1/29/2007 9:00am

Building Better Guilds: Choosing a Guild Theme

by Joshua Davis - Product Development Manager for www.guildlaunch.com

Creating successful guild takes some planning and fore thought. Building your guild around a central theme can help you recruit like minded players and help you get the most of out of your guild and guild mates. The list below is a collection of stereotyped guilds across many games there is generally a lot of blending between the themes.

Noob Guilds
The term “Zerg Guild” has been adopted by games in reference to a massive low level guild that are really just getting started in the game have   wide open door recruiting policy.

These guilds typically don’t have a driving force behind them. The bond between members is typically weak and member frequently come and go. These guilds are great places for noobs to learn more about the game or character class. These guilds often transform into other types of guild as the player base matures and more content opens up.

Zerg Guilds
The term “Zerg Guild” has been adopted by gamers in reference to a massive guilds that have an unbelievable amount of people in them. They have a very open recruiting policy and seldom prune their membership. Members come and go as they get more serious about the game and drift to one focus or another. The guild generally does it all but there is not as much structure as a full pvp or pvp guild. These Guild are great for people of all levels that are not really sure what they want to focus on and just want to check it all out.

PVE – Player Vs Environment

Casual Guilds
PVE are more casual guild that are not really into pvp and not really into the high end raids. They tend to be small guilds with higher level characters. Members spend their time in the smaller instances requiring less co-ordination and participants. These guild are usually started by people that found each other through PUGs (pick up groups) and have joined together to run together on a more frequent basis. These guild are great for people that don’t have a lot of time to play but still want the community experience with like minded people.

Raiding Guilds
Raid guilds are focused around end game content. The driving force behind these guilds is the potential for high end loot. This is only accessible by experienced guilds that work together to prepare materials like potions and special crafting items needed to successfully navigate these end game instances. Scheduling, voice communication and team work are a central theme of these guilds. These guilds are great for people with “loot fever” but not particularly good for people that want to be social. These guilds care about progression but they generally care more about getting instances on farm status which leads to more loot and then they move onto the next instance and start progressing again.

Raiding guilds typically have some system of DKP, like Guild Launch’s Rapid Raid DKP system. DKP makes the distribution of that high end loot fair for all by rewarding participation instead of a roll of chance. A /roll can easily turn into a /cry and potentially a /gquit if no system is in place.

Progression Guilds
A progression guild is essentially a raiding guild that is in over drive. The burning ambition is to be one of the few or the first guild to down a particular boss. Completion between progression guilds are fierce and can lead to exhausting raid schedules. These guilds also compete to get the first character geared with the newest high end loot for their class. They work together though a strict guild policy that mandates that class leaders will be the first to be awarded the first drop of the hottest loot so that the guild can publicly show off its first sets of complete gear and thumb their noses at the competition.

These guilds are intense elite environments where membership is scrutinized by class, spec, current experience, past MMORPG experience, and each piece of your gear will be examined with a microscope. Most people don’t have the gear or the time to compete at this level.

So make sure you are ready to make this commitment. It will most likely become a part-time or even a full time job. If you decide to make this type of guild make sure that you recruit elitist gamers that have the same goals and expectation that you do. You may want to reconsider any thought of having a life, a job, or a social live. Forget ever kissing a girl.

RP – Roll Playing Guilds
Guilds that roll take "guild crafting" to a new leveling. These guilds create a unique environment of storytelling, lore, and tradition sculpted around the game they are playing. Each game breeds its own type of roll players. Some of these guilds create extensive histories and complicated membership structures based on their theme. Role players are essentially word smiths and giving your guild creative license to tell their stories can improve the over all quality of your guilds experience.

PVP - Player -Vs- Player

MMORPG PVP and RPPVP Guilds
A PvP guild is a guild that competes against apposing factions or teams on a regular basis. The burning desire for this type of guild is sticking it to the other guys then /point  /lol. It’s all about wining and building a reputation as a bunch of bad asses. Good PvP guilds are well organized with strategies and voice communication between guild members. No complaining about healing the tank, no running off to finishing off some guest, when its time for battle its time to get nasty. Strike fear into you opponent so when they see your guild tag coming they just run or log out while you ROFL /rude.

Casual FPS Clan
Casual first person shooter clans are typical large guilds that frequently support a public gaming server. These server have one or more military styled combat simulators hosted usually in the WW2, Modern, and Future genres. These clans do not have classes and levels but have individual profiles for each gamer that build up accumulative stats in a number of areas including awards and badges. Some games issue reward ranks base on experience. Users don’t just play one roll they can switch kits through out a round.

Competitive FPS Clan
There is real money and prizes at stake in the competitive FPS world. The best and well organized squads compete for real cash and hardware. Guilds like this are typically smaller and have a private practice server set up so the team can practice their strategies in private until they are ready to open up a can of whoops as on the other team.

Additional Guild Types

Companion or Alt Guilds
Alt guilds are comprised of… well Alts. As guilds grow larger some decided to disallow alts into a guild in order to be a “main only” guild. An alternative to sending your alts to the wind while they are gaining levels is to create a companion guild that keeps guild member together in an associated guild using a similar guild name or colors and they can continue communicate as a group in a guild chat will familiar people. This will also help keep your best members from being lured away to new guilds while they are building their alts.

Crafting Guilds
Crafting Guilds are united by the desire to make in game money and craft the best items in game. Guilds form around a particular crafting skill or they create merchant groups that work together to provide each other with the resource they need. These guilds are best for people that really get serious about crafting and want to dedicate their time to building a reputation.

What ever type guild you build make sure you can commit to it. There is nothing worse than an AWOL Guild leader. It’s a chore but it can be a lot of fun and you can get a lot of personal satisfaction out of the experience. Which ever theme you choose, you’re going to need a guild website to help you with guild management. Out of the box guild hosting like Guild Launch can help you by strengthening your guilds inner communication. Tools like Rapid Raid DKP, guild forums, rosters, events calendars, and file storage can improve your guilds and your own gaming experience.

Good Luck Planning your guild and stay tuned for more guild building tips from Guild Launch.