I of course like the idea of a screening process for guilds. It has been lacking for ages. The current system has finally cut down the amount of guilds being created, but it didn't improve the quality.
Poorly made guilds don't survive too long already...
I couldn't agree with this more.
Couldn't
disagree more. I seriously wonder how one can come to conclude that, as it is not the case, at all. Seriously, it is obvious that
only decent RPers join guilds for their goals and background and ties with the settings. Everyone who is not at least a decent RPer doesn't bother, and joins guilds based on a first come, first serve system or on the "coolness" of the name, or the amount of money / items they are offered. Then there may be some PLs who join a guild that would allow them to disguise their PL as RP.
Add to that the low ratio of RPer to non-RPer (without looking at the reasons), and it is clear that a guild doesn't need any RP to survive. They need something that appeals to the
player, regardless of what that something is.
It is true that the average lifetime of such guilds isn't as high as that of some of the RP guilds. However, it is also not short, and several have lasted for a year or even more. And they keep being recreated by different players with different names, so a screening process would help that.
Even very "well thought out guilds" fail from time to time. I also agree with the poster who said something along the lines of "who's to choose and how can one dictate what collection of ideas people are going to choose to follow?" (Of course I am paraphrasing.) I guess the quick answer is, "the GMs". But do they need more burden? Guilds will come and go. The Helpers will continue to sprout and most will wither. (They exist because their creators feel some form of "help" is lacking, btw.)
That may be, but then again I never felt that way, possibly because I had read up on PS before joining. And yes, I think this can, and in fact should, be expected from every prospect player.
Anyway, as Karyuu has said, the playerbase is not a good judge. Not even now, being comparatively small, and certainly not once it gets larger. Just look at the amount of one-day players that rush through PS. They more than outnumber the "constant" playerbase, even counting all the players who don't stay for more than a month. IOW, if the playerbase was to judge, there'd be favouritism at best, and complete inconsistency at average.
In light of this, the GMs do seem like the most appropriate thing, but then again they are quite busy usually, so even though much more bad char names pop up, judging guild backgrounds would be much more work. However, knowing that one's guild has to be approved might serve to discourage knee-jerk guilds and thus cut down on guild creations. On the downside, it might lead people to claim that if it was approved, nothing needed to be improved as "it's perfectly fine, the GMs said so", just as we get with names already.
So who (other than the annoyance of the "elite") does the formation of fifty newb guilds a day hurt? Does it reflect on the quality of PS? Is that what we are trying to police here?
Well, I think that the "elite" of RPers should be what matters, yes. It's not like you'd have to be particularly great to become part of this "elite". Besides, yes, it does reflect on the quality of PS, as has been said. It creates false impressions, and invites new players to go the wrong way about PS or RP in general, thereby also hurting the quality of RP in the long run.
Also, though that is not that much of a problem as it used to be, I don't like being asked to join guilds by people that I haven't even seen around yet, let alone RP'd with, so it's a matter of bothering people, too.
Now, regarding the wipe / bilbous: I, too, come from a P&P environment. However, I most definitely am one who does, in no way or form, RP wipes of anything. A wipe is nothing but OOC, and therefore must not have effect IC-ly. In P&P RPGs you may start over, but that is an uniamous group decision. In an MMORPG, this sort of thing can never happen, because it will be impossible to get every single player to agree. Also, it would not make sense in terms of the consistent world.
The only exception to this is when, at the same time as the wipe occurs, a significant change to the settings is released that more or less forces a reevaluation of one's character. However, this then is not a result of the wipe, the wipe is merely coinciding with it. Such changes can occur at any other point in time as well and require the exact same action. Wipes are being done to erase effects of OOC mishappenings like imbalances in the game mechanics, excessive abuse/cheating or loss of database content, and have nothing to do with RP, just as server crashes don't.
As has been said, if your character feels played out, then you phase it out and create a new one. It should not be done lightly, and it's clearly a good idea to keep the old one around. However, if we had a wipe each 100th time some player feels their char is played out, we'd have weekly wipes.
As far as I am concerned a lot of what some people consider to be valid role play is a kind of one-dimensional, "Lives of the Rich and Famous" melodrama that might as well be "The Bold and the Beautiful" or "The Young and the Restless" soap opera.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that this is genius, but I agree. However, I must say that it is realistic even. IRL you simply don't often get to see this stuff, but it still happens all the time. And I think that IRL the majority of people can be called "one-dimensional" as well. I think that it is occuring in PS because people find it amusing, much more amusing than IRL because it doesn't actually matter in PS, and because they can / are forced to have all the other "normal" stuff IRL already. Maybe PS is like being somewhat of a celebrity and somewhat of a paparazzo at the same time. Also, there are, at least occasionally, really interesting stories popping up, and intrigues, bribing and corruption are much more common IRL than the usual save-the-world scenarios from RPGs. This is not to say that one shouldn't stay grounded with the drama, it
does become excessive at times.
Back to the guilds: regardless of whether or not the guild manages to attract players, this attraction is always OOC. Therefore, the judgement of whether or not a guild fits into PS is OOC as well. This has the added benefit of being less biased towards benevolent guilds. Since the entire matter of fitting in is OOC, I see no need to drag this process IC. IRL guilds and anything that would make use of the guild system in PS are being created completely IC-ly, simply because there is no OOC IRL. IOW, IRL nothing that doesn't fit within the setting comes to exist, and it matters not if it fits into the current regime / region / whatever, it's still IC. In PS, however, it is possible to have clearly OOC things, and this is to be policed.
To elaborate on this by example of a gray area:
A cult that worships some diety that doesn't exist in PS.
Variant A: The guild post claims that this diety exists
Variant B: The guild post states that the diety does not actually exist
Variant A is outside the setting, because the guild post is OOC and thus the intention is to change the settings to include some arbitrary diety, and the post will likely include something to "justify" it's existance.
Variant B is inside the setting, because no claim is made about the settings; it is merely stated that the member's IC belief is that the diety exists, while the players know that it does not. This post will likely include some reasoning on what makes the members believe in this diety.
Transposing this to RL, variant B happens everywhere all the time, while variant A cannot even be concieved. IRL one cannot think up OOC ideas, and therefore, when RP'd properly, characters cannot, either.
Summarising, I think it would be possible to have at least a minimum standard for guilds, and that GMs or a GM-like commitee would be a good judging body, but I feel that anything beyond guild names would be impractical. If any such thing is implemented, then I, too, think that it should immediately apply to new guilds, while established guilds are given a grace period of maybe a few months before they are either OK'd or disbanded. If one creates rules, they must apply to everyone equally.
If you've been around for a while, chances are you already know what may need fixing and why you haven't done so would be a mystery worth looking into.
In fact, as has been my stance all the time, if someone has been around for a while and
not fixed things, then there is something wrong about the player. Claiming that there weren't (significant) rules in the past isn't valid. The ones that would have trouble are those who are border-cases already and undoubtedly know that. Therefore they should have changed already without explicit rules, not (pretend to) be surprised once explicit rules are set down. The grace period therefore is merely an act of kindness, which those who it is given to have not shown.
