• Open Forum: Guild Features

    This week's Open Forum focuses on Guild features. Guilds have and will always be the backbone of MMOs. With that, bringing new features to help them function along their way is an important task of any developer. So in this Open Forum we ask -- What Guild features would you like to see added? In the scope of Free to Play, should BioWare ask guilds to pay extra Cartel Coins for new features? Which features do you feel are most important to add? If you have a comment that does not fit these questions but you think is relevant to the subject, feel free to add it after the jump as well.

    We will hand select a few choice comments to be featured in the next podcast episode. Be constructive with your comments and do not flame or degrade others. We will moderate accordingly.

    Note: This week's podcast episode was postponed due to scheduling issues. Due to that, the Open Forum pieces from this and last week will appear on next week's podcast.

  • Guild Dynamics: Legacy and Your Guild

    Welcome to Guild Dynamics, an editorial dedicated to exploring the topics and issues confronting guilds in Star Wars: The Old Republic. In this editorial, we focus on the Legacy system and its potential impact on a guild’s sense of community.

    Guild loyalty is a nebulous and often touchy subject, made all the more important for its unclear definition. Many guilds expect members to serve only in their guild and disallow player alts from joining other guilds. Overlooked in this requirement is a tacit sense of faction loyalty. After all, if player is expected to remain loyal to one guild, and that guild can only be populated by members drawn from one faction, then how can a player legitimately have an alt who is in league with “the enemy?"

    The Old Republic‘s Republic-Imperial divide adds a new twist to this old problem. BioWare’s statements and actions have made it clear that they intend players to “traverse the void” and play multiple cross-faction characters. The company has also provided limited support to cross-faction guilds, particularly in regards to their pre-launch “Allies and Adversaries” system.

    And yet, serious cross-faction guild support is nonexistent, and any guild who attempts to maintain both a Republic and an Imperial presence faces an uphill battle. With neither cross-faction tells nor shared chat channels, there exists no easy in-game way to coordinate what amounts to two completely separate guilds. Something that BioWare openly supports, is left in the hands of guilds to juggle and maintain. Some view it as something not worth the trouble.

    However, this need not be the end. Look below the jump for advice on how a guild can maintain a vibrant, cross-faction community.

  • Guide: Loot Systems

    Imagine this familiar scene: An oversized carcass lays strewn across the snow, a purple light emanating gently from its corpse. A group of players run hurriedly over, frantically clicking before bothering to resurrect fallen comrades or paying any mind to that strange puddle of goo beneath their feet. A chorus of elation and vulgarity-laced groans can be heard throughout Ventrilo and the chat log floods with “brb bio.” What happens next is the reason many players engage in endgame PVE in the first place. You rub your eyes, carefully open your bags and sure enough, find that singular piece of loot that has eluded you for oh-so-long.

    At some point in his or her MMO career, every player has experienced this moment of euphoria. At this same junction between effort and payoff however exists a lurking, fragile thing that can otherwise ruin the experience for nearly the entire group: loot distribution politics. A majority of the angst and disagreements often found within a guild, or even a pick-up group, is caused by perceived discrepancies regarding loot distribution. MMO players as a rule have very little to no tolerance for the mismanagement of loot assignments, so how can you be certain to avoid some of the pitfalls associated with raid looting? The answer is simple: you need a system.

    Read on below the jump for highlights and explanations of a number of commonly used MMO loot systems, one of which might just be right for you.