MMORPG.com Warhammer Online Correspondent Michael Dennis writes this basic look at Guilds in Mythic's RvR game.

Guilds are a very standard feature of MMORPGs. They provide players with a way to organise themselves, choose which of the people that they meet online they want to play regularly with and, usually, the level at which they want to play the game; be it hardcore or casual. Mythic took a slightly different approach to guilds with Warhammer Online. Originally called regiments the idea was that your guild would act like a part of your realm’s army. Through Mythic’s alliance system, guilds could ally with each other to form an army. The whole system screams of militant organisation, which is very appropriate for a game based on warfare.

During WAR development, Mythic coined the term Living Guilds to help describe the system they were going to implement into the game. A main focus of WAR has been the marriage of casual play and hardcore play. Many of their features were designed to get the solo player into situations where they had to interact with the other players, without even realising it; this kind of thinking lead to the Open Group system and to the innovative Public Quest system. With their guild system, Mythic needed to overcome the stigma attached to joining a guild.

Take A Look at Guilds

Guilds are the lifeblood of the "end game". WAR  just doesn't have it in terms of longevity. Running from Keep to  keep gets boring after a while.

I thought it might be useful for anyone checking out this article to have the following link, as it covers some aspects of guild experience that I did not mention.

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=369

Nice read, however you missed some aspects, but maybe you'r doing a second part.

Worth mention is the guild standards / standard bearers, guild keep claiming and the guild bank :)

See you on the battlefield!

Hi Howler, I have done a second part! You can see a more indepth coverage of guild ranks and their rewards here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2949/page/1

A companion article covering ranks six to ten is on its way, which contains a lot on guild alliances.