Project Lore

here is my idea if the next expansion is indeed the maelstrom. your guild could have it's own little instanced island filled with vendors, daily quests, and (possibly) guild rep rewards.

Solidsamm The Guild Hopper might not be cool, how about Solidsamm The Guild Ninja? He joined, he looted, he gquit.

Less cynic.

Yeah gotta agree, nothing special about guilds, unused tabards (due to rep tabards), trash/low lvl filled guild banks and that's about it, no big, special "I am in a guild, and that's EPIC" accessories...yeh that's the word...Blizz need to accessorize its Guild System, desperately.

While I understand, and agree with quite a few of, your points... I still don't think it's worthless or meaningless to be in a guild. There are always the social benefits of guild membership such as being a part of a more permanent and stable community, getting to know your fellow members, having a group of people to rely on for help or even just friendly banter. Guilds have always been a big part of the social aspect of WoW. Not to say that it couldn't be improved upon, as you bring up in your article, but I would say I still like being a part of my guild community, whether or not I *need* it for raiding. I do find your suggestions interesting and hopefully Blizz has thought of revamping the guild system themselves. It's definitely not beig utilized to its full potential.

Basically, what you're saying is that guild leaders are largely incompetent and should be replaced with automated mechanics. I'm not going to disagree with that, but it is, to a large degree, not the GM's fault. It's a ton of work to provide actually useful services to people. I personally, would rather play the game than spend all my time managing a guild 'properly'.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that there are no tools for the GM to use Guilds need a website, or some other similar data repository, and an EASY WAY for it's lazy members to get to it.

Guilds should be encouraged to cycle their officers. It should be clear, just looking at a guild's global information... how long their officers have been in... office. I should be able to go to the Armory and get all kinds of information about a guild... their mission statement, officer roster, rules of advancement, etc.

To that end, Blizzard could even host their own guild webpage server, with all guilds given a free page. Guilds that are one man armies, or set up simply to provide advertising space would be left at the default, whereas real guilds could populate their site with HTML or wysiwyg tools. The website "www.guildportal.com" is a good starting point, but with the login and connect mechanics streamlined so WoW players can easily get to it from either in game or from the Armory. Example: I'm sitting in IF, I click on 'website' in the guild page and the client tabs me out of the game, starts my default browser, and loads my guilds website. Since ALL guilds would have a website automatically, this mechanic would be universal.

Then Blizzard gets to work making widgets for their guild web pages.... Arena team management wirgets, Officer election widgets, What got looted widgets, who all has what gear widgets, ad infinitem. Make it easy for the GM to actually run a community, as opposed to forcing him or her to use the chat interface (and occasionally ventrilo) to run everything..

I would love to see guild rep/rewards.

E.g. you could base it of the achivemnet point system already implemented in the game, so the most points a guild has the more benefits it'll acquire.

Starting with guild related, rep rewards from existing factions, for which a new quatermaster could be created to avoid confusion.

although to make it fair, there should be 2 kinds of rewards, one based of the total accumulated points divided per account on a guild, from which different sized guilds could rip rewards evenly.

And another based of total accumulated points per toon, more achivment like rewards, which could push smaller guilds to accept and develope a new member base. For the second kind of rewards though, they could use a vendor service type of benefits, so by changing guilds, so would your benefits. In this way, just having a large guild with few points per character would not translate into an unfair advantage. Yet older more stablished guilds, would be more likely to accept new members in order to get this rewards.

As for the rewards themselves, how about epic BoP uncut gems, i wouldn't want my JC crafters to go out of bussines, but some of the really good gems are too hard to get, and i would gladly pay for someone to cut it for me. also this would fall in with the excess gold black hole phiosophy blizz has, pay for the gem, pay for the cut, yet you save time. BoP item enhancement, like shoulder/head/leg enchants would be on my list too.

And let's not eave gear out, i'm a gear whore myself, i'm outfitting my Paly with 4 differents sets, according to the occasion, 1 per spec and 1 for pvp.

And this could possibly be my favorite, A mount that changes with guild rep, not in shape, but in attributes, as the guild rep goes up. The better the guild rep is, with the different factions, the faster it goes, the more people it can carry, vendor upgrades, and so far. As much as i'd like to see a guild transport, i can't seem to see it as a reasonable or practical way to move around azeroth.

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@ decado

although i would love a guild hall, so to speak, since that seems to be the focus of your suggestion. I can;t see that happening due to server limitations. But if Blizz were to tell me that for an extra 50c a month per account, no choice in this, i could get a guild hall, i would gladly pay it. No more lagging around Dalaran, but hanguing out with my fellow guildies on a stress free enviroment.

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i would also like to see a more direct way to work with my guild. Like an in game tab at the guild bank with stats, for where we are, where we would like to be and individual/ guild progress. a way to set goals for the guild, other than logging and saying "ssup guild?, what we up to today?".

As you can tell i enjoy my guild very much, and although we ain't many we do help each other as much as we can. But having a common goal, and a way to visualize it, would certainly improve the way we approach our daily routine.

