The Uberguild and it's effect on virtual worlds

[schild]

I don't participate in this forum that often, but there is one subject I'd like to ask questions about, particularly after leaving SW:G and ruminating on what had happened in my time away and the creation of player cities.

The uberguild, powerguild or whatever you want to call it exists, and it affects the world. They generally dominate economies, decide pricing schemes, and rule the metagame - absolutely. The question is, how do you control the uberguilds and keep them from dominating the game short of arbitrary caps on guildsize and developer intervention. Can they be controlled? What are the consequences? Do they really represent a large subscriber base, or are they just the loudest? Should having no life and being able to grind away all day result in you being the most powerful force in the game?

Perhaps back in the early days of UO, EQ, and a few other games the guilds weren't that much of a concern as it was virgin territory. But now we see companies like Blizzard asking EQ Guilds to come take part in the WoW beta. Is that a worthwhile marketing idea? I mean even the biggest guilds probably have an average of about 200 people (that are constantly active) - is it worth having those 200 people when you know there's a good chance they will ruin the game for many casual players?

Personally I hated interacting with the weaponsmiths in SW:G who did nothing but play all day and charge a huge premium because they were "The Only Person With The Tangle Pistol This Week."

If I were to list the top 10 things a game can do to bite itself in the ass, it's to allow a dominating guild have more effect on a game than a nerf patch, exploit fix, or rampant banning. When do you say no? Do you ever say no?

It's one thing to treat a guild as a business, it's another thing to allow them to become the Microsoft of your virtual world. Perhaps the developers should allow guilds to specialize in a certain number of items. Or assign a CSR rep to them as a watcher once they pass a certain number of people or gain too much notariety. These people aren't famous, they are just groups with the most time on their hands. They do not deserve the fame. They deserve some fresh air, a shower, and human interaction beyond the keyboard. Instead, they are given the red carpet treatment from the creators of the virtual world...and then the guilds return the favor by slowly destroying it.

I'll ramble more about this subject later, but I just wanted to set down some thoughts for people to respond to - or share experiences you've had with these uberguilds.

Of course, to sum up my feeling of them - I hope they die in a guildhouse fire - even if I, myself, am quite the powergamer.

[eldaec]

1) Allow people to join as many guilds as they like simultaneously. This encourages more single issue/project guilds, more leaders, and hence a less monolithic body politic.

2) Keep the economy complicated, and continually drip feed new content into it. Make equipment heavily context dependant, so the typical person has a variety of pistols for different purposes. The point of all this is to prevent single minded domination of 'the best weapon'.

3) Have realm wide objectives with realm wide rewards. If one guild really wants to dominate this content, everyone else gets the reward anyway.

4) Instance all repeatable content that does not have a realmwide payoff. Waiting on a spawn timer is not immersive, and not cool. Raid calendars are not immersive and not cool. Both cause pissing contests between guilds. Any argument against the immersiveness of instancing should really be directed against the immersiveness of repeatability. Unfortunately, while we cannot supply enough content so that every single quest is run once and only once by only one person, instancing is essential.

5) Take a long hard look at ATitD. The economy is complex enough, and items varied enough to prevent domination by a guild. Projects that benefit the realm are plentiful, and are generally run by a temporary meta guild of interested parties.

[HaemishM]

It's a simple concept.

If power in your game is gained mainly by time investment, big guilds will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS win. Period. Because they will have more people who will be able to combine the time to become more powerful than anyone else.

Limiting size won't stop it, because they'll just work around your size requirements. So long as more time invested = more power, they will always find a way to win.

SWG crafting (and any other economic crafting situation) involves lots of time, to harvest resources, practice up the skills and maintain inventory. EQ power is all about your levels and items, which is all controlled by how much time you put into that part of the game. Same goes with DAoC PVP power and crafting.

When player skill required to advance and succeed closely approaches zero, he who has more hands wins. Hands down, no pun intended.

I like the idea of letting people join more than one guild. Be a bear to maintain a guild chat apparatus though.

[schild]

SWG crafting (and any other economic crafting situation) involves lots of time, to harvest resources, practice up the skills and maintain inventory.

