Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

What are these guilds?

I talked about the non-guild PvP eh. No organized activity, no social chat, no nothing. Players practically playing a single-player game. It's not the only guild here. Only on alliance side, and only by the guild finder tool I found another dozen:
The Dragon's watch is lvl25 has 995 members without a single Argoloth guild kill or even a single guild Zandalari heroic. No guild rbg either and only 370 guild-arena wins, so most players don't even arena or play with non-guildies. Totally dead non-guild.

The fun thing: these guilds hold about 2x more players than all the raiding guilds from 6/7 HM to 1/7 normal combined on Ally-Agamaggan. Half of them has a guild master who haven't logged in for a month. Yet they are not dissolved.

I'm totally puzzled because of them. Why do anyone play in these things? What do the players want from the game who are rotting in these non-guilds. And above all: how much time does it take since they get totally bored with the game they don't play?

Blizzard made the guild changes because "WoW is more fun in a guild". However they failed to prevent the forming of such non-guilds. I'm sure that most of the players here are just newbies who lost without hope. They don't even see anyone doing something remotely interesting, so they get the impression is that this game is all about smashing 10 boars 10000 times. If these players could be directed into functioning guilds (even "we dance on the mailbox naked together" is considered functioning), they would have much more fun.

Don't say that "they choose to be here", because choice requires information. Without that, there is only guessing or betting. They may not even know that there are raids and rated bgs in WoW or they wrongfully assume that they are hopelessly unprepared for these and they are exclusive to a "no-lifer" elite, despite anyone who can do a Zandalari can also do the nerfed 4.0 stuff and rated BGs exist in the 800-1200 region too. While this information is trivial to us, it is not in any official sources. NPCs just give more quests at 85, they don't say "go raid". So one can level up and get to max level without even knowing about the endgame. No wonder the player rotation is so high. Since this content needs other players, it's natural to place new players to the proximity of players who are doing it.

Some tips:
  • Guild finder should be unusable under guild lvl 10. Besides these non-guilds I found about 50 lvl 1-2 guilds, with 1-5 member, obviously created by little children. These are just making the tool spammed
  • Back to 10 signatures to start a guild. Only lvl 20+ should be able to sign. Way too many failguilds formed by players who are not ready to lead a guild, by spamming "10g for a signature". They could be a useful member somewhere or at least shouldn't collect clueless newbies into their black holes.
  • If the guild master is inactive for 14 days, the guild mastership is transferred to the highest ranked active player
  • Guild upkeep fee: 300G/day after the first week of creation. The guild "challenges" easily pay for these in a functional active guild. The gold is taken from the guild bank. If the balance goes below -2000G, the guild is disbanded.
  • Guild merge feature: a guild can merge into another. The guild rep of the players is turned into the new guild's rep, the banks merged, the guild achievements (and achievement progresses) combined, so players can switch without losing any "progress".
Please spare me from the "these changes would kill my personal bank guild". Guilds are not made to give you extra storage. You are abusing the system and there isn't any valid reason for Blizzard to help you keep your bankguild for free.

Of course there must be a solution for us players too to deal with these black holes that suck up all the new players. I'm working on it.

62 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recently re-activated my account to try out Cataclysm for the first time. None of my friends play any more so it made sense for me to quickly join some random level 25 guild for the perks, like reduced hearthstone cooldown, increased experience/reputation/honor gains, increased mounted-speed, increased mineral/herb/skin/disenchanting mat gains etc. etc. while I leveled to 85.

I had no trouble finding multiple such guilds on all 3 servers I bothered to try on. All of them had 700+ members but virtually non-existent guild-chat since nobody seemed to know anyone else in the guild. I'm sure there were cliques within the guild who communicated with each other outside guild-chat and did things, but for the general membership getting even a basic guild heroic run together was an extreme rarity - and it felt no different to grouping with randoms from the dungeon finder. There was no raiding going on and *ALL* of these people seemed to go out of their way to avoid any kind of PvP, so there was no chance of any RBG teams being formed.

It was totally boring, of course, but I didn't want to leave the guild and lose all the guild perks. I planned to try to find a guild that was actually doing something once I acquired enough gear but I got so bored I stopped playing and now my subscription has expired again.

Clockw0rk said...

There seem to be plenty of people out there who only want to be in a guild for two reasons:

1) The guild level benefits (and all the rewards that come with it and achievements)...these players I assume do mostly 5-mans and PuG raids...maybe level alts.

2) To have a group to talk to that is slightly more consistent than /trade and doesn't get you yelled at for talking to it.

Some enterprising Goblins have also used the "Everyone can invite, lets have lots of friends!" guilds as money makers...once you get the 10% into-the-bank perk you can just watch money roll in, especially if you can maintain a few dozen active players.

Anyways, guilds don't really have to serve a purpose beyond "An extra green channel" and for some they aren't even that.

