Are you referring to guilds only, or did you intend including the other factions - as guilds are factions too? I'm asking because if you include all the factions (which include guilds) from both TES 3 & 4 there is quite al list. From the UESP:

Fighters Guild
Mages Guild
Thieves Guild
Dark Brotherhood
Arena
Blackwood Company
The Blades
Knights of the Nine
Knights of the Thorn
Knights of the White Stallion
Mythic Dawn
Nine Divines
Order of the Dragon
The Order of the Virtuous Blood
House Dagoth
House Dres
House Hlaalu
House Redoran
House Indoril
House Telvanni
Census & Excise
East Empire Company
Imperial Cult
Imperial Knights
Imperial Legion
Talos Cult
Ashlander
Twin Lamps
Tribual Temple
Aundae Clan
Berne Clan
Quarra Clan

Plus there are the Daedric Princes who tend to involve themselves from time-to-time, and other potential minor players I haven't listed. So there is actually plenty of fodder for guilds/factions. What has been under-utilised in TES 4 is the interaction & rivalries between the factions and political manoeuvring. Still, more guilds is always good.

How about:

Mercantile guild
Seafarer's guild
Noble's guild (more of a faction, actually)
Adventurer's guild

IMHO guilds should be a source of quests, guidance, companionship, and/or profit for the players, depending on the nature of the guild, but the trend that we had in Morrowind and Oblivion that in each guild that you could join, the quest-line set a path for you to finally become the leader of that guild is not what I call an inspired game design.

Each guild should have its setting and situation that would most probably differ from other guilds and for most of the guilds, the quests should not be designed in a way to end in your becoming the guild's leader, so for instance:

Guild A:

There is a corrupt leader that is leading the guild to its doom or complete corruption, you offer to join and for instance you are told that you have to pay 300 gold to enter, and when you pay the fee and enter that guild, you are given jobs that feel a bit fishy, for instance you are told to go for a night mission and destroy a farm at the side of village and kill the cattle there, or you are told to go and hide in a narrow valley, outside the town and stop a caravan from entering the town by any means, and so on...

And when you ask them why you should do those actions, you are given seemingly valid reasons so that you are convinced that you should do the job, but there are some members of the guild that do not like the way that the guild is heading, and are plotting a revolt, and after you have completed some of those tasks, they approach you to say that the tasks were given to you just for the profit of the guild's high level members.

And you were send to damage the carriers of the people who opposed those high level members, and the guild's original quest was quite different from what is happening nowadays, so they ask you help them find out facts about those high level members that could help them in their current quest of eliminating their power in the society and the guild, and so on...

You have the option to work for both sides and profit from the masters, and help the lower level members with their quests until they could accomplish their mission and overthrow the guilds leadership and become a trusted and ranked member of the new guild, or you could side by masters only and tell them about the plot and eliminate the plotting lower rank members and become a trusted and ranked member of the current corrupt guild.

After that either you do your corrupted jobs with more profit, or you do the original guild's untainted quests and get the other type of rewards.

Guild B, Guild C:

There can be two rival feudal houses in an area of the province that compete with each other to become the upper-hand power in that society, and you could join each house or both, and you could work for both for a while until some later missions that would force you to decide to lose a house's trust and standing to be able to gain more trust and standing in the other.

You cannot finally become a monarch, but you could gain a monarch's trust and become close to him/her.

Guild D:

There can be a guild that has lost their leader recently and they are at total mayhem, because of the rivalry of two opposing sides within the guild, and the resulting conflicts, they do not accept new members for now, but you could befriend some guild members on any side, and gain your membership, and after that you could gradually gain the trust of both sides and pretend to try to help each side, but you could complete the jobs in your own way, so that finally with some tricks, intrigues, and blackmails you could snatch the leadership in front of their dumb noses.

Guild E:

There can be a merchant guild that have lost some caravans recently and need help to solve the problems, and you could join and help them, and with each gain of status, you could have better barter deals with the members of that guild.

OK, enough plots for now, and these examples show what I meant.

