Guilds

Apprentice Guild War Declaration Scroll

• Guilds trade off size for progression in other areas. The higher the guild's member cap, the fewer available skill options are available to that guild. Additionally, certain open-world encounters, such as castle and node sieges may incorporate instanced locations where groups can participate in small, short duration objective-based battles that will affect the overall outcome of the larger battle.

Q: How will you either embrace or combat massive zerg guilds?

A: When it comes to events that actually leverage guild structure, such as node sieges, node wars, guild wars, and castle sieges, we intend to provide objectives that not just relate to the number of people that you have, but also limit some of the participation to groupsize objectives within these larger events that can turn the tide of power in the event. So, in that situation we have mechanics that start to mitigate the amount of benefit that can come from a numbers perspective. Now, that doesn't entirely remove the numbers perspective. There are other features that intend to make it more difficult for larger organizations to take advantage of distributing their player base across multiple guilds, and that is the idea that when guilds own a thing, whether that be a Castle or a Guild hall, you are limiting the reach that that power has to influence that group of people. – Steven Sharif

• Guilds and guild alliances are designed to instigate competition within their membership, providing opportunities for political betrayal that leads to interesting emergent gameplay. Backstabbing is an aspect of castle siege gameplay. There's an opportunity for any guild leader in the attacking alliance to capture the castle for themselves, despite what may have been agreed upon prior to the siege.

Q: How will you stop big mafia guilds from owning all the good dungeons and world bosses by camping them?

A: The real answer to that is going to be what traditionally happens in a non-faction-based game where politics drive player interaction... Over time you have betrayals in the mafia guild and they splinter off into two groups and join the other side or it's like weird things that can occur in that regard. So I think that's the important way that will solve itself. I don't think the developer necessarily has to step in there and say no, let's railroad this politics or let's hand hold this aspect. I think that any time you have a bully, you're going to have a counter bully and that's something that we try to encourage as part of the politics process. – Steven Sharif

One of the things that I think will naturally combat the risk that comes with one mega corp or one mega guild owning the server so-to-speak and killing off competition is that Ashes is constantly changing. So the way that nodes spawn and despawn and can be destroyed; and the castles exist to exert pressure; and these world events pop up. It's a massive world and it's constantly changing. Those two things naturally combat the opportunity for mega guilds to claw control over a particular server. – Steven Sharif

• Guilds are pseudo factions that must compete for scarce resources and other objectives with other pseudo fations, such as node citizens, sozial organizations, and religions.
  • Node citizenship and mayorship is not tied to membership of a guild. Guilds don't "own" nodes.

There's a reason why mayorship, citizenship, and guilds are intended to be separate. Guilds I view as very much a territorial "I own this thing. My guild is the the owner of these things." Nodes are really not intended to be that space. Nodes are intended to be content hubs that any player has access to, whether that content is narrative arcs that send you out into the world and the POIs around you, whether that be housing that you have access to, or artisanship services, or vendor tables. These are things that, should players choose to be a citizen, they have access to. – Steven Sharif

• Guilds may enter into trade agreements within a guild alliance.

We have a specific system that relates to being able to invite another guild into an alliance that sets a flag on those characters with regards to being able to combat them, being able to share a chat system with them, being able to participate in specific types of quests and/or alliance warehouses and guild homes; with regards to the relationship of castle sieges and participating in node warfare and node activities. If you're not in an alliance with someone, you're in a neutral state so to speak. You can have trade agreements between different guilds and then you can also have Guild Wars which shows a state of war between you guys. I think that's the baseline of how we're going to develop interaction between guilds. – Steven Sharif

Q: Do you think that guilds will put their money together and make it hard for a single player to buy a freehold?

A: I do believe this will be the case for some percentage of the freeholds, but there will be mitigating strategies that we use in the designs of the auction system to ensure viable access to a wider audience of play styles. Regardless, it will be difficult to obtain. – Steven Sharif

Guild formation

There are prerequisites for guild formation.

• Minimum member count of around five individuals.
• Material and currency cost.
• Completing a quest line.
• Minimum level requirement.
• Guild names may be up to 30-32 characters in length.
• Players may be able to form guilds in starting areas if minimum requirements are met.

Guild creation scrolls

- None -

Guild size

Guild size of 300 is currently the maximum cap that can be attained by leveling the guild and selecting the path of size as opposed to the path of guild skills. This will be tuned based on testing.

• Guild size in Alpha-2 spot testing was 30.
• Guild size in Alpha-2 phase 1 is expected to be 50-100 based on testing.
• Guilds are expected to be fully functional in Alpha-2 phase 3.

