Whenever a band breaks up, you often hear the quote, “Hey, you know how tough marriage is? Imagine being married to 5 people.” In that light, it’s a wonder any band stays together. I assume drugs and groupies has a lot to do with it.
Joining a guild in most MMOs is like being married to 40 people. When you’re in a high-end raiding guild, you’re playing with, and depending on 24 other people to be minimally competent and to not try to cyber the Priest when the guild is in the act of taking Leo down itself. Some guilds are run by drill sergeants, and their guilds respond well to orders being barked. Other guilds have a more laid back leadership style. Some guilds have language that would make a sailor blush. Other guilds try to keep things family oriented.
This isn’t just about the raiding game – consider roleplaying guilds. There is still a Baskin-Robbins level variety of flavors. Does your guild follow the fiction closely, or does your guild attempt to extend the MMO’s universe, such as adding elves to UO? Do you allow guild members to talk OOC in guild chat? Party chat? During runs? With people outside the guild? Do you allow and/or encourage erotic roleplay?
One of the most frustrating things about building massively multiplayer games is that so much of a player’s perceptions of the game is going to be dependant on the culture of the players he plays with and around. I constantly see people talk about WoW as if it is awash in Chinese gold farmers and idiot 13 year old doodsp34kers. Perhaps it’s because my guild is on a relative backwater, a new BC-era roleplay server, but I see none of that at all. On the other hand, if my server was the first server you ever logged into, you’d probably extrapolate that every server in the game was full of lesbian blood elves cybering in Silvermoon City. Which, to some, may be a selling point.
Clearly, being in a guild that’s a good fit is key to your enjoyment of the game. Yet, most player’s guild affiliations, especially their first guild affiliation, ends up happening mostly by happenchance. They’ll go on one decent dungeon run, and sign up on the spot, happy to be wanted. The odds of you ending up in your perfect fit guild – well, they can’t be great. But once you’re in, leaving is hard for many players. They don’t want to abandon the good people in a guild, or risk causing drama or being called a traitor. Some will server transfer. More concerning for the game designers, others will wind down their involvement in the game altogether.
MMO designers should spend more time trying to hook up players with a guild that’s right for them. From what I’ve seen, though, only Everquest 2 has put significant effort into this incredibly important endeavor. If you found the right guild the first time (and maybe even the right server!), imagine how much stickier the game would be.
About a year ago, there was a wealth of people considering starting up MMO-centric MySpace-like services, and asking people’s advice on what the site should have. My response to anyone who would listen: matchmaking. As an example, I strongly encouraged people to consider personality tests designed to match a guild with a potential recruit. Apparently, Sanya had the same idea, and it’s encouraging to see Guild Cafe is experimenting with trying to make one. I don’t think it’s there yet (everyone I talked to who has taken it has gotten the same score), but there’s a lot to like here. The most significant thing is that by wrapping it up as a ‘purity’ test, Sanya is close to making a test that all players WANT to take – a constant stumbling block I had when toying with the idea myself. I’m very curious as to whether or not the idea gains traction with the player base and becomes a useful part of their model.
I certainly hope so. I think it’s important. One of the most significant parts of the internet is allowing like-minded people to find each other, something that is made possible by removing constraints like time and distance and making searching easier. MMOs, perversely, reintroduce barriers, most notably by having a 3D space to navigate, but also in little things like having shards/realms/servers that can’t be intertraversed freely. Any construct that makes this matchmaking easier is, IMHO, vital.
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