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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news7 wishes for guilds in Mists of Pandaria
by Scott Andrews 
Jan 23rd 2012 at 3:00PM
For officers, the improvements and new systems that Cataclysm brought to guilds were a game-changer in many ways. The sweeping changes to raiding that came with it brought on some difficult challenges. Fortunately, WoW does not stagnate. The Mists of Pandaria expansion gives Blizzard a chance to add new features, make important changes, and improve on what the developers gave us in Cataclysm. Here's my personal wish list:
1. Treat legendary items as guild rewards, not player rewards. As guilds in WoW have matured over the years, I've heard from officers less and less frequently about loot drama -- with one huge exception: legendaries. Every legendary in the history of WoW has caused problems for officers. For some, the legendary drama itself has become legendary.
It's time to change both the reality and the perception of these powerful items.
Earning legendaries today requires the prolonged effort of the guild's entire raid team. It's time to take that one step further. Each step in the quest line should be a guild quest that requires a guild undertaking to create a guild-bound item. (See, for example, Delegation during the Dragonwrath quest line.)
There are multiple benefits to this method. Grinding out the required quest items wouldn't suffer when that one key person misses a raid. Because each guild could only do it once, a guild wouldn't have to keep running old content to earn one for every eligible raid member. Plus, Blizzard wouldn't have to prolong the process artificially to keep the number of legendaries limited.
When the legendary is created, that item would be tradeable among everyone in the guild. If someone leaves the guild with it in their inventory, it would revert to the guild bank.
A legendary should never ultimately belong to just one player. They take too much time and effort on the part of too many people. If the quest lines and items worked this way, then the perception of ownership would change and we would see far less drama over them. Blizzard can create class quests for other things.
2. Create more guild achievements that matter. I enjoyed the concerted effort that it took my guild to earn the cauldron and feast recipes. These achievements mattered because they made raid preparation significantly less annoying for (mostly) everyone. I'd like to see this idea expanded in Mists.
Give us more goals to shoot for as the expansion progresses. Allow us to upgrade our flasks and feasts with each tier so the bonuses don't become less and less relevant over time. It was great to get a mount after clearing tier 11 on normal mode, but subsequent patches never followed up on that premise. Perhaps take some of the boredom away from farming raid bosses by giving us pet versions of a boss if we kill him a certain number of times as a guild.
PvP guilds deserve more achievement rewards than they currently get. Some fun items for roleplaying guilds wouldn't be unwelcome, either. Along those lines ...
3. Guild halls -- make it happen. Send our guilds on the longest and most epic quest line that Blizzard has ever designed. Make it similar to the Gates of Ahn'qiraj quest line that only a handful of guilds around the world got to experience (only without the insane rep grind, please).
Have us earn guild achievements along the way that unlock the hall, and then upgrade it with vendors, portals, trophy cases, and other services and eye candy. With the gear normalization that Blizzard is implementing for timed dungeon runs, the developers wouldn't even have to update the bosses from tier to tier like they do now for holidays.
I understand that Blizzard doesn't want cities to look empty, so make the halls restrictive; allow access only to players with exalted guild reputation. Keep the Auction Houses and other essential services out in the world, but let us have a fun place to gather. Nothing would get players more invested in their guild that this type of ques tline and reward.
4. Design better recruiting tools. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the failure of the Guild Finder. It's just too limited in scope and too difficult to use in practice. A player looking for a guild and vice versa uses many more criteria than those the Guild Finder addresses. A better system that includes far more information and can match up in both directions would be a huge improvement.
New guilds in particular need more effective tools. Currently, they are at a severe disadvantage to established guilds. However, if they could find the types of players who would be interested in their community more easily, then new guilds would have a better chance to survive. Imagine if players looking for a fresh start could flag themselves as potential recruits for new guilds.
With all the matchmaking tech behind the Dungeon and Raid Finders, I don't see why a similar system couldn't be used to steer players toward like-minded guilds across realms.
5. Enable a "rep for deposit" function for the guild bank. It's a simple idea: You deposit a certain amount of ingredients for flasks, cauldrons, or feasts, and the bank awards you guild reputation. I know most officers would consider that a more noteworthy service than solo questing in Desolace. Players looking to rep up faster would have a means to do that -- and they'd actually benefit the guild at the same time.
6. Reward larger raids appropriately. I wrote about this last week, so I won't go into too much detail here. Something has to be done to make leading larger raids more desirable for the officers who put in the extra work. Otherwise, these guilds will simply die out or switch over to 10-player raiding, and then no one will have a choice about raid size.
