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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficers' Quarters: Cataclysm's guild revamp -- leveling and talents
by Scott Andrews 
Aug 31st 2009 at 2:00PM
Last week I talked about the massive guild overhaul unveiled at BlizzCon, and the impact these changes would have on guilds, for better or worse. This week I'd like to delve into the leveling system and guild talents. (I'll cover achievements and guild currency in a separate column later.)Currently we know that guilds will level up as players participate in the following:
- Boss kills
- Rated battlegrounds and arenas
- Leveling professions
- Increasing faction reputations
One other factor I'd like see contribute to guild leveling is player achievements. Many of them, particularly for Heroic dungeons and raiding, are very difficult to get without a solid guild. Aside from a few vanity items along the way, there's no great reward for racking up a ton of achievement points. Yet, well-designed achievements (i.e., not the exploring or holiday achievements) demonstrate mastery of various aspects of the game. Shouldn't your guild be rewarded for having such players? Besides, it never hurts to give players more incentive to go out and /love some squirrels.
Currently, we have no idea how long it will take the average guild to level. I'd like to see a very slow leveling curve for guilds. It would be a disappointment if a guild could ding max level in just a few months. A level-20 guild should really stand out as a long-lived and accomplished guild. I'd be ecstatic if it took as long as a year or more to hit max guild level.
Once you reach that point, a guild should stand out visually from other guilds, either with new tabards that look very different from regular tabards, or some other type of heraldry. It should be immediately apparent that you belong to a highly successful, max-level guild.
Of course, the talents should be a big reward for your time investment as well. Let's look at the possible talents mentioned at BlizzCon:
- Remove reagent requirements for raid-wide buffs (Apply this to pally buffs, too, please!)
- Gold from experience- or honor-earning targets increased by 10%
- Repair bills reduced by 10%
- Summon your entire raid
- Mass resurrection
These talents all make sense. They're simple and expected, and many guild will take them.
Here are more talents that I'd like to see.
- A small speed boost for mounted players: Riding Crops for everyone!
- Increased reputation gains: It's always been the most grindy aspect of the game. Why not cut down on some of the tedium?
- Increased daily quest cap: Five more quests wouldn't be a huge deal.
- More items per node from gathering professions and fishing or increased chances of rare items from gathering professions and fishing: I think it's a good idea to support the people who spend time farming mats.
- Guild bulletin board: I'm not asking for a guild hall. Any type of housing has been firmly nixed by Blizzard, so I won't ask for it. But as part of the bank, a bulletin board to post guild news and screenshots would be very helpful. The board could also advertise items people need or can make. The board could have interactive functionality so that if someone makes a request, you can click on that request with the necessary items in your inventory, and your items will be mailed to them. Doing so will earn guild experience.
- New perks for each class: One talent could give new buffs, abilities, or other perks to all 10 classes. These perks wouldn't be something to increase your raid performance, but rather something for convenience or vanity. For example, there could be a Totem of Underwater Breathing that would apply this normally single-target buff to your group. Mages could get a group buff for Amplify Magic. Hunters could tame a unique type of pet or get a new visual effect for their shots. Druids could get new hair color options that match the guild tabard. Speaking of tabards . . .
- Add gem sockets to your tabard that hold a new type of guild gem, purchasable with guild currency. These gems wouldn't add raw stats, but would instead increase the guild experience that you earn for specific activities. For example, one type of gem would add 10% more guild experience for profession gains. Or they could enhance a perk obtained from other talents, like 12% more gold from enemies rather than 10%. Either way, it would be great to provide a reason to wear the guild tabard. Between reputation-gain tabards and now teleport tabards, guild tabards are looking pretty lackluster these days.
- Increased player experience/honor gain: I could see people joining guilds for faster leveling and then leaving as soon as they ding 85. Or joining till they can grind out their max-level PvP trinket. Reputation gains aren't as critical as these two methods of player advancement, so I don't see people abusing the system for that, but they can and will abuse it for leveling or honor farming.
