Massively goes to WAR: Everything you need to know about guilds pt. 2

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We note there is a website and an email address down there at the bottom of the tab? What are those?

Christian Bales:

That's just my web, that's test for now, but that's when the guild leader wants to set the actual guild's email address and the guild website.)

Josh Drescher: You can set that to be whatever you want, so ... Obviously, one of the cool things that you really want from a guild is a sense of belonging, the team jersey, you go and dress up in your Redskins jerseys or wherever you're from. It'll have the guild heraldry. The heraldry is a customized, unique sort of heraldry for your specific guild. So a symbol on it, specific color scheme, shape, patterns and so forth that's applicable only to your guild, that your guild will have the ability to place on various things.

Christian: On your standards and on your guild cloaks.

How many icons are there available for guild Heraldry?

Christian: There are a lot. I don't have the exact number off the top of my head.

Josh: A trillion!

Christian: ... but it's in the hundreds, definitely.

Josh: It's ... sufficient. One of the problems we run into is every single one of those symbols has to be run through GW, so we can't just put like "the Bunny Rabbit guild!" because they'll be like "pfft! No Bunny Rabbits!", so it really is a matter of - we have hundreds of IP-appropriate guild emblems, that are then obviously also appropriate to your faction, and so forth.

Christian: And what we also did, which was in Camelot, is these emblems actually have color variants within each emblem, so there's 1 to 10 color schemes. So you don't actually tint this, it's actually baked into the emblem itself. So you and I could have the same emblem, but mine might be green and yours might be black.

We assume pink, for example, would probably not be an option?

Christian: There's definitely a color palette that is approved.

Josh: We are trying to stay away from ridiculous clown colors, but at the end of the day, one of the things that the Warhammer hobby has always kind of leveraged really effectively is the idea that you and I might have the same army, we might have the same army list, but we have the ability to go and paint them up in a very unique and different way.

So while we're trying to stay away from the totally insane - we're all a bunch of Chosens painted up to look like Hello Kitty - we don't want to limit you too much, because really - you know - there are some audacious color schemes out there that look silly to some people but are going to be fun for other people. So especially, seeing as we're really trying to be evocative and interesting, we're giving you as many options as we reasonably can, without actually tripping the GW anger switch, making them go "No no no! No pink dwarves!"

Christian: Anger switch?

Josh: They don't actually have an anger switch. To my knowledge they have never actually gotten mad and said "No no no", but it's because we tend to treat them with respect, rather than handing them pink dwarves, "What do you think?" "I think you're stupid."

When we spoke to Jeff Hickman earlier, he noted that using standards and standard gameplay is a part of the Open World RvR as well as just scenarios. We thought that it was only a scenario element.

Josh: Any time that you're playing against other players.

And you can also use it in PvE situations?

Josh: It will have very specific and limited functionality in PvE

Christian: It's still under discussion.

Josh:

So, for example, there are things that the standard can do... an AoE knockback? We don't allow you to knockback monsters, because it's too exploitable. They're too dumb to know not to stand on a cliff, and so the boss monster, if you're able to guide him over to a cliff and then somebody goes "Standard!" and knocks him off a cliff... yeah. You don't wanna do that. The idea there is that Standard really is intended to be for an RvR thing. It really is like the battle cry.

Again, it's like football. It's ... you're running around, you're the team captain, you're The Guy. You've got the flag, you've got the ball. And while you've got that ball, you're the most important person on that field. And that might mean that you can't shove a man in the face because he got a hold of the ball, but all focus is on you, and really there are things that only you can do while you've got the ball. It's a very iconic thing that's drawn from the IP. The idea of the Standard-bearer marching into battle in front of the army, and kind of planting that flag, and then "We hold this spot". And it also creates a visual rallying point.

It's shockingly efficient, where you go "Guys, we rally actually right here. Not over there, right here." and then people run back and are like "Am I supposed to be over there? Oh! I'm supposed to be next to the Standard! 'Cause that's where we planted it!" ...and so on and so forth.

Then you add tactics onto that. Are those the tactics that you earn on the rewards tab there?

Christian: Yes. Those are actual tactics that were built specifically for standards. They're not from your player tab, and you actually unlock tactic points and tactic slots through the reward progression. Each standard - I would show you the Standards tab, but it's not really ready to be revealed yet. I unlock a tactics slot, I unlock a tactic point, and then I can actually see a tactics list, and then I go through, just like the player, and I choose which tactics I wanna buy. And that does allow your standard to have customizable bonuses on it at that point.

