This made the rounds today.  I enjoyed it muchly.

For years, I’ve always instinctively felt that MMO players who joined guilds tended to stick around in games longer than those who did not.  Oh sure, I track my own membership numbers, but that only tells me a small part of the overall story.  I never really know what’s going on with other guilds or whether or not players who don’t join a guild are more or less likely to stick around.

So, for years, I’ve rigidly stuck to my assumptions because I could remember hearing about studies that showed guilds were beneficial.  I could recall discussions at conferences and conventions which supported that position.  I could recall seeing occasional posts about the subject.  Sure, it feels logical to me that a player would stay in a game longer if they feel that additional investment to a guild, but that’s not really a fact I can point at with any degree of confidence, now is it?  In any event, it wasn’t something I thought about a great deal during any given week. 

Certainly, MMO studios have likely parsed the millions and millions and lines of logs they have access to to glean the data on whether or not guilds bring in the money, but they’re not likely to share that information publically.  As players, we can only guess at their conclusions when we see games releasing with more and greater guild functions included and when we see existing live games introducing more guild features over time.  However, that’s still largely conjecture as opposed to fact. 

Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who’d wondered about this topic, but it wasn’t till recently when I found out exactly who else was doing the wondering.  It was only this week when I became involved in a rather impassioned discussion regarding whether or not guilds should be better supported in 38 Studios’ eventual Project Copernicus MMO.  At one point in the conversation, one of the participants actually stated:  “The truth is that a more robust guild system is probably a bad target for developer resources…”  Well, that statement really got me to thinking. 

I started looking around for those studies I’d remembered hearing about or reading about.  I wanted to see what the actual facts said.  What I found was surprising to me – not the facts themselves, but the fact that I don’t recall seeing much written about these studies when they came out:

PARC Researchers Seek to Boost the Gaming Experience at PC World
Today @ PC World PARC Researchers Seek to Boost the Gaming Experience

“Another concern for the game owners, who want to keep getting their fees, is how to keep top level players in the game. One important reason for gamers to stay is the social network built up within a guild. Guild kinship, according to Parc, keeps people around. And there are special activities for characters reaching the top level. But researchers tell that game owners seek for even more ways to keep top players longer in the game.”

“Alone together?”: exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games
“Alone together?”

“Guilds are often cited as another important factor contributing toMMORPG’s popularity. They are the place where most of a player’s important relationships are formed and frame a player’s social experience in the game [9, 17, 24]. “

“Our data shows that, overall, 66% of WoW’s characters are in a guild. Moreover, this number increases to 90% for characters level 43 and above. This last number is quiteclose to data obtained from earlier games [24]. “

“Plotting playing time against level by guild involvement shows another interesting trend: playing time is more stable after level 40 for guilded players and fluctuates more fornon-guilded ones (Figure 7).”

“For example, between levels 41-60, characters in a guild are in a group about 43% more often than characters not in a guild, after playing time has been controlled for. Ittherefore seems that being in a guild facilitates finding and forming an ad-hoc quest group.”

“Our observations show that an overwhelming majority ofguilds have 35 members or less (90thpercentile), with a mean of 14.5. The “churn rate” is high, with many members leaving regularly to be replaced by new faces. Moreover,only a small fraction of each guild’s population (about10%) truly engages in joint activities. Overall our data gives the impression that growing a guild to a significant size and sustaining it over time is a difficult task, perhaps more sothan managing groups in other contexts. From a game producer’s standpoint this is clearly problematic since, aswe have seen earlier, guild membership encourages playersto play more and to group more.”

“Considering the above, it is clear that players need more tools to help insure that their guild survive and prosper.”

How Much Do Guilds Matter? by Sanya Weathers for GamerDNA
How much do guilds matter? – Massively

“Still, I found that players in guilds that had regular events, strong communication outside the game, and charismatic leadership typically subscribed for six months longer than players who did not boast such social connections.”

“It’s not just anecdotal evidence, anymore. In WoW, and I think any game built with similar mechanics (which is practically freaking everyone coming down the pike) any guild membership at all increases engagement as measured by time played per week, levels achieved, and leveling speed.”

Read the linked articles.  Dig into them.  The more I rooted about, the more I felt as if my eyes were opening wider to a great untapped resource.  Suddenly, I wasn’t even as concerned about the discussion I’d previously been involved in.  Now, I was actually finding myself incredulous as I realized how little actual guild support is out there in most MMOs.

