Coded diplomatic statuses between guilds. (Occupational guilds with leadership, not free guilds without official leadership, or layman guilds).
So that by setting a diplomatic status (a global guild leader item / command) you can declare whether you are at war, at peace, or allied with a guild. Or "no status". No status would simply mean there are no defined rules between your guilds. Yet.
So if you are at peace with a guild, attacking a member if the other guild would be an act of war.
Guilds who are at war can then negotiate peace treaties with different terms (coded), and time limit (coded), and if broken there is some type of penalty (coded) for the part that breaks it.
When guilds are allied (coded minimum time limit), it would also mean if someone declares war against your ally, they automatically declare war at your guild too. And as a bonus allied guilds could perhaps get small benefits, like maybe a shared who-list to make teaming easier, or something else small, but useful.
So... if I am a member of the Calians, my "diplomatic status" screen / device / chart, well however you wanna code it thematically, could look something like this:
Knights of Solamnia - Allied
Rangers of Gondor - Peace
Morgul mages - no status
Red Dragonarmy - Peace
Blue Dragonarmy - no status
Priests of Takhisis - no status
(etc)
So, suddenly an RDA attacks a Calian. This means their status changes to war with Calians, and also to war with knights since they are allied. But since RDA had a peace treaty with Calians the RDA guild suffers a penalty for breaking it (the type of penalty is defined in peace treaty terms). Now Knights and Calians are officially at war with RDA. RDA then talks to BDA and Pots, who ally themselves with RDA, and thus also automatically goes to war with Calians. And off we go, until a new treaty eventually is signed. Maybe. Some guilds may have a constant war status at all times if they cant agree on peace terms, or dont want to.
Well you get the idea. Now all these guild leaders would need to negotiate some type of peace again if that is what they want. And of course you can attack and kill members of the guild you are at war with to force a treaty with better conditions for your own guild. And we could add nice rewards and/or small penalties for killing/being killed by the other side in a war. Hopefully making PVP more fun and rewarding, but also hopefully there would less "random murders", and more of a targeted thing between guilds who are at war. Now you can still attack and kill others too, but as it would have no reward hopefully those who enjoy PVP would be drawn towards guilds who often are at war. People who dont like PVP would be drawn towards guilds who stay out of conflicts, and doesnt ally themselves with guilds who enjoy wars.
Members of free guilds will not suffer either boosts or penalties for wars, but can still join in of course if they want to.
Well there's a lot of possibilities.
Anyway, I think it sounds like fun. In theory at least. I definitely think a politic system where things are changing and stuff happens would both make guild leaders more active, but also encourage all members of all guilds to actually RP some when meeting each other, depending on their diplomatic status. And considering we are simply too many guilds with too few players to have any lasting 1 guild vs 1 guild conflicts, it makes it possible to ally with any guilds you want, and gain some benefits from doing so, but it also makes any conflict bigger, and automatically involve more players. Which is a good thing with our current player numbers. Any war now would more or less mean PVP between 2 active players of each guild is probably gonna be a bit... dull.
Uhm. Yeah. Thats my idea. So wiz and code it? Well... no. But I'll throw it out there anyway. Who knows!
