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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGuild experience no longer earned via guild achievements
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 7th 2010 at 5:45PM
NethaeraWe have decided to remove the added bonus of gaining Guild Experience from Guild Achievements earned. This change will realign Guild Achievements with our philosophy held for normal Achievements, which are intended to be predominantly their own reward (barring the rare exception of special achievements that grant an additional reward.) Previously, the experience reward had been seen as an additional side bonus and not something that should have been significantly skewing the advancement of guilds. During the beta, we greatly increased leveling speed across the board and since most characters were copied from templates, guild experience from Achievements didn't seem imbalanced. It has become clear that an imbalance does exist and should be addressed to ensure that guilds progress at the rates expected within the daily Guild Experience limits.
For guilds that are currently above the normally possible experience limit, we will be readjusting it back to the expected limit once more. This will not affect Guild Reputation gains at this point in time.
For guilds that are currently above the normally possible experience limit, we will be readjusting it back to the expected limit once more. This will not affect Guild Reputation gains at this point in time.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Claire Dec 8th 2010 2:31PM
I completely agree.
Collected Dec 7th 2010 6:04PM
Rather worrying that a beta test didn't catch this.
Avatar Dec 7th 2010 7:05PM
Netheria explained in her post exactly why they did not catch it. Most people were using premades and did not already have a plethora of achievements on their toons.
Amaxe Dec 7th 2010 7:59PM
Well, I would wonder why they didn't consider how things might be different with real toons and guilds vs the premades.
I guess it indicates they should reconsider how the PTR/Beta system actually works to get data relevant to the live game experience.
Angrycelt Dec 7th 2010 6:06PM
It seems the point of the guild leveling system isn't about the size of your guild, but just about being active. It would appear that the "it's not fair! My guild is just me and my only friend" contingent won this round.
Then again, how fair would it have been for one of the insane-o-huge guilds to ding lvl 25 in one day if their hundreds or thousands of players all went completely overboard? Every small guild would collapse, be absorbed, or break apart to join the big boys.
It's interesting though, how people are calling it nerfing when it's not even 24 hours old.
Just so long as single-player bank alt guilds don't suddenly start riding around on lions and scorpions.
freebeatfly Dec 8th 2010 6:22PM
To be fair... guilds have limited members now. There are no thousands, and rare few guilds have 100 active players rushing to 85.
I thought it was fun for guilds to level via achievements... With the daily xp cap, everyone will reach level 25 at more or less the same time, no? Kind of kills the point.
silvernoise Dec 7th 2010 6:10PM
this is for real? how disappointing. my guild already did a lot to try and prepare for getting these achievements. This change instantly makes most guild achievements pretty much worthless -_-. lame.
unexpectedeof Dec 7th 2010 6:17PM
You mean now they're just like NORMAL ACHIEVEMENTS?
Oh. No.
amasen Dec 7th 2010 7:20PM
to unexpectedeof.
That's the issues. These are not normal achievements. Nor is leveling a guild a "normal" leveling experience. To gain these achivements you need other people from your guild to collaborate to succeed. No other system in WoW exists that requires you to do things as a guild, so why should this system function exactly like other systems in WoW?
A guild is capped in XP ( to the absolutely lowest common denominator) and the only way to advance as a group was to achieve as a group. Now to advance as a group within this guild leveling system, you simply have to log on and level/play as you normally would.
Imagine if you were only able to level your character 4 bubbles of experience per day and had no way to excel? What if you could only earn 1 item a week? What if you could only kill 1 boss per week (from any instance). That is what the restrictions placed upon guild leveling are like. Guilds that are more organized than others should be able to succeed faster, and now that has been removed and every guild that has more than a handful of active members will all level at the same rate.
uncaringbear Dec 7th 2010 6:13PM
I think more than a few guilds quietly planned their strategies for making the most of the previous system to power level their guild. While I think the change is needed, the timing is poor, and it seems incredible that these scenarios were not anticipated during beta, or alpha for that matter.
lilgrim13 Dec 7th 2010 6:14PM
I dont like this change at all. This was helping to get guilds motivated and get stuff done. Now due to a "philosophical" change, guilds now have to suffer.
Guilds have been looking forward to this feature, and its gone within 24 hours. Awesome.
I hope the guild achievements come back and have more impact.
ahsanali Dec 7th 2010 6:35PM
Guild achievements have not been removed, guild experience from guild achievements has been removed.
