The Next Expansion: Guild Progression
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iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 35 Comments Tags: columns, comradery, expansion ideas, feats of strength, guild housing, guild progression, guilds, ideas for the future, player housing, progression, raiding, the next expansion, titles
iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 35 Comments Tags: columns, comradery, expansion ideas, feats of strength, guild housing, guild progression, guilds, ideas for the future, player housing, progression, raiding, the next expansion, titles 
BlizzCon is slowly creeping up on us, and this year most people expect the company's big announcement to be World of Warcraft-based. With StarCraft 2 locked in for this year, and Diablo III looking like 2010, early 2011 is rip (if not late) for the third expansion to Azeroth. As it stands now, people are expecting The Maelstrom (not storm) or The Emerald Dream to be the focus of the next expansion (water mounts anyone?), but World of Warcraft needs more than epic lore to pull people in and retain the current amount of users. Like any good internet subscriber, I need to get my ideas out there before the announcements are made so I have something to point to and go "told you so!"
We, the citizens of Project Lore, touched upon the idea of guild progression earlier this week. The short quip in the post almost lead to a complete derailment of the topic. Nearly as many commentators spoke out for guild progression as guild cohesiveness , the actual discussion. Obviously the topic is an important one to many of us here, so here's to hoping that Blizzard is listening. Outside of player desire, there's also another reason Blizzard needs to step up, every other game is doing it. There is the whole jumping off a bridge philosophy to worry about, but I say the leap needs to be made. Desperately.
Plan and simple, there is absolutely no reason to stay in a guild these days. None. Not one single reason keeps me from guild hopping daily. Okay, perhaps SolidSamm 'The Guild Hopper' wouldn't be a great title, but I could still get things done. I could leap from guild to guild and still raid, still participate in Arenas, still do my dailies, you name it. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be able to do these things without a guild. Not by any means. What I am suggesting is that your guild, and one's standing in the guild, should rise the more you contribute to it, and the rest of Azeroth.
How cool would it if your guild leveled up along side you through various means? Guild age, member count, average member length, these are just some easy ways to measure a guild's progress. Then we have more complex, and fun things to participate in. Complete 100,000 quests as a guild and receive a new Feat of Strength, all guild runs of Ulduar and Naxxramas award another. A new title, "Home of Mick" if your guild contains the #1 Arena team. "Die Hard" for guild domination (no deaths) in all of the Battlegrounds. The creativity could be taken as far as Blizzard would allow it. However, without player/guild housing, the developers would be somewhat restricted to what types of rewards they could offer. We'd be limited to things like extra guild bank slots (no longer would the GM have to pay up), news titles and achievements, super tabard construction, guild recognition, guild summoning (for those Warlock-less nights), discounts at vendors...Should I keep going?
One cool thing I would like to see is auto-progression in the guild. Instead of, or perhaps in conjunction with, the current guild ranking system we'd have a ranking system based upon atoon's contributions to their guild. No longer would a player's popularity allow him to raise the ranks of a guild, instead a toon's standing in the guild would be promoted by way of merit. As cool as it is I doubt this idea would fly due to the loss of control by the GM and officers.
A complete, and detailed, overhaul to the Guild system in WoW would be a huge boon to the community, and a great selling point on the back of The Maelstrom's/Emerald Dream's box. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to be a part of a guild that did their best to stay together, tried their utmost to deal with the internal issues, was full of selfless and giving members, was a group of friends and not random acquaintances. In a word, comradery. After all, aren't MMOGs supposed to be all about the social experience?
Those are just the seeds to get the greater readership brainstorming. What other progression mechanics would you have in mind? How about other types of rewards? Are you fine with the guild hopping ways of today, or do you desperately want a change like I, and many others, do?
Reader Comments (35)
or they coud make a zone ppl coud have guild towns.... but it will get many towns then and wont have place for all.. and u need reagents to build buildings and trade posts and stuff. like age of empires...
and for example a jc vendor guy.. and the jc ppl coud give gems to the vendor and when it get sold 50% will go to you and the rest to the guild bank
I would LOVE to see those changes however for the last one i would suggest a point system that would show how much one toon has helped the guild out.
I like the idea of giving guilds more of a role in the game. You need 10-25 people to raid, as it is; and, pre-mades typically dominate BGs; so, promoting a system where you benefit from doing group things with the same group makes perfect sense.
An easy way to do this would be to give more benefits to being in a guild; perhaps, even more to being with the same guild over a long period of time. I've heard it said that the game is what you put into it, and guilds [in my opinion] put a lot more into the game than single players.