What we're trying to create is an environment where there's a duality between guilds that try to go towards population and then guilds that choose to forego population in exchange for a deeper access to passive skills that the players have access to. Will the meta be for many smaller guilds to co-locate with each other? Yes, I'm sure that will be utilized by some number of smaller guilds in order to try to combat the numbers that other guilds might have access to. I don't think that that's a bad thing. I don't necessarily know if that's a meta either, because it's going to be beneficial for larger guilds to be allied with smaller guilds that might have access to those passive abilities that they don't have access to. So, what I think the meta will actually be is probably a mixture of large guild and small guilds that exist within the alliances so that they can overcome the types of challenges that occur in objective-based gameplay for events, where you need the smaller guild with the passives to overcome the challenge rating, but you also need the numbers from the larger guilds in order to engage with the opponent at the choke points. – Steven Sharif

• Guild size can be traded off for guild progression.
  • The higher the guild's member cap, the fewer available skill options will be available to that guild.
  • The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50.

Q: Smaller guilds can opt to enhance their passive skills as a strategic choice over increasing membership size. Could you elaborate on the passive skills available to smaller guilds and how they enable them to remain competitive against larger guilds in various gameplay scenarios?

A: That is a delicate line to play with because, what happens when you make those passive abilities too strong then you create the meta of how guild structures should be on this game; and so it means that if it's a zero-sum choice between either take the passives, or I'm bad, everyone's gonna take the passive. So, there has to be some complement between why guilds want to have expansion options versus passives; and so passives will be delegated to certain groups within the guild; and the core groups will have stronger passive access. – Steven Sharif

• Guild alliances may be a key part in creating a larger "guild".

Q: What’s the minimum guild size to really have a meaningful impact on the realm?

A: This is a tough question to answer. Single individuals can have a large impact on the realm without guild support, in the form of mayorships, Artisanship, economic opportunities, etc. We’re also balancing guilds through guild levels, where guilds must choose between size and effectiveness - smaller guilds will have an opportunity to get a leg up through abilities that larger guilds can’t afford to take. At the end of the day, having clear goals and organizational structure will likely matter more than raw numbers. – Sarah Flanagan

There are mechanics that are geared towards larger and smaller guilds.

• Larger guilds can siege fortresses.
  • Larger guilds won’t have access to power boosting guild ability slots.
• Small groups can do some things better than larger groups.
  • Sieges will have things that smaller groups have an advantage in.

It's important to note that the 300 is the maximum cap that is attained by leveling the guild and selecting the path of size as opposed to the path of guild skills. So the larger you choose to allow for members to join your guild, increasing that member cap, the less focused and honed the available skill options will be from a guild level up perspective for guild members. So the way that works is it plays as a balance/counterbalance to larger guilds versus smaller more honed and focused guilds. It gives them an equitable edge of participation. – Steven Sharif

If you have more objective-based combat that revolves around high mobility and agility strong focus, organization I would expect the smaller guild to outperform the larger guild with regards to that. If you're speaking purely a numbers game and they're meeting on the field then I would expect the larger guild to perform in that. The balance comes in our play scenarios. Do we offer solely a field based combat system where you show up with the numbers you have in which case you lean heavily towards zergs or do you implement designs that feature both components of objective based combat that involves organizational rule as opposed to just having that field presence; and we intend to offer both. – Steven Sharif

There are absolutely guilds out there that have a large following and good organizational leadership and can structure their raids well; and I think those will be the most performing in the game obviously; and that's where then guild sizes come to play creating the opportunity for division in the game to allow for this subterfuge to play a role and politics and stuff like that. But our focus is making a place for smaller guilds to be competitive with larger guilds as well. – Steven Sharif

Guild membership

A character may only be a member of a single guild.

• Alts on the same account can join different guilds.
  • Intrigue, espionage and intelligence gathering is a legitimate aspect of the game.
• A guild may only have a single guild leader.
  • Transfer of guild leadership is possible, but mechanics on transferring leadership if a guild leader has abandoned the guild have not been finalized.
• Guild masters can issue payouts to guild members.

Guild invites

Characters may be invited to join a guild from anywhere on Verra.

• Invites can be done through the guild UI.
• There will also be a guild invite chat command.

Server reservations

Server reservations allow guild members as well as unaffiliated players to reserve character slots on a server realm starting in the Beta testing stages of the game.