- Extra loot or extra badges from bosses: Again, this type of player advancement is too critical to allow it to be modified by guild talents. A talent like this would torpedo new or struggling guilds.
- Access to unique content: I'm torn on this one, but ultimately I feel like it would be bad for the game. Blizzard has tended toward making the vast majority of content available to most players in the last expansion, and I believe that's a good thing. For bosses like Algalon, guilds should have to earn it through hard modes, not by leveling.
WoW.com offers a plethora of information on guild leadership and guild membership. Be sure to check out Scott Andrew's Weekly Column Officer's Quarters and keep an eye on the community with Mike Schramm's Guildwatch.How do you think guild leveling should work? What talents would you like to see? What talents don't you want to see? Tell us below!
/salute
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Cyrus Aug 31st 2009 3:00PM
"Blizzard has been very specific on the fact that none of the guild talents will have ANY effect on raid performance WHATSOEVER. Anything that is raid related is only for convenience, like the mass-rez or mass-summon, etc."
That's too bad, really. I wouldn't want such a system to be overpowered or overly complicated, of course, but it seems like it should be possible to incorporate SOME alterations to performance into guild talents. A guild progressing through new content or working on hard modes might want the repair cost reductions and mass resurrections, for example, while a guild with all current raid content on farm might prefer a flat 5 percent dps increase to get their weekly farming done a little more smoothly. A pvp-focused guild might forego the raid performance entirely and take a bonus to each character's crit and/or resilience.
Blizzard would have to be careful to ensure that none of this is overpowered or essential, but it wouldn't be inherently and inevitably the case, so the system has potential.
jbodar Sep 1st 2009 3:25AM
The whole point is not to give higher level guilds any "combat" advantage. Anything as good as +crit or +resilience would quickly become "par" for PvP, thereby putting anyone in a less-advanced or even multi-focused guilds at an automatic disadvantage. That alone would tear guilds apart -- gods help you if you're (gasp) guildless. That's why these are all for convenience sake, like portable mailboxes and repair bots. Guild talents should not be as cookie cutter as everything else, IMO. They are the icing, not the cake itself.
Urobach Aug 31st 2009 3:07PM
When it it comes to guild hoppers, its just bad, REALLY BAD.
But who's to say that Blizzard can't add something to the Inspect panel that tells their previous, and if so many, how many in a set amount of time.
Lets say 1 year, given a player has been playing that long, has been in 2 diiferent guilds, both similar, 6 months each, it'd then be up to the GM of the guild to question the recruitee about their reasons for leaving those guildd, and then they could decide if they are trustworthy or not.
Cydonian Aug 31st 2009 3:07PM
I think the wish-list is a bit over the top: speed boosts, higher reputation gains, more dailies = more gold, even more gold from gathering profession advantages from the aforementioned speed boost and higher drop rates from nodes/herbs,... let alone unique class skills.
That all sounds like a lot of fun, but keep in mind not everyone will be in a level 20 guild, and these are some serious advantages, especially when you consider the sum total of them. I don't think these kinds of advantages should be as restricted, especially when it comes to time- and gold-saving advantages like speed boosts or gold income from professions. It's already bad enough that powerful speed boosts are now restricted to 2 classes - Paladins and Death Knights - and that 2-3 professions are many times more profitable than all the others.
The non-vanity top-guild advantages would be better if restricted to advantages only available during actual guild activities, akin to the the mass resurrection, mass summon/teleport, lower repair costs from raids, higher gold gains from raid kills, Crusader type Auras for the guild-leader(s)... etc. with the 24/7 advantages for individual players being limited to vanity items like epic tabards, pets, mounts, buy-able with some form of individual guild currency that guilds could distribute to their players based on their performance.
turtlehead Sep 1st 2009 1:59AM
Totally with you except for Crusader style aura for GL. I'm against any GL specific bonus actually. (Not liking this PuG leader bonus talk one bit either.) Being a GL is an often thankless task--I'm never doing it again--but in reality the GL may or may not be actually doing the bulk of the work.
