[Rygar]

Piqued my interest, did some searching and here is how I believe guildwar mechanics worked. While vastly unused in era, for timelocked server may be fun (and more convenient than going to a PvP area).

Some info is sparse, allegedly the /guildwar system was disabled during LDoN to free up needed resources.

I believe it was rarely used because /guildwar enabled rallos zek PvP looting rules (1 loot item per kill + coin). However, it also disabled PvP level limits (i.e. Level 60 can kill a Level 1 twink and loot an item). This would persist for life of P99 servers if following strict timeline rules. Note that perhaps until around May 1999 that guildwar rules were bugged (or perhaps by design?) and enabled 100% of all item loot (meaning you could loot every single item on corpse) until this was fixed/revised. I can link that evidence by request but won’t bother for now as it seems item or even coin looting on Blue/Green may not be desirable from a CSR standpoint (exploitable).


Initiating a guildwar

Conflicting info here, but I believe some of the tips may have been misleading and quite frankly folks didn’t realize all the ways it could be done. I believe there were multiple methods:

1) Target the guildleader and type /guildwar (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [days]
2) Type /guildwar [guildleader_name] (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [guildleader_name] [days]
3) Type /guildwar [fullguild_name] (would default to 1 day if no duration specified) or /guildwar [fullguild_name] [days]

If the command was successful and the guildleader was online at the time, they would receive a yes/no dialogue box (similar to being rezzed). From eqst0002 from titanium disks:

9048 %1, leader of the guild %2 wishes to declare war on your guild for %3 day(s). Do you accept?

Leader could accept by clicking yes or by typing /guildwar [guildleader_name] (or targeting guildleader and just typing /guildwar). Leader could decline by clicking no or typing /guildpeace [guildleader_name] (or targeting guildleader and just typing /guildpeace)

If leader declines the challenge, a personal message is sent:

6702 %1 has denied your request for war.

If leader accepts the challenge, a GLOBAL message is sent to server

1084 Guild <%1> is now at war with Guild <%2>

Evidence for a dialogue box and global message was found:
2/21/2000

I saw a global message sayin "<this guild> is now at war with <that guild>".
What do you do when you goto war with another guild on a non pvp server?
Just curious cuz it looks interesting.


The leader of each guild has to be online and then one of them issues
the /guildwar command. (i.e. /guildwar OtherGuildName). The other
guild leader hits YES (or ACCEPT, I don't remember) and poof - you are
at war.

Ending a Guildwar

Obviously this can end naturally after duration has expired, but can be ended sooner by doing the following:

1) Target the guildleader and type /guildpeace
2) Type /guildpeace [guildleader_name]
3) Type /guildpeace [fullguild_name]

If the command was successful and the guildleader was online at the time, they would receive a yes/no dialogue box (similar to being rezzed). From eqst0002 from titanium disks:

9049 %1, leader of the guild %2 wishes to make peace with your guild. Do you accept?

I believe you could just click the options presented or similar to the guildwar initiation could do /guildpeace for yes and /guildwar for no (with all the previous syntax caveats)

If leader declines the peace offering, a personal message is sent:

6704 %1 has denied your request for peace.

If leader accepts the peace offering (or duration ends), a GLOBAL message is sent to server

1083 Guild <%1> is now at Peace with Guild <%2>

Guildwar duration limits

It appears this was limited to 1 to 14 days, website evidence + disk messages back this up:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011020...uildwars.shtml

Guild wars may vary in duration from the default of 1 day to a maximum of 14 days. During this period of time members from either guild may cause harm to each other regardless of their adherence to the tenants of Order or Discord.

457 War Duration Invalid. Enter a number between 1 and 14.

Recruiting during a guildwar
As mentioned in previous in era evidence this is prohibited, disk message backs this up:

454 No roster changes allowed while at war.

Experience loss during a guildwar
Won’t link evidence, but players were reporting this happened on occasion. This seems to be from known glitches from early DoT spells and some other bugs such as charming someone that had even a summoned pet then pet would ‘go rogue’ and could cause exp loss if they killed you. Don’t presume you’d want exp loss enabled unless following those era rules.

