I would like to start off with a discussion about if we are forced to join a guild or not upcoming cata...

Im sure not everyone prefer to be in a guild for various of reasons, some being real life issues or time constrain, or just simply prefer to be guildless...

After the release of the guild perks and all that new skills, do you guys think or believe that it will become "necessary" to join a guild in the next expansion?

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Q u o t e:
I would like to start off with a discussion about if we are forced to join a guild or not upcoming cata...

Im sure not everyone prefer to be in a guild for various of reasons, some being real life issues or time constrain, or just simply prefer to be guildless...

After the release of the guild perks and all that new skills, do you guys think or believe that it will become "necessary" to join a guild in the next expansion?

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It won't be required or forced in my opinion. Larger guilds right now already enjoy a variety of advantages in getting groups together and such. So while the new system may encourage players to take part in guilds, it can be avoided if wanted.

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Q u o t e:
I have a pvp guild that is very small (about 10 members). Will it be theoretically possible to earn all the guild perks, even if we dont raid at all?

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I can't say anything is final right now, but the idea (last I heard) is that there would be multiple ways to level the guild - it just may take longer for a smaller one. As expected though, we hope to do some testing on this once things are ready in the beta to get a better feel for what works and what doesn't.

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Q u o t e:


By your own admission, the current game already rewards guilds that promote progression rather than socialization. How exactly is this any different in the "New" guild system? Again, the intent has been laid out by Blizz loud and clear in plain English. This expansion with it's inter-guild rep system is all about pigeon holing players into large guilds where they will only serve to reward the few at the top of the guild....while those unable to devote their entire lives to playing the game will once again be relegated to the hand me downs.

The alternative is to be out farmed, out leveled and out earned at every turn by the sheeple that make up the larger raiding guilds. Yeah...I can see how that playstyle is still a viable and attractive option.

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In my experience the people who like to focus on smaller guilds don't really care what the other larger guilds are doing as they are happily doing their own thing. It also sounds like you don't fully understand the guild system and we'll have more details to help you out when we are farther along in the beta.

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Q u o t e:


So in other words.... Beta is Beta?

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Anything in beta is final. There is no such thing as a work in progress. If you can't read sarcasm, don't read this.

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Q u o t e:
sounds iike the rich getting richer while the poor gets poorer.

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While there are ways for larger guilds to save money, I don't see the large negative impact on the smaller guilds that you are referring to. Larger guilds already farm more items and have more money, but are you thinking they will be able to soak up a larger portion of the economy and therefore cause the smaller guilds to make less money from everything they are farming? I can see this as somewhat of a concern but I also haven't really experienced issues making gold as a guild or as an individual player.

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Q u o t e:
Would I be able to join a guild, earn the rewards with that guild then leave that guild and still have the rewards?

also

Would I be able to join a guild that has those rewards and get thoes rewards right away?

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Q u o t e:


No and no.

Once you leave the guild,you lose the perks. Once you join a new guild,you have to get your reputation up with that guild before you can get the perks.

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This is correct.

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Q u o t e:
I'm curious to learn about the whole "grinding rep with your guild" thing, personally. I have a guild for myself and my alts, and that's it. The perks themselves don't matter much to me, but the potential for 10 grind reps with myself to access them sounds clinically retarded at best. Hopefuly, that is not the case, and I would love clarification on the issue.

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You would need to the rep grind for each character to earn whatever perks you gain access to as a whole guild. Doing a rep grind on one character doesn't carry over to other characters.

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Q u o t e:
I wouldn't dream of grinding rep on ten toons, screw that nonsense; I was just asking as a sense of curiosity more than anything. And out of a morbid sense of humor. "wtf, I'm hated -- with myself. WTB [Shrink]"

I'll have to see how quickly one can level/rep grind to see if it's still worth it to continue to have a self-only guild. Thanks for the answer, Bornakk.

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I'm sure we'll be playing around with it a fair amount in the beta. We don't want it to be a mega penalty to lose the rep to where players stay in a guild they don't like - but at the same time a lot of these changes are meant to encourage guilds as a whole so we don't want it to be extremely trivial to gain the reputation to where players give no thought to guild hopping (like now). We know this may shake things up for some players but we feel it will be a better result for the game as a whole to have a stronger setup for guilds.

