Feedback: Making Guilds worthwhile again

Community General Discussion
1

I was wondering if we would ever be looking at an update to the Guilds system in World of Warcraft. There is more coding, Quests and Lore, and UI design and thought put into the Sunsong Ranch in Mists of Pandaria then the WoW Guild interface, rewards, and just everything. More design into the Covenants system for Shadowlands (which means nothing now). More design put into garrisons (which mean nothing now). More design into Class Order Halls in Legion (which mean nothing now). These are all single expansion features, but guilds are meant to last through all the expansions yet we have almost the same UI design from WoW Classic. I play a mobile phone game that expands its Guild system more often and better than WoW which has a million plus subscribers every month. Meanwhile that mobile game is free.

One of the hardest things for Guild leaders in this game is retaining members to actually do any meaningful content. They can get all of this without a guild. They don’t need one. We had guild level up rewards at one point in time, but they were removed because I guess Blizzard didn’t want people to think they had to have a guild, and people were recruiting people just to make passive gold off their members. There can be more rewards and incentives to encourage members to stick it out.

Guilds today are pretty much just a chatroom, a calendar interface (which really needs improvement as well. No way to give any real substantial details for events or organize them with the VERY LIMITED text character limit. There is no recruiting method for guilds built within the game other than the Guild Finder system which also really needs an improvement as well.

Guild Achievements are very basic. Do these dungeons or raids as a group. Get a text based achievement, and that’s it. An occasional mount or battle pet here or there.

Guild’s need more core identity again, and are massively overdue for an overhaul.

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I feel like this is more of a Guildmaster issue than a Blizzard issue. Guilds can retain members, if you’re willing to have fun with them and have them actually do content then it’s not bad. I’ll admit, it is hard, I’ve had friends push me to help them run guilds and I did at one point, but it got to the point where I didn’t want to do it anymore because either they didn’t want to put the work in and I was the one doing everything or whatever the reason is. But other than that I agree, guilds do need to be updated but now and days, discord is the main source of contact.

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Guildhalls are the only way to improve what we currently have in my opinion.

Real cosmetic displays that are rewarded from guild achievements which the GM and assigned officers can customize and decorate the guild hall. Of course with Very small or no gameplay advantages.

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I don’t get how that’d improve anything, that’s just another way of saying let’s turn WOW into FFXIV or something.

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im sure FF14 was not the first mmo to have guild halls

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No. But I’m using FFXIV as an example because it’s the only relevant game at the moment with an active fanbase that has player housing and guild halls.

7

Guild halls would be frick’n sweet.

Cosmetics from guild achievements/raid kills/keystone stuffs etc.

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Nothing wrong with implementing something thats successful and well received by similar audiences

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My favorite part of guild halls in the mmos I’ve played with them is

Not at all interacting with them because they’re a waste of hard drive space and I’d rather do anything else in game

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Yeah, I just don’t think we need to turn every game into FFXIV or copy the aspects it has. Guildhalls could be fun, but I think there needs to be a certain requirement, we shouldn’t have guilds with 1 member and zero achievements just owning a guildhall,.

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Put guild halls behind a 10 dollar paywall lol

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12

Yeah, no lol. That’s stupid and a waste of money.

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This thread was never meant to be about guild halls or player housing. Please, can we move back to being on the original topic. The changes I am referring to is in the UI design, adding better rewards such as cosmetics, pets, mounts, toys, etc.

We haven’t had a single Guild Achievement that gave anything other than a title since Warlords of Draenor.

There is plenty more that they could add to the game for guilds to chase with their own rewards that have nothing to do with player housing which I never suggested initially.

Ideas for content: Guild World Quests that are Daily or Weekly that can provide a currency of sorts for Guilds. This currency can be used by Guild members to purchase their own rewards such as transmog, battle pets, mounts, toys and such.

Guild themed cosmetics that could really work such as a Toy that lets your mount have a banner with your guilds crest, or a few different tiers of special dragonriding barding that also display the guilds crest as well. We know we can have these banners as back piece transmog as well for Centaurs in the Onahrain Plains, and they have the Horde and Alliance ones from PvP. Why not these same things for guilds?

Having a guild currency would really help Guilds retain members, and a portion of that guild currency can go towards the Guild itself to unlock Guild Wide features. Bring Back the Have Teleport Will Travel ability that allows guild members to teleport to each other. This was an amazing ability that allowed Guilds to teleport all to one location. It was very useful not just for PvE which if we are being honest most of the game revolves around. RPers and World PvP Guilds would have great benefit from these abilities as well.

Every single one of those titles we mentioned that were added since WoD you can ONLY get from Mythic Clears which are only available for the Hall of Fame top 100 guilds. There should be more in the game then just catering to Mythic Raiding and Mythic Plus.

You could also add Guild Mounts which are multi-seater mounts bigger than two person mounts. We know that Three seater mounts exist from Mammoths, Yaks, and Brutosaurs, and there is a five seater mount from the Hivemind, but that has so many other restrictions for its perks that very few people even chase that one and are even able to enjoy it as it is tied to a per SPECIFIC character connection.

Guilds could always benefit from more Guild Bank Storage. Guild specific crafting for these Guild Mounts could be a cool way to implement them.

I dunno…I still feel strongly that the Guild system could benefit from a new fresh coat of paint. It has been several expansions since it has seen anything of significant approval and a lot of time is dedicated into coding and developing a lot of content rich features that are only relevant until that expansion is done and that content is forgotten about whenever.

We need to start adding content that is timeless and can always be worked towards progression, and shouldn’t keep catering towards designing everything towards solo play. There is enough of content for solo players. Bring back the MMO feel to the MMORPG.

Any thoughts you all have on these ideas or ways to expand them I would love to see what you all can come up with as well.

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I do agree that guilds should be made more impactful (actual guilds not 1 dude and 17 alts). Cosmetics wouldn’t really do anything long term though, unless they put new ones in every couple weeks, people would join a guild then farm currency then gquit.

Make changes to guilds to affect what players want the most, gear.

M+ if you are 5/5 guild members an extra piece drops (3 per run)
Raid if you are 100% guild members you get an extra drop per 5 members (so mythic would get 8 drops at 20)

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The long-time thread complaining about how Blizzard tore up the old guild UI has over 5200 posts.

The thread is from 2018.

Total silence from Blizzard.

Blizzard doesn’t give a damn about guilds.

They sacrificed their social players to cater to antisocial players, and now they stand around wondering why their playerbase got so toxic.

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As cool as this sounds I doubt if they ever did add anything to guilds that it would be based off player power of any sort. That is essentially why they removed all the Guild Level Perks that used to be in the game because a lot of players complained that they felt that they had to be in a guild, and that guilds got all of the power. Guild leaders of REALLY large guilds specifically made tons of gold from the perk that automatically generated gold for the guild bank. Initially designed to aide with Guild repairs it became problematic when the leader of the super mega guild became richer than everyone else without even trying.

This was why most of the things I mentioned were based off of cosmetics or convenience instead of player power.

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I like the idea of trying to make guilds a thing again, it just won’t work to keep people.

The system would have to be designed to be a continous thing if it’s for cosmetics.

Something like removing the old “once you have unlocked x in your guild anyone can join and get it and leave”. It would almost have to a personal bar (ie expanded guild reps could work or a renown system) not a guild wide bar. Do x amount of crap wirh guild members and get a pet type deal.

Updated and new stuff very frequently.

Even then I’m not sure it would bring back “guilds” to being something people wanted. That’s why I suggested gear. Every dungeon, every raid, hell even add world events would yeild a bonus. I think this would be the safest bet to get people to stay in guilds and socialize.