Blizzard, you know what happens, when you change guild controls? Do you know what happens, when you take power away from Guild Masters?! Do you know what happens, when you screw up something that wasn't broken in the first place, and make the WoWcaholics angry?
Do ya?!
Do ya know what happens?!?
*click*
YOU JUST MADE THE LIST!
08/07/2018 07:39 AMPosted by FumelNot that your post is in any way like that. I just think you're wrong about Blizzard only listening if we threaten their bottom line.
Sorry, it just feels that way to me. Its personal opinion only and I may be much more shortsighted than others on this but the only way that Blizzard MUST address these concerns is if there is a compliance risk that they get fined sued or both over or it negatively affects the bottom line to the point that it begins to tarnish reputation of the company with the investors. The consumer is almost always over a barrel with companies that they contract with. So, if they have ignored reasonable requests to change (and yes Blizzard silence is equatable to ignoring) and I believe that on this issue a reasonable person would agree that they have ignored reasonable requests to change, then the limited number of options left must be pursued because as many of us admit here the current system is not workable. We can either continue on (acceptance), protest, or claim harm. I personally do not know of a workable theory of harm in this instance (also not a lawyer so I am likely to have missed a workable theory). Protesting is what we are doing in this thread and it is yielding very few results. What else is left?
Revert the guild permission changes... do it now.
How is there no word or anything besides a thread cap extension?
This is a very real issue and a statement on intent would go a long way.
We just want to play with our friends the way we have for 14 years.
This is a very real issue and a statement on intent would go a long way.
We just want to play with our friends the way we have for 14 years.
Hmm. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. You sound a little burned out and slightly impatient, but you do have reason to feel that way.08/07/2018 10:12 AMPosted by Æthelwulf08/07/2018 07:39 AMPosted by FumelNot that your post is in any way like that. I just think you're wrong about Blizzard only listening if we threaten their bottom line.
Sorry, it just feels that way to me. Its personal opinion only and I may be much more shortsighted than others on this but the only way that Blizzard MUST address these concerns is if there is a compliance risk that they get fined sued or both over or it negatively affects the bottom line to the point that it begins to tarnish reputation of the company with the investors. The consumer is almost always over a barrel with companies that they contract with. So, if they have ignored reasonable requests to change (and yes Blizzard silence is equatable to ignoring) and I believe that on this issue a reasonable person would agree that they have ignored reasonable requests to change, then the limited number of options left must be pursued because as many of us admit here the current system is not workable. We can either continue on (acceptance), protest, or claim harm. I personally do not know of a workable theory of harm in this instance (also not a lawyer so I am likely to have missed a workable theory). Protesting is what we are doing in this thread and it is yielding very few results. What else is left?
The thing is, it's not an us vs. them (consumers vs. corporations) issue. Companies aren't really mindless behemoths looking to crush the little guy. They're made up of people, like you and me, some competent, some less so. They exist to provide a product or service to people willing to pay for said product or service. And of course they want to be paid--after all, you want to be paid for the work you do, don't you?
Blizzard's "investors" aren't some shadowy cartel. They're people, like you and me, who have some of their money put away in IRA's, mutual funds, etc. I actually do have a small number of shares in a small number of funds, at least one of which invests in tech companies, giving me some tiny little bit of Blizzard stock myself. Does that investment give me any say in what Blizzard does? Not hardly. I have far more influence as a player posting on these forums than I do as an "investor".
Bottom line, don't let the glacial pace of Blizzard's response to this issue get you down. Remember, there are a lot of things from this pre-patch needing attention, many of them far more game-breaking than guild permissions. Also, a brand new expansion is about to launch worldwide at the exact same time. That has all kinds of potential for disaster that Blizzard absolutely wants to avoid.
So it's not surprising our problem isn't getting full attention right now. That doesn't mean it will never get an attention. We just have to not let it get pushed to the bottom of the to-do pile. So, keep posting--especially with suggestions about what changes would be most helpful for guild management.
08/07/2018 11:23 AMPosted by SsleakHow is there no word or anything besides a thread cap extension?
The same reason the new Character Info Sheet and "Simplified UI" got pushed out with no changes in Legion.
Please revert the permission changes before the new release even if its just that please do it before you spoil the expansion for a bunch of people who are dedicated to your game.
Excuse me but I think this problem is very important! If all the guild leaders and their minions finally get so angry they leave, who is gonna be left to play this expac? A few solo players ? Please don't downgrade what this is doing to WoW's player base. I love this game and want to see it go on a long time! This latest move however is not leading us in that direction.
