Game Mechanics: Guild War

[quido]

As is known, the Guild War (/guildwar) feature is not functioning on Green. I'm going to take a stab at developing it against EQEmu base and will make it available for use if I'm successful.

I'm wondering if we could put together all the research and information that's available out there for it please?

A few questions I was not able to answer after some limited googling/conversing:

• Do names show red for people you can attack due to /guildwar?
• Are you prohibited from beneficial buffing people you can attack due to /guildwar?
• What sort of notification is generated for a guild leader when another leader invokes a /guildwar request?
• When the second leader goes to accept the guild war by using the /guildwar command, must they also specify the duration, and if so, must they match, or does it simply use the shortest of the two durations stated?
• Must the leader of the target guild be online and/or in the same zone to successfully invoke the /guildwar command?
• What are the specifics of item loot for /guildwar?

[nilbog]

Moved to general bug forum as it affects both blue and green.

Here is some quick searching for randomness:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000918...uild_wars.html

> I've always wanted to see how a level 30 > Necromancer would do against 6 level 16's or something like > that. Ask anyone who has been in a /guildwar. The four level limit is a GOOD thing. I read a report on usenet about a six vs. one battle and the guy who was alone killed all six of the attackers. The level difference was not that great either. I'll see if I can find it again and crosspost it here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000918..._commands.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20011227...ct/command.htm

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[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by quido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[*]Do names show red for people you can attack due to /guildwar?

Searches so far have only turned up one image connected to a guild war, but it's possible there are more associated with these two character/guild names.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030120...c/kul_comi.jpg

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Originally Posted by quido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[*]Must the leader of the target guild be online and/or in the same zone to successfully invoke the /guildwar command?

https://web.archive.org/web/20000205...e.cgi?read=150

17:59:50 Feb 05, 2000

Open letter to the Wolves of Odin guild
Posted By: Keefer Attaturk, Guildmaster of Albion
Posted On: 6:27 a.m. 25/5/1999
Subject: Open letter to the Wolves of Odin guild

Sadly, Albion now considers the Wolves of Odin enemies. We will treat the members as hostile. We will grant them no services and offer them no assistance. Our outstanding /guildwar challenge remains.

Our reasons are simple. A guildmember of theirs led a train onto a party of ours causing two deaths. Instead of apologising he became abusive and tried to killsteal and deliberately dragged more trains. When I attempted to contact his guild leaders I was put in contact with the guilds' second-in-command, Vanderben.

Vanderben claimed to be the guild leader and was hardly apologetic. He was abusive, arrogant and challenging. He challenged us to war verbally. We accepted but when I tried to instigate the war with the /guildwar command it turned out he was not the leader. He told us that the real leader Siegmund was with him RL but when I asked that Siegmund logged on, he refused and became increasingly insulting stating that their preferred tactic would be to 'train us' instead.

So the Wolves of Odin refused to accept the official /guildwar challenge despite their earlier taunts and provocation. The leadership is clearly cowardly, honourless and incapable of acting responsibly regarding the repercussions caused by the actions of their guildmembers.

We are aware that the Wolves of Odin recruitment procedure is somewhat open. They appear to invite anyone interested in joining a guild, therefore by and large many members are innocent and have no idea of the type of guild they are joining. I would take this opportunity to remind those individuals that they can leave the guild by targetting themselves and typing /guildremove.

It is a shame that we must call this guild an enemy and more of a shame that they refuse to accept the /guildwar challenge.

