Midgard Alliances

[blain]

Can some-one please explain this to me.

Fedaykin Alliance has 20 members
The other alliances have 3-5 members

Why are there 3 alliances with only 3-5 members?

Surely it would be better for Migard as a whole if those three alliances merged into 1.

Then we would have 2 full alliances, which would mean that we could work together better as a realm.

Is it a case of egos being more important than a realm working well together?

 

[Fightersuntzu]

<snort> <giggle>

(runs off laughing)

Alliance consolodation is one of those really impossible things, and just because it seems logical to you doesnt mean its logical to the others

 

[Dook_Pug]

People have different agendas.
People have different needs.
People have different wants.
People have different playstyles.

Two big alliances would be a bad thing IMO.

Aslong as the proper communication channels are kept open, it shouldn't matter if we have 20 alliances.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

On the surface simple, but an awkward one.

Get the coffee out, this is another word-count muncher.

Just like peeps gravitate to guilds of like-minded peeps, the guilds themselves tend to gravitate to others like themselves.

The problems always seem to occur when guilds have differing goals from each other.

You can usually split guilds into 2 groups:

1) Guilds that want to focus purely on RvR. Everything else in-game is merely to support this. Often associated with more hard core players. You will usually find much greater restrictions to joining these guilds in the first place either by level, realm rank or association.
Will often, though not always, attempt to be more militaristic in how they do things. Because of this, often these types of players/guilds are sometimes percieved as less 'community minded', since they are focused on one goal. Player level will usually be 40+ in these guilds and in last few months as more and more guilds have many lvl50s, you will find several guilds with only 45+ chars, unless they are alts.

2) Guilds that more casually RvR, or don't at all. Generally thought of as the more 'fun' oriented guilds, though thats not quite fair, as everyone plays for fun. Usually get a much wider range of levels in these guilds. This category also includes newly formed guilds that are trying to create a foothold in the game with a small and possibly growing playerbase in their guild. Many guilds in this category change often as the pressure to get into larger guilds for easier grouping/levelling/RvR grows. As such, many of these guilds don't last long, or merge between themselves to grow. New players to the game will usually be in guilds that fall into this category.

Now, because of all this, it makes it very difficult to get all these varieties of people into one single cohesive alliance, (its often difficult enough having them in the same guild ).

There is also the Top Dog issue. Often, you find some very strong personalities involved. Especially in some of the larger guilds, it can sometimes take this to keep such a large bunch of people together. Top Dogs sometimes try to intimidate and push smaller/weaker/dependant guilds into going in a particular direction. Even when the common goal might be a good thing at times, human nature and lack of social skills (remember the huge age ranges of people involved here) can often mean there is a lot of people get their hackles up when asked to do things. This leads to fragmentation in an alliance and a general falling out. While its easy to fall out, its very VERY hard to get people talking again. Top Dogs are notoriously easy to upset, as they feel they should be automatically included in everything or have a greater degree of deference from their counterparts in other guilds. This is another thing that complicates alliances. Additionally, Top Dogs like to do things their way, and alliances only work through cooperation: a further difficulty for the would-be successful alliance.

I've seen the We-are-big-so-you-should-join-us-for-the-good-of-all argument often. It amuses me. By guilding people that have opposite goals, you create strife in your own guild, a place where you really don't want it and actually make it harder for the guild to function as a cohesive whole so in the short term you grow the guild, but in the long term, you get problems. Again, these problems have a way of filtering through to your allies, as dissent grows. Exactly the same reasoning can be applied to alliances, as they are just a superset of people in guilds.

The current alliance game mechanics has its flaws, as do the various alliances themselves. Every way of doing things has pros and cons. The upshot is, as Dook said, pretty much: differing needs, differeing goals.

The way it is now though has an advantage: in the past, unless your guild was x size or had x number of contacts and friends, you were left out of everything on a realm level. Now there is a much greater chance for people to get included in things though there can still be problems.

I'd still like to see more guilds get included in things - there will always be many more 'casual' small guilds than the RvR guilds and these are the ones that are losing out because of the alliance limit. Its a shame really, because I bet you find that this is a significant proportion of the player base.

I think there are probably enough other unallied guilds in Midgard now to start another alliance amongst themselves. I believe a few guilds have tried this from time to time. The important thing, is maintaining links to other, more established alliances, as its all about flow of information. Keep your profile up, be around for things that are happening. It takes time.

A biggy to remember: nobody should think they are more important than anyone else. This has been at the root of so many of the problems in alliances and guilds.

Believe it or not, I cut this post short and skimmed some of the topics. The interaction and the reasons behind it are really interesting. All the points I've raised are based on observations over the last year of playing and haven't been plucked out of the air.

Hope you enjoyed your coffee.

 

[gengi]

Well impressed

Nice write up Roo. That has to be one of the best posts I have read in a long while. Concise, to the point, not in any way derogatory to any point of view, in short an excellent post.
/salute Roo

later

Gengee

 

[Elrond/Ruffting]

We don't have an alliance still do perfectly well, have organised 2 successful beliathan raids in the past 2 weeks and an almost successful relic raid. It's not the end of the world if you aren't part of an official alliance so long as you can make friends and cooperate with other guilds to achieve a goal.

 

[Ragnarok1978]

Roo sums it up pretty well, in an excellent post I might add.

Midgard is not dependant on big alliances to be better as a whole, Midgard is dependant on people being able to set their differences aside to reach a common goal, a situation I don't see happening really soon.

Still remember some of the first realm-wide relic attempts where everyone and anyone was welcome, those were the days before spies and individual skirmishes got in the way

 

[Kharok Svark]

Well written Roo

It is quite interesting how the interactions and psychology that exists in the game is echo'd in the world around us.

Different people, different goals, different emotions ...

Another great post to look at ;

http://forums.barrysworld.com/showthread.php?threadid=40425

 

[hrodelbert]

i think looking at albion pretty much sums up what roo said... LoE/SotL broke away from "unity" because we realised we had different agendas and play styles. LoE and SotL have very similar styles in the way we want to play the game and this was leading to a lot of conflict with the other unity members.
Initially after the split i think albion as a whole suffered and it has taken a long time to get ourselves organised again. Unity has since added guilds to its alliance which has made it a strong alliance again. Afaik the guilds in the unity allaince are now very happy and work in unison. which wasn't the case when LoE/SotL were in it. My alliance has since worked hard to ensure that relations between unity and LoE/SotL have remained good and i think we have now reached a point that we are more effective as two alliances than we would be as one.
A single alliance in albion is certainly not the way forward but ensuring there is good communication across the realm is. basically i'm just reafirming what roo said. that is more important to have a few alliances that are efficient and happy than a single one with a lot of internal conflict.
cheers
Pinky

 

[Oldbone O]

There is nothing wrong with small alliances, Sotl's and LoE's alliance in alb is working good, SU's and BaF's alliance in mid is working good.. those 2 allainces are the most active RvR/PvE allainces around, and they are doing fine, the key is to merge with guilds that focus on the same thing.

 

[vladamyr]

TBH for some reason the more guilds you have in an alliance the more likely it will go tits up, just look at one of the first alliances (Nemesis) it started off well but then just fused up into being nothing but arguments etc. To me only having a few guilds in an alliance is much better as it seems to prevent these arguments from spouting up.