Thursday, July 24, 2008

Guild concepts - From cookie to cake

I have been toying with the idea of creating my own guild lately. And while this is mostly due to logistical issues (tired of logging in and out all the time to transfer things from A to B) and a significant bankspace issue (I am too stingy to upgrade to primal mooncloth bags) I figured I would at least try to create a novel 'vision' for a guild.

Part of the issue of finding a guild at least for me is that there seem to be only limited flavors available.

1. The Raiding guild
This flavor doesn't suit me simply because I can make myself available maybe two or three times a week for a raid and due to job limitations can simply not guarantee that I will be online when the raid starts. I don't like inconveniencing people so I am simply not 'raid viable'.

2. The PVP guild
The pvp guilds at least on my realm attract a lot of questionable people generally displaying anything from l33t1sm to just plain bad attitude. PVPers are generally so invested in PVP that raiding anything except maybe an alliance town seems beyond their desire. This is compounded by the fact that my current server has very few pvp guilds. This is not to say I am not interested in PVP as a whole but I gain very little satisfaction from arena-ing (even when I win) and full-time BGing.

3. Levelling guilds
Levelling guilds for a lack of a better name are usually small groups of friends that have banded together to happily level themselves to 70 and then generally aspire to either turn to raiding or invest in pvp. These guilds are a solid choice for me until they make it to the point where they either go full raid or full pvp. These guilds are somewhat difficult to identify... they advertise with having a gbank and a tabard but generally don't state their long-term goals. Which means its easy to join a guild only to find out later down the line that they're heading a completely different way.



Of course at this point you're probably looking at me wondering if mr smarty pants has any better ideas. Well I do... or at least I like to think I do.
So here's a rundown of guild 'visions' I've been toying with, some ridiculous at best, others quite interesting. Guild names were picked randomly for illustration purposes.


For Hire
A guild that specialises in renting out players to other guilds for a set fee per hour. Essentially you set up a list of fees for all the instances/group activities in-game multiplied by a certain value depending on what class they want to hire and what gear level is needed. A Sunwell geared healer (if you can manage to recruit one of those) would obviously fetch a higher price than a kara geared DPS.
Payment would be in advance for a set amount of hours and of this payment a certain % of gold would go to the guild (the royal tenth so to speak) and the rest would be for the player that is being 'rented'.
Rented players for all intents and purposes are considered part of the renting guild and should have rights to roll on loot (with negotiable exceptions).

Warmongers
A pvp heavy guild with a focus on world PVP. Members of the guild should have their PVP flag enabled at all times and engage members of the opposite faction no matter the odds. The single minded goal of this guild would be to revive world pvp, organize raids on enemy cities, challenge the opposite faction to do the same and proliverate themselves as an extremely high profile pvp guild. Ideally this kind of guild would lock down enemy towns preventing quest turn-ins and as a result forcing the opposite faction to react. If the guild succeeds in completely locking down an enemy faction town for the duration of, say, a week (or a combined total of hours within that week) then this event should be celebrated and posted all over the place as if it were a raiding guild's first boss kill.
Arena and BG pvp should be considered a training ground only and visited for the purpose of training in groups and gaining the necessary gear. The focus must remain on world pvp at all times.


Free Form
A guild with no set goals or structure. A public site should be erected where members can answer a weekly poll that determines what the guilds goals will be for the coming week(s). The poll should consist of a random raiding target, a random pvp target and a random item target and replaced once the goal is reached.
Goals are picked at random for example by doing a google search on ner'zuhl and finding a relevant instance, pvp goal and item tied to this particular piece of wow lore.
Free form targets can also include doing a full druid 5-man, collecting 15 random pets, gaining revered with sporregar and whatnot. These targets could also be picked from the achievments list to be introduced with WotLK.
This guild should strive to see as much of the game and do as many 'fun to do' things without forcing themselves into an unreasonable raiding schedule.
Achieving a free-form target will award the participants points that should be listed as a ranking on a public site (with no other benefit than seeing your name there).


Collectors
As the name suggests this guild is all about collecting stuff. Members should be encouraged to research the various wow databases for unique, rare or just plain interesting items. This information should be posted in the forums and much like a freeform guild would do runs should be organized to make sure that everyone has the listed items.
Forums should allow for members to have personalized checklists so they can see what they have already and what would be interesting to get next.
Collectors should spend a significant amount of time at capital city banks to show off all the things other people don't have.
Anything from gear sets, darkmoon cards, vanity pets, unique trinkets and even rare craftables should be considered collectable.
Achievments could be listed on a public site showing off all the goodies players have via the item's icon symbol next to their name.



That's 4 ideas right there... with more in the back of my head that I will avoid mentioning here simply because this post is long enough as it is.

Do you have any guild ideas you would like to add? Or perhaps you like one of the concepts so much you wouldn't mind me going into more detail?

Comment away

3 comments:

LarĂ­sa said...

Oh I love thought experiments like this one, though I don't feel creative enough today to add some more suggestions. (I blame the heat wave currently going over Sweden, it really makes my arcane intellect shrink).

It probably will be quite a challange to keep the Free form guild going, without any structure or comman goals... That's the stuff that usually knits guilds together... Just a website with a weekly poll.. will that really be enough of glue to make it stick?

Captain The First said...

Honestly I think a freeform guild would attract quite a few people that prioritize real life over WoW time.

The fact that there's no stringent requirements to participate but always something to do allows for a more relaxed approach to the game.

As with most guilds it's down to leadership. A strong and creative leader or group of people can always come up with something to do and with no pressure to field 10/25 people for a full blown raid every week you have a lot more space to put up a poll.

People will figure out soon enough that the people voting and participating are dictating the course of the guild and can either chime in or watch other people get exactly what they want :)

Gold Guide for World of Warcraft said...

good post :)