User:AOTT/politicaltheory

As part of my experience as an Alliance and Guild Leader, I'm going to start thinking about the politics of Guild Wars. My thoughts will be put here. =Guilds=
 * Guilds are social constructs of up to 100 people.
 * 1 person MUST be the Guild Leader; there need not be any officers.
 * Guild Leaders can Disband the entire guild. (Kicking all members and officers out at once and removing their status as Guild Leader, thus destroying the guild)
 * It is possible for there to be up to 99 Officers in a Guild.
 * Only Guild Leaders can demote or kick Officers.
 * Officers can promote members to Officer.
 * Officers can Kick members.

Styles of Guilds:
 * Faction Farmer
 * PvE Oriented
 * PvP Oriented
 * GvG Focus
 * Heroes' Ascent Focus
 * Alliance Battle Focus
 * Self-Contained Focus
 * *Explanation: 1v1/group vs. group within the Guild combat.


 * Balance PvP/PvE

=Guild Politics= A guild leader is hard-coded with the most power of any one individual within the Guild. Because of this, the Guild Leader has the most authority of any individual within the construct. Benefits: The Guild Leader is able to excercise more control over Officers than normal members because the threat of Demotion hovers over Officer's heads. This leads to a paradox; a normal member has no reason to do what they are told except for the threat of being kicked out, which by its very nature releases them from any obligation to the Guild.
 * Ultimate Authority.
 * Can not be forced out of the Guild by the other members.
 * Has the ability to reverse any decision made by an Officer.
 * Able to kick Officers.
 * Able to manipulate the Message of the Day box.

Role of Consent

 * When a player joins the guild, they therefore consent by default to abide by the guild policies, social expectations, and goals.
 * Refusal to yield consent results in either:
 * Kicking, enacted by either an officer or the leader of the Guild.
 * Demotion, if the member has Offcier status.
 * Leaving of their own free will.
 * It is counter-intuitive to join a guild if you refuse to consent to their policies, because:
 * The leader is, essentially, omnipotent in the sense that your continued membership may be terminated at any time.
 * If you don't want to help out the Guild, there is no incentive for the Guild to help you.
 * If you refuse to yield consent and abide by the rules and policies of the Guild, then you will liekly be kicked out.
 * A Guild is a social system based entirely on the consent of the members to the Leader's hard-coded authority. If a member does not consent to the reasonable expectations of the Leader, they therefore forfeit their place in the roster.
 * If a Guild Leader has unreasonable or unenforcable expectations for the Guild, they are being unreasonable.

Taxes

 * Taxes are easily tracked by the leader.
 * Taxes are unreasonable unless the leader provides a resource for the Guild which members are willing to pay taxes for.
 * Taxes are unenforcable without the consent of the members.
 * If the leader tries to impose taxes on their Guild, they have only 3 methods of enforcement.
 * Demotion, in the case of Officers.
 * Kicking, in the case of all others.
 * Assuming the Leader is offering a service to the Guild which they have deemed taxable, they may deny this resource to members.
 * If a leader attempts to enforce a tax by kicking those who refuse to pay it, they may end up with an empty roster.
 * If a leader tries to enforce a tax by demotion, they may run out of officers, AND they have no way of enforcing the tax among the members short of kicking.
 * If the leader is providing a resource to the Guild, witholding the resource may result in grumpiness and dissention, but they will not end up with an empty roster unless all members in the Guild choose to leave. Assuming the service that the Leader provides is selective in some way (i.e., a forum, members can be temporarily banned, running a Teamspeak or Ventrilo server people can be kicked/banned from teh servers) then the Leader need not jeopardize their Guild's population by kicking members; rather they need only deny the extra resource to the members who refuse to pay the requested tax.

Entry Fees
It can be argued that entry fees equal in value up to the cost of invitation (100 gold) are acceptable to impose upon members. Whether the fee should be imposed is a question of who is recieving it.
 * If the LEADER recieves the fee (assuming the member was invited by an officer) it does not appear to be logical. The officer in question loses their money, then the leader gets money, supposedly as a reimbursment for the invitation.  The leader did not pay for the members' invitation, therefore they do not appear to have any claim on the fee, except in the role as the leader of the guild.
 * If the INVITING PARTY (Officer or leader) recieves the fee, then reimbursement appears logical. (Guild Wars guilds did not used to have a 100g fee associated with invitation; supposedly it was implemented to prevent invitation-spamming)

Enforcement of entry fees is impossible. Much like paying for a "run" or buying a guild (I still haven't determined whether or not it's allowed by the TOS to sell your guild for GW gold. Maybe I should look into that; it seems to happen a LOT) there really isn't any way to guarantee that the transaction will take place fairly. The inviting party may simply take the gold and ignore the invitee, thus stealing their gold. If the member refuses to pay the fee after they have been invited, then there really isn't much you can do to them. You can leave them be, and they stay in the roster; OR you can kick them, but you still don't get your 100g back.

Starting up a Guild
Starting a Guild is simple. All that a player interested in becoming a Guild Leader must do to start their Guild is speak to the Guild Registrar found in most major cities.

So, you've got your Guild, Now What?
Players will often respond to random invitations, it's true. However, players need a reason to STAY once they have joined. My best advice is to convince some of your friends to join you in your enterprise to start a Guild. This way, you have a core group of members that will help you expand the Guild.

The Guild Hall
The Guild Hall is you personal city. You can add every kind of merchant in the game to it. Without a Guild Hall, your members cannot GvG, AB, or have a place that they can truly call their own.

Saving a Failing Guild
=Alliances=
 * Alliances are social constructs of up to 10 Guilds, with a maximum capacity of 1000 people.
 * Within each Alliance, there is 1 Alliance Guild Leader, and one Leader Guild.
 * Stand-Alone guilds are technically Alliance Leaders until they are invited to join an Alliance.
 * Within each Alliance, there can be a maximum of 10 Guild Leaders, 9 of which are not Alliance Leaders.
 * The Alliance Guild Leader is solely capable of inviting new guilds to the Alliance and forcibly kicking out other Guilds in the Alliance.
 * Each Guild Leader within the Alliance is capable of forcing their Guild to leave the Alliance.
 * The Alliance Leader can not leave the Alliance until all other guilds have left or been kicked from the Alliance.
 * Because of this, the Leader Guild cannot be disbanded until the Alliance has been dissolved.


 * Alliances are part of either the Luxon or the Kurzick faction.
 * When an Alliance has enough faction, they can take command of an outpost or city in the territory of the faction they are loyal to.
 * Benefits of owning an outpost or city vary with the "level" of the outpost or city.
 * Because of the fanaticism of leading alliances, the possibility of taking command of an outpost is fairly slim.
 * Because the Alliances controlling outposts focus on few other aspects of the game than maintaining their position, they often break down due to member disinterest and argument among allies.