Beneficial buffing during a guildwar
It was asked if you are prohibited from casting beneficial spells on members of the opposing guild you were at war with. While this is only a single mention, I found a reference that doing so enables your own guild to attack you:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011027...ve/arc70.shtml

[Quote from original post: 1) Make the healer attackable by his own team for say the next 2 minutes everytime he heals (this happens in guild wars, so it should be possible); ]

Can't do this with the way that attack rights are handle. In EQ, if I can attack you, you can also attack me. There's no way around that mechanism. The exploit that pops out is that all I'd have to do to be able to go kill my own team would be to cast a beneficial spell on someone of another team. EQ also can't handle a persistant agressor flag. We know who is casting the spell and who the recipient is at the time the spell is cast, but not after. The same is true with melee attacks.

These are the options available to us:

1. Do nothing.
2. Disallow beneficial spells across teams. (handles cross-teaming problem)
3. Disallow beneficial spells out-of-level (handles, for the most part, the out-of-level situation)
4. A combination of 2&3.

Note that the dev was commenting in regards to the current PvP Teams server, its possible he was talking about not being able to do so in the PvP Teams context.

This would be a very cool feature that, if it was true, allows you to attack traitors within your own ranks during the guildwar. It also seems to imply during a guildwar you could not attack your own guildmembers.


Nametag colors during a guildwar
There is conflicting evidence here, I found a verbal mention of names changing to “peach color” during a guild war
3/24/2000

Red is PvP, Blue is either normal or anon, purple is roleplay, and green
means they are a GM
Hope that helps :-)


What she said [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] And every rare now and then you'll see someone with a
peach name--it means their guild is engaged in a guildwar.

I did find a few websites showing images from guild wars. The first doesn’t have larger pictures working, only low res thumbnails. Some clearly can be seen as blue names, but I did notice maybe 1 or 2 that have a yellowish tint. Can’t be sure if that individual was targeted and flashing though.

Second shows large images of guild war in action, clearly red/blue names visible, no peach.

Judge for yourselves, perhaps it never changed color or worked for a time or if you hit /role or /anon during a war it interfered and reset your display name?
https://web.archive.org/web/20041110.../guildwar.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050223...com/pics2.html

Other odd quirks by being engaged in a guildwar
It’s possible /guildstatus changed functionality during a guildwar, either by targeting and doing /guildstatus or /guildstatus [fullguild_name]. Only evidence is from disk messages:

517 Your target's guild is NOT at war with you.
518 You are not at war with this guild.

Seems you could not delete your guild while at war as well:

510 Cannot delete a guild while it is at war.

You could only be engaged with a single guild during a war it would seem, could not have multiple wars at the same time. Messages for multiple initiation and initiating with a guild already at war:

496 You are already at war with a guild.
497 Your target's guild is already at war.

System messages for improper commands executed
Just my best guess here after viewing the available strings in the file:

Initiating guildwar if you are not the guild leader:

307 You are not high enough rank to perform this guild operation.

or possibly

1013 You cannot Perform this Guild Operation

Enabling guildwar with invalid guild:

453 Guild not found.

Enabling guildwar with unguilded player:

455 Your target is not in a guild.

Initiating guildwar with non-leader member of guild:

456 Your target is NOT the guild's leader.

Initiating guildwar with a non-existent guild:

499 Your target's guild does not exist.

Possible error messages if war and peace functions aren't working ('sue for peace' probably out of era / revised saying). Could also occur after successful initiated command but opposing leader went LD or logged off?:

6703 Could not declare war on that target's guild. Try again.
6705 Could not sue for peace for that target's guild. Try again.

Another out of era message, or possibly a feature they wanted to enable or never did?

12276 You have petitioned %1 for your guilds to go to war for %2 days.
12277 You have petitioned %1 for your guilds to make peace.
12278 Only a guild leader may sue for peace.

They made mention in an interview for ‘plans’ to revise guild wars in the summer of 2001, but never saw anything further to that effect, so perhaps they had plans for ‘suing for peace’ or petitioning to initiate a guildwar command that were later implemented (which would make sense since it solves the problem of the leader not being online).

https://web.archive.org/web/20010822...ive/arc7.shtml

developer comments, 5/30/2001

Guildwars: We've noticed a huge lack in player participation of this feature due to a lot of bugs with it. Our hope is that by fixing these bugs and enhancing the system a bit more people might be interested in going to war with their local guilds.

That's it, let me know if you have any questions