Making guilds a business

[lariac]

About two weeks ago, I was trolling around on the vnboards and noticed a post I can honestly say that I had never seen before. Someone brought up the idea of pay per guilds. Basically you pay a monthly fee and in turn, the guild would provide you access to high end content, leveling services, crafting items and other things.

Now whether you like this or correlate it to gold farming/item buying is up to you, what I wonder if it would make a feasible business model?

One thing I do wonder is if it would weed out the asshats due to the monthly subscription.

Granted there would be TONS of things that would have to be taken into consideration; Loot distribution being probably the biggest.

Another thing that would be cool is this service providing access to other MMO games. You could trade in currency from one game and transfer it to another that the guild supports.

[schild]

The moment guilds become more businesslike is the moment they become less fun.

Like those dumb syndicate motherfuckers who are probably going to get sued by whoever owns the license to the game Syndicate. Which is, ironically Electronic Arts. I hope the copyright was worth the money.

[shiznitz]

What about the concept of guilds becoming gatekeepers? Instead of subscribing to EQ2, one subscribes to a guild. This guild then "buys" account keys from the game and allocates them to the guild members.

We all know that there are people out there who would pay money to be part of an uber-guild for whatever (pathetic?) reason. The people one plays MMOGs with makes a huge differences in one's enjoyment of the MMOG. I played Planetside with KAAOS for about six months and cannot even conceive of playing PS again without being in an organized Outfit like that. Planetisde was a much better gameas part of a cohesive unit than as a solo grunt.

People pay small fortunes to join exclusive golf clubs. Maybe MMOGs will move in the same direction. If there are players willing to support 10 SWG accounts at $15/month each, there are players willing to spend $100/month to play in a semi-exclusive world.

[schild]

I think I've got a little throwup in my mouth.

[WindupAtheist]

Most really large "PVP" guilds in UO these days are essentially Ebay cartels.  The "power scrolls" needed to begin training a skill beyond 100 drop only from bosses found in Felucca, and so those spawns are heavily contested.  The scrolls then go on Ebay, or are sold for gold, which itself then goes up for auction.  I've never heard of one of these guilds charging membership dues, but from what I hear the more organized ones do have a very strict "We're here to make money, not have fun!" attitude.  Fortunately there are enough competing guilds, smaller guilds, guilds of night owls who specialize in getting scrolls while the big guns are in bed, that the market is impossible to really lock down.

[schild]

I've definitely got throwup in my mouth.

[andar]

One thing I do wonder is if it would weed out the asshats due to the monthly subscription.

If there's one thing we've learned from WoW or any other MMO, it is that asshats have money to spend on things like MMOs

[WindupAtheist]

The modern UO economy is... weird... by the usual MMORPG standards.  I mean, it functions well enough, it's just really strange.  Not only can you spend real dollars on things that would "normally" cost only virtual gold, but you can spend virtual gold on things that you would expect to pay real dollars for.

When you purchase a service like a shard transfer or a name change, you don't just get the service.  You get a physical "token" that can be used to activate that service, or traded to another player.  Brokers buy them in quantity, then sell them to players for gold, which they turn around and sell on Ebay.  The bottom line is that if you have enough gold, you never have to spend a dollar at all.  You can buy your shard transfer from another player with your foozle-whacking proceeds, and let the Ebay catasses figure out how EA is going to get paid.  It's quite convenient, actually.

Hell, I know people who maintain their accounts by trading gold to brokers in exchange for subscription codes.

[Nija]

The moment guilds become more businesslike is the moment they become less fun.

MC at 8:30 EST every tuesday! BWL on wednesdays, 8:30 EST as well. Onyxia on friday for you newbies who still need that crap, thursday, 8:30 EST sharp!

They've been less fun for years before WoW, but they're reaching new levels of unfun.

edit: the pay to be a member of a guild thing would work really good in Eve. Want to have mining/ratting rights at some awesome POS way the fuck out in 0.0? Pay up.

