guild-tools
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Stick and Rudder: It's the Massively Star Citizen guild
I love me some guild management tools, which is strange since I don't manage guilds all that often. It's a bit of work, see, as one look through the titles and topics in our Guild Counsel category will make clear. At any rate, I can't stop playing around with Star Citizen's recently launched Organization stuff.
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the best guild management tools?
So the Massively staff was chatting up our experiences in Neverwinter's beta yesterday afternoon. Someone remarked that the title's guild tools seemed more robust than usual, which got my attention since the lack of guild tools in every MMO not named EverQuest II is one of my long-standing genre pet peeves. Seriously, you devs out there should just copy EQII's guild interface, options, and associated functionality across the board. Every time I create or join a guild in another game it leads to a gigantic frowny face as I realize how limited my options are for tracking membership, achievements, alts, and a dozen other niceties. But this Daily Grind isn't about my guild tool preferences, it's about yours. Which MMO boasts your favorite set of guild tools and why? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Guild Counsel: Guild-friendly features for which to be thankful
If you're reading this, it's probably well into Thanksgiving Day, which makes me wonder why you are reading this -- it's Thanksgiving Day! Perhaps you're playing catch-up while you finish up that slice of pumpkin pie. Or maybe you're back home, raiding the fridge for a late night turkey snack and a quick MMO update. Whatever your reason, there are many things that we can be thankful for when it comes to our MMOs. We've come a long way when it comes to guild-friendly features, and it's worth taking a look at in this week's Guild Counsel.
Hellgate reveals 2011 stats, hints at 2012 updates
T3Fun has released a few statistics designed to keep Hellgate Global in the public eye. Included in the data are interesting nuggets like the gender breakdown for characters created (60/40 in favor of the guys), the most-played class (Marksman), the least-played class (Guardian), and the class with the highest growth rate in terms of character creation (also the Guardian). We're not exactly sure what that last bit means, but we can tell you that Hellgate's devs have a few new wrinkles planned for 2012 (assuming the world doesn't end in a hail of apocalyptic demon fire first). Among the improvements slated for the new year are "improved services, deeper guild engagement [...] and greater challenges for the most motivated players [via] some of the biggest events yet." Hellgate Global is free-to-play, so there's really nothing stopping you from moseying over to the game's official website and downloading the client. [Source: T3Fun press release]
Enter at Your Own Rift: A guild-tool wishlist
As we fended off dripping, soggy, Abyssal infiltrators all over the cities, many rejoiced at seeing the arrival of guild banks with the latest update. Finally, guild members could unload their stacks of tradeskill resources, extra shinies, and other random loot that ends up cluttering the bank and making guild leaders cringe in frustration. Now that our patience has paid off, and the non-stop calls for guild banks has been answered, I'd like to show my appreciation by doing what any true MMOer would do -- rattle off a wish list of new guild tools that I want to see in RIFT! Read on for a look at what I'd like to see added, and also what I hope isn't put in game.
Stratfu debuts web tools for raiders and guild leaders
Stratfu and the venerable Seriallos of the <Roll Initiative> guild on Maelstrom (US) has just debuted some awesome web tools for raiders and guild leaders that can pump out some serious numbers and data for you to crunch using World of Logs data. These tools include: World of Logs Top DPS Analyzer Useful for checking out the top numbers from World of Logs to compare the numbers you're outputting with the best of the best. Knowing what to strive for as a DPSer in raids is a valuable tool, so see how you stack up. World of Logs CompareBot This tool can help you compare different World of Logs parses to check for inconsistencies, as well as see where you're having trouble. Important buffs and debuffs are highlighted, as well as some potential mistakes being made by the raid. Player Raid Achievements A quick way to see a character's raid achievements all in one, simple table (as opposed to having to troll through the armory). Great for sizing up a new recruit or applicant and checking someone's raid experience.
Which guild tools make SOE's Community Influencers tick?
SOE called on their Community Influencers (a term which is defined near the beginning of this post) a while ago to get some feedback about guild tools in the games they play. The result was a document, "Fundamental Guild Tools", which lists all the most desired features of the Influencers group. Not all of these ideas are in SOE's games yet, but if they made it on to the document, chances are that they will be seen some time in the near future.Looking through the list, there is a lot of focus on having features extend to outside of the game: being able to chat with guild members both in text and voice from the Station Launcher, checking guild mail without being logged in to the game, in-game message boards that can be viewed from out of the game, etc. Some suggested features that aren't in SOE's games right now are available in rival MMOs, and the fact that the term "RvR" appears on the document shows that at least someone had one of Mythic's games in mind -- but as is the way with games of all genres, if there's a good new idea or feature, it's probably going to be adopted by others later on. Have a browse through the full article to get an idea of what a guild in an SOE game will likely have access to down the track.
Player vs. Everything: The retention game
The conventional wisdom in any service-driven industry is that it's far, far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to recruit a new one. This is especially true in the MMOG industry, where your business model is largely dependent on maintaining a long-term subscriber base. The concept also applies to transaction-driven and episodic games, where you need your customers to want to stick around and continue spending money. Box sales are great, but ultimately they're pretty useless except as an indicator of how many people actually bought the game -- returning players are the bread and butter of the MMO world. In fact, that's exactly why companies are so interested in finding out why you're quitting their game. If they can fix issues that are making a lot of people quit, they can retain more customers and drive up their revenue. Surprisingly, Blizzard is the only company I know of which actually makes people fill out an exit survey in order to cancel a subscription. It's not that annoying and it gives them great information about how to make their game better for you (so if you're adamant on copying Blizzard, that's a good thing to copy). Unfortunately, Blizzard keeps notoriously quiet about their internal numbers like that. So why exactly do people quit MMOGs, and what can and should game companies be doing to keep you interested?
