I dont mean time investments. Tons of guilds already invest a lot of time into WvW. I also dont mean guilds spending money on siege, and repair costs.
What Im specifically refering to is guilds being able to spend a type of resource (doesnt have to be gold, in fact, probably best if its not gold), into elements of WvW, to help their servers battle.
This “resource” would need to be capped, for balance issues, and to encourage guild members to frequently contribute to gaining more of it back.
Examples of guilds spending whatever resource to help out in wvw:
1. After a guild claims a keep/tower/camp, the resource could be spent to speed up the upgrades to it. If a guild wanted to dump a TON of resources into the tower they just claimed, they could get really fast upgrades, but would wipe their supply or resource out.
2. Sentry alerts. Capture a sentry point, spend a set amount of resources, and have that sentry send 1 guild alert when that sentry is destroyed.
3. Caravans: Spend a set amount of resources (per caravan, purchase while next to it), to add swiftness until the caravan reaches its destination. Spend set amount of resources to add protection to the caravan until it reaches its destination.
4. Keep/Tower alerts: Spend resources to hire an NPC messenger, that will send out a guild chat alert when your guilds claimed keep has any door or wall taken down to 50% or less life.
(wvw alert messages could be enabled or disabled for guild chat, for those guildies who dont care to see them.)
Just some examples, not must haves.
The goal here is to add a sense of purpose for guilds to become invested in having a pressence in WvW beyond that of just being one of the common groups that hangs out in a specific BL. Where the hard work of guild members (earning the resource), can be spent by the guild, to help the battle for their server.
And here is the bonus:
Which ever server wins at the end of the week:
1. Increase max resource cap by 2%. So if your server wins 10 weeks of battles, each guild has a 120% resource cap. Lose for a week, and your cap gets reset back to 100%.
2. Guilds on the winning server each week gain a set bonus of resource to start the next week at (encouraging guilds to spend resources each week to win)
3. Servers that lose each week, get a 20% bonus to earning said resource, being the underdog. Also encouraging the winning server to work a bit harder to hold their position as winner.
Now, none of this is “This is exactly how it has to be”, but its certainly a good example of how things could be done. It solves a lot of the guild involvement (besides just having guild members in WvW), as well as a purpose for winning each week (aside from bragging rights). It also doesnt make WvW any more of “its own seperate game” (which should keep Devon happy – in fact, said resource could be something earnable in wvw AND pve.), but yet further adds depth to the existing WvW system as well as the guild system.