This is good. Now guilds will do achievements if they want to (just like players do) and will get experience by doing "new" things like quests, instances and battlegrounds. - i.e. getting experience just like leveling players do.
VioletArrows Dec 7th 2010 6:26PM
Jeez, my guilds barely made it to level 2 and we've already been bumped back down. :/
(cutaia) Dec 7th 2010 6:31PM
It's always a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't with Blizzard's decisions. Just the other day people were lamenting the "death of small guilds" due to the advantages big guilds would have in leveling. Now there's people complaining that all guilds will all level at similar rates because it's so easy to hit the cap.
Avatar Dec 7th 2010 7:05PM
You've hit the nail on the head.
There could be a glitch that gave some random class "god" mode, and blizzard could change it within an hour of it being introduced...
And you would immediately have thousands of people on the boards complaining about them taking it away, how it was 'needed', and how Blizzard should have caught it before hand...
wutsconflag Dec 7th 2010 6:39PM
Sadly, being in one of those small guilds (half a dozen members left, most went to large "zerg guilds" in order to benefit from the perks), while I'm happy that this change was made, I'm also sad that it wasn't made sooner.
Ah well, I didn't want those people in my guild, anyway.
gosubilko Dec 7th 2010 6:53PM
He did quite sum it up, didn't he? @(cutaia)
@wutsconflag You're better off without them too. If they just wanted the perks, the guild advancement was the least of their concern. Also, I wish this would have been addressed sooner.
If they have put up an article about the concept behind guild levelling like the other raid progression articles, we could've prevented the player attrition that happened. Some people who left their guilds didn't 100% wanted to leave, the guild perks just gave them added incentives to join the big ones.
N-train Dec 7th 2010 11:44PM
I agree that someone was bound to pissed off no matter which road they took here, but I wish some middle ground could have been reached (and maybe still can be).
As the GM of a small guild (15 ppl) I'm happy to see this go because the prospect of having every legendary weapon or creating 10,000 flasks is just about impossible for a guild like ours. I think the system is there to reward the active and to promote and reward guild activity, not be a game of who can hoard the most players.
That being said, I think guild achievements were a good excuse to allow the group to work towards a tangible and focused goal, and that's what I'm not happy to see go. If your guild is active then you're going to level up, even if you've 100 people and no one says a word to eachother. With guild achievements giving exp (or a real reward of some sort), you could create group goals and promote teamwork.
It's like the original guild talents system: I don't like the way it was planned on being implemented, but I do like the idea of a way to customize one's guild. Same idea here: I didn't like that achievement exp gave huge guilds a substantial advantage, but I do like the idea of tangible rewards the guild as a group can work for.
Anteia Dec 8th 2010 8:35AM
Completely agreed.
I'm really at a loss as to how this is such a 'blow' to guilds anyway. Blizzard is not encouraging guilds to work together with this change? What? There are still plenty of achievements that reward TANGIBLE THINGS such as pets and mounts and so forth for accomplishing achievements. These achievements are still bragging rights that your guild worked together to achieve them. That's what they SHOULD be, not "Our guild worked together so we could mass rezz people and your guild can't." It should be "You know what, our guild worked together and accomplished all this because we're a guild who DOES THAT and encourages members to help one another out and accomplish difficult tasks." Honestly, if a guild hinges their success on what level they are, I'd be highly suspect that they're also guilds who can't make it through a raid without raging at their members because something is difficult. Blizzard didn't remove the bonuses for certain achievements... just that those achievements count for the LEVEL of the guild.
I still fully am annoyingly reminding my members to kill every living critter they see as they level because it'll make eventually getting that armadillo pet easier. I, who never used to kill a critter needlessly unless it was to get extra rage before a pull, am now killing poor rabbits every chance I get. And I've turned my guild just as murderous. We're having fun seeing the number go up and players are joking in guild chat about the huge spells they're using to kill a single moth. When working together, isn't fun supposed to be a part of it? There's people saying how they planned for these achievements. That's honestly great. But why do the achievements have to be guild exp for you to still be proud you managed them?
bongato Dec 7th 2010 6:48PM
Well this is really lame... they're overestimating how much some of us care about Achievements as their own rewards.
Seriously though, there's a finite amount of XP awarded for a finite amount of achievements. Yes guilds could skyrocket up fast, but they'd still top out how much XP they could get from these and the drastically slow down, while smaller guilds would gain slower and steadier but over time likely get the exact same amount of finite XP and they'd all equalize after a bit.
I'd have thought they'd have done the math on it, this is pretty sad.