Development News #53 - Guilds are Feudal!

Hey Feudalists!

As many of you already noticed while testing the MMO, our Guild system is more complex than the current YO version. We would like to introduce this system to you all properly.

What is a guild?

A guild is an entity, which contains a list of guild members with their roles, a list of standings against other guilds and heraldry. In other words, a guild is a hierarchical community of players united to achieve game advantages with displays of politics, warfare, trade and symbology to identify themselves to other guilds and the rest of the gameworld.

Guild - land - claim

Lands are a separate entity, which is a part of the system. Lands connect territory and physical entities situated inside it to a landowner, which may be a guild or a person (guild land and personal land).

Lands connect a landowner to a set of customizable rights called “claim rights”. Ultimately, a claim is an entity that defines what every player in the game can do with land entities. Every ability in the game is marked by “claim usage type”, which defines a type of rights this ability belongs to, for example, the “open container” ability is marked by a “use” type of right. Some claim rights may be affected by other game mechanics - “destroy” can be granted to any person and allows that person to damage buildings inside of that land.

Guild lands and personal lands both have claim rights, but in a case of personal land, only the landowner can manage it, whereas guild land can be managed by a leader and a minor leader of a guild that owns land.

Politics

Political standings are a part of a guild’s life; guilds may ally or declare war on each other. War affects claim rights on guild lands; it overrides them during judgment hour (or in future battle sieges), it also allows guild members to kill and loot enemies with no effect on their karma.

A powerful guild can persuade another guild to become a vassal, “vassalage” is a special type of guild relation. A master guild becomes a kingdom and if it is drawn into a war by other guilds all vassals to the master guild automatically receive war standings towards this guild. Also, if this enemy guild is a master guild, all vassal guilds will be included in the war as well.

Guild management

All guild management for the MMO version is moved to the game’s web interface, the main reason to do so is to offer broad access - you can manage your guild from any place, and even when your game server is down, all web interface functionality is duplicated with server commands and client slash commands.

MMO and YO guilds

During the MMO Beta wave testing, we will have two completely different guild systems emerging. The YO and the more complex MMO guild systems - supporting both versions will consume a lot of dev time. Therefore, the complex guild system eventually will come to the YO version, less the web interface, but with the same core functionality. The behavior of these adapted guilds will be similar to the current YO version, but with extended functionality like custom guild roles, claim rights, even political standings will be available through server and slash commands.
 
We also want to thank everyone who participated in our recent ‘Emotions Gatherer’ contest! We are reviewing all entries and will contact winner(s) soon.

- The team