Star Wars: The Old Republic launched their Guild Headquarters today. I’ve never seen this level of guild support in an MMO before, especially prelaunch. The Guild HQ on SWTOR.com is a central location on the official website to support guilds prelaunch with creation, recruitment and administration. As someone who’s been planning on organizing a guild in SWTOR since I first heard of the possibility of a KOTOR MMO being launched, “excitement” is an understatement.

The Guild HQ is part of the Prelaunch Guild Program that is rolling out in three phases. Currently they’re at Phase 1 – Formation, where guilds can create, reserve their name and invite others to join. Players who are not yet a part of a guild can also search for guilds that fit their play style based on the criteria the HQ requests on their guild creation form.  I’ve long believed that an out-of-game forum is an essential tool for a guild, and despite the impact of guilds on any MMO community, it’s not been provided by an MMO until now.

Phase 2 – Alignment, and Phase 3 – Deployment, will come along later and you can check out those details here: http://www.swtor.com/guilds/faq <– they’re exciting as well, you’ll want to check it out.

The Multiplaying community already has a forum, but we’ll be using the SWTOR Guild HQ as our home away from home. If you have an interest in staying with or just joining us for our Star Wars adventures, you can find us under the guild name “Delusions of Grandeur” here: http://www.swtor.com/guilds/4130/delusions-grandeur

There are few of downsides to the Guild HQ. There’s a lack of customization. Also, we have adults who have gaming sites blocked from work so the forum will be unavailable to them during the time they usually use to browse the guild forum. And, as a gaming group that has been around, we have to convince our community to now check two forums when ours have been a one stop shop for them for so long. Still the positives far out weight the negatives and it’s important to remain open to ways to use this tool that’s being provided to enhance our SWTOR guilding experience.

Delusions of Grandeur is a Republic guild and we’ll be making our home on a North American Roleplay server. As per usual, we’ll be an adult guild (18 years or older). Most of our members have limited play times due to having real life commitments and responsibilities and we want to let you know that given this, we tend to participate in a game in a more casual capacity.