As a gaming community, the Immortal Gaming Network's leadership team often asks ourselves, why is that? Why do we struggle to recruit people for our various gaming chapters only to find that 90% of the people we recruit have no desire to get to know their fellow players and develop the sense of loyalty and guild pride that was once prevelant in MMO's of yester-year.
There are various reasons why we find a lack of guild pride or guild loyalty in today's environment. I'd like to give my views on a few of these reasons here and see what other people think about the current state of guild loyalty.
1. So many games.. so little time
If we look back a few years, there were really only a handful of powerhouse games in the market. Two that come to mind immediately are Everquest and Anarchy Online:
Everquest (Released in 1999), one of the original MMO's, with what at the time was a BEAUTIFUL gaming interface captured the hearts and minds of players across the world. Giants, Dragons, Goblins and Gnawls cascaded across this imaginary world drove players wild. Joining forces with other players across the world, you built you vast army of guildmates, spent hours and hours crawling through dungeons for a small chance at getting the armor and weapons you craved. This would allow you to go into the next dungeon and get even better armor and weapons. The truly hardcore would venture into places like Sleepers Tomb and North Temple of Veeshan where dragons and golems awaited you from the onset. The best armor and weapons were available to those who dared go into the depths of Veeshan's Peek and risk losing it all. The epic weapons quests for each class along with the quests to obtain keys for these end game zones compelled players to stay with their guilds and developed a sense of pride when your guild was able to finish the quest for you or get enough players keyed to enter these dungeons if you dared.
In Anarchy Online (Released in 2001), A science fiction based MMO in which World PVP pressed players into battles where your gear and money could be looted from your corpes. Sticking close to your guildmates or calling upon your guild to come help you when you were being corpes camped built your sense of guild pride and loyalty.
Both of these games forced players into a guild environment to press onward in the story line and see newly created content. But both of these games also had a downside: "Level Grinding".
The "level grind" is the amount of time it took players to reach maximum level in the game, a level profficient enough to challenge end game dungeons and begin collecting gear. This kept numerous players from experiencing the end game and limited the MMOs of that time from gaining a solid player base.
With the release of more "casual friendly" games such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft and Trion's Rift, the true "level grind" has all but been eliminated and as such - companies have drawn in a much larger player audience than previously seen. There are so many more games to choose from and these games are much more casual gamer friendly, than ever before.
As part of this shift towards the casual gaming experience, gaming companies have shifted away from the theory that it takes big groups to kill big monsters. In both World of Warcraft and Rift, the minimum party size to take on new content is 10 people with a maximum of 25 (WoW) and 20 (Rift).
What happened to the days of 70+ people taking on a dragon (in EQ) or 40 people heading into a dungeon (early WoW) to down the latest fire god? When will these companies realize that limiting the number of people in raids also limits the epicness of the fight and as such dumbs down the guild moralle and guild loyalty that such encounters builds?
2. Gamer ADHD... oh look.. shiney!
It seems today that so many gamers could be used as the ADHD poster child. We have seen so many recruits come and go because they "lose interest" with the game, only to return 6 months later when they get bored, we have progressed and now all of a sudden, they want to play again. Of course they have the expectation that they will just gear up quickly and jump right back into the fight with us after leaving us high and dry and having to recruit for their positions on the raid team.
Quality gamers who know their roles/classes and characters but also aren't complete asshats who are looking for the next best thing seem to be difficult to come by these days. The next shiney object; be that a piece of loot they want or be that the thrill of belonging to the next ranked guild seems to drive players to guild hopping and as such, destroys the moralle and fabric that holds quality gaming guilds together.
3. Solid Leadership
It seems these days that guild leaders come and go. Good leaders are hard to find and if by chance you do find a great guild leader or awesome raid leader, the utter bullsh*t that they go through to keep things running burns most of them out pretty quickly.
Finding a good guild leader or good raid leader is difficult. Leadership is generally not a talent someone learns but a talent that one is born with. Being charasmatic is one thing; but being able to resolve disputes, lead ordinary people to greatness, seeing through the outer exterior of your guildmates to the core of who they are, being encouraging yet also being firm when needed all while being charasmatic is something completely different! Now let's not only try to find one person to do this, but 5 or 6 people with these traits to lead a guild of 150+ people! Good luck with that!
We have been blessed to be able to find leadership that is solid and while we don't always see eye to eye on everything, we do tend to be able to resolve most disputes and keep the guild moving forward. Unfortunately not everyone can do that and as such, we as leaders have developed a community of guild hoppers, looking for the next best place to go. That is something that needs to stop!
4. Family and Friends or Hardcore Raiding?
Some people may argue that being in a hardcore raiding guild does not promote guild moralle or loyalty and in some ways those people are right. However, in other ways those people may be dead wrong. Think about this.
A group of family and friends that play together generally live in the same area and see each other outside of the game and therefor have the basis for a relationship that goes beyond the game. However the Hardcore Raid guild may spend multiple hours together working on the same raid encounters and through that time spent "together" in their vent raid channel and in game, develop long lasting friendships or relationships which can be as strong as friends who do see each other outside the gaming environment. The thrill of the victory in a fight that takes hours to master can be a strong bond that brings people together. I know that I still keep up with people I developed relationships "in game" with more than 10 years ago. Some of my fondest memories of gaming, are with those gamers in my EQ Guild, Fury's Edge. I've kept up with a number of them and most recently, they have joined the Immortal Gaming Network's, World of Warcraft chapter to come play and have fun once again. That type of bond, was made in a "hardcore raiding guild" without ever speaking to those people in ventrilo (it didn't exist back then).
In closing...
We would love to say that these are the only reasons that guild loyalty has declined over the years and that if you fix just these things, you will find yourself in a better position... there are so many more reasons why guild loyalty has dropped.
We would be interested in hearing why you believe that guild loyalty has declined over the years and what you think can be done to reverse the trend...
