I was going to post this as my SWTOR Christmas wishlist but once I started adding things the list just kept growing! It's been a few days since I thought of anymore things to add which means it's time to post it.

Producers; even if you don't do most of the items in the wishlist, please please fix the bugs listed in the "Broken Things" section. Guilds are not just non CM items in the game, they are large groups of your players and we need your help

Broken Things

• Fix the guild panel selection bugs
  
• Fix the guild panel so it stops stealing text focus from text inputs like the Chat panel, MoTD, Description, /f, /ignore, /who, Set Member Note, Set Officer Note...
  
• Fix whispering from the guild panel right click menu. It currently replaces foreign characters with blocks. Same menu option works from WHO panel.
  
• Fix the missing guild ship & stronghold problem
  
• Fix the custom chat channel system or at the very least the permissions systems so the channel creator is remembered along with the officers
  
• Fix the conquest panel so it updates at the reset time. Currently if you are logged in at the 18:00 GMT conquest reset time on Tuesdays then the conquest panel does not update and you continue to see the previous week. You have to log out and back again to see the new one.
  
• Fix the paging buttons on the strongholds KEYS tab. They currently don't let you move forwards/backwards through the list without a bit of trickery.
  
• Fix the KEYS panel so it is sorted by Name instead of the seemingly random order it's currently in. (same with BANS panel)
  
• Fix guild strongholds that can be set to be visible on both factions. The button let us pick the cross faction "Share with Everyone" option but it doesn't actually show our strongholds on their public listings page. Tatooine guild stronghold is good example of this.
  
• Fix Set Rank menu so there is a dot or star next to a characters current rank, it used to have this
  
• Fix the Message Of the Day so it displays for people that load into the guild ship. The animation prevents it displaying.
  

General

• Increase member cap to 10k+ or make it 1000 accounts with unlimited alts
  
• Add "Invite To Guild" to chat right click menu so when we receive a /w asking to join the guild we don't have to do the stupid dance of starting to type /ginvite but then it switches to /g were you start typing "inv" so then you delete that and type /ginvite ...
  
• Reduce group summons cooldown to 5 minutes.. It's currently 30 minutes.
  
• Add Guild Announcement channel. This is a separate chat channel that is enabled by default and is only visible to members of your guild. It can be used by officers to write messages that are displayed in a highlighted fashion. Similar to /oa (ops announcement) when you have a assist in an ops group.
  
• Let us do /roll in guild chat. Can be fun for mini prize giveaways etc or for picking from multiple people for the final spot in a group. This should be global so guild members on fleet can see /rolls of people in their DK stronghold etc.
  
• Add the name of the person that did /ginvite to the message in guild chat so we know who did the invite similar to how it already does this with /gkick
  
• Not just specific to guilds but please make the mail TO field, /WHO and /F use foreign character substitutions. So if I type Macky it will give show me Macky, Màcky, Mâcky etc.
  
• Let people turn off the guild ship intro animation in options
  
• Give people a settings option to turn off the orange "XYZ Conquered by Guild ABC" text, could make it a text chat message they receive when they first load into an area
  
• Let people turn off the "ABC's Stronghold" text using the Interface Editor. It takes a long time to vanish through moving around and sometimes it gets stuck.
  
• Put a mark next to people on the WHO panel that have the invite permission so it's easy for outsiders to know who to /w for an invite
  
• Hide the @ Server Name from the conquest scoreboard unless a guild currently has that as part of their guild name as per the server merge rules
  
• Allow /dnd and /afk to persist across instance/location changes. Currently we have to set the messages each time which is annoying since UP arrow chat history is also lost.
  
• Increase the number of ranks above 10
  
• Let us create ops groups on the guild ship/stronghold without having to exit to fleet
  
• Remove 30s delay for guild leaders and officers when sending mails to guild members. Currently there is a 20-30s delay between mails you can send to each other. This should be 0 for guild leaders and officers so we can send mails to our guild members. If some guild leaders abuse it then guild members will leave. currently this delay is a big factor when sending out 30 conquest prizes each week or top 6 winners in a photo contest etc.
  
• Give guild leaders an "Everyone" option for mail so we can send mini in-game news letters to our guild members
  
• Move the conquest week guild rewards to the Monday reset so they stop being broken with Tuesday patches/server restarts
  

Stronghold Panel

• Enable the SHARE KEYS option on the KEYS panel for guild ships/strongholds so we can grant keys to non guild members.
  
