The Guild Swiss Army Knife

Did you ever get a Swiss army knife as a kid? It was perhaps one of my greatest pleasures, to receive one of these doohickies during a summer vacation to Florida. I was salivating over getting one of these multi-purpose knives for months (The Simpsons had an episode where Bart shared my envy, and then they ended up abandoned at sea) -- you got a little of everything in one neat package. Three blades, saw, scissors, toothpick, corkscrew (because a lot of kids need to open wine), an awl (candidate for most useless tool ever), screwdriver and so on. My delight in finally getting the knife ended about ten minutes later when my mom took it away after my brother said I threatened him with the corkscrew.

I did, but really -- how much damage can I do with a corkscrew in a limited time frame?

We've been hearing just awesome things about the Swiss army knife of guild tools that Mythic is handing each and every band of brothers that strides into WAR and needs a strong drink of wine. Acquaint yourself with the features on the Herald and in this post (with follow-up commentary on OoD), then head on back here.

While these tools, this array of blades and saws and awls, might seem pretty common-sense to your average person, the shameful part is that most other MMOs don't have all these. Perhaps they just have a blade, or a couple other useful appendages, but that's it. It's like MMOs acknowledge that guilds are a necessary evil and then the devs do the bare minimum to get them organized before abandoning guild features to the Stygian abyss.

WoW is a perfect example of this -- the world's most popular MMO, and it arms guilds with almost nothing in terms of tools and organizational features. The basic game lets you form a guild, organize ranks, access a guild bank, and have a message of the day. Um... whee. It's so bad that modders have done a thriving business providing what should be standard tools -- like guild calendars! -- into that damning gap.

I'm not planning on running a guild in WAR, but I will be part of one, and potential guild leaders have to be just wiggling all over in delight when they read this sort of stuff. Let's go down the list, shall we?

• Guild Levels - Through guild experience (GXP), members can help to level up their guild from 1 to 40, just like a player! Each level comes with new rewards that benefit the guild entire.


• Guild Experience Points - GXP is earned by doing pretty much what you'll already be doing: fighting, questing, scenarioing, PQing and so on. You can even get GXP bonuses by holding battlefield objectives. Obviously, this system of guild leveling seems to favor large guilds (more players should = more GXP coming in), but Mythic says "not necessarily."


• Message of the Day - The first thing any guildie should read when logging in, and a standard feature in many MMOs.


• Guild Rewards - Tactics, standards, standard tactics, cloaks, heraldry, guild vault, guild auctions, trophy slot and trophies, Tome unlocks, tactic points. These are the sort of things that will get a guild excited to advance together, as a group entire!


• Guild News - Find out what's happened since you last logged in: guildies leveling up, the guild leveling up, guild events, people joining and leaving, etc.


• Guild Website/E-Mail - Good stuff to know.


• About Us - A great place to put your guild mission statement, along with any other vital info (like vent login stuff).


• Guild Calendar - The lynchpin of organized guild events. Want to throw together a Keep raid group? Perhaps a dungeon run or a silly mass chicken parade? Here you go. It'll allow for guildies to sign up for various events and to see what you've done in the past.


• Roster - The roster shows the entire crew of your guild: name, rank/career, title and status. Good way to get a quick overview of who's who, and who's online


• Alliance - The alliance bottom tab works similar to the roster, only in this case it shows the other guilds you've allied with. Alliances are key for the survival of small guilds in a big guild world -- you can keep the guild as exclusive as you like, but when you need a larger body of people to help put on an event, you can contact your alliance guilds for support!


• Standard - We've heard a lot about heraldry and standards over the past couple months, and this is the tab that lets the guild master fiddle with the look and colors of the banner you plant on the field (along with your cloaks). Each heraldry will be unique and lock out any other guild from making the same one.


• Admin - The final big bucket o' tools that guild leaders and officers can use to do various functions, such as set up permissions, title names, calendar events and so on.

I feel these features give players even more incentive to be part of a guild, which is definitely a good thing in the WAR environment. Even if it's just a handful of friends with you, guilds are still worth forming and leveling up!