As for your tips:
- Guild level 10: Addressed below.
- Maintenance Fees: I don't see Blizz ever doing something like that...Blizzard does not seem to want to punish people for not playing.
- Guild Leader Transfer: There is no automated system but I've heard that GM's will transfer ownership if the GM is MIA for 30 days or more.
- Merge sounds good.

Really I think the problem is that the Guild Finder is just a really poor tool that gives too few options. A revamp of it should include the ability to filter by guild level, specific activities (raids, RBG) and levels of progression, members/member-activity...just three off the top of my head. Guilds might also be able to set "requirements" to even be applied to (like boss kills or Arena ratings...I dare say even item level though it would be a poor criteria). If the "Searcher" could filter out guilds below level 10 they wouldn't need to be hidden.

nightgerbil said...

Erm... Dragon watch is where my alts are stashed. 25 guild perks says I am better off with them then on my own outside and so what if I cant get a guild group together for any single thing? There are guilds on aggy where you can "dance naked on mailboxes together" they are called bad mana and sporfe. Not places I want to see newbies end up.

What do we need as newbies anyway? Talk. Advice. Links to funny web sites about wow. Links to serious (ej) websities about wow. Someplace to vent when an lfg pug was a complete twat to us for no fault of our own. Oh and a bit of gold help(advice how to make and maybe enough to buy first lot of bags) and runs through group quests like nagrand arena all help. Mainly though I think a new player when he first arrives needs to find a group of online friends to play with, a group to bond with and do stuff with. Otherwise sorry, but IT IS a single player game. A lonely one at that watching other groups have fun. Feels like school again.

Ancetra said...

>> Guild upkeep fee: 300G/day after the first week of creation. The guild "challenges" easily pay for these in a functional active guild.
>> Please spare me from the "these changes would kill my personal bank guild".

Thing is, this change woul alsoo kill all lvl60, lvl70 and lvl80 raiding guilds (yes, the last also exist), since the rewards from guild challenges are only available to lvl85-content.

واحد من الربع said...

An interesting guild in my server is called "Guild Perks"

It reveales the mystery of those non-guilds.

Anonymous said...

Who would those changes help? They don't impact on you because you have a "proper" guild. The non-guild members are already effectively unguilded, jut getting the guild perks. They'd lose the perks and gain no extra game-play.

It places a barrier to enter the guild market (Blizz like low participation barriers) and would cost them dev time to impliment.

Narq said...

Idea of paying for guild bank, while it may seem to solve few (minor in my opinion) issues... Will never work in WoW environment. Not with this playerbase, and not within rules we had for long time. Guild auto disband would cause waaaay too much rage, plus it would put a feeling of duty in game designed for people who use it more than often for purely social reasons. Blizzard will never try to force socials into any activities.

Merge function is greatly needed, but instead of making activity check in form of daily fee, It'd be better to forbid guild advertising in chat, and modify Guild Finder tool to only display guilds that in last week were able to achieve certain level of activity, accordingly to options by which you can search them:
-active in raiding
-active in doing 5-mans and old raids
-PvP: active arena teams
-PvP: active RBG teams

Additionally, there should be option to browse guilds looking for certain kind of members, but those guilds would not appear as "active", since they lack people to raid, for example.

There still should be cathegory "social/leveling/questing", just for the sake of it. It's not like it'd matter.

Other funny addition would be UI reminder kicking in every time you log in, something like "guild you're currently in seems to be inactive. Would you like to organize guild activity?", followed by opening calendar, for example, or something that generates automated guild message " wants to form a guild group for an <activity", to which everyone online have to respond in some way "yes/no/later/busy", where "later" can be used once in an hour. Automated message can be sent every 30 minutes. Let's imagine you're unlucky and you can't form a group, people are chosing "no/later/busy"... It's not your fault. Let's imagine you do it for a week without results: game then suggests you list of active guilds that you can easily transfer to, without losing guild rep. (active guilds can chose an option to take priority in invite request from that kind of players marked as an exiles).
Chosing "later/no/busy" for seven days marks you as an "lazy/M&S", for everyone to see, let's say it gives you "inactivity point" - in any recruitment situation, officer can check number of your activity points, to get to know how serious you treat playing the freaking game, and not idling in Stormwind/Orgrimmar. In multiplayer game that kind of knowledge would be useful, right?

It's just one of many ideas you can come up with while thinking about improving guild system, making it matter somehow. In this proposition of mine your guild "reputation" follows activity monitored by game itself. No more disinformation, shouting and advertising; just facts showing things as they are, for everyone to see. I know that this is goblin blog, but I don't think gold would be viable way to solve that huge mess that is guild system in WoW.

Sinshroud said...

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the guilds are simply bot guilds.

Gold farmers and botters tend to guild their characters together (especially if they are from the same company) because they can share resources amongst the guild bank and it's easy for them to track member activity.