• Add a text filter to the KEYS panel so we can search for names instead of clicking through 50+ pages (same with BANS panel)
  
• Add the public guild stronghold listings to the stronghold panel as a new button on the left. They would get visited a lot more by guests if they could view/travel from any location (can do the same with public personal strongholds)
  
• Let people mark public guild/personal strongholds as their favorites so these can be displayed at the top of the list for that person.
  
• This is a biggy: let us give gold keys for individual rooms on guild ships & strongholds
  

Guild Bank

• Separate the guild bank options for Withdraw and Summons, add an extra tickbox for Summons so we can set 50k for each player that they can use as summons but not direct withdrawal as with current system
  
• Allow us to set 899,910 as the maximum "Withdraws Per Week" with each bank vault (or 999,999 to make it look nicer). 899,910 is the 90 slots in a vault multiplied by 9999 . The current maximum we can enter is 9999 which was cool years ago before we could have item stacks of 9999. Now this low withdrawal limit is super restrictive when trying to move a lot of crafting materials around during crafting conquest weeks.
  
• Make items auto stack in the guild bank. Easy example is how most raw materials do not stack. So you have 5000 Mythra in the bank vault and 500 in inventory. When you right click to add the 500 to the vault you end up with 2 stacks. You have to manually click, drag, click to make them stack. They do stack correctly with personal storage.
  
• Hide bank vault tabs for ranks that have the View option disabled. It currently shows the left side tab button and click it shows empty vault with the "you don't have permission.." message. Just hide the tab button, it saves having to answer the same questions.
  
• Disable moving items for vaults which people can add/view but not withdraw from. Currently people can jumble up the items in the bank vaults to be annoying.
  
• Make the guild bank log cut-off point time based i.e. 2 weeks. Currently it cuts off based on the number of rows. It's one of the ways we identify guild thieves but because we have a lot of items going in/out our log only shows ~24 hours.
  
• Let F2P and Preferred players have credit withdraw access so they can help with summons. The guild bank access perk they can buy only gives them access to items.
  

Guild Panel

• Move the "Remove from Guild" option to its own submenu
  
• Add a confirmation box to the "Remove from Guild" option. Icing on the cake would be settings page option to disable the confirmation box. Useful to have enabled for day-to-day work and then disable it when doing the weekly guild kicks to free up room.
  
• Display a tool tip when people hover over the rank that shows the description guild leaders can add to ranks and increase length of rank description. This way people don't have to keep asking "What is this rank for?" "How do I get this rank?" etc
  
• Add Set Member Note & Set Officer Note options with multiple guild characters selected to the right click menu with the other multi-select options
  
• Double the character limit for the Message of the Day
  
• Add a webpage option to the bottom of the guild panel. Clicking this will launch the website in our default browser.
  
• Add a voice-coms option to the bottom of the guild panel. We can enter a Teamspeak or Discord (etc) link to our guild servers. Clicking this option would launch the chosen program.
  
• Add name/legacy/note filter to guild panel
  
• Add an extra tab to the guild panel that lists all guilds on that faction that have someone who can invite online, along with some stats and a description entered by the guild leader/officers. People can click a button to apply to a guild. Should be a "Do not list us" option for guilds.
  
• Add another extra tab to the guild panel: "Bans". Let us ban people from our guilds. Currently we have to spot them from their legacy name and how they act. A lot claim to be somebody else, just with the same legacy since they are not unique anymore. The current system (or lack of one) puts all the pressure on those who can invite to spot persistent troublemakers trying to sneak back in.
  
• Add 10% CXP bonus to guilds that matches the 10% bonus Reputation and Experience options seen at the bottom right of the guild panel
  

These are some really good points no matter the guild type and size! One thing I would like to add is:

• A separate way for guild recruitment, as of now starter planets and General fleet are flooded with guild recruitment messages in chat.
  

These are some really good points no matter the guild type and size! One thing I would like to add is:

• A separate way for guild recruitment, as of now starter planets and General fleet are flooded with guild recruitment messages in chat.
  

Great list! I'd like to be able to add my alts to the guild at my current rank without needing an invite from a second person.

In general, guilds are a great way to socialize and discover a positive and helpful community, in particular, if you are more of a solo/single player. Often, guild ran raids, flashpoints and uprisings are a great way for a new and/or inexperienced player to learn tactics and strategies in a more forgiving and patient environment, compared to let's say a random GF run where the chance a new player would just be kicked, ignored or harassed is much higher.

