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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsCataclysm: New 600-member hard cap imposed on guilds
by Fox Van Allen 
Oct 5th 2010 at 3:00AM
Blizzard was keenly aware of the problems that these large guilds suffered, promising earlier in the summer to address them for Cataclysm. Well, not-so-great news, members of giant mega guilds: Blizzard is effectively throwing in the towel on large guilds and imposing a hard cap of 600 members effective the moment patch 4.0.1 goes live.
While the official blue post by Mumper says this will have no effect on 99.9 percent of guilds, this move could effectively devastate the remaining 0.1 percent. The full text is available after the break.
Guild Member Caps for CataclysmWe will be introducing a new, hard cap of 600 members in a single guild for Cataclysm. This function will go live with patch 4.0.1 and is already live on the beta and PTR's.
As most of you already know, we have supported a soft cap of 500 members in a guild since World of Warcraft launched. We have allowed guilds to exceed the 500 limit up until now since being in a guild really just amounted to ranks and chat channels. With the advent of the new guild system in Cataclysm we are tracking many more things on each individual player in a guild and in order to support that, we need to limit the amount of members to a reasonable level.
The new cap of 600 members is fully supported in the new guild system and that means that everyone will be visible in the ui and able to contribute to all guild functions like experience and reputation gain. We have pulled a large number of statistics to get to the 600 member cap for guilds and we are happy to say that this value covers more than 99.9% of all the active guilds in World of Warcraft.
The small number of guilds that are over the 600 person cap will be able to keep their guilds intact (and fully supported in the new guild system), but they will not be able to add new members until they fall below the 600 member cap.
As most of you already know, we have supported a soft cap of 500 members in a guild since World of Warcraft launched. We have allowed guilds to exceed the 500 limit up until now since being in a guild really just amounted to ranks and chat channels. With the advent of the new guild system in Cataclysm we are tracking many more things on each individual player in a guild and in order to support that, we need to limit the amount of members to a reasonable level.
The new cap of 600 members is fully supported in the new guild system and that means that everyone will be visible in the ui and able to contribute to all guild functions like experience and reputation gain. We have pulled a large number of statistics to get to the 600 member cap for guilds and we are happy to say that this value covers more than 99.9% of all the active guilds in World of Warcraft.
The small number of guilds that are over the 600 person cap will be able to keep their guilds intact (and fully supported in the new guild system), but they will not be able to add new members until they fall below the 600 member cap.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 9)
Verethrine Oct 5th 2010 5:13PM
When I said "access" I meant just post in. I was tired. I had no problem accessing it to read it.
And the point with it being posted at 3: It was announced late in the day when most normal people are sleeping. whether it was 11pm Pacific or 3am Eastern, it's late at night.
And, my conclusion it won't last long isn't based on facts, just the feeling I get when I read about it.
Justification. Whether it's wanted/needed or not.
Lorne Oct 5th 2010 4:44AM
Don't forget about the truly massive guilds like either. This sucks.
Lorne Oct 5th 2010 4:45AM
Bah, didnt realise that putting the brackets around the guild name would make it disappear. Taint is the guild im referring to.
Harley Oct 5th 2010 5:04AM
Taint was already split into around 10 raiding and social guilds before the hard cap was removed last time, so I think it will survive. It's just annoying more than anything.
Jenny Oct 5th 2010 4:48AM
Why don't those affected guild leaders just take another level of the advanced corp management skills? Oh wait I'm thinking of Eve Online.
obarthelemy Oct 5th 2010 5:02AM
setup an alt's guild, link their chats with g2g (guild 2 guild). what's the problem ?
plus, you're misrepresenting the fact that larger guild wil NOT be cut, just unable to recruit even more.
Whiny FUD much ?
Cthulu Oct 5th 2010 5:27AM
This prevents mega guilds from selling spots to single players for guild rewards. Effectively capping the amount of people in guilds. Not a big deal for 99% of the people really. Mega guilds were already like small monopolies anyway and that defies the object of blizzard having guilds to begin with.
The points about dropping inactive members/alts..would really fix a lot of these issues.
Rufio Oct 5th 2010 6:28AM
^ Exactly.
Skoteinos Oct 5th 2010 5:40AM
I would still like to see a way for two guilds to form an alliance. I understand they want to encourage us to join large guilds and stop having so many private guilds running around for bank alts and the like, but with this they're sending a sort of mixed message. We want you in a big guild, but not one that's -too- big. Which I also understand, or we would only have one or two guilds per server.
