[MUD-Dev2] [DGN] Multiple Guild Membership

[Tom Hudson]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 7:48 AM, Jon Wright <jon at wright.org> wrote:

> Just a quick introduction:  I've been a long-time lurker on the MUD-Dev
> forums (since about 2002 - ok, so not _that_ long) but this is my first
> post.  I've searched through the old archives and can't find this topic
> discussed in any depth so figured I would punt it out there and see if
> anyone is interested...
> 
> Does anyone know of a MMO which allows membership to
> more than one guild at a time?  Where the guilds become little more than
> group with it's own invitation only chat-room?
> 
> I'm considering the benefits: Players are not forced to
> choose between social networks and therefore potentially lose touch with
> friends in old guild. Players can have more than form of social grouping
> (the raid guild, the pvp guild, the roleplay guild). Guilds can be more
> specialized and only exist to serve one of the goals above (is that a
> good thing?)
> 
>  However, I'm sure there must be disadvantages, for example:
> You don't feel like you really BELONG somewhere The bonds between
> members of the guilds are weaker If the bonds are weaker, then there is
> a reduced sense of duty between guild members (less assured
> reciprocation of aid)
> 
>  I'm sure there are other advantages and disadvantages that I've
> not mentioned, any ideas?  Why don't any of the current MMOs offer this?
> 
>  Thanks in advance, Jon
> 
> P.S.   If you answer to this post we may get to argue about
> something other than specialization!  

A Tale in the Desert is built around multiple guild membership.

I haven't played the current telling, but in the first couple of
tellings some expectations evolved around having a "primary" guild that
you gave access to your buildings and coordinated with. But then guilds
popped up for social networks, to unify particular interests across the
server, to organize for particular regional projects. I can't recall my
list from the first telling, where I played significantly more, but in
less than a month in the second telling I think I joined:
- 2 regional shared production facility guilds
- regional cooperative research guild
- 2 regional social guilds
- worldwide banking/commodities exchange guild
- regional banking/commodities exchange guild
- alternate-region shared-production-facility/newbie-training guild
(probably 2 or 3 guilds, since they were structured as an
assembly-of-guilds with different interests and facilities)
- guilds pertaining to two or three particular tests (think
quest-chain-specific or class-specific guilds) that I was working on.

...and in that telling I was a solo player; none of those were a
"primary" for me. Contrast this with the first telling, where I was part
of a two-man primary that held 99% of our possessions in common.

Guilds required a nonlinearly-increasing amount of resources per member,
but these were pretty low on the tech tree, and so by the time you were
three months into a telling these were widely available resources;
senior players would often gift their guilds huge stashes of resources
to expand the guildhouse and admit more newbie members who couldn't meet
the ever-steeper requirements.

There were fairly elaborate systems in place for ranks, access control,
communication, and succession.

Tom