Another important part is that Bioware "just" need to ensure that guild leaders, officers and members simply have the tools needed to run a guild smoother, and those players and leaders will do the rest themselves, basically player-created additional value to the game through events, content and social raids/raid squads.

Personally, I think that in general MMO:s are really terrible at taking advantage of the passionate and creative player community, on steam, dota 2 and similar games have a workshop where the creative and talented artist can design sets and items that the owner/producer Valve can release into the game. I hope that Bioware and EA become better at using the similar resource, not limited to player created sets/items but also expand on the social/guild/group option to help us players help the game keep players.

Becoming a part of a guild or other social contexts have proved to be an important factor in ensuring that players stay in the game and in swtor, where much of the multiplayer content requires a subscribe, it is likely that it results in more subscribers.

Depends a lot on the week but they are expanding the conquest schedule to include more planets giving more guilds a chance, that said a guild of 10-12 active players can easily win conquest even over bigger guilds, in particular during crafting weeks. That said, if you are a small guild and want to get Top10 during Iokath Week, you need to work hard, your players already win the personal rewards, guild rewards are for guilds that make it into top 10, it's not supposed to be for every single guild (unless it's 5+ planets, then everyone does get it).

We do work hard, but we're teeny. When I say teeny, I mean we are not even at 10 -12 active players. Let's take the leatherboards and conquest out of the equation, since that is merely one thing and I'm not trying to make a plea for getting something for nothing. It would be nice if there were other avenues to gain the currency needed to unlock the guild ship, avenues that are a little more small/new guild friendly. Yes we can craft, and we do. We've been crafting dark projects like crazy, but the mats can be tricky since we aren't really into pvp. It takes fifty encryptions to get one framework. That's a lot of dark projects for even the initial deck unlock, to say nothing of the additional rooms.

I'm actually the guild master of both the imp and pub divisions. We want to grow but as small as we are it's been a real battle to get things going so we can have a shot at conquest. It's kind of a chicken and the egg issue. People want to join a guild with all the trappings, but in order to get those trappings you need people. I'm not even sure what the best option for recruiting is. I've tried a few gen chat messages, but those are annoying for everyone and usually get ignored or trolled. Is there some resource for recruiting I just don't know about?

There are avenues tho, you can farm the battlemasters on planets, with some luck and enough scouting you can do 15-20 with below 10 people in about an hour, with some extra luck you will find a few named ones meaning you get the purple framework directly. Each battlemaster can drop up to one encryptions for up to 12 players, along with a chance of a framework, named ones always drop a framework.

Swtorista has a great guide for how to grow and build a good guild in swtor (and it applies to other games, and if you search a bit there are quite a few guides for WoW which you can learn from...), you can find it here. But in general the key thing is that you want to provide something few other guilds have, it can be advantages, events or other things, but most small guilds stay small cause they aren't unique and just the same as everyone else.

That said, I feel we have strayed quite far away from the original topic...

I have to admin 2 large guilds and a medium guild and many of the bugs you list irritate me on a regular basis. I agree with most of what you say apart from the figure of 10k for the guild size which I think would lead to mega guilds dominating smaller guilds even more than they already do - I think 2000 would be more than reasonable. But at this point in the life cycle of the game I don't think we can expect most of those bugs to ever get fixed. The last time they tried to improve the guild interface a couple of patches ago they made it even worse. We're talking about a studio that once had Scum and Villainy ready for testing in about 3 days I believe and now has taken more than a year to produce a much smaller operation.

Having guild membership based on accounts like a few other MMOs do would be a really nice change but character names instead of account names are coded into every aspect of the game. The amount of work involved would likely be prohibitive.

IMO, the priority for BW has to be new content to retain and generate new subs whilst trying not to break anything else or there won't be a game left to bugfix. The current small studio cannot do both particularly well as we've seen over the last year and EA is unlikely pump additional money in.

Aintiarna - GM of Untempered Dread on The Darth Malgus

I'd also like to see them make the game a little more small/new guild friendly. I'm not asking for the same level of rewards as the guilds who make it on the leatherboards, but it's really a grind to unlock guild ships when you have a small guild. It would be nice if there was a guild goal in the conquest based on size brackets. It's next to impossible to get on the leatherboards if you're a small guild, it would be nice to have a chance to earn some sort of rewards if you meet a point number. During the crafting week my little guild worked their butts off and really pushed but there's just no way to compete with the numbers of a larger guild.

