Breakfast Topic: Guild achievements and you
by Deb Montague 
Jun 15th 2011 at 8:00AM
We are now a good 6 months into guild achievements. As a guild leader, I think the concept, as executed, is great. Although we're casual and we run all content, trying to get certain achievements has provided us with incentives to level toons, level professions and to work together.
Every week, I post to the guild web site, a tally of what we're working on and how far along we are in finishing an achievement. Doing all the Burning Crusade heroic 5-mans made people run the regulars to get enough honor to get their keys. People went into instances they didn't know existed. Attendance at our retro raid nights spiked when we announced that we needed this run for the guild achievement. We're small so the 25-man achievements will probably elude us, but people take a look at what still needs to be done and they help make it happen.
I'm very proud of how we have worked together. My little guild has more achievement points than larger guilds at higher levels than us. We downed Algalon. We cleared ToGC. We're three reputations from United Nations. All of those are sources of pride.
But, the achievement we are most proud of is Crittergeddon. That's right. Standing around in the Ironforge tram killing rats and watching the counter tick has become the stuff of guild legends. We spread out at all the spawn points and just went at it. We ran two guild events just to systematically clear sections of Azeroth of their critters. Almost everyone tracked the totals. One of my mages would pour herself a drink and spend an hour 2 or 3 times a week just kiling rats in the Ironforge tram. For that final push, we had toons of all levels and when the achievement came up, we were all cheering. So, while I am proud of our dungeon and raid achievements, our gathering and cooking achievements and all the others we have done, I am most proud of how much fun we had, the jokes, the laughter that killing rats for a silly achievement provided.
What guild achievement are you most proud of? Is it downing that one final raid boss who had eluded you for weeks before? Is it getting all the professions to the achievement levels? Is it killing 100,000 of the other faction? Which one do you look at and feel very proud to have accomplished?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
whitfield Jun 15th 2011 8:06AM
There are a few that were fun to do, but what I want to see is Heroic mode raid content without any wipes. Talk about a hard hard heroic mode.
ki Jun 15th 2011 4:06PM
there is. its called 'i can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am'
one shot sinestra without anyone dieing.
www.wowhead.com/achievement=5313
this is at current gear and for a few patches, the hardest raid achievement in the game.
Stardusted Jun 15th 2011 8:26AM
I haven't been in a guild in years, having never really had a good guild experience. That said, I have mixed feelings on the guild achievements, and the rewards they offer.
I hate that as someone not in a guild, I can't even work towards getting a non-guild achievement such as 200 cooking recipes. I can work towards it (and I have 199 recipes, but without being in a guild, at this time, its impossible for me to get the non-guild cooking achievement for having 200 recipes.)
A lot of the cosmetic rewards, such as mounts or pets, that are awarded from guild achievements, I have no problems with, even as a collector.
I just hate feeling like I'm being punished for not being in a guild.
In the end though, I realize it is my choice not to be in a guild, and I can live with it. I understand that WoW is a social game, but the guild achievements feel like a gimmick to try and force me into being more social than I care to be. I also thought raiding and rated BGs (and the rewards that come from taking part in such things) were meant to be the rewards for social interactions.
I am curious to see how others feel about the guild achievement system, especially guild leaders. Is it something that you use as a recruiting tool? Do people look for guilds now solely because of the possible rewards the guild has already unlocked? I can see selfish people out for rewards only looking for things like the Dark Phoenix joining a guild that has it, building up the rep, getting the reward, quitting, and then looking for another guild that has [insert reward here] unlocked and repeating the process. Have any guilds out there seen this as a problem? Is it something that you care about as a guild leader?
Gimmlette Jun 15th 2011 9:35AM
I don't use guild achievements as a recruiting tool, nor do I use guild level and whatever perks we currently have. (We're not level 25, yet, close but not yet.) Personally, I don't think those are effective measures of what a guild can do for you. Extra xp? Nice but what if all your toons are 85? Guild members like the extra rep bonus but guild rep is still accrued way too slowly, in my opinion. Faster movement speed? One of my healers quipped, "This is no longer my favorite perk. I move too fast when I'm dead."
I haven't seen people guild jumping for perks but then people leave guilds for any number of reasons. I don't think whether a guild has this or that achievement or perk factors into it. You still have to work for whatever you have your eye set on and, for some people, that's not what they are willing to do.
