Cataclysm: Guild cap revised, now 1,000 members
by Mathew McCurley 
Oct 8th 2010 at 10:00PM
While there are not a huge amount of guilds that go over the 1,000-player limit, those multitudes of players came out in anger over Blizzard's decision to set a hard cap. Now, with that cap raised, these guilds may potentially fall under the new rules, keeping their organizations intact. Hit the jump for the full announcement.
Bashiok -- Guild members capped in 4.0.1We previously announced in the Cataclysm Beta forums that we'd be enforcing a 600 guild member cap with patch 4.0.1. We've reevaluated what we believe the realms are capable of supporting and instead will be enforcing a guild member hard cap of 1,000 members. This means that guilds with more than 1,000 members will no longer be able to invite new members until they drop below the cap. For example, if a guild has 1,500 members they'll be able to continue as-is, playing and earning guild achievements for as long as they choose, through Cataclysm and beyond, but they will not be able to add new members until they fall below the 1,000 member cap. If a guild has fewer than 1,000 members, they won't be able to add members above that number.
This new guild cap is being enforced for several reasons, but they all factor into a need to control guild sizes in light of the new guild systems, including guild leveling and achievements. Previously, adding players to a guild was as simple as adding people to a chat channel. While approximately 500 members were visible in the UI, there was no real need to limit guild size. That is no longer the case. Guild leveling in Cataclysm features unified progression powered by a series of complex systems that track the contributions of all guild members. The larger the guild, the bigger the impact on these systems. We found it necessary to determine a maximum guild size to ensure continued performance now and into the future.
We want to reassure the few guilds that this does impact that they have ample time to plan and rearrange their guilds as they see fit. While this hard cap will go into effect with 4.0.1, guilds should feel safe rearranging members as necessary up to the release of Cataclysm on December 7 when the guild leveling system goes into effect. There will be no impact on guild leveling progression before then. If a guild were to disband after Cataclysm, or a group of people were to leave and start a new guild, they would lose the time and experience they previously contributed and potentially extend the amount of time it would take to regain the new guild perks.
While some players have used options including mods and custom chat channels to support large player and guild alliances that number multiple thousands, groups of that size aren't ideally suited to our design philosophy. As always, we're continually looking into adding new features to help facilitate guild management, scheduling, and player communication.
This new guild cap is being enforced for several reasons, but they all factor into a need to control guild sizes in light of the new guild systems, including guild leveling and achievements. Previously, adding players to a guild was as simple as adding people to a chat channel. While approximately 500 members were visible in the UI, there was no real need to limit guild size. That is no longer the case. Guild leveling in Cataclysm features unified progression powered by a series of complex systems that track the contributions of all guild members. The larger the guild, the bigger the impact on these systems. We found it necessary to determine a maximum guild size to ensure continued performance now and into the future.
We want to reassure the few guilds that this does impact that they have ample time to plan and rearrange their guilds as they see fit. While this hard cap will go into effect with 4.0.1, guilds should feel safe rearranging members as necessary up to the release of Cataclysm on December 7 when the guild leveling system goes into effect. There will be no impact on guild leveling progression before then. If a guild were to disband after Cataclysm, or a group of people were to leave and start a new guild, they would lose the time and experience they previously contributed and potentially extend the amount of time it would take to regain the new guild perks.
While some players have used options including mods and custom chat channels to support large player and guild alliances that number multiple thousands, groups of that size aren't ideally suited to our design philosophy. As always, we're continually looking into adding new features to help facilitate guild management, scheduling, and player communication.
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Amaxe Oct 9th 2010 11:36AM
67% of all statistics are made up.
/duck
Crowqueen Oct 9th 2010 5:32AM
Interesting that even WoWInsider's leading-question poll was 6 to 1 against anything being an issue yet you still claim the reaction was "harsh". While I think it's good Blizzard listens to the community, this was really not a huge stink.
Lillyxrielle Oct 9th 2010 6:14AM
Full heartedly agreed.
But then again the reporting on WoW Insider about matters concerning them has been anything but accurate and impartial for the past 2 years or so, so it's to be expected. Apart from WoW Insider and a few forum threads here and there I haven't really seen much in the way of harsh feedback about the matter.