I want to second this. - When the big guilds have put up >20M points within a few hours of the reset, most of my guild give up right there and then. -Even though we used to be able to place 7/8/9 of ten on the old server if we went balls-to-the wall.

( not to mention that personal goals give such meaningless rewards nowadays)

There are avenues tho, you can farm the battlemasters on planets, with some luck and enough scouting you can do 15-20 with below 10 people in about an hour, with some extra luck you will find a few named ones meaning you get the purple framework directly.

Not entirely accurate. There are only 9 commanders, and they only spawn in PvP instances (so you can't swap instances to hunt more). Named commanders are even less farmable if you don't control the planet, as they have a 4hr shield once they respawn.

For the interested, here's a list of commanders and what kind of Encryptions/Frameworks they drop:

• Alderaan: Command
  
• Ilum: Command
  
• Corellia: Engineering
  
• Yavin_4: Engineering
  
• Belsavis: Logistical
  
• Quesh: Logistical
  
• Voss: Logistical
  
• Hoth: Random
  
• Tatooine: Random

Ord Mantell, Tython, Corellia, Taris, Balmorra, Nar Shaddaa, Hutta, Korriban, Dromund Kaas, CZ-198, Oricon, Makeb, and Rishi don't have them. Not sure about Zakuul or Iokath tbh.

As to the original topic, yes pls. Guild management could use a massive overhaul. I'd be happy if they'd fix the bugs with the guild window; I'd be ecstatic if they actually implemented some of the changes the OP suggests.

Not entirely accurate. There are only 9 commanders, and they only spawn in PvP instances (so you can't swap instances to hunt more). Named commanders are even less farmable if you don't control the planet, as they have a 4hr shield once they respawn.

 

For the interested, here's a list of commanders and what kind of Encryptions/Frameworks they drop:

• Alderaan: Command
  
• Ilum: Command
  
• Corellia: Engineering
  
• Yavin_4: Engineering
  
• Belsavis: Logistical
  
• Quesh: Logistical
  
• Voss: Logistical
  
• Hoth: Random
  
• Tatooine: Random

 

Ord Mantell, Tython, Corellia, Taris, Balmorra, Nar Shaddaa, Hutta, Korriban, Dromund Kaas, CZ-198, Oricon, Makeb, and Rishi don't have them. Not sure about Zakuul or Iokath tbh.

 

As to the original topic, yes pls. Guild management could use a massive overhaul. I'd be happy if they'd fix the bugs with the guild window; I'd be ecstatic if they actually implemented some of the changes the OP suggests.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, that's helpful. I will reference this list and see if it helps.

I don't really know why it's such a terrible idea to offer a few small/new guild options, or introduce a few size bracket based reward systems but apparently the very suggestion might break the game for some, lol.

Not entirely accurate. There are only 9 commanders, and they only spawn in PvP instances (so you can't swap instances to hunt more). Named commanders are even less farmable if you don't control the planet, as they have a 4hr shield once they respawn.

Actually there are 10 per side since Iokath has one as well, and seeing as they are all placed on lowbie leveling planets (apart from Iokath of course) you can easily just relog to the opposite faction and see which ones are up and kill them as well, you simply have to reform the group.

I personally don't disagree with having more incentives and rewards from guilds of all sizes, however lets say that there are separate brackets for guilds between 1-200 members, 201 - 500 and finally the last bracket with 500+ members (with scaling rewards where 1-200 has the worst and 500+ has the best). In such as situation, smaller guilds like your own would have a bigger chance with getting rewards cause you don't need to compete with the big guilds, however what prevents bigger guilds from creating an alt guild and maxing it at exactly 200 members?

Assuming the rewards are good enough, big guilds that are already comfortably winning the 500+ bracket could easily split up a bit and place some good crafting alt in a smaller guild and ensure members gain multiple rewards. In and the case of your guild, Bioware would need to implement a reward bracket for perhaps guilds with up to 50 members (depending on how many alts you guys have), and that would be quite confusing with so many brackets and 4 leaderboards per planet.

Actually there are 10 per side since Iokath has one as well, and seeing as they are all placed on lowbie leveling planets (apart from Iokath of course) you can easily just relog to the opposite faction and see which ones are up and kill them as well, you simply have to reform the group.

