Project Lore

A guild castle from Runes of Magic.

This week we look back at the recurring idea of guild housing, and Upper Deck Entertainment's thoughts on the WoW TCG issue.

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Blue Stew is a new daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's Day 4, and somehow I'm still truckin'. All of this info-gathering business can really take it out of a guy, but I've still got some juicy tidbits for my loyal readers! Without a doubt, the biggest piece of Official World of Warcraft Forum-related news today is the opening of the Cataclysm section. There's not much to be found there yet, but it's sure to be the place to go for developer thoughts on the next expansion in the near future. I think I'm going to shake up the format a little bit today, if that's alright with you folks. Don't worry, I'll keep all the commentary and silly non-sequiturs intact. I just think it might be a tad more readable if I stay away from the bullet points. Paragraph breaks are a good thing, trust me! Guild Advancement Suggestion Quintas wants a Ferrari that brews coffee for you and irons your clothes on the way to work. Outside of some Xzibit-brand charity, she's going to have a hard time making that happen (and she'd probably have to actually own one of those zippy, Italian roadsters in the first place). Likewise, she wonders why we can't have our own Guild Houses that do everything for us, defeating the need to ever visit the outside world again! As WoW players, don't we already have that problem? Amongst her proposed "enhancements" is an Artisan system that attracts specialist NPCs to your guild, supplying them with unique patterns and schematics. Yo, yo, yo! It's yo' boy, Xzibit, here teamin' up with West Fall Customs to bring you the tightest rides this side of the Thandol Span! Like most "good ideas," though, it quickly spirals out of control, and soon enough you're running back and forth around the world collecting materials, doing dailies, and trying your best to woo this demanding NPC for what amounts to very little in return. I'm sure Blizzard isn't short on good ideas, it's more a matter of whether or not they're worth executing, something that I think Qunitas forgot to consider while in the midst of her illustrious proposal. I highlighted this post to once again address the issue of Guild Housing: it's just too much of a hassle. If you ask me, Blizzard's got the right idea. They're implementing most of the features people have always asked for, but they're doing it through the UI, instead of spending resources on constructing virtual domiciles. Think of it this way: why go through the trouble of having to meet up in a Guild Hall every time you want to do something when all of your normal business can be conducted through Guild Chat? Player housing is great when you can implement it from the ground up, and when you have the opportunity to incorporate it into PvP play (sacking fortresses and whatnot), but it's not worth shoe-horning into the game for purely cosmetic purposes. Will we ever see it in WoW? Maybe. Blizzard always used to rebuff the idea of changing Azeroth and, well, look where we are now. I just wouldn't expect it anytime soon when there are clearly so many more interesting things for the development team to work on. My Tiny Crimson Whelp Story Judging by the thread title, Velliana either writes articles for Highlights or has seen one too many episodes of  Taxicab Confessions. I'm not sure what a "Tiny Crimson Whelp" might entail in the world of prostitution, but I bet  you could find out for a couple Benjamins. The (admittedly short) story details her jaunt into Grim Batol, and the epic, emotional struggle she underwent wondering whether or not it would be worth killing a whelp for the mere chance of a drop! You'll have to click through to the thread for the shocking conclusion! What I found most interesting about this post is that it attracted more attention from the Community Management team than even the worst nerf complaint thread. Not one, not two, but three chose to respond, each detailing their own attempts at collecting all of Azeroth's tiny whelps. Thundgot had an especially tough time. It took him over an estimated 5000 kills to lock down all four. Thankfully, he made some extra gold along the way, but it just goes to show you that even Blizzard employees don't get everything handed to them on a silver platter. I don't have any of the whelps myself (I've barely even tried), but how about the rest of you? Were you as lucky as Miss Velliana here or was it a much more laborious and frustrating experience? Elitist Jerks Closes Thread on Unholy DK Ghostcrawler's been on the warpath today, dealing primarily with massive amounts of Hunter QQ. But that's not all! The Death Knights are itching to have their say, too. Now, I'm always a little wary of people who obsess over min-maxing their characters, but I can't deny that Elitist Jerks is one of the best sites to look at if you really want to understand how to play your class (that is, if you can sort through the long threads and gobs of esoteric information). Why Skaven is whining to Blizzard about something someone else decided to do on another forum, I don't know, but he sure is upset about them closing one of his favorite threads. GC reminds us of why he likes Elitist Jerks so much. They conduct the kinds of conversations he likes to see: "One of the things I personally appreciate about the EJ forums is they tend to focus on what is, not in their opinions on what should be. That tends to lead to discussions based on facts and not opinions. Their Unholy DK threads focus on how to maximize dps as Unholy not on petitioning Blizzard to buff Scourge Strike." The way I understand Skaven's complaint is that changes made to Unholy spec now favor one skill over another similar skill. Now we all know that sometimes even small modifications to a class can have a greater impact on the way they work in practice. But, as Ghostcrawler points out, he and so many others, like to complain because their class no longer fits the idea of what they think it should be. In other words, he's freaking out over having to re-learn the ins-and-outs of his Unholy Death Knight, even when the change itself is miniscule. This may seem like pointing out the obvious, but it's clear that there are many people out there who have yet to learn that crying on the forums isn't going to help or change anything. I think that about wraps it up for this edition. Please chime in with your thoughts on all of these topics below, and let me know if you prefer this format over the other one!

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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?

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