Changes to the Stormrage Guild system

[Kevin]

What we know: There is a website. There is a guild. They have an association right now of some sort.

What we all want: The website to be the primary focus of everything.

There are several forces at play. We have a guild and it isn't like many (maybe any, but I wouldn't say that just yet) other guilds. Questions come up like why do we have the guild. This was clarified by Mongo as easy in game way for Lurkers to hook up, but it runs into problems in practice because of how the rest of the game community sees a guild and how you get into the guild. As Pete pointed out the question of "What the Hell is an active Lurker?" comes up.

You also have the issues of the other benefits of a guild that I haven't seen really come up in this conversation. Sure they only really apply to the less social lurkers like myself who really only want to play with known quantities and provide help to those known quantities using the guild for those purposes, otherwise you could join another guild. I don't want to be in a different guild because I don't have the time, inclination, and possibly the skills, to get to know those other people. I do want to use the guild for other benefits besides finding my fellow Lurkers online and being able to chat with them easily. Things like easily finding someone to give all the extra silk I have to, or all the leather armor I made for skill-up. Guilds in D1 and D2 were pointless to me because the game didn't really have anything where the extra social interaction really mattered, or the need for a party for an instance, or anything of that nature. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who wants the Lurker guild to be able to provide the benefits a guild can provide besides just finding people to play with. This game has more too it than that. That starts to make your Lurker guild more like other guilds.

On this, I agree with you in principle but I don't really see it working in practice. Everyone the guild recruits is (duh) a player of the game. If the recruits are limited to people who already visit the site, then they will also be Lurkers. But if they are just people who are met in game, then there is nothing forcing them to become Lurkers. So, the only thing wrong with "guild first, site later" is that in many cases it will become "guild first, site never".

Why? With the proposed structure you have a means to get rid of people who don't become active Lurkers. Sure you still have to answer the question "What the hell is an active lurker?" but I think that question has to be answered regardless because we have a guild and we all seem to want it, in the end, to only contain that type of person. Yes, you can get rid of non lurkers without the structure and the structure may not make that easier, but it doesn't make it any harder. The informal structure also gives you benefits to help run the guild so it can provide the other benefits being in a guild in a game like this has. Again things that weren't present with D1 or D2 (common in game chat channels, interfaces to see who's online and where they are, just dealing with the vastly larger number of people in the game with you, guild halls in the future, finding a friendly craftsman to make you something, etc) which is part of the reason I feel this site never had a guild, there just weren't that many benefits to one, and there were a lot of drawbacks.

I also don't see why you have to be an active member first guild second as the only way to insure it reflects the Lounge. We need to answer the question "How is the Lurker Lounge reflected by the guild." To me the answer is that it is reflected in the quality of play of the person wearing the banner, their better knowledge of the game and it's tactics and the desire to share that knowledge through the forums, and now since we have it, through the guild as well. That is all the other non Lurker players in the game will see. I know we want to divorce some of the discussion from the details of the set-up to the questions of do we need it, but the limited structure says that we trust everyone that has met the definition of "active Lurker" to decide who these people who reflect our ideals are. It also has the means to handle it when "Rule One: Things go wrong" comes up without tying up the forums too much. It helps formalize the ability to get rid of people who want guild first, site never. You find that someone just doesn't seem to be reading (and we are stuck with reading because we all seem to agree on the principal that posting doesn't matter) the lounge because of a discussion you have in game where you talk about a point that has been made a lot on the lounge, and hence should have been read, and they don't recognize it or other things repeatedly. You talk it over with the officers, they remove or keep based on that. Without the "officers" you have to talk it over with what? the whole guild? the whole site? Control mechanisms as you pointed out in another post become more important the larger and organization gets.

I expect the guild to get larger just because the Lounge draws people like me. I'm a soloer just because I don't have enough time or trust to deal with people I don't know, and that includes our good friends at the Amazon Basin, but I still want to be the best player I can and help others be the best player they can which is where reading the Lounge comes in. I also don't want a highly structured guild (and we don't have one) because I don't want to be somewhere were a lot of structure is needed. Since it will get larger and it does exist I think early and mild control mechanisms are appropriate. I don't think the guild will ever die now that it is here and I think it is only a good thing for the site as well. I think it can be very loose and not take away from the site even if it gets huge. But it still needs some structure if it gets much larger and it may be large enough. There are day to day things to deal with, that is reality too since the guild is a reality.