Charlie Aug 31st 2009 3:40PM
More items per node from gathering professions and fishing or increased chances of rare items from gathering professions and fishing: I think it's a good idea to support the people who spend time farming mats.
Or rather:
Gives the gatherer a chance to get extra materials from nodes, those extra materials are immediatley deposited in the guild bank.
So it would work just like the % more gold from bosses -> Guild Bank idea.
Honestly i wish they would do that across the board. Elxir masters can have a "guild" proc, that they may proc potions that go straight to the guild bank (and can only be used by guildies, i think they had that in there too), same with Disenchants & Gems (though those would be lower, and much lower rates respectively). Maybe hte same for Milling, since i don't really know how inscription would work in there.
Edge Aug 31st 2009 4:20PM
I like it, but I hope they give us another bottomless guild tab cause that sucker would fill up pretty quick methinks, especially in a large guild. It wouldn't be bad if it was bottomless because that tab can only be filled through farming, not used for storage of anything else.
Estal Aug 31st 2009 3:41PM
It would be nice if there were a way to make some talent points/achievements retroactive. Putting a guild that has been strong and steady since day 1 at the same point as a guild that was started yesterday feels kind of wrong.
Then again, all the guilds are at the same spot now anyway without the system.
Also, maybe instead of some talents being affected by rank, they could be affected by guild loyalty, as in how long a character has been in the guild and such. Makes guild hopping a little less desirable by awarding long-term members, not necessarily just officers.
Edge Aug 31st 2009 4:14PM
I want to see a guild profession shop. Every person in the guild posts their profession to a sort of bulletin board, and the board compiles them all and creates one link for the entire guild for that profession that shows what your guild is capable of making, and maybe it can check to see what mats are available in the guild bank as well. Then if someone wants something, they place an order for an item (and can add the mats to the order as well), and a mail is sent to the highest leveled professional of that profession asking if they are willing and able to make said item (if the mats are available in guild bank and you have enough permission to remove those items, the items could be sent attached and sent as well). Maybe the mail could be prioritized to be sent to anyone who is able to make it who has that item in red on their recipe list, and move down from their to yellow and then green, until the only person available to make the item has it in gray. The person receiving the mail would then hit an accept or decline button, and should it be declined, it can be sent to the next person following priority until someone makes it. If no one makes it, then the request times out.
I think this would be especially useful for Cataclysm since everyone and their mothers will be leveling alts come time for the new expansion, and they would love to have some nice craftables to level in. Not only that but it would make leveling professions a little more useful to your guild.
Jon Do Aug 31st 2009 4:37PM
So will there be setting for "raiding guild" or "PvP guild"?
"10-man raiding guild"?
"Leveling / casual guild" ?
It seems to me that many guilds, especially small ones, meet a rather narrow set of parameters.
Can a guild select a specialization rather than to be expected to try to excel at things they have no interest in -- kind of like the fact that if your toon ignores certain classes of character achievements (like PvP or raiding) you don't really lose much of anything?
For example, a leveling guild might be rewarded for number of levels gained, or lower-level instances run. But if they are not rewarded, then Blizz is pretty much saying "the game begins at 85".
Ethan Sep 2nd 2009 3:32PM
Personally I would like to see the bulliten board as well, it would help accomidate players of different hours. however i would like to disagree with bit about exp + talent, it would help, but that is only if it doesnt stack with heirloom items, heirlooms are a godsend when it comes to leveling but for people with new accounts that doesnt help and the treck from 1-80 is tedious. I would personally like to see a talent that reduces the Cooldowns of things like Titansteel, or the transmutes for eye of zul. Or something that makes professions easier to do. I know that they are revamping the profession so that if you can make 5 of these things or 1 of those things and you choose the one you will get the 5 points, but maybe something that helps with the mats? less mats or a higher mat drop rate. like 2 leathers per skin, or 1.5x ore or 1.5x herbs gathered.
