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Van Hemlock Episode 15
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:14:00 GMT [download/play]

In which we forge on with becoming weekly! Lots of frank answers about running a corporation in Eve, a guild in Guild Wars and a city in Star Wars Galaxies.
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Episode 15 Discussion Thread

'Very thought provoking show!' by shuttler

Submitted on 2008-08-26 11:00:15 CST
Really enjoyed this episode, great to see in-depth conversation about the role of guilds and housing/cities.

I find myself always in the casual/social guild way of life and our Guild often feels like a chat room with a lobby for us to go and do things together, actually more like a pub or tavern before heading out for an evening or quests.

I can totally do without housing in a game and often feel like more of an explorer, in SWG I would much rather fire up a campsite for some social healing on my way to my harvesters than worry or not if the rent was paid.

I still feel like this even with the cool bases in CoH/CoV I feel like its an upkeep and woudl rather someone else took care of that stuff.

So this leads me to think housing should be entirely social in a game, what about community areas that are simply about social areas, but you had a house that was your space and you could choose to spend time/money on it.

I see it as more of a social network in-game, kind of like Playstation Home might be, you can socialise and find people to play your game with or play minigames or just chat.

This of course leads me to start thinking about the social tools in WAR too like the public quests or the system for teams that just lets you join a random group instantly

'Multi-Gaming Guilds ...' by Elsyth

Submitted on 2008-08-26 12:43:59 CST
Great show guys .. really nice to hear something different for a change.

As for Multi-Gaming guilds you're both right and wrong .. each one tends to be different in structure depending on their origin and development. For instance, PL has a Guild Leader supported by a group of Core Officers who look after external and inter-game issues. Each game then has a Guild Master supported by game specific officers. We have a core set of values which we expect every member to follow but there may also be game specific rules due to in-game mechanics. Members are welcome to move freely between games but any new members have to go through a 2 week probationary period.

Anyway you can find our forums at www.plforums.co.uk if you want to know any more ... and no this isn't a recruitment pitch, I think we have enough members already ;)

BTW, most of the active player cities I came across in SWG were in fact multi-guild cities .. single guild cities tended to die rapidly without additional help.

'nice pod' by Sente

Submitted on 2008-08-26 18:51:23 CST
Great podcast and subject.

I have been guilded in pretty much all MMORPGs I have played for at least a month and been a guild officer in some of them. It has pretty much always been a casual guild and reasonably small - I did not even consider that there could be other types of guilds until I started playing EQ2.

Most guilds I have been in have not had scheduled activities more than 1-2 times per week, at most. The majority of activities has been a bit more ad hoc, but it depends quite a lot on the members - a few enthusiastic players can make a big difference for the whole guild.

For multi-game guilds; I have been member of The Older Gamers since I started play WoW when it was released in Europe and has been part of a few MMORPG divisions in there since then.
From an organisational point of view each game with enough people (MMORPG, FPS etc) to have a guild or similar in a game forms a division. This is lead by a division captain, which may have some guild leaders under him, depending on the size of the game. Typically a game may have at least one guild for America/Oceania and one for Europe, sometimes more (I think the WoW division has 16 guilds).

I think most of the guilds are quite casual, but that varies and have resulted in some drama from time to time. The requirements for membership is pretty much only that one is at least 25 years old and guilds can generally not add any other requirements on top of that.

It is a nice place to get a "running start" in a game guild-wise.