This would likely be utilized more so by guilds than that would be solo or unaffiliated players; and I believe that the solo player they may have friends that they want to play with. That's fine, they can also still with those friends do the reservation system, but the player who is just joining the game fresh and doesn't have a community that they're part of, I don't think they really mind in that regard and will not utilize that system. – Steven Sharif

Guild benefits

Guild benefits that are being considered by the developers:

• Gear enhancements.
• Passives.
• Questlines.
• Guild halls.
• Guild castles.
• Guild activities.
• Name of guild displayed next to character name.
• Guild tabards.
• Guild mounts.
• Guild coats.
• Guild barding.

Undermounts

Wyrmling 3D render. Concepted by Ryan Richmond. 3D model by Jessica Jennings.

The guild leader of a castle can grant the use of flying undermounts (such as wyrmlings) to guild officers during a castle siege.

• These may only be granted if the castle nodes are successfully established prior to the siege.
  • Node A grants 1 undermount, Node B grants 2 undermounts, and Node C grants 2 undermounts.
• This system is subject to change during testing.

Little wyrmlings that you can grant to officers if you're a castle owner, and they can fly around too. – Steven Sharif

Guild progression

Guild perks UI. Alpha-1 screenshot. Image credit: Guild:Overlord

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups. – Steven Sharif

Guild progression occurs through participation in different systems.

• Quests.
• Nodes.
• Social organizations.
• Crafting certain items.
• Events.

Guild progression grants skill points that the guild can allocate to unlock aspects of their guild skill tree, such as passive skills, augments and membership count.

• Guild size can be traded off for guild progression.
  • The higher the guild's member cap, the fewer available skill options will be available to that guild.
  • The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50.

When you first form a guild and you're level zero, you may have 30 guild slots available to you and that's your core guild group; and you can move people in and out of that group because when you get expansion slots they form separate groups in the guild structure that might be a Knight or Squadron group: whatever you're going to want to call it, because you can customize it based on the guild; and then those groups will have access to certain types of passives. Some of the passive types will be horizontal, some will be vertical; and it will be dependent on where you as a guild member are placed within those groups; and the placement within those groups are determined by the guild administrators. And so, guilds will then spend currency as well as skill points to invest in those passives for those particular groups; and so what we want to do is we want to maintain the strongest passives for the central groups and allow it to decrease in power going outward from there. So, even guilds that select to go expansionist still have some passive abilities that they can spec into, but the guilds that choose to stay smaller they can consert their skill points towards the more central groups leveling up those passives to higher strengths; and those passive types are things like waterfall stat augments, crit rate, regen values. And then they can get a little bit more intricate with the types of effects that they have, like negating a... spell attack against you as a target every 30 seconds, or something. It depends on what we're talking about with the abilities. They they are wide ranging, but the intent is for them to be impactful. – Steven Sharif

• Guild passive skills are assigned to specific ranks within the guild, each of which has a number of slots depending on guild progression.
  • These skills can increase certain waterfall stats such as (Regen and Crit rate) relating to that rank's ability to perform in combat or potentially in other aspects of the guild, such as the economy.
  • Guild passives can have also have more intricate effects, such as negating certain attacks within a cooldown period.
  • Guilds cannot respec their skill points once allocated. This is subject to testing.
  • Guild members do not need to be citizens of the same node in order to benefit from passive skills and augments.

It's not always going to be combat. You could have an economic focus guild. You could have a trade oriented guild; and there's all sorts of things that you can put together and give your guild its own identity. – Jeffrey Bard

• Guild halls can be unlocked at a certain stage of guild advancement.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guild augments may apply at the upper tiers of guild progression.
  • This applies to guilds that have opted for the non-expansive member route.
  • It benefits guild members with a classification of officer or knight.

Patron guilds

Patron guilds unlock the following benefits for their members.

• Emblems can be applied to guild armor that can be purchased from the node.
• Participation in the node's stock market.
• Ability to participate in specific guild-based missions that will progress the guild's leveling and development.
• Allocation of guild points to unlock specific node abilities for guild members.
• Ability to claim an in-node guild hall. These have different perks and benefits to halls placed on freehold plots.

- Whether an organization is the patron of their node means it contributes the most amount of work to the node from its members.

Any number of guilds can be in a node, but the number of patron guilds within a node is limited by node stage.

• Villages and lower do not have patron guilds.
• Towns can have up to 1 patron guild.
• Cities can have up to 2 patron guilds.
• Metropolises can have up to 3 patron guilds.

Guild reputation

Guilds may be able to allocate points to increase their reputation with the node that houses their guild hall. This will affect:

• NPCs.
• Quests.
• Merchant services.

