Revitalizing Guilds in World of Warcraft

Community General Discussion
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Hey everyone,

I’ve been reflecting on the current state of guilds in World of Warcraft and I wanted to discuss some ideas for improving the guild system in World of Warcraft. The game has increasingly catered to solo play, leaving guilds with fewer incentives and unique rewards. It’s time to bring back the MMO feel to our MMORPG by making guilds matter again.

Guild Currency and Rewards

Introduce a Guild-Specific Currency:

  • Earned through daily or weekly guild quests and distributed among members.
  • Used to purchase unique rewards like transmog sets, pets, mounts, and toys.

Auto-Generating Currency:

  • Bring back the guild perk for auto-generating a small percentage of gold, but instead make it a small percentage of this new guild currency, auto-awarded from mob kills or completing activities, similar to experience or reputation gains.

Guild Achievements and Perks

New Achievements and Rewards:

  • While recent expansions have offered mounts and titles, there hasn’t been anything truly exciting. We need more varied and tangible rewards to motivate guilds.

Reintroduce Perks:

  • Bring back perks like “Have Group, Will Travel” on a 24-hour cooldown to retain the unique value of Warlock summoning stones without overshadowing them.

Guild Halls

Customizable Spaces:

  • Introduce Guild Halls where guilds can gather, display achievements, and add cosmetic touches.
  • Unlock cosmetic rewards through guild achievements, raid kills, and keystone completions.

Crafting Stations:

  • Implement crafting stations within Guild Halls, similar to Garrisons, where members can craft using guild reagents, encouraging cooperation and resource sharing.

Enhanced Guild Bank Storage:

  • Update sorting options and add multiple reagent tabs for different professions, purchasable with either gold or the new guild currency.

Guild Bulletin Boards and World Quests

Guild Quest Hub:

  • Implement a hub where players can sign up for various tasks such as crafting, gathering, rare monster hunts, and Mythic world boss hunts.
  • Include a Guild Bulletin Board showing all available guild activities like weekly raid runs, dungeon runs, scenarios, and mythic runs.

Expanded World Quests:

  • Expand guild activities to include world quests in various zones, including Outland, Northrend, and Shadowlands, encouraging members to explore and engage with different parts of the game world together.

Guild Achievements Overhaul

Varied and Engaging Content:

  • Update and expand guild achievements to include more varied and engaging content, giving guilds long-term goals beyond just raiding and mythic plus content.

The Library (Guild Halls)

Lore and Monster Information:

  • Introduce a section called [The Library] in Guild Halls for accessing lore and monster information.
  • Fill out the library by completing lore-based quests, finding lost knowledge, or gathering data from defeated monsters.

Idea for Player Housing (if Ever Implemented)

Interconnected Progression:

  • If Blizzard ever adds player housing, tie guild achievements to unique cosmetic rewards that unlock both for player houses and guild halls, adding depth and value to both features.

Personal Experience:

Back during Cataclysm, one of my favorite aspects of WoW was leveling my guild and working together to achieve our goals. The sense of community and collaboration was unmatched. I believe these changes could bring back that feeling and make guilds a vital part of the game once more.

Let’s bring back the MMO feel to World of Warcraft. Guilds should be more than just a name under our character; they should be integral to our adventures and accomplishments in Azeroth.

What do you all think? Any additional suggestions or expansions on these ideas would be greatly appreciated!

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Stopped here. This was supposed to be a thread about guilds.

Also, low post count. The pattern continues.

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I added the player housing suggestion because the game currently caters more to solo players than a traditional MMO. If player housing is ever implemented, having cosmetic items unlockable through guild activities could encourage solo players to occasionally join in with friends. This way, they might engage more with guild content, even if they usually prefer playing alone. Denying the game’s current solo-friendly nature overlooks the opportunity to create incentives that bridge both solo and group play styles.

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You are fundamentally wrong. An MMO involves a world with other people but not necessarily guilds. Guilds already have more than enough incentive and advantages and should live or die by their own merits. The onus is on the guild leadership to draw and keep members.

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Based take. All I’m getting from this thread is that you used a bait-and-switch tactic to kick a horse further.

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Good ideas over all. I loved my BFA guild, but i was non-essential in a raid/M+ focussed guild. I curently have a few alts in 4 different great guilds. Depending on who i main, i could possibly get back into guild life in TWW. Most of my toons are in my personal guilds. Panda remix didn’t help as i now have about 20 70s and a couple of 60s. I will not be maining them all, as i don’t have the time. I plan to only play mainly only 6 in TWW.

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I hope they move completely away from guilds. They’re from days when scheduling activities for games was a thing. Only a very small percentage of people still do that. I’m not interested in playing according to other schedules at all.

Pug and solo meta should be the future and complete focus. Guilds should just be chatting outlets.

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The game has always catered to solo play. Adding more reward structures to the guilds won’t turn people over or make it less of a solo play and turn more into group play. Evidence of this is Vanilla - Wrath, when there was no guild perks or rewards except for your own tabard, to Cata-DF/TWW, where there is guild perks and rewards.

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To revitalize guilds we need(used some of yours)

New and return guild perks
Flight switching cast reduced by half
Return all perks that didn’t marginalize a class ability like summon or brez
New guild achievements
New cosmetics through guild achievements/perks
Guild hall like class halls with professions hub and a weekly quest

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Guilds won’t ever be ‘alive’ as long as Discord and Communities are a thing, they took a lot of guilds’ thunder.

