (I guest over to Sanctum of Rall or Anvil Rock for events at times), but it still doesn’t help a lot of the problems inherent in making everything tied to servers so tightly.

Guild missions are going to be here on Tuesday. Yay! We were looking forward to these – they’d make it easier to get guildies involved!

Except that merits, earned by completing guild missions and used to unlock more upgrades, are…wait for it…server-tied! Oh, and if you want to do Guild Bounties? Better have your Art of War at level 5.

Luckily, we have everything upgraded in full, but that’s still very frustrating. A lot of smaller guilds will not necessarily have Art of War to that level, or the influence to get it there any time soon. And don’t forget build times for those upgrades! This essentially makes guilds that do not normally have any interest in PvP or WvW burn influence to kick off PvE content, which I think is wrong.

There’s also the communication side of things, which is difficult People not repping your guild cannot read your guild chat, which makes it easy to miss out on things. There’s the message of the day, but unless someone is 1) repping and 2) checks the guild pane, they won’t see it.

Remember in Guild Wars 1 when you’d see your guild’s current message in your chat window when you logged in? I miss that. A lot. I also wish that guild leaders had a way to send a message to all members, even those not repping, similar to how maintenance messages are displayed in the chat window in-game. Things like that would be a great help to all guild leaders.

I love this game. I love my guild. But I really feel like the guild sytem leaves a lot to be desired, and splits the community more than it brings it together.


Filed under: Community, Guild Wars 2

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