In short, I realized very quickly that these studies showed that for all intents and purposes, guilds equal money…and apparently lots of it. 

Why aren’t more studios catching on?  Why aren’t we seeing more guild support then we already are?

As more games release, I believe we’ll see guilds becoming even more dominant as the social hubs for players.  We’ll see more guilds straddling multiple games and we’ll see more demand for guild related services – both in-game and out.  There’s a distinct market here for the studios or entreprenuers looking to capitalize on it.

I think on some of the things I’d love to see as a guildmaster and I have to wonder why we’re not seeing some of these things. 

For example, why am I still collecting real world donations for my guildsite through Paypal to cover the expenses on my web hosting, url fee, forum support, etc. Why hasn’t anyone provided a close enough alternative to these things?  Sure, SOE has their various EQ2players type sites, but the forums on those sites are horrid and the site itself tends to be painfully slow and cluttered. 

To be fair to SOE, they have provided more guild functionality than anyone else out there (likely a very large part of the reason my guild is still in Everquest II right now).  Other games continue to launch which seem to treat guilds as a secondary afterthought – a requirement to appease players who like guilding (“See, we’ve got a guild system…what more do you want?”).  The notable exception recently was Warhammer Online with their “living guild” idea.  Age of Conan didn’t even pretend to like guilds at launch  - you were practically punished for daring to try to form a guild. 

Part of me admits that no system will ever live up to my ever rising expectations of what I want from a game regarding guild mechanics.  However, I still don’t think that’s a excuse for studios to phone it in regarding guild systems.  The world is changing and customers are becoming more saavy every day. 

Studios need to fight to keep the customers they already have since monthly churn can be so punishing.  The studies show that players who stick around at least two months have the best chances at converting into longer term subscribers and that guilds account for a dramatic percentage of all players above certain levels within the games. 

Regardless of the business model, studios want to keep customers in their worlds playing and subscribing and buying widgets from their virtual token stores.  The more we play, the more we pay and the studies show that guilded players play more often and longer than unguilded players. 

For studios, the question shouldn’t be whether or not including guild support is important.  The only real question is how best to encourage the guilds to maintain a presence within one game over another. 

Guild tools are one method.  Really, this should be the given.  It shouldn’t take years to implement such basic amenities as points tracking, attendance tracking, custom ranks, custom heraldry/uniforms, guild rewards, guild halls, guild banks, guild calendars, etc.  Most importantly should be basic guild recruiting/matching tools, though.

New players should be exposed to the guild systems early on.  Mention guilds in opening tutorials.  Present guild halls right off in starting towns and cities.  Give guilds more than a name over their heads and let them put heraldry and iconography on their shields, cloaks, tabards, mount barding, banners – you name it.  People should be excited and curious about guilds right away in the first 20 minutes of a game…and they should be presented with an intuitive way to find a guild that matches their needs right then.

It should be as easy to find a guild to match your wants and needs as it is to find a resturaunt on City Search. 

Seriously, I want a method by which a player, such as yourself, can open a UI window and check off boxes to indicate your preferred guild features. Maybe you’re not quite interested in raiding, so you leave that box unchecked. You are interested in regular groups, so you check that. You’re interested in questing, but not tradeskilling, so you make sure to note that. In the appropriate areas, you point out that you’re looking for a guild with a more open guildchat (as opposed to strictly family friendly), that roleplaying isn’t necessarily important to you, and that you’re based in the GMT-5 time zone. The game automatically notes that you’re a level 60 rogue.
When you click the “find a guild” button, the system automatically filters through the heavy roleplay guilds, the heavy raiding guilds, the guilds which have minimum level requirements you don’t meet, and the guilds which aren’t looking for rogues. It sorts out the remaining selections in order of relevance for you, and let’s you look through some relevant stats that include everything from total guild size, average nightly activity levels, most active nights, least active nights, rosters, leaderboards – you name it.

From a guild standpoint, guild leaders have set up similar filters on their end to help weed through potential applicants who might be looking for a guild in the first place. Generally speaking, the system is set up in such a way to allow players looking for guilds and guilds open to new players a way to find each other in the first place. From there, an actual application window might open up (which has its own system/criteria backing it).

