Posted by iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 - 35 Comments
Tags: columns, comradery, expansion ideas, feats of strength, guild housing, guild progression, guilds, ideas for the future, player housing, progression, raiding, the next expansion, titles
BlizzCon is slowly creeping up on us, and this year most people expect the company’s big announcement to be World of Warcraft-based. With StarCraft 2 locked in for this year, and Diablo III looking like 2010, early 2011 is rip (if not late) for the third expansion to Azeroth. As it stands now, people are expecting The Maelstrom (not storm) or The Emerald Dream to be the focus of the next expansion (water mounts anyone?), but World of Warcraft needs more than epic lore to pull people in and retain the current amount of users. Like any good internet subscriber, I need to get my ideas out there before the announcements are made so I have something to point to and go “told you so!”
We, the citizens of Project Lore, touched upon the idea of guild progression earlier this week. The short quip in the post almost lead to a complete derailment of the topic. Nearly as many commentators spoke out for guild progression as guild cohesiveness , the actual discussion. Obviously the topic is an important one to many of us here, so here’s to hoping that Blizzard is listening. Outside of player desire, there’s also another reason Blizzard needs to step up, every other game is doing it. There is the whole jumping off a bridge philosophy to worry about, but I say the leap needs to be made. Desperately.
Plan and simple, there is absolutely no reason to stay in a guild these days. None. Not one single reason keeps me from guild hopping daily. Okay, perhaps SolidSamm ‘The Guild Hopper’ wouldn’t be a great title, but I could still get things done. I could leap from guild to guild and still raid, still participate in Arenas, still do my dailies, you name it. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t be able to do these things without a guild. Not by any means. What I am suggesting is that your guild, and one’s standing in the guild, should rise the more you contribute to it, and the rest of Azeroth.
How cool would it if your guild leveled up along side you through various means? Guild age, member count, average member length, these are just some easy ways to measure a guild’s progress. Then we have more complex, and fun things to participate in. Complete 100,000 quests as a guild and receive a new Feat of Strength, all guild runs of Ulduar and Naxxramas award another. A new title, “Home of Mick” if your guild contains the #1 Arena team. “Die Hard” for guild domination (no deaths) in all of the Battlegrounds. The creativity could be taken as far as Blizzard would allow it. However, without player/guild housing, the developers would be somewhat restricted to what types of rewards they could offer. We’d be limited to things like extra guild bank slots (no longer would the GM have to pay up), news titles and achievements, super tabard construction, guild recognition, guild summoning (for those Warlock-less nights), discounts at vendors…Should I keep going?
One cool thing I would like to see is auto-progression in the guild. Instead of, or perhaps in conjunction with, the current guild ranking system we’d have a ranking system based upon atoon’s contributions to their guild. No longer would a player’s popularity allow him to raise the ranks of a guild, instead a toon’s standing in the guild would be promoted by way of merit. As cool as it is I doubt this idea would fly due to the loss of control by the GM and officers.
A complete, and detailed, overhaul to the Guild system in WoW would be a huge boon to the community, and a great selling point on the back of The Maelstrom’s/Emerald Dream’s box. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be a part of a guild that did their best to stay together, tried their utmost to deal with the internal issues, was full of selfless and giving members, was a group of friends and not random acquaintances. In a word, comradery. After all, aren’t MMOGs supposed to be all about the social experience?
Those are just the seeds to get the greater readership brainstorming. What other progression mechanics would you have in mind? How about other types of rewards? Are you fine with the guild hopping ways of today, or do you desperately want a change like I, and many others, do?
Related Posts: BlizzCon 2009: Important Guild Changes, Sarth 3D: Progression or Pride?, So Who Else Needs A Guild?, So Much Raiding, So Little Time, How To Join A Raiding Guild Part 1: Go Shopping!,
By Decado on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
here is my idea if the next expansion is indeed the maelstrom. your guild could have it’s own little instanced island filled with vendors, daily quests, and (possibly) guild rep rewards.
