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

Community General Discussion
1786
Face it folks, the Q&A is a place for the developers to tell the community about the work they've been doing, while cleverly disguising it as a place for the community to get feedback on the popular, hot-topic issues.

Many of the questions answered were cherry-picked to accommodate the answers that they were comfortable, and well prepared to give.

Our Question, which can be found here:

10/11/2018 12:12 PMPosted by Druunah
If you still have officers, get them to ask too--let's make this issue impossible to ignore.
We all need to be sure to up vote this question: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769766993?page=1#post-15


has 90 PAGES of feedback to support it, and no acknowledgement since the previous Q&A where we were told to give our feedback. After weeks of doing exactly what we were asked to do, and assuring that our question was once again visible on the top page of the questions thread, we were ignored.

After being faithful in giving thousands of replies in feedback, the topic should have AT LEAST been mentioned again, since the infamous "We are looking into it" line from the last Q&A where our question was barely mentioned.

You'll notice that out of all the questions asked, the ones that were answered were based around stuff the devs have previously admitted to have some kind of solution for, or known to have been working on already. Many of the questions weren't even as highly voted as our own.

This looks to me like Blizzard wanted to boast about their changes, and have them heard by a large portion of the community, so they masked the announcements as a Q&A as to attract more of the community to the stream. They simply prepared their replies, and picked the questions which would allow them to share them, in the form of answers.

I have been lead to believe Blizzard does not intend to focus on the lifeblood of this game (guilds) due to the recent avoidance of giving us any form of announcement (even though it is confirmed that Ythisens reads this thread "almost every day").

It is hard to believe anything else, I mean come on, Warfronts are catering to smaller groups, and discouraging larger, guild, groups from queuing because a group of 20 people whom communicate makes the Warfront "Steamrollable".

This game is supposed to be an MMO. And last time I checked, the most important part of that abbreviation is the "MM" for Massively Multiplayer. Not this single player, catered to, guildless theme park it's slowly becoming.

TLDR: I am salty, and didn't hold back in this one, cause enough is enough. Give us back original guild permissions PLEASE.
1787
ROFL! People are confused by my Blizzard Employee post!
1788
Welp back at it...BUMP!
1789
10/11/2018 01:12 PMPosted by Midgette
Missing in new UI vs. old Guild Roster
1. Ability to See Date Active and Sort by Date. This is very important for larger communities to be able to remove inactive players who haven't been around


Hey there madam Gnome, and thanks for the feedback, it's all very good. I did want to attempt to assist you on this one however, because no matter how bad the new guild functions are, this one does still remain.

If you go to the "Roster" tab on the right side of your guild UI, will see, at the top of that tab, an option to see all offline members. Make sure you click that, and then sort by "zone". The offline players, will have a "last online" clarification instead of their current zone because, well, they're not online. My guild used to remove inactive players after a set number of days, and this is still possible if you sort by zone. You can see how long somebody has been inactive from

"< one hour" all the way to "1 Year" with all of the days and months in between :) I know this is only a fraction of the issues you mentioned, but I hope this helps you a tiny bit.
1790
Wait, wait, wait, wait...

WAIT.

So when I suggest that Blizzard does something similar to what happened to us to themselves, a green quickly shoots down the idea.

But Guilds? Oh it's okay to keep us screwed.

Yep.
1 Like
1791
Well it's almost academic at this point. Most of the people in the guilds I'm in across 6 servers have quit the game and are not returning.

Yes they gave me their stuff.

This is a very disturbing trend and there are no signs it ever will improve as long as the D3 devs remain in charge.
1792
08/06/2018 10:15 AMPosted by Ythisens
Extended the cap once more on this one!

As you can imagine we're aware of this thread but don't have anything to share at this time but just wanted to say thanks for the continued feedback on this one. As soon as we have something to share we will post that for you guys.


So its been a few months.... Exactly WHEN will you have something to share? Are the forums just an interactive memory hole?
1793
10/11/2018 12:07 PMPosted by Venjin
To get some GD attention to our issue!


I already posted. I have nothing new to say, unless I failed to mention how I hate gchat as a message board. It keeps me quiet. I'm not of the opinion that spam bumping threads and acting out are the best ways to get positive attention.
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08/06/2018 10:15 AMPosted by Ythisens
Extended the cap once more on this one!

As you can imagine we're aware of this thread but don't have anything to share at this time but just wanted to say thanks for the continued feedback on this one. As soon as we have something to share we will post that for you guys.


So its been a few months.... Exactly WHEN will you have something to share? Are the forums just an interactive memory hole?

This guy replied months ago and people were SOO appreciative just to get acknowledged... And yet there is nothing new on what is clearly a pretty big issue.
1795
I find the new rank permissions to be awful, you've taken away nearly all of the flexibility i had in giving different permissions to different people, now its just like officer god mode or nothing.
1796
Even funnier:

My thread is being derailed.

LOL.
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10/11/2018 01:50 PMPosted by Venjin
Even funnier:

My thread is being derailed.

LOL.


