Elnia welcomes the guild changes as some great thing for socials. I am sure that this is not the case.
You can read the mentioned changes here. I'm sure the details are under development, but the main frame is already visible:
- players get points for their guilds while playing
- guilds can use this points to get "talents", that have effect to the players, like +7% money from monster loot
- guilds can buy consumables and reagents from the points
- guilds can buy heirloom items and recipes that are bound to the guild, player loses them upon gquitting.
At first let's get the "finally the goblins of AH can't make advantage on us" thing out of the way. The "guild vendors sell frost lotus" doesn't change anything. Just because it's sold by a guild vendor, it's not free. You still have to farm it, just in a different way, by farming points for the guild bank. So you still have the same options to get your stuff like before: you farm it, or you buy it from the AH.
If the reward affect one player (like a heirloom item), then being in a guild or not is not important, as 2x more players mean 2x more heirloom but also 2x more people who want heirloom. This case you only need to have a guild tag that can be gained by joining the guild of your lvl1 banker.
It seems Blizz made a very smart move with the leveling system to prevent selection of guildmates according to the system and not social reasons. Only the top 20 player will affect points, but it's also additive, so the guilds are not motivated to hoard players or gkick non-farming friends.
Now let's get to the anti-social point that will make Ghostcrawler learn the hard way "be careful what you wish for": "we don't want people to bounce around from guild to guild". Because this is the point where drama-fest is coming!
Leaving a guild is easy and cost-less. If you don't like it, you just /gquit at 2:00 AM. No hard feelings, no drama. Now imagine that leaving the guild will cost you gear pieces, recipes, achievements and bonuses that you have farmed for (partially, but people overestimate their contribution). Ghostcrawler will get exactly what he wanted: people won't /gquit silently. They will fight until the last bullet. They will start the "he said she said" game to make their "competitor" leave. They will whisper into officer ears to /gkick the other guy. Drama without end.
If now someone is /gkicked, he dusts himself up and apply another guild. Now he will get his gear, recipes and bonuses removed. It's not something you just let go right? Every single /gkick will be another bitter thread for Guildwatch, either in a hope that the "victim" can convince the guild that it wasn't right and get him back, or just to get some revenge for the harm he suffered. Remember, there is not a punk in the Universe who would accept any responsibility on his part (otherwise he wouldn't be a punk at all).
The only kind of guild what survives these new restrainst are exactly the anti-social professional guilds. Attendance rules determine activity, donation rules determine who has to farm how much points for the guild, strict and written and previously accepted rules determine who get gkicked. Everything according to protocol, social chit-chat is frowned upon as they have the potential of starting "he said, she said".
WoW became so social friendly exactly because of the parallel-single-player design. The other player couldn't hurt your gaming experience, so you had no reason to exclude anyone who is not a jerk. People could come and go, drama was minimal. As soon as player decisions affect your gameplay, drama is guaranteed.
However there is a trick that Blizzard can pull: make all guilds equal! With properly tailored formulas you can create a system where it doesn't matter what the members do. Socials have the tendency of overestimating their groups. "Our guild has reached lvl20, we are awesome!" (every other guild reached it too, roughly the same time, but who cares?) So players could painlessly keep switching as previously.
I already found a way how a goblin can make money from this guild system: "rent a heirloom!" For 100G/day your alt is invited to the guild XXX and given 8 pieces of heirloom what you can use for quick leveling up. We also have -20% repair cost and +10% loot bonus talented, so you'll have these bonuses during leveling. /w me for inv.
Another goblin way: our guild is the No1 raiding guild on the server we have the highest guild achievements and access to the wonderful [Screenblocking flying whale], the coolest mount ever. For 500G/week you can ride this beauty and everyone can see your achievement! For 1 hour a week you can wield the legendary heirloom [Awesome polearm of PWNAGE]. (of course your rank will be "M&S", you cannot raid or even talk on /gchat, but who cares if you can ride a [Screenblocking flying whale])
If the reward affect one player (like a heirloom item), then being in a guild or not is not important, as 2x more players mean 2x more heirloom but also 2x more people who want heirloom. This case you only need to have a guild tag that can be gained by joining the guild of your lvl1 banker.
