Alliances

Ashes of Creation may have specific content that revolves around Alliances.

• Progression pathways within alliances.
• Guilds sharing common services with alliance members.
• Node alliances.

Content that revolves around alliances specifically and progression within the development of that alliance; and the ability to share some common services between guilds that are part of that alliance. I think that additionally allowing alliances to toggle certain relationships with nodes as an interaction is beneficial. That's going to provide an interesting dynamic for players who are either members of the particular node that has the relationship established or members of the Alliance. So I think that obviously building systems is is about creating the channels by which these players can form bonds and the more layers you have around those channels of bonding between the different guilds or players, the more sustainable that relationship. – Steven Sharif

Guild alliances

Guild leaders can create an alliance at a later stage in guild progression by completing a quest. Once created, the leader can invite up to three other guilds to this alliance, but this is subject to change.

• A guild may only be a member of one alliance. There is no specific member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.

Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds? Absolutely that will happen; and the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate the use-case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings. Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always. It depends on what they're encountering, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure. – Steven Sharif

• Guilds and guild alliances are designed to instigate competition within their membership, providing opportunities for political betrayal that leads to interesting emergent gameplay.

There's a competition for the scarcity of resources and there's an opportunity for political betrayal. I can't tell you how many times in the games that I played, where that scarcity of benefit has caused rifts between my commanders or between different groups within the guild that then can potentially erupt in a civil war. And those are the types of player emergent behaviors that we want to encourage by introducing these systems of soft friction where people compete for things. – Steven Sharif

• There will be alliance specific quest lines.

• Guilds may enter into trade agreements with allied guilds.

• Due to the lack of fast travel, guilds will need to plan to have people in the right place at the right time. Alliances with other guilds will help enable that.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guild leaders will be able to pool resources into a guild alliance bank.

You can only invite a number of guilds to the alliance before you must form a new alliance; and then those alliance can have a de facto friendship but they won't have any game component of connection. What the alliance system would allow is pooling of resources into by guild leaders into an alliance guild alliance bank. Will allow certain participation in different quest lines. It will allow common area chat for members and it will allow affiliations and gear that can be attained as well. – Steven Sharif

• Alliance members will share a common chat channel.

• Alliances will have affiliations and gear that can be attained.

Siege alliances

When a siege begins, temporary alliances are formed among attackers and defenders.

• For node sieges, citizens of the node or provincial nodes being attacked are automatically registered as defenders.
• There are many reasons to participate as an ally in the attack or defence of other nodes.
  • Titles.
  • Items.
  • Materials.
  • Money.
  • Social bonds.

Many incentives exist that can benefit your node and yourself personally by participating in the attack or defense of cities. These range from titles, to items, to materials, to money. Additionally, aiding others may help you strengthen bonds when your assets are threatened. – Steven Sharif

Affiliations

An affiliation tree determines how entities are flagged against other entities within its hierarchy.

• Corrupted players can be attacked (or killed) regardless of other affiliations. This is something that will be tested during Alpha-2.
• Node citizenship.
• Alliances.
• Guilds.
• Parties.
• Raids.
• Family.
• Religion.
• Society.

There's node citizenship. There's guild. There's alliance. There's party. There's raid. There's family. All of these types of affiliations have a hierarchy. The highest of which is your node affiliation: So your citizenship is your greatest superceding relationship, which means if you were a part of a guild and the guild has multiple nodes in which its members are citizens of, if there was a war between two of those nodes, the members of those nodes would be first and foremost citizens who defend that node, even against their own guild members. – Steven Sharif

All of these things have some hierarchy; and within that hierarchy there's the ability to participate within certain systems. So for example, if you have a node that has fallen under your vassal state and you're a citizen of the parent node, then you could participate in a siege against the vassal node but if you're a citizen of the vassal node you could not participate as an attacker against the parent node; so there's a hierarchy, unless you were to renounce your citizenship. – Steven Sharif

See also

• Guilds
• Nodes
• Sieges