(MMO) Guilds

I'm not sure I have anything particularly useful to actually say. This might just be venting. The trials of maintaining an active, healthy guild are a bit on my mind at the moment, though.

In WoW... Well, I don't want to say "the guild is dead," but that may be applicable. Fallen below thresholds required for more challenging play, even our more "dedicated" players seem to have found less and less to do. There is a sadness to it, but what can you do? I understand even our guild leader is not resubscribing at this point. Things could always pick up at a later patch or expansion, but it could be an ending as well.

In GW2... The picture isn't much prettier as far as the initial friends guild I joined, carried over from GW. With a guild leader who saw it more as a social forum (far as I can tell), and yet benefits available to active players in active, larger guilds, there was really nothing to hold this one together and make it grow. So people have drifted to putting in more time under other banners. I don't think there's any actual disadvantage to leaving it where it is, but there's no sign it'll grow to something more.

In both cases, I feel like I've been one of the more stubbornly supportive players, but not the biggest one who will struggle until figuratively going down with the ship. For better or worse, I don't quite have that in me.

Now, in GW2, I've also entered into another guild - one where I'm just a member. I have no officer duties. I have no great ties of friendship to the leadership. Generally speaking, I'm fine with that. It's not as warm and cozy as a group of people I'm all friends with, but it's nice to have a large support network there. I don't typically ask for help, but I could probably find it there if I did.
And, even so, I can see constant pressures there. This guild has the issue of being close to the member cap as the roster fluctuates over 450+ members out of a maximum 500, so there's always some pressure on the leadership to keep room for active recruits. This has lead to some potentially overzealous guildkicks in some cases, as well as other issues. On the up side, even just those who show up at the scheduled time on Sundays are plenty to complete the game's guild missions most of the time (even more easily when 2-3 guilds end up with the same mission at the same time). It's a force to be reckoned with, it's a headache to manage, and it's an interesting contrast to what I've seen the the smaller guilds - though I'm not sure if I'd say "better."

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