Another thing we were talking about I remember early on with regards to guilds is not just that but also having a reputation score; and being able to allocate points to increase that reputation perhaps with a specific node that you may have your guild hall in; and that reputation will interact with the way that NPCs interact with you. It might interact with the way that quests are given in that particular node or merchant services that are present. – Steven Sharif

Guild alliances

Guild leaders can create an alliance at a later stage in guild progression by completing a quest. Once created, the leader can invite up to three other guilds to this alliance, but this is subject to change.

• A guild may only be a member of one alliance. There is no specific member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.

Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds? Absolutely that will happen; and the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate the use-case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings. Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always. It depends on what they're encountering, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure. – Steven Sharif

• Guilds and guild alliances are designed to instigate competition within their membership, providing opportunities for political betrayal that leads to interesting emergent gameplay.

There's a competition for the scarcity of resources and there's an opportunity for political betrayal. I can't tell you how many times in the games that I played, where that scarcity of benefit has caused rifts between my commanders or between different groups within the guild that then can potentially erupt in a civil war. And those are the types of player emergent behaviors that we want to encourage by introducing these systems of soft friction where people compete for things. – Steven Sharif

• There will be alliance specific quest lines.

• Guilds may enter into trade agreements with allied guilds.

• Due to the lack of fast travel, guilds will need to plan to have people in the right place at the right time. Alliances with other guilds will help enable that.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guild leaders will be able to pool resources into a guild alliance bank.

You can only invite a number of guilds to the alliance before you must form a new alliance; and then those alliance can have a de facto friendship but they won't have any game component of connection. What the alliance system would allow is pooling of resources into by guild leaders into an alliance guild alliance bank. Will allow certain participation in different quest lines. It will allow common area chat for members and it will allow affiliations and gear that can be attained as well. – Steven Sharif

• Alliance members will share a common chat channel.

• Alliances will have affiliations and gear that can be attained.

Guild housing

The term "guild housing" refers to guild buildings and not guild owned player housing.

• Guild halls
• Guild fortresses
• Guild castles

Guild halls

Summer guildhall appearance cosmetic concept art.

Guildhalls are the ultimate expression of a guild's power! In Ashes these structures will serve as focal points for a guild, offering any guilds who construct them a whole host of benefits as well as customization options.

Guild halls serve as a focal point for a guild, offering a host of benefits and customization options.

• When a guild reaches a certain level, its guild master is granted a certificate to enable placement of a guild hall.

• Guild halls may be placed within Baronies within the ZOI of a node.
  • A barony can only have a single guild hall.
  • The number of baronies that can have an active guild hall is determined by the node's stage.

Only a limited subset of the guild halls available around the node are available concurrently... So you might only have two that might be available at fifth level and then three at sixth level of a node; and the guilds have an opportunity to select from the six available which three are going to be active. – Steven Sharif

• Patron guilds may also place their guild hall within (the footprint of) their patron node. These guild halls have different perks and benefits to halls placed within Baronies.
  • Patron guild halls placed within Baronies may have the ability to confer benefits to surrounding estates within that node by speccing into passives in their guild skill tree and carrying out a lengthy quest line.

• The design of guild-halls is currently subject to active iteration by the developers.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guild halls can only be destroyed by a successful node siege. This contrasts with guild fortresses, which can be sieged in a guild war.
• Guild halls are objectives in guild wars.
• A guild hall only houses a single guild.

Guild freeholds

Guild freeholds consist of a central guild hall surrounded by multiple expandable plots. Guild members that are authorized by the guild master, or delegated official, may utilize these plots to place freehold farms, taverns, or other guild amenities.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• When a guild reaches a certain level, its guild master is granted a guild freehold certificate to enable placement of a guild hall.

Benefits

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Guild halls unlock actions a guild can perform within a node.

• Allow guilds to participate in the shareholder system.

Guild castles

Guild castle Alpha-1 early preview.

With five Castles in the world, and each having been owned by different civilizations from the far-flung past of Verra, you can expect that each Castle has its own character. Different terrains and different layouts will result in each Castle having its own advantages and disadvantages. Just because you have managed to take one Castle will not mean that your strategies will pan out in the next. Commanders will have to take into consideration the lay of the land, time of day, weather, and even seasons into account when forming their battle plans.

Five guild castles exist in Ashes of Creation.

• Each of the five castles has its own static layout. Castle siege defenses include deploying traps and blockades within the castle, as well as hiring mercenary NPCs to defend specific locations.

While the hard structural environment is static and not able to be- you're not building a castle if you own a castle, you're inheriting a historic ruined castle that is representative of the past because it has some tie-in to specific types of powers that we haven't gotten into from a lore perspective yet but we haven't expressed to the community. That's something that we're going to leave for the community to find out when they play. But when you place mercenaries and you place those blockades and you place those traps, that affects the level design of the castle according to the strategy you might use to defend it. – Steven Sharif

• Castle sieges occur in the open world but may become instanced based on testing.
  • Alpha-1 castle sieges occurred in a zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.
• There is one castle located on an island that is able to be affected by naval combat.