It seems Blizz made a very smart move with the leveling system to prevent selection of guildmates according to the system and not social reasons. Only the top 20 player will affect points, but it's also additive, so the guilds are not motivated to hoard players or gkick non-farming friends.
Now let's get to the anti-social point that will make Ghostcrawler learn the hard way "be careful what you wish for": "we don't want people to bounce around from guild to guild". Because this is the point where drama-fest is coming!
Leaving a guild is easy and cost-less. If you don't like it, you just /gquit at 2:00 AM. No hard feelings, no drama. Now imagine that leaving the guild will cost you gear pieces, recipes, achievements and bonuses that you have farmed for (partially, but people overestimate their contribution). Ghostcrawler will get exactly what he wanted: people won't /gquit silently. They will fight until the last bullet. They will start the "he said she said" game to make their "competitor" leave. They will whisper into officer ears to /gkick the other guy. Drama without end.
If now someone is /gkicked, he dusts himself up and apply another guild. Now he will get his gear, recipes and bonuses removed. It's not something you just let go right? Every single /gkick will be another bitter thread for Guildwatch, either in a hope that the "victim" can convince the guild that it wasn't right and get him back, or just to get some revenge for the harm he suffered. Remember, there is not a punk in the Universe who would accept any responsibility on his part (otherwise he wouldn't be a punk at all).
The only kind of guild what survives these new restrainst are exactly the anti-social professional guilds. Attendance rules determine activity, donation rules determine who has to farm how much points for the guild, strict and written and previously accepted rules determine who get gkicked. Everything according to protocol, social chit-chat is frowned upon as they have the potential of starting "he said, she said".
WoW became so social friendly exactly because of the parallel-single-player design. The other player couldn't hurt your gaming experience, so you had no reason to exclude anyone who is not a jerk. People could come and go, drama was minimal. As soon as player decisions affect your gameplay, drama is guaranteed.
However there is a trick that Blizzard can pull: make all guilds equal! With properly tailored formulas you can create a system where it doesn't matter what the members do. Socials have the tendency of overestimating their groups. "Our guild has reached lvl20, we are awesome!" (every other guild reached it too, roughly the same time, but who cares?) So players could painlessly keep switching as previously.
I already found a way how a goblin can make money from this guild system: "rent a heirloom!" For 100G/day your alt is invited to the guild XXX and given 8 pieces of heirloom what you can use for quick leveling up. We also have -20% repair cost and +10% loot bonus talented, so you'll have these bonuses during leveling. /w me for inv.
Another goblin way: our guild is the No1 raiding guild on the server we have the highest guild achievements and access to the wonderful [Screenblocking flying whale], the coolest mount ever. For 500G/week you can ride this beauty and everyone can see your achievement! For 1 hour a week you can wield the legendary heirloom [Awesome polearm of PWNAGE]. (of course your rank will be "M&S", you cannot raid or even talk on /gchat, but who cares if you can ride a [Screenblocking flying whale])
42 comments:
The "Screenblocking Flying Whale" made me laugh my ass off, nice one Gevlon.
On a more serious note; the ideas for "rent a heirloom" and "rent a mount/weapons" are interesting. I'd like to see if anyone tries doing that once Cataclysm hits.
I think that you've identified a key issue with the guild leveling, as we know understand/expect it. It causes players to want to bind more tightly to their guilds, but does little to cause guilds to want to hold onto players.
What the system needs is a component whereby if one of your guild-point contributors quits (or is kicked out), the guild is somehow penalized. Certainly not devastated, but maybe it loses a recipe or some points or whatever. That way, rather than a "please don't kick me" or "kick the other guy, not me" drama-fest, there's an incentive on both sides for people to stay in the guild and work through whatever stupid drama they've created.