Guilds in SW:G came down to a science. Knowing when resources shifted, having your 5 accounts with 30 harvesters ready to drop down on the latest shift of Beryllius Copper. Then  picking them up when it ran dry and running of 1827398723 suits of Composite. I wouldn't say it was so much time, as the ability to completely dominate a resource by knowing there was a limited amount of space to lie down harvesters. I did this once, but it was a special scenario, I was wandering around on Rori and the resources shifted and I found some great copper with room for only two harvesters...and of course, I dropped two harvesters. But ever seen a field of 100 harvesters all from the same guild? Yea, it's stupid.

[Dren]

I like the idea of letting people join more than one guild. Be a bear to maintain a guild chat apparatus though.

You could imitate FFXI's system of linkshells.  You get a "pearl" for each guild you belong to.  You can only "equip" one pearl at any given time.  While pearl A is equipped, you are speaking in guildchat A's channel, etc.  

Of course, in FFXI, these were not really guild's so much as basic chat channels that you had to be invited to (given a pearl.)  However, I think even more could be built into those pearls to carry along rank, status, etc.

[Rasix]

The only games I've been a part of where the uber guild didn't dominate were UO and late ATITD.  Early ATITD showed just how prohibitive an effective uber guild could be as they effectively controlled some of the rare ores.  If you wanted tin, you went to guild X.  As the game became more cooperative at a base level (the tests really remained competitive at the highest level), people joined multiple guilds as the resources flowed more freely. Of course, people with large guild backings often had an edge in the tests that were just too hard to make up unless you were an extraordinary catass.

UO on the other hand was new.  Material weath was highly nonconsequential and maxxing out a character for the end game took less than a month for even the most time starved gamer.  The PVP was fast, mobile, and extremely tactical.  This made having a large amount of people a non issue.  Being part of a smaller guild, more tightly organized guild, we were able to use our skill  to overcome larger odds due to everyone being on a relatively flat power curve.

So, there you have some methods for overcoming an uber guild in a pvp setting: make skill trump time, make material wealth a non factor, make the pvp fast paced. Uber guilds will always win on time and wealth and in a game where the pvp is slow paced, the zerg will always triumph.

In a non pvp setting, there's really no way to staunch the uberguild's influence outside of placing limits on guild size.  However, this will likely just lead to a series of subguilds uniting under one banner.  (The opportunity for infighting in this situation is marvelous, however)  

I some key factors to make the uberguilds less of a burden on have already been mentioned here. Eldaec really hit the nail on the head with his points on realm wide bonuses and instanced raid encounters (for some situations).  If people see the uberguild as their champions instead of their asshole, time-gifted brethren, less people are bound to quit your game in disgust for having to deal with the ubers and you promote an overall healthier in game atmosphere.

As for economics.  There's no legit economic system that the uber guild will not completely dominate.  The more complex, the more varied the crafting, the more they will rule.  They can cover every base, game the system, and cut margins to near nothing and still rake in the profit.  However, SWG for a while turned this on it's head.  It wasn't really the uber's dominating, it was the early catasses.  Those that cornered the market early were able to make a killing.  But as time progressed, the ubers were able to dominate the market. However, the individual crafter was always able to make their way in the game.  I always did well as an independent droid manufacturer.  Sure I would have made easily 10x my profits with an uber guild backing + advertising machine but I was able to stay comfortable just like Darniaq was able to profit easily in his energy business.  

So, I suppose in a crafting based system, this is not nearly so bad as in a loot drop system where the ubers will really control the flow of high end items into the economy.  They will dictate when a certain item is common enough to let on the market and then charge enough to fund their raids for the next year and a half.

If one can turn the uberguilds from a stratifying force into a unifying one, then they can be a boon.  Otherwise, they come to exemplify all that's wrong with a game's power curve.

I don't really see a reason though for the EQ clones to reduce the uberguild influence because they help define the motivation for continuing to pay your 15 a month. They really are the carrot for the time starved and people a few standard deviations off the end game. The allure and promise of the end game radiates off them as they strut in their planes armor, carry their Sword of Carnage, and cast spells you've never seen before.   They're what keep the achievers striding forward.  They're the incrowd the socializer desperately wants to be a part of.  They're the people seeing the lands the explorer wants to see.  Subtract the negatives and they're still a positive force for the company that has them.  

