Guild Level 600

Back in December, I noticed that Twin Suns Squadron, my guild on Darth Malgus, had hit guild level 600. I gave it a brief mention in the guild message of the day but didn't really think about it beyond that. Until a few days ago that is, when I noticed that we were still level 600... and that our guild XP bar had stopped moving.

It was only then that I realised that we'd in fact hit the level cap for guilds. I'd had no idea that there even was one. I mean, I guess I always figured that there had to be one for practical reasons, but I expected it to be a really high number that we weren't going to reach for many more years, such as 1000.

However, apparently the cap of 600 was well known before anyone even got to it, as a quick Google search for "swtor guild max level" revealed a reddit post from over five years ago that already stated it to be 600 back then. Though that same post also posited that "guilds can first reach it in the week of August 27, 2024", which obviously turned out to be very wrong. (It's possible that XP rates were changed at some point after said post was made though.) I couldn't find anything on which guild was the first to hit level 600 or when, but apparently Stroke my Wookie of Darth Malgus hit level 500 in June of 2022.

I feel slightly sad now, both that I missed the opportunity to celebrate the ding itself due to not even realising that it was going to be special, and because our guild has no more levelling to do now. I just like making bars go up and I'll miss that.

When Twin Suns Squadron first hit level 100, I was so excited that I made a whole post about it. Then again when we hit 200, and again when our smaller Imperial alt guild hit 100. At some point it stopped feeling that exciting though, and like I said, I kind of started to think that we were (effectively) going to continue levelling forever. Now I wish I'd continued commemorating those milestones.

I figure there's no point in getting my hopes up that the devs will actually raise the guild level cap some day - after all, they never raised the maximum legacy level from 50 either. Plus the guild levelling/perk system hasn't really received much love over the years in general. I thought it was a really neat new feature when it first came out over five years ago, and Musco said at the time that they intended to "support [it] for a long time going forward".

I guess they technically did that in the sense that it's still functional and in the game, but it hasn't really received any more feature updates. They just fixed some small issues and bugs, and not even all of those at that. For example the "previous leaders" column in the Conquest leaders tab remains blank to this day, and we still don't have a way to tell when guild perks are rotating other than by checking the Jedipedia page, because there's still no in-game indicator for that five years later.

I don't know, it all just makes me feel a little melancholy. I suppose for whatever flaws it may have, SWTOR's guild levelling system remains solid and generally does its job. I certainly feel engaged by helping the guild I'm in on Shae Vizla grow and progress. I'm just a bit sad to see that particular part of the game come to an end for my main guild. I'll try to enjoy the 184 levels we have left on Imp side while I can.