Bioware has revealed a new part of it's plan for Star Wars the Old Republic. We all expected guilds to be a part of TOR, and were hopeful there would be some website tools to help us do this, but Bioware went the extra mile and created a system for creating and managing guilds pre-launch.

Each guild leader creates their guild on the website and chooses between an RP, PVE (normal) and PVP server type. When the game launches, it appears you will not be able to chose your server's name and will instead be placed on a server based upon your guild-leader's decisions. It also appears that guilds which are created on the website first will have the first shot at obtaining their ideal guild name. Once a guild's name, such as Bane or Vengence, has been selected too many times, you will be forbidden from creating a guild with that name.



All of this guild creation and guild joining is just phase 1. Guilds will also be able to select allies and enemies during phase 2 of this process. At this time, it appears the ally/enemy selection is mainly so that other guilds you have contact with will start on the same server.

Finally, in phase 3 the guilds will be loaded into the game. They will only be loaded into the game pre-luanch if there are four members who have pre-ordered the game via an official pre-order site (there are no official pre-orders yet). Additionally, the guild-leader must load the guild into the game in phase 3 to prove the guild is still active and deserving of their guild-name reservation.