The immediate responses, from even an MVP, as to how bad of an idea this is, kills me. When do we drop a link to this thread and say "Then why this"

x'D

Note: This is still feedback!
1798
10/10/2018 06:56 AMPosted by Druunah
10/09/2018 01:38 PMPosted by Venjin
Before the "communities" idea was even conceived, we had already created our own community. This was our Family. We had the tools to make our family great, but those have been taken away.

Blizzard, this is not "generalizing" or "aggrandizing". This is my reality. My wife's reality. This is our story. OURS. Separate from any crafted narrative you could have created. We want to make something special again, so let us do it.

And I'm not the only one asking this.

Get it done.

TL;DR: Our guild is the only thing that keeps us engaged due to the emotional investment we've put in to keep it alive. You're preventing us from doing our best to keep it going.


^That^

There is some of that human emotion / feeling that I've mentioned several times lately.

That's something you can not include in a bug report.

My guild's story is much like Venjin's story (to a point) The main difference is we haven't ever taken off (much) time. Certainly not for several expansions.

However, that difference aside, we are certainly very similar.

We as guild leaders whether we are the leaders of small guilds, medium guilds, or extremely large raiding guilds are all in the same boat in many ways.

We've all created communities of our own. (In my case and I think Venjin's we started back in Vanilla before communities were a sadistic gleam in Blizzard's eye)

We've all been adversely effected by the deliberate slash and burn of OUR guild's guild permissions.

I would also bet my last dollar that we all have some sort of story to tell about our guilds.

Please bear with me.
Another brief guild story from myself.

Years ago during Wrath we were having our own guild's "golden age"

Even in our small guild, there was not a time day or night that you could log on to Wow and not find someone online. We had guildies from all over the world. New Zealand, Germany, the US, several solders stationed in Iraq, and at least one person who claimed to be playing in Japan.

Over the years we've had entire families play so we keep guild chat respectful and PG rated.

We've had doctors, writers, soldiers, factory workers, food service workers, nurses, engineers, computer programmers, parents, grandparents, their kids, and even grand-kids etc...etc...etc....I could continue.

One story of many:

Back in Wrath we had a young married couple join us. Carr and Xe

I found them questing together in Lakeshire.
They were the definition of noobs.

No proper gear, they had out-leveled the area but didn't realize it, and had not even heard of dungeons if I remember correctly.

I invited them to our guild.

Our family.

Our community.

They joined us and "grew up" quickly.

As a Wow player Xe started learning fast. She got good.

She started doing dungeons and getting better and better gear and learned how to run content. She always claimed to randomly smash buttons, but I had my doubts. Once as we were about to wipe in (Ulduar?) I watched her last for a good 10-15 min alone against one of the tougher bosses (I forget which one after all these years) while the rest of us all lay dead. She almost beat it too, except she finally ran out of mana on her now exhausted pally.

Carr was different.

He liked to quest and explore the virtual world of Warcraft.

He would message me most days and just tell me what newness he'd discovered that day.

Oddly enough I discovered what he had to say very interesting.

One day he's got a rare whelpling drop from the Wetlands. This was long before pets were account wide.

He asked me if i wanted it, as he wasn't into pets. I told him he could make a fortune on the AH if he sold it there.

He didn't care about gold much and said he did not know much about the AH.

He mailed me the pet.

I was sorta "struck" by this gift. I don't know how else to describe what i felt.

Looking back, i think I had the vague idea that if I held onto the pet long enough he'd come to his senses sooner or later, wish he'd used or sold it and regret giving it away for free.

I stuck the welpling in my bank.

Several weeks passed.

Carr died suddenly.

Xe whispered me. "Carr died at work this morning"

I thought she was joking...

No joke. Carr had gotten up, went to work at the factory. He'd said he felt a little off to Xe that morning, but nothing specific.

Apparently at the young age of barely 30-something he'd had a massive heart attack and died in the arms of his coworkers.

This was shortly after Xe herself had recently been hospitalized after a miscarriage.

A boy.

They (Carr and Xe) grieved.

So did the guild family.

Carr was dead and Xe was a mess.

She continued to log in day after day clearly distraught and not thinking clearly.

This was Wrath so to distract herself she created a Deathknight.

Back then the DK starter zone was actually hard and she was having a particularly hard time with one quest.

She asked me to take her account and complete it for her. I refused, but "talked" her through it until she got it done on her own.

We talked. And talked. And talked.

At some point I happened to think of the unused whelpling in my bank Carr had given me.

I told he about his gift and asked her if she'd like to have it.

She said "YES!"

I hope she still has it in her collection, and I hope it brings her fond memories of her lost husband.

The rest of us were in shock at Carr's sudden death. We wanted to do something, but we didn't know what we could do.

We thought of sending someone to Xe's location as a guild emissary, but no one lived anywhere near her. We were spread out all over the country and the world.

So.

We had an in-game memorial service at the same time Carr's funeral was taking place.

It was touching. We gathered at our usual guild meeting place and everyone took a few minutes to speak a memory or two about Carr in the circle of our toons we'd created.

I had no way to record the event back then, but I took screenshots and wrote down some of the "better" tributes to Carr on good old fashioned paper so i could show Xe later.

