What are your thoughts about Cryptic doing Star Trek Online (being previewed Sunday).
 

Tobold,

Have a look at www.wizard101.com. It's in open beta and uses some of your card concepts. Designed for children but I played a bit and it's smartly designed and relatively fun.
 

I just cheked out wizard1010.com and I think they need to improve the interface.

If it;s designed for children, it should have less distractions, less words.
 

Guild Surfing!

The bane and biggest problem for me with the WoW expansion (tBC) was and is guild surfing.

How many guild have I seen crumble over the last 18 months... too many. The current mechanic promote instable guilds.

So... any suggestions on preventing guild surfing? A few from me.

- If you leave a guild you are unable to raid for 2 weeks. If you leave another guild within 2 months of joining it... you gain an extra 2 weeks of non-raiding ability. So leave a third guild for example in 2 months you cant raid for 6 weeks.

Players would soon think twice about jumping from ship to ship.

- All attunements are dropped and are to be associated with the guild and the player. Like some kinda rep bar but for the guild. So raid X needs 100k rep to enter. Play Y accumlated 12k of this rep.

If player Y leaves, the guild loses 75% of the players rep... bringing them down from say 108k to 99k and unable to enter the raid.

- Have crafters be able make uber gear better than anything that drops... make it hard to craft though and needs the guild to do completely guild based quests and runs in the game world.

Leave the guild and you lose any gear that the guild crafted for you.


I just think guilds are a farce at the moment and the game needs some kinda cementing of what guilds should be.

Any thoughts?
 

- All attunements are dropped and are to be associated with the guild and the player. Like some kinda rep bar but for the guild. So raid X needs 100k rep to enter. Play Y accumlated 12k of this rep.

If player Y leaves, the guild loses 75% of the players rep... bringing them down from say 108k to 99k and unable to enter the raid.

Not thought through. If the well-equipped char leaves the guild, they get hit twice. Not only, that they lose a valuable player, they also can't go into raid dungeons any more. Some better ideas on Guild Management can be found here.

@Tobold: With regards to Star Trek Online, check out the following blog entry
 

@ gg

1)What if you join a guild only to discover that the people there are complete pillocks, rude and disrespectful, the advert may have said they were nice, but what if? And so you leave the guild and cannot raid for two weeks due to other people.....not thought out.

2)The guild attunements idea is being considered by Blizzard, but rather than add yet another grind bar one of the ideas was that your entire guild gains the attunement, but you lose it when you leave the guild.

3)So change the entire crafting mechanics and make raid-progression worthless? Bad idea.

Anyway, love the blog Tobold, maybe when WAR hits you should do an article and try and get your hands on some subscription figures for AoC and WAR.
 

So... any suggestions on preventing guild surfing?

Not to sound rude or harsh, but give Guild Masters "People Skills" training, perhaps?

The main cause of guild retention problems stems from a lack of proper people and management skills within the officer ranks in a majority of the cases that I've seen on my server. Guilds are almost entirely social, and the responsibility for retention lays squarely at the feet of the guild leadership in that regard.

That's not to say that guild members dont have any culpability in all of this, such as in attendance or actual participation, but penalizing players for jumping ship due to poor leadership is never a good idea.
 

I have had far more problems with the guilds themselves, than with the people who jump one to another. Not saying what they really are, lies about how far they have gotten and general clique-ness and snobbery that makes new comers not feel welcome. Sorry, but if you want good recruits, don't treat them like they are just your raid filler -- or no one will have any issue leaving, or being disloyal.

Maybe it's issues you speak of creating crappy guilds like this in the first place, but till guild leaders and officers get it together, don't expect recruits to fix things for you.
 

lol you know how many are kids out there playing for purples? tons, they have no idea what a guild even means. you cannot put penalties on this. I've been in guilds that turned out to be ran by complete idiots, a penalty that kept me from raiding or doing anything I pay for would just make me quit sooner. instead of penalizing players, just create a guild yourself since you have no idea how touch it is.
 

Didn't Tobold already give his thoughts on the guild hopping stuff a while ago? Of course, the blogosphere all kind of blurs together sometimes.

The One-Dungeon Guild - Tobold.
 

gg -

Check out EQII's guild system. Instead of punishing players for leaving guilds as you suggest, EQII guilds instead offer incentives to keep players around, such as the concept of guild "levels", special gear only available to guilds of a certian level, etc. I think punishing players is not a very good idea, as this tends to cause them to leave the game, which is not good business.

K
 

how about we get rid of the kids?
 

If you want stable guilds, you have to give veteran players rewards for helping the "new kids". When you don't know anyone in your guild, it isn't a big decision to leave it.
 

Why not have two types of player guilds? For example...

1. Normal guilds as we have now
2. Level 2 Guilds (or clans or some other name) that require members to be twice nominated and have attunements or reputations for entry. Such guilds could even somehow be woven into the game itself, being recognized by NPCs and so on. "Hail, member of the Lost Legion!"


The problem with any player-based community is that people quit, have personalities, go on vacations, cap out, etc.

Guild stability often results from good leadership and astute recruiting -- neither of which should be the responsibility of the game developer.
 

I'm curious about political affiliation in relation to PvP preference.

Every Democrat I know plays on a PvE server, and Republicans on PvP servers. It may just be my group of peers, but I still find it odd.

For the record, I am a PvP player; however, I'm very much in the center.
 

Played the new Kingdom of Loathing Hobopolis multiplayer content yet?