Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Guild Wars 2 Guilds

When my friends and I began playing The Old Republic, we decided to create a guild for ourselves. In hindsight I think that was a bit of a problem, especially for me, as it limited me from the social aspects of the game more so than any other. And since at least one of my friends is very anti-social (in an online sense), trying to join another guild wasn't really possible. He would have quit first before ever considering that kind of switch. So, my options were limited in that regard and by the time I hit 50 I really had no social pull for any of the more difficult content.


With Tera we have not created a guild at all, though at this point we probably should go ahead and make one. I'm certainly not interested in the political aspects of the game--they are cool and all and present a more interesting form of end-game. But it is also something that is just as much of a commitment as a high end raiding guild. To be successful at that you need a big group, and you really need to commit to it to be successful in any meaningful way. And even if some of the Vanarch seats aren't heavily challenged, it's still way too much of a commitment for a game that I'm really only planning on playing for another month.

With Guild Wars 2 it looks like I can have my cake and eat it too. Apparently in Guild Wars you can create, and join any number of guilds, though you only 'represent' one guild at any given time. That means that we can create a guild just for our friends, but still reach out and join other guilds for more focused content (such as PVE, or PVP, etc). This is a very cool concept (FFXI had something similar, and hopefully this won't take up inventory space like Linkshells did in FFXI). This is again something that points to the way Guild Wars 2 seems to invert core basic concepts with an eye towards usability and openness.

Guilds also seem to include some leveling functions that allow you to increase the abilities of the guild. I looked at this, and this seems cool, though less impressive than the guild leveling I've seen in Warhammer Online, and in World of Warcraft. Of course, this could be expanded later and probably isn't really necessary for release. But I'm not entirely sure it's worth it just to purchase basic 24 hour buffs--it's cool, but not cool like some of the abilities you got in, say, World of Warcraft.

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