MMO Guild Commandment I
Whenever I settle down to play or write about an MMO there is always one word on my mind: guild. In my entire ten plus years of play I’ve spent virtually no time “guildless” and can sum up over 60% of my career with a mere two organizations. In short I am all about playing and staying with the same group of people for a considerable duration. Due to this style of play, I’ve often focused more on the mechanics that control guilds than I do on the ones that make up game play. As a result I’ve developed what I call the Ten Commandments for MMO Guilds.
Originally, I created this list for my own use. Whenever I approach an MMO product I judge its UI and support systems against my commandments and see how it holds up. Usually this is an internal process for Sodality but most recently I turned it into a blog post and evaluated EQ2. That article brought to my attention the fact that I’ve never written about the list itself. I thought it would be a good idea to amend that and turn it into a series. Each commandment has a purpose and depth behind it so I felt they could all stand on their own. Today I want to look at the first commandment: guild rank names shall be customizable and you shall be able to create new ones.
On the surface there isn’t a whole lot going on here. Many players would consider the ability to change the names of ranks to be nothing more than cosmetic. From a purely technical standpoint I would agree. On the other hand I’ve found that organizations frequently name their positions in a meaningful way. Some do this for style or to meet a theme while others do it for functionality. Regardless of the reasoning, the standard set of ranks that most games give out will not fit all organizations and, if that set is really small, it won’t work for most. Sodality had problems in LotRO because our options were recruit, member, officer and leader. We have staff members that are not officers but are much more than members. To ensure they had the permissions that they needed we made them officers. This can be confusing to potential recruits and members in other chapters of the guild. Someone who is a staff member in EQ2 would have to be an officer in LotRO. It can be quite a nightmare explaining these nuances in a guild as structured as ours.
Beyond just dealing with ranks names, an organization can also be too tightly constrained by a small amount of options. I’m not trying to pick on LotRO but I do have to bring up again that the game only had four ranks. In actuality, however, there are only three ranks as most MMOs consider the “leader” rank to be a single user only position and thud render it useless otherwise (and I’m all for that). There is no option to distinguish or stratify Sodality members in that MMO. You’re either a noob, regular Joe or an officer regardless of how the guild views you. Having the ability to add ranks gives guilds the opportunity to organize their roster into a way that makes sense. My favorite example is the “alt” rank. I think it is extremely useful. There is no ambiguity about how the new person who you’ve never heard of found their way into the guild.
If organizing your guild into various player types isn’t your thing a large number of guild ranks allows for an organization to create a hierarchy. Sodality uses a system where members are singled out and rewarded for good works in the guild. We have a few member ranks to allow this with additional privileges granted to each successive rank. We also have two different staff ranks and two officer ranks. Games that allow us to fill this out really give us the opportunity to clarify just where everyone sits in the guild. While not every guild will want all of this freedom there are some that depend on it.
I’ve never expected any MMO to allow guilds an unlimited amount of ranks but I do stress that being able to create new ones (up to about 10-15) and delete unused ones is important. To build further on this, I’m still waiting for a development shop to include a “tag” feature in their MMO. How great would it be to just set tags on individual members and be able to sort by them? It would be nice to have the “sub-roster” that shows all the craftsmen. This would help a stratified guild mark their special units without giving up ranks. Special perks could be then assigned to tags. Crafters, for instance, might have additional access to the guild bank regardless of rank. That is just an idea that goes along with the commandment. It isn’t a necessity but certainly a helpful tool. Many MMOs do well with commandment one and I hope to see it become a standard. I’m always perplexed by games that force a naming scheme on their guilds and limit them to a small amount of serviceable ranks. Thankfully there just aren’t that many out there anymore.
Consider discussing “MMO Guild Commandment I” on the new Epic Slant Forum!
Tags: Ferrel, Guild, MMO, MMO Design
I like this one. Then again, I’m hugely in favor of giving players more power and options, so that’s probably not a surprise.
Puzzle Pirates has a fairly strict setup on ranks, but there *are* 8 of them (I think, anyway…). At least one of them (the Fleet Officer) was created because the player base wanted that sort of “middle class” rank and functionality. It’s worked out well enough, and there are a couple dozen “titles” that you can assign to players on top of the rank. They are cosmetic and informational, not “functional”. (Say, the “Cartographer” title; it gives information as to what a player *does*, but not what they can do strictly with guild functions.)
As usual, though, I’d lean to giving players more control. I’d like the ability to set access permissions and such *per player* or per “tab” as you suggest.
I’m a soloist, but I agree that good guild controls are a huge boon to a social game.