dick11 Aug 31st 2009 4:48PM
Lets hope that no retroactive reputation will be given to guilds :
"Guild looking for new members exalted with this, that and the other faction. Others need not apply"
or
"I'll join your guild for 5000 gold. I'm exalted with 30 different factions"
BebopFox Aug 31st 2009 4:52PM
I would love for them to add in a guild hall ability (even though they've stated against it) as it would not be difficult at all. Guild Wars did a pretty good job with their setup of guild halls (basic ones purchasable via 10gold and better ones available via pvp-rank standings). This would give Blizzard an excuse to use their beloved phasing since you would only need to make a few small locations (or just inside-castles) for people to choose from then, depending on what guild they are in, they are phased to their own specific castle.
christian_588 Aug 31st 2009 5:00PM
Wow blizz. guild talents.. stupidest thing ever... but the happy idiots will like it tho ;)
Burntpepperoni Aug 31st 2009 5:05PM
I think one thing they should do as a reward is a guild standard. Something that is unique to each guild (designed like a tabard) but which also makes it VERY clear that it's a max level guild that's being represented.
I can just see someone tossing out the standard in a BG and upon seeing it the opposing team just bugs out.
Although that's probably just my imagination running amok again.
Tildy Aug 31st 2009 5:06PM
It may be that in general exploration and holiday achievements do not require as much group coordination or individual player skill, but those achievements appeal to a subset of players and I believe that Blizzard does well to cater to both the hardcore and casual player subtypes. They could do it without using achievements, but this was a method that they chose to aim at casual players as well. I'm sure they have their reasons.
Darkfyre Aug 31st 2009 9:14PM
After reading the article I think it is important to point out that while a lot of this information was discussed, the basic ideas behind them were the main point that the devs wanted to make. For example, I was rather startled when I read that Blizzard intends to give each guild 20 levels. There was no mention of what the devs said before or after this comment was made. I attended the panel where this information was discussed and the developers made it quite clear that they were not set on any of the numbers they were using. The concept they were quite clear on introducing was that they did not want larger guilds to progress faster through guild levels than a smaller one. They were merely using the number (20) to explain the concept that they intend to implement. Dissappointingly enough, there doesn't seem to be enough emphasis on this in the article. The way that the article is written is what contributes to the community storming the forums when the changes are implemented demanding to know why the original 'promise' was not kept. While the numbers are accurate and the concepts are explained, it would be usefull to note to non-attendees that the numbers were not set in stone.
John Aug 31st 2009 5:34PM
I like the idea of standing out at level 20. One idea would be to give out Guild Banners to guilds that reach level 20.
These banners would act exactly like the banners offered by the various factions of the Argent Tournament. And (unlike the current banners) your guild name would either appear in the tooltip or over the banner. The banner design would be a larger version of your guild tabard.
Zepho Aug 31st 2009 6:53PM
I agree with the columnist on the things that shouldn't come with guild ranks. Hopefully Blizzard also sees the wisdom in this. I disagree with the columnist on his last point, though. Guild rank shouldn't have an impact on guild talents. Most guilds use ranks mostly for guild bank access. Guild ranks would be much more complicated if guild talents were tied into it as well.
Also, I'd like to avoid guild officers from being better than other guild members because of better guild talents. That's setting some guilds up for disaster.
And finally, if the whole guild has to work together to achieve guild ranks and guild talents, then the whole guild should enjoy those benefits. If the intention is to prevent players from switching guilds all the time, then a time-based restriction would serve the purpose much better. New guild members, for example, wouldn't get the full benefits of or full access to guild talents for two weeks.
I'm quite excited to see all the ideas Blizzard comes up with. It will be great to finally have the guild experience updated!
Amaxe Aug 31st 2009 6:44PM
"For example, there could be a Totem of Underwater Breathing that would apply this normally single-target buff to your group. "
Totems have a limited range, so really what good would that be?