Guilds are a pretty big thing when it comes to the MMO genre. In most other genres you'll have your usual party system comprising of roughly five or so people, a standard affair when it comes to MMOs as well, however when you want more than the usual rag-tag team you'll want to be creating a guild.

Carbine Studios' upcoming MMO WildStar has just that, though it seems like the dev team are taking a different approach to the standard guild system seen in previous titles, opting for a more "sci-fi" theme. One of those big changes is the Guild Holomark, which takes shape in the form of a holographic emblem projected in the air around, or above your character. Awesome.

Of course while the team want to be different, you can still expect some normality to how a guild operates. Some of the more obvious features include creating a guild (duh), access to a guild vault that has full permission sets for various actions and renamable tabs, customisable ranks with accompanying permissions and optional guild taxes that the guild leader can choose to enable.

Another change to the system is Guild Influence, which the team hopes to be a building block in getting individuals to play with their guildmates. By playing with your guild you earn the Influence currency and are able to spend that on Guild Perks, a reward system that offers a number of incentives to help your guild out in the long run. These include buffs, additional bank vaults, player summoning and consumable items.

There are six guild-wide buffs a guilds can unlock and activate. Unlocking the ability to use a buff is a one-time, high-Influence cost. Once unlocked, the buff can be activated for 7 days (real time) by spending a smaller amount of Influence. Any member of the guild is affected by this buff while they are logged in during those 7 days. These buffs typically boost the rate at which you earn currencies in the game, including experience, faction reputation, and Influence itself.

The consumable items include things like summoning a guild bank out in the open world just by spending some Influence on the spot. You can also purchase the ability for guild members to buy "flasks" on their own, which give individual boosts that stack with the guild-wide buffs you may already have activated.

If all of this is sounding like your kind of playstyle, head over to the dev blog for the full rundown including a prototype look at the system the team are hoping to bring public.

WildStar is set for release on PC during 2014.