Massively OP reader Josh wrote into the podcast recently — in fact, we’re answering his whole email on this afternoon’s show — about the state of guilds in MMORPGs. A fan of Asheron’s Call’s monarchy system, he posited that far from creating tight bonds in MMOs, modern guilds seemed designed to encourage “flitting around” as you can very often join multiple guilds at a time.
“But this seems to also result in far less expectation of investment in a particular guild,” Â he observed.
I wanted to use that part of his question as a springboard about multi-guilding in today’s Daily Grind. I personally think that multi-guilding has helped a lot of social and roleplay guilds stay alive in an era when game developers are hell-bent on gamifying guild systems with achievements and perks that drive so many players into the arms of power-centric guilds. But I also see the investment issues Josh does, which inarguably affects the communities, just in a different way.
What do you think — does multi-guilding hurt MMORPGs?