Sorry for the disjointed ramble. But eh, I felt like writing.

[schild]

The allure and promise of the end game radiates off them as they strut in their planes armor, carry their Sword of Carnage, and cast spells you've never seen before.   They're what keep the achievers striding forward.  They're the incrowd the socializer desperately wants to be a part of.  They're the people seeing the lands the explorer wants to see.  Subtract the negatives and they're still a positive force for the company that has them.

Yes, for the first few games I played, I looked at them this way. Not I see them as: Oh, gee, a weapon I've never seen - I wish I could call my on 30 friends (who happen to smell of catass) to come and waste time to get my Sword of N00bler Reviving. It's just not impressive anymore.

Generally they are run by people who don't understand the structures inherent to a market economy and in turn end up completely ruining everything they touch.

[Rasix]

Yes, for the first few games I played, I looked at them this way. Not I see them as: Oh, gee, a weapon I've never seen - I wish I could call my on 30 friends (who happen to smell of catass) to come and waste time to get my Sword of N00bler Reviving. It's just not impressive anymore.

Well, same here.  I but you've got to believe that there's still a large portion of people that still consider this shit important.  I know I did when was playing EQ hardcore.  I dragged plenty of my non-hygenic friends through hell on earth to get my monk epic.

It's an important stage in your gaming life when you realize getting a certain item is worth less than the lowered grade on the test, the lost brownie points with your partener, or even 2 hours of sleep.

[Nebu]

Great dialogue so far, but I'm surprised you haven't touched on an aspect of power guilds that sticks in my mind: There are REAL financial incentives.  PL'ing, gold/platinum, and item selling on eBay have become a lucrative industry and guess who stands to gain from it... that's right, powerguilds.  They have both limitless player coordination and time to obtain items en masse and sell them for real cash.

Now, I'm not trying to enter into the tired debate of whether this is ok or not, I'm just stating that there can be large financial benefits to being a part of a mega-guild.  

For me, growing up has taught me much of what you are saying about priorities.  I'm now finding that when I do spend the time to camp anything, it's typically to give away to someone that I know will gain some happiness from it.  Catassing a few hours to make someone smile is usually a decent investment for me.

[Djamonja]

SWG crafting (and any other economic crafting situation) involves lots of time, to harvest resources, practice up the skills and maintain inventory.

Guilds in SW:G came down to a science. Knowing when resources shifted, having your 5 accounts with 30 harvesters ready to drop down on the latest shift of Beryllius Copper. Then  picking them up when it ran dry and running of 1827398723 suits of Composite. I wouldn't say it was so much time, as the ability to completely dominate a resource by knowing there was a limited amount of space to lie down harvesters. I did this once, but it was a special scenario, I was wandering around on Rori and the resources shifted and I found some great copper with room for only two harvesters...and of course, I dropped two harvesters. But ever seen a field of 100 harvesters all from the same guild? Yea, it's stupid.

There is a good site for SWG resources info:

http://www.swgcraft.com/home.php

Resources spawn at multiple nodes -- easily dozens per planet, and resources are typically on multiple planets. There is no way for one guild to dominate any resource. I haven't experienced any uber guilds dominating anything on the server I play on -- the biggest guilds are all fairly loose associations that don't seem to have any cohesive purpose. Some of the mid-sized guilds seem to be a lot worse about trying to camp specific areas of the game, but they certainly aren't dominant.

[Koyasha]

I like the idea of letting people join more than one guild. Be a bear to maintain a guild chat apparatus though.

You could imitate FFXI's system of linkshells.  You get a "pearl" for each guild you belong to.  You can only "equip" one pearl at any given time.  While pearl A is equipped, you are speaking in guildchat A's channel, etc.  

Of course, in FFXI, these were not really guild's so much as basic chat channels that you had to be invited to (given a pearl.)  However, I think even more could be built into those pearls to carry along rank, status, etc.