If the guild is based on people who play the game and are Lurkers, then no structure is required.

I don't think this is a given. I think because of the nature of the game that I touched on earlier where a guild holds other benefits and the fact that there are plans to make guilds have more benefits and add more enjoyment factors to the game coupled with the fact that even with Lurkers that "things go wrong" that a mild structure is something that will become more necessary. Structures generally helps to fix things when they go wrong. Yes, a plan helps more, but structures help make plans become realities in my experience. If you don't have something in game to handle dealing with what a guild is, that means it would have to end up on the forums because the discussions will happen. If we want the site to be about the game and not about the guild I think you need something in game to deal with the guild.

I do not disagree with your sentiments that a plan should be made before a structure is created. Of course a plan was made, Tal did talk to people and then he posted about it here to let people know as well as to get feedback to change it if need be. Maybe the big mistake was not running it through the wringer first, but then again there were issues that needed to be addressed now and as guildmaster Tal has the power to make those decisions to address the issues. So he compromised on that situation as well. Maybe the guilds on the two servers they are on shouldn't have been created without more discussion first, but they were and now we have to deal with them or disband them. I don't think anyone wants them to go away.

Again, this is not a judgement issue. It is not a moral issue. It is simply a reality check. If the guild limits membership to established Lurkers (whatever the hell that means) it will miss out on a lot of great people who just can't be bothered to be active on a website. That might mean that the guild will not be able to maintain critical mass. Since a character can only be in one guild, players might leave the Lurker guild for one that is bigger, more active. That's a danger with being exclusive. On the other hand, if any good person is invited, then pretty soon the majority of players will be unacquainted with the site. If they represent the ideals of this site it will be fortuitous. If the persons they in turn recruit also do so it will be amazing. The guild will get further and further detached from the site.

I don't think critical mass matters with the guild. Especially if it is just a facility for friends to get together. But I think that definition misses out on other things a guild can do for the members of the Lounge who play the game. Like I said because of the nature of the players and this site and the nature of the game I don't think the guild will ever go away, even if we don't have an official one, someone will start one somewhere else and just invite all the Lurkers to it. I don't think the guild missing out on people who can't be bothered with the site is a problem either. We don't need them and the changes to the guild have nothing to do with that. Characters going to other guilds isn't a bad thing, in fact it's something that is encouraged if they want something else out of the guild other than what the Lounge guild offers. While I have talked about the Lounge guild offering other benefits because of the nature of the game, it still doesn't have to be like the Basin guilds or guilds where being a higher rank or playing well gets you rewards and such. Finally just because we invite someone who didn't start as a Lurker, but through their play and their manner still gives the in game representation of a Lurker, it doesn't follow that that will be the majority of the players. The structure is there, in fact, to insure that exactly that doesn't happen. If they don't represent the ideals of the site (which involve learning and sharing what you learned or discovered on your own) then they won't stay in the guild. With the way it was proposed you don't get to a level where you can invite people until you have proven you do embody the ideals of the site. The only way I can follow your argument is if you get invited and you can also then invite. That won't happen with the structure, it could without it though. With the structure everyone could invite and then what you say could happen if just one or two non Lurkers get invited because we trust that everyone will make the right choices and that Rule One will never happen.

I think we need to decide how the guild relates to the site and how the guild reflects the site in game or we need to get rid of the guilds. I think regardless of how the guild is set-up we have to tackle the definition of "What is an active lurker" or decide on how to deal with that on the fly. We have to decide how much like a typical guild the guild will be. How many benefits of a guild do we want ours to offer? Can all those desires be controlled and keep the site the focus?

Personally I think the structure proposed answers them the way I would like to hear them answered. We determine an activer lurker through oberservation of how they play and they interact. If someone questions that we put it to the officers of the guild to deal with, using the forums if necessary. We aren't like a typical guild we don't have formal events, but we do get to take advantage of the benefits of being in the guild without dealing with as many of the problems because we are exclusive, but open about our exclusivity. The officers are there to facilitate, but really don't have any ultimate authority. If there is abuse, the type of people this forum attracts and holds will deal with it. But there could be other ways to handle it. But things will need to be handled and we need to agree on it.