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World of Warcraft's top 20 guild names
Based on their database of 230,000 guilds, GuildOx has come up with the top 20 most popular guild names. Interestingly there are no guild names that really run away with the list -- the most popular guild name only appears 62 times. One would have thought that there would have been names that'd appear hundreds of times, but according to the data that's not the case. Also noteworthy is that none of the top names are offensive or jokes. This speaks well of the community at large. Here's GuildOx's results: 20. Prime -- 48 19. Requiem -- 49 18. Eclipse -- 50 17. Genesis -- 50 16. Exodus -- 50 15. Asylum -- 51 14. Defiance -- 51 13. Invictus -- 52 12. Relentless -- 52 11. Insidious -- 52 The rest of the list after the break!
FS of Ravencrest-EU gets world first level 90? [UPDATE: Rolled back]
While we're not ready to declare it official, it appears the world's first level 90 has been achieved. FS of the Ravencrest-EU realm dinged just a short time ago, according to GuildOx. It's important to take these early dings with a healthy dose of skepticism, as in the past they've been accompanied by swift action on Blizzard's part when the leveling method has been discovered to be exploitative. Some high-profile people in Cataclysm took park in an exploit, only to find themselves slapped with a level decrease back to 80. We'll keep you updated as we learn more about this developing story, but if this is a legit power leveling, then it's been done extremely fast. Mists only released in the EU a little over four hours ago. Updated 1:30 a.m. EDT 9/25/12: Apparently he's been rolled back to 87, which follows what many in the forums are claiming (although there hasn't been any evidence until now).
1,000 guilds have killed heroic Ragnaros
GuildOx, one of the premier guild ranking and data sites for WoW raiding, reports that 1,000 guilds have defeated the heroic Ragnaros encounter in Firelands. This number represents 2% of the entire pool of active raiding guilds, as well as 4.2% of the guilds that are raiding heroic Firelands content. If that doesn't put things into perspective for you with regard to Blizzard's trying to make raiding more accessible, I don't know what will. Interestingly, 76% of the heroic Ragnaros kills have been completed in 10-man raids, with 24% of the kills in 25-man groups. Ten-man raiding has certainly made endgame raiding significantly more accessible, and 25-man only guilds seem to be struggling to keep their numbers as high as they once were, especially when the 10-man versions of the encounters are more accessible.
GuildOx shares the most popular Alliance and Horde names by race
Last week, GuildOx shared with WoW Insider the top 10 character names by class in World of Warcraft based on the new data pulled from Blizzard's awesome new APIs and information sharing services. If you're not familiar with GuildOx, these guys catalog and rank top progression guilds in WoW and parse lots of cool information. Now, GuildOx is back with the top 10 names by race and faction, proving that the era of creating punny names on World of Warcraft is far from over. We'll first take a look at the Alliance races and then hit up the Horde. Human Palatinus Percivale Tyrael Fordragon Thrasius Crixxus Sangrial Gavinrad Dalson Kikyo Human names are tough to "pun up," as it were, because they are pretty much just us. Would you name your own children with punny-sounding names or ironic references to video games? Actually, don't answer that -- some of you with kids named Donkey Kong are going to get mad at me. Actually, when I do have a daughter and I name her Samus, I'll come back and read this paragraph and regret everything I've ever said.