Gods no.  Look, while I love FFXI and all kinds of things about it, Linkpearls are one of the most annoying things EVER.  A: They take up inventory space, in a game where inventory space is at a premium.  In another game this may not be the case, but that's not the only problem with them.  B: You can only be in one at a time.  Excuse me?  In EQ, I was in guildchat and about 8 channels simultaneously once they introduced the channel system.  A couple serverwide channels for my class, a couple guild/alliance channels, a channel with my friends, an auction channel, and a couple channels for other purposes.  Being limited to one linkshell at a time is a serious pain in the ass.

And, what IS a guild, mechanically speaking, other than a chat channel, in many games?  EQ, that's definitely all it was.  You gained guildchat and got to have a guildtag.

Now don't get me wrong, I like the idea of being in multiple guilds at once, in a way...it has it's disadvantages, though.  Loyalty goes down in such a situation.  In FFXI, you have people with a half-dozen linkshells that cycle through them when they have something they want, but aren't that interested in helping other people from their linkshells.  Still, I think it could be good.  But definitely, I'd want the ability to be in at least 10 of them at a time, listening to all the chat channels.  EQ's UI handles this just fine, and if you ask me, any game better have at LEAST as good a UI as EQ to make me happy with it.

Great dialogue so far, but I'm surprised you haven't touched on an aspect of power guilds that sticks in my mind: There are REAL financial incentives. PL'ing, gold/platinum, and item selling on eBay have become a lucrative industry and guess who stands to gain from it... that's right, powerguilds. They have both limitless player coordination and time to obtain items en masse and sell them for real cash.

I disagree..  I find that among all the guilds I've been in (2 uberguilds in EQ, and I can log in characters in 2 others, and 2 other mid-high end guilds) I find that the uberguilds are some of the most opposed to this sort of thing.  Probably because most of these people have a 'well, we worked our asses off to get here, and nobody better be able to BUY their way to our level, damnit!' attitude.  Not to mention the general looking down upon noobs, and anyone who hasn't gotten to these levels by lots and lots of hard work is a noob.  So I would say that if an uberguild dominates these resources, it's actually less likely they'll end up on the out-of-game market.

[Nebu]

I disagree..  I find that among all the guilds I've been in (2 uberguilds in EQ, and I can log in characters in 2 others, and 2 other mid-high end guilds) I find that the uberguilds are some of the most opposed to this sort of thing.  Probably because most of these people have a 'well, we worked our asses off to get here, and nobody better be able to BUY their way to our level, damnit!' attitude.  Not to mention the general looking down upon noobs, and anyone who hasn't gotten to these levels by lots and lots of hard work is a noob.  So I would say that if an uberguild dominates these resources, it's actually less likely they'll end up on the out-of-game market.

Another reminder that mmog's are even less like "games" than I give them credit.  If you have to "work" for it, then (for me) it loses the "fun" or "game-like" aspects.  I guess you could say that uberguilds are the Henry Ford in the gaming world.  They do work better and more efficiently.

[daveNYC]

It would be interesting to get some numbers.  Like:
How many Uber-Gulds are there industry wide?
How many members does each of them have?
How many Uber-Guilds can be supported on each server due to content/economic-resource availability?
Do the ubers decide to dominate one game at a time, or do they multi-catass?

[Rasix]

Ubers give ebay lip service, nothing more.  They get really pissed when members ebay, get huffy about ebayed characters trying to join their guild, and proclaim to never partake it in it.

It's all bullshit.

Oddly enough, some of my best in-game friends in EQ were some of the most prominent ebayers in the game. Both buying and selling.  Most if not all were either highly connected with the top tier guilds or members themselves.  They try to keep it on the down low, because if it was more open they'd lose some of their street cred with their legions of toadies.

Really, it's big money and they're in a prime position by skimming a little here and there to make a killing.  They roll on a non no-drop item they don't need, make some of the table scraps disappear and use their in game advantage to put themselves in a very favorable ebaying position.  It's not a high percentage of the members, but it's high enough to see why someone might want to spend a majority of their leisure time raiding when their day job is refilling your water glass at the local cafe.

I've never seen an actual "e-bay guild" in any of the games I've played formed explicitly for converting in game accomplishments into real life cash. It's more certain people in the system (as explained above), "farm teams" (optimized group of friends that farm spawns, sell the items and ebay the plat), or organized IGE operation.