By Shamtastik on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Solidsamm The Guild Hopper might not be cool, how about Solidsamm The Guild Ninja? He joined, he looted, he gquit.
Less cynic.
Yeah gotta agree, nothing special about guilds, unused tabards (due to rep tabards), trash/low lvl filled guild banks and that’s about it, no big, special “I am in a guild, and that’s EPIC” accessories…yeh that’s the word…Blizz need to accessorize its Guild System, desperately.
By puhoi on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
While I understand, and agree with quite a few of, your points… I still don’t think it’s worthless or meaningless to be in a guild. There are always the social benefits of guild membership such as being a part of a more permanent and stable community, getting to know your fellow members, having a group of people to rely on for help or even just friendly banter. Guilds have always been a big part of the social aspect of WoW. Not to say that it couldn’t be improved upon, as you bring up in your article, but I would say I still like being a part of my guild community, whether or not I *need* it for raiding. I do find your suggestions interesting and hopefully Blizz has thought of revamping the guild system themselves. It’s definitely not beig utilized to its full potential.
By Iiene of Kul Tiras on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Basically, what you’re saying is that guild leaders are largely incompetent and should be replaced with automated mechanics. I’m not going to disagree with that, but it is, to a large degree, not the GM’s fault. It’s a ton of work to provide actually useful services to people. I personally, would rather play the game than spend all my time managing a guild ‘properly’.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that there are no tools for the GM to use Guilds need a website, or some other similar data repository, and an EASY WAY for it’s lazy members to get to it.
Guilds should be encouraged to cycle their officers. It should be clear, just looking at a guild’s global information… how long their officers have been in… office. I should be able to go to the Armory and get all kinds of information about a guild… their mission statement, officer roster, rules of advancement, etc.
To that end, Blizzard could even host their own guild webpage server, with all guilds given a free page. Guilds that are one man armies, or set up simply to provide advertising space would be left at the default, whereas real guilds could populate their site with HTML or wysiwyg tools. The website “www.guildportal.com” is a good starting point, but with the login and connect mechanics streamlined so WoW players can easily get to it from either in game or from the Armory. Example: I’m sitting in IF, I click on ‘website’ in the guild page and the client tabs me out of the game, starts my default browser, and loads my guilds website. Since ALL guilds would have a website automatically, this mechanic would be universal.
Then Blizzard gets to work making widgets for their guild web pages…. Arena team management wirgets, Officer election widgets, What got looted widgets, who all has what gear widgets, ad infinitem. Make it easy for the GM to actually run a community, as opposed to forcing him or her to use the chat interface (and occasionally ventrilo) to run everything..
By Mmrdkm on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I would love to see guild rep/rewards.
E.g. you could base it of the achivemnet point system already implemented in the game, so the most points a guild has the more benefits it’ll acquire.
Starting with guild related, rep rewards from existing factions, for which a new quatermaster could be created to avoid confusion.
although to make it fair, there should be 2 kinds of rewards, one based of the total accumulated points divided per account on a guild, from which different sized guilds could rip rewards evenly.
And another based of total accumulated points per toon, more achivment like rewards, which could push smaller guilds to accept and develope a new member base. For the second kind of rewards though, they could use a vendor service type of benefits, so by changing guilds, so would your benefits. In this way, just having a large guild with few points per character would not translate into an unfair advantage. Yet older more stablished guilds, would be more likely to accept new members in order to get this rewards.
As for the rewards themselves, how about epic BoP uncut gems, i wouldn’t want my JC crafters to go out of bussines, but some of the really good gems are too hard to get, and i would gladly pay for someone to cut it for me. also this would fall in with the excess gold black hole phiosophy blizz has, pay for the gem, pay for the cut, yet you save time. BoP item enhancement, like shoulder/head/leg enchants would be on my list too.
And let’s not eave gear out, i’m a gear whore myself, i’m outfitting my Paly with 4 differents sets, according to the occasion, 1 per spec and 1 for pvp.