One last idea to pops into my head, all this rewards should be lvl apropiate, meaning different rewards for different lvl toons, and no i don't want more BoA gear, that could lead to abuse, but once again deeping into the gold black hole Blizz philosophy, how about blue lvling gear with slightly less item points than dungeon gear, just enough to making lvling an alt easier, but not good enough to make older dungeons un attractive to new players, this could fit into the second tye of rewards.

Also, by adding an alt to a guild, you would have to consider what kind of impact this would have on the achivement rewards of the guild itself.

Just a few ideas of the top of my head

i dont really have a comment on this i mean my guild is my best chance to do any raiding or even heriocs

Guild halls awesome idea, but i would like to see a system setup to run guild arena-esk tournements to assign the rankings you talked about. Probably only seen to other ppl in the guild but still cool

I've seen a couple of replies regarding the uselessness of Guild Tabards because of the Reputation Tabard system. I was thinking of this during a Naxx run a while back. What if wearing your Guild Tabard in a Raid Instance could gain you reputation with your guild. A point system, if you will, that can be attached to your toon's name in the guild roster. These points would be an easy way for GM's and Officers to see if your toon has been participating enough. Kind of a built in EP/GP system.

Anyone curious about the EP/GP Addon: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/epgp-dkp-reloaded.aspx

If the next expansion is the maelstrom im sensing alot of nagas and makruras. ew

WoW could easily make an instanced Guild Hall or something along the lines that if you are in the guild or in a party with the guild member you can get into the place. Set up trophies of things your guild has downed and other accomplishments

GuildWars has something like this in Eye of the North. Lineage 2 has guild halls and castles to fight over and I am sure there are other games that use these. They are just great to have.

Guild ships. S'all I'm saying.

For content of the new expansion the best you can come up is increasing the guild content?

New Races
New classes
New Hero classes
New continent
More advanced levels
New dungeons and lore to wow
More items
More mounts
More battlegrounds
More more more

That's just what we want MORE
Concerning guilds:
That's not why we play the game but i agree it needs some changes.
The kind of achviments for the guild would be cool thing to add.
And yep to raise in level in guild not because you best bud with the GM but because you work at it would also be cool...

If you worked much much hard you could even take the guild from the GM...
That would spice things up but probably also kill the guild.Like an implosion....I love this idead

And you guys??

See you in WOW

How about a guild achievement system? Every member could get special guild points wich they can use at a vendor where they could buy raid gear or even a special mount with his own guild tabart :) or items that will help yoou in raids?

WTB Guild Clubhouses

Again with the guild hall i think it would be a great idea. If you were to pay a good amount of gold to get it, it should work well.

Here are the things i would like to see in it...

Vendors equiped for the guilds needs.
Large space with a good few rooms.
A entrance from every city.
An instanced area.
Possibly and area with a big table for meetings would work well with RP.
A guild vault.
For decoration, a few banners on the wall walls with the guild tabard.

If anyone can get this suggestion into blizz please do so I think it would be a great area for no laggs raid organisation, and for a bit of dueling perhaps

Surely you already get rep for wearing your guild tabard in heroic instances with Alliance Vanguard or the horde equivalent?

i dont know how that would work i mean that would have to make 1,000s of diffrent halls unlesss the ymake like an instance a portal that takes you to a diffrent hall

Some interesting concepts, I really like the guild accomplishments / achievements. I loved Ulduar, reminds me of a much more fun Kara. I hope the upcoming content blizzard continues to produce such content.

I seriously don't think the game needs more races, classes or another hero class. The game STILL isn't balanced after they added the DK. Think how much it will be screwed up if they add another class to the mix.

Guild Hall idea is nice. You could acess it from the guild register tabard creator places in the cites. You cna pay gold to improve it such as portals, food vendors, poffesion suplies,trainers and maybe a pvp system where guilds face off and the winnig guild gets a trophy which is displayed in the guild hall. Rep system would be better as I hardly wear my tabard like many others in the guild im in. Plus the GM can increase rep for peoples contribution to the guild. Obviously the halls will be instanced to avoid confusion. Quatermasters would be nice with a system called guild tokens which are avillable from pvp areana that i said earlier or guild dailes.

Dan you're right the game is not balanced but its not the DK that makes unbalanced its all the other classes and it looks like blizz just added DKs to make the other classes look even better and we definitly dont need another punching bag i thik we have enough classes but another hero class wouldent hurt unless they make them like the DKs

I think that there should be a guild standing just like their are arena standing, and your guild will move up in rank by the number and kind of raids you do. Also you could move up in your guild rank by how much members of your guild donated to events in Azeroth (Crusaders Coliseum).
So there are a lot of things that Blizzard could change to make guild membership more important, and I hope they do something or no one will be in guilds anymore.

does everything in thsi game have to be a competition?

Well, if you actually LIKE the people in your guild, that should be enough. Without all these retarded competition add-ons.

I think that Blizz should do a guild house(hall / citadel etc.).
Some kind of separate ,,dimension" where the GM could place vendors for enchants,reciepes etc. but with the price of gold from guildvault.

p.s: It's not my ideea, I saw this in another MMO.