Guilds in Star Wars: The Old Republic
The Bounty Hunters Guild. The Assassins Guild. The Smugglers Alliance. While Star Wars: The Old Republic is a story of conflict between two galactic superpowers, third party organizations play a crucial role in the history of the Star Wars universe. This is an important distinction considering that one of the defining aspects of an MMO is the social component; the ability to join together with other players to take on the challenges of the game environment. In MMOs, one of the most common ways for players to team up with each other is by joining a guild, or clan. Though BioWare remains fairly tight-lipped on the subject of guilds, recent MMO history gives us some idea of what to expect, what to hope for, and what areas might present a challenge for the developers.
In most recent MMOs, guilds are allowed to choose a logo, design, and color scheme to represent them. This design is commonly displayed on cloaks, banners, and special tabards - most of which present a challenge in a sci-fi setting. Given BioWare's strict adherence to the iconic visual images of the Star Wars Universe, we're unlikely to see Bounty Hunters and Troopers donning cloaks and tabards any time soon. If they intend to include the ability for players to visually represent their guilds through their armor and equipment, they'll need to get creative.
Recent screenshots do show prominent insignias on the shoulder plates of the Bounty Hunter and Sith Warrior companions. We recently identified the insignia of the Bounty Hunter companion Skadge as the logo of the Black Sun Crime Syndicate. While nothing has been officially confirmed, it does appear that BioWare has created pieces of armor that are capable of displaying a guild logo, if need be. However, this could be problematic for classes without plated shoulder pads, such as the Smuggler or the Sith Inquisitor.
There are other areas where you could place an insignia that are unrelated to armor. Player ships, certainly, are large enough to accommodate a tasteful logo on the exterior hull. If logos prove to be too complex, unique color schemes could be incorporated into any existing item, as evidenced by any recent MMO with a dye system. However, we should note that BioWare's focus on linking certain colors to particular classes could rule this option out.
Not long ago, guilds functioned as little more than a glorified chat channel for friends. As the audience for MMOs increased, the genre saw a rise of high-end raiding guilds and dedicated PvP guilds, making bragging rights common place among competitive guilds. While not a standard feature by any means, games such as Warhammer Online opened the door to a guild advancement system, and the Cataclysm expansion pack for World of Warcraft seems to be following suit.
A guild advancement system allows guilds to "level up", and in some cases gain new abilities, similar to the system in place for individual players. Each member contributes to the advancement of the guild by completing certain PvE and PvP activities. In many games, such as Dungeons and Dragons: Online, guilds level up as their members gain personal experience; other systems require the collection of items or completion of specific quests. While BioWare has not announced any sort of "achievement" system yet, it's not out of the realm of possibility that such a system could also aid in guild progression.
Another common feature of MMO guilds is the guild vault. These vaults are a community resource for guild members that essentially act as a shared bank tab, where members can deposit and withdraw items. Though BioWare has not made any announcements regarding banks and storage, it seems extremely likely that this near-universal feature would be included.
There are considerably more questions surrounding the subject of crafting. The recent update on Crew Skills gave a good idea of what players could expect, but for many guilds, crafting is a group effort. Daniel Erickson had this to say, in a recent interview with Massively.com:
Massively: Will that stuff be accessible to, say, people who aren't in gigantic PvE raiding guilds? If you just solo play, could you actually take over the economy on the server, if you're really dedicated?
DE: We're not getting into how you get the very rare stuff yet, but if you were a very dedicated crafter, and your life and your thing was about that... but obviously the other dedicated crafter who has 200 people who are assisting him; he might have an edge.
While certainly not a definitive statement, it does seem to support the idea that guild members will be able to support each other in their crafting endeavors. Whether this means collaboration on large-scale crafting projects requiring multiple Crafting Skills (Mandalorian Armor with integrated weapons systems, anyone?), or simply a joint pooling of resources gained through Gathering Skills, remains to be seen.
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Posted 4/17/2011 10:52:36 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/11/2010 8:07:22 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/9/2010 9:21:41 PMIf you wanted to show off your 'ta bard', I would think you could just have a small patch on your chest or something. Just a graphic you could turn off and on. Doesn't have to be so big it takes up the whole chest, but something subtle.
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Posted 12/9/2010 4:22:30 PMWhat would be great about the Guild Capital Ship idea would be if you could somehow work that into a PvP element where opposing guilds could attack each other's capital ships via an instanced "plant the bomb" warzone. Think about it.
Guild A and B want to battle. Say 8v8. 4 on Offense, 4 on D.
Guild A group gets on a shuttle, flys through space to Guild B's ship to board. Based on Guild's B's investment in turbolaser tech for their ship, the shuttle may/may not reach the ship to board. Guild A would use their best pilot to zap the defenses and get in. Once aboard, Guild A tries to plant a bomb inside the ship and hold it for a certain amount of time. Same thing goes for the other ship. Whoever plants the bomb first, wins.
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Posted 12/9/2010 9:18:17 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/9/2010 7:06:52 AMNice article DH, as usuall.
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Posted 12/9/2010 12:56:43 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/9/2010 12:05:05 AMAs for the guilded player having an advantage in crafting, I think it's in a monetary sense (and gathering/supplies).
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Posted 12/8/2010 11:14:12 PMHold on, I'm sure I've seen Sith Inquisitor attire that has plated shoulder pads...
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Posted 12/8/2010 10:39:25 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/8/2010 10:17:04 PMYour track record proceeds you with ... bread crumb.... bread crumb... offical announcement... almost as if you have insight about timing your articles before they go live!
For that I love you! This is truly the last piece of the SWTOR puzzle that most of us have been waiting for anxiously.. thank you..
cheers
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Posted 12/8/2010 10:34:15 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/9/2010 7:26:55 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/8/2010 11:08:47 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 12/8/2010 10:42:11 PMHAHA