GuildOx finds the world's most experienced raid boss killer
Guild ranking and progression tracking site GuildOx has assembled data on World of Warcraft's most experienced raider in terms of boss kills -- a Troll mage named Meltymon from the Destromath (EU) server. Meltymon has 5,389 raid boss kills, most on normal difficulty, going back to the beginning of the game's raiding challenges. Now, while Meltymon isn't the most experienced raider in terms of content completed, since heroic Ragnaros is still unaccounted for, the number of total raid boss kills over the lifetime of the character is still pretty impressive. The most interesting part of the ranking on GuildOx is that the most raid boss kills do not come from characters in the cutting-edge guilds. In fact, most of the higher-ups on the list are from guilds doing normal content each week with a smattering of heroic kills thrown in. The larger, more progressed guilds tend to do the content on their mains until completion for world firsts and then swap to alts or take time away from the game until a new patch hits and new challenges appear. All of these new rankings on GuildOx are possible because of the new APIs we had talked about in the past and are really providing developers and site owners with some cool tools to play around with. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Typhoon Struggle claims world first strict 10-man heroic Lich King kill
Big congratulations are in order for <Typhoon Struggle> of the Defias Brotherhood (EU) server, the first guild in the strict 10-man GuildOx rankings to kill the Lich King on heroic. GuildOx interviewed Sheeana, Typhoon Struggle's guild master, who shared some of the trials and tribulations of the kill, especially the brutal first phase of the encounter. What are the 10-man strict rankings, you ask? GuildOx ranks the progression of guilds all across the different realms. The strict 10-man rankings are, essentially, 10-man raid groups that never have access to the 25-man versions of the instance. This means that a strict 10-man raiding group will never have gear or drops obtained through 25-man raiding. To be considered and ranked on the GuildOx strict 10-man rankings, members of the 10-man raiding group can never earn an ICC-25 or ToGC-25 kill. Even though ICC-25 drops the same iLevel gear as ICC-10 heroic, GuildOx discourages the practice, as this allows strict 10-man raiding groups to gear up twice as fast. "Strict" means "strict." In addition, strict 10-man guilds usually only have a limited roster of between 10 to 12 people, since most others go on to the 25-man versions of the encounters. According to Sheeana, the toughest phase was the first, as the Lich King's minions on heroic scale in power exponentially. These are raiders using, at the most, iLevel 264 gear. For the full interview and announcement, including the criteria for the strict 10-man rankings, visit GuildOx. You can learn more about the criteria surrounding the strict 10-man rules here. Again, big congratulations to Typhoon Struggle!
GuildOx implements 10-man strict rankings
GuildOx sends an email to tell us that they've set up 10-man strict ratings on their guild progression website. They've always offered 10-man ratings, though a lot of guilds run both 10- and 25-man content, and it's not quite legit to stack the "10-man only" guilds up against the guilds who occasionally do 25-man content (and thus have chances at better gear, no matter how much of a difference it makes). Hence, enter the "10-man strict" ratings -- these are guilds who have not run any 25-man content, according to a set of criteria that GuildOx has put together?What is that criteria? You won't be allowed to earn any Coliseum normal kills or Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills. You are still allowed to PuG those fights, though the limit is 10 players over time, or five in the same fight (in other words, if 10 players of your guild accomplish a kill in 25-man Coliseum, or five of them do it in the same raid, you're off the 10-man strict list). That's designed to make sure that the list stays as clean as possible. You'll have to watch recruits, too -- anyone who enters your guild with a certain achievement has it counted towards that total of 10 players as well. All the other info you need to know about the listings are over in their FAQ. Players may find other ways around the limit (there is, of course, higher level gear now available from Emblems that 10-player guilds are still able to get), but for now, that's where GuildOx is putting the limit, so if you want to stay on the list, follow their rules. Good luck to all of the strictly 10-man guilds out there.
Alternatives to WoWJutsu
It's very, very rare that pioneers are actually the best at what they do. They have great ideas, and those ideas revolutionize their field... but they're just ideas, concepts. It's not long before someone else improves those initial concepts and makes them the new standard. This more or less describes the situation around WoWJutsu.WoWJutsu was once the number one guild ranking website, tracking progression, boss kills and all of that great stuff. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with the times. WoWJutsu's tracking relies on the Armory, crawling the whole thing and using gear that characters have equipped to determine progress. In order for your guild's Malygos kill to be marked down, members of your guild need to have Malygos drops on their Armory profile. This is the only way, as far as I know, that WoWJutsu will list your kill.What does that mean? Well, it implies that guild progression isn't tracked properly at all. The first guild on a server to clear all of the content can easily come in third or fourth or twelfth on the ranking list. If your armory page doesn't update right away, that alone is going to throw your guild's progression record off. As minor as it may seem, it actually has some bad side effects, specifically when it comes to recruitment. If you claim your guild has cleared the hardest content in the game when you're looking for applicants, and people check WoWJutsu to make sure you're not making false claims... well, WoWJutsu's inaccuracies could imply that you're lying, when you're not at all. It's damaging.