Usually a few non-botter randoms thrown into the mix to make the guild look legitimate so Blizzard doesn't simply investigate the entire guild. However they guilds are rarely higher than level 10.

Something else I've experienced (I joined the biggest level 25 social leveling guild on my server a while ago) is that so many players within that guild are horrible - and everyone in there knows it - that they prefer to pug (and amazingly enough get a low chance of idiot) than to do a guild run.

Yaggle said...

Players should decide for themselves what guilds are for and why they should be formed, not you nor Blizzard. It should only take 1 signiature(your own) to form a guild. People will always make bad decisions but they have to fail in order to learn to make better decisions, not have somebody else make their decisions for them. So let people join the failguild and learn their lesson.

Jana said...

The guild unkeep feature would cause some serious rage among the 'friendly pplz guilds'. I highly doubt Blizzard would ever implement that.

Shintar said...

How can you know whether these guilds have social chit-chat or not?

Dzonatan said...

This is one of disgusting truths of today's MMO design that creates wanna be social experience through carrot on a stick method, those methods are... guild perks. Your examples are nothing more then extra perks for accept guild clicking for up to 1k people per one person minimal effort and paitiance to get a guild to lvl 25.

Its bizzare and sad IMHO. I wish someone would just drop the ball and stop pretending that MMOs are about socialization these days.

Anonymous said...

Why does anyone play in these guilds? Because of guild perks. If I want to level an alt I join a random level 25 guild, turn off the guild chat and everyone benefits - I have the perks, the guildmaster has some gold (Cash Flow).



And I bet there are many PuG alts in such guilds because of your overly complicated and restrictive alt rules.





Your "tips" about regulating the "guild market" sound like leftist nonsense. Why would you like to force people to create and use guilds in some specific way? Do you really believe you know better what they need their guilds for? Why not let them do whatever they want? Does it harm you in any way that there are crap guilds around?

Enforcing stupid regulations is bad, it's almost always better to let people do whatever they want (as long as it doesn't directly harm others).

Grim said...

Dragon's Watch has less than 100 lvl 85 characters, many of which have at least something in BH down.

I'd guess that these guilds are just full of alts.

Anonymous said...

I want to comment on your tips.
1)guild lvl 10.
no new guilds...

2)Back to 10 signatures
no new guilds

3)guild master is inactive the guild mastership is transferred.
less intensive to create a guild for not so active players. aka no new guilds.
4)Guild upkeep fee:
no guilds for low level players no guilds for friends and family. no guilds for the poor. no small guilds.
5)Guild merge feature:
thats actually good.

basically you want to kill all the small guilds. Kill everygroup who does not play the game of your definition of fun.

Jon said...

In your rules for The Pug you clearly state that the contents of the guild bank are yours, and that everyone else can go gather signatures on a bank alt if they want to use a guild bank. Is today's post not a bit hypocritical? How do casual guilds take away from your fun, wouldn't you rather the "M&S" corral themselves into "non-guilds" instead of pestering you?

Bekken said...

Maybe they just like to level ten alts and do stuff like seasonal achievements.

I've seen plenty of people that only do that, even "friends" (horrible concept) in my raidingguild when I was still playing WOW.

You (and many other people) only want to reach the best gear possible/beat all content/develop your character as well as possible.

Which is of course the main goal in MMORPG's. However, apparently a lot of people don't find that amusing and rather stay in their ghost-guilds.

Anonymous said...

Start a new alt, and join this guild - for the sole reason of viewing 1. Repair amount 2. Guild bank value and 3. Gold distribution.. I myself usually join similar guilds for the perks, faster lvling more materials from skinning / herbing / mining whilst lvling can be very profitable. The most common use I see for these guilds is a place were anyone can get the perks, the leader gets a substantial income 4-5k with only a 300 member guild and people can just do thier own thing while "being part of a larger community" even if they don't do things together they are still part of something bigger

Cathfaern said...

"NPCs just give more quests at 85, they don't say "go raid"."
I think that's one of the reason why Blizz will implement the Random Raid feature. And perhaps there will be raid quests again.

Anonymous said...

###I'm totally puzzled because of them. Why do anyone plays in these things? What does the players want from the game who are rotting in these non-guilds. And above all: how much time does it take since they get totally bored with the game they don't play?###

The game is pretty much dead...i am in such guild to have all the benefits from a lvl25 guild when i log in.

I am just loggin in because beside WoW theres no mmo right now worth playing. Doing a few Dungeouns, dailys and a few pug raids. Not worth no more to invest much effort in a guild. This will change when GW2 comes out.

I think alot of players act the same after 5-6years playing this shit game.

Gevlon said...

Guild perks are not an answer. They are tools, bonuses for a goal.

WHAT IS THE GOAL?

I mean with the perks the players can level up, get honor/justice/rep easier to do NOTHING!

Pangoria Fallstar said...