• Castles are initially be occupied by level 50+ NPC adversaries. These are the primary antagonists in the storyline. Guilds have a period of time to level up in order to siege these castles.
  • There will not be a relic to capture, instead whichever guild had highest contributing DPS against the raid boss will capture the castle.
  • Castle nodes around NPC run castles will not be present.

These Castles are occupied when players arrive on Verra, and their current inhabitants will have to be removed before any player can claim them. Castles will be dangerous and high-level raid zones until they can be cleared, and the first group of players to do so will gain the Castle as their reward.

• It is undecided if NPCs will attack player occupied castles that are otherwise not challenged by other players during the monthly castle siege events.

Q: You had mentioned in the past that player held castles could be attacked monthly. Does this mean that if a castle is not attacked monthly by players, the NPCs, which originally held the castle, would attempt to retake their castle from these players?

A: We've we've talked about this a little bit in the past, how we want to handle kind of off-cycle sieges: whether or not we want NPCs to attack the castle. The jury's still out on that from a design perspective. The original intent was that, if you didn't have any attackers scheduled for the castle siege that the castle would enter into an NPC siege, but that might not be the case in the future. That's still something that we're actively discussing. – Steven Sharif

Benefits

Guild castle concept art.

It's a reciprocal relationship between the castle and its nodes essentially. There are benefits granted to citizens of the castle; and the longer that the castle remains in the hands of its incumbent guild, the stronger the benefits become overall. But at the same time that represents a greater incentive to attack the castle because the rewards will get greater over time also. – Steven Sharif

Guild castles provide benefits and trophies for guilds that capture and control them.

• These benefits increase the longer a guild holds its castle.

There are levers and dials that are present to both the owners of Castles as well as the elected officials of Nodes that during their administration they have the ability to impact and influence the region around them. – Steven Sharif

Guild castles exert a King or Queen's presence over nodes within their region.

• Levy taxes for the purposes of defense (additional to taxes already imposed by node governments).
• Activate events and abilities that benefit node citizens under their rule.
• Establish special relationships with Mayors to help build up the three dedicated castle nodes.
• Unlock additional types of buildings in nodes.
• Exert control and pressure over one of the five economic regions.

Guild fortresses

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Guild fortresses are siegable guild halls within Ashes of Creation. These are different from nodes and castles.

• Guild fortresses are objectives in guild wars. These are contested on a regular basis.
• The developers will decide if guild fortresses will be implemented in the game or shelved.

The fortress design is also something that might be on the shelf. We haven't decided yet. We're going to look into it, but the idea behind the fortress is that this is a competitive guild hall so to speak where you have to contend for it on a regular basis so to speak; or can be taken from you necessarily. Whereas the guild hall is a structure similar to freehold structure can only be taken through successful sieges against a node per-se are not taken but destroyed. – Steven Sharif

Castle sieges

Alpha-1 castle siege gameplay.

Throughout Ashes of Creation, the player has an opportunity to participate in massively multiplayer siege warfare. Since castles are likely the world’s most limited resource, it will be a task to secure and hold them. Involving hundreds of players on a single battlefield, our sieges will employ many moving parts and intricate design features. Because of the difficult nature of taking and keeping a castle there are great rewards available to the players for their efforts. Castles will allow players to exert control over nearby lands and allow for the development of unique buildings in the nearby towns.

Guilds participate in Castle sieges in an effort to capture and occupy one of the five guild castles in Ashes of Creation.

• Sieges occur once a month within a server prime-time window.

• The minimum goal is for 250x250 players to be on a single battlefield. It is hoped that this can be increased to 500x500 over time.

Q: Is 500x500 still the goal for castle sieges?

A: Our metrics currently point to a very positive trend when it comes to how the networking backend is facilitating Alpha-2 right now. Given that in order to achieve the types of player versus player scaling that we want to, we are not a far cry off from facilitating those types of numbers. So, I would say that given time and given the ability to inspect the Alpha-2 performance and the data that we collect with Alpha-2 tester participation, we are going to achieve 500 versus 500. – Steven Sharif

• There will be systems that mimic some of the mechanics of sieges, but there won't be practice sieges.

• There may be instanced locations within otherwise open-world castle and node sieges, where specific groups can participate in small, short duration objective-based battles that will affect the overall outcome of the siege.
  • Alpha-1 castle sieges occurred in an open-world zone that was accessible via a NPC teleporter.

