Guild Gathering #4 - Team Building

ApogeeOrbital

This is a good question, but one I haven't thought of much before. I suppose this has changed a lot over time because my early years in MMOs were very different from later years. I started playing MMOs at about the height of UO's glory, but became really engrossed in them with EverQuest. My brother and I were both active duty military at the time and have never been stationed together. So we played EQ from different parts of the world in order to do something together. So originally, doing things outside of the game meant we did things apart.

Over the next few years, however, I found myself operating out of a few military bases in the Pacific and met people with whom we formed a guild. So the people I met and I were able to do things outside of the game, including sightseeing, movies, dinner, shopping, etc. It was really a good but short-lived time of about three years.

After that, I moved to Europe and shortly after that, WoW and EQ2 came out at about the same time. This divided the guild as we took different paths. I met some new folks who joined me in EQ2, and once again, we were able to sightsee, go to movies and dinner, shop, etc. ... And then I moved again.

This time, we were all able to stick together online, but outside of game there was not much to be done. A lot of the recent conventions of Discord and the like still had not been developed. So the game was it, but boy we were able to plan and manage a lot to maximize guild resources and to participate in all content of the game. Through dividing and conquering we covered it all. And guild night activities included going through old dungeon content to reminisce on some early fun and frustration. Other times we would raze through dungeons that were seemingly impossible when they first came out, but in our most recent gear we were able to melt the mobs' faces off. Good fun.

Regards,

Apogee

Varkun

When the guild has a presence in an MMO there is a lot of theory crafting goes on surrounding builds gear choices, strategies etc. Many of our members are very competitive PvP oriented players and there is almost always some form of discussion going on. On the PvE side again there is always strategy being discussed on how to take down harder content.

Several of our members like to put together recordings of the guilds goings on either pvp or pve and it is quite fun to see these again several years later.

The guild is quite inactive atm though there are those who will drop in from time to time just to touch base and catch up. There are alot of old members quite fired up to get stuck into ashes, things will be ramping up when we get closer to launch.

Xhelori

Regarding the same guild, since members tend to be scattered all over the world, most out-of-game activities tend to be text or voice chatting on Discord about various interests, playing bot games in Discord channels, VoIP karaoke, and occasionally streaming a movie or show for members to watch together.

In-person activities would typically involve meet-ups with people within the locale who play the same online game(s) and is not restricted to just guild members, like monthly meals at restaurants and attending local conventions together (e.g. MegaCon in Orlando).

I always thought it would be cool to organize a special vacation together every 5-10 years, like a themed 3-day (or even a 7-day) cruise or an all-inclusive resort experience.

JSpenceGlass

Could this be the time for guild change?

Guilds are usually something where you feel like you belong with these people. These people are not other players, they are family. A family needs a home (Headquarters or Stronghold). These people need rewards and consequences (voting or poll system) These people need Organization and Order (Conference Room, Cartography Table, Player Notes)

Guild Homes and Strongholds

More than 1 guild may want to grow in a city, this would be asking to make room for another guild area. You could make the game have a dedicated Guild Hall, but we would not see it grow like the city grows. Dedicated Tavern visits with a recruitment board to become established or Player Owned Private Living Area until the guild pools enough money and resources together to buy or build their Headquarters/Stronghold

Guild Activities

Working alone should feel rewarding, working together should feel more rewarding. If you have guild members working together in a small area, give them guild rewards or nearby bonuses for being in a group and giving life to the game. Group Chores or Group Activities can be missions accepted by players in towns to grow your guild with benefits for completing it on time. After the mission is completed you can add Mission XP + Time Completion XP + Player Nearby Shared XP = Guild XP to Add

Our Clan "The Greyhands" will be doing our best to ensure every players precious cargo makes it onto and into caravans at their proper locations, we hope to see you adventuring our roads! Best of Luck to the Development Team and all Other Players!

We Will be discussing this in more detail in our guild chat.