Keefer Attaturk,
Guildmaster of Albion

Additional information...

https://web.archive.org/web/20000901...8,18450,.shtml

01:25:35 Sep 01, 2000

#1 Name: sedoma () Date: 6/6 @ 9:10 AM PST
I do not think you are allowed to recruit during a guildwar friend, but good luck.
#2 Name: Alarik () Date: 6/6 @ 9:18 AM PST
its gonna be a massacre!!!!!!! am selling tickets! for 5pp. a seat, just kidding........
#3 Name: Alaric (*) Date: 6/6 @ 11:43 AM PST
Hey you stole my name!!!! Imposter :P
#4 Name: Tallondrakae Darktide () Date: 6/6 @ 13:03 PM PST
You cannot recruit during a guildwar....I have led my guild through three such events. =P

[Rygar]

Piqued my interest, did some searching and here is how I believe guildwar mechanics worked. While vastly unused in era, for timelocked server may be fun (and more convenient than going to a PvP area).

Some info is sparse, allegedly the /guildwar system was disabled during LDoN to free up needed resources.

I believe it was rarely used because /guildwar enabled rallos zek PvP looting rules (1 loot item per kill + coin). However, it also disabled PvP level limits (i.e. Level 60 can kill a Level 1 twink and loot an item). This would persist for life of P99 servers if following strict timeline rules. Note that perhaps until around May 1999 that guildwar rules were bugged (or perhaps by design?) and enabled 100% of all item loot (meaning you could loot every single item on corpse) until this was fixed/revised. I can link that evidence by request but won’t bother for now as it seems item or even coin looting on Blue/Green may not be desirable from a CSR standpoint (exploitable).


Initiating a guildwar

Conflicting info here, but I believe some of the tips may have been misleading and quite frankly folks didn’t realize all the ways it could be done. I believe there were multiple methods:

1) Target the guildleader and type /guildwar (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [days]
2) Type /guildwar [guildleader_name] (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [guildleader_name] [days]
3) Type /guildwar [fullguild_name] (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [fullguild_name] [days]

If the command was successful and the guildleader was online at the time, they would receive a yes/no dialogue box (similar to being rezzed). From eqst0002 from titanium disks:

9048 %1, leader of the guild %2 wishes to declare war on your guild for %3 day(s). Do you accept?

Leader could accept by clicking yes or by typing /guildwar [guildleader_name] (or targeting guildleader and just typing /guildwar). Leader could decline by clicking no or typing /guildpeace [guildleader_name] (or targeting guildleader and just typing /guildpeace)

If leader declines the challenge, a personal message is sent:

6702 %1 has denied your request for war.

If leader accepts the challenge, a GLOBAL message is sent to server

1084 Guild <%1> is now at war with Guild <%2>

Evidence for a dialogue box and global message was found:
2/21/2000

I saw a global message sayin "<this guild> is now at war with <that guild>".
What do you do when you goto war with another guild on a non pvp server?
Just curious cuz it looks interesting.


The leader of each guild has to be online and then one of them issues
the /guildwar command. (i.e. /guildwar OtherGuildName). The other
guild leader hits YES (or ACCEPT, I don't remember) and poof - you are
at war.

Ending a Guildwar

Obviously this can end naturally after duration has expired, but can be ended sooner by doing the following:

1) Target the guildleader and type /guildpeace
2) Type /guildpeace [guildleader_name]
3) Type /guildpeace [fullguild_name]

If the command was successful and the guildleader was online at the time, they would receive a yes/no dialogue box (similar to being rezzed). From eqst0002 from titanium disks:

9049 %1, leader of the guild %2 wishes to make peace with your guild. Do you accept?

I believe you could just click the options presented or similar to the guildwar initiation could do /guildpeace for yes and /guildwar for no (with all the previous syntax caveats)

If leader declines the peace offering, a personal message is sent:

6704 %1 has denied your request for peace.

If leader accepts the peace offering (or duration ends), a GLOBAL message is sent to server

1083 Guild <%1> is now at Peace with Guild <%2>

Guildwar duration limits

It appears this was limited to 1 to 14 days, website evidence + disk messages back this up:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011020...uildwars.shtml

Guild wars may vary in duration from the default of 1 day to a maximum of 14 days. During this period of time members from either guild may cause harm to each other regardless of their adherence to the tenants of Order or Discord.