7. Expand guild tabard design options. It's a tiny issue in the grand scheme of things, but the tabard designs haven't been updated since, well, ever. The original options were never that great to begin with. The color choices are very limited. Plus, with all due respect to the weeping bear, many of the icons just look flat-out terrible on actual character models.
What would you like to see added or changed in Mists? Tell us below!
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership), Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 7)
ObiChad Jan 23rd 2012 4:51PM
I'd love for them to add more reasons to run 5 mans as a guild. With as easy as it is to get a group with the dungeon finder, not to mention the luck of the draw buff, it feels like 5 man guild groups have died, for my guild anyway. Maybe give a little more valor for running as a guild? The whole give the guild rep/gold for running its first seven was a good start, but it's not personal enough for people.
pez Jan 23rd 2012 4:53PM
Lineage 2 had the best idea with clans; you needed to complete certain guild quests to advance the clan level that required a lot of people working together and they had clan halls with buffs, transports to leveling zones, and more. And don't get me started about castles and sieges and taxes.
Edymnion Jan 23rd 2012 4:54PM
As a Rogue main, I have one thing to say to the legendary suggestion:
HELL NO!
Who pickpocketed the boss? I did.
Who payed 10k gold up front? I did.
Who did all of those quests? I did.
And I got mine (and am collecting my shadow gems) *WITHOUT MY GUILD*, entirely by pugging. I am the one putting the time, the effort, and the expense into getting my legendaries, not my guild. Those daggers are mine, and I will not be sharing them with anyone.
pez Jan 23rd 2012 4:54PM
Oh, and fix the damn tabards! They look horrible on certain races and classes!
Perspective Jan 23rd 2012 5:04PM
My wife and I were members of a small raiding guild which at the end of Wrath. Unfortunately the guild suffered a great deal of attrition when Cata arrived. People left for other guilds or for other games, and new people came in. After a couple of months we (my wife and I) realised that the median age of the guild had dropped by about 10 years and we just weren't relating well to the new people.
We discussed it and came to the conclusion that we'd experienced ups and downs of raiding and didn't really feel the need to raid in Cata, so we wished everyone well and moved our mains and active alts to our 2 man bank/alt guild. The idea was (and still is) that we're focussing on doing things together without the need for other people ... even to the extent of not bothering with 5 mans any more.
Now my wife is having a blast playing the AH and helping me as I enjoy pursuing Achievements. We are both enjoying non-rated PVP, grinding various reps, etc.
But here's the thing - most of what we are enjoying returns very little guild rep. Because we'd already levelled our most active toons to 85 in our former guild, and then lost that rep when we left ... those toons are STILL not exalted. If we want to get them exalted with the guild we have to do things like dailies (eg the Molten Front) which takes time away from the other things we'd like to be doing.
So my wish list is a single item: I don't know how they could do it, but it'd be nice if Blizz could find a way to recognize that active players in small (or very small :D ) guilds who are grinding old reps, or clearing old content they never got to see, are still active members of their guild and contributing to that guild.
Utakata Jan 23rd 2012 5:14PM
...if this hasn't already been mentioned:
8: Make it easier for smaller guilds to gain guild experience/levels substantially.
/thread
DarkWalker Jan 23rd 2012 5:16PM
My #1 guild wish would be to make the other players be more important than the level or the guild perks. Even if this meant removing levels and perks altogether.
One possible way of doing this would be for the guild itself to not earn XP; instead, each character would earn his own Guild XP, and the total XP of the guild would be the sum of all character's Guild XP.
Main benefit: it shifts what is really important from the guild itself to the players. A player leaves a guild, he takes with him all Guild XP he has ever earned. A whole guild wants to oust the GM, they could just form their own guild, taking all their guild XP with them (thus, starting roughly at the level the old guild had, and leaving behind the unwanted GM with a low level guild).
For my #2 guild wish: free and fast realm transfers. This would allow any player to apply for any same faction guild, and every guild to recruit from half the total player base, without money being an issue. BTW, this alone could most likely save 25-man raiding without having to mess with rewards (and, thus, without punishing the players that actually prefer 10-man raiding); with a 200x larger recruiting pool, and 200x more guilds to apply for (given that there are over 200 realms in the US zone, and a similar number in the Euro zone), finding and filling raid groups should be much easier.
#3 would be to create teams (akin to the current Arena teams) for Raids, Rated BGs, and perhaps even the upcoming Challenge Modes. Breaking apart the specialized groups used in those activities would allow the guilds to revert to being mostly about the social aspect, while the teams handle the specialized content running. Allowing players to be part of multiple guilds could achieve the same results.