[Fabricated]

I've never seen an actual "e-bay guild" in any of the games I've played formed explicitly for converting in game accomplishments into real life cash. It's more certain people in the system (as explained above), "farm teams" (optimized group of friends that farm spawns, sell the items and ebay the plat), or organized IGE operation.

It doesn't count as an MMORPG, but PSO is guilty of having some of the worst ebay farmers ever. Funny enough, considering there are easy to do dupe bugs in every single version of the game (minus PSO 1&2+, which is only out in Japan right now). I smacked a friend of mine for wasting $10 on ebay to get a gigantic stack of rare items he probably could've gotten some board gamesharker to dupe for free.

It's not so much like that anymore, what with PSO being all but dead on all fronts due to there being absolutely nothing to do but collect rares and kill monsters.

[eldaec]

I like the idea of letting people join more than one guild. Be a bear to maintain a guild chat apparatus though.

It's no more complicated than the Atitd guild system, the swg chat channel system, or irc really.

[chinslim]

The problem with uberguilds from both an uberguilder and an outsider's perspective is that they've outgrown their server "sandbox."  The uberguilds don't get challenged enough and the outsiders feel squeezed out.  The obvious solution is to design your game's infrastructure and database for movement flexibility.  

Design game and server mobility so that players can move their characters to their ideal playing environment.   In every sport, there are leagues of all levels.  The same can be applied to MMO's...that is if you don't do stupid #%# like keying by first names or even constraining unique first names.

That, or the Guild Wars approach is promising with instanced PvP environments matching up similar teams.

[MrHat]

The problem with uberguilds from both an uberguilder and an outsider's perspective is that they've outgrown their server "sandbox."  The uberguilds don't get challenged enough and the outsiders feel squeezed out.  The obvious solution is to design your game's infrastructure and database for movement flexibility.  

Design game and server mobility so that players can move their characters to their ideal playing environment.   In every sport, there are leagues of all levels.  The same can be applied to MMO's...that is if you don't do stupid #%# like keying by first names or even constraining unique first names.

That, or the Guild Wars approach is promising with instanced PvP environments matching up similar teams.

The problem then becomes fucknut Uber Guilds wanting to play on the casual server so that they can remain Uber instead of the norm.

[Kageru]

There's one trick that lets uberguilds work, it's focus of power. See a normal guild needs numbers to play a lot of game systems, but those people are erratic, selfish and occassional. So you need a large number of people in order to have the critical mass when you need it. And lots of time ends up being spent in organising this mass, or dealing with their individual demands. And when the game system rewards you that progression is divided amongst the horde.

The uberguild wins because it demands high investment per person, which allows it to get by with a low population. Thus power, class balance and character progression are all focused. Tactics is automatically improved when it's the same people every night, 5+ nights a week. It just works better, and the success of this model attracts those who prize such success. Heck, the guilds themselves tend to become famous for their success, which provides another re-inforcing influence.

You can restrict it in gameplay terms by having no rewards that result from group actions, but I very much doubt it's worth the damage you do to the game. Don't bother with simplistic technical limitations, intelligent people will always work around them (not that teamspeak isn't becoming the default anyway).

Incidentally restricting guild population (L2, EQ2) actually works in the uber-guilds favor. They are organized so as to get maximum contribution per person, so any numerical limit increases their power relative to more normal guilds. It's a shame the people who thought 24 person EQ2 raids where a good idea didn't get that.

[Soukyan]

Generally they are run by people who don't understand the structures inherent to a market economy and in turn end up completely ruining everything they touch.

This is the reason that virtual economies do not work in this game. There is no real mimicry of a working model and there are players who will work 80 hours a week to earn money in a virtual world, but won't move a finger to work in real life and earn money. Because the real world economy is hard. Of course, I wouldn't want the real world economy in a game anyhow. It's bad enough that I'm usually slightly above pauper in games. If they were to mimic real life more closely, I'd never be able to afford a thing.

[El Gallo]

I disagree with Haemish that the reason uber guilds dominate is because the games reward time investment.  I know tons of people who play EQ as long or longer (hours per week wise) than people I know in my server's top two guilds do.  These are people who solo a lot, craft a lot, or are in all kinds of other guilds, from "family style" guilds to midrange guilds to feeder guilds.  They are not very powerful.

