Challenge #2: Recruiting and Matters of Trust
We've all seen old mafia movies where our hero the informant has to kill someone to prove themselves and join their ranks. This does, in fact, make perfect sense from the Don's perspective. If one strategically placed pigeon can tear down the whole organization, it's definitely worth your while to discover if your new lieutenant actually does have a taste for murder and mayhem.
Guildmasters have the same problem, only without the option of fitting a traitorous spy with concrete shoes. The anonymity of the internet makes it very difficult to ferret out spies and other disruptive forces. Guild leaders tell tales of trying to find spies based on speech patterns, login timing, and flat-out intuition; some guildmasters require a screenshot of a new recruit's character selection screen, or even their login information. Even those measures can be easily sidestepped via a second, or even a free trial, account. A red-handed offender can vanish into thin air, reappearing two months later with a new name and appearance.
These trust issues make guilds grow insular as a game ages - recruiting new blood simply isn't worth the aggravation. As a result, new players have a hard time finding a guild - exactly the opposite of what the game designer wants to see. Incentivizing recruiting and finding ways to help guilds trust new blood is the first step into building a society where new players feel welcome and desired.
Challenge #3: The Beleaguered Guildmaster
Managing people is hard, yet we often give guildmasters tools completely inadequate to the task. UIs to manage memberships are frequently buggy or cumbersome. Setting up large-scale encounters such as raids and distributing raid loot often are done by hand, and can be hugely time-consuming. But as budgets get tighter and launch dates grow nigh, developers conclude that since few are guildmasters, time spent building quality tools for them is wasted on the grand majority of the player base.
This worldview ignores the fact that guild leaders are your community's opinion leaders. Most people lack the time and energy to become fully informed in all topics, and we naturally turn to opinion leaders to give us cues as to how to respond. Jesse Jackson and Rush Limbaugh are opinion leaders in the realm of politics. Roger Ebert is an opinion leader in the realm of movies. Their opinions simply count more.
A guild leader is an opinion leader as well - his standing in the little minisociety he runs acts as a force multiplier for any opinion he holds. The casual player will take cues from his frustrations, and if he's had enough, he can cause a stampede of followers to a virtual world where the grass is greener. Designers need to stop giving guildmasters tools that make them feel like they're being punished, and instead focus on making them happy. Guildmasters that quit are very bad for your virtual world.
Challenge #4: Multiple Affiliations
Researchers in the emerging field of Social Networking examine the social ties between people with great interest. They noted that your average person has multiple groups of affiliations. Those that someone is closest to are the ones he sees almost daily: co-workers, roommates, and immediate families - researchers call these strong links. People also interact with others, weak links, less frequently: former co-workers, drinking buddies, and distant family might be examples.
What surprised the researchers was that people, in times of crisis, turn to their weak links. For example, if your entire company is laid off, your co-workers (i.e. strong links) will be too busy with their own job hunt to help you. Instead, you might call your former co-workers or in-laws (weak links) to start your job hunt. Your weak links act as your social safety net.