#4: Legendaries banned from Arenas and BGs. They are PvE weapons obtained with PvE gameplay, and they cause too many problems in PvP. I don't see any reason for them to even be allowed in PvP.
VioletArrows Jan 23rd 2012 8:55PM
How would you combat the droves of ninjas and guild destroyers hopping from guild to guild?
Sinthar Jan 24th 2012 8:22AM
#2 - so all progresion oriented guilds can now demand you skip server after the raid Wed night, thur night, fri night, sat night etc so you get 7 full raids in per week to max out progression. Hmmmm think this is wrong.
Next problem - is one you dont think of in the US as much - what about language? In mumble do you speak polygot so everyone understands? Stick to one language? So the number of servers is divided by the languages as some are language specific. Even in america I am sure there are different languages (French canadians, Mexians, foreign nationals, heck even the 'gang speak')
#3 - teams only...so flexibilty is out the window eh? So what if fred the tank cant make it tonight - ok we cant raid then as we only have him in the team? What about the rest of the guild? This is too specialisted, and too exclusive.(As well as Elitist).
And lastly (perversly) #1
I actually agree - the guild should NOT be as important with the perks. But I believe the guild XP thing is a mistake, as it could lead to people hawking their 'XP' on the open market, or trying to blackmail their guild etc etc.
I think guild rep should be handled differently as well, guild rep should suffer loss when you leave a guild, but it should be easier to grind back up with a new guild. Something like 10-20% loss when you leave guild, with each time you leave guild within a month adding to the loss of rep (quickly) like 15% first time, 30% second time, 60% third time, 100% all subsequent times. This will help with the guild skippers, while not significantly impacting the people who have to change guild for various reasons (moving server due to RL, guild disbanding, etc etc).
#4 When PVP gear is no longer allowed in PVE situations, THEN and ONLY THEN would I even think about possibly agreeing with you. Your PVP gear spoils my PVE - but its ok then, but now the PVE gear spoils PVP - its a problem?
DarkWalker Jan 24th 2012 2:31PM
@Sinthar:
#2 would obviously need the exploit where raid locks reset on realm transfer fixed.
Also, I believe WoW's backend to be a gruesome mess that has been festering for 7 years - either that, or else Blizzard is flat out lying when they say they must charge for character transfers due to the work involved. If WoW's backend is as bad as I think, Blizzard would have to overhaul it, perhaps from scratch, before some features - such as free transfers - could be implemented, and this overhaul would hopefully fix the kinds of bugs and exploits that can be triggered nowadays on realm change.
BTW: with a properly done character database enabling free, instant, and unlimited realm transfers is quite feasible. In fact, a number of MMOs, managed by quite smaller companies than Blizzard, are able to offer free and unlimited transfers at the click of a button.
Free transfers would also help with the language barrier. When players are free to apply for any same faction guild in the whole game, the chance of them being able to find a whole guild that speaks their language is actually much higher. BTW, I know the problem first hand; I'm from one of those South American countries that don't speak English and where WoW's subscription is roughly $8 :)
#3: My intent is for smaller organizational structures to be possible and supported, and for them to be able to exist outside a guild if the players prefer. I perhaps didn't express myself clearly, in that I don't actually want the same restrictions of Arena teams regarding who can enter the instance.
#1: If the guild is large enough that it can remain at max level even when a couple (or perhaps even a couple hundred) players leave, there would be no way for the player to leverage his share of Guild XP as blackmail material. Also, if the player is actually willing to blackmail his guild, perhaps getting rid of him right away is the best course.
I also don't see why guild skippers are any problem. In part because I believe making players stay in a guild just to not lose perks or to avoid a new rep grind is actually worse than any problem guild skippers might bring.
Players hawking their Guild XP on the open market shouldn't be any more problem than players with high end raiding gear hawking their skill (or, more precisely, GearScore) for prospective raids. They would serve as a jumpstart in the guild leveling process, at most - and, arguably, a way to jumpstart the guild level might be a good thing, given the recruiting problems new guilds currently face.
#4: If I get a PvP-clad player in my LFD runs, the group gets to choose: either I leave or the PvP-clad player does. BTW, I only play Tanks and Healers, so either way, if I leave, the group should be looking at a reasonable delay while the LFD finds someone to put in my place.
I believe this answers how I feel about players using PvP gear for PvE.
lsprof4 Jan 23rd 2012 5:31PM
And I'm not very happy with the television schedules, those could use some work
Scunosi Jan 23rd 2012 5:52PM
You think the crying bear is bad? Anything with two twin images on it (let's say...the hands?) just looks obscene on the female models. Though I'm sure that's the draw for some...
bethontheharbor Jan 23rd 2012 5:54PM
Just say no to guild halls. We have guild chat, mumble, vent, in game tincan chat as perfect means of hanging out together. Guild halls are a waste of server space, as well as resources that could be working on more content.
