The new Guild UI and Permissions...yikes (Part 1)

[Nêlsôn-greymane]

Still ignored.

So we still keep bumping it up.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

Out of curiosity, (and for more “input” for Blizzard of course) I wonder if some folks will please chime in with how their guilds are currently doing?

My guild has been dead for some time. The guild master hasn’t been on for about a year. However, I could dethrone her if I wished–but I’m the only officer high enough.

The problem is, with the permissions the way they are, I can’t see myself trying to run the guild. Since we don’t have a GM, the few guildies who came back for the expansion haven’t been on again for a couple of weeks. Blizzard has made doing anything so damn hard, that people are simply giving up and moving on.

I’m beginning to feel like WoW is the Sears of gaming. A once-awesome, super popular brand that has been destroyed by poor management.

[Lúthien-aerie-peak]

Four and a half months since the last blue response simply stating there were a post cap extension, and this thread came out in mid-July and has 2500 posts. Guild management is kinda supposed to be one of the most important parts of the social aspect of the game, don’t you think? Think you guys still need to work on your communication?

[Takoda-kul-tiras (Takoda)]

At the beginning of the expansion, my guild was TOO active, and I had to put the breaks on new members coming in. Partly because of uncertainty around permissions changes, and partly because I was worried that we were going to outgrow one raid and have to start a second. (And I don’t want to deal with two raid groups - that is drama waiting for a place to happen imo.)

When I would log in at random times around launch, we would frequently have 20+ people online doing dungeons, warmode PVP, and questing. The first couple of weeks of raiding, we had around 25 people log in to raid.

Now, there’s usually 1-3 people online when I log in to check the world quests and/or go farming. Our raid attendance has dropped down to around 12-16 players. Most people only log in for scheduled events, and almost all of our non-raiders have stopped playing.

As far as how we’re doing, I’d call it “coping.” It’s not going great, but we could be in a worse state. Morale is really not good though, and the constant bugs, constant fiddling with mechanics, and lack of ability to respond flexibly to changes are wearing people out. Nearly every time we work hard to learn a new mechanic, wiping repeatedly until we figure it out, it’s changed next time we fight that boss. (This has been our experience in both m+ and raids.) It’s incredibly frustrating, and has massively slowed our progression. Some of my guildies are hanging their hopes on classic, and just killing time until release. Absolutely no one from my guild is excited for the new 8.1 raid.

In response, we’re started moving towards alternate games that we can play together. We’ve already had groups playing GW2 and League of Legends, and there has been some interest in playing Paradox titles like Europa and Stellaris. The current plan is to trial an “Alternate Game Night” and see where it goes.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

Nearly every time we work hard to learn a new mechanic, wiping repeatedly until we figure it out, it’s changed next time we fight that boss. (This has been our experience in both m+ and raids.) It’s incredibly frustrating, and has massively slowed our progression.

I’m not a raider, but I can see all kinds of red flags if this is the experience people are having in end-game. The whole point of progression raiding is learning the fights and moving on up. You might wipe dozens of times as you learn to adjust to the mechanics, but once you get it down you’re like, “Yeah! We got that sucker!” Except, if they change everything, you can’t feel like you got anything.

This thread is about the changes to guild permissions, but more and more, I’m seeing our problem as a mere symptom of larger issues with the game. The fact that they’ve done practically nothing about this issue since it cropped up six months ago definitely makes it look like they have no plans to fix this, or the many other issues throughout WoW. This is extremely discouraging.

I love this game. I sincerely hate to be all doom-and-gloom about it. But I think maybe this is actually what it looks like when a game is dying. It’s not the players who have given up, it’s Blizzard (or Activision–doesn’t really matter what you call them at this point).

[Velara-gilneas (Velara)]

Try using reverse psychology - tell Activision-Blizzard that the new controls are “fun” and they will intervene to make sure that doesn’t persist.

You know, this should be funny. But somehow, I think it could actually work…

[Velara-gilneas (Velara)]

Nearly every time we work hard to learn a new mechanic, wiping repeatedly until we figure it out, it’s changed next time we fight that boss. (This has been our experience in both m+ and raids.) It’s incredibly frustrating, and has massively slowed our progression.

I’m not a raider, but I can see all kinds of red flags if this is the experience people are having in end-game. The whole point of progression raiding is learning the fights and moving on up. You might wipe dozens of times as you learn to adjust to the mechanics, but once you get it down you’re like, “Yeah! We got that sucker!” Except, if they change everything, you can’t feel like you got anything.

This thread is about the changes to guild permissions, but more and more, I’m seeing our problem as a mere symptom of larger issues with the game. The fact that they’ve done practically nothing about this issue since it cropped up six months ago definitely makes it look like they have no plans to fix this, or the many other issues throughout WoW. This is extremely discouraging.

I love this game. I sincerely hate to be all doom-and-gloom about it. But I think maybe this is actually what it looks like when a game is dying. It’s not the players who have given up, it’s Blizzard (or Activision–doesn’t really matter what you call them at this point).