 

I personally don't disagree with having more incentives and rewards from guilds of all sizes, however lets say that there are separate brackets for guilds between 1-200 members, 201 - 500 and finally the last bracket with 500+ members (with scaling rewards where 1-200 has the worst and 500+ has the best). In such as situation, smaller guilds like your own would have a bigger chance with getting rewards cause you don't need to compete with the big guilds, however what prevents bigger guilds from creating an alt guild and maxing it at exactly 200 members?

 

Assuming the rewards are good enough, big guilds that are already comfortably winning the 500+ bracket could easily split up a bit and place some good crafting alt in a smaller guild and ensure members gain multiple rewards. In and the case of your guild, Bioware would need to implement a reward bracket for perhaps guilds with up to 50 members (depending on how many alts you guys have), and that would be quite confusing with so many brackets and 4 leaderboards per planet.

The fastest way to slow down the mega guilds is to put a limit on how many Conquest points Alts can produce. During crafting weeks they are precrafting (starting the crafting on Monday so that when they log in on Tuesday, boom, hundreds of completed CQ tasks.) They do the same with heroics and other activities that reward CQ points (by saving them up from the previous week). If only your main could contribute (or some sort of diminishing reward for using alts) you would cut those point totals down quickly and favor guilds that are mostly single toon members as opposed those that are all alts. I personally doubt there is a single guild out there over 250 "members" that is not at least 50% alts.

Actually there are 10 per side since Iokath has one as well, and seeing as they are all placed on lowbie leveling planets (apart from Iokath of course) you can easily just relog to the opposite faction and see which ones are up and kill them as well, you simply have to reform the group.

 

I personally don't disagree with having more incentives and rewards from guilds of all sizes, however lets say that there are separate brackets for guilds between 1-200 members, 201 - 500 and finally the last bracket with 500+ members (with scaling rewards where 1-200 has the worst and 500+ has the best). In such as situation, smaller guilds like your own would have a bigger chance with getting rewards cause you don't need to compete with the big guilds, however what prevents bigger guilds from creating an alt guild and maxing it at exactly 200 members?

 

Assuming the rewards are good enough, big guilds that are already comfortably winning the 500+ bracket could easily split up a bit and place some good crafting alt in a smaller guild and ensure members gain multiple rewards. In and the case of your guild, Bioware would need to implement a reward bracket for perhaps guilds with up to 50 members (depending on how many alts you guys have), and that would be quite confusing with so many brackets and 4 leaderboards per planet.

I agree with your points but I just used the conquest as a general example, but in regard to the conquest problems, maybe they could somehow bind the rewards to the guilds. I don't know if that's the best solution but since this is all hypothetical anyway why not throw it out there.

I don't even care if they use the conquest as a place to implement such things. Surely there are other avenues to explore to make some small/new guild friendly content. Everyone is getting stuck on the conquest and leatherboards and hyper focusing on that rather than the general request for content or options that work better for the little guys. Maybe they could do a combine forces option? With a little creativity I'm sure there are things they could do without even touching conquest.

The fastest way to slow down the mega guilds is to put a limit on how many Conquest points Alts can produce. During crafting weeks they are precrafting (starting the crafting on Monday so that when they log in on Tuesday, boom, hundreds of completed CQ tasks.) They do the same with heroics and other activities that reward CQ points (by saving them up from the previous week). If only your main could contribute (or some sort of diminishing reward for using alts) you would cut those point totals down quickly and favor guilds that are mostly single toon members as opposed those that are all alts. I personally doubt there is a single guild out there over 250 "members" that is not at least 50% alts.

So you want Bioware to discourage players from playing and using alts? Come on lets be realistic, sure the current situation isn't optimal for guilds who have a hard time recruiting, but at least it encourages players to play more on mains and alts. Perhaps it would be more suitable to adjust the conquest giving activities by restricting more to be one-time-only, in particular activities that don't mean increased playing time.

The guild I am part of (where the OP, UlaVii, is the GM) have 1k members and 500+ unique accounts, there are at least two other guilds I know of on Darth Maglus that have over 500 unique accounts, there are quite a few.

I agree with your points but I just used the conquest as a general example, but in regard to the conquest problems, maybe they could somehow bind the rewards to the guilds. I don't know if that's the best solution but since this is all hypothetical anyway why not throw it out there.

