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Star Wars: The Old Republic: With Friends Like These
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
There are many great things going for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but guild features currently isn't one of them. In this week's Star Wars: The Old Republic column, we discuss the importance of guilds and how BioWare can improve on the game's guild feature set.
MMOs are about all manner of things for different people, but the one aspect that differentiates the genre from anything else is its emphasis on community. While this emphasis may have waned or taken a different shape over the last few years, it’s still the most powerful force an MMO can have going for it. Frankly, MMOs live or die on the health of their communities.
While having tons of individual players are important to any MMO community, it’s the strengthening force of guilds that really knit a server together. Guilds provide a place to call home amongst other likeminded players. Guilds also put on events (often involving other guilds on the server) and help foster relationships between players that persist for months, if not years.
Read more of Michael Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic: With Friends Like These.
Comments
the lack of functionality in the guild interface and lack of a guild bank are both quite disappointing. It strikes me as odd that this would be overlooked.
The beginning should have went something more along the line of this.
"There are many great things going for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but guild features, PvP and end game content currently isn't one of them."
I have been playing MMOs for many years and seldom if ever do I join guilds. Guilds are more hassle, drama, and trouble than they are worth.
I never seem to have any trouble finding groups, and if I ever get to a point in any game where I would actually need the support of a guild to move forward or to play content, that's my cue to move on to another game.
"Guild functionality" is fine for them as wants it, but it means squat to me.
I don't think that having guild capital ships be raidable is something that should be included at launch. City of heroes had a great base system that had a wide range of RP potential and incredable customization, but it was seen as a failure because it never got the PvP raid function to work. Really? A failure?
If they want to work on that dowen the road and have it be something that guilds can opt in for, that's fine, but I would rather get guild capital ships into the game first than compound and complicate the issue with PvP concerns, which would likely just lead to chest pounding and QQ.
I will say that I am happy with some areas of guild customization that we have, such as the ability to create ranks and modify positions. This is a feature that often gets overlooked in MMO's and I am glad that we got it at launch.
This is me.
However, it doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the social aspects of MMOs. I love being social. It's just that games these days don't have anything to be social about.
Things like Guild Levels are not new to or invented by Warhammer. Please get your facts right when making posts like these. They may be new to you, but you clearly have not played older games.
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
Guild features are BASIC. I can't believe they didn't include more guild stuff. I like the idea of a guild ship though, and some place we could decorate and hang out as a guild would be pretty cool. Might go a long way to making the game feel more social.
It really does make you wonder where all the development money went though. Other development houses have had much less to work with and produced much more. To my mind, this fact does not bode well for the future of SWTOR. Three conspicuous failures come to mind, APB, Vanguard Saga of Heroes, and Tabula Rasa. From what I recall they had lots of money but failed due to poor managerial leadership. I think that is what we see going on here.
I think a combo of EQ2's and WoW's guild systems would be ideal. Maybe even look at Rift's version as well. These 3 games for me are the epitome of how to do guild systems the right way.
After the pre-launch guild website system I had high hopes, shame it's not been carried across.....yet.
The setting guild ranks stuff is good but everything else is poor, very poor compared to the initial website.and the hopes is raised.
Basic needs for guilds:
Add ability to bulkmail all Guild members (seriously I've already had to individually mail every single member of a guild and got hit by the 2 mins cooldown on mail.)
Guild admin needs last login date against player info.
Fix ability to add friends who are offline - so I can invite them (3 weeks trying to invite a friend who's timezone is just slightly off mine, if I just knew he was online.....grrr)
Add ability to guild invite offline players. (see above comment)
Guild Events System.
Guild Bank (personally, after all the above, fix that then give us a bank)
A bigger character limit in Guild Description would be good.
Nice additions:
Guild Capital Ship
Guild Rankings
Some sort of Guild v Guild based PvP
Titles for characters given by the guild (i.e Guildleader, Raid Leader maybe, Guild Officer)
I'm sure I can think of other things Guilds are missing, I may return to thie thread.
I was thinking it should be more like,
"Star Wars: the Old Republic may not have much of anything aside from the IP going for it, but you'd think at the very least, they'd do a better job of supporting the players that don't seem to mind."
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I could use some player housing
If they just said hey everybody we are working on guilds and have a crew dedicated to it people would be like alright cool. But they don't say shit, the only actual interaction with the community is posts on general saying when downtime is gonna be.
Leaving your entire base in total darkness does nothing but drive them back or to other games.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
I like the idea of guild housing better, lets you socialize with your guildmates more.
Would be even better if you located them in some place that had to be defended but that's not really the focus of this title.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Everquest 2 had guild leveling at launch. It's been ruined since then, but it should be known SOE had something good planned once.
Its kind of funny, so much praise and sucking up to start, now we start getting actually objective articles on the game. Honeymoon I suppose is over. Either way, the biggest factor with a guild is having things that really unite the guild. Sure there are guild levels and all to work for together, but there are plenty of other things that can be done to incompass guild activity together.
I've been writing articles about SW:TOR both enthusiastic and critical for over two years now. Feel free to look through 'em.
totally agree with KingofHartz
George Lucas said in an interview that he wanted to keep it simple for the younger , newer players. As a vetren you should know that they add and fill after launch. I love the game. Who ever thought that having an actual story you have some control over would be so fun.
Capital ships wich could be guild owned or by anyone who can afford it. These capital ships would be base of operations which gives access to exclusive PvP and PvE content. For example being able to attack other sides capital ships, be it player controlled or AI controlled.
Moon or asteroids which can be conquered by guilds. By for example using the aforementioned capital ship.
For me having guild content means actual content and not fluff things like guild banks etc. There should be content that actually requires a guild to aquire and use. Having guilds but with no real purpose to them, beside socializing, is imo pointless.
My gaming blog
The lack of purpose or functionality for guilds is one of the big reasons this game feels like a co-op game and not an MMO. I'm not impressed with the summit, though. Does anyone really think they'll invite anyone that might actually have complaints about the game? They can't afford another public bomb like the announcement of space combat. Sadlly, it's too little too late for my guild and allied guilds. All but a handful of our players have cancelled and gone back to the other games we were playing before.
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
Rift didnt launch with a guild bank either....Rift is Game of the Year to some.