GuildOx implements 10-man strict rankings
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 8th 2009 at 5:00PM
What is that criteria? You won't be allowed to earn any Coliseum normal kills or Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills. You are still allowed to PuG those fights, though the limit is 10 players over time, or five in the same fight (in other words, if 10 players of your guild accomplish a kill in 25-man Coliseum, or five of them do it in the same raid, you're off the 10-man strict list). That's designed to make sure that the list stays as clean as possible. You'll have to watch recruits, too -- anyone who enters your guild with a certain achievement has it counted towards that total of 10 players as well. All the other info you need to know about the listings are over in their FAQ.
Players may find other ways around the limit (there is, of course, higher level gear now available from Emblems that 10-player guilds are still able to get), but for now, that's where GuildOx is putting the limit, so if you want to stay on the list, follow their rules. Good luck to all of the strictly 10-man guilds out there.
Filed under: Ranking, Fan stuff, Realm Status, Guilds, Raiding, Bosses, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Z Sep 8th 2009 5:06PM
They've been offering this for awhile now, and I'm glad for it, although I expect you'll receive not a few comments about how 10-mans don't count or whatever.
Valt Sep 8th 2009 5:07PM
I like this! Most sites that list guilds only take 25mans for some odd reason. Like in our server we are doing pretty well on 10man but we are kinda lagging behind on charts because 1) We dont do 25mans if its not pug once 3 months and 2) All 25man guilds steamroll 10mans with full 25man gear (example 25man with hardmode gear doing 10man hardmodes which are bit easier than they are meant to be for that level). Thumbs up for GuildOx!
tutti Sep 8th 2009 5:08PM
We had already gone past the limit by the time we became aware of the upcoming change =/
tutti Sep 8th 2009 5:13PM
*sigh* Meant to post more, hit the add button too early.
The 10-man strict rankings have been around for a while, previously the requirements were to have less than 9 25-man progress achievements in the guild. A progress achievement was such things as clearing a raid, or hard modes, and the guild had the achievement if 18 individual players, or 10 individual players at the same time, had the achievement.
We were rising rather fast and approaching the upper part of the list when we became aware of the change to these much harsher terms to remain a strict 10-man guild. At that point, we had already reached 10 people having killed the Northrend beasts on 25-man difficulty, and now we've lost our strict status without having a chance to do anything about it. If GuildOx announced this, they didn't do a very good job of it.
Juice Sep 8th 2009 5:37PM
I completely agree. How is killing a few bosses on 25 normal progress? It's easy enough to pug, and doesn't help THAT much. Just easy loot that any 10m guild can pug out to get.
Lagavulin Sep 9th 2009 9:19AM
Same here. Five people in our 10-man guild pugged a 25-man normal Beasts, and we're disqualified. (We have maybe two or three 25-man achievements in total.) Meanwhile, a dozen mediocre 25-man guilds, each having cleared all of 25-man Ulduar, shoot to the top of the list.
"Strict 10 man guild" = "Crappy 25 man guild" on Guildox right now.
SmokeTheBear Sep 8th 2009 5:25PM
I love this. It's about time.
CiM Sep 8th 2009 5:32PM
They did announce it in advance, around the time 3.2 hit. Nevertheless it is a great shame for those guilds that are disqualified on the basis of a stray 25-man PUG kill, as there's nothing that can be done about it and yet there's no similar risk for 25-man guilds - who can tear through 10-man raids with no "penalty" and get all the extra gear, experience, achievements and emblems which are of benefit both to their 25-man progress and their egos.
Somewhat more upsetting is those guilds disqualified on the basis of 10-manning the 25-man version of Flame Leviathan+towers for extra emblems of conquest prior to 3.2.
CiM Sep 8th 2009 5:33PM
This was meant to be a reply to tutti, but I guess activating enough NoScript permissions to allow me to reply undid the threading. Whoops.
CiM Sep 8th 2009 6:11PM
My mistake, the GuildOx author just confirmed that 25-man FL+1 is not counted as a 25-man hard mode kill for the purposes of strict 10-man rankings.
Areck Sep 8th 2009 5:34PM
While overall I think this is a good idea, I do see a problem making this distinction given that there are very few achievements in Coliseum raids to truly identify members running the 25-man content. In both Naxx and Ulduar, there are many achievements along the way that distinguishes what players are running 10-man content versus 25-man content. This is simply not the case with Coliseum raids. Accordingly, it is very likely that members of guilds that claim to be strict 10-man progression will be running around with 25-man Coliseum gear. I also have to wonder how many PUGs are going to bail on the Anub fight just to avoid the achievement which would risk their guilds strict 10-man status.
polar Sep 8th 2009 6:47PM
GuildOx has a special trigger for a 25m Northrend Beasts normal kill that will exclude the 25man guilds. They won't have the luxury of being able to game the system by bailing before an Anub'arak kill.