I haven't read pages 3-51 so sorry if this has been mentioned.
There is no way within the new guild controls to transfer Guild Master status.
On an alt I had a guild (the only member) that I no longer wanted so I tried to sell it. I found a buyer and invited the person into the guild only to find no controls to transfer it. The GM has no drop-down menu under Rank. I advanced the buyer to the highest rank short of GM but that was the top rank available in their drop-down rank menu. I tried all sorts of things but no success until I found a 2 year old thread here that listed an old command: /guildleader {playername}. This did transfer the GM rank. But it is nowhere within the actual guild controls which is either a bug or an incredibly dumb choice.
I'm spreading the word of the bug because this will become a much bigger problem than just chat permissions. I did post a note in the bug report forum: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20767347000
As for the other guild controls:
* Non-officers need to be able to set their own notes - it is foolish to block them from being able to do this.
* The GM and officers, at least, should be able to view the reputation of the members - reputation matters heavily for everything else in the game so why is it no longer visible in the guild?
* Tab 3 could be just turned into a button - there is no point to it being a tab of its own.
* Even tab 4 could be modified into a button with the MotD and Guild Info popping up at the top of the chat tab when you first view it.
* Correct the Invite option to not require being an officer. If a guild is trying to grow then the GM should be able to allow non-officers to invite people too.
* Break up the officer group of permissions back into options for the GM to choose. It looks especially bad considering the massive number of options under chat window settings.
There is no way within the new guild controls to transfer Guild Master status.
On an alt I had a guild (the only member) that I no longer wanted so I tried to sell it. I found a buyer and invited the person into the guild only to find no controls to transfer it. The GM has no drop-down menu under Rank. I advanced the buyer to the highest rank short of GM but that was the top rank available in their drop-down rank menu. I tried all sorts of things but no success until I found a 2 year old thread here that listed an old command: /guildleader {playername}. This did transfer the GM rank. But it is nowhere within the actual guild controls which is either a bug or an incredibly dumb choice.
I'm spreading the word of the bug because this will become a much bigger problem than just chat permissions. I did post a note in the bug report forum: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20767347000
As for the other guild controls:
* Non-officers need to be able to set their own notes - it is foolish to block them from being able to do this.
* The GM and officers, at least, should be able to view the reputation of the members - reputation matters heavily for everything else in the game so why is it no longer visible in the guild?
* Tab 3 could be just turned into a button - there is no point to it being a tab of its own.
* Even tab 4 could be modified into a button with the MotD and Guild Info popping up at the top of the chat tab when you first view it.
* Correct the Invite option to not require being an officer. If a guild is trying to grow then the GM should be able to allow non-officers to invite people too.
* Break up the officer group of permissions back into options for the GM to choose. It looks especially bad considering the massive number of options under chat window settings.
Please rescend the guild UI and permission changes. Also allow us the option to wipe chat history.
As it is it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to do what I want to do with a guild, which involves a mix of rp and non rp custom ranks and permissions as rewards for organizing and participating in guild activities.
There's less than a week left before BfA, I would have loved to have spent the prepatch recruiting and getting everything up and going but it looks like I'm going to have to wait.
As it is it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to do what I want to do with a guild, which involves a mix of rp and non rp custom ranks and permissions as rewards for organizing and participating in guild activities.
There's less than a week left before BfA, I would have loved to have spent the prepatch recruiting and getting everything up and going but it looks like I'm going to have to wait.
08/07/2018 12:10 PMPosted by NysallaPlease rescend the guild UI and permission changes. Also allow us the option to wipe chat history.
As it is it is unusable for what I want to do with a guild. I'm better off just using discord.
This is really it.
They are trying to get in on Discord's market-- at least the people that use it for WoW-- while giving us none of the moderation tools or ability.
It's awful. If anything we will use Guild related tools LESS.
Just revert it back. How many pages will that take?
Please rescend the guild UI and permission changes. Also allow us the option to wipe chat history.
As it is it is unusable for what I want to do with a guild. I'm better off just using discord.
This is really it.
They are trying to get in on Discord's market-- at least the people that use it for WoW-- while giving us none of the moderation tools or ability.
It's awful. If anything we will use Guild related tools LESS.
Yeah as it is that's exactly what's going to happen. There's absolutely no way to use the new guild interface for what I want to. I cannot fathom these changes, it's a downgrade in every conceivable way. The only thing we have now which we didn't before is permanent chat, which is awful IMO but I can understand the desire for it. BUT IT SHOULD BE AN OPTION.
