Trading guilds in WAR

"WTS level 25 guild, two months old, not used much. PST"

In your average MMO, being in a guild is nothing more than a extra chat channel and a guild tag under your name. Some games offer advantages, such as guild housing, guild banks, and taking keeps, but that's nothing that moving to another guild will keep you from doing.

But what happens when your guild is facing trouble and players leave the guild to look for greener pastures? The remaining people log in one day and find that the once glorious guild with a hundred members now lie in ruins with just a dozen people. The remaining people in the guild then have a few options: they can take leadership of the guild and invite new people, hoping that the good name will help them; or they can follow their brethren and quit the guild, finally ending it.

Warhammer Online will introduce guild levelling, where your guild gain experience and levels as the players in it do. Taking your guild to the highest level (40) is not something done overnight, and offer interesting advantages, such as bonuses to your banner, wielded by the standard bearer on the battlefield.

This will maybe offer a new, third option. Christian Bales says in a interview by Massively:

If a guild does experience some sort of upheaval, where it's a very large guild, lots of progression, and it's relatively high level within the guild system, and then it sort of fades away, trickles down and suddenly there's only a very small number of people left, we don't take away any of the benefits they've earned. They keep all of that. It's what they've earned as a guild!

Which means that a guild that's been around for a long time, and have gained the maximum guild level, will be worth something. Players that have been around the guild since the beginning will feel a certain pride and ownership of the guild, and simply leaving the guild to start another might not be as easy as before.

One new possible option, that might or might not be common, is to sell your guild to someone. Levelling up a guild to the cap for all the great benefits take time, and if you have plenty of gold, why not just buy a guild that has all these things? While it's uncertain if you will be able to rename your guild as easily as in Age of Conan, even with a name not of your choosing, taking control of a high level guild will be tempting.

Then there is the possibility of rebellions. People who have been in the guild for long and don't like how it has turned out, seize leadership and remove big parts of the guild. After all, they think, why should the people who levelled the guild have to leave to start a new one? Time will tell how drama friendly the new guild system will be.

<A°)))>< Drama Fish feast on drama.