The 'outcry' over this matter has been pale in comparison to some of the class changes, the casual/hardcore debate and the big one itself - real ID.
Brett Porter Oct 9th 2010 9:57AM
lolwut?
So because WoW Insider reports on something that impacts more than a few people in the game, and they happen to be included in this group of people that are impacted, their reporting is somehow tainted? I've never seen the reporting from the IcftB folks slanted, only that Robin has said, you know what let's avoid this hassle and fix it now ourselves.
No where has anyone said this is the end of the world for us, or let's go get some torches and pitchforks; all we said is, well that sucks, would be nice if it's higher (especially since 600 seemed like such a random number anyways) but we'll deal with it.
So we deal with it and you're complaining that it was a "huge stink?" I'm glad that Blizzard is helping out those that are affected, and again, just because you aren't, doesn't mean that others aren't. For example, I didn't care about the Real ID situation, but I didn't it wasn't important because it didn't affect me.
Sheesh...
Ice Oct 9th 2010 2:43PM
I think in this case, and many others, its mostly due the fact that MINORITY are the most loudest on forums and in general feedback.
600+ guilds going to be impossible to recruit? Of course most of those people will go angry to forums. Guilds lower than that? The "99%"? They have nothing to complain or say (other than "cool, first after blue!"), thus being silent and not giving feedback.
When the 600+ guilds memebers (The "1%")is "all" feedback they get they will rethink of it and up the system.
I think the limit is needed too for other reasons than being stable, since they removed "top contributors" this really means that they allow zerg guilds to level up fast and get all cool stuff and more.
Guild with 100 members: Have fun to do things like fish 50k fish to get guild xp, "Thats 500 fish per guy"
Guild with 2000 members: "Oh thats just 25 fish per guy, not that bad, most will do it before they get bored of fishing". Imagine 2k guild with 10% of gold going to gbank and using those for selected people (like raiders).
stillsong Oct 9th 2010 8:09AM
hello i have toons in ICFTB, bannsidhe being my main there. Its a lovely place. I recently moved her into the higher level guild because of the break up. It's sad we have to break the guild up but I completely understand why it has to be done. There will be too much to monitor on every character in each guild for the guild levelling function. I understand. I think Robin's solution for our guild is the best compromise.
i think the people in this chat thread saying the programmers are not good enough really need to stop being hard on people doing their very best with a very thankless task.
Quit yer whining I say.
Kz Oct 9th 2010 8:40AM
I still believe all this stuff about a bug and now a performance issue is a red herring. The most logical reason for the cap is the guild leveling and achievement system itself. Large guilds are going to give every member access to level-25 guild perks in the minimum amount of time. As a member of a very small guild, we know our guild has no chance to get to level-25 in any reasonable time. A few of our members have left just for that reason. The migration to large guilds is only just beginning.
Kale Oct 9th 2010 12:15PM
I believe you're correct in thinking this is the real reason. It's all about fairness to everyone...regardless. Still those folks that aren't in guilds suffer, so why should guilds have an advantage over the non-guilded folks?
This "bug" has been in game since the beginning and they haven't fixed it, and from the sounds of it have no plans in doing so. But, from all the chatter I've read over the past week about this, it is totally possible to work around the issue and still allow the larger guilds to stay intact. Plus, Blizzard in the past has supported the large guild model and have commended/featured these guilds in past publications. Why all of the sudden are they turning coat and shoving the proverbial dagger in the back of these guilds?
I ask all of you to carefully re-read what was said in those Blue Posts because it just doesn't affect the large guilds, it affects us all in the long run.
It's funny how all of this came about after Blizzard receives an award for customer satisfaction.
Kz Oct 9th 2010 2:45PM
Kale said, "Why all of the sudden are they turning coat and shoving the proverbial dagger in the back of these guilds?"
There is one guild with 6,000 members and another with 5,000 members. These guilds would blow right through the guild leveling system. As a result even more players would join these guilds and it would not be long before guilds exceeded 10,000 players. I believe this is the problem Blizzard is trying to head off. Unfortunately mega guilds are the first casualty of the guild leveling system. Small guilds with be the next casualty. It appears Blizzard failed to foresee this outcome until it was too late to put in something like a scaling system based upon the number of accounts in the guild, i.e. large guild would require more guild experience to achieve a level than a small guild.