I don't see this as a big deal, simply because there are many "social, friendly" guilds on every server. So if you get kicked out of "crits or GTFO", you can hop over to "PWNies" or "ChAos dArkNeSS", which will probably have similar heirlooms and recipes and bonuses. Yeah, it's a set-back, but it's not world-ending.
The "guild vendors sell frost lotus" doesn't change anything.
Don't under-estimate this. The availability of epic gems for honor put a nice dent in gem sales on many servers. If the ways to get enough Tidal Lotus for your guild's flask are "farm herbs for hours" or "get 20 guildies to run the right dailies" or "shell out on the AH", then the guild option may be quite popular. The idea is supposedly that we're getting these points for things we're going to do anyways - the current equivalents would be stuff like heroics and AT dailies and Hodir dailies and Wintergrasp.
True Anon! 10 points for the [Screenblocking Flying Whale], Gevlon.
Likewise, the 'rent-a-guild' per day fee is very intriguing. Good way to fill a gbank. Plus it will certainly beat the current /Trade 'advertisements' for "join my guild, we hav a *really cool* tabard and a bank tab". I mean seriously - all guilds have a tabard/bank tab. And it might hopefully dissuade some of the M&S that reckon they can run a guild / M&S with a power complex from starting up these same sad guild that spam chat all day long.
OMG, wtb [Screenblocking flying whale]!
Anyway, I think it is a good analysis of the current facts. But most people tend to forget that the next expension will most probably not be launched within the next 12 months.
However, sure there are some quite cheap gems in the AH that have been bought with honor, but the next arena season ist starting soon, so people don't stockpile honor anymore for quite some time.
Additionally a lot of people will get new gear which needs to be gemmed and enchanted.
The first part of your case, that there is little reason for a player to want to be a part of a guild on such unilateral terms, is spot on, and I think I made that case when Cataclysm was announced.
The solution seems to me to be that if you leave a guild on terms other than amicable, the guild loses all of the achievements that you participated in. This would create the need to work collaboratively. If you leave simply because you and the guild are going in different directions, have a flag set to avoid the penalty.
There are enough immature tools out there advertising their crap guilds, kicking top players from their guild runs, etc, that it would seem this only exacerbates it.
The flipside of your proposal would be that a crappy guild with money could pay a bunch of good raiders to join the guild for a weekend, run all the high end content for achievements, then leave, giving the worthless guild the appearance of not-sucking.
This could be a good way to fund activities for a good raiding guild.
Don't forget that your <Heirlooms 4 Rent> customer is also adding to the value of your guild by gaining guild experience for you.
A particularly interesting plan might be to rent heirlooms to people for free, with the only stipulation being that they must gain some amount of guild exp every week... Then the goblin can spend that exp on whatever is most lucrative (or double down with more heirlooms.)
"next arena season ist starting soon, so people don't stockpile honor anymore for quite some time.
Additionally a lot of people will get new gear which needs to be gemmed and enchanted."
my gems, from 96 stacks of titanium that i prospected for dust to buy recipies, have been sitting my vault waiting for season 7 since 3.2. i've also added a cardinal ruby every day from my alchemist. i considered buying all the 120g gems from the AH but i'm being a little cautious.
i had already considered inviting randoms to my bank alt guild to view my vault and be able to buy anything i store but dont list on the AH every day. renting them heirlooms while they do so sounds like a great idea.
WTS [old raiding guild]
- Lvl 20
- Heroic : Glory of the Icecrown Raider
- all heirlooms
- 6 bank tabs
100,000 g ono
Now he will get his gear, recipes and bonuses removed.
But when s/he joins a new guild, don't they just get it all back or even better stuff? Remember the grass is always greener and other guilds always have more, right?
I think a few people might hold on a bit longer than normal, but I doubt it'll stop /gquits since I'll bet most guilds will probably have the same bonuses as any other.
@kyrilean
Not likely. Stuff like that wouldn't stay unused for long and no doubt would have already been handed out to other players or alts in any guild decent enough to have them. Plus being the new player you would be least likely to get priority in receiving the items.