Simple things like titles for Guild Masters and Officers would be a great addition, that I think most people would like. Giving guild's an in-game ranking system would also be a relatively easy addition that I think a lot of people would enjoy; and, the only hard part about it would be determining how to rank those guilds. Would guilds completing PvP objectives (such as, win 20 Arathi Basin battles in a row in a group composed completely of guild members) to raise their rank within their PvP server gain more points towards their rank than if they completed PvE objectives (such as, full clear Normal Mode Naxxramas 20 times will in groups composed only of guild members); and, vice versa on PvE servers?
I read a post that said something about instanced guild island for the rumored Cataclysm expansion; and, that seems like a very good idea; however, a massive programming task. It's already enough information to send from one computer to another, sometimes over great distances, without adding a completely guild detailed island into the game for every guild on every server.
There are a LOT of good ideas here. Simply too many to name all at once.
I hope Cataclysm destroys (phases) Old World and gives high level characters something to do as well as a leveling boost.
yea if it was maelstrom it might actually bring me back because....wotlk made me quit, i hate it, its boring so i just play FFO...i hope the next one will bring me back...
@Iiene of Kul Tiras - He's not saying that GM's are incompetent, just that Guild Member might want to be recognized for their contributions, beyond the "Raider" rank. I'd say it's not so much a rank thing (as ranks are great for GM's to put people with the access they need, but another type of "Hey, I helped" system.
City of Heroes is probably a great example of this. In CoH, you can see how much Prestige each member of the Super Group (or SG, which is the CoH equivalent to Guilds) has earned since they last joined the Group. Guild members can earn Prestige, by playing in Super Group mode. However in CoH, you earn Prestige by sacrificing the amount of money (or Influence/Infamy) you earn in the game.
However, for WoW, it would be very easy to earn Prestige for a Guild simply by wearing the Tabard, any Rep you earn while wearing the tabard gives your guild a higher score. Then you can use the WoW armory to see what the highest scored Guilds are on your server. Now THAT, would be something right there. It would give guilds a mark of pride to say, they are in the top ten Guilds for the server, and by seeing how much Prestige or Rep each member earns, GM's can offer benefits to upping the guild Prestige.
This was fun for me on CoH, cause it drove me to be competitive, working to become a top Prestige earner for my SG.
Then perhaps the Guilds can use their Prestige points to purchase Guild rewards, like housing, bank slots etc, but even if it's just a matter of pride, and generates competition between guild on each server, that could be all that's needed to encourage people to stick it out.
However, the problem I think is the blind guild invites to un-guilded players would probably get worse. I forgot all about this, and realized that the only reason I haven't seen it recently is simply because I've had all my toons in my own Guild.
For me though, the thing I'd really like to see, is again something that existed in City of Heroes, and that's Coalitions. Coalitions are basically a group of Guilds. You share a chat channel, that's different from your Guild Chat, that allows you to basically talk with multiple Guilds. For me, the benefits of having all my toons in one guild is great. I don't want to join another guild for Group Content, but I'd love to be a part of a Coalition of Guilds, and then could use the Coalition channel to form Groups for Raids and Heroics.
Officers or GM's could join Coalitions with other Guild that their members have had a pleasant time grouping with for whatever purpose. This way, if you don't like the Guild Drama of a certain guild, but know they are effective at raid content, then you could join a Coalition.
The other thing that would be helpful would be the ability to see all members of the Guilds in the Coalition that are currently signed in. You can see who is in the channel and it would work nice to be able to see who is on from all of your favorite guilds. :)
It's one of those things I really like about CoH.
and flush out the "lazy punks" in the guild and then what happens those who dont do enough get kicked it is hard enough to get a guild guilds are supostu be fun the y are supostu help out each other allmost like a femily not compete against each other who has accoplished more and who is more valued to the guild
guilds are more then just raiding and helpingguildys with soloble quest is that why you help your guild so later you can ger recontion dont you see how stupid taht is
I think the instanced guild hall thing would be an awsome idea. It would give players somewhere to go a chill, get guild tabbards, setup raids, pvp, etc. All guilds get one but with more members or progress or money they do it gets bigger and nicer. Update the guild tabbard creation so they can be more choice. And what about some kind of ingame list in every city where if players click on it i will say the top 10 guilds on this realm for that faction based on progress in game or something.
If over MMOs can do guild halls im sure WoW can.