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Q u o t e:
Bornakk,

If I may, could you feedback to the Blizzard Gods Of Development, Raid achievements for 10 player raids be 5/10 not 7/10.

Small guilds co-operating to bring down 10-player content would thank you mightily. (At 5/10 both guilds can earn the achievement at the same time by bringing 5 players each to the party).

Other than that, look forward to seeing the system in play.

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If it's 5/10 then it's not really a "guild-run" though.

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Q u o t e:


How so?

It's still a 10 player raid, there's still two guilds in it, it's just that both guilds will get to benefit from it.

Two small guilds, allied together to bring down 10 player content, arrange to bring 5 players each into the raid. If the requirement were 5/10 instead of 7/10, then both guilds would benefit from this co-operation by earning a little reputation towards their guilds rankings.

This would be an excellent way of encouraging smaller guilds to work together.

By leaving it at 7/10, it encourages one guild to try and bring extra members, or in the case of two small guilds simply unable to field more than 5 active raiders each, the pug-like situation of no guilds benefitting would then be applied. :-(

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It is meant to encourage inner-guild cooperation, not with other guilds. The idea is to give credit to the "guild-run" as they are the ones doing the most organization and (usually) leading. Also, how would you break this down for 25 player guilds?

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Q u o t e:


The intent may well be to enhance intra-guild co-operation as opposed to inter-guild co-operation, however, the effect will be to encourage smaller guilds to merge to the point of meeting the 7/10 requirement consistently; that is, a penalty on guilds not able to regularly bring 7 people to the raid.

As to how you would break this down for a 25 player raid, the solution would simply be to set the bar at 12/25. Thus, both guilds would earn the reputation advancement (this time somewhat larger guilds co-operating to bring down 25 player content as opposed to 10 player content).

I think the guild advancement is a great idea Bornakk, but I just think with some very minor tweaks, it could encourage inter-guild as well as encouraging intra-guild co-operation.

Wouldn't that be a laudable goal of the system?

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If we were going in this direction, where would we draw the line? If 5/10 is an option, we could do 3 guilds with a 3/10 setup. Or 5 guilds at once with a 5/25 setup. We want to encourage guilds to be strong enough to stand (mostly) on their own feet. It can still be a pretty small guild to fill 7 slots and filling the 7/10 slots isn't the only factor in making the guild function. As I said before, things could change and we will have to see how the testing goes in the beta.

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Q u o t e:


Bornakk,

And this is the crux of our debate in this thread to be sure. The system currently favours only 1 guild in a raid being able to make this gain, where I am arguing that the system would be more inclusive if it allowed 2 guilds to share the gain (splitting it 50/50 even, so no extra gain is awarded).

Extending this further to allow 3, 4, 5 or ultimately 25 guilds to share the gain, is a little bit of a slippery slope counter-argument (all due respect intended of course). Still, not that I advocate such an extension of my own suggestion, if the gain were split rather than replicated, the total gain handed out for each encounter would be unchanged (though I hazard to emphasis I'm only arguing for 2 guilds sharing the gain here).

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If you can field 5 players consistently it doesn't feel like a big jump to get 2 more players and promote the strength/unity of a single guild that we are going for. I know there are a lot of differing opinions on this but I believe this is just what the goal of the system is right now. It does encourage players in 1-2 man guilds to join a larger guild, but if they aren't interested in doing so they don't have to as the guilds with only 7 people will need to fill the slots and things like that.

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Q u o t e:


My concern centers more around small guilds who have formed alliances with other small guilds. Even if one of them does simply recuit a few extra players to rise up to that 7/10 requirement, it penalises the inter-guild co-operation with their (possibly former) allies, who are now reduced to merely bringing the 3 left over slots and making no advancement at all.

Can I turn this question around though Bornakk?

Who would be disadvantged by allowing two small guilds to share the guild advancement allowed by lowering the limit to 5/10? The same amount of achievement would be handed out, it is still promoting co-operation between players and it is still (largely) meeting the stated design goal of encouraging guild membership.

Larger guilds, be they 10 or 25 raider capable will still earn the achievements faster (indeed, much faster since they wouldn't have to split their gains with another guild); it just allows small guilds (many based on real life relationships) to dip their toe in the water as well.

Put another way Bornakk, two guilds could "conspire" to achieve exactly this - even with the current design - by swapping in and out 2 members of the raid after each boss. Why incentivize them into such "swapsies", when the system can be tweaked to do it automatically by splitting the gain?

