World of Warcraft: The Problem With Guilds Part Two - Resolutions

If you’ve read my previous article, I outline numerous issues with the current guild system. In this article, I will offer solutions to these problems. Some solutions will address multiple issues or overarching issues with guild.

Guild Experience

The first thing I want to deal with is leveling the guild. This will primarily address guild experience gains:

• Guild experience from quests should scale based on the level of the quest. For instance, all Vanilla WoW quests should give 100% of the experience as guild experience, Outland quests should give around 80%, Northrend quests should give around 60%, and Cataclysm quests should give around 40%. Keep in mind these are estimated benchmarks.
• Honorable kills should grant guild experience based on the target’s level. For instance, a honorable kill on a level 85 player would give 425 guild experience.
• Honor gained from Battleground objectives (which give experience) should also give guild experience. This includes level 85 Battlegrounds. This may or may not include bonus experience for doing Random Battlegrounds or Call to Arms.
• Guild experience gained from Arena matches should be reduced by as much as 50%. The amount it awards for winning is simply too much at the moment. There will be compensation for this.
• Dungeons should probably award a little more guild experience. Raids may need to as well, although it is not a necessity.
• When a player is removed from the guild, a fraction of his or her contributions is decremented from the guild experience. This can de-level a guild if the guild experience isn’t generated by the time the guild experience cap resets (which is on a daily basis). Removing more players within a short window of time will increase the amount of guild experience lost (it will start out very small so guild leaders and officers aren’t punished for removing players that are actually a detriment to the guild).
• To prevent guilds from dropping to level 24 every time they remove a player, there will be the potential to make a large “guild experience buffer” that is decremented from when players are removed from the guild, preventing the de-leveling.

Guild Challenges

Because guild experience gains are related to Guild Challenges, it’s worth addressing Guild Challenges next:

• There should be a larger allotment of Dungeon Guild Challenge, up to 20 per week. The gold reward and guild experience reward should be reduced to compensate by a sizeable amount of around 33% (especially if guild dungeon runs will give more guild experience, as mentioned above). This should give a larger incentive to run more guild dungeons.
• There should also be a larger allotment of Raid Guild Challenges, up to 3 (or more) per week. Killing one raid boss as a guild group to finish the challenge for the week it generally far less than most raiding guilds will achieve. The gold and guild experience rewards will be reduced for this challenge as well (by as much as 66%).
• There should be a new Guild Challenge related to winning Arena matches, up to 50 (maybe 40) per week. This will award around 100000 guild experience and 100 (at Cash Flow level 2) gold per victory and will serve as a way of compensating for the reduction of guild experience awards from doing Arena matches. It will also deter players from constantly doing Arena matches to farm insane amounts of guild experience and instead do other activities.
• With the release of Mists of Pandaria, I am hoping there will be Guild Challenges related to doing the new content that will be offered (such as PvE Scenarios). However, until it’s set in stone whether there will be Guild Challenges or not, there’s not much else to say.

Guild Reputation

This section will address problems related to guild reputation:

• Guild reputation shouldn’t be completely reset upon joining another guild. Instead, when you join another guild you “recover” a fraction of the original guild reputation (about 25%-50%). In addition, if it’s possible, the reputation with the old guild should be “retained” for a short amount of time even if another guild is joined during that time (it already does this if you remain unguilded, retaining for up to 10 days).
• Guild reputation gains should scale based on a ratio of the player’s level and guild experience gained. The idea of this ratio is to ensure players gain the same amount of guild regardless of their level based on the activity they do (a level 50 quest done at level 50 will give the same reputation as a level 85 doing a level 85 quest).
• On that topic, guild reputation gains for doing Battlegrounds should be similar to that of doing quests.
• Fix the guild reputation boosting tabards so that the additional reputation doesn’t count towards the cap. I’m not sure why the tabards are counting a small amount of the bonus reputation towards the cap.
• I’m not sure if completing guild challenges give reputation, but they should award static reputation to each player who participated in the guild challenge if they don’t already.

Cash Flow and Other Guild Perks

In this section I will suggest changes to Cash Flow and other Guild Perks to resolve issues I outlined in my previous article:

• Cash Flow should be changed to instead generate Guild Bank interest. It would generate approximately 0.25%/0.5% of the amount of gold in the Guild Bank on a daily basis with a maximum cap as high as 100/200 gold daily. In addition, each rank of this perk will allow Guild Challenges to give 50%/100% of the gold reward.
• Extremely good Guild Perks shouldn’t be stacked at the higher levels. For instance, Bartering should have a second, lower rank that reduces vendor prices by 5%.
• There should potentially be multiple Guild Perks at certain levels to allocate for new Perks. In fact, guild progression for these perks should be altered a bit.