I love castle-based gameplay. I love trophies. I like rewarding risk a lot; and for me it's very difficult to imagine a MMO that I would want to play where there is not competition of strategic prowess that determines the outcome of these types of events and there is not a meaningful reward both mechanically and from just a bragging rights perspective that players can aim for and try to achieve. I think that it brings a lot to the game when it comes to motivations, to excel, to level, to gain power, to engage those different progression loops when there is an ultimate goal or trophy that is not static and doesn't exist forever once you achieve it, but that you must constantly perform in order to maintain; and that's really the purpose of these castles. – Steven Sharif

A guild that captures a castle will own that castle for a month before it is sieged again.

Each week leading up to the siege week... is a week that's dedicated to one of the three castle dedicated nodes. So around the castle there are three nodes. They represent week, one, two, and three; and then the fourth week is the siege against the castle. Those can only be elevated up to stage three. We've discussed this in the past and there's definitely information out there on the community ran wiki. – Steven Sharif

• In the first three weeks that a guild occupies a castle they will need to level up each of their castle nodes to Village stage through questing.
  • Each of the three castle nodes have a siege against it at the end of each of these three weeks.
• The fourth week is declaration week, where other guilds have the opportunity to lay down their declaration flag or to sign up as a defender of the castle.
• Depending on how well the guild defends their castle nodes results in better defenses for the castle.
• Different siege weaponry will grant the attackers the ability to destroy walls, doors and sections of the castle in order to gain access to the inner keep area.
• When castles change hands (following a siege), some taxes stay with the castle and some stay with the guild.

There will be benefits to attracting people... even if they're not in your guild or alliance – a feudal like system, where you can attract other players who are just independent of this whole politic. They will have things to do there - benefits to receive - and there will be a reciprocal relationship between who you can attract, what they do for you; and how that benefits you and them. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 castle sieges

Alpha-1 preview castle.

Trebuchets in the Alpha-1 preview castle siege attackers headquarter camp.

Alpha-1 preview castle siege gameplay.

Alpha-1 castle sieges were based on Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges.

• Players will be able to join guilds. These guilds can register for the siege events.
• Castle siege events will be 100v100 battles that occur daily and will last for three hours.
• Attackers will start on the opposite end of the map (from the defenders).
• Attackers will be able to use trebuchets to drive to and assault the castle.
  • Trebuchets have a single primary fire that does a small amount of damage to players and heavy damage to buildings.
  • Trebuchets will be fully physical when they are being driven.
• When the attackers have breached the castle they will be able to channel a cast on the relic in the throne room to try to capture the castle from the defenders.
• The victors of castle sieges will receive benefits, such as cloaks, flying mounts for guild leaders and potentially also for guild officers.
• Alpha-1 castle sieges are in a separate zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.

  Currently the siege zone is actually in the open world, but separated by mountains and off in the sea a bit. There is actually no instancing in A1, although the siege zone will only be accessible in A1 through a registration NPC teleporter. – Steven Sharif

  • This zone includes the following raid bosses.
    • Elder Dragon of Flame
    • Elder Dragon of the Tundra
    • Elder Dragon of the Wood
  • These bosses will also appear in the open-world (outside the siege zone) with slightly different mechanics.
• The opposing team is notified when these raid bosses are being attacked.
• Teams who get the last hit on these bosses will receive buffs that will help them in the siege battle.

Last year, I spoke of attempting to incorporate sieges into the Alpha One experience. This has obviously been a goal of mine because it provides considerable data and a consistent event within the world that players can participate in to help stress test the deployment. Well, I am happy to say that it is appearing more and more likely by the day! Initial implementation of the Apocalypse siege code has been migrated into the Alpha One client, and we should begin internal testing next month. I will caveat this expectation with the fact that we are cutting it a bit close from an internal QA standpoint, but I have some confidence that the system will be online and capable of inclusion for the Alpha One test in the month of June. The siege component will obviously not be representative of what the siege system will be at launch, or even in Alpha Two. – Steven Sharif

• Destructible structures (such as walls and gates) are present in Alpha-1 castle sieges.
  • The ability to repair structures (and siege weapons) is a long term design goal that will not be present during Alpha-1.

Guild wars

Guild wars are objective-based PvP events between guilds. Guild war mechanics are work-in-progress and subject to change.

Q: How do you plan on keeping wars fresh long term? Typically in other games wars become one dimensional in terms of strategy. Will intrepid be looking at map changes every few years, or will you give guilds / node mayors the ability to customize the layout or objectives of the battlefield?

