As announced in the 2024 roadmap, we should receive an update to the game’s guild system that has been needed for a long time at the beginning of the summer.
Describing all the points involving guilds in the game would make the topic too long, so summarize some of these points that currently need improvement.
It’s worth remembering that at Blizzcon last year, changes were announced that I was very pleased with, such as the end of restrictions on participating in mythic raid and recruiting other players from different servers for your guild (a feature present since BfA in Communities) .
I still don’t know how deep the update that the guilds will receive will be in this update, but I would like to know the opinion of other community members about what can be improved in the guilds or what their expectations are around this subject.
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1-) Achivements
Until the Mists of Pandaria expansion, guild achievements received many updates to motivate members to complete them as a group. However, starting with Legion, there was a large reduction in these updates, reaching a point where there were practically no significant improvements, leaving only raid completion records.
In the image below, the guild quest achievements tab has remained unchanged for over ten years, with just two options. There was no progress or evolution over that time.
In the image below, the new allied races have not been added to achievements so far.
There are profession achievements that still use the game’s old scoring system in the description.
Guild Challenges also need to be updated. The current system only rewards activities in instanced environments, such as dungeons, raids and battlefields, leaving out other activities that could be carried out in groups around the world.
I believe there is plenty of opportunity for enhancing guild achievements.
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2-) Rewards
There are guild achievements that do not adequately reward the efforts of members upon completion. For instance, in the “Guild Gladiators” achievement (image below), which requires all races to achieve Gladiator rank, there is no reward commensurate with the challenge posed, and no achievement points are awarded.
Rewards inspired by the ancient empires of our civilization, such as armor, mounts and carriages could have been used here.
Gladiator transmog inspired by the Roman Empire (Arena > Gladiator > WoW)
Chariot - Mount used by one or two people in ancient combats (sometimes in arenas) that could be a reward mount.
As of the Legion expansion, the mounts that were given to players for completing raid achievements no longer exist.
Guild Glory of the Expansion
Another point worth highlighting are the rewards available from the guild’s NPCs. I believe that the way some of these rewards are made available to players should be rethought. Today, the player equips a guild tabard, raises the reputation with the guild by doing any mission until exalted and then buys everything the guild has achieved with gold and leaves the guild without even having done any activity together with the guild members.
Players should receive coins, medals or tokens for participating in activities together with other members of the same guild. These coins or tokens could be used to exchange for rewards instead of using gold.
More icon options for guilds should be made available. This topic created by @Nonoa-Moon Guard among others mentioned by her in the second post demonstrates that there is interest on the part of the community in new models.
Guild banners could also receive more variations than those existing in the game.
In the game “Heroes of the Storm”, there are many war banners that could be redesigned and incorporated into World of Warcraft.
In the game manual that accompanies Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, there are several war standards that could also serve as inspiration for future creations.
Images of the warbanners present in the Warcraft 2 manual for PC:
There are several areas where guild achievement rewards can be expanded and improved to provide a more rewarding and engaging experience for guild members.
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3-) Guild Perks
It is important to highlight the impact that some guild abilities have had throughout the game and express any concerns or reservations about the future of updates related to them.
Mobile Banking
Sometimes many players cannot access the guild bank whenever they want, which makes this skill less useful for most. Some create their own “guildbanks” to resolve this, which can cause them to leave the main guilds.
I believe that once the warband is inserted into the game, this guild perk and Void Storage will no longer make sense to exist in the game, especially with the permission to recruit players between different servers.
Warbands
Void Storage
Cash Flow
Do you who played the Cataclysm and Mist of Pandaria expansions remember this perk?
The Cash Flow ability may have caused economic imbalances and encouraged unwanted behavior such as spamming guild invites. Replacing gold with a guild reputation currency for equipment repairs could have been a more balanced solution than completely removing this ability in the past.
Have Group, Will Travel
This skill was highly prized by many guild leaders, but was often abused due to its short cooldown of two hours. Instead of removing it from the game, an alternative would have been to increase the cooldown to 12-24 hours or restrict its use to specific situations or locations.
Currently, there are few skills available for guild members to use in the game, and we don’t know if new ones will be added or if existing ones will be removed, as has happened in the past with other skills.
It’s not necessarily a problem for the game’s guilds to have skills for use by members or exclusive to leaders, as long as there is a good balance of utility for everyone involved. The important thing is to ensure that skills are not overly powerful, do not encourage negative behavior, and do not cause inequality among guild members. A good balance that can guarantee a fair and rewarding experience for all players would be the best solution.
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4-) Guild Finder
Two improvements that could be made to the Guild Finder would be to give preference to displaying guilds that demonstrate recent activity in their history and to avoid highlighting “ghost guilds” that have been inactive for a long time.
Regardless of the size of the guild, those that are active should be prioritized on the first pages, while those that have no group activity, are not recruiting new players or have active members for many months should be filtered so as not to occupy spaces in the first positions. This would ensure a better experience for players looking for active guilds.
One change that could be implemented is to display some of the guild’s online players in the Guild Finder, with the ability to invite other players to the guild.
In the Tree of Savior game, after selecting the guild you want to join, a second window appears, showing more information about the guild and the members who are allowed to invite other players. This approach gives you a more in-depth look at the guild before you decide to join and makes it easier to contact members who can invite you to join. This functionality could be adapted to improve the recruiting experience in World of Warcraft.
