One guild per character in EverQuest Next? Or more?

Guilds do fall apart so if your bound to 1 guild and they go bad or ruined by drama you have that option to have other character's to pick and choose what guild they want to be in.

As much as I think guilds are necessary, instead of being enjoyable they become an absolute pain. They make demands on your limited time and become the focus of everything because only through this kind of grouping can you get to decent content. Those same demanding guild players defect in a heartbeat if another guild can get them where they wish to go. It just becomes a means to an end.

It's time to take solo players and small groups seriously in gaming. Most of us have a life outside of the games we love and only have small bits of time. Hard core guilds want every instance shaped to their will and want to punish anyone who doesn't "live" in the game like they do.

While I understand the lure of massive raids for some content, I feel that has become the focus. If I could, I would limit any raid or instance to 12 characters (no 20's or 50's).That way there would be more opportunities for everyone and each player would become more important overall in that group instead of just another button masher in the chaos. Creators seem to only want to make instances for those who will grind their life away in a huge group, over and over, for that one slim chance at a certain magical item.Yay for them. But please make a game where solo players and small groups, even PUG's can also get the great content.We want to socialize but we don't have four hours for your dungeon right now...

It really makes no sense to punish people who would give you the same amount of money and tax your servers less than the "live-ins". As people have less and less time available for entertainment, the creators who figure out how to satisfy those who are after short fantasy forays will be the survivors. It is time to make a fun game for those who live in the real world and just want brief vacations in the virtual one.

Do not bring up guns in EQ...that goes into a different thread....

I think every character should have the right to be a part of a family. Say 6 slots available. I also think they should be allowed to join a Clan. which could consist of 12 slots. And of course each character can join a guild having as many slots as necessary. It's the option that counts.

Bob of the Baggs Family, Chief of the Archery Clan, Member of the Council of the White Dragon..... ya know long title, but in medieval times, it was entirely plausible.

One toon, one guild. Guild alliance system game support, supper.
Maybe a guild selection choice be who on in alliance. Also a chat option for alliance chat. Are there going to be guild halls, guild communities? You may have a alliance portal. If guild made communities, maybe guild would have to make a alliance meeting ground.
Are communities going to get attacked by wandering beasts, an orc scouting party? A quick community emergency channel be in order then.
Hard to say what options needed, but please keep it one guild per character.

As you point out, having multiple memberships results in multiple (i.,e., NO) loyalties, and no sense of community.

While I love this idea from a player perspective (Having to go out and rally together players? A job board system where I can make my own listings and have people apply to join my raiding party for an event? That'd be awesome!) I have to put myself in the shoes of players who are shyer, quieter, not as outgoing or motivated.

Some players find a lot of comfort in guilds because they're a reliable group of people who are inclusive instead of exclusive. When you are part of a guild you are part of a team - people go out of their way to require you, to ask you to join, when you really want to but are too shy or withdrawn to ask yourself.

It's why we have the whole "want to join my guild" phenomenon in the first place - there's the people that want to ask, and there's the people that want to BE asked. There's players who will invite themselves, and there's players who want to be invited.

Having a lack of a guild system, I think, would be really fun from a hardcore perspective but would alienate a lot of players and make them not want to play the game, and I don't want that - more people playing the game makes for a richer, more busy, living world and a better experience for me. Especially in a game like EverQuest Next!

This^. Please don't make the same mistake GW2 and ESO are doing. If someone wants to join multiple guilds, then do it with another character. This can cause to many headaches for min/max guilds and guilds with structure who take their gaming seriously.

My instinct on this one is to vote "Keep it simple," but I'm going to abstain for now.

What is a guild? A union of players? A faction that contains both NPCs and players?

If we see guilds as they've traditionally been used in the past, then I say only one per character. GW2 tried the multi-guild thing, and it didn't really work out that well. But if we see guilds as more of a faction (as could be evidenced by the multiple types option), then I wouldn't see why we shouldn't have more than one.

Wow, now there's an idea I haven't considered. I have seen in the past raiding guilds often put loot above all else. In Velious, my guild switched from Dwarf, to Giant, to Dragon in all of three months based on the whims of how good the faction loot would be. Nothing worse than working up a faction, to destroy it for a new one, and then to destroy that sane faction thanks to the decisions of raid leaders.

If indeed your guild mates' actions would affect your guild faction, and inevitably your own faction with NPC's, that would make choosing a guild a HUGE decision. It would only make sense though - if my guild tag was "Bunny kickers" and my guild mates kicked bunnies all day long, I'd assume bunnies would be less than wanting to befriend me.

IF any votes matter, it will be the poll results, not how many times a single individual down checks an opposing point of view. Even if it did work the way you think it does, the number of thumbs up and thumbs down on each post would only reflect the poll results.

I will always want an adventuring guild and a friend/family guild. The f/f will tend to be people who are friends before and after EQN but they don't always have compatible EQN playstyles to be in the same traditional guild as I. The one guild rule forces me to choose and I'll probably choose the inferior EQN option to be with f/f which is not fun for me or good for EQN's long-term revenue.