Guild tactics and player tactics are completely independent. Player tactics are divided up into - you get those in three distinct ways - I don't know who reiterated this, but I'll reiterate it now. The standard tactics pool comes from your general advancement throughout the game, as you're leveling up you're getting new abilities, you're getting morale abilities, you're getting tactics. So those are generally useful everywhere. They're good in RvR, they're good in PvE, you need 'em to do your job. Then you've got your renowned tactics. Renowned tactics, obviously, you earn through the renowned system, via RvR. Those are tactics that are specifically targeted for RvR use. They're not going to be any good to you out in PvE.

Then we have Tome tactics, that you unlock through the Tome of Knowledge. Those are focused squarely at PvE. So an RvR tactic, or renowned tactic for instance, would be "I do some percentage of additional damage against Dwarven players", versus a Tome tactic that would be "I gain experience faster by killing humanoid models". And then Standard tactics - career tactics - would be something like percentage increases to actual abilities, percentage improvements to specific types of functions that your character engages in and so forth. And then Guild tactics are obviously very focuses at group playing, morale generation increase for the entire guild, increase morale generation for people that are close to the Standard, and on and on and on.

The tactic points - does the guild leader choose which tactics are selected, or can each individual guild member choose which one they get?

Christian: Only if the guild leader chooses to give other members that permission. It's permission-based. Once you actually slot tactics onto your guild standard, it locks for 24 hours as soon as you hit save. At guild rank six, you get access to a number of standard-related things. You've unlocked two standard bearer titles, the only people that can carry standards are the guild leader or whoever it's assigned at the standard bearer title. Then I unlock a tactic slot, which means I can slot a tactic under my standard, and then a tactic point, and then I actually unlocked my Recruits-Battle standard.

You unlock your first standard, you unlock your first tactic point ... and then further down the line, you unlock more tactic points for the standards.

Christian: And more tactic slots.

Josh:

Everything sort of drives back to the core for lots of the social interaction, cooperation and so forth. One of the things that we're trying to get away from is the idea that you can be part of an uber-guild and that as a result, you can basically be anti-social as a Guild. You can go "We are the top badass dudes, and we ignore everybody else! We go out every night, we go on raids, and we ignore everybody else. You can't get into our guild ... you can't talk to our guild, we don't talk to you, we don't look at you, we're impossible to deal with, we're terrible, just ignore us." Because this game is large-scale world-spanning conflict-oriented, one guild is not going to be able to accomplish everything on their own.

They need to cooperate on a macro level, on an alliance level, and so in an effort to re-train people back into the idea that World War II wasn't just the Americans, or just the British, or just the Russians, that's the case. That was a coalition, sometimes a little tenuous, it was a group of people that came together, formed an alliance, strategically worked together - and obviously their sensibilities were different. The Americans behaved differently on the battlefield than the British, and everybody behaved differently to the crazy Russians, and that sort of thing. There's a place in that coalition for everyone. And so even though the United States and the Russians don't necessarily get along that well, they can come together for a common cause. So we're trying to remind people of that in subtle ways.

Guild halls are located in capital cities. Within that guild hall there are all sorts of special vendors and NPCs and so forth, they are only for people in guilds, and then there's actually a room upstairs, a special room that only the guild leadership can go into. It serves the purpose of a guild hall, access to different things, vaults and NPCs and all that other stuff, but it's communal so you're going to see people from different guilds that are all, effectively allied with you in a general sense. They might be specifically allied with you in that you actually have an alliance with that other guild, but then actually decisions are being made upstairs by the guild leadership.

In my perfect little vision of this, what you've got is hundreds of people downstairs getting drunk and punching each other in the face, and so on and so forth, and upstairs in the smoke-filled room, you've got the officers bickering over what are we going to do, how are we going to attack. Who's going to go for the Bright Wizard's College instead of the Temple of Sigmar when we breach the gates of Altdorf? And then they all come downstairs and they announce to their guildmates, "All right! We're allied with so-and-so now, we're going out on Tuesday, we're doing the thing ... check the calendar!" and off they go.

You're not going to be able to operate as a completely independent organization. To access everything, you're going to have to go and play nice-nice from time to time. You're going to have to work with other people, you're going to have to cooperate, you're going to have to socialize, we're going to force you into communal areas ... all the things that you do to children, basically, on the playground. You organize "You're all gonna go play dodgeball now." "I don't wanna play dodgeball!" "Play dodgeball!" ...and that sort of thing.

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