Depending on exactly how this goes I could see a LOT of drama from the system. Beyond the points already made there is the problem of players now disagreeing with the choices of recipes, talents and heirlooms that the guild chooses. There's already potential drama points in the mid-range guilds for things like who gets to raid and who gets drops. This is just going to add extra layers for people to disagree.
The game is dying and the devs need to bring in new interesting stuff to keep milking the subscription fees of long term fans.
I dont think wow can be completely revitalised so, right now, it is just a game trying to keep the subscribers it already has as opposed to gaining new ones.
All changes seem to point to this, to fight with the burnout of the players already playing this game for some time: easier epics, simpler game etc.
So therefore, I think that what keeps this game alive is the social connections and the game caters to that. In the end, someone who downed thousands of bosses in their game-life and got hundreds of epics isnt interested anymore in the same repeating story.
Therefore, shifting the game towards a e-community type game could be the solution to keep this thing going for another 2 more years and make even more profit.
You hit the nail on the head Gevlon. I don't like the idea of being forced to join a guild much less having to stay in one or surf them to find one that's not subject to the ebbs and flows of membership every time Blizz drops new content. I like my little vanity guild. Less drama; more fun.
The only items Blizzard has specifically mentioned as guild-bound are heirlooms and recipes for heirlooms. I strongly doubt that they would create a situation where raid gear is guild-bound, or where your enchants on your existing gear go away when you gquit/gkick.
If anything, I think that these changes could be very damaging to "social" guilds. Other games with similar systems either do not allow the guild to choose its rewards (Warhammer, LOTRO) or do not have such a large number of choices that choosing is a problem (EQ2). Guild "talent points" imply that the guild will have to pick and choose. The "professional" guilds (raiding or heirloom renting) will be fine because the membership shares a purpose, but the same may not be true of more social groups.
First thing first - heirloom items suck. They are only good for leveling due the experience bonus, and always having current blue gear. Come end game they are quickly replaced with crappy epics.
Guild heirloom items will most likely be the same, thus guilds should only be giving them out to help recruits level up. Once a recruit hits level 85 they really won't need the heirloom items, and blue gear alone won't cause them to worry about /gquit-ing. This might be a great reason to rent your heirloom items out to random levelers.
Second - Bitching over /gkick is going to go through the roof. Esp from 15 year olds who spent their summer farming for a guild and being kicked over a gear tantrum. I've never been kicked out of any guild. I'm mature, I'm polite, and I'm reasonable. I don't get upset if gear goes to another guild member for the good of the guild. I also won't tolerate guild leaders who make too many bad deciscions. I'm going to /gquit from those guilds regardless of loosing heirlooms, vendors, mats, etc...
Blizzard should make sure that guilds and guildies need to pay a price when a guildie leaves. Be it from /gquit, or /gkick. I think it would be fair to say that "top 20" guildies leaving their guild loose access to all they helped farm. I think it would be also fair that the guild looses all that the guildie contributed. With out specifics I can't say what the guild would loose. Obviously any experience points the guildie put in, but perhaps more.
I don't agree with your prediction. I understand how being kicked out of a guild that you helped level and loosing perks and rewards could be drama inducing, but your arguement makes one assumpion that I don't think will hold true.
Your arguement assumes that the perks/rewards guildies receive are either unique or difficult to receive in other guilds. My guess is that leveling up a guild won't be that hard and the benifits can be obtained relatively simply.
For example, if this went live today, the top guilds would level primarily by doing Hard Modes. The M&S guilds would easily be able to level up using the normal modes and could do other things like Rated BGs to level up. The top guilds may level quicker, but ther is nothing preventing the lower guilds from leveling. Therefore a lot of the advantages can be had by all.
Now, if there are patterns and things that can only be found in high level raids this is one advantage that Top Guilds would have over the M&S, but then again its not like finding a good guild is extremely hard given a relatively flexible schedule.
I think this will lead to less guilds with more members.
