I would like to suggest a change to how and when players can join a guild.
We all know, on all servers, which guilds leap on new players as soon as they say one word on any of the chats. The new player asks for friends for a quest and they get flooded with guild invites. It is always the same group of guilds who do this and so smaller guilds (10 - 40 members shall we say) have no chance to grow, unless they want to join in on the spam inviting game. The guilds in question will doubtless say they whisper etc to the person before inviting but sorry that's not the experience of a friend of mine who logged in whilst I was offline. He asked for a friend for a quest, got 10 mails of which 4 were guild invites, with not a word said....... On Northisle it is now such a joke that we can run a behind the scenes sweepstake as to how long before the person vanishes into one of the 3/4 guilds.
I suspect this is costing BB players, and hence income, as these new players are absorbed into the huge guilds and then find many accounts are inactive. As a result there are less people playing to add to the chats on g-1 and less to buy gems. For the fun of it my friend joined one of the guilds who sent him an invite and found that of 90+ members less than half were active and only 5/6 people chatted on guild chat. In his case he decided the game wasn't for him anyway and quit, though 3 weeks later when he popped on he found he was still in the same guild, hence costing every active player in that guild 3 - 4 guild coins a day from guild quests.
So, what I would like to suggest is that players are not able to join a guild until they are say level 17. This gives them time to learn how the economy system works, to spend time chatting on g-1 and help to see who is who and to chat to a mix of players from a mix of guilds. I would also like to suggest that players should have to apply to join a guild instead of being invited in order that their application is more considered.
I would also like to suggest that on the guild list the guilds are listed by number of active players, not by number in the guild as at present. That way new players can see which guilds actually have players in who play. Could have Number active/Number in guild, as per another game I play? So a guild with 50 members but only 10 play could be listed as 10/50 etc. This is a side thought, main issue is how players join to begin with
I have discussed this several times on Northisle g-1 and many saw it as a positive step. Amusingly those who spoke against it were from those guilds which are the fastest to send random invites .... no shock there then.
I am not suggesting this for my own guilds purposes, but in order to try to find a way to spread the new players across a variety of guilds, not just 3/4.