For about 10 months now Iâve been running a social experiment using clever game mechanics in retail WoW, so Iâm very interested in hearing your opinion on this matter, which would be of great help for the sociological aspect on my online gaming research study!
The thing in question is a guild in which every member is a male forsaken, every member is named the same using various appendixes like Ê, â, etc⌠(It used to be Roleplayer, but we all renamed to Abomination, as you can see by my name), and we all wear the same transmog sets for cloth/leather/mail/plate.
The guild is focused around killing as many flagged Alliance players as possible in the open world (War Mode), and, as months passed, I can tell you that we have raked up immeasurable hate towards our devious organisation (and for good reason too).
So you could say we became rather infamous on our realm, as you can see here.
Now, Iâd like to take this opportunity to ask you guys two questions so that I may find more answers for my sociology research. Any and all answers you could provide me with would be greatly valued and appreciated:
Would you or would you not forfeit your identity to become a part of a larger entity (a hivemind of sorts with no guild master, but lots of officers) in an online videogame, provided the community offered you free gear boosts on a weekly basis, as well as a friendly environment, custom PvP/PvE events, etc? Basically, would you join an unorthodox guild, which focuses on a niche way of having fun in the game, instead of getting curve/edge in every new raid tier?
Seeing this, would it inspire you to create a similar organisation, perhaps with night elves, draenei, tauren or something akin to that?
Thank you, in advance, for your valuable feedback!
I think first question on this quote asks completely different thing than second (bolded part), even wording is suggesting bolded part is first question in another words? What do you actually want to know?
What does âunorthodox guildâ mean, does it mean making other players life misery or does it means doing other content than raids? What about players who donât play for curve, are they already âunorthodoxâ or do they answer this question considering possibility to throw away their normal wow life and starting to âunorthodoxcallyâ raiding? What do you mean by âniche waysâ of having fun?
By quality of your questions I am assuming this is not actual research but cleverly hidden advertisement for your guild, but in case it actually is research, you have to clean up your questions to be understandable only one way and put in all the information you are supposed to when doing research (ask from your school if you are not sure what).
When 8.3 hits, if there would be a mecha-gnome guild focused on similar activities, Iâd join with my mecha-gnome hunter in a heartbeat. I would even make sure I have the âserve nâzothâ toy, to be able to attack my own faction from time to time.
REMOVE THE CURSE OF FLESH! And not just from Gnomes, from everyone, because King Mechagon was short-sighted. We need to save themall.
Nope, my individualism is part of who I am and this arrangement you describe would have nothing to give me on an emotional level. I greatly respect and value the benefits of being in a group, but Iâve never been a âjoinerâ. Any group I become part of needs to respect my individuality. In my mind, a guild is a group of individuals who work together for the overall benefit of everyone in the group.
Woah, so many replies so far! Thanks a lot for your input so far, I will try my best to answer all of you (Also, I forgot to mention, I will need about a minimum of 100 replies for my study to be valid. So far, youâre doing a great job!)
Alright so:
I am glad youâve had, as a fellow AD player, a few fun encounters with us! I hope to see you again one day soon
An all druid guild â covering tank/healer/rdps/mdps role sounds very amusing! It seems to be a very cool concept, and I do wish you could reenkindle that kind of guild. We could truly have some fun interactions.
Could you, perhaps, be more specific about the first part? I am sorry but English is not my first language.
Hey, since this wasnât a recruitment thread, I forgot to add that! Sorry! To join us you could create an undead male character named Abomination (with appendixes) on Argent Dawn (or transfer a character and rename it for free) and whisper any of my guild mates, but the best way of joining would be by contacting our Guild Master via Bnet (MilanGrujic#1256)
Hey, absolutely not Itâs just another form of having fun. It would really be helpful, though, if you could input those 2 questions Iâve asked. It would honestly mean a lot to me
Hey, I will try to explain it better here, and as I said, English really is not my first language, so the question might have been a bit vague. So to simplify, what I had in mind when asking about joining an unorthodox guild was: Would you join a guild that is mainly concentrated around doing an activity which does NOT drop lootable items like, for example, raids (not to say we donât do mplus together, though). So, in short, joining for the community and fun times, not for your own characterâs progression gear wise.
