Interview: Wayne Song Chats About Swordsman's Guilds

As part 2 of our 3 part interview with Wayne Song, Swordsman's Associate Product Manager, we sat down to chat about guilds and the important role they play in the Gilded Wasteland expansion. Check out what Wayne had to say and stay tuned for part 3 where we wrap up by chatting about PvP.

Magicman (MM): In playing Swordsman, I almost feel like being in a Guild is a necessity (one which I like), is that the case?

Wayne Song (WS): Correct. The world of Jianghu is designed as a community of martial artists. We’d like players to have this community experience in guilds. Players can make friends in guilds, work together in guilds, and play the game together in guilds. Also, there are lots of good rewards from guild quests and events, which can help you level up quickly. While players are perfectly able to solo through Swordsman, the guild experience really helps streamline everything.

MM: Besides the usual social aspects that being in a guild has, in Swordsman there’s actually guild specific content. Can you tell me about some of the things I can do only if I’m in a guild?

WS: There are lots of guild exclusive quests and events.For example, you can receive Escort/Hijack quests only from guilds. After hijacking the targets to your guild base, you can even interrogate him/her for intelligence. These sorts of experiences break the mold on the normal quests in the game and help broaden the player experience.

MM: Gilded Wasteland seems to have made guild even more important. Were guilds a big focal point when developing the expansion and why?

WS: Guilds have always been a key focus in Swordsman, and with Gilded Wasteland, players have new instances and encounters where they should group up to complete the hardest challenges in the game. These are experiences that are impossible to play alone. With Gilded Wasteland, we wanted to further build the Swordsman experience for guilds.

MM: Does your “behind the scenes” data show you that most players are guilded?

WS: I think so. It’s easy to join a guild in game, and you can receive good benefits from it. Why not join it?

MM: What impact do guilds actually have on the world of Jianghu?

WS: In the world of Jianghu, guild is more like a basic organization for players. The powerful guilds can attract more players to join them, and even control the economy benefits of a city, but the normal and small guilds still have the chance to fight for their rights by forming a guild alliance to become more powerful.

MM: What future additions or developments for Swordsman are aimed directly at guilds and making them feel even more important?

WS: We’ll try our best to optimize the game experience in guild system, adding more interesting quests and events to guild system. While we can’t go too deep into what we anticipate for the future, we are excited about the new content we’ll be bringing to Swordsman in 2015.

As always, we thank Wayne for spending some time with us!