We don't need trophy rooms and that crap.. It's a an asset that would last about 2 months and then no one but new members would care about it.
How many people got their guild mount? Now how many ride it all the time to show guild pride? Not many overall I'd bet.
crimsonninja85 Jan 23rd 2012 6:11PM
I have an idea for legendaries. Make one of every weapon type each tier. Have them start as an epic that drops of last boss in first raid. Next raid tier have some quest you get have you collect some item from the raid for say 4 weeks. At the end get it upgraded to a higher item level. Rinse and repeat til last raid of expansion. At that time epic solo quest chain that turns item into a legendary. This will also add life into older raids as alts would be cycling through all the old raids to build up the item. Time investment would itself alone make it feel legendary.
bushkanaka86 Jan 23rd 2012 6:18PM
I played LOTRO and the guild halls in that game are decent in that it added some guild storage and plenty of options to decorate but it lacked individuality as every guild hall had the same outline.
I also played Runes of Magic where guilds could build a castle. Everyone could donate resources to help add new buildings to the castle or whatever. Then, once a week was guild battle night and 2 guilds would line up against each other and fight a massive PVP battle. Based on the buildings your guild had constructed in the castle, you had different things you could use in the battle.
The winning guild got some nice rewards and te best part was that everyone in the guild could participate no matter what level they were.
I would love this to be in WoW but with Blizzard's wonderful improvements.
Dankie Jan 23rd 2012 6:25PM
As an avid seasonal tabard designer guild master, I have to add this note: From wotlk-to-cata they did add new guild tabard symbols. Even a wolf-moon design for those worgen guilds, lol. It'd be nice to roll in the arena team symbols though, since they have some unique ones. However I want more color options and boarders! More Boarders!
Piper Jan 23rd 2012 6:42PM
1) All you are doing is shuffling the drama around. If legendaries become guild-bound start watching for the guild kicks so that a new favorite gets the item. It would also tip the guild recruitment abilities even further away from newer and/or lower level guilds.
2) Good idea
3) Great for those that did the quest chain, meh for everyone else. Given Blizzard has stated they want people out of the cities and into the world I don't see it happening anytime soon.
4) & 5) Agreed
6) No. It's been a hard enough fight for 10 mans to be considered equal that I don't want to lose that. If you raid 25 man do it because you like the raid size, not because you get extra virtual pixels. Otherwise too many guilds will kill themselves trying to be 'real' size raiding guild. :sigh:
7) Agreed, but most tabard designs will still be ugly since most of us (myself included) can't design a good looking tabard.
My wish would be that rep would just be Guild Rep. That way if you end up changing guilds - for whatever reason - you don't need to regrind guild rep. Helping new guilds grow and thrive is better for the game in the long run.
Hob Jan 23rd 2012 6:47PM
Regarding guild recruiting:
I now either pay for signatures to create my own guilds, or (least favorite option) join one of those guilds where no one's on and people don't spam guild chat with blather.
Why? Well despite having "Block guild invite" enabled, I receive constant whispers:
"Sorry to bother you but [Nights of the Knights] is now recruiting!"
"We're fun, we're level one, we're all friends, the party never ends! Join [Doods of WoW]!"
"Would you like to join my guild, [Full of Poop]? Free tabard for joining."
Block guild invite. Seriously, if you're a recruiter, and someone is blocking guild invitations, how do you think your awesome whisper macro is going to make a difference?
Grrr...
GabeCo Jan 23rd 2012 7:05PM
HUUUUGE flaw one number 1. my guild has 985 players in it, with over 10 raid groups. one legendary per guild? no thanks. Not to mention, the guild as whole doesnt do that much more than if there werent a legendary. Legendary or not, you still doing the same thing, but the rogue just gets an extra prize.
Lachdanan Jan 23rd 2012 7:08PM
The last three points don't hold as much importance, but as a GM in a guild that is really a group of friends who want to play together, I agree with the first four wholeheartedly. :)
One idea to solve the guild hall issue would be to do it like Diablo 3's artisans: use phasing to make it so that everyone is in the same place, but they just don't see the same NPCs and doodads (i.e. trophies and such). I'm not sure that's possible with the way phasing works now, but the devs have made terrific breakthroughs with it in Cataclysm, and I have faith in the fact that they could make it happen.