There are a lot of mini-guilds with only 5-10 members. Those are often the ones advertising with "join my guild, we hav a *really cool* tabard and a bank tab". They will not be able to reach guildlevel 20 or get all heirlooms.
Therefore, with the guild changes, there is a big incentive to join an established guild (heirlooms, cheap mats, etc). Starting your own guild for the fun of it becomes less attractive.
My vision for the future of guilds with these changes in mind:
- Smaller guilds will be left for bigger established guilds. There will be much less new guilds being formed.
- Bouncing between guilds will not change as the most important reasons for switching (guild drama and lack of progression) will still be there.
For the goblins: if you don't already have a bank-alt with guildbank: there will be lots of them for sale next year.
@Green armadillo
I think you are on the right track. Before I came along, the top guys in my guild who knew what they were doing and played well all around were very focused on melee dps. While they were willing to learn cuts for caster gems and such, they didn't have any of that stuff. I had to buy the titanium powder, tell them what recipes they needed, etc. Now, any caster in the guild can get epic red, orange, and purple gems cut for free. Prior to this, no casters in the guild had any epic gems. The situation was the same with meta gems. (I also had to point out that the JC could make a lot of money with these, as the caster purple/orange epic gems sell for a lot more than anything else on my server, so I was paying them to learn something they could make money with. The melee gem market is saturated, probably because of all the DK JC's who gemmed themselves out.)
The two aspects of this that are problematic: First, as you say, if the guild leadership was making the decisions, and weren't thinking 'big picture', the guild talents could be very lopsided. Second, if you are a huge contributor to a guild's overall capabilities(and let's agree in principle that well-rounded maxed professions help everyone), then with the new system, your leaving allows the guild to keep all that you have contributed.
Let's look at an extreme example: What if, when I left the guild, all the patterns I bought for people, all the enchants that I did, all the feasts, repairs, and deposits I made, along with all the kill achievements, disappeared?
In this glorious self-indulgence, a top contributor to a guild leaving would absolutely devastate the guild, and quite possibly bankrupt it. Given that a talented person could get all the kills back in 1-2 weekends, it's not a big deal for them.
Like I said a couple weeks ago, this new guild system seems like a scheme constructed to shackle the great and force them to the will of the mediocre.
I have to go read some Ayn Rand and clear my mind.
@Zaluthar: Actually, I'm dreading ever being unguilded for any reason. If you think the blind guild invite spam from those small guilds is bad now, just wait until every would-be guild leader knows that each and every warm body they can get in their guild represents free guild exp at no cost to them.
I'm sure there is a Goblin solution to this problem (i.e. negotiate compensation for joining the guild, an odd kind of ritualized begging), but what's the monetary value of having to share a guild channel with total idiots?
This was a classic! Very humorous post. Love the detail you considered for the Guild change.
You keep thinking up important topics that are interesting and thought worthy.
The rent-a-guild idea is fantastic.
@Ayonel
I really do not see how this system is going to 'shackle the great'. The 'great' would only be 'shackled' if they are shortsighted and greedy (and not in the goblin way). If you are staying in a guild because you do not want to lose the benefits of the rank then you are trapping yourself of your own free will.
If you are really 'great' then you will be able to join a better guild that already has the benefits (or will soon have them) because they are as 'great' as you.
A guild is meant to be an exercise in reciprocity. If you feel that you are contibuting too much relative to others then stop.
This looks as though it has the makings of a fun social experiment. It may also help solidify guilds that have a defined purpose and good leadership, while killing off the "yay I have 10 signatures now to swamp the trade channel with invite spam" type of guild.
There are so many guilds out there that have one or two (or five) people who really organize and drive everything, and what they should be doing is forming their own guilds or joining guilds more suited to them. Now they will be more inclined to do so, because they must eventually sit there and think "this guild sucks, but that didn't matter before because I did my own thing. But now my efforts help every M&S here and if I leave they keep the stuff I earned!"
If they don't realize that and create or join a more focused guild that suits them, then maybe they were in the right guild all along...