The image below shows the game’s guilds in a similar way to what we have in WoW.
In this other window, it displays some additional guild information, but in another guild window.
An alternative solution would be to create an in-game link that directs players to the WoW Armory of the guild they are considering joining. This would offer players the option to access more detailed information if they wish, without completely disrupting the in-game experience. This approach could balance the convenience of quickly accessing information in-game with the depth of information available in WoW Armory.
Activating the option to receive invitations to join the guild via mail could be an additional alternative for admitting new members. Additionally, offering the option to not receive guild invitations by mail, except from guilds the player has chosen to join, could be an alternative to avoid unnecessary spam.
Although the /who NameGuild function exists in the game to identify online players in the guild, many players may not be familiar with this command and it does not provide clear information about who can send invitations to the guild. Therefore, having a more direct and automated option for receiving invitations through the mail can be a more convenient and effective way to find and join a guild.
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5-) Guild Management Functions
An option to automatically remove all inactive players in the guild after a certain number of days would be extremely useful for management without relying on complementary addons.
For guild leaders who need to manage a large number of members, manually filtering out inactive players can be a challenging and time-consuming task, especially without the assistance of addons. This can demotivate some leaders and harm the guild’s activity over time.
Other MMORPGs offer the functionality to automatically remove players absent for more than 30 days for guild leaders. Introducing similar automations into the game, with the option to disable them, could certainly be beneficial, providing guild leaders with a more efficient way to keep their guilds active and organized.
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6-) Member Limit
The increase or decrease in the maximum guild member limit would depend on the needs and dynamics of each particular guild. Some guilds may benefit from a limit increase to accommodate more active members, while others may prefer a tighter limit to maintain a more intimate and cohesive community.
The option to allow players to join the guild using Battle.net instead of specific characters could reduce the need to invite players’ secondary characters to the guild. This would provide more convenience and simplify the guild joining process.
Many guilds reach the 1000 member limit, but a significant portion of these members are secondary player characters (alts). Sometimes players just want to maintain access to the guild chat they like, without necessarily being part of the guild with the registered main character. Allowing players to join the guild through Battle.net could solve this problem, offering a more flexible and streamlined option for guild members similar to what exists in the game’s Communities system.
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7- ) Future Additional Features
Insert Guilds into Seasons
Inserting guilds into seasons is an interesting idea. This could involve integrating guild achievement progression with the game’s seasons. It would be useful to have separate records of guild achievements for each season, allowing guilds to track their progress and performance over time. This could add an extra layer of competitiveness and engagement for guilds, encouraging them to work together to achieve goals throughout the game’s seasons.
Guild Hub/Hall
The Warlords of Draenor garrisons would be a great example of a Guild HUB that works within World of Warcraft but with some changes. First, it is important to remember the problems reported by players around the garrison.
During the Warlords of Draenor expansion, players pointed out several issues with the garrison in World of Warcraft, including:
1. Isolation: Garrison has been criticized for isolating players in their own personal instances, reducing social interaction and the sense of community in the game.
2. Reduction in world exploration: The excessive focus on the garrison led to players spending less time exploring the game world, which diminished the sense of adventure and discovery.
3. Ease of obtaining resources: Garrison has made obtaining resources and rewards very easy, reducing the sense of challenge and achievement for players.
4. Monotony: The repetitive, daily tasks in the Garrison have become monotonous and tedious for many players, resulting in a less engaging gameplay experience.
5. Impact on the game economy: The garrison’s quest and resource production system had a negative impact on the game’s economy, devaluing certain items and negatively affecting trade between players by generating a lot of gold.
These issues have led many players to express dissatisfaction with garrison and call for changes and improvements from the game’s development team in the past.
Based on this context of problems presented, the Guild Hub/Hall could perfectly work on the opposite of all these problems highlighted by players in the past. For example, mines and plantations would only produce reagents to be used in weekly guild improvements and not for external use by professions as happened in the past, which allowed the sale of these reagents in the auction house.
Seasons could play an important role in players’ interest in always helping with something in the development of the guild hall, which would be the opposite of what happened in guild updates during Cataclysm and which continues to this day.
What should not exist in this context is the daily repetition of these activities. The game’s community has expressed in the past that it is more interested in content being applied in a more cadenced manner every 4-7 days rather than something that forces you to log in regularly like it was during the garrison era or with the world missions during Legion and BfA.
War Territory/Warfront/Guild Tournament
Introducing turf wars, warfronts or guild tournaments could be an exciting addition to the game, encouraging healthy rivalry between guilds and promoting more dynamic and engaging competition. These activities could provide opportunities for guilds to stand out, conquer territories, fight for resources and special rewards, and even participate in large-scale organized events. This could strengthen the sense of community among guild members, as well as offering new forms of interaction and challenging content for players.
Leaderboard
The in-game guild season leaderboard is a highly requested feature from players and can add an extra layer of competition and engagement. Allows players to track their guild’s standing on the server or globally, encouraging healthy competition and the effort to improve guild performance over time. This functionality can strengthen the sense of community and provide a clear goal for guilds to work together towards collective achievements.
Integrating an official in-game leaderboard would provide a reliable and accessible source for players to track their guilds’ progress, promoting more transparent competition than consulting third-party websites.