You can be guildless and still get things done as if you were in an actual guild.

Ultimately they all serve the same purpose- getting like-minded players together.

Imo, they’d have to rework how guilds currently operate if they are to ever be as big as they used to be.

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We started down this path once and it was great. Don’t know what whiners ruined it but they’re still around because they still complain about hearth.

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Thank you for the support, @Lousipher. I fondly remember my favorite time during the Cataclysm expansion. The guild I was in was so friendly and patient, teaching me how to raid. It truly was the best time I had playing WoW; we were more than guildmates, we were a family. My best PvP time was during Wrath, especially in Wintergrasp. It was my favorite battleground; I knew everything about it and had so much fun and memories. I wish it was still up-to-date and more active. I also have about 30 characters I switch between, depending on my mood, so I definitely understand the alt army! :slight_smile:

@Ayukama, I had a different experience with my own guild back in Cataclysm. When I created the guild, it took about 2 months to reach the max player cap. About 40% of the members were solo players who enjoyed being in a guild for the lively community. I created a rank specifically for solo players, ensuring they weren’t directly invited to events but could join if they wanted. One of my fondest memories was a hunter who always played solo but joined our guild runs for older content. He once told me, “I’m not the best at raids or dungeons, but I’ll come and help, that’s how I contribute.” We became great friends. He was around 60 and had Parkinson’s, eventually becoming wheelchair-bound. One day, he stopped logging in, and I never heard from him again. I named my hunter after him, Kharper, to honor a lost friend, brother, and guildmate.

@Kimlyn, I 100% agree, we need to bring back the community of guilds. A revamp would definitely help with this.

@Unonatural, people complained about the passive gold guilds made. I think a good solution would be to have guilds earn gold through completing specific group activities, such as raiding, dungeons, Mythic+, and scenarios. Guild achievements could offer rewards, and a new guild currency system could help balance the economy. Additionally, I had an idea for a guild quest/hunts system where groups can sign up for various tasks. These tasks could include crafting and gathering quests, rare monster hunts, and Mythic world boss hunts. Another feature could be a guild hall with a section called [The Library], where players can access lore and monster information. This library could be filled out by completing lore-based quests, finding lost knowledge, or using a spell to gather data from defeated monsters.

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I love this idea all of it!!

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Anything that allows guilds to offer guild repairs again would be great.

Guilds use to offer guild repairs. As a returning player, I’ve only found one guild that offers repairs. They are already maxed out with 1,000 members so no room for alts.

I’m in favor of guilds having some sort of currency that can only be spent to repair gear. Free repairs is a huge draw to guilds.

Btw… if you do know of a guild offering repairs, please let me know.

Additionally, the guild finder system should only list guilds that have refreshed themselves as active in the past 3 days.
The clutter of inactive guilds is overwhelming.

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Most players these days join a guild for the low CD on the hearthstone.

Some for the heirlooms

a Few for the raiding and m+

but mostly for the low CD hearthstone.

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Would be one of the coolest and strongest incentives to join a guild, imo.

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So true, but not just because it’s a new feature. It’s because it’s an evergreen pillar that can be built upon with new content, like some of the ideas I mentioned. It’s fine if people want to play solo, but there should be a robust system for those who want to be part of a community. Not all guilds are hardcore; many casual guilds still exist.

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I just wish Blizzard did not allow multiple guilds to have identical names on the same realms/server. There are several guilds right now that have identical names as my guild (I am the GM), and I can do nothing about it? We have been around for several years, have several hundred members, but would love to have some new members. Instead potential new members find these other identically named guilds and join them, sometimes by mistake (as I have had a few members confirm to me). I would love to have ways to bring in new members besides the cluttered and out-dated “guild finder” which seems to feature many old, defunct guilds in addition to the ones with identical names.

Would love to find new features and ways to keep current members happy, plus attract new members. Would love to have shared resources beyond the shared gear, food, and crafted items some members donate. I have members ask me all the time to go on mog runs, pet runs, and sometimes work for a mount. It would be so fun to have more to offer members, as I am sure people would work for them.

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This is exactly what I’m talking about—there’s so much potential to breathe new life into the guild system. A system to restrict similarly named guilds would be nice as well, to prevent confusion and help us stand out. I completely agree about the outdated guild finder; it needs more options, especially with all the recent improvements. I’d love to see us build our guild halls, working together to gather resources and gold. After the resources and gold are gathered, we could watch it get built, similar to how our garrisons were constructed back in WoD. That system had potential but was poorly executed.

Imagine having a private practice arena with phased 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 skirmishes. We could also have PvE quests to fight and capture monsters, train them, and use them in gladiator-style arena battles against tough elites. This could also serve as a new proving ground, similar to what we had in MoP, for players to train and improve with their classes.

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Make guilds better by making raiding viable as an avenue to progress your character through instead of m+.
Mythic raiding just isn’t worth the time and effort when you can run some dungeons that are easier than heroic and peace out until next week for the same rewards. 2500 as an equivalent cosmetic reward to CE is completely laughable with how easy it was to do. Make people run 15s if they want their mythic level rewards, 10s are an absolute nothing even supercasuals can do it.