guild-leveling
Latest
Breakfast Topic: Should guild bonuses be a continuing effort?
Plugging into a level 25 guild after a period of solo leveling is like being loaded into a slingshot and catapulted into a candy shop of delight. More XP! More rep! More speed! More travel! Suddenly, basic game business turns EZ mode. Who wouldn't want that? Last year saw adjustments to guild leveling that made it easier to push a guild up to level 25. The changes helped boost many guilds up to the level cap, allowing their members to reap the benefits of guild membership. The question is ... now what? Should there be something more to enjoying guild benefits once you've reached the top? Once members have helped the guild reach the level cap and pushed their individual guild reputation to exalted to earn the available rewards, is there enough incentive to keep contributing? Should there be additional benefits for consistently active players? What might those rewards look like?
Officers' Quarters: Faster leveling through bribery
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Rewards can be powerful motivators. But what is the right way to reward members for leveling the guild and earning guild achievements? This week, a new leader asks just that. Hey Scott, I'm a newly established guild leader with hopes of having a decently successful guild. You see I've had my hand in a handful of guilds ranging from the most casual to the semi hardcore and then in ranks ranging from your run of the mill raider to substitute guild leader. From what I noticed in my experience is that most guilds have tons and tons of members that either pvp or raid and it seems that only the few named personnel only show up to check raid times (if any) or to do the occasional battleground. What I want to accomplish with my newly establish guild is some sort of incentives for work towards achievements or overall leveling of the guild. My officers are just down right stumped and I am looking at you for a piece of advice maybe. I guess to sort of elaborate more on what our goals are is that I'm looking at just making a casual raid/pvp guild that not only rewards its players for achievements but for progress in leveling the guild. What do you suggest? Sincerely, Wet Behind the Ears GL
Limits on guild leveling and reputation removed in patch 5.0.4
Patch 5.0.4 appears to have made a major change to the way guilds level and the way characters earn guild reputation. The daily and weekly caps for guild leveling and guild reputation game have been removed entirely, allowing players to grind reputation and experience to their heart's content. With a Renowned Guild Tabard, my alt was gaining a whopping 367 guild reputation per quest turned in, making the grind to exalted a relatively quick one. But there's more than just the cap removal. Apparently, the reputation and guild experience you gain is no longer limited by level, either -- which means that were I to make a new level 1 and slap on that tabard, I'd still be making 367 reputation per quest completed. Speaking of alts, my bank alt completed a couple of quests in Azshara just to test this theory. Not only did she get a sizeable reputation gain, but she also earned a whopping 60,000 guild experience per quest turned in. This makes it much, much easier for guilds to level, whether you're part of a small friends and family guild or just wanting to level a guild for your bank alt. In either case, guilds should have a much easier time hitting level 25 before Mists officially launches in September. [Thanks to Matt for the tip!] It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Is it time for daily guild XP limits to be removed?
Is your guild level 25? Surprise, most guilds are -- or at least most guilds that have been up and running since the first days of Cataclysm are. The higher-end guilds or guilds with plenty of members pushed the leveling cap every week and managed to hit level 25 in a fairly short amount of time. Others with plenty of members followed soon after. In fact, as long as your guildmates were running dungeons on a daily basis and maybe indulging in some PvP or raiding, it was pretty easy to hit that daily cap. However, there are plenty of guilds out there that were established later in the expansion, guilds with fewer members. And those members may be awfully tired of running the same heroics over and over by this point. At the beginning of the expansion, running those instances was all well and good -- they were new, interesting, and perhaps most importantly, they contained gear upgrades for just about anyone. However, we're at the end of the expansion. Most people have seen the heroics far too many times to count, not everyone is raiding, and there's a lot less activity from players in general. It's typical for that end-of-expansion lull to occur. But when you're trying to get a guild to level 25, it's awfully hard to do when there's a daily XP limit in place. Is it perhaps time to remove the daily cap and let guilds level as they will?
Officers' Quarters: A tempting offer
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. It's not easy being anything less than a max-level guild in this era of perks. Most guilds can't wait to hit that final level and have access to all the bonuses that players of long-established communities have enjoyed for the past year. This week, one guild leader has an opportunity to skip the guild leveling process -- practically by pushing a button. Should he take it? Hi Scott, I messaged you awhile back in regards to guild realm transferring (this was before the service was implemented). We've done well overall and our progression has been fantastic overall, making us relatively competitive in Heroic Raiding. Currently, I have an interesting option available to my guild. One of our officers has access to a level 25 guild, while we are only in the mid teens (we are a small, tight-knit group). He has offered, rather graciously, for us to move over to that guild and change the name of both of our guilds, so we could keep our guild name.
Officers' Quarters: 6 tips for new guilds in the era of perks
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. Two types of guilds in WoW are having the most difficulty right now: 25-man raiding guilds and new guilds of every sort. For officers, competing against established, max-level guilds can be incredibly daunting. Success in this game is never a sure thing. However, you can take steps to help your guild to survive and grow. 1. Establish your credentials. You are the face of this new enterprise. Asking players to give up all their shiny perks is a big deal these days -- bigger, honestly, than I ever thought it would be. Luring people away from that into your brand new organization all hinges on their confidence in you and the other officers. They can't just assume you have a plan and the background to pull it off. They have to know. You wouldn't buy a car designed by a guy who never learned how to drive. Likewise, players aren't going to join your guild if it's clear to them that you don't have the appropriate level of experience.