She was astonished at the outpouring of love and grief from her guildies.

I wasn't so much. We're a guild family.

Xe went on to become and officer in BloodOath.

She still plays Wow to this day, although not as avidly.

That Blizzard is a REAL Warcraft community

After all these years, it still is a real community.

It's our guild, it's out family, it's our home on Warcraft.

You are KILLING it

Thank you for bearing with me.

Here's to you Carr.
Rest in peace guild brother.
You are not forgotten.


^^ This... so MUCH this. <3
1 Like
1799
Oh good, ignored again on today’s Q&A.. for a minute, I was worried blizzard might accidentally communicate with us..
1800
10/11/2018 03:12 PMPosted by Holliday
Oh good, ignored again on today’s Q&A.. for a minute, I was worried blizzard might accidentally communicate with us..


Well, in a slight sliver of hope, a green did say "they know" about the issue, so at the very very least, it's confirmation of the problem. They're just mum on how they're gonna fix it at this point.
1801
Guys...I don't know. I'm just...

Ready to throw in the towel. It shocks me to think that I, a super WoW fan, have completely lost heart. A relationship has got to be a two-way street. We're talking here, but no one at Blizz seems to give a fig.

They say they "know" there's a problem? Yeah, fine. WHAT THE F*** ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

That's all I want to know.
1802
DO NOT GIVE UP! RELOAD! KEEP FIRING!
1803
10/11/2018 03:36 PMPosted by Fumel
Guys...I don't know. I'm just...

Ready to throw in the towel. It shocks me to think that I, a super WoW fan, have completely lost heart. A relationship has got to be a two-way street. We're talking here, but no one at Blizz seems to give a fig.

They say they "know" there's a problem? Yeah, fine. WHAT THE F*** ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

That's all I want to know.


The frustration is real. And more and more, I believe their integration of Guilds + Communities is what complicates the reversion the most. I get this bad feeling the frameworks of each are tied together and messing with one borks the other even more. 'Tis a crappy situation for us for sure, but I cannot give up.

Crepe, Jareff, Xakopane...Ythisens...you guys know the deal.

Give those devs some memos, stand by their cubicles, and tell them their TPS reports on the Guild UI solution are missing the new cover sheet.

Guild Masters from Vanilla to Modern await with baited breath.
1804
Guys...I don't know. I'm just...

Ready to throw in the towel. It shocks me to think that I, a super WoW fan, have completely lost heart. A relationship has got to be a two-way street. We're talking here, but no one at Blizz seems to give a fig.

They say they "know" there's a problem? Yeah, fine. WHAT THE F*** ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

That's all I want to know.

LIKE
QUOTE


A few things here:

It is hard to continue a relationship knowing that while one of the people in said relationship realize there's a problem, that person fails to actually do anything about it.

"Super Wow fan" I never considered myself as such, but thinking it over, I guess I must be. (Or at least I was) I've played since Vanilla and my guild was created in late Vanilla. I mentioned in my first post on this thread (I think it was my first) that I'd always felt that no matter what changes were made to the game (for better or worse) that Blizz always had my back.
Until now.

I still can't argue with that statement.

"A relationship is a two way street" and "I am ready to throw in the towel"

I relationship IS a two way street.

I am now envisioning this whole thread as the guild leaders of Wow as one side of a dysfunctional relationship desperately trying to convince the other half of said relationship that they need to do something immediately to help fix that relationship.

Guild Leaders " Please Blizzard, you need to listen to us! There's a serious problem here and if you don't acknowledge it and help work things out, our relationship will be in serious trouble! We may even be forced to break up!" *sobbing*

Blizzard *Briefly glances up from it's television program* "Ok ok! I understand there's a problem. We'll talk it over later! Now Shhhhh! Right now, my show is on!"

But Blizz, I....I thought you cared.....

It only takes on person to (as Fumel stated) "lose heart"

I'm not quite done yet, but this is beyond disheartening. I think I may be close.
1805
Yup. We're definitely in dysfunctional relationship territory here. Funny thing is, some of that improved communication would go a long ways towards helping. As such, there is only one proper response. *AHEM* doremifasollatido!

Every guild you break
Every permission you take
Every rank you break
Every improvement you fake
I'll be in this thread

Every single day
Silence comes my way
Choices taken away
From customers that pay
I'll be in this thread

Oh can't you see
Your UI's hurting me
My poor guild aches
With every day you take

Every question you take
Every answer you fake
Every claim you stake
Every coal you rake
I'll be in this thread

Since the pre-patch dropped, ranks are gone without a trace
I dream at night that I wake and it's replaced
I look around but it's just your smug new face
I feel so sad and I long for restored ranks
I keep crying Blizzard, Blizzard, please

Oh can't you see
Your UI's hurting me
My poor guild aches
With every day you take

Every guild you break
Every permission you take
Every rank you break
Every improvement you fake
I'll be in this thread

Every move you make
Every step you take

I'll be in this thread
I'll be in this thread
Moo.

**Sorry to steal your thing, Venjin. I was going to suggest this song, but then I kinda couldn't stop. I got carried away, and it was really cathartic. I have no regrets.
1 Like