Gryph Oct 9th 2010 8:52AM
Not really on-topic but still guild related, are there any experience cap a guild can get, dayli or weekly, top player contribution? If not. we who are in a guild with under 100ppl will be way beyond in terms of guild perks :(
Dragonrose Oct 9th 2010 9:17AM
Timear foresees servers divided into about 3 mega-guilds.
Sintraedrien Oct 9th 2010 10:10AM
Is he pretty good at detecting these things?
Sintra E'Drien of the Ebon Blade, né Sindorei (still Worgen-curious)
evionstarkindler Oct 9th 2010 12:37PM
This was good news indeed! Though I'm from a relatively small casual/social-raiding guild, we have a bit over 100 accounts, though only 10 people are on at any given time, 20 on a good day, we are regularly courting or over the 500 character cap. We've already gone through a lot of purging of old inactive characters, and we don't want to have to boot alts because the whole point of the guild is to be able to level with friends. We were really cringing at the potential drama this 600 hard cap would bring, as *everyone* is gonna be rolling new alts come Cataclysm, and we didn't want to suddenly have to put a block on peoples' characters where before we had never done that. We didn't want to have to be exclusionary. This cap-raise brings a lot of relief and gives us much more wriggle room. I am grateful that our vocal protesting was successful. Thank you, Blizz!
Nemeseia Oct 9th 2010 5:18PM
I don't see why this change was needed, but okay...whatever. If you are in a guild of 600, I defy you to tell me you actually have anything to do with more than 100-200 people in the guild, if that. There is actually a psycho-social phenomenon describing the maximum number of people you can have a friendly, engaged relationship with (Dunbar's Number), and the punchline is that it is less than 200. =) And what is more, you don't have to be in the same guild as someone to socialize. There are a very few number of guilds in the world that have that many members (outside of Beta...), and they fit into 2 categories:
1.) Slutty Guilds that invite anyone and everyone to see there member count get really big
2.) E-Famous guilds who actually accept people who track them down and ask to be included (Ensidia had special guilds for that) Neither will miss the excess of players
Tondef Oct 11th 2010 9:06AM
If you argue that your guild needs to be huge because you are social, but each player has 10 toons in the guild. Then the question is why does each player need to have 10 characters in the guild?
Social is really just using the game for chat.
I guess this is one of those cases that Real ID would have solved, but the “social” people don’t trust each other enough to become Real ID friends. /shrug
Scrabblet Oct 9th 2010 5:49PM
I don't even understand how you can get over 700 people without a bunch of alts. I've NEVER seen a 1000 member guild, or even a 700 member guild.
Darlina Oct 9th 2010 11:31PM
Well it was not the cap alone that tick off the large guilds. It was the current poor ability to link guild with other guilds. Bring down the number members in the guild is fine. But we would like to have a private always on chat channel. As well the ability for the guilds that are linked, members to count on the achevements for things like raids.
I feel that the linked chat channel and guild aliance system would help the smaller guilds as well. So you would have /g guild chat and /ga for the guild aliance.
Tondef Oct 12th 2010 8:12AM
Wasn't Real ID suppose to solve the problem of friends being off on other servers, on other characters, on other games, or in other guilds.
Appears that if Blizzard would just let us create an alias for our Real ID instead of our real names, guilds could still keep in touch with all their friends no matter how many guilds they had to break into.
Eirik Oct 11th 2010 3:02PM
I would really, really, like to see blizzard post the demographics for guilds.
Absolute numbers, as well as percentages, for guilds within standard deviation ranges. %age of accounts with members in guilds in those range, by server.
Some ranges that I think would be keen:
*
Eirik Oct 11th 2010 3:04PM
Grr! Okay, comment system, you're making me mad...
Ranges (by number of distinct *accounts*)
(1) - bank guilds
(2-9)- close friend guilds
(10-24) - 10man capable guilds
(25-100) - 25man capable guilds
(100+) (by standard deviations) - media guilds, social guilds