Ask the Devs round 6 Guild Advancement Q&A now up
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.
The Guild Counsel: A guild guide to RIFT
With all of the buzz this week surrounding the launch of RIFT, I thought it would be a good opportunity for The Guild Counsel to take a closer look at guilds in the game. On the surface, with all of the solo content and the public grouping feature around rift invasions, it might not seem that guilds are very important. But at the higher levels, guilds definitely have a purpose, such as prepping for raid content, working on ancient wardstone quests, or coordinating PvP attacks in Warfronts and in the open world. This week, we'll cover the basics of how to form up a guild and then take a closer look at some of the guild tools available to guild leaders.
Patch 4.1 PTR: Heirloom guild tabards aid reputation gains
From the very moment guild reputation and guild leveling were implemented, players have wanted some of their reputation gains to spill over to their alts. Why should your alts have to level their reputation if they're in the same guild as your main? In patch 4.1, Blizzard still isn't allowing your reputation to spill over to your alts, but it is implementing the Illustrious Guild Tabard and the Renowned Guild Tabard. These Bind to Account tabards are likely purchased at revered (Illustrious) and exalted (Renowned) reputations with your guild, making leveling additional characters through guild reputation that much easier. Additionally, assuming you get to keep the item upon leaving a guild, it should make the re-leveling process that much easier. Losing your exalted guild reputation for one reason or another and ending up neutral in your next guild can be a painful, painful thing. These tabards will help soothe that pain. Judging by the sell-to-vendor prices on Wowhead, the Illustrious tabard will cost 125 gold and the Renowned tabard will cost you 250 gold.
The Queue: My pet is adorable too
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Mat and Gray aren't the only ones with adorable pets. I can play that game, too! Look at that Roomba up there. It's so cute, what with its glowing cycloptic eye, its massive, unyielding grin and its manic, electronic chittering. Just adorable. lazymangaka asked: What is the most efficient way to grind guild reputation?
Officers' Quarters: The guild achievement controversy
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Less than 24 hours after Cataclysm went live, Blizzard announced a major change to the way guilds would level up in the brand-new system: Guild achievements no longer provide experience. The change came as a shock to many players. Typically, major shifts in design philosophy such as this occur during beta or even earlier. However, as Nethaera explained, the beta did not provide an accurate picture of guild experience from achievements because most characters were templates without their own achievement history. It seems shortsighted that Blizzard did not anticipate a rush on guild achievements, particularly in the early days of the guild leveling system when there are so many juicy perks to unlock. Not to mention, achievements were the only way to get around the daily experience cap and powerlevel your guild. If anyone should know the lengths that players will go to in order to reap rewards, you'd think it would be Blizzard. As it turns out, the game's developers somehow did not see this coming and, unfortunately, the timing of the announcement could not have been worse.
Breakfast Topic: Is your guild looking forward to guild perks?
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?
Guild experience no longer earned via guild achievements
Community Manager Nethaera hit the official World of Warcraft forums this afternoon to announce a change to guild experience that has been implemented today. Until now, guilds received guild experience for achievements earned. Going forward, this will no longer be the case, and it appears the change is retroactive as well. Any experience previously gained via guild achievements is no more. Nethaera We have decided to remove the added bonus of gaining Guild Experience from Guild Achievements earned. This change will realign Guild Achievements with our philosophy held for normal Achievements, which are intended to be predominantly their own reward (barring the rare exception of special achievements that grant an additional reward.) Previously, the experience reward had been seen as an additional side bonus and not something that should have been significantly skewing the advancement of guilds. During the beta, we greatly increased leveling speed across the board and since most characters were copied from templates, guild experience from Achievements didn't seem imbalanced. It has become clear that an imbalance does exist and should be addressed to ensure that guilds progress at the rates expected within the daily Guild Experience limits. For guilds that are currently above the normally possible experience limit, we will be readjusting it back to the expected limit once more. This will not affect Guild Reputation gains at this point in time. source
Coming back for the Cataclysm
Tomorrow sees the launch of the third expansion to World of Warcraft... but odds are you already knew that. It's been hard to miss the lead-up, even if you weren't playing the game and thereby missed out on seeing the entire planet get blown apart. And it's probably been equally difficult to fight back the siren song of the game, taunting you to come back and play again... or play for the first time if you've never tried it. If you've been proud of yourself for resisting, you might want to look away, because there are many reasons to start playing again or start up for the first time. The expansion has brought with it a number of improvements and boosts to the game, some obvious and some not. If you've been considering coming back or trying the game out, there's never been a better occasion than right this moment -- whatever your reason for leaving might have been.