I think that in the end, this will hurt guilds that maybe shouldn't ever have been formed, and will serve as a kick in the pants to players who needed a wake up call in order to get out of a dead-end and into a more active guild. Truly "social" guilds which don't really care about anything but occasional 5-man runs and using WOW as a chat service shouldn't really be affected either way.
"First thing first - heirloom items suck. They are only good for leveling due the experience bonus, and always having current blue gear. Come end game they are quickly replaced with crappy epics."
Current Heirloom items do not "suck". Not only are the fantastic for leveling, but the ILevel of the item levels when you level. I don't understand why you think they suck?
I think it's a litte too soon to call Guild leveling a failure since we don't know any of the finer points, and everything they have said is subject to change.
It's like complaining Summer of 2010 sucked, in August 2009, because you think it's going to rain too much next year.
Quick comment, [Screenblocking Flying Whale] should link to the original post mentioning them.
Great blog, it truly speaks to stupidity in the real world as well.
On the flip side there are guilds that started in UO and EQ that are still together to this day 10 years later.
These guilds are more like clubs where people feel comfortable together and play together. Some are "social" as you call them, some are "casual raiding" and others are hard core.
I don't think this change will have much effect on such guilds at all. Sure there will be some drama llama from newer members but I doubt it would seriously affect the overall stability of such guilds.
@Neilas
All valid points. I am saying you are shackled to the extent that if you contribute disproportionately to your guild, and will lose those contributions when you leave, you are disincented from leaving. This is true in all scenarios except in the case you cite wherein you find a guild in which your contributions are matched.
My Ayn Rand reference is not without purpose. A little discussed aspect of Gevlon's philosophy, the flip-side of M&S, is that high level performers will perform well, play well, do well, whether they are by themselves, in a group, or whatever. I am not going to play less well simply to lower myself to the average performance of my guild, party, etc, nor would I expect that of most people. It takes a conscious and willful act of self-destruction to force yourself to do badly so as not to benefit others.
The goal is to benefit yourself to the highest degree possible without allowing loss in the form of allowing others to benefit at your expense. With this new system, WoW, not being a zero sum game, seems to be trying to force an asymmetry in which positive synergy benefits the collective, but does so at the expense of individuals.
I agree with your point, however to the extent that these changes are intended to form more cohesive guilds, I see mass exodus and increased bitterness toward guilds.
@Ooke
I completely agree. Now, if only those guilds would advertise as a bunch of guys chatting in vent who like to wipe once in a while instead of 'casual/serious raiding guild seeking new members to clear Ulduar'.
Gevlon, I love you ^^,
Bitter truth accompanied with sweet ideas. Love it.
The first thing I thought when I heard about guild talents was: Oh great, now there's going to be an ideal raiding "spec" for my guild too...one more thing for min/maxers to debate and perfect over time.
I recently came into contact with a system where a guild gave out dkp for gbank donations, farming for consumables, etc in addition to normal raid dkp. Now this system is being folded into these new guild changes, which could be a good thing for that tight guild of the same 10 people who have been in it for 2 years and have no turnover. But just like leaving a guild is prohibited by the loss of all that dkp you worked to procure, so will this system have its drawbacks in exactly what Gevlon outlined here.
@Gevlon: the whale was amusing. :)
I predict that the current system will increase the percentage of players participating in the raiding game. I also predict that the M+S percentage will decrease slightly.
I suspect there are a lot of 'friendly, social' guilds with about 7 dedicated raiders and a heaping of M+S. Currently, the rate of guild breakup and formation appears to be roughly balanced. (constant number of guilds on server)
The new system will create incentives to abandon small guilds and to stay in large guilds - which can raid - and thereby increase the number of people in guild raids.
Since fewer guilds will be available - or desperate for people - gkick will become a slightly real penalty - and will result in an increased incentive to not be a complete M+S.
Meh - rosy glasses - I bet it is Blizzard's hope. I'm hoping it works - cause I'm in an 'ancient (server start), friendly, social' guild with about 7 hardcore raiders. We have about 20 hardcore raiders who cycle through the guild and some successful raiding guilds - but they are rarely all in at the same time.