I think that the reason uber guilds dominate is because these games reward cooperation.  The #1 advantage the uberguild has over other guilds is that they cooperate many, many, many orders of magnitude more efficiently than regular guilds or unguilded players do.

During my peak EQ playing days, I was in a semi-family, semi-power guild that was well behind the top 2 guilds on the server.  I also occasionally raided with the top guild.  The difference was like night and day.  They didn't really spend more time raiding than we did.  We'd spend 4 hours raiding, which included an hour of waiting for everyone getting to the zone, an hour and a half clearing through the zone to the target, an hour organizing our shit so we knew who would do what and when during the fight while fighting respawn and bringing in latecomers, and a half hour actually killing the thing.  2 hours if we wiped because one of the clerics was smoking/walking their dog/taking a crap and didn't tell anyone.

In the uberguild, most people were at the zone when the raid was supposed to start.  Buffing took seconds, and clearing started immediately.  During the clearing, people who logged in late because of work or whatever were teleported in and immediately folded into groups and started perfroming their role.  After the clearing was done, teleports were called off and any latecomers were told to go to the next raid zone.  They spent maybe 5 minutes at the target going over instructions and checking to see that every group was at the keyboard and ready for the fight.  The fight itself was brutally efficient.  Everyone knew what the fuck they were doing and how to do it.  When something changed for the worse (big adds out of nowhere, lose a few healers to rampage, or lose the top 2 tanks), everyone would automatically adapt to the new situation and handle it, often without any formal instructions (any of those things would usually wipe my guild).

The raid that took us 4 hours took them maybe 1.  They would raid the same 4 hours we did, but get 4x the targets and 4x the loot.  They did this because they just plain cooperated better than we did, and cooperation is the name of that game.

I also agree with Kageru that the small, instance-enforced raid sizes of WoW&EQ2 make the uberguild more powerful than ever.

As for how to stop them?  Eliminate cooperation as a useful thing in your game.  Uberguilds don't dominate Asheron's Call (at least on PvE Servers 2 years ago, when my real experience with that game ended) and they don't dominate Diablo 2, because those games don't reward cooperation all that much.  I only played SWG a month or 2, but it seemed similar.  I was wiping my ass with credits just from clicking that swgcraft.com link once every week.  A tight group of, say, 5 people would have been overkill in that game.  Bringing a real, live uberguild to SWG to dominate its economy would be like killing a mouse with a nuclear missile.

The other way is to suck the multiplayer out of MMOG with instancing (/flamebait).  In EQ, when Fires of Heaven killed the dragon, the dragon was dead for everyone for a week.  FoH would have better gear than you and they would be able to kill it easier next week, too.  Then they'd move to dragon 2, and kill it with their loot from dragon 1, etc.  In WoW/EQ2, an infinite number of copies of all the dragons are sitting there waiting to be killed once per week per guild.  You'll never advance as far as they do unless you get as organized as they are, but at least they can't actually hurt you.

[schild]

You'll never advance as far as they do unless you get as organized as they are, but at least they can't actually hurt you.

See. That's the problem. You people believe that it has something to do with PVP. It has nothing to do player-killing. It's ALL about ruining the economy by controlling the flow. It'd be one thing if they did it correctly, but the don't. Many of these people are high school/college kids with nothing better to do and they don't understand the first thing about free market economics. Just look at SW:Gs market. It's goddamn awful.

[El Gallo]

Uh, I wasn't talking about PvP, I was talking about killing a dragon for its lewts, which takes that dragon and its loot table off the market for everyone else that week until the dragon respawns.  Controlling the flow of valuable resources into EQ.  If that's PvP, so is your SWG economics example.  Instancing makes this problem go away, because instancing eliminates economic scarcity.

I don't know what SWGs market is like now, but when I played the issue was hyperinflation.  People aren't stupid, they behaved exactly like real life people would under those circumstances.  Economics is primarily a descriptive discipline.  You are treating it as if it is normative.  If people in an economic simulator aren't behaving according to the predictions of an economic model, it is because your model is wrong or your simulator is wrong.  In MMOGs, its the simulator (to the extent that they are trying to simulate a real world economy, which I dont't think they are, because a real world economy is extremely un-fun).  You seem to be screaming "why don't these morons treat this broken joke of an economic simulator as it it was an economic simulator that works really well" which is, I think, an exercize in frustration.

