Expansions, Side Projects, and your Guild

Every time new con­tent becomes avail­able, it’s an oppor­tu­nity for change in how each player approaches the game. When the con­tent is as sig­nif­i­cant as an entire expan­sion, it can mean an influx of play­ers in the most obvi­ous way: peo­ple com­ing back because they want to see that new content.

There’s a sec­ond, much smaller shift that hap­pens as well, for both the peo­ple who have been play­ing all along and their guild’s leadership.

When you’re in guild lead­er­ship, you try to pay atten­tion to the kinds of peo­ple in your guild. If you’re in a raid­ing or arena guild, you need a cer­tain num­ber of play­ers of a cer­tain build and gear level. If you’re in a casual guild who tries to be family-friendly, you need to know that the peo­ple in your guild respect that. The social dynamic of your guild is deter­mined by the peo­ple who are vocal and play a lot. Run­ning jokes tend to include these peo­ple, con­tent gets run with them, and even the ros­ter can start to be shaped by their presence.

Every­one makes a big deal about peo­ple join­ing and leav­ing a guild, and it’s true that this is a big deal. But to guild lead­er­ship, who is active is just as impor­tant than who is tagged with your guild name.

Now, many play­ers have just one guild. The guild is their game expe­ri­ence. This kind of player is easy for the guild lead­er­ship to man­age: when that player logs out with one toon, they’ll typ­i­cally log in with another guilded toon and only the name change needs to be accounted for. Given that MMOs are a time-heavy style of gam­ing, if you have access to all of someone’s char­ac­ters, you have access to that player.

In my expe­ri­ence, some frac­tion of the player­base has a game expe­ri­ence that is more than one guild. In fact, there are many dif­fer­ent ways to man­age mul­ti­ple characters:

• one guild, mul­ti­ple guilds, or unguilded
• all on one server or across mul­ti­ple servers
• all in the same fac­tion or across mul­ti­ple factions

…and of course, any com­bi­na­tion of the above.

When a given con­tent level is in play for long enough, it becomes eas­ier to man­age mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters, even if those char­ac­ters are in com­pletely dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. Let me explain.

In my casual raid­ing guild, I know that a cou­ple of the play­ers are side projects for play­ers in highest-end raid­ing guilds. After a while, the char­ac­ters in these guilds can only be improved by fur­ther raid­ing. Those play­ers enjoy the vibe of our very friendly guild for just hang­ing out and “light raid­ing every now and then.” In the long dead time between highest-end raid instances being released (and con­quered), they spend most of their non-progression-raiding time (that is, most of the time) in our guild. Even though their highest-end raider is in another guild.

Now don’t get me wrong, they’re not gear­ing up the char­ac­ter with the intent of ever leav­ing (the “lev­el­ling guild” stigma). Each of these char­ac­ters are in that character’s per­ma­nent home (my guild), but each player doesn’t spend all their play­ing time on one char­ac­ter. They play enough to par­tic­i­pate in mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties at the same time. For these peo­ple, when a new highest-end raid instance comes out, these play­ers mys­te­ri­ously van­ish for a while as their raid­ing guild attacks the instance with fervor.

Like­wise, I have a num­ber of toons in the same guild, but another unguilded toon who I farm and run bat­tle­grounds with. (When I was an offi­cer, I needed an unguilded steam valve) My wife and I also have a com­pletely sep­a­rate horde alt side project, which I’ve men­tioned in pass­ing before. On that server, we’ve con­sciously avoided join­ing a guild there in part because we know that we wouldn’t be there but for our own whim, even though we’ve met some very friendly peo­ple there. How­ever, if we had joined a guild, that guild wouldn’t see us for a few months (at a min­i­mum) after this expan­sion comes out.

So what’s the com­mon thread?

While char­ac­ters are bound to one guild, play­ers are not bound to one char­ac­ter.

When there is new con­tent avail­able for a char­ac­ter, it becomes espe­cially attrac­tive to play that char­ac­ter, to the exclu­sion of oth­ers. While this doesn’t affect a character’s rela­tion­ship with a guild, it does affect the player’s rela­tion­ship with their char­ac­ter. Namely, every other char­ac­ter hiber­nates when new con­tent comes out for a char­ac­ter that you con­sider higher in pri­or­ity. In fact, every time you log in with a char­ac­ter, the oth­ers are hiber­nat­ing. The content/focus rela­tion­ship is just the run­ning trend.

(Yes, this inval­i­dates the whole main/alt def­i­n­i­tion. It’s a con­tin­u­ing area of interest.)

The broader the new con­tent reaches, the more likely that a given person’s side project will be affected, and there­fore the more likely that some­one in your guild will be touched.

When the new con­tent is as small as a new rep­u­ta­tion grind becom­ing avail­able, a pro­fes­sion change, or the release of a sin­gle new instance or raid, the odds aren’t as high. In this case, a player will just play their other char­ac­ters a bit less, as in the exam­ples above.

Alter­na­tively, when the new con­tent is as large as a raised level cap and a com­pletely new set of instances/raids and revamped skills and expanded/new pro­fes­sions and new pvp con­tent and and and… in that case, every sin­gle char­ac­ter of every sin­gle player has new con­tent avail­able and new goals to pur­sue. For exam­ple, the humon­gous Wrath expan­sion com­ing out next week!

In this case, one char­ac­ter will be cho­sen to hit the expan­sion con­tent first. There­fore, expan­sions mean the tem­po­rary hiber­na­tion of every side project.

The side projects who are mem­bers of my guild (and every other guild) will appear to van­ish, prob­a­bly with­out a peep. Peo­ple who man­age toons on mul­ti­ple servers will basi­cally go back to being single-server play­ers for a while.

Given enough time (between three weeks and four months, depend­ing on the player), peo­ple will go back to spread­ing their play time around, and likely rekin­dle the rela­tion­ships that sur­round that char­ac­ter. But at first, they’ll be play­ing their favorite char­ac­ter pretty heav­ily, and the com­mu­ni­ties around the hiber­nat­ing char­ac­ters will have to adjust to their absence.

For guild lead­er­ship, it’s a mixed bag. They smile at the flood of play­ers return­ing to the game, per­haps pick­ing up some recruits and keep­ing their guild healthy by doing so. But mean­while, a cou­ple of peo­ple on the roster–maybe well-liked members–will silently van­ish dur­ing one of the most excit­ing times to play the game. The excite­ment of the expan­sion con­tent means that this will be over­looked, but it’s strange and it does affect the social dynamic of your guild.

Do you think you’ll see this hap­pen? Keep an eye out and let me know.

More Words!

• Expan­sions are the Great Reset
• Def­i­n­i­tion: Main vs Alt
• My Com­pul­sion is Infrastructure
• Poly­toons can be Bad
• Max­i­mum Per­for­mance Isn’t Always Max­i­mum Fun