Countdown to Cataclysm: Guild leveling and progression
This article is part of our Countdown to Cataclysm series, preparing you for Cataclysm launch one day at a time. One of the coolest new features of Cataclysm is the ability for guilds to level up, unlocking all sorts of cool items, mounts, heirlooms and much more. Also new to Cataclysm are guild achievements that groups of players can work for that open up even more rewards. Blizzard has crafted a really awesome guild reputation system, so get your buddies together to hit the ground running when Cataclysm launches.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm, part 2
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Last week, a reader wrote in to ask about some dos and don'ts as a guild leader during the character leveling process of an expansion. Obviously, we're focusing on Cataclysm here, but many of these tips will be relevant for any expansion with a raised level cap. Part 1 provided four tips: Have a plan. Organize group activities. Don't rush anyone. Set a date for the endgame. This week I've got five more.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. The weeks after an expansion goes live are a strange time for guilds. After months of working as a team toward a common goal, most members go off on their own to level up through solo quests. Since raiding at the cap is impossible and raiding old content isn't nearly as interesting as questing in the new zones, your guild can find itself strangely fractured during this time. This week, one guild leader wonders how to keep a guild from falling apart during the leveling process. Scott, I was a member of a "raiding" guild in The Burning Crusade (they didn't do too much raiding), but I hit level cap a week before Wrath of the Lich King came out. The guild basically came apart at the seams before anyone hit level cap. Then they tried to reform again a little before ToC and nothing really worked out. Now I'm running my own little raiding guild and don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. What keeps a raiding guild together through the leveling process? I was thinking about putting in incentives in our loot policy for people getting to cap, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. What are some things I should be doing, and what are some things I shouldn't be doing? Thisius Hells Vanguard Sisters of Elune (US)
Cataclysm Beta: Select guild raid achievement requirements reduced
I admit it. I'm an achievement-holic. I'll repeat the most idiotic, mind-numbing task for hours on end just to earn a handful of achievement points. It doesn't matter that I can't do anything with those points. I want them. I need them. And I know I'm not alone in my obsession -- some people play World of Warcraft just for the achievements. (You know who you are.) Once Cataclysm launches, there will be a whole new set of achievements just for guilds, only compounding my poor, crippling obsession. A metric ton of them are for completing old instances and raids as a guild, and grabbing those points requires 80 percent guild participation. Under the guidelines laid out earlier in September, that meant you'd need to take along at least 20 guildies to conquer Serpentshrine Cavern (a BC 25-man), even if you could easily complete it with fewer. Well, for those of us who are obsessed with collecting achievement points, there's good news -- Blizzard just cut the required participation rate for all the old school Burning Crusade raids. On the official forums, blue poster Mumper confirmed that they're treating all old 25-man raids as 10-mans -- instead of needing 20 guildies to take on Lady Vashj and Kil'jaeden, you will now only need 8. The full blue post is after the break.
The Art of War(craft): The shape of Cataclysm battlegrounds PvP
Zach loves all things PvP, which is why Fight Quest is the only thing he watches on television. Well, that and Glee, which contains absolutely no PvP whatsoever. Except maybe if you consider Rachel Berry and newcomer Sunshine Corazon's rivalry some form of The Art of WarCraft. I mean, it could be. I was supposed to go into detail with keybindings using an addon this week, but we'll put that on hold for now. We can always revisit keybindings another time, but so much has happened on the beta that it would just be wrong not to take a look at what's going on. By now, many of the abilities are pretty set, and with a rumored November release on the horizon -- an idea that's got some meat behind it now that the background downloader is working on a hefty 4 GB worth of 4.0.1 goodness -- it looks like what we see is what we'll get. The numbers will probably be tweaked up or down on some spells and talents, but for the most part, I think we've got a pretty solid feel for how the game will play. The new game mechanics will take some getting used to for some classes such as warlocks, who become a cooldown class, and paladins, who now manage a secondary resource. Players have all of the pre-Cataclysm and the grind to level 85 to get a good feel for things, and that should be plenty of time. But never mind the new abilities -- those are fun, for sure -- but there's an entire support system for World of Warcraft PvP that raises the bar in a way we've never experienced. New battlegrounds, a standardized currency on par with the PvE system, guild support ... Cataclysm PvP is going to be fun as hell.
Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.0.1 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Most major game patches have a significant impact on guild officers, and in the past I've tried to give an officers' perspective on how the changes to the game will affect the decisions and plans that we make moving forward. Unlike previous patch-perspective columns, however, a reader actually requested this one. Hey Scott, I'm a guild leader for a rather small 10-man raiding guild, and I got to thinking today about the upcoming pre-Cata patch that's going to change everything. See, Wrath was the first expansion of WoW that I, and many members of my guild, were ever really active in (a lot of us swapped over from another MMO, together), so I was wondering -- once the pre-Cata patch hits, should we continue raiding? From the grumblings I've been hearing on the PTR, numbers are all out of whack, and with some of the class changes coming, I was wondering if it'd even be a good idea to keep raiding once 4.0.1 hits. I've never experienced the "conversion" from one expansion to another on the raiding front, so I really have no idea what to expect as far as people's attitudes (not just guildies, but possible PUGs, too). In the other games I'd played, an expansion just meant new zones, storyline, etc., but WoW's expansion features a level cap increase, and in this case, a major overhaul in how we play.