How would players know about such a system? Because they’re exposed to it during the game’s tutorial…as well as being exposed to how to create a guild, the benefits (and some common pitfalls) of guilding, and any specific features of this particular game that revolve around guilding (guild halls, keeps, etc.)

Newer players in good guilds will be exposed to self-perpetuating activity/social hubs.  They’ll find more groups this way (especially if there’s some in-game benefit to grouping with younger members).  They’ll find more active players this way.  They’ll be included in an existing community right off this way.  They’ll begin investing and growing within the game faster this way.  Having newer members joining guilds is a way of increasing their chances at hitting that all important 2 month mark. 

Beyond recruiting, modern guilds are going to want to see more benefits outside of games as well.  As more games start to offer up free or freemium benefits, more guilds are going to spread out across multiple games.  For companies like SOE or NCSoft, cross game chat and organization systems should be considered.   Offline tools to create guild logos or heraldry should be looked into.  Robust forum/website tools should be researched. 

The benefits are tangible.  The money is there on the table just waiting to be grabbed.  Guilds equate to money…and lots of it.  The studios that realize this will reap the rewards.

Throughout the forums (official or otherwise) players and even guilds have uprooted and moved to the Antonia Bayle server.  Everywhere I turn, a new blogger has packed up a truck and then moved to Bev-er-ly…Bayle that is.

Why not?  Isn’t Antonia Bayle the server where dreams come true?  It’s the virtual land of milk, honey, and perfect roleplaying.  Every street is paved in gold and every LFG is answered within seconds by the nicest group of strangers you’ve ever had to chance to group with.  On Antonia Bayle, levels do not matter because a veritable army of level 80’s stands at the ready just waiting for a call to Mentor your level 12 through Blackburrow.  The channels are filled with the most helpful and thoughtful voices you’ve ever heard – this must be what angels sound like, right.

The reality is that Antonia Bayle is bursting at the seams, apparantly.  Common complaints seem to indicate that server lag of 5-6 seconds is widespread.  That means that it probably took longer for your heal spell to actually start casting after you pressed the button than it did to read this sentence.  Other repeated complaints indicate that entire chunks of guild rosters are being kicked out of the game regularly as Guildhalls crash or take to long to load.  Other players are upset that they’re unable to actually log into the server in the first place.

Me?  I’m back here on Guk with my guild.  Jaye’s here with her guild, too.  We didn’t follow Cuppycake, Tipa, or Stargrace to those “greener pastures”.  We’re doing just fine where we’re at.  Feel free to come visit us over here on Guk…just not all at once.  We’d prefer it if you kept your dirty lag out of our clean server, thank you very much.

 ;)

Most guilds tend to track player characters differently depending on whether or not it’s a main or an alt (in my guild, we refer to these as “primaries” and “secondaries”…because, well, we like to complicate things).  For many guilds, mains are treated differently than alts – voting rights, loot rights, guildhall rights.  If someone leaves or is removed from a guild, then an officer typically has to go through the entire guild listing to hunt down all of the different characters that belong to a particular player in order to keep the roster clean. 

I’ve had to do this function in multiple games and I can say that within Everquest II, this is a pain. In Everquest II there is no indication of which character is a main or alt.  This in itself isn’t really an issue since no games I know of actually make this distinction.  So long as there is a notes function that I can sort by, I can set up the roster to take care of this concern for me. 

In Everquest II there are notes, but these are a function within the same column as character names.  We cannot actually sort by these notes.

Ideally, Everquest II could have mimicked the old Everquest method which had a separate column for “Notes” in the guild window which could be filled in by officers.  Since you could actually sort the entire list by just the Notes column, it was very easy to enter “Kendricke Primary” or “Kendricke Secondary” in the Notes column to very, very quickly identify all characters for the same player. 

Even if such a thing were not something SOE would want to include as separate column, I think there could be tremendous value in something as simple as allowing the current guild window to be sorted by the “Notes” and “Officer Notes” fields. 

What other features could be implemented to help players track their rosters a bit easier?

If you’re interested in trying out a different kind of guild experience, let me know.  On Guk server in Everquest II, the Legion is currently recruiting both casual and more serious players.  Anyone who’s read this site for any amount of time understands that we try to balance time limitations with a more dedicated internal raid force.  If it sounds like something you’d be interested in trying out, let me know.

