Council Chambers: Making The Most Of Allies And Adversaries

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

This week’s entry focuses on a unique aspect of TOR, the Allies and Adversary system.  This system allows a guild leader to connect with up to three other guilds through the TOR guild window, and will ideally place all of these guilds together on the same server at launch.  In order to be an ally or adversary of another guild, you all need to be requesting the same type of server (PvE, PvP, RP-PvE) and also the same time zone (EU, US East, US West).  For most guilds, if they used this feature at all, it’s been as a way to connect with friends from other games or other well-known guilds in the community.  But it turns out, there may be a lot more to the Allies and Adversaries system than just connecting with some friends to land on the same server.

This week’s letter talks about a really innovative way of using the Allies and Adversaries system to not only place guilds with similar groups, but to also really try and build a solid server community:

We believe that putting several reputable Republic/Sith guilds on the same server will promote future growth. We aim to build a server that fosters friendly competition and a respectful community. We also want to move the server faction balance closer to 1:1 (away from the likely Empire dominance on PvP realms), creating a healthier than average server for PvE raiding, PvP rated battlegrounds, and open-world PvP competition. In order to do this, we utilize Bioware’s Phase 2 program for creating Alliances and Adversaries, along with our own twist that we feel is essential to accomplish our goals.

When I read this, I was really struck by how clever and useful this strategy is.  Instead of just focusing on connecting with other well known guilds or picking out guilds known from other games, this particular group is working with other guilds to build a server-wide effort and using the Allies and Adversaries system to really build a community of gamers on their server.  This in turn should help to stack the decks a bit on that server so that at launch, with an established group of players all working towards similar goals and with the desire to build a strong server community, they should all wind up with a really solid server to call home for years to come.

When it comes down to it, guilds can live or die not just by their own efforts, but by the health of their server.  Think about the way in which servers can develop reputations – for both good and ill – and how that can affect your playing experience in an MMO.  For example, small, sparsely populated servers can cause additional challenges for guilds in terms of recruitment and growth.  By the same token, if a server develops a “reputation” for any number of reasons, that can also lead to challenges for guilds.  Sometimes a server becomes so sparse that it’s eventually shut down, and its players relocated to other servers.  So server selection matters – and in a context where a game is brand new, without any sense of server population or reputation – then it really is a grab bag where your guild will land.

That’s where the above guilds really seem like they’ve discovered something here, working together in an alliance not just to play with friends or other big guilds, but to really foster and develop a healthy server environment. For those guilds out there who are still debating whether it’s worthwhile to pursue allies and adversaries during the pre-launch guild phase, or even for those who may already have established some – consider whether it’s worthwhile to think a little bigger, and work towards not only setting yourselves up on the same server but also working together to build a great server community through those links!

Got a question for Council Chambers?  Drop a line to me at ladyoftherepublic@gmail.com or post a comment here, and you may see your guild questions answered in a future column!