Id buy a slot in a guild that gave me 8 pieces of heirloom for quick leveling up if I rerolled on another server, for sure
Please. All the DRAMA about this. It will change nothing. In my experience with dramatic g/quits the socials are like pigs in crapola trying to figure out what happened, trying to contact the g/quitter, getting all concerned & into it, etc. Then someone else g/quits in solidarity, then they talk about it, then they come back when they get bored or sober. Or not.
People like drama. Maybe not the intelligent, mature readers of this blog (?!), but most.
And hey, if the game is important & interesting enough to blog about, why isn't it important enough to get embarrassingly dramatic about?
Maybe, just MAYBE it will cause some firecracker to take a deep breath and log out before doing something he regrets but can't take back easily. But I kind of doubt it.
I don't see how this will affect the AH at all. People will still farm mats and put them in the AH to sell for gold, Goblins will still buy those mats and make Glyphs for sale. People will still buy those glyphs.
It's not like Joe Scrubwad will be able to buy Frost Lotuses or anything else from the guild vendors, that will be the the privilege of the Officers and GL. As only they will be able to spend the 'guild currency' derived from the efforts of the top 20 worker bees. Guilds that allow the rank and file to spend guild currency will learn fast that it's as bad an idea to allow that as it is to allow total access to the current guild vault.
This will cause untold drama. People begging for guild bound items for level 10 char they want to level, People begging for mats to level their professions. "I helped level up this guild! I deserve all the stuff!" will be the cry heard every 10 seconds. (Note that I'm assuming a guild bound item will only be wearable by one person at a time. If you want TWO people to have them, you have to spend more resources to make a second. I'm also assuming these items will be expensive... like the current emblem heirloom items are)
All the social lowbies in your guild will be whining and crying that they want these items, but can't get the mats to make them because they're only level 10.
I'm gunna have lots of popcorn ready to watch the drama unfold. Heh.
Blizzard is ruining WoW the same way that SOE ruined Everquest. It's a sick game and obviously with Cataclysm it will be getting more sick, until it dies. 10 more days on my account and I am out for good this time. If you want to be in a guild, then join the guild. Where does Blizzard get off giving the kids candy so they will join? New mounts in the mail I did not earn, more presents for everybody. Faster levelling, Baby bears and Onyxia in the mailbox, you know, whatever. It's just more and more stupid all the time.
The more I read about this, the more I like the system. It will be great for actual, purpose driven guilds.
However, and this will be "Not as intended" for Blizzard... this will devastate all the directionless social guilds out there.
The guild I'm in will probably be obliterated by this. Why? Because it tries to do EVERYTHING, and as such, does nothing well.
Once your guild is at level 20, you will have to choose. Do we buy PvP related Guild Talents? Or Raiding related Talents? Do we invest heavily into recipes for leveling heirlooms, or focus on raiding consumables?
Guild Leaders will actually have to have a plan, and run their guild accordingly. We'll see rise to more 'Families of guilds' with a common name and top level of control, but are consisted of many smaller guilds, each with a unique purpose.
Then there will be the Guilds that refuse to adapt, and try to do business as usual. The drama and QQing will be endless.
@Ayonel
One thing you have to consider that your guild level contribution only has any value if you are actually in a guild. They are a pure byproduct of your normal activities. If you are not in a guild then it is completely wasted. Personally, I do not mind 'giving away' something if I am just going to waste it anyway and it does not cost me anything to do so. And in a guild you will rarely just waste that contribution. You will get stuff back for it. It might not be the most optimal return on your investment but you still get more out of it then you would get on your own.
I think the idea of guilds lending out heirlooms or craftables is possible.
In Vanilla the craftable FR gear for MC was a massive grind. You needed a stack of drops from within the raid instance to get enough rep. to get most of the patterns.