457 War Duration Invalid. Enter a number between 1 and 14.

Recruiting during a guildwar
As mentioned in previous in era evidence this is prohibited, disk message backs this up:

454 No roster changes allowed while at war.

Experience loss during a guildwar
Won’t link evidence, but players were reporting this happened on occasion. This seems to be from known glitches from early DoT spells and some other bugs such as charming someone that had even a summoned pet then pet would ‘go rogue’ and could cause exp loss if they killed you. Don’t presume you’d want exp loss enabled unless following those era rules.

Beneficial buffing during a guildwar
It was asked if you are prohibited from casting beneficial spells on members of the opposing guild you were at war with. While this is only a single mention, I found a reference that doing so enables your own guild to attack you:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011027...ve/arc70.shtml

[Quote from original post: 1) Make the healer attackable by his own team for say the next 2 minutes everytime he heals (this happens in guild wars, so it should be possible); ]

Can't do this with the way that attack rights are handle. In EQ, if I can attack you, you can also attack me. There's no way around that mechanism. The exploit that pops out is that all I'd have to do to be able to go kill my own team would be to cast a beneficial spell on someone of another team. EQ also can't handle a persistant agressor flag. We know who is casting the spell and who the recipient is at the time the spell is cast, but not after. The same is true with melee attacks.

These are the options available to us:

1. Do nothing.
2. Disallow beneficial spells across teams. (handles cross-teaming problem)
3. Disallow beneficial spells out-of-level (handles, for the most part, the out-of-level situation)
4. A combination of 2&3.

Note that the dev was commenting in regards to the current PvP Teams server, its possible he was talking about not being able to do so in the PvP Teams context.

This would be a very cool feature that, if it was true, allows you to attack traitors within your own ranks during the guildwar. It also seems to imply during a guildwar you could not attack your own guildmembers.


Nametag colors during a guildwar
There is conflicting evidence here, I found a verbal mention of names changing to “peach color” during a guild war
3/24/2000

Red is PvP, Blue is either normal or anon, purple is roleplay, and green
means they are a GM
Hope that helps :-)


What she said [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] And every rare now and then you'll see someone with a
peach name--it means their guild is engaged in a guildwar.

I did find a few websites showing images from guild wars. The first doesn’t have larger pictures working, only low res thumbnails. Some clearly can be seen as blue names, but I did notice maybe 1 or 2 that have a yellowish tint. Can’t be sure if that individual was targeted and flashing though.

Second shows large images of guild war in action, clearly red/blue names visible, no peach.

Judge for yourselves, perhaps it never changed color or worked for a time or if you hit /role or /anon during a war it interfered and reset your display name?
https://web.archive.org/web/20041110.../guildwar.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050223...com/pics2.html

Other odd quirks by being engaged in a guildwar
It’s possible /guildstatus changed functionality during a guildwar, either by targeting and doing /guildstatus or /guildstatus [fullguild_name]. Only evidence is from disk messages:

517 Your target's guild is NOT at war with you.
518 You are not at war with this guild.

Seems you could not delete your guild while at war as well:

510 Cannot delete a guild while it is at war.

You could only be engaged with a single guild during a war it would seem, could not have multiple wars at the same time. Messages for multiple initiation and initiating with a guild already at war:

496 You are already at war with a guild.
497 Your target's guild is already at war.

System messages for improper commands executed
Just my best guess here after viewing the available strings in the file:

Initiating guildwar if you are not the guild leader:

307 You are not high enough rank to perform this guild operation.

or possibly

1013 You cannot Perform this Guild Operation

Enabling guildwar with invalid guild:

453 Guild not found.

Enabling guildwar with unguilded player:

455 Your target is not in a guild.

Initiating guildwar with non-leader member of guild:

456 Your target is NOT the guild's leader.

Initiating guildwar with a non-existent guild:

499 Your target's guild does not exist.

Possible error messages if war and peace functions aren't working ('sue for peace' probably out of era / revised saying). Could also occur after successful initiated command but opposing leader went LD or logged off?:

6703 Could not declare war on that target's guild. Try again.
6705 Could not sue for peace for that target's guild. Try again.