 

I don't even care if they use the conquest as a place to implement such things. Surely there are other avenues to explore to make some small/new guild friendly content. Everyone is getting stuck on the conquest and leatherboards and hyper focusing on that rather than the general request for content or options that work better for the little guys. Maybe they could do a combine forces option? With a little creativity, I'm sure there are things they could do without even touching conquest.

Yea I don't mind people giving suggestions to improve the situation for small-scale conquest guilds, but the problem is that people are simply not thinking in a realistic manner. You want to have a system that promotes playing swtor more and doing a diverse set of activities but so far your suggestions would solve neither the small-guild problem nor the activity problem.

That said, I don't think most guilds are hyper-focused on conquest, most smaller guilds rather focus on their activities and events which involves the members of the guild and that they plan, be that an operation, raid squads, social events, achievement hunts or other things. In the grand scheme of things, I think the focus on Conquest in general from guilds is quite small, it's far more likely that most guilds conquest points comes from these events rather than directly from "Gather Conquest Points" events. But again, if you want to grow and improve your guild, checkout the links I posted.

So you want Bioware to discourage players from playing and using alts? Come on lets be realistic, sure the current situation isn't optimal for guilds who have a hard time recruiting, but at least it encourages players to play more on mains and alts. Perhaps it would be more suitable to adjust the conquest giving activities by restricting more to be one-time-only, in particular activities that don't mean increased playing time.

The other option would be to set it up so that you could not gain any CQ points for any activity that was started before the start of conquest for that week (or not telling people ahead of time what conquest it would be). That would reduce the pre-completion of objectives by alts without disincentivizing playing them. Besides if the only reason you are playing alts is to generate CQ points from crafting are you really "playing" them.

Yea I don't mind people giving suggestions to improve the situation for small-scale conquest guilds, but the problem is that people are simply not thinking in a realistic manner. You want to have a system that promotes playing swtor more and doing a diverse set of activities but so far your suggestions would solve neither the small-guild problem nor the activity problem.

 

That said, I don't think most guilds are hyper-focused on conquest, most smaller guilds rather focus on their activities and events which involves the members of the guild and that they plan, be that an operation, raid squads, social events, achievement hunts or other things. In the grand scheme of things, I think the focus on Conquest in general from guilds is quite small, it's far more likely that most guilds conquest points comes from these events rather than directly from "Gather Conquest Points" events. But again, if you want to grow and improve your guild, checkout the links I posted.

I've said this more than once, but I'll say it again because it keeps getting skimmed over. I just used conquest as an example. In fact, I think what would be best is to just offer up other ways to gain guildcentric rewards, i.e. encryptions, frameworks, etc, that are a little more small guild friendly. Perhaps having a weekly FP goal or something? It encourages people to play, but doesn't require a huge guild to accomplish. Doesn't even need to be in any sort of competition it could just be for guild focused rewards.

I think the answer here is to add, not take away. Tossing in a something like a weekly guild fp mission wouldn't really be that difficult. I mean, I don't know that, but the weekly mission dynamic is already in the game, I wouldn't think adding one for a guild would be that difficult. Just adding some lower level, small group options would go a long way in helping the baby guilds build themselves up. Not to mention that there are some guilds that prefer to stay on the smaller side, it gives them something to do together too without taking anything from the larger guilds.

There are so many other things in the list yet it's clear some people just want to discuss conquest. There is no point stressing about it until the producers break their silence and reveal what their overhaul of the conquest system entails.

At least we can all agree that there are a lot of bugs with the current guild system which make it unfit for purpose. There are also a lot of things that would be nice to have to improve the quality of life for guilds and make things easier to join them.

When I get some time over the next week I'll go through the comments and add the suggestions to the main post (with credit). Any more suggestions to add? Even if the producers are going to continue to ignore their guilds at least we can have a central location for guild related ideas.

So, here's my suggestion in regard to making things a little more small and new guild friendly. Maybe BW could implement some kind of join forces option for guilds under a certain number of members? This way it wouldn't be making anything easier but also makes it possible for the smaller guilds to enjoy some of the content that is difficult when you don't have larger numbers. There would definitely have to be a max number of members a guild is allowed to have in order to join forces with another guild but it could be an easier way to make things available to those guilds without completely overhauling aspects of the game.

Maybe they could put in some kind of listing similar to strongholds. If a small guild is interested in teaming up with another guild they could add their name to the listing. Guildmasters could check the listings and hit a join forces button. or something like that. It could actually be a fun mechanic.