I cant remember which is which, be essentially one is more a religious group and one is a secular mages group (which is more like what the mages guild was).

1 of the following:

Guild Ideas A: Guilds in TESV don't pertain to a specific skill or combat style (E.G. combat, magic,) but rather, are more like political parties.Along with these parties, there are smaller, less organized factions, most of which are like cults or criminal organizations.

Guild Ideas B: All or most of the guilds from 3 and 4 are still existent, but have changed in character, method etc... some of which were replaced with new guilds.

Guild Ideas C: like 3 and 4, but noticeably, but not dramatically different.

Im saying that there should be a guild that is not about the jobs or money. An assassins guild that is about shaping the political world the way the assassins want it, but in a good way. Killing evil people and mainly politicians so that the government is less corrupt and the assassins get what they want. I can think of endless possibilities for quest lines for this faction.


There should also be factions that do not require fighting. Ones that make you a merchant or a politician.

You should be able to choose your side in the arena and there should be more than two teams. Maybe a team for each race?

They aren't guilds, but I want to be able to side with noble families and help them in wars with one another. The best example I can think of are the Great Houses in Dune. You could engage in economic sabotage, assassinations, maybe throw in a Romeo & Juliet type romance subplot or something. And before anyone says it, it would not be the same as what was in Morrowind. I want to enlist in the service of a particular noble or royal family, not the "psuedo-guilds" of Vvardenfell.

There should be a guild just for archers the would be AWSOME!!! Mainly because there isn't enough stuff that has to do with archers.

The Extradimensional Merchant Marine of Sarthaal. They've been running Aldmeri blockades for an eon, delivring artifacts from Sarthaal to 'collectors,' who are top secret persons within the resistance, of course. You must straddle space-time, as you battle across the ages, for a future unkown.

We don't know yet, that's just pure fan speculation.

I know it doesn't make much sense for Skyrim, but eventually, I want the Renrijra Krin to be more fleshed-out. A game in Elsweyr would be nice.

Love the TCI crime fighting guild idea that'd be awesome

Ya ignore my question about defining "bad people" again, not to mention that sound so cliches. The reason as to why I would keep asking ya this question is the simple fact that "bad people" is subjective, as along with "good people" as well. Why would there be a guild for "good assassin" to kill "bad people"? (They would kill off for stealing competition.) There is no real define level of "good" and "evil" in politic. The service of that already exist in the form of the Dark Brotherhood. Yes, I already know this is future but I have a strong feeling with all the mess is going around, the Dark Brotherhood is banking lots of gold during the fall of the Empire.

vampire hunters guild

explorers guild?

some guilds where you actually go out on jobs with other guild members.

fighters guild "go to some cave on the other side of country and kill a bunch of trolls"
player "umm on my own"?
FG "yes on your own"
player "cant that dude come with me, he's been drinking that same drink for 5 weeks now"
FG "no we need him"

you get the point

I don't think any new guilds are necessary, I just think the quests and things you can do within the guilds should be a lot longer. And, after you've completed the quest line for the Guild, you should still have some sort of participation with it. There was nothing I found more annoying than becoming Listener to the Dark Brotherhood, only to not be able to kill anymore people? That doesn't seem right. I'm the leader of a guild whose soul purpose is to kill.

Or, at least make some sort of bounty on people. For instance, once you've reached the top to the Dark Brotherhood, a dialogue option should open up with all NPC's. That you can put a price on their head, then a member of the Dark Brotherhood will kill that person as a quest. Rather than just walk around and act like they're doing something productive.

So, basically, I just want the guilds to always have something to do.

What would be more awesome is you get a writ pinned to the wall in the guildhall with someones name on..

then with no other clues you have to hunt the person down. Maybe a dialogue option with persons name so you can ask people.

Please let us have some mutually exclusive guilds, like Morrowind's Great Houses. It adds so much replayability to the game to have guilds that you can't join because of a choice you made earlier to join one of their rivals.

