my old co-worker used to tell me some stories about his korean "guild". hesitant to say guild because from his stories they seemed more like a social clubs. You payed club dues, which was used for facilities, and hiring "guild officers" to run events. (in korea unlike na market, most gaming is done from cafe's rather then home pc's). Yes pay people to run the guild/lead raids, but the entire guild structure was different then american guilds.
1: the guild orginization itself kept and leveled "guild" characters, that were general access to all members. Given the gaming atmosphere there in korea these char's my co-worker said got more playtime then "personal" chars, members payed for themselves.
2: He also said the majority of the time (accept extreme early mornings 4 am-8am) there was at least one officer able to organize an event if player intrest was there. (have to do a note, the guild he claims was active,paying for dozens of accounts in mutiple games). at peak times he claimed they could be raiding in eq, doing a city bane in shadowbane and pvping in lineage at the same time.
Biggest thing that intrested me was he said you could join any guild event you wanted, as long as there was space. If you showed up and your personal char wasn't high enough level to join that event, you could grab any free guild char of the appropiate level and use that character to play with your friends/guild, no questions asked. He claimed that most people infact played off guild accounts, rather then personal accounts. (I'm not sure of that though, given personal experience with a korean guild in EQ, but shrug )
question I've always wondered is, what sort of response this type of orginzation would face on this side of the ocean. It does answer some of the concerns of bliz's/soe's definition of casual gaming in today's morpg gaming mechanics, but at more player costs.
1: the guild orginization itself kept and leveled "guild" characters, that were general access to all members. Given the gaming atmosphere there in korea these char's my co-worker said got more playtime then "personal" chars, members payed for themselves.
2: He also said the majority of the time (accept extreme early mornings 4 am-8am) there was at least one officer able to organize an event if player intrest was there. (have to do a note, the guild he claims was active,paying for dozens of accounts in mutiple games). at peak times he claimed they could be raiding in eq, doing a city bane in shadowbane and pvping in lineage at the same time.
Biggest thing that intrested me was he said you could join any guild event you wanted, as long as there was space. If you showed up and your personal char wasn't high enough level to join that event, you could grab any free guild char of the appropiate level and use that character to play with your friends/guild, no questions asked. He claimed that most people infact played off guild accounts, rather then personal accounts. (I'm not sure of that though, given personal experience with a korean guild in EQ, but shrug )
question I've always wondered is, what sort of response this type of orginzation would face on this side of the ocean. It does answer some of the concerns of bliz's/soe's definition of casual gaming in today's morpg gaming mechanics, but at more player costs.