Oh, didn’t you know? Despite the extreme amount of real problems in this game, Blizzard has turned its attention to the “problem” of 110 twinks! It seems some players have found a way to have fun despite Blizzard, but that will change. Their first idea was to turn off the “XP turnoff” feature at 110. They since decided … maybe there is another way to nerf this fun.

Yes, Blizzard just now looks to create new problems instead of fixing what’s actually wrong with the game that makes players want to stop leveling at 110.

I don’t think Guild permissions are going to be fixed any time soon.

[Smadinker-moon-guard (Smadinker)]

Today marks 165 days that this topic was created and we haven’t heard a word from Blizzard. I applaud them on their improved communication. Keep up the good work guys, your high sub count reflects the awesome work you guys have been putting into the game.

[Xethorsiph-kelthuzad (Xethorsiph)]

I…I think you should look at the post I was replying to when I typed all of that

[Mahatma-blackwater-raiders (Mahatma)]

Out of curiosity, (and for more “input” for Blizzard of course) I wonder if some folks will please chime in with how their guilds are currently doing?

I have one guild that had once been fairly active (though it had always been a small, friends and family type of guild), but is now pretty much dead… though it had been dying long before the guild permission changes. I only have one character in that guild, and I am currently the guild master.

The rest of my guilds are all alt guilds, with mostly my own characters in them, though a couple of my alt guilds do have friends’ alts in them. My friends who have characters in my alt guilds have not played in some time.

[Azhurea-medivh (Azhurea)]

I think it’s because of “communities”. The funny thing is, I am in multiple communities and no one ever talks in them now, 5 months later. The fact that the community channels had to be added to chat channels to be seen, made them sort of useless. The changes to officer ranks are asinine. Different officers having different permissions made perfect sense. Now everyone is CEO or a Peon.

[Roguewit-sargeras (Roguewit)]

I…I think you should look at the post I was replying to when I typed all of that

No… I realized about two-thirds of the way through the rant–but was already committed to finishing the thought at that point

It’s been a heated topic of debate in my circles. None of us are dealing well with the Death of Blizzard ™

I regret nothing.

[Nok-winterhoof (Nok)]

What are people’s thoughts that Blizzard may be moving towards phasing out guilds entirely in favor of communities - or is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

Along that vein… What changes to communities would be needed?

[Dlaciabia-sisters-of-elune (Dlaciabia)]

Just seems…weird and unneeded…?

What becomes of guild achieves? Do they convert to a community achieve? X number of community members participate in a raid boss kill? What about perks? Just throw away all the perks?

Phasing out guilds seems like an insane notion- like, truly knocking one of the actual pillars of the game (even the genre as a whole) out. I can only see that going really badly…

Communities would have to be guilds. And we already have guilds. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

[Zaranthosdk-icecrown (Zaranthosdk)]

Does Blizzard have a vision of how communities work with guilds? Have they communicated that with players and guilds? Has there been a conversation with feedback from the community? Or are communities another unilaterally imposed Blizzard idea like pathfinder? Our way or the highway development vision?

I’m not for or against communities. I am for guilds because most of my WoW experience has been in a guild. Were communities thoroughly tested on PTR, discussed in the forums, and well thought out? I never played on PTR so I don’t know, I heard about them not long before they were released and just broke guild permissions. Officers in my guild couldn’t even do basic stuff for a few weeks as some things were just broken.

Epic fail feature, and epic fail communication from my point of view.

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

The Jets are about to fire Todd Bowles.

I have more faith in his ability to lead the WoW team at this point than any incumbent dev within the company.

[Nêlsôn-greymane]

Four and a half months since the last blue response simply stating there were a post cap extension, and this thread came out in mid-July and has 2500 posts. Guild management is kinda supposed to be one of the most important parts of the social aspect of the game, don’t you think? Think you guys still need to work on your communication?

There needs to be communication to begin with, it’s a two way street just right now blizzards side of the road appears to be closed.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

So, going back over the thread still, little by little. Here’s a nice long post (from Aug 12) addressing things the poster would like to see improved.

I just want to say thank you for clearing up the Public Note and the Guild Speak option in the guild controls.

As I’ve stated before, while this is a step in the right direction, it’s still not quite where it needs to be to properly maintain and manage a guild.

I’m going to go with Greenstone on this and relist some things that I think need to be addressed for guilds. I know that between the both of us and a few others these are often way to long but sadly there are things that have been needed and/or wanted, asked for a LONG time.

Side note as well, I’m going to refer to the new GUI as it would appear they are slowly phasing out the old one.

GUI suggestions:

Last On-line and Zone Sorting

Last On-line, this needs to be fixed where you can sort the “Zone/Last On-line”, then “Rank”, and keep the chronological order of the “Zone/On-line”.

Right now you are not able to sort this properly to effectively clean out the roster. Or be able to assess how active your roster is.

This is not as big of a deal for Communities, being that there isn’t as much of a repercussion to if a player is on an Alt or not, but this is needed for guilds.