Meh, even though I quit years ago, when I come back I want my guild to be there. It was a guild for just me and my friends, and when I stopped playing so did they.

Now, at least one or two continued to play, but from my understanding they stayed with the guild because they liked the guild name, and they do not need to join some other guild to participate in raiding. This of course was all before the guild perk changes.

Either way, the biggest guarantee at preventing players from returning to the game are such ideas that take things from players who do not log in constantly. All it does is make people not want to play again.

What I do agree with you, is that it would be nice if Blizzard implemented a way to sense these non-guilds and get messages to its players that they can find other guilds.

Anonymous said...

First of all, I think that the main reason for these "non-guilds" is spelled "guild perks". You can get all the bonuses of a large guild without having to contribute anything else but the time you play. Furthermore, you don't have to withstand any guild dramas over loot, raid spots, or being looked down on as "just a social member". Not to mention the stream of "lol, you boost me DM?" and "plz, gief 10G" in guild chat.
Have you considered the possibility that those guilds consist of people that have decided that the raiding end-game is not for them rather than new players that have lost their way?

As for the low level guilds, I can only offer anecdotal evidence. I personally happen to be in two of them (Your comment about them being started by children made me smile, being a almost middle-aged person). One of them is the remains of a guild started by a group of my IRL friends during vanilla WoW. Over the years, people got feed up with WoW, and quit, leaving only me and another player, who loggs on now and then to chat a bit. The other guild is my old alt guild, that I got during TBC when my main was in a raiding guild. As I haven't got the time to perform properly in a raiding guild (I have a full-time job, a family, and all that.), and since I'm just so tired of all the moronic antics in a larger guild (seen too much of it), I quite enjoy pottering around in my two low-level guilds, despite the lack of guild perks. Currently, there are, as far as I'm aware of, only two (2) guilds on all of the EU servers that spark any kind of interest in me - the PuG being one of them - but joining them would cost me at least a server transfer or a server transfer and a faction change.

So for me personally, being forced into a "proper" guild would only mean that I would leave WoW altogether, taking my subscription fees with me. Blizzard would loose revenue, and WoW would loose a player who might sometime in the future return to raiding. Not really a "win-win" situation, would you say?

Finally, from what I can gather from reading about the PuG, and how you run it, you seem to have a rather unique (meant in a positive way) guild there. Sometimes I wonder if you are aware of just how unique the PuG is, compared to the great mass of guilds in WoW these days?

Cathfaern said...

Gevlon, who do you know these people aren't raiding, doing RBGs, etc? Most of the guilds have rules about attendance and most casual people couldn't / don't want to fit them. So they have to PUG (gdkp if they lucky enough to have those on their realm). For pugs you don't need a guild, but it's always good to have the guild perks so why not join one of these? They don't care about the other members, they don't know their skill, so they won't recruit people for the pugs from the guild, thats why there aren't any guild challenge.

And as we spoke about it before: people play some game because it's fun. If someone like to levelling alts (just enjoying the lvling, questing, trying out new abilities, etc) why does he have to have a "living guild"? Really don't need it, but some of the perks (faster mount) is good for him too. And you can find many other similar example. Yes, blizzard intended that the "fun" of the game is the high-end pve and pvp. But there are some people who don't play basketball games, but spend many hours to doing 3point shots. Just because he finds it fun. You don't have to raid or rbg / arena to have fun in wow. Maybe YOU have to. But not everyone.

Dar said...

Guilds are only useful if you are playing as multi-player game and facing environmental challenges that require player support.

For the majority of players following the path of least resistance, is World of Warcraft not a single-player game?

Paul said...

I see the whole guild levels/perks going away in the next expansion. I doubt it has had any positive effect in Blizzard's eyes.

Paul said...

I don't think the next expansion is going to retain the guild XP/leveling/perks system. It just doesn't seem to have had any positive effect on the game or player retention.

I also wonder what these players are getting out of these soulless, anonymous guilds. Wouldn't the rational reaction to the game becoming like that be to just quit?

Finally: the existence of huge non-guilds throws the progression numbers from wowprogress and guildox into a new light. You can no longer assume all guilds are roughly the same size, or that the casual guilds are small, or even that a guild's progression reflects that of any sizable fraction of its members.

Eaten by a Grue said...

Gevlon,

As to your comment: "WHAT IS THE GOAL? I mean with the perks the players can level up, get honor/justice/rep easier to do NOTHING!"

WoW is a grindy game where people grind stuff. Often, this is an irrational, compulsive activity. Guild perks make the grind a little easier. End of mystery. That is all there is and that is your answer. You are trying to make sense of people's compulsive activities, and that simply cannot be done.

Anonymous said...

Certainly it was obvious that guild perks were going to be very hard on small guilds forcing much consolidation. If you no longer know people, why not get 110% of your crafting, D/E, JP and XP from being in a level 25 guild?

Just because you think Blizzard should not have alt guilds does not mean that Blizzard agrees with you. There have been alt guilds since forever.

