Guild Hex

A guild is a living entity and requires communication to keep it active and alive. As in real life some form of communication is absolutely necessary for your guild to survive.

You do not have to put up an entire website for your guild but at the very minimum you should have a message board or forum.

You must have a place where your members can interact when not playing the game itself. A forum will give you this needed place.

How can you get a message board?

Getting one set up is really a very easy thing. There are a number of places that offer free message boards but like all things you get what you pay for. Nearly all of the free forums spam your visitors with advertisements.

There are some really great free scripts out there. The down side to these scripts is that you must have your own web space with access to databases. The hosting you get from your ISP may not have this access.

You want a message board that you have complete control over and can list as many or as few categories as you like. In my experience you will not get this from free message board hosts.

If you have your own web space with a control panel, look to see if Fantastico is listed in your controls. If it is chances are that you already have the ability to host a message board. Simply click on Fantastico and look for a section titled “Discussion Boards” then follow the instructions to install one of the message boards.

It is my advice that you make registration on your forum mandatory for all of your players. If they do not want to take the time to become part of your community then perhaps they should look for another guild.

Use message boards to create a sense of community within your guild. They can be very handy when scheduling guild events as well as day to day communication that cannot take place within the game.

Running a guild can be a very difficult thing. Using a message board is one of the keys to effectively managing your guild and should not be overlooked.

Lee Ruleman is a 10 year veteran of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) beginning with Ultima Online and continuing on through the present. It is Lee’s goal is to assist other players in attaining maximum level, the best equipment, large cash reserves, and advanced gaming knowledge, all in a 100% legal manner.

For a limited time Lee is offering his brand new product “Effective MMORPG Guild Creation and Management” for Free!

Guild Wars Factions is the second in the Guild Wars series of games. The great thing about Guild Wars is that this multi player role playing game is that there is no monthly fee, you only pay once, which sets it apart from most other online games. With Guild Wars all you have to do is buy the game or purchase an account key online and you can play for an unlimited time. Guild Wars was released just over three years ago and has completely changed the face of massively multi player online rpg games [MMOPRG].

The first Guild Wars game Prophecies was criticized by some players and so there have been some changes made to the campaign. Players can get Factions as a game by itself or they can choose to add it on if they already have an existing Prophecies account – even if you buy Factions on its own you can still access quite a lot of the content of Prophecies.

Guild Wars Factions introduces players to a new continent Cantha where two opposing groups or factions, the Luxons and Kurzicks are constantly engaged in battle. When you play the game you decide which of the factions you want to belong to and then you can join in the war.Players help their factions to claim towns on the map from their opponents. This game has a new PVE or player versus environment campaign. The Luxons respect strength more than anything else, they have no religion and they live in the Jade Sea. The Kurzicks on the other hand respect religion and social order, they live in the dark environment of the Echovald Forests.

Originally Guild Wars had six professions (hence the guilds) but in this game another two professions, the Assasin and the Ritualist have been added. The chief skill of the Assasin is getting into a situation or battle quickly and getting out again just as quickly once the mission has been accomplished. An Assasin can teleport around the battlefield and they can also shadow step. The Assasin’s special skills means that they can do a great deal of damage to their opponents. The Assasin’s major weakness is the armor that used, it is not quite up to the task expected of it and this means that the Assasin is of little use in the front line of combat.

The Ritualist has a direct link to the spirit world and is able to conjure up spirits into the field either to protect their allies or attack their opponents. In addition to this they can communicate with the spirits of their ancestors in a ritual involving ashes and urns to create ghostly weapons to put into the hands of the spirits they have conjured up. Factions also contains new skills and armor for the six existing professions and there are new ways of playing the game for both player versus environment and player versus player.

Tom Kranz has been playing Guild Wars since its UK launch. As well as writing about the three Guild Wars chapters – Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall – he also covers Guild Wars gold and Guild Wars maps.

Guild Wars is an extremely popular massively multiplayer online role playing game; it is different to most online games because there is no monthly subscription – once a player has bought the game or a key code they can continue playing for as long as they wish.

Guild Wars is quite a complicated game because it is made up of a number of different campaigns and each campaign has its own extra additions to the original campaign of Prophecies. In the Guild Wars players have basically two modes of action, player versus player game and player versus environment. In the first players compete against each other or they become part of a team that is competing against another team. The environment, the virtual world is an important part of Guild Wars, unlike other virtual worlds the Guild War world is not static – this means that characters can move on in their lives and the story takes place in real time.

Each campaign in the Guild Wars series has its own territory or continent and each continent has a set of maps. Maps are necessary to any campaign and in Guild Wars they allow the player to see where they have come from, where they are, and where they should be going. They have to make their way through the map in order to gain rewards with which they can buy certain skills. Players choose the profession or guild to which they want to belong and then they start to build their character. Guild Wars builds are accomplished by making use of certain skills, each player can have only eight skills, one of which may be an elite skill which cannot be bought.

Players can recognize their allies, those who are on their side by green dots on the map, their enemies on the other hand are represented by red dots. Players have to accomplish a series of tasks or missions to take their character to another level where they have access to more armor and skills.

Guild Wars is fast developing a cult following and there is a Guild Wars wiki containing a lot of basic but useful information concerning the game. There are also Guild War gurus who compete every now and again to see who has the most up to date knowledge on the game. Like many other online games there are also a series of cheats that some people claim they use, but if a player is caught cheating then they risk having their account suspended.

Derek Smithson

Massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) are a new genre of computer games which are proving hugely popular around the world. Client software is installed on your PC, and this lets you connect to the game’s servers. Joined thousands – even millions – of other players online, you are no longer restricted to just playing through a storyline by yourself.

MMORPGs expand the world of role playing games, allowing players the freedom to make their own storylines, and prove their skill not just against computer controlled opponents (NPCs) but also each other. Usually MMORPGs like World of Warcraft have a monthly subscription fee, on top of the initial fee required to purchase the game client.

Guild Wars from ArenaNet does away with these subscription fees. Once you have bought the software, installed it, and created an account to log in to the game, everything is free. This gives players the freedom to play Guild Wars as little or as often as they want.

Each character has a relatively low level cap of level 20. This is because Guild Wars is based more on skill rather than how far you have progressed in the game or what items your character has. Combined with the lack of a subscription fee, this has made Guild Wars very popular with casual gamers.

There are three campaigns – Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall. Each of these has their own unique characters, skills and items, along with the core characters and skills which are available in all campaigns. Each can be played as a standalone title, or registered with one account, allowing players to move their characters between the three storylines.

Prophecies alone has over 30 character/profession combinations, and more than 200 quests available through the storyline. Factions continues the initial storyline, moving events to a new continent. Nightfall, the third campaign, moves the action to an unexplored part of Tyria, and brings events in the main storyline to a climax.

Eye of the North is the game’s first true expansion, requiring one of the campaigns to be installed first. Aimed at established players, there are no new professions or characters available. Eye of the North introduces some new features which link the existing titles to the forthcoming sequel. The beta for Guild Wars 2, starting in 2008, is sure to have a huge take-up.

Since it’s release in April 2005, Guild Wars has sold over 4 million copies, and won numerous awards. With such a large established player base, as well as regular tournaments for cash prizes, the game is going still going strong.

Tom Kranz is a an avid player of Eye of the North, the expansion to the award winning Guild Wars. Follow the links for more information on Eye of the North maps and Guild Wars gold.