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From my perspective, it doesn't promote either guild very well.

As a member I'd prefer to know/feel that it's my guild so when I achieve something we did it, not someone else. That is just speaking from how I feel as a player.

As I mentioned before, we are aware that this can and probably will shake things up a bit. Yeah, some guilds may merge, some may break up, etc. but we feel it will be better for the game as a whole to strengthen guilds.

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Q u o t e:

I do speak for me, never said I spoke for others. ;) I did say that Blizzard doesn't always do what the actual players want, which is true. I did say that those players should be asked what they wanted, to actually give them a voice rather than ignoring them.

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We welcome the voices. I'm here discussing things and providing my perspective on things and happily reading yours.

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Q u o t e:
However, the Blue speaks for Blizzard and stated they don't care for smaller guilds having to merge or disband because of this. So those players don't matter to Blizzard.

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I am not sure where you read this, but there is a big difference between understanding things will change and not caring about our players so I will try to spell this out as clearly as possible.

We care about all of our players. We consider many different factors before implementing new systems especially when they may affect a lot of our players. That said, we do have to design and implement what we feel is best for the game. As a random example off the top of my head, players tend to dislike nerfs, but if one class is ahead of others we will nerf that one class and not buff 9 others.

A lot of players are also afraid of change. Before they even test things out or while it's in an early stage, they will declare the world has imploded. (See talent tree changes.) None of this means we don't care about our players. We understand that things will get shaken up, this won't be the first time gets shaken up and it won't be last, but we still need to design things the way we feel they are best for the game. Players can either choose to try it out or avoid it in favor of their own style.

There may be an impact on the economy, there may be an impact on recruiting, there may be an impact on guild sizes - but the end result is likely to be very positive on the game. We aren't designing it to cripple solo players and I haven't seen anybody provide a valid example of this so far. We have made a lot of changes recently to help support both smaller and larger guilds and want players to feel special for being part of a cool guild in this multiplayer game. We are looking forward to testing this feature with the thousands and thousands of players who are (and will be) in the beta and make it the best it possibly can be for as many of our players as possible.

Okay, I started babbling in there, but hopefully that helps get the point across.

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Q u o t e:
so basically i can spend months helping a guild build up the guild level, leading raids, organizing bgs, grinding rep for countless hours on all my toons. i can farm for mats and make the guild bank thousands of gold. i can be the primary organizer of events, work my tail off getting us there as a guild, and my emo guild leader and i can have an argument one day and he can gkick me and i'm just out of luck with nothing to show for it? losing all of the benefits that i helped gain for his guild, which he gets to keep, including all the gold i earned for them? and all the huge benefits described below, all lost?

i for one welcome our guild leader overlords.

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If you are the type of player who is capable of working your tail off like that, there is likely another guild you can find that has a similar level of perks that will take you in and you just grind the rep (which doesn't sound too hard based on your playstyle) and you'll have them all again.

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Q u o t e:


Yes, people don't like nerfs. How often have nerfs lead to guilds having to merge or disband? Those are two completely different things.

If you want to reward larger guilds then give them cosmetic shinnies. A special item that simply gives them glowing flappy wings for a few seconds. Things like that. Instead you are giving them special game benfits.

"Yeah, some guilds may merge, some may break up, etc. but we feel it will be better for the game as a whole to strengthen guilds. " <-- Shows a blatant disregard for the guilds and it's players that you say you care for and want to strengthen. How are you taking them into account when you feel the game will be better even when it forces them to either merge or disband?

How does having small guilds either merge or disband make the game better?

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It is their choice to take these actions if they feel they want to progress faster as a guild instead of enjoy their smaller guild. The choice is yours. Lets also clarify that you can have a really small guild and be totally fine, it's mainly the 1-5 person "guilds" that may have the toughest choices but it's still up to them.

I see no blatant disregard for anybody happening here, I'm sorry to hear if that is your perception, but making guilds a stronger part of the game will probably be a very good thing so we are going to move forward with it.

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Q u o t e:
bornak how about the guild that will end up getting their coffers filled with money, and the gm and its officers are the only ones allowed to touch it. or the gm sees it as a good time to gdisband and takes the spoils. all too often i see this happen, and now with the new system those guild funds are going to swell and the average member will see no benefit from it.