Remember in EVE when one spy disbanded the largest alliance in the game. Your rule would allow someone to ninja the guild gold and disband the guild at the same time.

I raided in TBC and LK but I and perhaps 90% of the people I raided with no longer raid. My opinion is that any efforts of Blizzard that presents players with a raid or leave option will lower revenue.

Besides, it seems pretty obvious that Blizzard intended there to be fewer people raiding in Cata than LK. This, unfortunately, seems to be working as intended.

Eenheid said...

From a perspective of someone who quit wow, guild perks are the problem.

Guild perks give incentive to be in a level 25 guild.

You used to join a guild to be with the people, whether it was for mailbox dancing or raiding -- the perks make it so you feel you HAVE to be in a guild, even if no one talks to each other.

This dilutes the guild experience; many people don't know what being in a real guild is like.

The system was better pre-cata. If Blizz wanted people to have the "guild perks," they could just give them out for free, not require being in a 600 person guild where no one talks.

Sheldon said...

So, you've quietly abandoned the effort to break up other guilds and absorb their membership through competition (ie, guild achievements). Instead, you're now advocating that Blizzard break them up for you. In what way is this not supporting free markets and limited government involvement only when things are going your way?

Jon said...

Quoted from The Pug rules:

"(Note: I bought the bank tabs for guild achievement from my own gold and use it as a personal bank. You can have yours if you get 5 signatures with your bankalt)."

Gevlon, how do you reconcile this statement with today's post?

Jon said...

I also just remembered that a few months ago you had a guest post where you encouraged goblins to create social guilds as an gold making enterprise. These "social guilds" do not exist to raid, they exist to provide perks for their members and provide the guild master with gold. Are you now saying that forming a guild should only be done if raiding is the goal? Who are you to judge what people should be doing with their game time? Not everyone wants to raid. Some just want to collect pets or do dailies. They aren't telling you that you should collect pets or quit WoW, what right do you have to tell them they have to raid or be useless?

Usually I am in agreement with your posts but today you seem to really have lost your mind!!!

SirFWALGMan said...

In some ways the new guild Exp may actually trap people into bad guilds.. because there is a cost in switching to a new guild.

Dancingblade said...

The Dragon's watch is lvl25 has 995 members without a single Argoloth guild kill or even a single guild Zandalari heroic. No guild rbg either and only 370 guild-arena wins, so most players don't even arena or play with non-guildies. Totally dead non-guild.

Totally. And it has no impact on you. So why waste the time writing about it? Who cares what they are doing (or not doing)?

Anonymous said...

" Enforcing stupid regulations is bad, it's almost always better to let people do whatever they want (as long as it doesn't directly harm others".

Amen Brother.. Amen...

Anonymous said...

Have to say I disagree with you. In my current guild we just run things as is and it is a social guild at this point though we cleared most content from release through heroics. While we have enough in our bank to cover many weeks of a 300g "guild tax", we would eventually be disbanded for no other reason than people outside our 20 accounts dislike less than active guilds.

I also have a toon in my old HC raiding guild from TBC that we keep around simply because it has good memories and you get some interesting tells when you walk around on that toon. Does it serve anything other than a social need? No. But it still provides fun to the game and there is no reason to disband it.

Anonymous said...

"If the guild master is inactive for 14 days, the guild mastership is transferred to the highest ranked active player"

Die in a fire, my minions shall work for my return!

I founded it, its my asset. Don't like? leave

Also you seem to forget that all arenaplayers just need the perks , we have zero need for guildmates, thats something for raiders only

Anonymous said...

1. After getting all heroic archievements for the item we dont go heros anymore
2. We seldom raid

Arena and RbG earns 0 gold

youre seem to be a biased pve player

Anonymous said...

For me, raiding is boring and pvp at 85 is one big gear grind. Not interested.

I enjoy leveling and random BGs below 85 so when I roll an alt, I join a big guild, turn off gchat and play the way I want. It is all about the perks: reduced repair bills, faster hearth (travel time is boring) and more mats when gathering (more gold, faster profession progress). I don't care about the other people in the guild, what they might want to do, guild achievements or guild culture. And I don't intend to play at the level cap.

WoW isn't more fun in a guild; it's that you get harassed with guild recruitment whispers if you aren't in one. The sad truth is that if you want to play alone, you're better off in a big "dead" guild.


I recently started a guild with 3 friends. We PvP together once a week. The GM is level 30. It's a level 1 guild because for some reason Blizzard decided that only high level characters should be able to advance a guild. We are not recruiting. A 300g/day fee would be impossible to pay. We're not "sucking up all the new players" or harming anybody else (except when we stomp them in the bgs). We might never ever get the kind of achievements you'd recognize, but so what? We're not playing for your approval, Gevlon.

Jon said...

"WHAT IS THE GOAL?"