On top of this, maybe some kind of freedom fighter/terrorist group, fighting for freedom from an 'evil' opressive Imperialist force, but who use methods which seem evil in themselves, such as the kidnapping and killing of innocent civilians. On the other side of the coin you could work for the Imperials to crush this organisation, forcing the player to decide upon joining the lesser of two evils.

This is a must. This must come back.

On top of that, I think everyone would like gray factions. In Morrowind, the most honorable house (in my opinion) that you could join was Redoran, and they tolerated slavery. The Fighters Guild was corrupt. The Thieves Guild wasn't all that honorable. Everyone was against each other, and it made everything more tense. I'd like more of that.

Whatever they do, they should give us the chance to choose... I mean, I have always wanted to join blackwood company, mythic dawn cult, or go against thieves guild...etc We don't have a chance and we are not completely free when we join a guild. I want to have the chance of changing my mind when I talk to the guys in Blackwood Company, and going against fighters guild.

A lot of these ideas could be offshoots or factions of preexisting Guilds, which could add to the political intrigue of each guild.

i.e. The fighter guild could have a faction that just make armor…. These members could feel like they are looked down upon by the more adventurous factions of the guild. Yet where would the more adventurous factions be without the armor that these member supply?

i.e. The mages guild could have multiple factions between the different schools of magic…. and god forbid if one of those low lives that just makes potions becomes the guild master.

The only guild I could see being a fun addition to TESV that doesn’t fall into anyone of the old guilds categories, would be…… the Exquisite Guild, a guild where every snobby member tries to out dress one another. Your rank in this guild depends solely on your clothing! Will you kill, steal or deal your way to the top? What happens if you get caught wearing a fake Exquisite Gucci apparel? Could you make a living selling cheap nock offs to aspiring members?..... Endless possibilities!

P.S. I'm only half joking about the Exquisite Guild!

Three we know probably exist:

• College Of Whisperers
  
• Synod
  
• "Secret Service" Faction in Infernal City.

Those that are unmentioned and may or may not exist anymore:

• Thieves Guild
  
• Fighters Guild
  
• Dark Brotherhood
  
• Imperial Legion
  
• Morag Tong (Maybe destroyed or severely drained of power)

I think we have yet to see a guild/joinable faction for entertainers, explorers/treasure hunters, historians/archaeologists, and Daedric Worshiping Factions. We've seen a join-able faction for Vampire Hunters, so maybe that'll expand a little and be for werewolf and/or werebear hunters in Skyrim. There also hasn't been a join-able faction for pirates, bandits, necromancers, conjurers.

We've seen factions for Vampires, The Imperial Legion, Paladins of the Nine Divines, Daedric Realms, a Merchant's Guild, and a couple of other small factions.

Since we're thinking TES:V may be Skyrim (and there's supposedly a huge time gap) we'll probably get some new factions. Since the Empire has collapsed there are no doubt going to be some disputes between the provinces, so maybe a Militia faction for each large region, or even a faction for keeping out invaders or fighting wars with other provinces will be included.

Skyrim's supposedly the home of Vampires, so I'd suspect there are some ancient hidden lairs that you could possibly join.

I think the first kill you make for the Dark Brotherhood should be a single mom with five kids, marked for death by a neighbor who wants her small farm. It needs to be something cruel and petty to set the tone for the guild. In general there needs to be a higher ratio of killing for greed, or to silence people.

Also, as you know, no one ever leaves the Dark Brotherhood. If you go too long without doing a quest or two for them, they should kill you in your sleep.

Also, the guilds were continent spanning organizations that were independently operated by career professionals, they aren't going to fold up across the empire just because the head office does. Because of the nature of the major guilds, they're probably thriving on the turmoil and could become the de facto government of towns in many cases. The Dark Brotherhood will survive and thrive as long as there are living people, and the Thieves Guild must be running hog wild in the chaos.

A town controlled by the DB would be scary to wander into...

But from what I can tell Nordic Kings and Queens stick their thrones like glue, and they probably took advantage of all the turmoil to fight amongst each-other and try to gain more land.

Some political faction would be sweet, but it'll have to involve some more involved quest other than just killing off the opposition

Only guilds would have that role.