An Official TRI Guild?

[Gryphonheart]

I posted this over on the TRI boards, and I figured I'd link to it here since WFR composes the majority (or at least the largest minority) of TRI.

http://feathermoonmc.proboards.com/inde ... hread=2491

(I don't want to post the entire original post here because I'm not sure splitting the discussion is a good idea. Feel free to delete this though, since it's just a cross-link. Apologies if I'm breaking any WFR forum rules.)

[Lansiron]

I figure it's probably best that you did post this here, because there should be a guild-centric discussion about this.

At the moment, from what it looks like, those guild talents and other features seem to be "perks". They're probably very nice, from the look of things, and I don't doubt some of the more raid-centered people here would want to take advantage of them.

However, for what it's worth, my piece is this: We, the Riders, or more specifically the players behind the Riders, have always taken a certain pride in this particular circle of ours. We've gotten accusations of "elitism" and such, but it isn't really that. We've got a fairly tight-knit group of people who simply enjoy playing together, whether it be for raids or RP, and great pains have been taken to ensure that it is this way.

I think it would be an incredibly bad idea to dissolve this in favor of a TRI-wide guild. Some raiding advantages would be gained, yes, however, the sense of community that a lot of people here have worked so hard to cultivate would probably vanish. It wouldn't be worth it.

[Tarq]

There are no plans, now or ever, to dissolve WFR based on ingame mechanics.

[Gryphonheart]

...

I think it would be an incredibly bad idea to dissolve this in favor of a TRI-wide guild. Some raiding advantages would be gained, yes, however, the sense of community that a lot of people here have worked so hard to cultivate would probably vanish. It wouldn't be worth it.

Well, one of the reasons I posted here is because absorbing all TRI members into WFR is just as logical of an option as dissolving WFR to make a TRI guild. However, not all characters fit into the WFR story as it exists now, so even that solution would involve a lot of discussion by all sides.

Also, one of the points I was considering adding to the other thread (but decided not to since it didn't really flow very well) is that WoW guilds might end up expanding into a social framework in the new Battle.net. And even though I'm not a part of WFR, the community is important to me as well, and it would be awesome to keep in touch with people even if/when SC2 & D3 pull people away from WoW (either temporarily or permanently).

[Lansiron]

If it had to be done, absorbing everyone into WFR would be the lesser of two evils, but still not good. We're kind of insular, for lack of a better term, and one of the reasons it's worked so well is because pretty much everyone knows everyone.

I don't doubt that the TRI network has some damn fine guild candidates if it came to it, but there are others that probably wouldn't fit so well--and there you run into the problem of; even if they don't fit into the guild, doesn't mean they oughtta be deprived of their raiding circle.

It may help to know exactly what all this stuff entails as Cataclysm development/news moves along, 'course.

[Gryphonheart]

...

It may help to know exactly what all this stuff entails as Cataclysm development/news moves along, 'course.

Of course. No need for an answer right this instant or anything, but I do think it's important to get the discussions rolling.

[Varenna]

I think it's too soon to consider this. We don't really know what the benefits for leveling a guild will be, and we don't know what the leveling process requires or how it works. I do doubt Blizzard would do anything so powerful it would actually impact gameplay to raid with people outside of your guild. I also suspect it will mostly be something more like passive benefits and useable abilities given to every member of the guild as the guild advances, rather than things which only work on or with other guildmembers.

Even if it should be that a worst case scenario, be all in the same guild for the bonuses or you're not beating this boss sort of scenario is true, for myself I have to say I have no interest in joining a raid guild or having WFR become one, much as I love TRI. Fortunately I truly doubt that such measures will be necessary. My greater concern is that the guild leveling process will require an investment of resources, time or manpower that would be impractical or impossible for small or one-person vanity guilds, or worse that the guild leveling process might have membership requirements attached, but I doubt that too. This is the sort of thing Blizzard thinks about, and even if they largely ignore us in their worldbuilding I don't think they'll forget that on a good portion of their servers, guilds exist for other reasons than to be groups of raiders.