And this could possibly be my favorite, A mount that changes with guild rep, not in shape, but in attributes, as the guild rep goes up. The better the guild rep is, with the different factions, the faster it goes, the more people it can carry, vendor upgrades, and so far. As much as i’d like to see a guild transport, i can’t seem to see it as a reasonable or practical way to move around azeroth.
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@ decado
although i would love a guild hall, so to speak, since that seems to be the focus of your suggestion. I can;t see that happening due to server limitations. But if Blizz were to tell me that for an extra 50c a month per account, no choice in this, i could get a guild hall, i would gladly pay it. No more lagging around Dalaran, but hanguing out with my fellow guildies on a stress free enviroment.
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i would also like to see a more direct way to work with my guild. Like an in game tab at the guild bank with stats, for where we are, where we would like to be and individual/ guild progress. a way to set goals for the guild, other than logging and saying “ssup guild?, what we up to today?”.
As you can tell i enjoy my guild very much, and although we ain’t many we do help each other as much as we can. But having a common goal, and a way to visualize it, would certainly improve the way we approach our daily routine.
One last idea to pops into my head, all this rewards should be lvl apropiate, meaning different rewards for different lvl toons, and no i don’t want more BoA gear, that could lead to abuse, but once again deeping into the gold black hole Blizz philosophy, how about blue lvling gear with slightly less item points than dungeon gear, just enough to making lvling an alt easier, but not good enough to make older dungeons un attractive to new players, this could fit into the second tye of rewards.
Also, by adding an alt to a guild, you would have to consider what kind of impact this would have on the achivement rewards of the guild itself.
Just a few ideas of the top of my head
By cocopuff on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
i dont really have a comment on this i mean my guild is my best chance to do any raiding or even heriocs
By Barrager on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Guild halls awesome idea, but i would like to see a system setup to run guild arena-esk tournements to assign the rankings you talked about. Probably only seen to other ppl in the guild but still cool
By Irishi on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I’ve seen a couple of replies regarding the uselessness of Guild Tabards because of the Reputation Tabard system. I was thinking of this during a Naxx run a while back. What if wearing your Guild Tabard in a Raid Instance could gain you reputation with your guild. A point system, if you will, that can be attached to your toon’s name in the guild roster. These points would be an easy way for GM’s and Officers to see if your toon has been participating enough. Kind of a built in EP/GP system.
Anyone curious about the EP/GP Addon: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/epgp-dkp-reloaded.aspx
By gabereal1 on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
If the next expansion is the maelstrom im sensing alot of nagas and makruras. ew
By Dan on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
WoW could easily make an instanced Guild Hall or something along the lines that if you are in the guild or in a party with the guild member you can get into the place. Set up trophies of things your guild has downed and other accomplishments
GuildWars has something like this in Eye of the North. Lineage 2 has guild halls and castles to fight over and I am sure there are other games that use these. They are just great to have.
By Sean on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Guild ships. S’all I’m saying.
By Keltoroq on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm
For content of the new expansion the best you can come up is increasing the guild content?
New Races
New classes
New Hero classes
New continent
More advanced levels
New dungeons and lore to wow
More items
More mounts
More battlegrounds
More more more
That’s just what we want MORE
Concerning guilds:
That’s not why we play the game but i agree it needs some changes.
The kind of achviments for the guild would be cool thing to add.
And yep to raise in level in guild not because you best bud with the GM but because you work at it would also be cool…
If you worked much much hard you could even take the guild from the GM…
That would spice things up but probably also kill the guild.Like an implosion….I love this idead
And you guys??
See you in WOW
By acexyz5 on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
How about a guild achievement system? Every member could get special guild points wich they can use at a vendor where they could buy raid gear or even a special mount with his own guild tabart
or items that will help yoou in raids?
By Karatechop (US-Vek'nilash) on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
WTB Guild Clubhouses
By porkchop on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 2:34 am
Again with the guild hall i think it would be a great idea. If you were to pay a good amount of gold to get it, it should work well.
Here are the things i would like to see in it…
Vendors equiped for the guilds needs.
Large space with a good few rooms.
A entrance from every city.
An instanced area.
