One of the core mechanics of EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is "Living Guilds," a testament of their overall importance. While such ideas communicate the old school style of guildcentric activities, this game promises to implement them in new ways. Associate Producer Josh Drescher and Designer Christian Bales join us for part 3 of our interview series where Josh will discuss not only what makes Warhammer Online's guilds great but why their methods worked in Dark Age of Camelot.

Ten Ton Hammer: Josh now that you've mentioned what you saw as "opportunities" in the development of the game. Christian how about you?

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Guilds Will Control Areas Like These

Christian: Rewarding is a good way to say it. To take everything we've talked about with veteran guild members and actually put it in the game. That's been tremendous.

Josh: I have another answer and I'm going to answer for Christian now. The thing for Christian has been having to show off the Guild System with programmer art. They're all brilliant, but she'll say something to them like "Alright guys. What we need for the Heraldry is a color picker that allows me to go through and pick colors for my heraldry. So if you could be sure to implement that so I can mock it up and show it off to my boss that would be great."

I was actually around when the color picker was unveiled and it was the mathematical thing where it went "Here are 900 variations of the color green!" That satisfies the exact explicit request we made but I think we need to rub an artist on it now. I've sat in on presentations she's been giving over the last year and there is almost always something lurking under her pad that is awesome but in programmer art. One of the things I'm looking forward to is Christian being able to give live demos of a fully functioning guild window.

Christian: Yes the pretty window! The programmer art was good but saying every presentation "We promise it's going to be much prettier than this" has definitely been a challenge.

Ten Ton Hammer: On the flip side of that. If you had to sell someone on Warhammer Online and what it's guilds do better than other games, what one element would you choose?

Josh: The focus on getting away from the idea that in order to be part of a guild you need to be "crazy." The example I always use is, the only guild I've ever been a member of is was a guild called Solo Threat. The only reason we even formed was because there was some option we could get like a tabard that was only available if you joined a guild. So we'd get together, find the minimum number of people necessary, form up, get our tabard, and agree to never speak to each other again.

Prior to the implementation of our guild system, it felt like there was this steep incline between "I have joined a low level guild" and "I am actually effective as a guild." And again that was a function of guilds being sort of an after thought in most games. A lot of thought has gone into making sure that the philosophy "Your guild, your way" really works. If you are a casual group of friends and you want to get together and make a guild? You shouldn't be punished for trying to engage content because there are only ten of you. Similarly you shouldn't be punished for being successful and having sixty people.

The design scales amazingly well for different guilds with different play styles and different memberships. We've been very careful to do this in a way that consistently rewards people that play with a good heart and engages the system as a social mechanic and organizational structure. We want them to be able to do this without getting crazy and into an elitist crapfest. We wanted to get away from "On this server such and such guild dominates and everyone else is a chump" instead making them a lively vibrant part of every players experience.

This affected a lot of the decisions we've made in other parts of the game. The Public Quest system in the last 6-9 months we've finally admitted one of our real goals was to trick people into being nicer to each other. We want to teach them how to play socially and drive them into the guild system. A lot of people go through these games and play for years doing nothing more than a pick up group. They've come to view a guild as this intimidating commitment where you're agreeing to wear rubber Spock ears. We wanted to show it's not like that.

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Don't be a Loner Like This Guy

Christian: I agree with Josh! *laughs* I'm biased when it comes to that question. The whole system we're tremendously proud of. It's been an effort to get it into the game but we're really there.

Ten Ton Hammer: This is kind of a philosophical approach to guilds and based on experiences from Dark Age of Camelot. You've talked about how guilds have progressed over time, are you really promoting Destruction vs Order on a certain server and the Destruction guilds will know each other?

Josh: We would hope so. One of the core differentiating factors is if you look at what made DAoC's guilds different than other games was not so much the system itself but the function of RvR. RvR is such a demonstrative evocative event that is completely different than a guild going on a PvE raid. A guild accomplishing something that benefits your entire realm generates that sense of heroic celebrity. It's something visible the group which actually took part in that activity. These guilds in DAoC were doing things that mattered to you so you noticed them.