Guilds War

I want to write a bit about the paradigm shift of player community interaction in Guild Wars 2, and as someone who has had an administrative hand in guild and groups in nearly a dozen MMOs I have some advice for people trying to build a Guild Wars 2 guild. The "paradigm shift" I speak of is the fact that a single player (or, more specifically, their account) can be a member of multiple guilds.  This isn't new to MMOs, except perhaps to one as "mainstream" as Guild Wars 2.  Final Fantasy XI had linkshells, which was that game's equivalent of guilds, and you could have as many as you had inventory spaces for (since they...literally took up inventory space).

The thing I'm looking for and hope develops in Guild Wars 2 is the compartmentalization that occurred in FFXI.  By either design or the game's social evolution, individual linkshells had very specific specializations.  Players had their social LS, their ENM (endgame) LS, perhaps a Dynamis LS if their ENM one didn't also do Dynamis (or they might have had a separate LS just for Dynamis with the same members).  I'm not yet committed to a guild (or circle of guilds) and so I'm trying to collect solid guilds, but whenever I see a recruitment message that touts that they intend to be super duper active in everything, PvE, sPvP, WvWvW, endgame, leveling, et al. all at once it's an immediate turn off.  This is an old school mentality that comes from WoW-style MMOs where your guild was really your only social circle, so by necessity guilds had to do everything to attract members.

Anyways, to get back to that advice I referred to in the first paragraph.  If you want to build a successful guild, start by doing what nobody else is doing: specialize.  Pick the thing you like doing most, whether it be PvE, sPvP, or WvWvW and get the word out that your guild does nothing but that.  Let's use sPvP as an example.  Get the word out that your guild eats, drinks, and farts sPvP and discusses and engages in it ad nauseam.  In time, wise players looking to play with others focused on sPvP and improve and talk sPvP will like the idea of joining a guild that does nothing but that.  Players who would like to sPvP more but are stuck in ho-hum guilds where only one or two other people are sort of vaguely into it will eagerly jump on board as well.  So far I've found guilds that sort of casually only do WvWvW and PvE, but I'd still like to find guilds actively committed to only doing them.  I still haven't found a guild full of die-hard sPvPers which is frustrating because I want to do it more but can only take soloing through the server browser in small chunks, and thus I don't have anyone to talk PvP theorycrafting with at all.
"Representing" guilds is an issue that throws a kink into my desire for specialized guilds, as representing a guild for influence does encourage a certain amount of guild loyalty.  Right now guilds really want you to represent them for influence, though I think this'll probably die off over time as guilds finish all the upgrades they want.  Right now a lot of guilds are very adamant (or at least passive aggressive) about it; early on there's a lot of incentive for guild leaders to persistently ask their members to either exclusively or semi-exclusively represent them.  I just had an officer from my WvWvW guild send me faux-sad tells asking why I wasn't representing.  I had to explain to him that when I was in WvWvW, grouping with members from the guild, or particularly starved for conversation, I always represent the guild, and furthermore that in a game like Guild Wars 2 where you have a neigh-infinite choice of guilds a player is only holding themself back by sticking to one.  As a guild leader there's two ways to ensure a steady flow of influence: either recruit like mad just for sheer numbers, which will maybe give a short term boost unless you can create a truly steady large community (which can happen, shout out to All Shall Perish), or do as I advised above.  Like I said before, guilds used to be the only social circle a player has.  Now you need to create the need or incentive for a player to choose your guild over others and right now I believe specialization is the best way to do that.


Fortunately for me, guilds are a very accessory part of GW2, so I've not urgently needed one for anything and have had the luxury of not being desperate to shoehorn my way into an existing community.  I actually made my own tiny guild to invite a few friends I know who play and to dump small bits of influence into when things are dry in other guilds.  Since I don't feel attached to any of them yet, I'd rather my influence be my own right now.