Critical mass

[Cali]

I know everyone wants to see their old friendly Guild name over ther head and hold on to old memories of glory. My consern is that this will splinter everyone into smaller guild that will not be able to enjoy everything WARHAMMER has to offer. I have seen the pressure on members of a small guild to show up on a given night because of the need of that class or person to show up or the guild can not go on with their plans for the night.

I think we need a guild with 40 members at the min. With a guild of this size you should be able to fill out a full WarBand (24) ppls. We all know it takes time for everyone to learn to work together as a well fighting force. While it is true you can fill out a WarBand with 4 groups of difference guild and make a good fighting force, I believe it will not work as well as a full guild WB

What are your throughts on this.

[Wolvan]

I'm dragging some people I know (both old Perc players, RL coworkers/friends etc) to what ever server we end up on here. Hopefully most if not all of us in Gisli's guild. :) I agree though, we are going to need a bigger guild that is active. Having come from a pretty small guild in DAOC and some various size one in WoW, an active guild that has a decent amount of people on is much more fun. Though...to huge can be bad too.

[Rashaverik]

I would remake 'Mad Kobolds', but unfortunately there are no kobolds in the game! :(

[Wolvan]

Mad Gobbies! Mad Gobbies!

[Jenguss]

Hey Cali, Jenguss here, just droped in to say hello. :)

[Llnk]

Ive often found that the best thing for a realm/side is to have multiple guilds of medium size. Big huge guilds tend to screw the server in the long run.

Just one example is the number of claims required for all the objects alone is a reason to have multiple guilds.

[stroadt]

Even with a bunch of small guilds in DAoC, finding people for groups/raids wasn't a huge problem back in the day because of alliances and /as.

WAR provides the same mechanics and builds on them allowing people to share scheduled events easier.

The guilds can be small to moderate in WAR, as long as the alliance is healthy. And I expect the Tintagel alliance to be a very strong alliance.

It occasionally happens that guilds get too small and merge with other guilds. This wasn't a big problem in DAoC and I don't expect it to be one for WAR.

These were some of the many criticisms I had of WoW. Every guild in WoW was essentially an isolated island of people where big guilds were pretty much required for end-game content.

[Drakhon]

Well, the whole Living Guild thing means that smaller guilds will level slower. They have said that at some point adding more people will lower the rate of contribution per capita. We don't know what the graph looks like, though. I doubt the leveling rate will ever decrease by adding more people (assuming equivalent activity rates), but it will probably plateau.

My guess is that 40-50 will be a nice size, but it also depends on each person's play time.

[Kestrel_Trebor]

Remember they are giving "bonuses" to guilds to make them level faster if they have fewer members. The "bonuses" scale as I recall, based on number of guild members. Ultimately, huge guilds will level faster, and tiny guilds slower, but a moderately sized guild hopefully should be able to keep up pretty well with bigger guilds leveling due to the bonuses.

[Gisli]

Another thing to consider. Alliances currently have a cap of 10 guilds, and there is no reason to expect that to change. Given the persistent issues that we had in DAOC with managing alliances even with a 21-guild cap, it is a safe bet that small guilds are going to have a lot of trouble getting a spot in a major alliance. And once we get the inevitable fall-off in population that always occurs after the first few months of any release, we must expect that some failed guilds will need to be pruned from any alliance that wants to stay healthy.

[Lilitallye]

I think having a 40-ish member guild is probably the best idea (with the limit to 10 guilds per alliance). That's not to say that 10 guilds with 10 members each in an alliance together won't accomplish anything, but what if only 3 or 4 members are logged on in each guild most nights?

Our current guild has probably 10 or 15 people who are going to be playing with us, but a couple of them will be hit or miss as to when they will be able to play.

We also have some alliance members who will be moving to Warhammer but at this time, I'm not sure that all will be playing Destruction, or that we will all be moving together. I'm sure that some will, but I can't say how many.

That being said, I believe I can say with confidence that we would be interested in being in the same alliance with all of you. I wish I could give you an accurate count on our numbers, but I've tried to get a rough count and haven't been able to as of yet. If it's just going to be around 15 people, I will float the idea of perhaps forming a guild with some of you (or joining one of your guilds).

Whatever happens tho, I'm keeping tabs on these forums to see where everyone will be playing. :D Even if we don't wind up in the same guilds/alliance that doesn't mean we can't do things together or help each other out.

Current hib guild is Sylvan Learning Center (hehe) if any want to look it up on the herald and see who we are. Most of us came from Taar Isteach (formed SLC when Taar kinda died out). I'll see what I can find out from people over the next few days and figure out what our plans are and how many are interested in joining guilds with you guys. If any other guilds/players here only have 10 or 15 people themselves want to drop me a pm, feel free to do so. Maybe we can get something going.

[Gisli]

Glad to hear that you will be joining us!

Your post begs the question of what "big" and "small" mean. 40-ish certainly should be able to hold its own. I think 10-15 solid players can form the good core of a guild. I think the problem comes when what one has is 10-15 people who are more of a clique than a guild. By that I mean, a clique is a group of people who won't let others in. A successful guild has to constantly be replenishing its numbers, because all guilds are steadily losing player base after a few months. So the problem comes when a guild of 10-15 people stagnates. Then it becomes a guild of 5-10 after a few months. Then it becomes a guild of 2-5. That's OK too, if that is what they want to do. Its a problem if they are tying up a spot in an alliance, though.

Take what I say with a grain of salt though, I've always been an advocate of medium-to-large guilds. Though I'm not fond of mega-guilds, either. Hopefully we won't end up on the same server as, say, Goon Squad. :(

[Lilitallye]

I agree with what you're saying. The people we have now are a very strong "core." The only problem we have right now in DAoC, is that the population is dying out, and finding new members at all is difficult. Most of the people looking for a guild now are leveling new characters, and most of us have done that 50 times over and just want to RvR and enjoy what's left of the game. That or it's someone we already know and we just don't want the headache of having to boot them 3 weeks later. :p

Not to mention that with pretty much all of us moving to War when it's released, inviting new members at this point would be unfair if they they do not plan on playing Warhammer, or planned on playing Order when we are going to be playing Destruction.

We do love our current alliance tho, and I'm hoping that as release looms closer, that more will be deciding to come with us and form a guild/alliance there. It would be awesome to start at launch with 20-30 people. If that doesn't happen, it's not too big of a deal. I'm sure we will find an ample number of people to merge with or invite to a guild.

I'll post more tho when I know what we have and what people are wanting to do. I'm breaking out the lighter fluid and some matches to light fires under some butts and get us moving. :D

[Gisli]

Yup, I know where you are coming from!

The idea of forming a guild from your old alliance is a good one. That is essentially what we are doing right now.