We helped boost a very trust worthy (RL friend of members in both guilds) armoursmith from a friendly guild so that everyone's tanks could get to 315 FR faster. This meant serious attempts on Rag 2-3 weeks earlier for both guilds.
This was back in the day when Blizzard hated its players and wanted to see how many flaming hoops we would jump through (love those off nights of MC trash farming with 20+ guildies just for FR crafting mats).
Micheal,
At least boosting that Blacksmith to make the FR gear actually helped your raid efforts. You had an incentive to do that.
Where's the incentive to bust your hump so some noob can level faster?
The thing some of you seem to be ignoring is that only the top 20 people contribute to guild XP. So if you want to look at it, only 20 people have a legitimate gripe if they aren't allowed to buy an heirloom for their level 20 worgen warrior. The same thing goes for people who claim they are working to help the M&S in their guild. Maybe they are, or maybe they're only helping the 20-30 people who raid or pvp or do whatever to contribute to guild xp.
IDK, I think this will change almost nothing in the game. It just gives GMs an extra tool, but it doesn't change their behavior. If they were good before, they'll be good after the expac.
Meh I dont have a problem with the guild leveling thing boosting newbies from the sound of things what boosts the guild are the very things your doing already.
Just think of it as getting free bacon to put on the hamburger of your choice, if you dont want the bacon you can let your wife have it. . . no wait that came out wrong. . . or did it? ;P
I'm surprised that guilds can't levy a tax for their guildies. This is something I think would definitely sort the grubs from the kernals.
TY for the Screenblocking Flying Whale that was great :)
now to serious business, im seeing a lot of comments that go along the lines of "The solution seems to me to be that if you leave a guild on terms other than amicable, the guild loses all of the achievements that you participated in."
i think that before too many people agree with this, lets poke some holes shall we?
the more obvious one to me is, who exactly will decide (and how) whether the terms of someones' gquit are amicable or not? the answer to this question will either make or break the whole feature. make the penalty too heavy its going to not only create problems with guild recruitment, since youll not just worry about clearing content anymore, the person you recruit will be able to have an impact on the whole guild. or even worse, people joining guilds just to wait to hit guildlvl20 and then /gquit as an attempt at sabotage (a little far-fetched maybe, but there are no limits to how far morons will go when fueled by hatred towards others' success.)
on the other end, make the penalties too light, or not implement penalties at all, will open up the way for goblins to exploit the whole guildlvl idea.
but either way, i think it is far too early to discuss the Cataclysm expansion yet. its most likely more then a year away, chances are that 90% of what we 'know' about the next xpac will change by the time its out.
@anonymous
I stated that my suggestion would be that when you leave on amicable terms both you and the guild leader would check a confirmation that you left on good terms, and that in such case, neither side gets penalized, or at least the guild does not. It is more complicated in cases where the split is not amicable, but consider an appropos example in sports:
A really crappy team drafts a high-performing manager to turn the team around, but the manager doesn't mesh with the long-time players(who, by the way, totally suck) and he tries to bring in new players who are better. What happens? The new manager gets sacked for no fault of his own. I think it is fair to discourage that, and ensure that if you or I join a guild for purposes other than goblinish ones, i.e. making the guild better, we shouldn't be punished for being an imperfect fit.
In principle I don't take exception to the idea of guild-level bonuses; but I almost always take exception to group benefits that incur a tax on individuals, to the extent that they do.
@ Nielas
If you are correct, then I don't have a problem with it either; but then, do the people contributing the most get some say in how the points they earn are distributed?
Gevlon. The mistake you make was finally picked up by Bristal. Socials love drama; it's what they live for. Far from making the case against what I said, you make the case for it.
I agree also with the poster that said there will be more larger guilds and fewer smaller ones.
I never suggested that goblins couldn't make money. I only suggested that they wouldn't make money as easily from the Auction House.
Finally, I'm bothered by the niavity that thinks what Blizzard has done here is the end of the road for socials. I think it's just the beginning. I may be wrong; we shall see; but more likely than not it's going to get worse for goblins from here on out.
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