I saw a post by Suzina over at Kill Ten Rats that reminded me of a post I’d made within my guild’s forums.  In Suzina’s post, she talks about how monsterous she felt after she asked a particular underperforming player to sit out on a raid and he refused.  Later, the raid failed and she felt guilty – guilty because she didn’t kick the player when she knew she probably should have, guilty because she asked the player to leave and he felt badly over that, and guilty because the raid later failed. 

Raid leadership is tough.  It’s one of the hardest positions in any guild, but it’s particularly hard because it requires a cold, calculating aspect that many people find hard to pick up.  It’s truly a thankless job much of the time and it can be one of the more stressful ways to play an MMO. 

I wanted my own guild to understand what it’s like to lead a raid.  I wanted them to understand the pressures I place upon myself and the realities they place upon me each time I form up a raid.  I conveyed these facts to my guild in the following way:

The Raid Leader’s Manifesto

I am a raid leader.

Time is my enemy. I recognize that the most important number on any raid is not the mitigation of my tank, the health of my target, or the damage of my raid force – it is time I have left on this raid.

Anything or anyone that interferes with the limited time I have before my raid breaks up is aiding my enemy. Raiders who show up unprepared, raiders who have not read the strategies I’ve written, raiders who do not listen while plans are discussed, raiders who get into conversations during fights, raiders who did not work on their character since the last raid – these are all collaborators I must halt or overcome in order to perform my duties within the time my raid force has alloted me.

As a raid leader, I am impatient. By definition, patience is a virtue that requires time. Time is my enemy. I grow frustrated when the raid is taking too much time. I do not care about dying…I care about dying slowly. I do not care about wipes…I care about recoveries which take too long. I do not care about careful pulls…I care about pulls which hold us up. If I must repeat myself, I am wearied. If I must wait for a recovery, I become irked. If I our raid wipes frequently due to the same mistakes, I grow upset.

When we run out of time, the raid is done. If I have lead my raid well, they will have accomplished something new, performed better, or moved faster than they have in the past. They win when they gain new loot, see new enemies, or learn something different. Any or all of these things are referred to as progression. When my raiders do not progress, I have lost the raid. In order to avoid losing, they must progress…and they must do so within our time constraints.

Whenever I am online, I am either raiding or preparing for a raid.  When I am online between raids, I talk about raiding. I discuss raiding. I ask questions about raiding. I try to get my raiders thinking about raiding. I want my raiders to understand that success in a raid does not start in a raid zone.

Groups are the way to success. Before I ever step foot into a raid dungeon, I know that our raid force’s success has already been largely determined. I realize that the best way to prepare for raids is to prepare raiders and the best way to prepare raiders for raiding lies in groups. I know that we bond in groups. We gear up in groups. We prepare for raids in groups.

Mine is a thankless job. I accept this. I accept that if I am polite and the raid fails, I will be berated. I accept that if I am kind and the raid is slow, I will be judged. I accept that even if the raid is a success, so long as I am not polite, I will be criticized. I accept that when I do well, I will rarely hear it. I accept that when the raid fails, it is my fault.

If I believe I am acting firm, I am being rude. If I ask someone to leave the raid, I am a jerk. If I call out someone on their performance, I am elitist. If I reserve any loot for a critical raid class, I have favorites. If I remain quiet, I am weak. If I chat, I am distracting. No matter what I do, I will never please all of my raid force. No matter what I do, I will always be compared to other raid leaders who do things better than I.

It is irrelevant that the very people who tell me what I am doing wrong as a raid leader are rarely people who have ever been a raid leader. It is irrelevant that the reason a raid failed is due to one person making the same mistakes over and over. It is irrelevant that the target was just too hard for the raid force we brought. Any time we fail the raid and any time I am criticized, the fault is mine.

I take failure personally. Each time we fail, there is something that I could have done differently. I could have explained the strategy differently. I could have benched a different raider. I could have chosen a different target. There is a never a raid which fails which is not my fault. That is the responsibility which is mine as raid leader.

There are no second chances on raids for the leaders. Each raid is a trial. Each raid is a judgement. Each raid is a review. If I perform well, raiders will continue to follow me. If I perform badly, they will stop attending my raids or even seek a new raid force. This is the reality I live with. This is the the only thanks I will ever truly know – that if I do my job well enough, I will be allowed to continue to do my job again in the future.

