There are many great things going for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but guild features currently isn't one of them. In this week's Star Wars: The Old Republic column, we discuss the importance of guilds and how BioWare can improve on the game's guild feature set.

MMOs are about all manner of things for different people, but the one aspect that differentiates the genre from anything else is its emphasis on community. While this emphasis may have waned or taken a different shape over the last few years, it’s still the most powerful force an MMO can have going for it. Frankly, MMOs live or die on the health of their communities.

While having tons of individual players are important to any MMO community, it’s the strengthening force of guilds that really knit a server together. Guilds provide a place to call home amongst other likeminded players. Guilds also put on events (often involving other guilds on the server) and help foster relationships between players that persist for months, if not years.

Read more of Michael Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic: With Friends Like These.

the lack of functionality in the guild interface and lack of a guild bank are both quite disappointing. It strikes me as odd that this would be overlooked.

The beginning should have went something more along the line of this.

"There are many great things going for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but guild features, PvP and end game content currently isn't one of them."

I have been playing MMOs for many years and seldom if ever do I join guilds. Guilds are more hassle, drama, and trouble than they are worth.

I never seem to have any trouble finding groups, and if I ever get to a point in any game where I would actually need the support of a guild to move forward or to play content, that's my cue to move on to another game.

"Guild functionality" is fine for them as wants it, but it means squat to me.

I don't think that having guild capital ships be raidable is something that should be included at launch.  City of heroes had a great base system that had a wide range of RP potential and incredable customization, but it was seen as a failure because it never got the PvP raid function to work.  Really?  A failure?

If they want to work on that dowen the road and have it be something that guilds can opt in for, that's fine, but I would rather get guild capital ships into the game first than compound and complicate the issue with PvP concerns, which would likely just lead to chest pounding and QQ.

I will say that I am happy with some areas of guild customization that we have, such as the ability to create ranks and modify positions.  This is a feature that often gets overlooked in MMO's and I am glad that we got it at launch.

Originally posted by tmr819

I have been playing MMOs for many years and seldom if ever do I join guilds. Guilds are more hassle, drama, and trouble than they are worth.

I never seem to have any trouble finding groups, and if I ever get to a point in any game where I would actually need the support of a guild to move forward or to play content, that's my cue to move on to another game.

"Guild functionality" is fine for them as wants it, but it means squat to me.

 

This is me.

However, it doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the social aspects of MMOs. I love being social. It's just that games these days don't have anything to be social about.

Things like Guild Levels are not new to or invented by Warhammer. Please get your facts right when making posts like these. They may be new to you, but you clearly have not played older games.

Guild features are BASIC.  I can't believe they didn't include more guild stuff.  I like the idea of a guild ship though, and some place we could decorate and hang out as a guild would be pretty cool.  Might go a long way to making the game feel more social.

It really does make you wonder where all the development money went though.  Other development houses have had much less to work with and produced much more.  To my mind, this fact does not bode well for the future of SWTOR.  Three conspicuous failures come to mind, APB, Vanguard Saga of Heroes, and Tabula Rasa.  From what I recall they had lots of money but failed due to poor managerial leadership.  I think that is what we see going on here.

I think a combo of EQ2's and WoW's guild systems would be ideal.  Maybe even look at Rift's version as well.  These 3 games for me are the epitome of how to do guild systems the right way.

After the pre-launch guild website system I had high hopes, shame it's not been carried across.....yet.

The setting guild ranks stuff is good but everything else is poor, very poor compared to the initial website.and the hopes is raised.

Basic needs for guilds:

Add ability to bulkmail all Guild members (seriously I've already had to individually mail every single member of a guild and got hit by the 2 mins cooldown on mail.)

Guild admin needs last login date against player info.

Fix ability to add friends who are offline - so I can invite them (3 weeks trying to invite a friend who's timezone is just slightly off mine, if I just knew he was online.....grrr)

Add ability to guild invite offline players. (see above comment)

Guild Events System.

Guild Bank (personally, after all the above, fix that then give us a bank)

A bigger character limit in Guild Description would be good.

Nice additions:

Guild Capital Ship

Guild Rankings

Some sort of Guild v Guild based PvP

Titles for characters given by the guild (i.e Guildleader, Raid Leader maybe, Guild Officer)

I'm sure I can think of other things Guilds are missing, I may return to thie thread.

Originally posted by xxcomaxx

The beginning should have went something more along the line of this.

 

"There are many great things going for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but guild features, PvP and end game content currently isn't one of them."

I was thinking it should be more like,

"Star Wars: the Old Republic may not have much of anything aside from the IP going for it, but you'd think at the very least, they'd do a better job of supporting the players that don't seem to mind."

I could use some player housing :D

Originally posted by Tenebroso

I could use some player housing :D

I like the idea of guild housing better, lets you socialize with your guildmates more.
 

Would be even better if you located them in some place that had to be defended but that's not really the focus of this title.

Everquest 2 had guild leveling at launch.  It's been ruined since then, but it should be known SOE had something good planned once.

Its kind of funny, so much praise and sucking up to start, now we start getting actually objective articles on the game. Honeymoon I suppose is over. Either way, the biggest factor with a guild is having things that really unite the guild. Sure there are guild levels and all to work for together, but there are plenty of other things that can be done to incompass guild activity together. 

Originally posted by Purutzil

Its kind of funny, so much praise and sucking up to start, now we start getting actually objective articles on the game. Honeymoon I suppose is over. Either way, the biggest factor with a guild is having things that really unite the guild. Sure there are guild levels and all to work for together, but there are plenty of other things that can be done to incompass guild activity together. 

 

I've been writing articles about SW:TOR both enthusiastic and critical for over two years now. Feel free to look through 'em. :)