The end of last week was a huge info dump in Guild Wars 2 with 6 blog posts detailing the guild system that is coming with the Heart of Thorns expansion. I admit with the extent of this information, I have not been able to process the entirety of it, but my gut reaction was that “they are bringing ‘guild’ in to Guild Warsâ€.
Prehistory
Guilds have been part of the lore since the pre-history of Guild Wars 1, where they were so powerful they started shaping the flow of kingdoms. The kings were not able to control them. They fought against one another. There was no peace across the land. It was in a way ironic to name the game after such a dark time. I wonder what some original concepts of Guild Wars 1 looked like; EVE Online perhaps? Finally, the charr invaded and the human kingdoms crumbled since the guilds, more powerful than any kingdom’s army, were already embroiled in conflicts of their own.
The power of the guilds never reached any similar level in the gameplay of Guild Wars 1. The closest it may have come to this prehistory might was a huge reputation grind in Factions, where a guild could “own†an outpost. The GvG system also helped a little in that a guild was an entity that fought on the leaderboards. It appeared that whatever powerful mechanics guilds would have imagined by early ArenaNet, they really did not culminate.
Guild Wars 2 had this inside joke: “where are the guild wars?†Guilds could claim objectives in World vs. World, which had little meaning to the attackers. Guilds joined teams for competitive PvP, but they felt like a shadow of Guild Wars 1 where people would sell off guilds that had won championships just to be able to have a cape trim. In Guild Wars 2 PvP teams will merge, separate, rename themselves and boot someone out without thought for the brand of that guild. A guild was a pretty bare social construct in early Guild Wars 2.
Finally, ArenaNet is going back to the earliest fiction and game concepts of what it meant to be a guild, and they are implementing those ideals in game.
Storytime
For me personally, the biggest shift is with “the Pact in tattersâ€. The race-governed governments, and perhaps the melting pot of New, New Lion’s Arch, have created a Guild Initiative to mobilize guilds against the threats to Tyria. No longer are guilds a mere mechanical overlay to allow for grouping and chat; they are part of the story of the game.
In core Guild Wars 2 (“Pact Tyriaâ€) everything revolved around either the racial/city-state government (human, charr, Lion’s Arch, etc.) or the Pact, where the three ultra-national Orders joined forces against the Elder Dragons. The player would become a commander of the pact, but guilds themselves were basically non-entities. The stage was too big, and apparently the power of the guilds was too small.
Now things have shifted. Tyria needs the guilds to pick up the pieces. It needs the guilds to mobilize against the threats. It needs these agile forces to reclaim parts of Tyria.
Mechanical Realization
The biggest mechanical realization of this shift is the guild hall. The guild hall is basically a map that each guild owns. In game, these are places of power that the guild is defending from the Elder Dragons. A previous culture or civilization built the two guild halls available in Heart of Thorns, but they are gone now. The two guild halls coming with the expansion’s release, Lost Precipice (canyon cliff dwelling) and Gilded Hallow (cavern city of gold).
Beyond merely owning real estate, it appears the guild system has been refined to greater importance. Guild Teams can now be formed for PvP, which adds a guild progression and ranking system. Guild claiming in WvW is gaining greater importance as a guild’s ability to fortify objectives is greatly increased, and the tools a guild can create for WvW have been greatly increased, such a banner that allows allies to trample enemies, or the ability to call in a Pact Fleet bombardment to defend Stonemist Castle.
There is a fighting arena in the guild hall. There’s a new crafting profession for guilds. There’s a guild portal the guild can use to get their members transported to various staging grounds for guild missions or even Lion’s Arch. I am basically drowning at this point in how many extra there are for guilds, and I would tell you to definitely check out the Guild Wars 2 official blogs to get all the details. Dulfy as usual is amazing in her info gathering as well.
Conclusion
The “guild wars†in the Guild Wars series has always been a bit of a misnomer. Even “guild†in Guild Wars 2 has been but a footnote in the game. I really hope that with the start of the Heart of Thorns expansion ArenaNet is re-imagining the place for guilds in the MMO. I hope they continue down this road, and perhaps eventually we will get to the point where guild are fighting for power and influence as imagined in the actual Guild Wars.
–Ravious
I always felt like Guild Wars 2 shipped before it was really, really ready. Like the developers changed from “when it’s ready” to “well… it’s basically ready…”
One example to support that opinion is Guild features/functionality and Guild Halls were pretty abysmal or non-existent at launch. If they can pull off what they’ve shown so far regarding Guilds, things will get very interesting. And they’ll pretty much justify the “Guild” portion of the title of their game. The lore justifying the name was always a bit weak for my tastes.
The way they are incorporating Guilds into the story is fantastic, I’m excited to see how they use Guild Halls in the future as well, in a GT Review interview, 2 GW2 devs talked about how the Guild Hall could be incorporated into the new Living Story. We may have to defend our hall, etc.
We need to see more examples like this for HoT content, this type of depth and detail, imo, has been lacking a bit so far. Lots of QoL changes shown, but this feels like the first real meat for HoT since we got previews and examples of Verdant Brink, but I don’t feel like VB has had as much blog “support” as Guild Halls have.
I can’t stand guilds. I dislike the entire straight-jacketing concept. I’ve been in plenty and in every single case the least-damaging effect being a member has had is to make it harder in every session for me to just get on and do what I want to do.
Guild drama has almost always been the order of the day. I’ve had to change servers at least twice because of it and change games at least once. Even when the guild is filled with easy-going people who get along there is still constant peer pressure to be doing X when I’d rather be doing Y.
My first reaction to the recent torrent of guild information was, therefore, bound to be hostile. The last thing I would ever want to see in any MMO I play would be guilds increasing in significance. Having read most of it, however, I am of the view that its almost all fluff, smoke and mirrors.
I’ve never felt the tiniest need to use any of the guild facilities to date other than the expanded vault, which we are getting grandfathered in thank god. GW2 is already mindlessly easy without the need for any buffs or similar bonuses. I almost never use any of them so how they are obtained is meaningless. We’ve had around 200k Influence in our 3-person guild for the best partof three years. If it goes over 200k we top it off with something or other. Otherwise it just sits there like all the other currencies I acquire but don’t use (7.5m karma for example, 1100 laurels, 2k gold etc etc).
In WvW all the changes seem to mean is that the same four or five serious WvW guilds who do all the work now will continue to do so. Can’t see the changes means anything to the rest of us. The Guild Halls are out in the middle of nowhere and look completely uninteresting other than visually. There’s supposed to be some kind of quasi-guild hall atrium in the new Lion’s Arch which reminds me of the Guild Lobby off Planes of Power that was added to EQ when Guild Halls were included in that game. I used that then and I expect I’ll use it this time too. Other than that I can’t see Guild Halls having much impact.
The GvG stuff is actually a great addition. It will, with a bit of luck, siphon most of the annoying “Fight” guilds out of WvW and into instances far away, where they won’t be bothering the rest of us. WvW can hopefully then go back to being a PPT/PvE competition with a little light PvP for flavor as ANet always intended.
On balance, then, I like the changes to guilds. Especially the five guild channel thing, which brings us about up to date with where EQ was in 2002, when you could make any number of custom channels you wanted and populate them with anyone you cared to talk to, not only on your server but on any server – even servers in other games entirely.
To me this is just another “too little too late” piece they are trying to struggle and run through the cheapest easiest things to try to fix last minute to salvage what’s left of the community. Honestly things like this should have been patched the first year this game was out. It’s like ignoring a plumbing problem until you’re standing hip deep in water and then finally going to see about that busted pipe.