A: Our guild wars have objective-based gameplay that spawn in the world based on several different factors and predicates that might exist. Some of those predicates might be where is your guild a patron guild of? Does your guild have a guild hall? What node is your guild leader and/or officers a citizen of? What was your last completed raid boss? All of those can serve as predicates to then spawn a certain objective within the world that players have to either engage with in a number of different manners. Either they can be kill objectives, they can be control objectives, they can be capture and move objectives. They could be a caravan caravan summons that need to take supplies from those objectives. The idea is to incorporate all of these other ancillary systems that exist within the game in some way shape or form- tie it into the guild war, because we've created those systems for a reason. We want players to engage with those systems, so why not hook those systems into the guild war format? And I think that that creates a very dynamic setting where it is not just about killing and logging out, but rather strategy in both your resource placement, how you respond, and when you respond, the composition of your raid/group teams. Those types of things play a role now in the outcome of those guild wars and I think they keep it fresh because it'll be different per war. – Steven Sharif

• Guild wars are intended to be released in Alpha-2 phase 1.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guilds may war multiple guilds/alliances at a time.

Guild war objectives

Guild war objectives are work-in-progress and subject to change.

Q: What are the benefits for winning a guild war and what are the penalties for losing?

A: I would punt that question because it's something that design is actively debating and it's something that they have a number of different approaches that they plan to institute as part of A2. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• There will be default guild war objectives as well as objectives that dynamically spawn in the world based on the assets guilds own, the activities guilds have participated in, and other conditions.

• If the guild owns a guild hall, objectives might be related to capturing a quest item in or around the guild hall that is only visible to the warring guild. Capturing this objective may require channeling time.

If you have a guild hall and a certain type of guild war is declared that is maybe a higher stakes war, some of those objectives will be centralized either at your guild hall, at the opponent's guild hall; could be a progression step towards the guild hall. It might be a specific a period of time that accumulates into into a central battle at the guild hall for an objective. – Steven Sharif

• If the guild has recently completed a raid, objectives might include stealing one of the quest items that the guild received from killing that raid boss.

• Objectives may be based on whether a guild is a patron guild of a node.

• Objectives may spawn based on the home node of the guild leader and/or officers.

• Guild wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during server prime-time.

• There may be bounty objectives to kill a particular guild member. The target may have increased damage mitigation and/or health against the warring guild and can call for help.

• Guild war objectives are intended to be more fluid than castle siege objectives.

Guild war mechanics

Guild war mechanics are work-in-progress and subject to change.

• Guild war declaration scrolls

- None -

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guild wars operate outside the PvP flagging system.
  • Player death during objective-based PvP accumulates lesser amounts of experience debt, but other penalties remain.

• Guild wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during server prime-time.
  • Players can kill each other at any time during the war (not only during server prime-time).

• Guild war objectives are intended to dynamically spawn based on various conditions that exist within each guild.

• Guild wars are not intended to be permanent. Definitive victory/surrender conditions exist that are based on the level of the warring guilds and the assets that those guilds have.

Read more...

Leadership tools

The developers are considering a number of leadership tools for guilds:

• Recruitment tools.
• Management tools.
  • Guild management tools are expected to be available at the start of Alpha-2.
• Delegation tools.
• Motivational systems.

• Communication tools.
  • Messaging members when offline. SMS was given as an opt-in example.
  • Guild alerts.
  • Board messages.
    • Forum connectivity.
    • Message of the day.
  • In game chat.
  • Calendar (may be available via the mobile/web companion app).

• Roster.
  • Standard guild ranks (such as Guild leader and officers).
    • Custom rank names (such as Knight or Squadron).
    • Each guild rank has a number of slots depending on guild progression.
    • Guild passive skills are assigned to specific ranks within the guild.
  • Member availability times.
  • Information about guild member properties such as freeholds.
  • Information about guild member family members.
  • A list of available permissions per rank/role.
  • Departments/micro-structures (such as battallions) within the guild structure with an associated leader.
    • Freehold permissions may be associated with these micro-structures.

The idea behind guild permissions for freeholds, is that within guilds there will be micro-structures of battallions etc. If we end up allowing guild permissions for freeholds it will likely only apply to the other members within the guild's micro-structure. – Steven Sharif

• Audit logs may be available to guild leaders and officers.
  • Deposits and withdrawals from the guild bank.
  • Promotions.
  • Kicks.
  • Leaves.

• Guild stats.
  • Player performance stats within events, such as guild wars.
  • Information about guild membership, such as archetype and class makeup will be made available.
  • Access to guild stats is subject a permissions structure.