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Rough things can happen in just about any situation but this one is new to me. If the guild funds are swelling, hopefully the leaders are being good leaders and providing repairs all the time and things like consumables. The goal is to make the guild stronger and not just provide bonuses for each individual player.

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Q u o t e:
ok so let me get this right .. you are going to kill pug raiding altogether. at the same time guilds that are lacking a few people to start a raid wont be able to find anyone to go raid with them as replacements since most people will only raid with their guild.

example 1 guild has 7 members show up to raid .. they need to find 3 people to complete a 10 man raid. where are they going to find 3 people who want to raid with them that dont mind that they are not getting any exp/guild points if they join that raid?

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-People who still won't want to bother with bigger guilds.
-People who are in another guild but missed their run for the week.
-Maybe the guild is actually really big and can get random peoples' alts from inside the guild.
-Another guild that has their points maxed out and don't care about the contribution.
-People in another guild that know their contribution will be small but want to get some runs in on their mains/alts for gear to better contribute in the future.

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I have no idea.

Break things out of the quote boxes if you want to discuss them.

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Q u o t e:

-People who still won't want to bother with bigger guilds.
Bigger guilds will die in Cataclysm due to the raid changes. Smaller 10 man guilds will be the norm.I actually think the guild perks are an attempt by Blizzard to counter the inevitable death of 25 man raiding.

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I see no reason bigger guilds will die. A lot of people will be focusing on 10 man guilds, but a guild of 50 people running 4ish dungeons is something a lot of people already do.

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Q u o t e:
-People who are in another guild but missed their run for the week.
Maybe....could happen on rare ocassions.

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I've seen it happen often on Sundays and Monday especially. Someone has an alt that missed their run, or someone missed the main run and an alt (or pug) filled that slot earlier.

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Q u o t e:
-Maybe the guild is actually really big and can get random peoples' alts from inside the guild.
Again...a maybe but very doubtful assuming only 7 players showed up in the given example.

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It depends on the group. I've been in some large guilds so the first place that is often checked to fill in spots is the guild itself.

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Q u o t e:
-Another guild that has their points maxed out and don't care about the contribution.
Will never happen.....ever.

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You are implying that reaching the max level of perks is going to be impossible? I assure you, it will not be impossible.

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Q u o t e:
-People in another guild that know their contribution will be small but want to get some runs in on their mains/alts for gear to better contribute in the future.
Pugs don't get gear in guild runs unless absolutely no other guildy wants it.

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All the runs I have done in the last couple of years have been open rolling with only special items reserved for guildies - like trinkets or something. I guess it depends on the people you run with and/or your realm a bit.

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Q u o t e:
I have no idea.
Probably should have just left it at this for the imposed irony. Would have been a great "lol" moment or a good signature for someone to swipe.

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What ideas did you have?

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Q u o t e:

I am implying that a maxed guild will never help another smaller guild just because the smaller guild doesn't have enough people to raid.

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Possible, but in my experience the player desire to gear up their character is a much stronger driving force than what may help another guild to some degree. As long as the guild is fairly progressed in the instance and will allow for a relatively gear clear of at least a couple of bosses people tend to be fine with it.

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Q u o t e:
My ideas? I would scrap the entire "guild perks" system. It's unnecessary and will cause much strife after implementation.

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Not a realistic request. Constructive feedback on what issues it will cause with ways to improve them would be much more helpful. :)

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Q u o t e:


Here is my constructive feedback:

Have the Blues stop saying the word "grind" when talking about a new feature.

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Talking to players tends to result in using player-terms. If you'd prefer I can instead say the wonderful and enjoyable adventure mechanic of gaining points for a reputation field. Or actually, what do you call it as I've only heard the term I used? :(

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Q u o t e:
bornakk,

i was excited about this until i read your comments today, so what you are saying is, that since i run my own guild by myself with me and some friends who play very sparingly, is that me pugging raids will not give my guild any points or rep or whatnot. I need to have at least 7/10?

So my guild will never progress, makes me a sad panda. I already did the big guild thing in vanilla, did the guild politicing and such, i got myself 5/9 when we were still 60.

I never want to go through any of that again, and what I am reading here is because of that my guild will never progress.

:(

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I said somewhere in here that there will be other ways to progress, but the final details haven't been nailed down (that I know of, I could be wrong.) I'd way to pass judgment until the system is fully functioning in the beta and provide feedback then.