[Numtini]

That's a really interesting idea. In terms of games that prohibit RMT, powerlevelling services, and all that, it would be far too easy to just look at all the people with the guild tag and ban them. The model won't work there.

However, for games that allow that kind of cheating, I don't know. It seems like a more or less valid form of "gaming tourism" to me. Join and for $50 a month, we'll give you a 60 level and provide you with twice weekly excursions to MC. I can see some takers.

[Telemediocrity]

The solution, from the dev side, is to do what AC1 devs did to some extent (yeah, fanboi, I know):  Make 'lesser' versions of uber content, experienceable at lower levels.  The AC1 uber-quest Gaerlan has a version that's level 80+ that's the "main" version, but also versions for 60-80, 40-60, and 20-40 that provide roughly the same playing experience with appropriately scaled rewards.

Of course, such a plan only works if you're not trying to use timesinks to keep your playerbase around indefinitely.  Which might be one more contributing factor as to why AC1 is only at about 50,000 subscribers.  Whoops.

From the player-base side of the equation;  Doesn't EQ1 run a $40 a month server with exclusive quests, content, and uber-thisses-and-thats?  What ever happened to that?  And was the playerbase any less petulant than usual?

[Dren]

The modern UO economy is... weird... by the usual MMORPG standards.  I mean, it functions well enough, it's just really strange.  Not only can you spend real dollars on things that would "normally" cost only virtual gold, but you can spend virtual gold on things that you would expect to pay real dollars for.

When you purchase a service like a shard transfer or a name change, you don't just get the service.  You get a physical "token" that can be used to activate that service, or traded to another player.  Brokers buy them in quantity, then sell them to players for gold, which they turn around and sell on Ebay.  The bottom line is that if you have enough gold, you never have to spend a dollar at all.  You can buy your shard transfer from another player with your foozle-whacking proceeds, and let the Ebay catasses figure out how EA is going to get paid.  It's quite convenient, actually.

Hell, I know people who maintain their accounts by trading gold to brokers in exchange for subscription codes.

Who the hell is at the bottom of this economy driving the entire business?  There has to be somebody just playing the game and paying for stuff so they can enjoy it more.  The way you describe it, nobody enjoys the game, but uses it as a way to make money.  For that to work there has to be a pretty good sized population driving it.

It would be interesting to see what the break down is for the player base.  10% farmers vs. 90% players?  10% get all the press and conversation over gameplay and design while 90% go along completly ignorant to what goes into those purchases they continue to make?

[shiznitz]

Doesn't EQ1 run a $40 a month server with exclusive quests, content, and uber-thisses-and-thats?  What ever happened to that? 

It is gone or going.

A quick google: http://mobhunter.com/001445.html

"Speaking of Stormhammer, it appears the elite server will soon close its doors. The high monthly cost for negligible improvement resulted in very few players on the server. While some felt that SOE could have done more to make the server attractive, it was unlikely that SOE could spare the resources for such a gamble. Closing the server and moving the players seemed the only reasonable choice. When I saw the numbers of active players on Stormhammer in comparison to other servers at the last Summit, it was clear to me that this was the only choice."

[Merusk]

The question on this is, what rights would your guild-sub buy you.  If I'm paying $9.00 a month to be part of "Joe's Uber L00t Whores" does this automatically entitle me to going to content whenever I want?  If so, how do you handle population-capped events?  You certainly can't just limit your guild size to the cap because some folks simply don't login every day.

  When I go someplace, do I actually have to do anything, or can I just take up a slot and sit there, because "You're providing me a service, now make with the lewt."   How do you tell me that I have to pass on this item, but mr 5 epic items gets a chance to roll, or outright awarded it?  I paid my $9.00 same as him and I want it, I don't care that I can't use it.

