To Rule An Empire

Wolfpack Studios' Sean Dahlberg has penned an editorial on MMORPG.com entitled "To Rule An Empire", in which he offers some helpful tips on guild management in a massively multiplayer game. A snip:
Having run a few guilds before myself (and being a designer so I'm always trying to think of ways to fix problems), one feature that would have made my life so much easier would have been a way to collect guild dues using the game's mechanics. Truth is, it takes (in-game) currency to run a guild successfully. You need currency to form the guild usually, to purchase various amenities that either the guild as a whole can use or for individual members. Having a simple system where Guild Leaders can assign how much in-game currency members have to pay by certain intervals in time would be beneficial to almost every guild leader out there. These dues can be a blanket fees for every member or can be denoted by their rank or status in the guild or even on an individual basis. And, of course, a way to track those dues collected would be practically a necessity.