Just speculating here, but a big part of the instability for the prepatch revolved around the community feature, and I imagine the guild UI is precariously tied to whatever they did to fix it... So it's likely that we're stuck with this for a good while which is really frustrating.
I love almost everything that I've read about BfA. It would have been great to have a guild going into it but it looks like my friends and I will just be sticking to discord because, and I can't stress this enough, the new guild UI is UNUSABLE for everything I'd want in a guild. It's nothing more than a public chat room now. Not a place for friends to chat. Not a place to make fun rp ranks. Even officer chat has become useless due to its permanent nature, meaning nothing even REMOTELY sensitive can be discussed there.
Just, ugh.
This is the dumbest idea....who did this someone who never played...or even was ever in a guild. Please fix this or even better put it back to the way it was and leave stuff that isn't broken alone...ty
08/05/2018 10:39 AMPosted by GreenstoneBiggest risk they have is GMs deciding to gdisband their guilds and stop buying their product.
However they know they have a captive audiance that won't do this. Many guilds were created early in the game's history and are run by some of the older players who basically created communities and friend networks on their own through hard work and determination.
The opinions and needs of guilds and guildmasters should have value in this game since its main goal is to be mmo, not a solo player game. Even with communities you will need players that are willing to sacrifice game time to create and administer events. You can not do this with a simplistic interface and no permanent foundation.
Communities should be another in set of tools for guilds and guildmasters not something that will supplant them.
As my own experience has shown me when you pick up pugs and give them a community link you do not always get the best of the crop. Point in fact with how toxic lfr has made pugging you have to deal with people who won't go to voice, won't eat or buff themselves,who never even think about actually sticking around for more the two wipes. So yeah unless they plan on giving a reward for not doing bad behaviors in groups, communities will be something that will constantly cause issues for those that plan events.
Without strong GMs and officers, players who have experience building groups and dealing with the misfits in them communities will fail.
The community system seems to want to mimic Discord, however Discord has a guild structure to it, you can assign roles or ranks with different abilities like a guild and give specific people channel permissions, you can mute both voice and channel chat on multiple levels. If anything the implementation of communities barely scratches the surface of what controls you would need to mimic it. Not to mention the fact that you are basically copying another companies intellectual property.
In any case the permissions changes made to the interface should be reverted.
Guildmasters shouldn't have to work with an incomplete interface when we had a very effective and well implemented one in the original guild control panel.
Previously I have pointed out errors/bugs in the implementation of the community ui and the permission changes in this thread, I have also pointed out how ranks are harmed in previous posts, I even explained how communities are created and channels that previously existed do not merge into them. I explained how the community ui differs greatly from the original controls, I also explained how communities could be used for illegal or detrimental actions on the part of the users since they are not an organized system connected to a group but rather one own by individuals like a channel, and now I have explained how the community ui itself harms the game and actually could be a point of contention between Blizzard and Discord.
Blizzard you have all this information in your hands now, I understand you want to improve your product and do things in your way, but as consumers of your product we do not want to see any harm come to it so please try to consider this thread and the advice given.
Please revert the permission changes and consider the Community UI panel and how its being implemented why the need for it and would making stronger links to guild be a smarter route or should you be completely separating the two.
Also as some have said the fact that Loot Master, and Guild Rewards, and Perks that we had earned as guilds have now gone it seems that more and more guild associated features and benefits are going away. Is there truly no more place for guilds in the World of Warcraft are you truly trying to remove them and remove the benefits that they bring to the game?
So much good stuff here I just have to quote and comment.
Guilds do a lot for the WoW community. It's not just about "my" guild, it's guilds in general. Blizzard should be nurturing and supporting the guild community but unfortunately it feels more like the guild community is neglected and abused.
Guilds offer a lot because they are groups of people who know each other and can draw on that familiarity to coordinate far beyond what group finder or the new communities feature has to offer.
Our guild works and plays with other guilds, we're able to draw on each others btag lists to group with specific people for specific situations in game so we all succeed more and have more fun.
A working, easy to use, sensible guild UI is important. We don't need the guild UI and permissions to be some massive time sink or aggravation to GM's or officers. Guild addons are also important to save us time and make guild management easier and more convenient just as raid addons are for raiding.
Guilds have had addons destroyed with little if any care from the developers and now the UI options have been badly broken.
Give us a break. Invest a little development time into guilds. Put some thought into it and scour this thread and others for input to really improve things for guilds. Increase the guild member limit or stop counting alts in member cap so our guilds can thrive and grow instead of fill up with allied race alts.
Please.