Below is an example of how guild progression could work (changes to perks themselves are in green):

Level 1: Guild Bank Unlocked (First tab is now free)

Level 2: Fast Track (Rank 1): 5% bonus experience.

Level 3: Mount Up: +10% mount movement speed.

Level 4: Mr. Popularity (Rank 1): 5% bonus reputation gains.

Level 5: Cash Flow (Rank 1): Your Guild Bank generates interest and you receive gold from Guild Challenges.

Level 5: Working Overtime (Rank 1): Increases your chance to get a level up on a tradeskill by 5%.

Level 6: Fast Track (Rank 2): 10% bonus experience.

Level 7: Reinforce (Rank 1): Your equipment suffers 10% less durability damage on death.

Level 8: Hasty Hearth: Reduces the cooldown on Hearthstone by 15 minutes.

Level 9: Chug-A-Lug (Rank 1): Increases the duration of cauldron, flask, and elixir buffs by 50%.

Level 10: Honorable Mention (Rank 1): Increases Honor Points gained by 5%.

Level 10: For Great Justice (Rank 1): Increases Justice Points gained by 5%.

Level 10: Have Group, Will Travel (Rank 1): Summons all players in your group to the caster. 4 hour cooldown.

Level 11: Mobile Banking (Rank 1) : Allows you to summon a Guild Chest to access the Guild Bank with. 1 hour cooldown.

Level 12: Mr. Popularity (Rank 2): 10% bonus reputation gains.

Level 12: Reinforce (Rank 2): Your equipment suffers 20% less durability damage on death.

Level 13: Bartering (Rank 1): Reduces vendor prices by 5%.

Level 14: Working Overtime (Rank 2): Increases your change to get a level up on a tradeskill by 10%.

Level 15: The Quick and the Dead: Increases movement speed by 100% when dead and when resurrected by a guild member, you revive at 50% of your health.

Level 15: Guild Mail: Mail between guild members arrives instantly and has no postage cost.

Level 16: Bountiful Bags (Rank 1):Sometimes increases the quantity of materials gained from Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, and Disenchanting.

Level 17: Happy Hour: Guild cauldrons contain 50% more flasks. In addition, Guild cauldrons and feasts last an additional 2 minutes.

Level 18: Chug-A-Lug (Rank 2): Increases the duration of cauldron, flask, and elixir buffs by 100%.

Level 19: Cash Flow (Rank 2): Your Guild Bank generates more interest and you receive more gold from Guild Challenges.

Level 20: Honorable Mention (Rank 2): Increases Honor Points gained by 10%.

Level 20: For Great Justice (Rank 2): Increases Justice Points gained by 10%.

Level 21: Have Group, Will Travel (Rank 2): Summons all players in your group to the caster. 2 hour cooldown.

Level 22: Mobile Banking (Rank 2): Allows you to summon a Guild Chest to access the Guild Bank with. 30 minute cooldown.

Level 23: Bountiful Bags (Rank 2): Sometimes increases the quantity of materials gained from Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, and Disenchanting(more than rank 1).

Level 24: Bartering (Rank 2): Reduces vendor prices by 10%.

Level 25: Mass Resurrection: Brings all dead party and raid members back to life with 35% health and 35% mana.  A player may only be resurrected by this spell once every 10 minutes. Cannot be cast in combat or while in a battleground or arena.

Level 25: True Representation: Cost to change guild crest is halved. Also unlocks more options for the guild crest.

Guild Invite Spam

The solution to this issue is pretty simple. Just stagger the frequency that players can invite other players to the guild. In addition, add the option to block guild invites when you receive a guild invite (as opposed to just blocking through the interface options), among other forms of functionality. Finally, put harsher punishments for repeated actions of spamming guild invites, guild recruitment messages and the like – add it into the Terms of Use if you have to.

Guild Master Dethroning

Something I didn’t actually mention in my previous article but a friend was kind to point out is the issue of Guild Master Dethroning. At the moment, any person of the appropriate rank can “steal” the guild master position if the guild master is inactive long enough. I propose this be changed to a poll among all players of the appropriate rank whether to remove the player, and then also another poll determining who earns the promotion. In addition, there should be a window of time where the Guild Master can come back and regain his or her rank (within a month of being deposed, for instance).

Final Statements

The guild system isn’t perfect and will probably never be perfect. However, the suggestions I proposed should help reduce problems that I outlined before and not start any new issues. Not everyone will agree to these changes and I can guarantee there’s probably more problems with guilds than I addressed here, so I urge you to reply with feedback on what you think is wrong with the guild system and suggestions to fix it.