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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
How Did You Join Your First Guild
KingDDD
Member, Alpha Two
With all the various pro solo discussions, I started to wonder how do players get into guilds? As group centric as AoC intends to be, having systems in place to help facilitate those critical social interactions in the first few hours of gameplay will be critical to the success of the game. So I ask you, how did you join your first guild? What do you remember about your reasoning for joining?
For me. the first guild I can remember joining was in WoW in 2005. I was waiting for a boat in the nightelf starting area trying to figure out how in the hell to get to Westfall to get my water form. I ended up asking random people waiting on the boat next to me in /say and eventaully made friends with a hunter named Eibbor. After a multiple hour trek across the world, he invited me to a guild called THUGZ which I stayed with for a few weeks.
For me. the first guild I can remember joining was in WoW in 2005. I was waiting for a boat in the nightelf starting area trying to figure out how in the hell to get to Westfall to get my water form. I ended up asking random people waiting on the boat next to me in /say and eventaully made friends with a hunter named Eibbor. After a multiple hour trek across the world, he invited me to a guild called THUGZ which I stayed with for a few weeks.
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That was 20 years ago.
Dwarven Guild est. 1996. Hammers High!
15-year-old me was kicking it in local chat with the bossy army commands in stilted "eloquent" archaic language for over a year, and eventually I got adopted by a semi-competitive guild with an always-online Mumble policy. They were officially an 18+ guild, so I felt very special. I'm sure not everyone loved the guild leader's decision of allowing the squeaker in, but I stayed for many years.
Personally, I was never a big fan of newbie guilds. I think they stand in the way of organic player interaction, because everyone ends up hyperfocusing on efficiently spending their time with their guild and racing to max level, causing people to lose out on discovering and theorycrafting on their own. Not to say you can't use other people's research, but you shouldn't be encouraged to copy everything without learning to understand it yourself. And by being part of a streamlined community where there's always someone available to do things for and with you, that habit gets reinforced.
More importantly, I think a guild should be a community with a shared higher purpose, directive, and personality/playstyle, not just random players who farm XP together whenever someone's available.
So I really think systems that facilitate grouping up with a random guild are flawed game design.
I'm not naive; I know newbie communities and random level-up communities that isolate players from the rest of the realm will happen anyway. I just think the game shouldn't do anything to reinforce and speed up that process.
That’s sounds like us.
First guild I joined, was the first one I created, though as a guild that stayed together that happened in LoTRo, had a kinship their called Rohan Riders, and even if I say say so, it was one if not the best on that server. (Just a kin, that really clicked)
(We only use The Immortals in games that have PvP)
You truly love big Pictures. ^.^
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
AA I shopped around between beta and launch and joined a guild that had been around for alpha. That didn't last more than a month or two and began a long chain of merges, absorption, rises, declines and eventual ownership after everyone else was gone. XD
I guess what I'm trying to get at is how do you game systems facilitate recruitment in the wild without being so overbearing that no one gets to that point. If a game requires grouping in the first 30 seconds, the retention rate of players past 5mins will be abysmal. How do you introduce grouping, guilds, and the other multiplayer aspects of the game while still getting people invested enough to get past the pain point of needing a group?
I don't understand why people are suddenly associating Solo with not being in a Guild.
Solo is just adventuring while not joined in a Group.
We can have plenty of social interactions in MMORPGs without being in a Group or Guild.
Solo is not the same thing as being non-social.
My first Guild was with Jens Anderson, my Activision co-worker who told me I should play EQ and run with his homies on the PvP-Optional Server. Don't worry about PvP. They would protect me.
But, I was working on UK time rather than US time. So, they were typically sleeping when I had free time to play. Which means I mostly Soloed deapite being in a Guild.
My WoW main joined a Carebear Guiild that ran the Carebear Challenge of reaching max Adventurer Level with 0 Kills. I mostly Soloed that character, too. Despite being in a Guild.
In 2013, I joined CohhCarnage's Neverwinter Online Guild from hanging out in his Twitch Channel during Beta.
I think a gang of us who mostly Soloed and Duoed end up leaving and starting our own, more casual, Guild.
Players should not need to be in a Group. Group beciase you want to; not becuase you need to.
(Keep in mind that I am not in the Target Audience for Ashes.)
In WoW, my cousin and many of her family members were playing and convinced me to play and join their guild. Also, another real life friend had a guild in WoW that I also joined with alts. So it seems mostly to be real friends/family or people I grouped with that I jived with.
For Ashes, I looked at the guild recruiting post, found one that seemed like a perfect fit for me and joined them. And (yay!) they truly are a perfect fit for me! Now we all play various games together while waiting for Ashes to release and form our own guild in all those games.
Theoretically I would think a good way to do it would be for most (leveling and farming) game content to be comfortably solo'able until the player gets comfortable with the gameplay and community. I would target group content towards mid-plus game content and add things like auto-raid to bring players together.
Most of my in depth experience comes from AA so my perspective is highly influenced by that game. I did also play EQ and L2 back in the day and those games definitely had points where it became impossible to solo in any meaningful way. AA was good because you could do a lot by yourself (plus/minus whatever risks you were comfortable) but if you wanted to do the main content you needed to raid (and possibly only by being in the right guild).
For Ashes one can always look for a guild via guild postings, but the guilds will come naturally when you play the game whether Alpha or live. Just play and they will find you