Another out of era message, or possibly a feature they wanted to enable or never did?

12276 You have petitioned %1 for your guilds to go to war for %2 days.
12277 You have petitioned %1 for your guilds to make peace.
12278 Only a guild leader may sue for peace.

They made mention in an interview for ‘plans’ to revise guild wars in the summer of 2001, but never saw anything further to that effect, so perhaps they had plans for ‘suing for peace’ or petitioning to initiate a guildwar command that were later implemented (which would make sense since it solves the problem of the leader not being online).

https://web.archive.org/web/20010822...ive/arc7.shtml

developer comments, 5/30/2001

Guildwars: We've noticed a huge lack in player participation of this feature due to a lot of bugs with it. Our hope is that by fixing these bugs and enhancing the system a bit more people might be interested in going to war with their local guilds.

That's it, let me know if you have any questions

[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

However, it also disabled PvP level limits (i.e. Level 60 can kill a Level 1 twink and loot an item).

https://web.archive.org/web/20000117....cgi?read=1645

Read a thread a little farther down about guild wars.
Posted By: Loren
Posted On: 4:49 p.m. 22/3/1999
Subject: Read a thread a little farther down about guild wars.

In Reply To: Re: PkCap and Guilds (Yours trolly, Bohica)

> I forget the scource, but I have read that with guild warfare,
> all level restrictions are off. Any member of a guild can attack
> any member of the rival guild. I havent seen or heard about
> guild warfare first hand, so I cant confirm this.

> Bohica

https://web.archive.org/web/20020313...99575170537189

person By: Anonymous
Posted @ Sat, Jul 21st 5:41 PM 2001 Score: Default[2.00]
if you are in a guild can you declare war on other guilds. and can you and your guild have a battle in a zone?

RE: person Reply... By: Tebyen,
217 posts
Posted @ Sun, Jul 22nd 3:17 PM 2001 Score: Decent[2.76]
Yes guilds can declare war on one another. However, both guild leaders have to aggree to it. Anyone involved in a guild war can be looted by people from the other guild when that person dies. And battles between guilds can take place in any zone.

Tebyen Trueheart(druid)
Frizza (enchanter)
Tebyene (ranger)
Sikle (necromancer)
Senior Officer/Events Coordinater of Cold Comfort

https://web.archive.org/web/20030415...umID1/431.html

Rekuul Click to check IP address of the poster 07-27-01, 08:38 PM (PST)
10. "RE: *Nod*"
*Edit*
I went back and re-read a paragraph I kinda skimmed across... the one involving the guild war. As I said, that suits mine, and that of my guild's needs more than it does yours. At lvl 26 I dont think that im THAT far behind you guys. Believe me I know you have many 30+ and probably some into the forties. In general though Im not so far behind you to be insignificant... well maybe myself alone wouldnt mean much, but their are many others 20+ in HoW.

Sure, you guys definitely have us lvl-wise at this point... *shrug*. However A war is a war, given the opportunity I believe we would rise to the occasion. Conflict drives progression. Just my .02~

-Rek

Azmodion Click to view user profileClick to check IP address of the poster 07-28-01, 06:22 PM (PST)
11. "RE: *Nod*"
Do you think we would "war" and have some solo level 20's running around for someone to pick off? You aren't thinking too clearly. As I said, we take war seriously.
War = death for our opponents. Not a friendly game of darts at the local pub where we clap each other on the back for a dart well thrown. No, war with KAAOS means death.

