Social Features
The most important part of an MMO is arguably its community, and while Tera is still in its infancy (at least in North America), it comes packaged with a few social features that are sure to please any MMO veteran.
For starters, it launched with a cross-server dungeon matchmaking system, similar to WoW’s LFG tool. This makes finding groups for dungeons extremely easy.
Another neat feature is the guild list, which allows you to look at every guild on your server. From the guild list menu, you can find a guild’s name and level, its leader’s name, when it was founded, how many members it has, and its total praise, which is essentially a rating of how popular it is. While in this menu, you can also give praise to a guild or apply to join it in-game, which is a nice change from the website-driven applications of hardcore guilds in other MMOs.
Finally, one of the most interesting aspects of Tera is its political system. During set periods of time, elections are held for the position of Vanarch--a leader of one of Tera’s 20 provinces; only guild leaders can apply for the candidacy. During the election process, players on each server choose which guild leader will become Vanarch of a given province. Once elected, Vanarchs have the power to activate (or remove) special vendors, trainers, world bosses and more in their province, and they hold power for three full weeks. There’s no way to impeach them should they abuse the system and deactivate all a province’s services, but that’s a good way to get your guild blacklisted by the community.
