After a long day at work dealing with politics and power struggles, the last thing I want to do when I fire up Ryzom is go to a UN-type meeting and hammer out a political agenda. Really, I wan to sign in, see my friends, and blow things up. Sure a little friendly guild rivalry can be fun, but I don't really think we need to have a sort of council to administer the guilds. First of all not everyone is in a guild, and it seems kind of didactic for those of us in guilds to be saying how things in the game sould go. Instead of one guild strong arming people, we have 4 or 5 or 6 guilds strong arming people. No difference really....
Comparisions are odious, and any comparision between real world politics and an MMO are spurious at best. That is not to say that politics don't exist in an MMO, but they are hardly in need of yet another layer of control in order to make sure everyone has fun. ("Have fun RIGHT NOW. We demand it.") There are guilds of various sizes in the game, and certain ones are more active than others both in the game and here on boards, and if there are large groups of poeple threating to leave, then let him. It is up to the developers to strike that fine balance between giving the players what they want and not allowing themselves to be steamrolled into poor design choices by angry groups of players (:: cough cough jedi cough cough :
. We, as players, owe it to ourselves to go into the game and have a good time, so long as it is not at the expense of others or in viloation of the rules of that game.
Some guilds are more devoted to the game than others, and if that is the way they want ot play then fine. Luckily, in Ryzom, there are not finite resources, missions, are really anywhere special to go (never though you'd hear someone praise that) so really, there are few ways for even the largest guild to "control" the game. Can they be arrogant and self serving? Sure. Xenophobic, of course, but let them. They can't stop you from playing how you want...
Layering on more red tape likely solves nothing and leads to more red tape ("The Guild Comittee is getting out of control, so we are going to form a sub-comitee to investigate the comittee") At one job I had, we even had a spontaneous event commitee, responsible for, well, planning spontaneous events. If players want to create such an organization, fine! But the players therein should realize that outside of this organization no one has to care about them or think they are important....
When it comes down to the grit, we are all here to have fun and if a guild decides not to associate with another guild or form an alliance that's fine, theres nothing that says we have to work together here, its not kindergarten here. Some people play because they like the politics and that's fine, there is a very fun meta-game there for them to play, Some people, myself included, just want to run around the world, explore, have fun and meet people. If the kitin attack, we'll deal with it, but we don't need to build the pentagon to plan a picnic here, this is a game, and in effect, it is a game where we CANNOT lose. The worse that happens is some DP, some busted weapons, and a few hurt egos, but there will be many guilds, many invasions, kidnappings and so on, but the game will not end if the kitin attack, Zora will not disappear, and the world will not end (assuming the game contines to surivine on the market, which I really hope it does). Go out, have fun, join a guild, don't join a guild, put everyone on ignore, Save the Yubos, murder the Yubos, complain on the forums, but, damn it, have a good time.