Possibly and area with a big table for meetings would work well with RP.
A guild vault.
For decoration, a few banners on the wall walls with the guild tabard.
If anyone can get this suggestion into blizz please do so I think it would be a great area for no laggs raid organisation, and for a bit of dueling perhaps
By khali on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 am
Surely you already get rep for wearing your guild tabard in heroic instances with Alliance Vanguard or the horde equivalent?
By cocopuff on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 am
i dont know how that would work i mean that would have to make 1,000s of diffrent halls unlesss the ymake like an instance a portal that takes you to a diffrent hall
By Brokenwing on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 am
Some interesting concepts, I really like the guild accomplishments / achievements. I loved Ulduar, reminds me of a much more fun Kara. I hope the upcoming content blizzard continues to produce such content.
By Dan on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
I seriously don’t think the game needs more races, classes or another hero class. The game STILL isn’t balanced after they added the DK. Think how much it will be screwed up if they add another class to the mix.
By Derxor on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
Guild Hall idea is nice. You could acess it from the guild register tabard creator places in the cites. You cna pay gold to improve it such as portals, food vendors, poffesion suplies,trainers and maybe a pvp system where guilds face off and the winnig guild gets a trophy which is displayed in the guild hall. Rep system would be better as I hardly wear my tabard like many others in the guild im in. Plus the GM can increase rep for peoples contribution to the guild. Obviously the halls will be instanced to avoid confusion. Quatermasters would be nice with a system called guild tokens which are avillable from pvp areana that i said earlier or guild dailes.
By cocopuff on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Dan you’re right the game is not balanced but its not the DK that makes unbalanced its all the other classes and it looks like blizz just added DKs to make the other classes look even better and we definitly dont need another punching bag i thik we have enough classes but another hero class wouldent hurt unless they make them like the DKs
By Meren on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I think that there should be a guild standing just like their are arena standing, and your guild will move up in rank by the number and kind of raids you do. Also you could move up in your guild rank by how much members of your guild donated to events in Azeroth (Crusaders Coliseum).
So there are a lot of things that Blizzard could change to make guild membership more important, and I hope they do something or no one will be in guilds anymore.
By cocopuff on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
does everything in thsi game have to be a competition?
By Oscar on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Well, if you actually LIKE the people in your guild, that should be enough. Without all these retarded competition add-ons.
By Milensium on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 6:03 am
I think that Blizz should do a guild house(hall / citadel etc.).
Some kind of separate ,,dimension” where the GM could place vendors for enchants,reciepes etc. but with the price of gold from guildvault.
p.s: It’s not my ideea, I saw this in another MMO.
By palala on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
or they coud make a zone ppl coud have guild towns…. but it will get many towns then and wont have place for all.. and u need reagents to build buildings and trade posts and stuff. like age of empires…
and for example a jc vendor guy.. and the jc ppl coud give gems to the vendor and when it get sold 50% will go to you and the rest to the guild bank
By jhez on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I would LOVE to see those changes however for the last one i would suggest a point system that would show how much one toon has helped the guild out.
By Keahi on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I like the idea of giving guilds more of a role in the game. You need 10-25 people to raid, as it is; and, pre-mades typically dominate BGs; so, promoting a system where you benefit from doing group things with the same group makes perfect sense.
An easy way to do this would be to give more benefits to being in a guild; perhaps, even more to being with the same guild over a long period of time. I’ve heard it said that the game is what you put into it, and guilds [in my opinion] put a lot more into the game than single players.
Simple things like titles for Guild Masters and Officers would be a great addition, that I think most people would like. Giving guild’s an in-game ranking system would also be a relatively easy addition that I think a lot of people would enjoy; and, the only hard part about it would be determining how to rank those guilds. Would guilds completing PvP objectives (such as, win 20 Arathi Basin battles in a row in a group composed completely of guild members) to raise their rank within their PvP server gain more points towards their rank than if they completed PvE objectives (such as, full clear Normal Mode Naxxramas 20 times will in groups composed only of guild members); and, vice versa on PvE servers?