As for your assumption, Iâd have to answer: negative. Every day we get about 1 new member on average, so weâre in no shortage of new people, but more are always welcome. General Discussions, furthermore, as I remember, are not used for recruiting, but for⌠well⌠General Discussions like this here survey.
A mechagnome only guild, thematically put right, would be glorious You would even have more OP passives than us, The Forsaken. I encourage you to start such a guild and meet us on the fields of battle!
We, as you put it, âdominateâ and âpersecuteâ others who have opted in for war mode, which means giving consent to all kinds of PvP, including ganking.
Hey, this is a nice imput and I will probably, together with the first reply on this thread, use it in my research as a template.
P.S. Our guild does not restrict you in any way. The only goal here is to have fun together, in a group, while not breaking the ToS. Ganking people with WM, be it RP or not, is not against the ToS. Weâve spoken to several gamemasters about it. However, we do not spam toys or mounts on them once they turn it off. Weâre here just for the funny PvP gimmicks.
Thank you very much for your feedback!
An absolute treasure chest of an answer. Thank you!
Ahh ok i understand. My answer:
I am running such a guild. Our main activities are chatting, saving eachothers from caves we have got stuck (it is so much easier to sneak in than to get out!), drag eachothers lvl 1 alts on multiplayer mounts to events they have no busines being in at lvl 1, ressing them after participating to the said event, talking bad stuff about weird aunt, sharing cooking recipes (and disasterous attempts to create new ones), hoarde items on our banks for decades so when one of us finally decides to craft primal batskin gloves then surely someone digs out mats for those. We have all either hugged or punched (or both) eachothers several times in our lives. We are irl friends and family guild. We never do anything that is worth any currently valuable loot. And i wouldnât change into any progression guild ever. Been having fun since 2005 and still going!
A lot of people saying how theyâll lose their individuality, by sacrificing their identity to be a replicate of everyone else! but really thats not the case at all!
Iâve found being in this social experiment for a couple of months now, and having sacrificed my characters identity to match everyone else has allowed me to settle in this community, and create my own individualness, and bring my own ideas to the table; far more than i could in any standard guild!
I find the concept of this Social Experiment creates a tighter bond, as weâre forced to be more coordinated; mostly due to our high risk raiding on a 70(A)/30(H) Realm, and our consistent mythic plus runs to gear one another; brings the real friendship, and uniqueness to the group. + the excitement of raiding and being picked as a âtargetâ by the opposing faction; now thats picking out the individual!
I would encourage other servers to attempt an experiment like this, and the bonds you make with players are great! Along with the competition it generates with other players trying to go up-against you!
Honestly, itâs great youâre enjoying this, but to me it sounds absolutely horrible.
Herd mentality to the max. It makes me almost mad; I just want to slap some sense (and self worth) into you guys.
I can understand why it wouldnât be appealing to everyone. For me, personally, its seeing the reaction from players on the other end - when they see a large group of players, named the same, dressed the same, 100% identical; charge at them! That reaction gets me through it, all of It creates a great fun atmosphere!
Iâm confused why it makes you feel âalmost madâ, howeverâŚ? There is a lot of sense in this social experiment to me, as the idea is clear. âConfusionâ and âsurpriseâ being two of the many key goals.
Wouldnât mind having an alt for a guild like that, but Iâm afraid bfa grinding have worn me out too much for me to start another character and gear it up. Iâm simply afraid that I wouldnât be able to devout myself to it as much as it would deserve.
Thanks a lot for your input so far, I will try my best to answer all of you (Also, I forgot to mention, I will need about a minimum of 100 replies for my study to be valid. So far, youâre doing a great job!)