See, all the problems you have right now just get magnified because people are paying money for them.  Taking cash is also going to open you up to lawsuits when dissatisfied people decide you're being unfair, or not abiding to your agreement.

[shiznitz]

I won't disagree that there would be inherent issues. That doesn't mean people won't try anyway.

[Dren]

The business agreement will be simple.  Pay us money to be in our guild.  The agreement won't state ANYTHING about actually getting lewtz or anything.  You basically have some chance at items where before you had zero.

If they go beyond just guild admission, yes they'll have a ton of trouble on their hands.

[HaemishM]

The modern UO economy is... weird... by the usual MMORPG standards.  I mean, it functions well enough, it's just really strange.  Not only can you spend real dollars on things that would "normally" cost only virtual gold, but you can spend virtual gold on things that you would expect to pay real dollars for.

When you purchase a service like a shard transfer or a name change, you don't just get the service.  You get a physical "token" that can be used to activate that service, or traded to another player.  Brokers buy them in quantity, then sell them to players for gold, which they turn around and sell on Ebay.  The bottom line is that if you have enough gold, you never have to spend a dollar at all.  You can buy your shard transfer from another player with your foozle-whacking proceeds, and let the Ebay catasses figure out how EA is going to get paid.  It's quite convenient, actually.

Hell, I know people who maintain their accounts by trading gold to brokers in exchange for subscription codes.

Sounds like one big gaggle of douchebag if you ask me.

[Murgos]

So what kind of numbers would you have to be looking at to make it worth it to run this as a business?  I.e. a full time job for 1 person, 40 hours a week.

Lets say you go with $10.00 a month per person.  You're a pretty talented person and you want to make decent money so you want to make, oh, $48,000 a year (to keep the math simple).  OK, you need to be bringing in $4000 bucks a month to meet your mark, or, in otw, 400 people in your guild...

Heh, there isn't enough time in an 80 hour work week to ride herd on that much catass, good luck with that.

[Merusk]

The business agreement will be simple.  Pay us money to be in our guild.  The agreement won't state ANYTHING about actually getting lewtz or anything.  You basically have some chance at items where before you had zero.

If they go beyond just guild admission, yes they'll have a ton of trouble on their hands.

So it's not a business you're after, it's a con game.  There's no need for me to hand my $$ over to you for the shiny in this model, at least not in WoW.  Instancing means no cockblocks by uber guilds sweeping-in to steal the phat lootz.  There's always more people out there reaching the level cap. You can help develop a guild on your own and go explore the exact same content with them instead.  Or, if you've somehow found the only server in exsistance where all the competent players are in a single guild, there's always new servers to move to.

In an older game like EQ, or one trying to emulate it like VS, perhaps, but then you still have to provide people items or else hey're just going to quit.  Even then, you're counting on people not to wise-up and say "hey, we're doing all the work, fuck this guy we'll do it ourselves and save the cash, come with us rest_of_the_raiders!"

[Dren]

I didn't say it was a good business model. 

I suppose if you had a well developed guild that could raid MC with their eyes closed in 1.5 hours, they could guarantee like 5 spots to newbs that pay for the priveledge and they get all the lewtz.  Their deal nets them 5 scheduled visits to catassery and all the loot they find between them.

The core group just splits the fees (not much money to go around, but again, I can't see this as a good business model.)  The core group doesn't need the items so whatever.  They eseentially start getting paid IRL for something like like to do anyway.  Just always keep those last 5-10 spots open when hitting those 40 man raids for the paying customers. (Core group would actually be part of the paid staff.)

Nobody would get rich, but compared to doing it for nothing and actually costing money (monthly fee, constant /pizza orders, etc.) it might seem attractive to some.

Hell if a customer played long enough and got good enough at raiding, they could get hired as part of the paid staff and cycle would continue on. /shrug

[Murgos]

Pay per raid might be something.  Get a core group of ~10 people to do the actual hard work of the raiding (core tank/healer group and group leaders) and then rent out all the other spots at $5 per person per raid, loot handled on that point system that was mentioned around here recently.