Full Guild/Community GUI vs. Minimized Version

The full UI is fine and i don’t have much to say about it other than the above. However in the “View” (top right drop down menu) options, for guilds specifically, it would be nice if there was a “Guild Status or Statistics” option.

This way you can still see some of the information that was given in the original set up. Some guilds do use that information. I personally use the Last On-line, but I know of guilds that use the amount of achievement points and so on for their guild structure. I would also like to see the Officer Note displayed here as well, since the only way you can see these is by clicking on individual players. (not including addons)

However if the Last On-Line option is an issue to code in for both Guilds and Communities this would be a way to get that in.

The minimized version of this GUI seems a little redundant, since you can make chat panes on the main screen, and have multiple chat panes viewable at any given time.

However it would be nice that if you are using the in-game voice option in this minimized version if it had a side panel showing who was also actively in voice.

Guild Controls vs Community Controls

There is still a lot to be said for guild controls. The controls that are available work just fine for a community. Not trying to be a debbie downer, but a community with the functions within the game is more a group of people in a chat room. There is no other function to it.

I say this cause there is not achievements for community groups, no group vault and so on. While this brings people together on common thoughts, ideas, class, role etc… that’s it.

Given this, a Admin, Moderator and Member setup for Communities makes sense. Where guilds it does not. Guilds require more granular controls because there is overall more structure to them. There is a community aspect to it, and that is where the line between the two is really non-existent.

Otherwise, you have players that lead and organize teams for PvP/PvE events.
Not to mention “Officers” for management purposes, and do more than just “Moderate”. This takes a level of communication that is not exactly available in the game unless everyone is on. This is why programs like Discord do so well for MMOs.

This is also why Guild Leaders need more granular controls to allow specific permissions to certain ranks in the guild.

This is why the “Is Officer” option needs to be unbundled. Or an option for “Advanced” features. Depending on the Community this would also be quite helpful.

Personal Note

Having players able to adjust their own note is a major plus and thank you for this. Again having an option to allow other ranks within the guild to edit other people’s note would be extremely helpful.

Officer Chat and Officer Note

Officer chat needs to be able to be given out as well as the Officer note. Not all guilds have traditional Officers, this would help with RP guilds, other than making sperate chat channels, which yes is also an option for these guilds.

As stated earlier it would be nice if you could view the Officer Note outside of having to click on individual players or to be able to sort by the note as well. This portion would also be beneficial for Communities as well.

Guild Chat and Community Chat Log

This is something that everyone should have the option to log or not individually. I don’t think that this needs to be set by the Guild Lead specifically. This really should just be a personal choice period.

As far as players being able to choose whether or not they can be recorded is redundant. I think it makes players a little more conscious of what they are saying in a public chat board (guild or not), and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Character Linking
This would make roster management 100x easier for both Communities and Guilds. Particularly groups are Alt friendly, instead of having to keep track of notes and remember the many random names of one player.

It would also be nice if the “Last Online” showed that of the most recent played character’s time if they are linked. This again would make things easier to make sure that the rosters are active. Again i think this would benefit both Guilds and Communities.

Guild Message of the Day

This needs to be addressed as well. This message is lost with addon spam more often than not, and is almost never seen. The GMotD used to have a space in the GUI a long time ago. This would be more prevalent and players would be able to see it more readily. Something like this needs to be brought back. I or my officers are stuck spamming this message here and there through the day/week to make sure players are up to date currently. Otherwise, I’m using Discord and doing an announcement.

Guild Challenges

This needs to be updated. The rewards are very outdated and do not offer much of an incentive for players to do. As far as I’m aware this has not been adjusted since it’s implementation (other than the addition of Mythic Dungeons). Please correct me if I’m wrong.

However, this does not change the fact that the gold reward do not match the current state of inflation in the game.

This goes into the idea as well of Cash Flow being reintroduced for guilds. Please refer to prior post regarding this.

Please, lets try and get this up and going sooner rather than later. I’m not referring to the Soon™ either.

As always, there are some great ideas here. Though, anymore, I have little hope of anything being improved, I figure I’ll just keep knocking on that door. Maybe the folks in charge of things at Blizz will come to their senses before the game completely implodes.

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

Maybe the folks in charge of things at Blizz will come to their senses before the game completely implodes.

I sincerely hope you’re right.

However, after taking some time to look through recent concerns posted here in the Wow forums (to say there’s a lot of them is understating matters) as well a reading many multiple posts on several Warcraft related Facebook groups, (not to mention a few articles regarding apparent shakeups at Blizzard/Activision, I am not sure that things have not gone much to far already.

I hope I’m wrong.

Very wrong.

I love Wow. It’s been my home away from home for approximately a decade and a half.

I find this apparent decline and willful failure to communicate with concerned players / customers very disturbing.

I almost feel like Blizzard is purposely trying to kill (or perhaps severely damage) the game for some odd reason.

For me, this whole situation is disheartening to say the least.

[Tixi-moon-guard (Tixi)]

This is legitimately disgusting. I am extremely ashamed in Blizzard for their lack of communication here.

And I’m what GD would call a “Blizzdrone shill” half the time.