Is their goal of collecting pets, dancing by the mailboxes, and licking windows any less valid than your goal of beating hardmode boss encounters?

You each pay 15 dollars a month, it's your choice whether you want to down bosses or lick windows. One does not take away from the other's enjoyment.

I started a guild soon after reading your guest column on here about building cash flow through Ninja Invite. That was over 3 months ago. I'm proud to say the guild is now raking in about 3,000g per week from cash flow and guild challenges.

Do we raid? No. Are there mostly idiots in the guild? Yes. Is there a goal? I don't think you can seriously say there's a goal for ANYONE in WoW. Even if you beat the "end boss" there is always something higher to achieve - a hardmode, a server first, a world first. So I find it hard to believe there are any reasonable "goals" one can complete in a game that can't be won - only enjoyed in a manner of one's own personal liking.

The one goal this kind of guild does fulfill successfully is providing a place for its members to enjoy their time while playing WoW. And it also meets the goal of making me 3,000g per week.

MoxNix said...

"I found about 50 lvl 1-2 guilds, with 1-5 member, obviously created by little children."

More likely most of these are bank guilds created by players with many alts.

Neverheals said...

I'm sure that I'm not the first to have mentioned it, but "abusing the system" is totally a goblin philosophy.

Gevlon said...

Bank guild: yes, use it while you can. But don't be surprised if the loophole is closed.

Little guilds: if they are bank guilds or family guilds, why are they on the guild finder with idiotic recruitments?

Anonymous said...

"Guild perks are not an answer. They are tools, bonuses for a goal.

WHAT IS THE GOAL?

I mean with the perks the players can level up, get honor/justice/rep easier to do NOTHING!"

Leveling up and gaining rep is the goal for many people. If you believe that Raiding and PVP is the goal for the majority of WoW players, you are completely wrong. The amount of players whos goal is simply to level to 85 and experience the solo content completely dwarfs the small population that actively engages is endgame. It isn't because they are 'noobs' or are in bad guilds, they simply don't care for an aspect of the game that requires external resources, planning and coordination with a 9+ other players.

I and a lot of my "inactive" guildies prefer to stay away from Raids and PVP because we don't want to study statistics and rotations to play a videogame, as well as go through the effort of coordinating 10 people for several hours. I believe that requires too much effort + work for unsufficient amount of satisfaction. I can assure you I am not alone in this statement, there are dozens of solo players for each raider, but with this blog and the style of play you choose, you are not exposed to this entire community.

Mnemnosyne said...

I don't really agree that people could possibly be unaware that there is more to the game than these guilds offer. It would take very, very intentional obliviousness to do that. You'd pretty much have to go out of your way to not hear about various raids, and if any of that sounds even slightly interesting, any moderately intelligent person is going to try to learn more, so they're going to ask other people questions or google it.

Narq said...

Small guilds can be active. If those 5 people do dungeons and battlegrounds or arena together, it's much better than 200 that doesn't play with each other. To my previous thought: guild activity should be measured in comparison to number of members. If 5 member guild does 7 heroics every week, and 200 member guild does the same, it should be also noted, and mentioned on "guild card" in Guild Finder tool. Measuring activity is the way to separate good guilds from bad.

Esteban said...

I log in daily. Sometimes I do a troll or two to slowly VP cap. The guild will usually have a person or two to join me, and since I heal lately, they're happy for assured success with LFD.

Sometimes, I'll join a trade pug raid. I play the AH a bit, enough to keep middle-class comfortable. Once in a blue moon, especially when more than two or three friends are on, I'll actually lead a raid, filling the rest with puggies. I used to lead successful small-guild-coalition raids a lot back in BC and Wrath so I'm not too bad at herding cats.

I collect gear and maintain my skills/fight knowledge because I find it rewarding to be competent/capable when I am called upon to raid. And it's also fun to save that Occuthar mess or heal a really hopeless LFD 5-man group through trollroics they couldn't otherwise do.

Why would you want to deprive people like me of perks to do this kind of casual play more easily?

Also, lots and lots of people work at achievement collection. I, personally do not, but that's part of the answer. And perks are very useful to get that one pet at exalted or whatever.

WoWMidas said...

At its core, your message comes across as “these guilds have no right to exist” and “the purpose of guilds is for raiding and RBG groups.”

- re: 10 vs. 5 signatures: who cares. Instead of paying 500g (100g each for 5 fast signatures), I’d pay 1,000g to get the 10. What do I care? If I were poor and patient, I’d do it successfully for a fraction of that. You’re not going to dissuade many just by requiring 5 more sigs. Anyone who wants their own guild bank ain’t gonna be blocked that way.

- re:2 weeks of GM inactivity...this suggestion is shortsighted. If you got hit by a bus tomorrow and ended up in a hospital for 2 weeks, then came back to find the PUG handed off to a guildie - possibly one harboring secret “social” sympathies - you’d be SOL. Or if you went on a 15-day vacation: same thing. Being a wow guild GM should not have a “no extended break, ever” requirement.