I am a raid leader.

I love fishing. Like most boys, my grandpa used to take me out dockside to throw some worms at the sunnies. Now, I don’t get to go fishing as much these days as I used to, but I still go whenever I can.

I can quite easily spend a day casting my line into the water over and over and over hoping for a hint of a nibble. If I think I’m in a bad spot, I can move. If I think I’m using a bad lure or bait, I can change it up. If I think I should be using one set of tackle over another, I can switch. On a really, really good day I might get a nibble half of the time I cast. On my best days, I might actually pull in a fish 4 out of 5 times I feel a nibble or strike. On the days of my dreams, half of the fish I actually land are worth keeping.

I shudder to think of a place where I might show up to go fishing once a month and a guy at the dock simply hands me a pole which already has a 15 pound lunker hooked every time I drive up. No matter how nice his intentions are, he’d quickly take the thrill of fishing away from me.

“They call it fishing, not catching” is a saying my grandpa was fond of whenever I complained of long, dry days at the dock without so much as a nibble. He tried to teach me that it was those days of nothing at all that made the great catches all the better. It took me years to realize what he meant.

In completely unrelated news, SOE has introduced Research Assistants into EverQuest II.

Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University shows some innovative ways to use a Wii-mote.  I gotta tell you this sort of thing is really interesting to me.

Well, technically I’m just an Associate Producer, but I’m pretty sure my mother only heard the part she wanted to hear.  In any event, it’s a pretty big step for me, as I’ve shifted from writing about games as a hobby to helping to build games for a living.  You see, today I started my new job as an Associate Producer at Activision.  I haven’t talked about it publically because (A) it’s all happened rather quickly and (B) I didn’t want to say anything till I’d actually signed papers and put some time on-site. 

So, what exactly does an Associate Producer actually do?  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure as of yet, but I’m learning.  I’m learning pretty damned quick. 

As I learn, I’ll try to share what general lessons I can.  I’m sure I’ll put in some long hours over the next few months at least.  I’m positive I’ll feel overwhelmed most days.  I’m certain I’ll feel lost at times.  At the same time, I’m absolutely thrilled and excited to have this opportunity.  I’m pretty stoked about getting back to work tomorrow.  This time last year, I couldn’t have said that.  Frankly, I can’t ever think of a time I’ve thought that.  That has to be a good sign.

Anyone who has been in my guild longer than a week has likely heard me say this at least once, that “we bond in groups”. Generally, when I say this, it’s because I’m referencing activity levels on a particular night or recognizing longer term trends toward overall guild activity levels. After all, in our guild (as I suspect is the case with most guilds), we may solo as individuals quite a bit or raid together for shared goals or glory, but it is in the regular nightly group runs that we truly get to know each other as people and not just as names on a roster or in our chat.

Though I’ve been meaning to write this particular post for months now, it wasn’t till a recent post over at Cuppytalk that I started to really think about the subject with more depth. After all, I know that grouping is important (at least I think I know), but it’s apparent that others feel differently on the subject. They challenge the idea that significant content for grouping is good design. They raise questions. For example, is the idea of having content designed exclusively for grouping activities truly an outdated or dead concept, as Cuppycake seems to indicate in her post? Must all or even just most of an MMO’s content be accessible through soloing for the game to be good? Does a game have to reduce the importance or efficiency of grouping in order to be successful?

I’d argue no on all counts. Let me explain why I feel this way…

As I’ve stated, “we bond in groups” is a common saying of mine within our guild’s chat channels.  I don’t just say this because it’s a nice turn of phrase or because it’s supposed to be motivational.  I say it because over the years of running my guild, I’ve noted that whenever officers spend time and effort to set up regular groups within the guild, our activity levels increase overall.  Just adding raid nights each week doesn’t have this same effect.  Just recruiting more members does not, either.  No, if you want more of your members on more of the time, you’ve got to make grouping easier for your members overall.

This doesn’t mean the members of my guild do not solo.  Soloing is a requirement in a guild of our size and girth.  We have more than 80 active* accounts which span more than a half dozen time zones all around the world.  Truly, there is no one “prime time” in the Legion of the White Rose.  So, no matter who you are in the guild, there will always be times you log in and find yourself without a group to join.  The options are then to either solo, find a pick-up group, or log out.  Soloing ends up being the lesser evil at least as often as not. 

