Posts with tag guild-progression

Ask the Devs has landed again with Blizzard answering questions about Guild Advancement. Round 6 of this long-running Cataclysm feature on the official site has gathered a variety of questions from folks about the new guild systems and how they're working so far, as well as what they'll be doing in the future. I was particularly interested in the following excerpt.

Q: Leveling guild speed varies depending on the amount of players. Have you considered tweaking the system so that guilds with fewer members get more experience per player and bigger guilds get less to even it out? Are there plans to allow smaller guilds to level their guild faster? – 信蜂 火星小喵喵 [Taiwan], Sergan [Latin America], Jardar [Europe, German], Паладиа [Europe, Russian], Amasisa [Europe, Spanish], Shory, 부너맨/노대현혹, Meltdown, 치킨아고마워/유진님 [Korea]

A: Guild Challenges coming in patch 4.1 are designed to help address this issue. Obviously we already enforce a cap on the amount of XP that can be gained per day to keep the disparity from being too large, but it's clear that smaller guilds still need some help. We'll monitor the impact of Guild Challenges and see if any further changes need to be made.

source

The rest of the entire Q&A session is after the break.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Cataclysm is focusing on many new things and changes to the old ways of doing things. With guild experience being on the forefront of these changes, it is no surprise that suddenly people are taking more notice of their social environment, as it may have an impact on the game once the grind for your own guild goes live. Having a group whose personnel and personality are on the same page as you might be nice if you're planning on receiving some of the benefits (like mounts, special patterns and bonuses to rezzing) immediately.

Some people are very focused on guild perks and have assembled elite crafting and leveling forces or are maintaining the same strict raid teams they've had for a while. Others don't care as much. Blizzard has made it clear that all sorts of guilds can effectively benefit over time from the guild leveling system.

Our guild is especially looking toward having enough people to be able to level up quickly, even if we won't have a bulk of our guild XP coming in from raiding achievements. This bodes well, as we've very quickly started taking on orphans from other servers, alts of people in other guilds and raid teams, and people rolling up new characters.

Does your guild care about the XP system? Are you a close-knit, small guild that will be leveling up slowly, or are you a large raiding guild that things like mass-rezzing appeal to? Or is your guild looking forward to something else entirely?

Blue poster Mumper was busy the past day or so answering questions about guild advancement over at the forums. His answers are spread over several posts, so we've compiled some of the most useful answers for you. If you've been curious about how guild XP will work in Cataclysm, hopefully Mumper's answers will shed a little more light onto the situation.

Polegara asked:

What exactly contributes to guild XP at the moment?

Mumper

Guild experience can be earned in any of four ways:

1. Completing quests / daily quests that reward experience
2. Killing any dungeon / raid boss with a guild group/raid
3. Winning a rated battleground with a guild group/raid
4. Earning a guild achievement (these are nice, fat chunks of experience so they feel great when you get em)

A guild group/raid is 4/5, 8/10, 12/15 or 20/25 members of the group/raid being guild members.

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It's no secret that Blizzard is going to be changing the face of guilds in Cataclysm with guild talents, perks from being a collective entity, and rewards for using their new tools. While this benefits the majority of groups, what about those who have created something outside of the standard? They might not be a large chunk of the WoW playing population, but for the people who raid and socialize differently than the average player, the systems raise some new and troubling questions. Blizzard's particular idea of a guild is becoming the predominant social unit in Cataclysm, and those who don't fit into it might be all but left in the dust when it comes to new mechanics and rewards.

So who doesn't fit? I'm talking about two groups, mostly -- guild collectives/coalitions (several guilds who have banded together for a common purpose) or raid alliances (a very specific coalition or mixed group of people formed into a team for content). Both are two structures that have emerged socially and pragmatically to fill gaps that the traditional guild structures of yore haven't met.

I touched on Blizzard's presence at IgroMir 2009, sort of the Russian E3, a bit previously, specifically about J. Allen Brack's panel regarding guild progression and leveling in Cataclysm. Of course, I had to Google-translate the panel from Russian (nyet, I do not know Russian, comrades), and not everything Blizzard-related from the whole convention was in the recaps I read.

