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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 3 of 4)
Eirik Dec 8th 2010 2:17PM
It's not so much about the achievements being their own reward as it was that the achievements were bringing in tangible benefits (the guild perks).
I agree that Blizzard should have exercised a couple of use-cases earlier in the process. It's not like the data about guilds wasn't available to them before Cata released. So now, they get to play catch-up, and make the best decision they can after the fact.
Casp Dec 7th 2010 6:55PM
This only applies to the achievements, correct? Do you still get guild xp for running dungeons and raids in a group with guildies?
Michael Dec 7th 2010 7:00PM
Seems that these achievements took a stroll down one of The Paths of the Titans...
MichaelBerean Dec 7th 2010 7:08PM
This change is horribly timed. But as an officer of a guild with at most 20 people on at peak times it is nice that people will not feel so much that they have to be in a huge guild to raid 10 mans competitively. (Not that they had to before this change, but the feeling seemed to be there.)
They could easily gruntle some of the disgruntled by having all of those guild achievements award something nifty that would not be useful for raiding and rated pvp ... pets, fireworks, your guild name on a banner over Stormwind or on the main blizz website, 1.0 dps weapons that look SUPER cool, new dance moves or emotes ....
TheSloth Dec 7th 2010 7:20PM
What I don't get is shouldn't they know how many achievements are out there? When someone said "Let's make it so achievements add to guild XP" why didn't some else say "Yeah, but let's look at how much XP people will have on launch day"... Horrible planning, and take away what was perceived to be earned on launch day is not at all good.
Blayze Dec 7th 2010 7:24PM
Logged in last night. Raid Representation critted the XP bar. Tried to find some way to push it to level 2.
Damn.
Joltmar Dec 7th 2010 7:54PM
Oh wow that pisses me right off .. I can't get cata till like the end of this month do to money issues.. I was like hey I can get on my 80 mage.. and work on guild achivs so we can get the exp from them. Then blizzard goes and takes it away.. fracking .. sods ..
Oh well I guess I'll just make a new level 1 and get rep .. or what not .. *shurgs*
kalisala Dec 7th 2010 9:18PM
So say we all......
donna Dec 7th 2010 8:11PM
I can cetainly see how this happened: beta artifically skewed the rates at which guilds leveled by letting toons level faster (so they could test more content) and by relying heavily on premades without representative amounts of rep etc. So the balance between guild rep being earned from leveling and achievements was weighted toward leveling. Might someone have caught it if they were really crunching numbers on just guild leveling? Maybe. But without a control group (ie, previous history of guild leveling via some other system), it would be easy to miss amid the flood of other data being examined.
So okay, I can understand. However, the solution smacks of knee-jerk "Oh s__t!" reactionism rather than a well thought out recalibration. Surely there were options beyond just yank it out. Perhaps a separate daily or weekly gains cap on just achievement XP. Or a fixed number of achievements allowed to be registered per week. Or a significant reduction in the amount of XP granted per achievement. That's three just off the top of my head.
Allowing guild achievemens to contribute to the overall progression of the guild was a great way to promote a sense of teamwork and guild cohesion. Now that the guild achievements are purely fluff (entertaining, possibly addictive fluff to be sure, but still fluff) there's still little incentive for guilds to really pull together and achieve group goals. Hopefully, the guild achievements can be reconsidered now that the immediate crisis. After all, it's not like Blizz has never changed their minds before... :)
Eirik Dec 8th 2010 2:18PM
I've got a new fish feast recipe that disagrees with you about the achievements being all fluff...
jamesbragg07 Dec 7th 2010 10:00PM
Umm server first chef 5 minutes into Cata
Guild working as a group to help the guild instead of grinding
Some one help me understand this
jamesbragg07 Dec 7th 2010 10:02PM
Edit to this since it counted what i wrote in tags
Umm server first chef 5 minutes into Cata - Working as intended
Guild working as a group to help the guild instead of grinding - Broken
Some one help me understand this
kakotan Dec 8th 2010 12:17AM
This is BULL CRAP! screw you Blizz on this idea :/
Deathphyre Dec 8th 2010 6:15AM
Srry Blizz, i think you ticked off your players....um....for the umpteenth time. EVERY player/guild was really looking forward to this new system, guilds were reving up to actually DO something with eachother for a while. rather than sulk as they had been for the couple months leading up to Cata Drop. I too was personally looking forward to helping the guild prosper and just generally getting really into social guild fun!
Now, with this, guilds are more likely to not focus on group dynamics, and just do ALOT of things solo untill pretty much end game....Why you ask blizzard? Cause you took away the "Common" link that made ALL guilds, large or small, WANT to do things together.
Excellent again Blizz..
Perhaps, TALKING to your CUSTOMERS (surveys or what not) is the thing to do before
getting our hopes up, then dashing them like spoiled refuse.
Henrah Dec 8th 2010 7:01AM
Hi.
Your opinions are not the same as every other player in the game.
Bye.
Claire Dec 8th 2010 2:34PM
EVERY player and guild was not looking forward to achievements contributing to XP. My small guild was unhappy about it. Now we are happy.
Asdafer Dec 8th 2010 6:50AM
So how is the guild with only lvl 85 toons going to level now? At lvl 85 you get no xp for quests or killing mobs in heroics. How does this work?
RandyWatson Dec 8th 2010 7:59AM
Wow, this was a big mistake by Blizzard. The core of Guild Achievements is that people would work together and achieve a positive, tangible benefit for the guild. This was something that our guild really rallied behind and held onto going into Cataclysm. We had members saving all of their greens to DE after Cata came out so that they would count towards the DE'ing achievement (instead of DE'ing them when they got them and funding their own causes). We also had members farming up tons of meat to stockpile feasts that would count toward 5000 feast cooking achievement. We had upwards of 3000 feasts saved up and ready to go.
Now, all of that hard work was wasted. There is no tangible benefit for the guild other than a pointless achievement. I can understand if Blizzard was worried about guild's leveling too fast because of achievements. However, the philosophy, the core idea behind it was a good one. Would scaling achievements so that they give less reward be a more prudent solution rather than scrapping the whole system right outright?
Removing any game mechanic that encourages people to do something for the greater good rather than be selfish is just a mind boggling.
Deathphyre Dec 8th 2010 8:44AM
Never claimed my opinion was for everyone.
It was a generalization. So I redact my "EVERY player/guild" comment to be
"Most" to you know, silence the over sensitive forum trolls
killer_tunes Dec 8th 2010 9:46AM
Our guild was Rank 2 prior to this change. It knocked us back to Rank 1. Blizzard has bigger problems than this considering people hit 85 yesterday. I played up to 82-1/2 yesterday. I thought they said leveling was going to take longer. It is disappointing.