- re: Guild upkeep fee: interesting idea but rather draconian and arbitrary. It would disproportionately punish small guilds, even ones large enough to regularly run 5-man content. The guild system already rewards large guilds disproportionately. Sounds like you want more raiding guild welfare.

- re: Merge feature: seems like a good idea to me. Although merging two banks could be tricky, depending on how full they are. Not a deal-breaker however: just give a warning to prune, or purge excess items based on a defined algorithm including quality level.

- re: the claim that personal use of guild banks is “abuse of the system” ...my first instinct would be to flip you the bird. Guild activity or membership levels would be relatively easy to implement and trivial to enforce; the fact that they are not means that the system is not being abused. In fact, the sig requirement was lowered, so it looks like Blizz doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you on this one at all. You are trying to substitute your opinion for fact.

- re: small/inactive guilds being “black holes that suck up the new players.” ... Please. Are you saying you can’t outcompete these (personal, pathetic, and/or inactive) guilds for players in a free market? Or is it that you think these players (too ignorant or too stupid to drop out of someone’s personal sandbox or guild bank) are really PUG-members-in-the-rough, just waiting to escape their unwitting confinement?

Jack The Maniac said...

There is indeed too many guilds.

Since I started playing WoW, I always thought guilds should be in less numbers, and have a purpose, a purpose fitting the common interests of it's members.

In definition, a guild is:
A common place in which members with similar interest gather and work toward those interests.

Now, in WoW this could translate to loldostuff. But nay, I speak in more practical, roleplay terms, with a goal defined by the objective rules of the game, not a goal defined by people.

Guilds should be more roleplay like.

In the game Tales of Vesperia, there are guilds, they are the counterpart of the Empire.

There is the Merchant guild, the Thieves guild, the Archeologist guild and Altosk, the guild that manages the Guild City, to name a few.

Add to that Blacksmith Guild, weapon dealing guild(s), a monster hunting one...

WoW could have so much more depth if your Guild could have an activity in which to partake in addition to raiding. Members with common interests would cling together to achieve things.

Now, it's just do stuff. Raid. Might as well be called a raiding team, they only serve to gather people up. These aren't guilds.

Guilds should have a goal in existing. They should have a purpose, other than killing bosses.

And yes, I am saying banking guilds shouldn't exist. Like the 300 000 guilds that doesn't have a purpose.

In addition to raiding, all guilds should have another purpose...

Blacksmith Guilds could be guilds in which blacksmiths trade stuff.

Merchant Guilds could be able to set up shop and sell wares, similar to AH.

And these purposes would gain some currency to the guild, enabling it to stay alive. In real life, if a group of people all stop doing X activity, the group will stop existing since no one is managing it and keeping it up.

Should be the same thing for guilds.

Some guy said (CTRL+F it):
"
Players should decide for themselves what guilds are for and why they should be formed, not you nor Blizzard. "

Nah. Blizzard can decide how and for what reasons guilds are formed. They just decided to let it all up to the players. And why yes, it is not up to Gevlon to do so, it doesn't means his ideas don't make sense. Guilds in WoW are too numerous, with too many useless guilds, just re-read my whole message to see how guilds should be.

One man cannot form a guild. Perhaps he can, but his guild will not last if he has no one to make it work.

Blizzard CAN decide how guilds have to be used.

Jon said...

"Bank guild: yes, use it while you can. But don't be surprised if the loophole is closed."

This isn't a loophole. It's working as intended.

Azuriel said...

17.9% of the US/EU player population has killed (nerfed) Magmaw so far this expansion.

I think it is time you admit that it might be possible that 82.1% of the WoW population is playing a different game than you. And perhaps start concerning yourself less about what they are "obviously" doing wrong.

Feel free to continue taking their gold, of course. They don't need it.

Gevlon said...

@Azuriel: half of the world population lives from less than $5. You should admit that these people simply have different priorities than making money and work 10 hours in a sweatshop or live in a civil war ridden country without central government because it's fun for them.

Your 81% FAILED to kill Magmaw because
- they are just terrible
- they choose to be with terrible friends
- they don't know that he has different options.

Anonymous said...

Re "don't be surprised if the loophole is closed"
It might happen but is there any evidence for this?

The Void storage will reduce a bit of demand for alt guilds.

Each realm needs a few raiding guilds; (not that many with the state of Cata raiding) and perhaps a PvP guild. Then just a bunch of mega guilds for the perks and personal guilds for alts.

Dancingblade said...

"Your 81% FAILED to kill Magmaw because..."

...maybe they have not even tried, and have no intention to try? Ever consider that one?

Failure requires attempt. Personally, I have not seen Magmaw, nor attempted it; therefore, I have NOT failed to kill Magmaw.