Areck Sep 8th 2009 7:29PM
I'm just wondering how GuildOx will actually do this since they rely upon achievements to track progress. There is no achievement for simply killing the Northrend Beasts - just for killing them under certain circumstances (Upper Back Pain, Not One, But Two Jormungars).
thatguy Sep 8th 2009 5:47PM
To all the QQ'ers: How would you suggest strict ranking be done? Seems like they came up with a creative solution to a problem no one else has dealt with.
CiM Sep 8th 2009 6:06PM
I think 10 man guilds already feel like unrecognised underdogs, which for most of us is just fine. But when someone sets out to deliberately recognise those unrecognised guilds and ends up lumping half of them in at the bottom end of a scale shared with their more illustrious 25-man cousins, it feels worse than not being recognised at all.
Still, GuildOx is a great site and has done a great job. Hopefully they'll tweak the ratings system again soon in a way that's less punitive to some of the genuine 10-man guilds, and doesn't leave some "bad" 25-man guilds looking like good 10-man guilds. Not because it matters, but because that's what GuildOx *wants to do*. To which I say, good for them.
Daigeil Sep 8th 2009 5:54PM
All this change does, to my mind, is make bad 25-man guilds - who can't manage TotC-25 or Ulduar-25HM, but who -can- use what Ulduar-25 gear they've gathered to flatten 10-man content - show up as 10-man guilds. It sucks. The previous system quite clearly split the two. Now my server's rankings have 5 or 6 shitty 25-man guilds showing up as 10-man strict because of this. It's frustrating in the extreme.
I'm not saying that a shitty 25-man guild is good enough to clear the harder 10-man content playing on a level field, I'm saying that a shitty 25-man guild is good enough to clear the harder 10-man content with a severe leg up from the massively bigger iLevel 226 loot pool available to them. It's damned annoying.
Iratio Sep 8th 2009 6:13PM
Its a feel-good for non 25 man raiding guilds. They can't please everyone with their chosen criteria, but the criteria should be okay for most 10 man raiding guilds on any given realm.
How could they improve upon it? Good question don't you think?
As for shitty- 25 mans, they prob. don't even care about their strict 10 man rank.
polar Sep 8th 2009 6:43PM
The 'shitty 25man guilds' will be removed from the strict rankings once they down Northrend Beasts on normal mode. There is no public achievement listed for this but GuildOx will be knocking them out once they do this. I would expect these guilds will be capable of getting a Northrend Beasts normal 25m kill if they can manage to get through Ulduar on 25man.
Eraser Sep 8th 2009 6:51PM
I'm from a guild who has no real competitors (10man) server wise and we use this to compete with ourselves. It's a great tool for motivating everyone into raiding.
Just a couple of things to point out though:
- if you're guild is pugging 25man, then you have access to better gear not available in 10mans, hence you can be lumped in the same category of 25s. Wouldn't be fair if you're walking around in full 25man gear claiming to be a 10man only guild.
- Emblems of conquest were available to 10mans prior 3.2 if they were able to do ulduar hardmodes. (I for one was pretty miffed at the change, mainly because we worked so hard for our conquest emblems then blizz decided to give them away like candy D: ).
- All items from emblems of triumph, emblems of conquest are the same ilevel as Heroic Call of the Grand Crusade (10man), and hard mode ulduar(10man) respectively.
Boomtilloom Sep 9th 2009 1:29AM
My guild (From Chaos-Suramar-US) was #1 world on this list for almost 3 months before the recent change bumped us. I understand why the change was made, and to an extent agree with it. My only complaint was that 10-man guilds ( as in guilds with 10 raiders who raid 10 mans as a guild) who are really progression focused are naturally going to want to min/max their characters and pugging 25-man super easy normal mode content is a good way to do that. That's obviously not 10-strict gear wise, but there should be some differentiation between a guild like us that had a few members that pug 25's and a 25-man progression guild that farms hard modes of the previous tier, then takes their top-10 heroic 25 geared players and steamrolls the 10-man content. It seems to me the latter is really behind the intent of a 10-man only ladder, but you have to draw the line in the sand somewhere I guess.