For me personally, being a guild leader of a very large guild in the past, these types of administrative functions are life savers for guild leaders... Guild leaders are a very important part of the community for MMORPGs in general and the reason for that is- think of it like a queen on the board- "I bring order to chaos". To a degree, guild leaders are that order to the chaos. They help organize- they do so through lieutenants- they delegate responsibilities. There are good leaders, there are bad leaders, but essentially it's a highly social environment and if you can find a good guild and that guild is augmented with complimentary services from the company, from the game itself, it just makes that life easier and allows them to execute better. So in my opinion that is an important aspect. – Steven Sharif

Guild emblems

Banner 3D renders.

The user interface will allow emblems, logos and symbols to be designed in-game.

• Guild emblems.
  • Flags.
  • Guild halls.
  • Mount barding.
• Ships
  • Sails.
  • Emblems may potentially appear on a ship's hull as a decal, along with the ship name.
• Character
  • Shields.
  • Cloaks.
  • Armor attachments.

Q: Do nodes provide their citizens some kind of clothes or ornaments, capes, tabards, or something that they can basically represent their node?

A: I mean technically the node does have a sigil or insignia and there will be certain armors that you can customize insignia and/or symbols on, so yes you could probably achieve that. – Steven Sharif

• Emblem editor functionality is tentatively planned for Alpha-2.

Guild ladder

An inter-guild ladder will rank guilds based on their performance within competitive activities:

• Guild wars.
• Castle sieges.
• World bosses.

When the guild participates in guild wars or they participate in sieges, you'll be able to climb the ranks of your inter-guild ladder as well so you get bragging rights amongst your friends. – Steven Sharif

PvP seasons

Performance in various PvP systems (such as Caravans, Arenas, Guild wars) is measured over the course of ~6 month PvP seasons (season duration is subject to Alpha-2 testing). At the end of each season, a player's cumulative score may unlock various rewards.

• Gear enhancement rewards.
• Achievement ranks.
• Purchasing power (Currency).
• Potentially more granular player health bars.

The goal there is obviously that players can rinse clean the history in the season and start fresh. Whether or not those will be six-month, I think that's the goal of Alpha-2 is to help test that. It might be shorter than that, but the intent is to have a system that provides ability to track your wins and losses and to have those wiped fresh on some cadence. – Steven Sharif

Crowdfunding guild rewards

Guild themed character cloaks were cosmetic rewards for backing at the Leader of Men level or higher in the Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding campaigns.

• Guild cloaks can not be applied over costumes.

Guild cloaks will work the same way that accessory appearances from the cosmetic packs work, in that they are applied to the item and take over that appearance. They can not be applied over costumes. – Cody Peterson

Kickstarter/Summer crowdfunding guild rewards are assigned to a guild by the owner of the reward.

• Once assigned, the reward becomes an asset of that guild.
• Guild members that leave the guild no longer have access to the unique items of that guild.

Guild name reservation

Guild name reservation was available in the Braver of worlds and higher backer packages during the Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding campaigns.

Sharemarkets

Stock exchanges (also called Stock markets and Share markets) enable players to buy and sell shares in Nodes, Guilds, Social organizations, and Religions. The stock exchange system is still in a 'paper design' phase and is subject to change.

There's a number of different things where you can have success/failure points that then inform the metric that the stock price is predicated on; and players can purchase in at a certain price. That's the intent behind the stock market system. – Steven Sharif

• The value of stocks is influenced by world events that relate to the performance of the stocks, including Guild wars, Node wars, Node policies, Caravan runs, Trade agreements, and Monster coin events.

Q: Is it possible that as an outside actor you could influence the performance of a particular organization across one of those events?

A: The answer is yes. So, if you wanted to, as an adverse party, engage a particular organization, you could do that. You could engage with, let's say, a guild that you don't like when they're running a trade run, or when they're engaged in a node war, or when they're attempting to complete a raid boss. There is the PvX component of being able to interrupt or engage with them in those events and turn the outcome towards a negative, driving the potential stock value of that organization down. – Steven Sharif

• Stock exchanges were a Kickstarter stretch goal unlocked for reaching the $3 million dollar mark. They are a planned feature for the launch of Ashes of Creation.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Hard metrics, such as quest lines, nearby resources, citizen progression, and purchases of local real estate, will determine the value of purchasable shares.

• Sieges will halt trading of shares in a node. This opens up potential for economic sabotage.

• There is no regulatory commission to restrict the purchase and sale of stocks.

Community guides

• Ashes101 - Guilds

See also

• Social organizations
• Guild castles
• Castle sieges
• Guild wars