I read a post that said something about instanced guild island for the rumored Cataclysm expansion; and, that seems like a very good idea; however, a massive programming task. It’s already enough information to send from one computer to another, sometimes over great distances, without adding a completely guild detailed island into the game for every guild on every server.
There are a LOT of good ideas here. Simply too many to name all at once.
By Angel on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I hope Cataclysm destroys (phases) Old World and gives high level characters something to do as well as a leveling boost.
By kayoken on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 8:43 am
yea if it was maelstrom it might actually bring me back because….wotlk made me quit, i hate it, its boring so i just play FFO…i hope the next one will bring me back…
By Blight on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
@Iiene of Kul Tiras - He’s not saying that GM’s are incompetent, just that Guild Member might want to be recognized for their contributions, beyond the “Raider” rank. I’d say it’s not so much a rank thing (as ranks are great for GM’s to put people with the access they need, but another type of “Hey, I helped” system.
City of Heroes is probably a great example of this. In CoH, you can see how much Prestige each member of the Super Group (or SG, which is the CoH equivalent to Guilds) has earned since they last joined the Group. Guild members can earn Prestige, by playing in Super Group mode. However in CoH, you earn Prestige by sacrificing the amount of money (or Influence/Infamy) you earn in the game.
However, for WoW, it would be very easy to earn Prestige for a Guild simply by wearing the Tabard, any Rep you earn while wearing the tabard gives your guild a higher score. Then you can use the WoW armory to see what the highest scored Guilds are on your server. Now THAT, would be something right there. It would give guilds a mark of pride to say, they are in the top ten Guilds for the server, and by seeing how much Prestige or Rep each member earns, GM’s can offer benefits to upping the guild Prestige.
This was fun for me on CoH, cause it drove me to be competitive, working to become a top Prestige earner for my SG.
Then perhaps the Guilds can use their Prestige points to purchase Guild rewards, like housing, bank slots etc, but even if it’s just a matter of pride, and generates competition between guild on each server, that could be all that’s needed to encourage people to stick it out.
However, the problem I think is the blind guild invites to un-guilded players would probably get worse. I forgot all about this, and realized that the only reason I haven’t seen it recently is simply because I’ve had all my toons in my own Guild.
For me though, the thing I’d really like to see, is again something that existed in City of Heroes, and that’s Coalitions. Coalitions are basically a group of Guilds. You share a chat channel, that’s different from your Guild Chat, that allows you to basically talk with multiple Guilds. For me, the benefits of having all my toons in one guild is great. I don’t want to join another guild for Group Content, but I’d love to be a part of a Coalition of Guilds, and then could use the Coalition channel to form Groups for Raids and Heroics.
Officers or GM’s could join Coalitions with other Guild that their members have had a pleasant time grouping with for whatever purpose. This way, if you don’t like the Guild Drama of a certain guild, but know they are effective at raid content, then you could join a Coalition.
The other thing that would be helpful would be the ability to see all members of the Guilds in the Coalition that are currently signed in. You can see who is in the channel and it would work nice to be able to see who is on from all of your favorite guilds.
It’s one of those things I really like about CoH.
By cocopuff on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
and flush out the “lazy punks” in the guild and then what happens those who dont do enough get kicked it is hard enough to get a guild guilds are supostu be fun the y are supostu help out each other allmost like a femily not compete against each other who has accoplished more and who is more valued to the guild
By cocopuff on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
guilds are more then just raiding and helpingguildys with soloble quest is that why you help your guild so later you can ger recontion dont you see how stupid taht is
By bin on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I think the instanced guild hall thing would be an awsome idea. It would give players somewhere to go a chill, get guild tabbards, setup raids, pvp, etc. All guilds get one but with more members or progress or money they do it gets bigger and nicer. Update the guild tabbard creation so they can be more choice. And what about some kind of ingame list in every city where if players click on it i will say the top 10 guilds on this realm for that faction based on progress in game or something.
By bin on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
If over MMOs can do guild halls im sure WoW can.