If I could have a third guild, it would be crafting.

if I could have a fourth guild, it would be for my alts for a guild/legacy/account bank (e.g. crafting)

I think it was EQ1 that had a board up somewhere in the game, gosh that was so long ago I can not remember. But this would be a neat idea. You could post something if you wanted to lead a raid Friday night, and have people sign up. But then you have to hope they actually come. There should be a spot in the game somewhere, that encourages people grouping/raiding etc.. The drop down box for group finder has not worked in any game I've seen.

So the min/max guilds and structured guilds' needs win out over those of the family/social/everyone else guilds? Why not build a more flexible system that allows players to define the rules, rather than sledgehammering a one-size-fits-all solution?

I prefer more than one guild. I want different -types- of groups, but I want no limitations on how many of each I can be in, which is why the above poll is kind of unsatisfying. I don't want 'one of each'. I want chat channels active for each. I don't want to 'Rep" one at a time and be denied access to the rest while I'm 'Repping".

If you want only one guild, fine. Join only one guild. If you want more? Let us do more.

Considering the sandbox nature of the game, it seems only fair to keep social options as wide open as possible.

Gonna tell you a situation I was in in guildwars;
I joined a US guild as a EU player(always played on US channel) and enjoyed many nights with them playing guildwars.
Then when guildwars 2 came Irl friends asked me to join them on the EU side
And it was with pain in the heart that I couldn't play anymore with my US friends I made in guildwars1,still joined their guild in gw2 but could only see one chat at a time.
Thus the ability in guildwars 2 to join multiple guilds was not perfect as you only could see the chat of the guild you represented
and not the chat of all the guilds you were in.So you never knew where help was needed.
Then there also was the problem that you couldn't get together with players from a Us server on a EU server.
And the points you earned for the guild were wasted time on a server they probably will never be on.

In guildwars 1 this never was a problem;you wanted to play with US friends->switch to US channel in seconds,and vice versa.
And you had like a guild tab and an Alliance chat tab.
I would support it 100 procent if Everquest next was to adopt this.
Because it was very easy:nobody online in your guild you still could ask what the alliance guilds were upto?
No guild member to help you with a difficult part?;telling it in alliance chat often was the solution to still find someone for the job.An alliance chat were all the different guilds chat was displayed and where you could send a message to all was truly a big plus..And you made more friends in guilds that had a big network of alliances with different guilds.

Therefor I believe alliances will only improve the social structure of the community.
If there is an option to join multiple guilds max 2 or 3 guilds
And I do support families/clans for those few schoolfriends that want to play together or a family playing together..they shouldn't create a guild if they just want to have a cozy small group

Maybe you could have like a leader/motherguild that manages who can join an alliance.
IF then irl friends create a guild and ask you to join you could request them to join the allaince
Within the alliance you could represent any guild then perhaps
Loyalty-wise,Within the alliance you help any guild gain a % of the points if you are active in the alliance perhaps
Speaks for itself I voted "I'd like different types of guilds - e.g. families, alliances, guilds - and you belong to one of each type"
Many people forget how they limit themselves socially catering to only one guild.While a innovative guild/alliance system could still preserve loyalty by giving a bonus to all guilds
if a guild member achieves something with a guild in the alliance.
It would be win-win

I understand that many people are looking at EQN as a new game and therefore wanting to explore new concepts. Which is perfectly fine, but for my own personal preferences, when I join a guild, I give that guild and it's leadership my loyalty. I research a guild and try to get to know some people in it before I join it, because I despise guild-hopping and I don't join one lightly. I'll stick with it and have the leader's back, unless something happens to break that bond (i.e. leadership jumps to a new server with all the guild funds, or something like that).One guild per character is all I ever plan to join.

To give an example of this, when I played EQ1, I was in a guild of people I really enjoyed raiding and grouping with. When some of the leadership migrated to EQ2, I went with them and joined the guild they formed on launch day. I stayed in that guild for 8 years, until the roster had thinned out to the point of the remaining members working out a merge with another lightly staffed guild. It turned out that I didn't really get along with many of the members of other guild and conflicts and drama (the kind that never cropped up in the original guild) became too much to handle. I eventually left and joined another guild after grouping with some of the folks frequently enough to get to know them. So over the course of 15 years spanning two games...I've been in 3 guilds total.

That said, being in a guild shouldn't keep me from forming a different kind of group with friends I hang with consistently. Something like Fellowships in LOTRO, although I detest borrowing ideas from other games, is basically what I'm talking about. Pretty much what Syllogy talked about in the second or so post of this thread. I'd like to see one guild that a character can make a commitment to, but various social groups (I hate to use the word "clique" but that's basically what it is) that we can belong to at the same time.

I am inclined toward having guilds as well as families. In other games, including EQ1 & EQ2, many tiny guilds exist just to house a handful of perhaps not even a dozen people that like each other a lot. It would be wonderful to decrease the number of these tiny guilds by simply allowing those handfuls of people to form families; then they can be in whatever guild they want and still come home to the people they have deeper relationships with.

Holy ****, this sounds so awesome. Why is everyone not picking this????

One character may belong to 1 guild, alts being able to join a different 1 guild.