[ajax34i]

The same problem as with ruining other aspects of the game, though: players are not devs, and their goal in-game is not to promote the "health" of the game.  Even an economics major will go for fun and/or instant gratification over "keeping the economy healthy."  That's the devs' job, not the players'.

[AlteredOne]

Instancing makes this problem go away, because instancing eliminates economic scarcity.

 

I see no problem with eliminating economic scarcity via this method, at least for monster-dropped items.

The key in my view, is whether a gathering system for "scarce" resources, combined with a crafting system that produces desireable items, can offer a functional economy.  Presumably the crafters themselves will not be able to harvest everything themselves.  I did not play in WoW beta long enough to evaluate the overall economic system, but do you think they have done a decent job with the harvesting/crafting as an economic market?

[El Gallo]

WoW is like PoP-era EQ1 in that crafting can make great gear, but getting the materials to make the very best crafted stuff is much, much, much harder than skilling up a crafter who can turn those items into a sword of asswhoopage.

In the end, when the dragon drops the "ore of asswhoopage" you think "sweet, it dropped a sword of asswhoopage" because converting the ore into the sword is a trivial exercize any number of guild mules can perform.  Personally, they might as well have the dragon just drop the damn sword and skip that BS.

The only game I am aware of that tried to address this is EQ2, by making skilling up a crafter a brutalizing grind, in an attempt to make it just as costly to convert the ore as it is to get it.

WoW's gathering/crafting market works much better on the low-medium end, I think.

[chinslim]

Just look at SW:Gs market. It's goddamn awful.

Nowadays, you're probably lucky if your SWG's economy even has a heartbeat.   I don't see how anyone can dominate in SWG when an extra account allows you to harvest more than what you'll ever use.  Regarding player-driven economies, I don't think they should ever exist, because in the long run, player-driven economies tend to become corrupted or they shrivel away from player boredom.

I think that the reason uber guilds dominate is because these games reward cooperation.

This is probably the truth more than anything.  Uberguilds demand obedience and conformity to the objectives of the guild.  I've seen it everywhere: members simply don't want to be seen out of line with the heavyweights of their guild as not to impact their playing time.

[Kageru]

The advantage of having a boss-mob drop a crafting component is that it allows you to partially customize the drop. One drop allowing you to choose between the several items it can make. However most of the high level crafting drops I've heard of in WoW have basically been high level, self-inforced, collection quests. The group needs X drops of uber-ore which demands Y hours gaming in the instance.

I'm not surprised that SWG can't be monopolized, given that it has an endless inflow of the components for the most powerful items in the game. And the dominant hunting group is a kiting soloist AFAIK. Of course I believe they've been moving away from that with drops that take a high level group to get.

[Typhon]

I think there are two ways to mitigate the impact of big guilds - give the 'casual' player access to the tools of organization within game, and make guilds a more intrinsic part of the game.

One thing that alot of 'casual' gamers lack are the tools to cooperate that the big guilds have - web sites, and the dedication and discipline that is required to use and upkeep those tools while not in-game.  WoW and CoH have added in-game mail (with WoWs implementation having in-game impact, a good choice, imo).  Focus on bringing more of the tools of bulletin boards and web forums available in-game, allowing casual groups in increased ability to coordinate.

The other way to limit the impact of big guilds is to have some in-game impact on being a member of a guild, especially a big guild.  Make guilds have an in-game political presence, with the 'faction' of the guild made up of the factions of its members.  Lone players, or small guilds can 'fly under the radar' of factions, but big guilds should find themselves having to choose sides, pay taxes, etc.  Along with this, abolish the idea that the player can be all things to all factions, players must make real choices about which faction's favor they wish to curry, and stick with that choice.

Guilds being real political presense within the game world also seems to open possibilties for in-game spys, double dealings, etc.  The rogue could actually go from being a melee damage dealer, to playing a different game then the warrior or mage.