Yet, even with members who are able to quickly and easily solo through the rather hefty number of solo related quests in Everquest II (including the thousands of solo rated quests which are all but required in the highest tiers of the game), soloing rarely keeps members online night after night.  Neither does just raiding.  If anything, players log in to raid, then log out immediately after.  I’ve come to realize that it’s not so much that players are enjoying raiding to the exclusion of all else, so much as raiding is a scheduled, static event. 

This leads to the experiment:  setting up static group nights.  Whenever we set up static group events, activity levels jump.  Members log in for the groups and stay online till they either must log out (and typically long after they should have) or till the groups break up later in the night.  This isn’t a random occurance, either.  ANY time I set up a regular group time, activity levels jump.  Any guild could try this on any server in any game and I’d wager the results would be fairly consistent as a whole across the board.  Sure, it’s nice to be able to solo if groups aren’t available, but in my years of experience with a dozen chapters of my guild across a host of different online games, nothing brings out the activity levels like grouping. 

So what’s the problem with grouping?  Generally speaking, in most games today grouping can be a painful experience.  Now, before you quote that sentence and try to use to it to show me how I’m wrong, realize what I’m actually saying here.  I’m not saying that players do not want to group or that they hate being forced to group in different games.  I’d argue quite the opposite, that players really do want to group and they want to be in groups.  The real problem is that forming groups is often a tacked on UI element or function, that starting groups in many games can be an intimidating experience, and that there’s little incentive to group with strangers you do not know due to potential failure triggers in modern game designs.  Let’s face it, a whole lot of players want to group, but hate grouping.  It’s a contradiction created through modern game design, and the workaround has been to create more solo content so that groups can be avoided…but that’s not the solution. 

Certainly, I’m not for “forced grouping”.  Forced grouping is part of the problem I just mentioned, that players are put into situations with strangers who may or may not be at a similar skill or experience level as each other.  It’s just as frustrating to find yourself in a group filled with players with far less skill than yourself as it is to find yourself the lone newbie in a group filled with long time vets who start blowing through a dungeon faster than you’re comfortable with.  However, I think the phrase “forced grouping” is often confused with encouraged or even incetivized grouping.  Now, I’m very much in favor of encouraged or incentivized grouping.  I’m in favor of building systems into the content itself which encourages grouping as a natural part of the game’s design.  I believe that there should be grouping “hubs”.  I believe that there should be very easy to use, intuitive methods by which fast groups can be created which don’t involve underutilized, tacked on interface elements that aren’t part of the core design.  I’d love to see grouping systems built right into the interface design as a core element and more grouping hubs built into overall world design.  It needs to be as easy to find and join a group as it does to find an opponent in an online PVP matchmaking service. 

I wrote about these ideas nearly two years ago in an article here entitled, “The Path of Least Resistance“.  Though I still believe the general aspects of that post, I think that I’ve gained a bit more insight into the use, in fact the overuse of solo content as an alternative to forced grouping content.  The Everquest II expansion, Rise of Kunark, opened my eyes to the dangers of swinging the pendulum too far to the solo side of the equation just as the follow-up expansion of The Shadow Odyssey seemed to overcompensate toward the grouping side of the equation.  Obviously then, the ideal is a balance between the two concepts, to design for both group and solo content with engaging, compelling content.  The argument about creating “all/most of the content” around the soloing is just as bad as designing all or most of the content around grouping. 

However, given the choice between the two, I can tell you that setting up “solo nights” within my guild never yields as much of a turn out as a “group night”.  It doesn’t matter when you schedule the events, because the group events win out each and every time.  I can actually pull up records that show the members of my guild who joined and who rarely joined groups tend to quit playing much sooner than players who group often when they’re online.  Even players who start out strong and who are online frequently will still almost certainly quit the game sooner if they don’t tend to join groups.  It’s practically a given. 

From a personal perspective then, the players who I can count on to stick around for months or even years will be the players who tend to group.  Though I don’t have direct access to numbers from different studios, I’d wager that this is a very similar situation across game populations as a whole.  Players who have a bond with other players will keep playing a game longer than players who do not.  Where do we find these bonds?  We find those bonds in groups, because we bond in groups.