With the launch of Guild Wars 2 rapidly approaching, many players are already starting to align themselves into guilds or are looking forward to joining one soon after the game launches. Some players want to start guilds of their own, but aren’t sure how to go about it. Others question what the purpose of guilds will be in a MMO without raiding. What’s going to keep your members logging in? What kind of activities can you provide for your guild community?

I’m glad you asked!

SO YOU WANT TO BE A GUILD LEADER?

The first step in running your guild is creating it. Once you have a name selected (often the most difficult part of the process), you need to find out how to turn your community ideology into an actual community. In Guild Wars 2, this is a relatively simple and inexpensive process. For the price of a single silver coin, you can be a guild leader! Simply hit the G button on your keyboard to open up the Guild Panel, and select the ‘Create Guild’ option. If you prefer to speak with a NPC, you can visit any of the conveniently located Guild Registers located in each of the major cities. 

Guild Registrar Locations

  • Lion’s Arch – The NPC is located on a balcony area of the bank
  • Hoelbrak – The NPC is located near the Might and Main waypoint
  • Black Citadel – The NPC is located on the ground level of the Imperator’s Core
  • The Grove – The NPC is located inside the Envoy’s Shelter point of interest
  • Rata Sum – The NPC is located near the bank in the Interdisciplinary Accessium
  • Divinity’s Reach – The NPC is located near the Minister’s waypoint

 

That’s it! Congratulations! Don’t forget to open up your Guild Panel again and make sure you’re representing the guild you just made.

It may seem like a useless extra step, but for those who are unfamiliar with the guild system in Guild Wars 2, this is actually pretty important. You see, in Guild Wars 2, you can be a member of multiple guilds at the same time. You can only actively represent one at any given moment, but there aren’t many restrictions other than that. Guilds also work across servers, so you can easily have guild members from all over the country playing in your guild. Thanks to the guesting system, your friends can swap over to your server FREE OF CHARGE in order to experience PvE and structured PvP with the rest of your guild members! The only thing guests can’t participate in is World versus World. 

What this means for you, the Guild Leader, is that you can really tailor your community to be as general or as specific as you’d like it to be with almost no downside. If you really want to focus on specific game activities like WvW, sPvP or dungeons, you can do so easily. There could be multiple guilds on your server with a portion of their membership who are incredibly competitive about WvW. Your guild may be the common link all of those players share, and when it’s time to sound the charge, they’ll don your banner. Conversely, you can have a small guild focused on one or two dungeon teams, with members who branch out to other, larger PvP guilds for those activities. You certainly don’t have to make a guild with a narrow focus, but a certain amount of specialization makes sense when you consider how Guild Influence works.

 

INFLUENCE

Influence is a currency your guild earns through almost any action your members take while representing your guild. You can also increase your influence by buying rounds of drinks for the community at the local Guild Promoter. 

Like any currency, it’s not much good unless you have something to spend it on. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to spend your Influence. Here are the general categories:

  • Political upgrades include guild emblems, guild armor, buffs to increase influence gain, and party items.
  • Art of War upgrades include buffs for WvW.
  • Economy upgrades include guild-wide buffs for increasing item drop rates, karma or experience gain, and other economic boosts.
  • Architectural upgrades generally take the longest amount of time to build; they mostly involve upgrading shared storage (e.g. the Guild Vault) and the Guild Workshop, which allows guilds to work on two upgrades at a time.

A guild focused on WvW may choose to spend most of their influence in the Art of War category, while a more generalized guild may spend influence across all four. Each of the upgrades has a time to build investment along with the influence cost, and you can generally only research one upgrade at a time. This gives guilds a real chance to customize their communities through the choices made by their membership, and makes representing a guild more meaningful than just throwing on a tabard. A number of these purchases have limited durations as well, meaning there is always an opportunity cost associated with them.

The means of earning influence varies, but it usually comes as a reward of normal play:

  • 2 Influence.png for individual guild members completing an event or part of a personal storyline. (Guild groups completing events are rewarded with additional influence.)
  • 5 Influence.png for individual guild members getting a victory in a PvP match.
  • 10 Influence.png for each accepted guild invitation.
  • 10 Influence.png for each member who is online during an Attendance Check. (Not sure what this means just yet.)

 

ROSTER SIZE

If you’re thinking that the best way to get more influence is to have a large guild, you may be right. But before you run out and try to recruit everyone you come across, you may want to learn about the roster limits in Guild Wars 2. 

