subgroup of them. Structurally, such guilds look like dictatorships or oligarchies, but any group of dissatisfied members can always start their own guild, so the nominal leaders of successful guilds are more like servants than kings, exerting great effort to satisfy the membership.
To outline the contours and establish ubiquity of such guilds, Table 2 provides some data about 3,676 members of the largest such group in the classic MMO, EverQuest II. Called Blackhawks, it is organized into the series of eight membership ranks given in the table. In EverQuest II, as in most MMOs, there is a set system of experience advancement, an objective status ladder based on successful completion of missions inside this virtual world. Currently, the levels of experience run from 1 to 90, but with levels above 80 available only to committed players who have annual subscriptions. The three factions listed have evaluative labels in EverQuest II, but can be thought of as geographic representation districts, because members of the Good faction come from one district of the virtual world; those in the Evil faction come from another, and the Neutrals can come from either district.
Table 2: Members of the Blackhawks Guild in EverQuest II
| Rank | Number of Avatars | Mean Level of Experiance | Percent in Good Faction | Percent in Neutral Faction | Percent in Evil Faction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leader | 9 | 45 | 0.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Council | 40 | 67.1 | 40.0% | 50.0% | 10.0% |
| Captain | 43 | 57.9 | 34.9% | 41.9% | 23.3% |
| Commander | 32 | 74.9 | 18.8% | 59.4% | 21.9% |
| Senior Member | 381 | 69.9 | 25.2% | 43.3% | 31.5% |
| Contributor | 451 | 57.0 | 29.9% | 41.9% | 28.2% |
| Member | 1166 | 30.4 | 29.5% | 43.3% | 27.2% |
| Recruit | 1554 | 34.2 | 28.3% | 42.6% | 29.2% |
An extensive literature exists on MMO guilds, and we cannot take the time here to discuss all the findings, or all the tools used by different MMOs to create and support these groups. However, one point deserves emphasis because it links to fluid democracy. The members of Blackhawks are not people but avatars of people. EverQuest II is the only current MMO that makes public which avatars link together through one player, although it does not reveal the real-world identity of the person playing that set of avatars. These 3,676 Blackhawks avatars belong to 1,782 game accounts, for an average of 2.06 virtual representatives per person. The Berlin group imagined that each person could behave almost as multiple persons, with one vote per political issue area. The system of multiple avatars in MMOs, suggests there might be several ways in which voters could become multifaceted, even earning extra votes through investing time and effort in the system.
The Blackhawks website indicates that a single person is Leader of the guild, but this person has nine avatars, three of which have reached level 90. The 40 avatars in the council represent 8 people, only two of which lack level-90 avatars, for an average of 5 avatars each. Captains and Commanders are also considered to be leaders. The 43 captains represent 19 accounts, while the 32 Commanders represent 23 accounts. The guild seems