Mortenebra Jun 15th 2011 10:23AM
The only problem I've seen is that people will join the guild and bring in their lowbie alts (which is great and fine; in fact, we encourage it)... Then decide to quit for "more raiding" or whatever the reason but want to keep their alts in the guild. Back in the day before perks and such, we welcomed good people who wanted greener raiding pastures but liked our guild atmosphere so they'd stay with alts and main alts. We had a network of friends for the guild!
Nowadays, however, we get borderline tolerable people (which we find out after accepting their application and inviting them, unfortunately) who realize we're a casual raiding guild that isn't catering to their specific wants and needs, day in and day out... So they join and then leave but then ask that we keep their alts in the guild for none of the specified reasons we used to get: "I'm really gonna miss you guys and I don't want to lose contact," etc. When I talked about it with the other officers, they agreed that I wasn't just paranoid. It reeked of "I'm just using you guys for the perks," and that sucks.
LynMars Jun 15th 2011 1:26PM
I find it's a bit harder for niche guilds and small, starting up guilds, even on a RP server, but it's always been a struggle to create and build up a guild, especially with a specific focus. There are things I dislike about the guild leveling and achievement system too, but we don't use any of that for our guild recruitment.
My main guild is a heavy RP guild and we focus on that in the guild finder and our website. We look for people who can read the directions, come RP with us, and have patience before we admit them into the guild. We make it clear we don't do progression stuff; we have our partner guild for that, and the arrangements have remained unchanged after Cata.
My other guild, where I raid (even on my main, who is in the RP guild as playing with friends > guild achievements) doesn't advertise and is mainly grown by word of mouth and by, again, seeing how patient people are when it comes to their laid back admittance process.
The ideas in this article for promoting guild achievements as a way to do things as a guild together is a nifty one. I would like to do a lot of old school instance stuff for the guild achieves, because it could be a really handy way of getting folks to do stuff together as a guild, which is part of the point.
Aruhgulah Jun 15th 2011 1:40PM
@Mortenebra: there's an easy way around that. If someone hasn't logged into an alt in 30 days (or whatever time frame you decide), you remove that alt from the guild. If they really want to keep the connections up, they should be logging in to those alts.
Blayze Jun 15th 2011 8:26AM
I loved it when guild achievements gave Guild XP. I logged on that first night, got Raid Representation and doubled our effective cap.
Now the Server Firsts have been gained, why don't they give XP any more?
HalcyonGT Jun 15th 2011 8:28AM
You know, I read all these cool articles about guild achievements and groups of people having fun....
Then I log on to see that I'm the only person thats logged on in weeks. I'm not bitching...but the only Cataclysm that happened is my long term guild simply vanished. Maybe Deathwing ate my guildies...and I survived...I dunno.
mavis.pye Jun 15th 2011 9:09AM
I feel your pain... We are trying to rebuild now because of the same reason... We got to level 8 before it started to die off, Hubby & I pushed to get level 10 then we said screw it, joined a bigger guild which reached level 23 and failed...( GL got a wild hair and kicked everyone) so we are back in inviting all and everyone, lol. Reached 11, but have yet to have a single day where we reached our daily xp limit... /sigh I miss BC and heck, even Wrath
Nina Katarina Jun 15th 2011 8:46AM
I drove our guild to the pool fishing achievements. For a while I thought I'd have to do it alone - I would log on and see that the counter hadn't budged from the day before, and spend a water walking potion and a few hours running around Tol Barad while nagging folks on guild chat.
Then the ADD 12-year-old son of one of our guildies stepped in to help, got nearly 1000 pool fish for us in one afternoon. We were all flabbergasted and proud that he'd managed to focus on something for that long, and it turned into a fishing party. We got the last 5,000 fish in 24 hours, I think.
I was in on all of our guild first boss kills, but I'm prouder of that fishing achievement because it was truly an inclusive effort.
whitfield Jun 15th 2011 9:05AM
I have severe ADD as an adult now, mildy growing up + concussions from dirtbike fiascoes made it 10x worse. Growing up I played Asheron's Call and people would be surprised how well an MMO works for a kid with ADD. There's a ton going on and it helps get out the scatter brained mentality and helps focusing on a goal/task that has some sort of pay off new armor, weapon etc.