So in a 40 man raid your core group is getting $30, or about 10 bucks an hour, give or take a bit.

Think of it like a guided tour.  Your $5 gets your a chance at uber loot and a few hours of entertainment (which doesn't seem unreasonable, movie prices and all) doing something your un-uber guilded ass wouldn't ever get a chance at normally and the people making up the core of the raid get some beer money.  Plus you can get your friends to go with you if there is room.  I guess you would buy tickets and have to be at the assembly area in advance.  Just guild and deguild people on the fly.

[WindupAtheist]

Who the hell is at the bottom of this economy driving the entire business?  There has to be somebody just playing the game and paying for stuff so they can enjoy it more.

Obviously there's a population out there keeping the meta-economy afloat by purchasing instant leetness.  I never much cared for that sort of thing, but if it means I end up being able buy all the money-grubbing "extra services" with play money, then so be it.

The way you describe it, nobody enjoys the game, but uses it as a way to make money.  For that to work there has to be a pretty good sized population driving it.

The uberguilds I described in my initial post typically number no more than one per shard at the most, and represent a minority of Felucca players, never mind the playerbase as a whole.  It's just that the PVP venue is the only one where the money-makers have any need of a guild.

It would be interesting to see what the break down is for the player base.  10% farmers vs. 90% players?  10% get all the press and conversation over gameplay and design while 90% go along completly ignorant to what goes into those purchases they continue to make?

Not sure what you mean here.

[ClydeJr]

I wonder if people would pay to be in "managed" guilds. You pay some sort of dues and then you get guaranteed access to things like forums and TS/Vent servers. They manage all the DKP crap so you don't have to. They maintain extra accounts for bank characters. I know a lot of guilds already provide this sort of stuff but since you're paying, you could have a reliability contract or something like that.

The managers wouldn't neccessarily be in charge of the guild, they would handle any sorts of administrative type stuff. They might manage guilds on multiple servers which don't have any overlap in members. The might even manage guilds on the same server but opposing sides (i.e. they could manage an Alliance guild and a Horde guild on the same server). You could even do something like gold transfers from one server to another as long as there is a "managed" guild on the new server. It wouldn't cost you anything since that service would be part of your fee.

Don't know if this could work or if you could make money at it.

[shiznitz]

What about an independent website that will manage DKP and TS/Vent servers for any guild? Charge the guild $x per member (sliding scale probably) and let the guild sort out how to share the costs. I am part of a very casual guild and we use the Paypal subscription function to contribute to website hosting costs and software upgrades.

F13 could do this tomorrow I bet. It would be a nice "brand" extension: www.f13.net/guildware or some such.

[Krakrok]

Lets say you go with $10.00 a month per person.

Try $99/mo a month per person and now you're only talking 40 people. For $10 people wouldn't feel like they were getting anything. $99/mo is a much meatier number guarenteed to part the fools from their money.

[Morfiend]

I've definitely got throwup in my mouth.

For once we 100% agree.

I also threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[Tale]

Try $99/mo a month per person and now you're only talking 40 people. For $10 people wouldn't feel like they were getting anything. $99/mo is a much meatier number guarenteed to part the fools from their money.

Raids consisting purely of random rich fools paying $99/mo for guild membership would probably fail often, so membership wouldn't be worth the money. In a game like WoW you're restricted to 20-40 people per raid, most of whom must be reliable, attentive, team players. So you'd want a large pool of "staff" to form the backbone of the raid, whose gear would need to be kept up-to-date, meaning customer loot takes second place. They would need payment for taking customers. I can't see how this would work as a full business model. I can only see it working as a side activity for existing uberguilds.

[JoeTF]

So what kind of numbers would you have to be looking at to make it worth it to run this as a business?  I.e. a full time job for 1 person, 40 hours a week.