What I want to see is a guild alliance option that allows a smaller guild to ally with a larger and both share in the achievements and benefits while still having separate guild channels, banks and members. There should be an inter-guild chat, but optional. Some of us prefer smaller guilds with friends and simply don't want to put up with the drama of a huge guild full of strangers. Those folks who prefer the smaller guilds and who actually treat them as guilds should have some sort of option to befriend another one so that they can reach some of the benefits they may not be able to on their own.
This would be limited to one alliance per guild, of course, but beyond helping out a smaller guild this would also be a good way for those with over 600 players to create a sister guild that is more part of the larger guild than just a shared channel. It's a thought anyway.
Sleutel Oct 5th 2010 8:46AM
I don't think there will ever be a problem with there only being one or two guilds per server. It's a good hypothetical, but it's clearly disproven by the evidence we have right in front of us: only a tiny percentage of players belong to megaguilds of over 600 members.
There's no valid reason to disallow players from guilding with as many or as few other people as they please. The playerbase has found its own natural balance of guild sizes--and now Blizzard is ripping that away because they don't want to take the time to fix something that they didn't bother to make work right in the first place.
N-train Oct 5th 2010 9:43AM
I like your idea, but I think it should be made clear that (at least it looks to me) Blizzard is imposing this cap for more a technical reason than a "we don't want you in one of the 15 super-guilds that exist" reason.
"new guild system in Cataclysm we are tracking many more things on each individual player in a guild and in order to support that, we need to limit the amount of members to a reasonable level."
Could they also not want people leeching off super-guilds or filling up small guilds with meaningless alts for the sake of achievements or rewards? Sure, but I do think its worth noting that they didn't really take issue with guilds going over the cap until the new system, and probably anything over 600 people is too draining on the system.
Bouncing Gnome Oct 5th 2010 6:13AM
I've heard rumours that Blizz are introducing an in-build feature to the guild roster that lets you automatically see which characters belong to the same account. But I've heard very little about this, despite it seeming to be so massively useful.
Here's the question: *if* they are implementing an in-game link between alts then could they set the guild cap to be at 600 accounts, rather than 600 characters? I'm assuming that they want to introduce the cap because the number-crunchers were having difficulty when 600+ people were levelling and getting guild points at the same time. But this problem wouldn't be an issue with alts, as a player can only play one characters at a time.
Hope that makes sense.
Matt Oct 5th 2010 10:32AM
Well, /ginfo displays information on the number of characters and accounts in your guild, so your idea wouldn't be much of a stretch. They already can differentiate between the two.
dsouthall Oct 5th 2010 6:52AM
Easy, split them in 600 member guilds with similar names "Vision 1" "Vision 2" etc and use an addon such as guild to guild to link all the guild chats together.
Wildstaff Oct 5th 2010 6:56AM
Only one guild I know of will be affected by this and that's the WHU though they already have about 12 different guilds so im guessing it wont be too much of a loss
Draelan Oct 5th 2010 2:22PM
Perhaps I'm missing something, but since when does WHU have that many sub-guilds?
I know there's WHU, which is all the Dwarf Hunters. I know there's the Dead Hunter Society, which started off as DK alts to help fund WHU, but now accepts all kinds of members...
Are you thinking of guilds like Wyrmfoe (the raiding guild Frostheim is in, I believe), and the guilds other key officers have high level characters in? If so, I wouldn't consider those as WHU sub-guilds unless they were specifically created to house WHU guild members/supplies...
Of course, it's entirely possible I'm missing something here...
Sam Oct 5th 2010 7:38PM
I don't think there are twelve yet, but there's WHU (baby hunters), DHS (alts), and then a bunch of profession guilds- alch/herb, skinning/lw, etc. I believe there are five profession guilds, but I don't remember off the top of my head.
BlackTiger™ Oct 5th 2010 7:53AM
90% of guild members usually are someone's alts or off-liners.
And because "Cata" will make 25 people raids obsolete then there is not need for "large" quilds anymore. If people are using guild to "socialyze" then they have even bigger problems then they think they have.
mechabahamut Oct 5th 2010 8:25AM
I disagree with your "f people are using guild to "socialyze" then they have even bigger problems then they think they have."
MMOs are for socializing, for that's the point of what an online game is. If you don't like socializing, you need to go back to one player games, or at least accept that's what people do on online games. Communication between players is a vast majority of what makes up an MMO.
BlackTiger™ Oct 5th 2010 8:39AM
Until it begins to replace a real life.
"Internet Friend" (mmos, "social networks" etc) is empty expression. Meaningless and pointless , but very useful for marketing purposes. "time is money, friend!". people spending their time pretending they have a lot of "friends" makes even more money.