[Yva]

- Cross posted on the TRI forums as well -

Not a Rider officer or anything, but here's my two cents? I'm sure other more official people will put their spin on things later.

I'm not sold on this being appropriate for a roleplaying situation. People have story arcs and in-character reasons for guilding (using the Riders as an example, but there's many more than just us in the community, so I'm fairly certain this mindset extends to others as well). In order to accomodate this kind of mechanic, uhhh, well? We'd have to break years worth of rp tradition. Getting into the Riders is a process. I'm not saying they don't recruit or wouldn't be open to taking new roleplayers, but a big"thing" in the guild is the rp introduction and fostering relationships through rp over time. Basically, the Riders are a bunch of ne'er-do-wells - they're not just gonna hire someone who would sell them out. When you're in, it's kinda like being in a mafia family. You earn trust, or as much trust as Tarquin ap'Paranoid is willing to lend anyone.

That being said, a hiring spree (which would sort of have to be the roleplay justification for something like this) would be completely out of left and field not at all character appropriate. I think it's great that Blizz is offering this functionality, mind you, but I don't see a lot of folks willing to break their roleplay in order to get a levelling bonus. So it's a little more work to get to 85. Well? It's a lot of work to add a roleplay element to the game. Us RP nerds are used to toughing it out.

[Threnn]

Today is only the second day of Blizzcon. While it's fun to think about what kind of worgen we'll play, and how neat it'll be to fly around old-Azeroth, it's way too early to start making any kind of major plans, especially ones like these. Things will change a hundred times before they even announce the release date for Cataclysm.

That said, let's take a look.

First of all, from the RP perspective, the Riders are an RP guild with members who raid. Yes, a lot of us raid with TRI, but not all. Absorbing TRI would change the dynamic of the Riders both ICly and OOCly, and that's just not going to happen. It's unfair to all of us, and it's unfair to the people who are already happy in guilds of their own that aren't the Riders. Do you have Boomsticks that go with you? Would you really ask them to leave? Roses? People from the Order of the White Tower? And for people who aren't in guilds for IC reasons, that forces them into an odd position -- Prydion's rallying cry back in the days of feathermoon.net's shoutbox was "Burn ye tabards!" I doubt that he'd want to bend the character ICly just so he could get guild-levelling benefits OOC.

Mechanically, I was talking to Gharr (who pays far more attention to this stuff than I do) and this is what his theory on it is. Warhammer already has a guild achievement/levelling system. It is very likely that WoW's will be similar. They ALSO have a Guild Alliance mechanic, that spreads the achievement/talent/shiny things love to people who are in guilds that work together. We've already seen WoW add in things that were successful in other games -- most notably (I think?) the achievement system. It's very likely that they'll take the things that worked well and have already had the bugs shaken out from Warhammer and implement them in WoW's guild levelling mechanic.

Another thing to consider, from Gharr: we probably won't even be fighting Arthas until next March or April. We're probably not going to see Cataclysm until fall of 2010. It's exciting to see the information as it gets released and to speculate on the what-ifs, but it's definitely too early to be making any kind of plans.

I will reiterate, though: Tarq already said the Riders won't dissolve for the guild levelling system. Neither will we absorb people because of it. We are an RP guild. We will remain that way until the servers shut down for the last time.

[Denne]

My feelings on this are brief and easily described. This feature is going to be altered significantly before it's incorporated, assuming that they ever actually complete and add it. They're going to hit a lot of logistical and fine-tuning walls with it, and this strikes me as the kind of thing they announce and then let fall to the wayside due to unforeseen scope.

Assuming it does make the cut, it would likely be rooted to a guild but utilized with an entire raid group. It might be tied to lockouts, so only one raid ID per dungeon/difficulty combo would apply. It's just too early to mull it over and certainly not worth any modicum of worry.