No, it would not be you at level 26 picking off a couple stragler level 20 IE's. It would be a situation of you facing 30 - 40 people 10+ levels above you constantly every second you were logged in, you and everyone in your guild. With your guild's level average being 14 you couldn't expect much in the way of support. Your bind point would be found and every one of you would be deleveled back to infancy. Our guild would stop everything to spend every waking moment hammering every one of you constantly until there was not a one of you left with the will to log in. Yes, 1 lone level 26 fuck would be insignificant. As I said, it would not be a war, it would be a slaughter.

When there is a challenge then seek us out for a war. Right now, your guild poses no challenge, no threat. As I told Meram a few weeks ago, it's a bit early for you all to be thinking war. Level up, learn the game, put a mark on the map then come to us for your funeral.

It's a simple concept to understand, we are not the idiot police, it's not our job to bitch slap every level 10 guild running around that ridiculously challenges us to a war. Think about it, go back and re-read all the posts. Realize who came where to start what. Seperate yourself from your guild for a moment as you contemplate the situation. If you have half a brain you will see just what a bunch of retards your guild is full of and/or making themselves out to be.

Azmodion
KAAOS

https://web.archive.org/web/20011125...yGuildwar.html

15:50:24 Nov 25, 2001

Out of Character: Guild Wars can be fun, but I know from experience... they can also cause a lot of trouble for everyone involved in them, and a big hassle to those of us who have to clean it up. I've often noticed even the most veteran roleplayer can become inflicted with "War Fever" and forget that the player behind another character has feelings. We expect everyone in the guilds to be mature about PvP (Player versus Player) situations.

Always remember, when I and Faileas call technical guildwar in the game, it does not mean we have declared War in character. Many times we use the PvP switch simply to allow certain effects to be available in our roleplay. PvP/Guildwar is an enhancement to the story, not a license to begin killing. Anyone can play on one of the Zek PvP servers, if killing is all one wants out of a War.

As with any policy, failure to abide by this can result in Demotion or being Disbanded from the guild. Some things to remember:
Each war has goals. It is extremely doubtful that these goals will include killing every enemy you come across, and I'm not very understanding of "convenient" mistakes.
The PvP switch is an enhancement to the story, not an officially declared war. A war is declared when I declare it. If you have questions about it in game, give me a tell.
In any PvP situation, be mindful of what level your opponant is. Level should not become an issue in roleplay, but certain spells used for effect might kill someone on accident. This has happened in the past.
Make extra efforts to help everyone feel important, regardless of their level. If that means running or occasionally losing to a "Green con", so be it. (Losing a battle does not mean you have failed to roleplay well; on the contrary. If you can lose gracefully, your character is considered more well-rounded.) This applies to anytime outside Guildwar, too.
Guildwars in the past have had technical bugs associated with them. If you find yourself randomly disbanded from the guild during war, please notify an officer.
No one can be invited to the guild during guildwar. The War must be paused to invite anyone, and that means Faileas and I must be in the same zone.

[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If leader accepts the challenge, a GLOBAL message is sent to server

1084 Guild <%1> is now at war with Guild <%2>

https://web.archive.org/web/20020329...n.net/war.html

07:54:26 Mar 29, 2002

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https://web.archive.org/web/20020617...dwar_quote.gif

20:08:45 Jun 17, 2002

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https://web.archive.org/web/20020822...raguildwar.gif

19:48:00 Aug 22, 2002 (the link itself suggests Dec 2001)

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The screenshots contained in the following links do not show, however some of their descriptions provide enough detail on guild versus guild content to support other evidence.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000118...mal/Dorken.htm

14:34:47 Jan 18, 2000

Hedron dispatches Tyranos. CHACHING, nice loot from this one.

That's one naked troll. Maybe we took all his equipment?

https://web.archive.org/web/20000118...al/dorken2.htm

And here we have the object of Gayraige's affection, a 19th Level DB Necro,
getting punished by a 15th lvl KAAOS God. How sweet it is.
(Notice the moss snake thinks he's a fucking putz too) ;D

https://web.archive.org/web/20000118...al/dorken3.htm

Enlucent, 4 levels higher than Kafat.
How embarassing.