Had I not been gaming growing up/through high school odds are I would have gotten into a ton of trouble.
Mortenebra Jun 15th 2011 10:14AM
I was in a very similar situation as you, Nina. My husband and I were practically the only ones going around on weekends to fish pools or gather herbs for flasks for the longest time. Then a guildie who usually liked levelling alts and doing this n' that decided to hop in. The tally rose a little quicker each day when we were suddenly at 8.5k fish out of the 10k. We just happened to talk about it in guild chat and everyone who was online said, "Wait, we only need a little bit more? Let's DO IT!" Less than an hour later, we had the achievement. The same guildie ground out the last couple thousand critters as well. It was awesome!
Kaylad Jun 15th 2011 10:22AM
One of the "better" effects of ADD/ADHD is the ability to hyperfocus on an enjoyable activity. When my son was 9 or so I introduced him to minatures painting - I and my husband had boxes of old pewter 15mm & 25mm RPG figures from way back when we used to play things like D&D regularly. I grabbed some new brushes and a few tins of Humbrol paint and spent an hour showing him the basics. I swear I'd not seen him sit that still ever. After that he'd easily spend a couple of hours just painting. Couldn't sit still in class to save his life (or his teacher's sanity) but could sit for hours to paint a teeny representation of an orc.
Eirik Jun 15th 2011 3:48PM
There's a bandwagon effect that goes on here. "Oh, that's too hard" is the usual answer when I try to push for the fishing achievement; we're at about 3800 fished up currently, and I'm one of about two folks in the guild who fish much at all. But yeah, when an achievement is mostly complete, or when the guild is nearly to the next level, you'll see folks pitching in where normally they'd sit back and let someone else do the work.
Jake Jun 15th 2011 8:53AM
Cheesements are the worst thing that did come to WoW for me for years... Blizzard trying to cover up the lack of content at current top level with telling people to jump from a cliff. They also where use to try make more people interested into there crappy holiday events.
Personally I do not care what my mount looks like and never show off my none combat pets.
Now there are Guild Cheesements!! And it just got worst I had guilds leaders trying to mind trick people to do Guild Cheesements and not just for the so called locked raid items (If you not help the guild get cheesements you get kicked out)... My guild master really wanted the dumb pet and so on...... One did even think that Guild Cheesements make his guild the best on the realm.
Jonisjalopy Jun 15th 2011 10:30AM
MMmmMMmmm...Cheese...
Docp Jun 15th 2011 10:32AM
Yup, Cheesemints really were an awful idea, Humbugs with the flavour of chedder, polos with brie and perhaps worse of all, extra strong mints with a hint of stilton, truly truly awful.
Probably the worse idea since that toothpaste flavoured orange juice I had.
Sinthar Jun 15th 2011 10:37AM
Judging from the general tone, and the fact you had 'leaders' (plural) I would say that you dont seem to be a 'team' player at all. I suspect its not the Achievements that has caused you to have problems, but your attitude. If that is not the case then I would hestitantly agree that someone kicking you out for NOT participating to get a guild achievement is a bit off, but then again that is also subject (ie if you deliberately made them fail, then I personally would boot without hesitation, if you only declined to participate, I would have just made a officer comment "not into achievements nor willing to help guildies that are").
Personally I would advise you to look for a guild that has the same attitude as yourself. Although i have never heard of one like that Im sure that somewhere theres a guild for a sarcastic grump.
Personally I like achievements - both personal and guild. In fact I was a little renowned for it, and indeed got at least 4 offers to join other guilds due to my liking of them, willingness to help others get them etc. I am currently on a break (4 months now), and I still have the highest achievement score in guild, and thats without doing any revamped content or cata raids as yet! I would be approching about 10k personal score if not for my damn RL problems!!! (Why does life get in the way of serious stuff like gaming!!! :) )
mazca13 Jun 15th 2011 8:58AM
The guild achievements for old dungeons gave us a good excuse to blast around all the old content. Hitting something like Wailing Caverns with a full group of raid-geared 85s just for the overkill is amusing.
The main thing I'm disappointed about is how you still need 8 people to get guild achievements for old 10-man and 25-man raids. The margin between having 8 people together to do, say, a guild run of Black Temple - and having 10 people together to do an actual progression raid, is rather too narrow. So in general we haven't got the old raid achievements done.