Thankfully, Blizzard themselves have released their own recaps of the Cataclysm panel. In his talk, Brack discussed rated battlegrounds, Tol Barad (briefly), and guild progression. It turns out that I was pretty thorough in the guild leveling post, but here's the stuff I didn't cover:

• Rated Battlegrounds will be an alternative way to gain Arena points for those who prefer large-scale PVP.
• Your personal rating gain for a win will vary depending on the specific Battleground.
• There'll be featured Battlegrounds each week with bonus rating gain for wins.
• You will not lose points or rating for a Battleground loss.
• Arena points can be used to purchase pets, mounts, vanity items, and perhaps best of all, the old honor system PVP titles like Grand Marshal.
• Tol Barad will provide bonus daily quests and instances for the faction that wins the battle for the zone, somewhat like, as Brack put it, a cross between the Isle of Quel'Danas and Lake Wintergrasp.

You can check out our previous IgroMir post here, or read Blizzard's official recap on their IgroMir site.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

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IgroMir is Russia's largest gaming convention -- sort of an Eastern European Electronic Entertainment Expo (E5?) -- and Blizzard made an appearance there this week, showing off World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Starcraft II. Besides the demo booths, visitors could look forward to panels with J. Allen Brack (the current WoW head honcho) and Chris Sigaty (SC2 grand poobah), trivia contests with the Russian Blizzard CMs, and goblin/worgen leveling contests.

But, of course, here at WoW.com we're mostly interested in Cataclysm news, so let's get right to it, shall we?

In his Cataclysm panel, Brack touched on two subjects -- Tol Barad, the new outdoor PVP zone/quest hub, and the new guild leveling system. The Tol Barad talk was apparently nothing new, but the guild leveling talk had some good information in it. Not everything discussed here is new, but some of it is, so I'll just reiterate what he said.

After the jump, of course.

With the heroic versions of Trial of the Crusader going live yesterday, raiding guilds are already venturing into the more challenging versions of Tier 9. As of evening Tuesday EST, the European guild For the Horde has claimed a world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10 (a no-wipe full clear of the instance) on 10-man heroic Trial. Unfortunately, I don't speak German so I might be missing some of the finer points related on their website (anyone who can shed more light on this, please drop a comment!) but it looks like they weren't deliberately aiming for the achievement until they reached Anub'arak with all 50 attempts remaining, and then decided to go for it. Next in achievement progression? A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity -- repeating it without any gear from 25-man ToC, which is broadly equivalent to the Herald of the Titans achievement. Ouch.

Boubouille at MMO Champion has since confirmed that the Swift Horde Wolf and its Alliance counterpart the Swift Alliance Steed are drops from the tribute chest upon completion of the no-wipe clear, and it's quite possible that the mounts also drop from the 25-man version as well. However, I doubt we'll be seeing A Tribute to Insanity-25 this week, as none of the guilds doing the heroic-25 mode have reported a wipe-free experience thus far.

We'll keep an eye on guild progression for you, and congratulations to For the Horde!

So we know that Arena seasons are intended to match PvE progression. Drysc a few days back said what some of us have feared over at the forums, stating that "(Arena) Seasons match PVE progression," and pointed out that the last gate in Sunwell Plateau opened only last May 20. He went on to explain that they "want that gear to be circulating a bit before the next season starts." By "that gear" he must have been referring to items that drop from Kil'jaeden, particularly weapons such as Apolyon, the Soul Render. Although a full 10 item points above its Season 4 equivalent, the Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword, they are very nearly visually identical.

When Season 4 starts, many players will have the maximum 5,000 Arena points banked for Season 4 item purchases. Some teams will be able to hit 2050 Rating on their first week, making it likely that more than a few players will be sporting S4 weapons as soon as the Season starts. Because of the way the current Arena system works, more players will have access to Season 4 gear than those with access to Kil'jaeden or even Sunwell Plateau. What does this imply, exactly?

Nihilum, everyone's favorite (okay, some people's favorite) guild, would like us all to know that they plan to come back and world first the Sunwell Plateau the way they did Illidan. Apparently since putting Hyjal and the Black Temple on farm they've, well, been farming them and PvPing and taking more or less a 'holiday' away from the game, which makes sense, insofar as they don't really have any new content to see. Sure, Zul'Aman, but when you've already beaten Illidan going back to the ten mans is kind of anti-climactic. So they've basically been done with WoW. But they haven't actually stopped playing, so it's not a comeback, they've been here for years.

Yes, I made an LL Cool J reference. I went there.

They've also redesigned their site if you intend to make use of it to keep track of their progress: I have some old friends back on Norgannon I know will be watching them intently. For those of you who won't, well, it's still a very pretty site design, and you can always watch this Babe Ruth like 'calling' of their eventual success and discover with us all if it's genius or hubris.