When you create the guild, your initial 1 silver investment also purchases you a 50-person roster. This is the default size of any guild. Expanding your roster begins to cost a bit more after that, topping out at 2 gold to hit the maximum 500-player limit. If 500 sounds a bit small, remember that Guild Wars 2 counts roster spots by the player and not by the character, as in many other MMOs. Your alts will automatically join any guild you belong to, although they are under no obligation to represent any particular guild at any time. 

Here are the roster costs (courtesy of the official wiki):

Tier   Max Size   Cost  
1  50  1 Silver coin
2 100  1 Silver coin
3 200  10 Silver coin
4 300 1 Gold coin
5 400 1 Gold coin
6 500 2 Gold coin
 
 gwi official gw2 guild
GREAT! WE HAVE A GUILD! NOW WHAT?
 
 This brings up larger questions regarding what your guild’s focus is, what the general community’s focus is, and how you envision the endgame of Guild Wars 2. We can make educated guesses regarding how things will be in Tyria six months or even a year from now, but they’re only guesses. What we do know is that there will be several ways for people to spend their time while leveling, and after level 80:
 
World versus World is what a lot of people first think of when they ask about Guild Wars 2′s endgame. The expansive, dynamic, large-scale combat is fun and addictive and can easily be a guild activity akin to raid nights in other MMOs. Not only is there personal glory to be won, but for guilds there’s an even bigger incentive. Whenever any fortification is captured, the guild that had the most participating members will have the option of claiming that keep or tower for themselves. The claimed fortification will then display the banner of that guild, and any WvW upgrades purchased by that guild will apply to nearby allies. This is a huge point of pride that many guilds will take very seriously. It’s one thing when an enemy force is attacking a random tower; it’s something else entirely when that tower belongs to your guild. Suddenly the entire combat just became personal in a way not seen in many MMOs.
 
Structured PvP is also a huge draw for players of Guild Wars 2, and it’s one you don’t even need to level up to enjoy to the fullest. There is already a budding eSports community centered on the game, and it’s growing daily. The announcement that Arena Junkies is now featuring Guild Wars 2 will only create more buzz and legitimacy for that scene. Our own PvP podcast, The Stompcast, is one of several springing up in the community. The depth and complexity of the sPvP system is drawing competitive gamers from all over the world, yet sPvP itself remains completely accessible to even the most casual of players. There’s no gear to grind, and the only rewards are cosmetic in nature. Anyone can compete on a level playing field at any time. There are even unique ways for guilds to participate and enjoy this content as well. Not only can you field normal teams in regular competition, you can completely create your own Player-Run tournaments where members of your entire guild could square off against each other to win the prize of your choosing!
 
The Dungeons of Guild Wars 2 are also unique compared to other MMOs, offering you experiences that never become obsolete thanks to the fact that you’ll always be scaled down to the appropriate level of the dungeon. Completing the Story Mode and Explorable Modes of each one and collecting the unique weapons and armor sets they contain will appeal to those who’ve raided in other MMOs and are looking for similar, cooperative challenges to overcome. 
 
The entire continent of Orr awaits you and your guild at level 80 as well. There will be no renown hearts in Orr because there are no friendly NPCs. What you’ll find is a deadly ruin, infested with the undead minions of the Elder Dragon Zhaitan. A menacing waste where even the land itself seeks your death. Dynamic event “webs” (think chains, only far more complex and varied) will await you there, and you’ll need to rally your forces to fight for even a foothold on it’s watery, black shores!
 
That’s a lot of variety right there, and that’s not even touching on jumping puzzles, mini-games like Keg Brawl (think Norn rugby/football), or seeking out legendary weapons, each of which are things your guild can have fun with together. 
 
Coming from a raiding background myself, I’m used to having regular guild nights scheduled. Only now with Guild Wars 2, instead of all of those nights being dedicated to the same thing, I get to break them up and offer my friends choices on how we spend our time together. Maybe we’ll still agree to band together three nights a week with one night dedicated to WvW, another for sPvP and the third  for crushing the armies of Zhaitan under our boots. That variety and spontaneity will go a long way to preserving the fun of the game and creating vibrant and active guild communities within it.
 
Thanks for reading! I hope to see each of you in game! Don’t forget to check out the Guild Wars 2 Emblem Creator. It’s a productive way to prep for launch.
 
For more on what ArenaNet has in store for you and your guild at the endgame level, please check out the following videos from the developers themselves.