Lets say you go with $10.00 a month per person.  You're a pretty talented person and you want to make decent money so you want to make, oh, $48,000 a year (to keep the math simple).  OK, you need to be bringing in $4000 bucks a month to meet your mark, or, in otw, 400 people in your guild...

Heh, there isn't enough time in an 80 hour work week to ride herd on that much catass, good luck with that.

Hey! Don't forget youan is 1/8 of $:>

[lariac]

The more I think about this, the more I think that there would have to be different services offered. I don't think a straight guild membership/per month payment would be doable.

However,

Depending on the game and lets take WoW as an example here, the services I could see being viable are:

Leveling - This is something that is already provided by companies like IGE and their ilk

Cash - See leveling

Items - See previous two

Instances - Some instances only take 5 others take 40. In the case of of the 40 man raids and MC in particular, a group of 10 guys knowing exactly what needs to be done and geared out could easily carry another 30 noobs through it. As what was mentioned above, a pay per raid fee could definitely be doable.

Cross Game Support - Having the ability to move into other games where you will get items/cash upon arrival could be a real incentive for pay per month. You pay X amount a month for the ability to have XX amount of cash in EQ, DAOC, WoW, DDO....etc etc....

Leasing of Characters - as mentioned previously, you could "rent" characters for a set amount of time. Want to try out that level 60 rogue for 1 month. 3 dollars a day then. Want to try out that lvl 75 prophet in Lineage 2? 2 dollars a day.

**Edit**

Another thing that might be viable is guild consulting services. This would work in the same function as real consulting services where the consultant would come in and give advice/direction on how to better run your guild, help facilitate website layout, recruitement and retention and other guild related areas.

[Der Helm]

Want to try out that lvl 75 prophet in Lineage 2? 2 dollars a day.

Can you still delevel in that game ?

I'd pay for deleveling that character from 75 to 1 ... 

[Rhonstet]

I was actually part of a pay-to-join guild: Sturmgrenadier, which used to be (and, by some accounts, still is) the finest outfit on the Emerald Planetside server.  The methodology was different, but the effect was the same: joining the guild would give you access to be a member of a highly-organized and large force, one that periodically would fight large battles totally on its own. 


The fee was $12 a year.  I didn't mind paying it, since I'm one of those people who believes that one guildie shouldn't have to shoulder the cost of paying for their own Teamspeak, forums, and website.  We also played other games, like SWG, but Planetside was where I met them and still see them.

The positive aspect of the experience was that everything related to the guild was top-notch.  Having a fee kept out the trash you get in most guilds that aren't composed of you and your closest friends.  The downside was that the guild invariably fell into a kind of political bickering that smelled suspiciously like office politics, and a level of elitism of a few members against other people.  After a year, I felt like the group simply didn't have anything to offer me anymore.  Cap that off with some sketchy conduct in EVE Online that violated the spirit of the guild's charter, and some other breakdowns of organization, and you have a serious problem that can only be solved with feet and the walking. 

The problem with making a guild revolve around fees is that when you pay a fee, your relationship changes from that of a participant to that of a customer.  That exacerbates problems that normally might be too trivial to notice. 

I imagine MMOs themselves are affected in a similar way. Paying a monthly fee makes you more critical of a game's flaws, and paying membership dues to a guild makes you more intolerant of things that you cannot influence.

[MrHat]

"I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done," he says. "Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task." His story - translating experience in the virtual world into success in the real one - is bound to become more common as the gaming audience explodes and gameplay becomes more sophisticated. The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

From Wired

[schild]

If I ever, EVER see a resume with "Level 60" anything on it, even if I somehow ended up in management at Wizards or Blizzard or Gamesworkshop or wherever, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from beating the guy to death with a metal chair.

[tazelbain]

Then you'd be a manager at WWE.

[schild]

I don't mean a metal folding chair. I mean something with some real heft to it. Like a chair you'd find in a dentists office.