Maybe I'll get around to Magmaw eventually. Maybe I won't do another raid until the next expansion. I would expect that there are a LOT of players more skilled than most of the people commenting on this blog who have not killed Magmaw (and have not failed, either).

The percentage of those who have or have not beaten a boss is a statistic devoid of meaning on its own, yet you try to hold it up as some sort of intellectually-dishonest measuring stick. /golfclap

Anonymous said...

"Maybe I'll get around to Magmaw eventually. Maybe I won't do another raid until the next expansion. I would expect that there are a LOT of players more skilled than most of the people commenting on this blog who have not killed Magmaw (and have not failed, either)."

While there are tons of people who are not interested in raiding (ex-raiders, PvP players, casual players, bad players) we should also keep alts into account. How many of your alts are level 85 and have not even bothered to raid any Firelands or Cataclysm? I play max 2 characters at the same time. I have no interest in killing Magmaw on for example my hunter even though she is lvl 85. Why should I bother killing Magmaw on my hunter? I barely bother to enchant and gem her gear. I have better things to do. Like raiding Heroic Ragnaros. Or a random HC dungeon on my hunter. Or soloing Black Temple on my hunter.

Anonymous said...

Another reason for megaguilds is that the majority of things that during the beta were said to increase guild rep do not do so. So you really need to not only do instances but have at least two friends on who want to run something at the same time.

It's just easier to join a 25 guild than try to get small guild to level 25. Especially if you probably are not going to succeed and the odds are the guild stagnates prior to 25.

--------

Your analysis is predicated that Raiding is the only thing to do at 85. Blizzard has said they are going to add more non-raid content at max level i.e. smaller % of effort going towards raids.

The number of players who have the desire and ability to raid in a way you would describe as competent is relatively low. Factor in outside of your guild you also need the predictable time commitment, then you are left with an even smaller number.

If 81% can't/won't kill Magmaw then it is obvious to any business person that Blizzard needs to spend a lot more effort on either non-raids or easier-than-Magmaw raids. Blizzard's shareholders will insist.

Anonymous said...

^

Someone from my realm was just interviewed for warcrafecon upon reaching 2 million gold. He has one 85 and has never even been in a 5-man.

The people I talk to who can find something on their own to do in WoW seem pretty content. The people who pug trolls and raid and blog about raiding seems angry and bitter. Maybe they enjoy that, but I have to question some of their choices.

Anonymous said...

The comments are TLDR so I apologize if this has been stated.

One major problem with the guild finder is that you cannot use it if you are already in a guild. So you need an unguilded alt.

If that alt is under the level required by the potential guilds, you wont see that guild on the list of guilds recruiting.

They need to change it so that someone who is already in a guild can look to see what guilds are recruiting.

This would make it easy for people in alt or perk guilds to find guilds that actually need members to do things like raid.

Nate Kerkhofs said...

@gevlon

I sincerely doubt that among those 82% that haven't even killed Magmaw there are no PvP players. Like it or not, there is a reasonable amount of people out there that don't even care about PvE. They know about it, but they prefer the more volatile and everchanging PvP play. If you count about 40% of the playerbase doing PvE, 40% doing PvP and 20% doing both, your 18% that killed Magmaw suddenly becomes 30% of the PvE playerbase.

Also, your idea of guild tax will affect the smaller guilds that ARE actually being social. For example, I play nearly solely on 1 server, with all my characters in the same guild, a real life social guild that some friends formed together. We got 62 characters over 10 accounts. We are not in the guild finder, nor will we ever be. Our bank has basically rubbish in it. If we would have to pay 300G per day just so we could stick around, we're just going to go to another game. and we rarely even have 3 people online. Half the characters aren't even 85 yet. Heck, 4 of those 10 accounts haven't been online in months. Yet we stick together. And a guild with 900 players like you mentioned: if 300 of those are online per day, that's enough gold from cashflow to maintain a status-quo on that 300G/day fee. You're not hurting the big guilds with that. You're hurting the small guilds with no real income.

If you want to discuss this guild in an upcoming blog: on Kor'Gall EU.

Nate Kerkhofs said...

gah... aparrently brackets like the one your guild appears between ingame hide words here. guild name is Ownage Division.

krogkvada said...

I play my main chars on blackhand, dont have charslots left, so i decide to play horde on Blutkessel.

Same reason like many people here

...it made sense for me to quickly join some random level 25 guild for the perks, like reduced hearthstone cooldown, increased experience/reputation/honor gains, increased mounted-speed, increased mineral/herb/skin/disenchanting mat gains etc. etc. while I leveled to 85.

I'm in a raiding guild as an alli, my activities are there and i have no reason to be in a second guild.

So its ok that nobody is talking or asking the stupid questions again and again. Sometimes i help, but if i see a lvl 85 dont know his char, its not my responsability to bee his personal google-slave. Everybody could use the internet for questions about gameplay mechanics or whre to find a npc, e.g.