Drachenpaladin

Skribbl.io when servers are down
and take a look if login works

maouw

If it's randoms I've met online, usually it's just talking about/playing other games together.
Games of a significantly different flavour - like Terraria or Don't Starve Together.

Otherwise, if it's a guild of IRL friends, it's not so much guild-bonding for us - just standard hangouts etc.

Nerror

I'm a part of a Danish multi-gaming MMORPG guild that was founded around 19 years ago, and we usually do summer parties and christmas parties (not with corona currently obviously), and sometimes other smaller RL get-togethers. Meeting the people behind the screens IRL changes things and improves cohesion mostly. For many it's more a community than a guild. We have our own forums and discord and all that.

Being a multi-gaming guild, we obviously also play a lot of different games together. All kinds really.

@LieutenantToast I am actually a little unsure what the goal is with this one. Are you considering making tools for creating or strengthening the out-of-game activities for guilds and communities? Because that seems... anbitious Maybe something in that phone app for the game, we've heard about?

Suggestion: In the phone app, let us play those tavern parlor games with our guildies. People who are commuting, or sitting in waiting rooms or otherwise unable to log into the game for RL reasons can fire up a game of Verran Gwent and play against a guildie, instead of beating the next level on candy crush.

Sunboy

Since AoC is a game that makes you multitask on a high level I would suggest some low effort stuff. Easy dice/card games. Or just talking.

SoggyBandaid

LieutenantToast wrote: »

What kinds of activities do you like to participate in with your guild outside of the game?

Most of my guilds over the years have become friends irl. We tend to do cookouts, or meetup for the occasional beverage. Otherwise our go-to activity is some online dungeons & dragons.

Luthienstorm

We've watched movies

Neurotoxin

Chatting in Discord, playing other games, hanging out in each other's streams, and making plans about the game.

Rinta

Back in the days when MMORPGs were smaller and more localised geographically (in no small part due to higher pings and limited server capacities), a lot of guild members could be from the same area IRL. We'd have real life guild meetups occasionally, BBQs and whatnot, and even large server meetups which were akin to conventions. That was good fun.

Was no Discord back then, and IRC was only used by the most nerdest, so most talking would be via guild forum, with dedicated sub-sections for non-game stuff.

Despite that, common interest in the game was still the basis of interactions for the most part, and if someone stopped playing - they would usually soon stop joining any outside-of-the-game activities as well.

In more modern times, I've seen most guilds having Discord servers, which to me personally is less enticing, as there's no space for thoughtful discussions, topics of conversation come and go while you are not looking, finding the beginning of any specific discussion is near impossible, and it is all 90% memes anyway (and also grass was greener, forgot about that part ).

Saedu

Nothing really outside the game except discord chat and other games for me.

Tacualeon

Nothing outside. I'm a goal oriented person.
I usually hang out with goal oriented people.

Chatting in-between duels in the duel zone is the most orthodox socialization I have ever done.
Give me a nice dueling zone and some camp fire to lit and I'm good.

BigRamble

General discussions, and bitchy comments about other players personal lives.

Grihm

I have some wonderful memories from gaming and MMO´s.
I just really hope for making a new large amount of friends, and finding connecting factors world wide.
Suffering from Insomnia etc, i do have strange hours up, and some days or nights, gaming is a safe haven for me...to unwind.

As gaming has been there for me, i hope to be able to be there for others.

LieutenantToast

Hi again lovelies! Thank you all for stopping by to share your thoughts on team building with your guild in this thread we've updated the original post here with a summary of your top feedback!

Nerror wrote: »

@LieutenantToast I am actually a little unsure what the goal is with this one.

While some of these Guild Gathering topics are helpful for our team to see what tools/processes we should be keeping in mind for guilds, others are a bit more focused on being a "knowledge share" between different guilds - so that you all can learn from each other on what works well or doesn't work well for your own communities we hope you enjoy reading through other folks' comments as much as we do!