08/07/2018 11:33 AMPosted by FumelThe thing is, it's not an us vs. them (consumers vs. corporations) issue. Companies aren't really mindless behemoths looking to crush the little guy. They're made up of people, like you and me, some competent, some less so. They exist to provide a product or service to people willing to pay for said product or service. And of course they want to be paid--after all, you want to be paid for the work you do, don't you?
Blizzard's "investors" aren't some shadowy cartel. They're people, like you and me, who have some of their money put away in IRA's, mutual funds, etc. I actually do have a small number of shares in a small number of funds, at least one of which invests in tech companies, giving me some tiny little bit of Blizzard stock myself. Does that investment give me any say in what Blizzard does? Not hardly. I have far more influence as a player posting on these forums than I do as an "investor".
I think you will find that the investors that I refer to are not the mom and pop I own 1000 shares of ATVI (or less) that I bought when it was $7.00 per share.
No the investors I refer to that DO control what the companies investment relationship looks like are the Fund Managers, Institutional Investors, Equity Trading firms and the like along with Insiders. These guys don't care about what is happening internally with ATVI (except for Insiders) but they do see what the ANALYSTS are saying about ATVI.
Their movements with their portfolios account for a lot of the volatility of the stock and its THESE investors (as well as the "Insiders" (Directors, Officers, and any shareholder with more than 10% equity in the company)) that become the impetus for change when bad news begins to break. That last category of investors is often filled to the brim with people who are influential in the decision making process day to day within the company.
They do not generally come out and say Change Guild permissions to be less granular. They do however say cut costs wherever you can and maximize profit wherever you can. The Lead Game Designer and his development team then interpret that and somewhere along the line that cut costs/maximize profit goal turns into Change Guild Permissions to be less granular. It serves the function that the insider investor wants so the insider investor is happy the executives are happy the designers and developers are happy.
Everyone but the customer is happy. Only the Customer is supposed to be the reason the company is in business to begin with and if they are not happy no one should be happy.
Now you can't actually point the finger of blame at the insider investor, or the executives, or the developers. They have circled the wagons too well for that. But the jist is that the customer is not happy and they have no recourse to be made whole and be returned to a state of happiness except to drop what amounts to be years of their invested time in a hobby/pasttime for something that is perhaps less enjoyable but at least is workable, or they have to bear up under the burden of a change that is made that is onerous and reduces the value of the hobby/pasttime because more time has to be found to apply to workarounds or fixes than enjoying the hobby/pasttime in the first place.
Add to that the silent stone wall from those responsible for implementing the change and yeah I get a bit burned on the whole thing.
08/07/2018 12:38 PMPosted by NysallaYeah as it is that's exactly what's going to happen. There's absolutely no way to use the new guild interface for what I want to. I cannot fathom these changes, it's a downgrade in every conceivable way. The only thing we have now which we didn't before is permanent chat, which is awful IMO but I can understand the desire for it. BUT IT SHOULD BE AN OPTION.
Just speculating here, but a big part of the instability for the prepatch revolved around the community feature, and I imagine the guild UI is precariously tied to whatever they did to fix it... So it's likely that we're stuck with this for a good while which is really frustrating.
I love almost everything that I've read about BfA. It would have been great to have a guild going into it but it looks like my friends and I will just be sticking to discord because, and I can't stress this enough, the new guild UI is UNUSABLE for everything I'd want in a guild. It's nothing more than a public chat room now. Not a place for friends to chat. Not a place to make fun rp ranks. Even officer chat has become useless due to its permanent nature, meaning nothing even REMOTELY sensitive can be discussed there.
Just, ugh.
AND we can't clear the persistent chat on demand... like Discord allows.
Honestly, do not forget this. Keep pushing.
Blizzard, Crl Z this mess. Thanks.
Something else I would like back is the ability for everyone to see the officer's note. I and my officers designate 2 people per crafting professions and I put the profession on the officers note since I let everyone edit their public note...uh well use to let everyone do that >,>
08/07/2018 12:12 PMPosted by ZumasPlease rescend the guild UI and permission changes. Also allow us the option to wipe chat history.
As it is it is unusable for what I want to do with a guild. I'm better off just using discord.
This is really it.
They are trying to get in on Discord's market-- at least the people that use it for WoW-- while giving us none of the moderation tools or ability.
It's awful. If anything we will use Guild related tools LESS.
And yet what they don't get is the only way to get people to change to your service is if you do it better than the other guy. I don't get why no one's learning the lesson that Google Plus should have taught everyone.
Bumperino.
Undo awful changes.
Undo awful changes.