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

[Tareir-arthas (Tareir)]

They want feedback on what parts aren’t working with permissions? Okay, I’ll give it a go and try to be as concise as possible so they don’t have to read a lengthy post:

• The “IsOfficer” checkbox isn’t working. Remove it and put in granular permissions.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Takoda, I would quote your post, but it’s right there, two posts above me, so quoting seems silly.

BLIZZARD: Look up there at Takoda’s post ^. That, right there, is all the feedback you really need. Specific, detailed, clearly written, with prioritization and everything.

And I totally agree with those priorities.

1. Permissions
2. Recruitment
3. Perks

I would add a fourth, Guild Halls, but that can go under Perks.

So, thanks to Takoda, you’ve got what you asked for, Ion. Now get it done.

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

I’m quite grumpy that it took 9 months to get a “we’re working on it.” But it is a significant step up over continued silence. For that, Ion gets a very grudging thank you from me.

As far as prioritization goes, this is something that I have discussed in this thread, but I don’t believe I have focused on it. So I’ll attempt to expand on my previous thoughts.

Priority #1: Deal with “IsOfficer”

My main problem with the “IsOfficer” box is that it doesn’t allow for multiple ranks of officers. To fully resolve this, the permissions MUST be completely unbundled.

That said, if Blizzard is looking for a stop-gap, I propose the following: separate out the “admin” level permissions from the “officer” level permissions. Though this isn’t a complete fix, it will buy time, allowing guilds to function a bit better until Blizzard is able to fully work out the technical kinks of complete unbundling.

IsOfficer:

• Access officer channels
• View and edit officer notes
• Edit public notes

IsAdmin:

• Edit guild info
• Edit MOTD

Other:

• Remove people from voice chat
• Delete other people’s guild events
• Delete other people’s chat messages

The “Other” category are those that I moved from Officer to Admin and back several times and then decided, yeah, I’m not really the person to decide this. Those three are things that my guild doesn’t really have much reason to use. We use Discord, so there’s no need to kick people from in-game voice chat. We have moved away from using the in-game calendar, so there’s no need to delete events. And deleting other people’s chat messages is something that all my officers would just leave to me anyway. So if any of you guys have ideas about where those three should go, I’m all ears. Or any other suggestions for how to improve this stop-gap suggestion.

Ofc, it’s very possible that Blizzard may find that it will simply be easier to unbundle like we all want rather than create yet another checkbox that will be hated. But my goal with this suggestion is to allow guilds to go from a “one-size-fits-none” structure to an optional 2-3 pre-set leadership ranks. It’s not ideal, and it’s not a permanent fix. But it would be a small step in the right direction.

For me at least, this would give me enough to work with that I can start recruitment again. (Because yes, I have suspended recruitment completely for the last 9 months. We’ve been surviving on a revolving door of people returning from a break and people bringing their friends and family into our raids. A guild that doesn’t have 12 years worth of social connections probably wouldn’t still have enough people for a raid group.)

Priority #2: Recruitment

Speaking of recruitment, the in-game tools are hot garbage. There are no short cuts that will really work for fixing guild recruitment. The in-game tool needs a complete ground-up redesign. That said, I do understand that level of design is probably needing resources that are only available when creating a new expansion.

Even though the in-game guild finder is horrible, it is still the way that most of our new recruits find us. Historically, we’ve had some people join through friends or family. We’ve had very little success recruiting via channels like general or trade (before it was cross-server), and marginal success recruiting by whispering unguilded people.

Based on my experiences, I believe fixing the guild finder will be a HUGE benefit to the game as a whole, and will very likely go a long way to addressing the general animosity towards guilds that exists in the pug world. If people have the ability to find a good guild, then they are much more likely to participate in (and enjoy) the social side of an MMORPG. If they just find dead guild after dead guild after toxic guild, well then frankly, I don’t blame them a bit for being burned out.

To that end, I propose the following. (Also, as I previously stated, I have not tried to recruit for 9 months, so if some of this has already been changed, please let me know. I like guild updates!)

Stop-gaps:

Please make guild listings expire after 30 days. I cannot stress this enough. If I still need people, I can relist easily enough. (It would be super helpful if the postmaster could remind me that the listing has timed out too.) This will help people who are searching for a guild to find guilds that were recently active, and also make it so they don’t have to sift through nearly as many guilds. No one wants to join a guild that is still searching for a main tank for Dragon Soul.

Provide better scheduling info. The “Availability” section is largely useless. Please delete the check boxes and instead tie it to “Guild Interests.” For each box I check in that section, open up a blank field where I can type in our schedule. For example, if I have the boxes checked for “Raiding” and “Dungeons,” let me type in our raiding schedule, and our m+ schedule. When a prospective new member is viewing the listing, they could see something like: “Dungeons – M+ cache runs Wednesday evenings and as needed” “Raids – Friday and Saturday 7PM-9PM server.” This way, people can know up front if our schedule is going to work with their work/school schedule.

This would free up the comment box at the bottom for me to put in basic info like what to expect from the guild’s culture, our rules and expectations etc. It’s super important that people know these things up front so they can determine if the guild is a good fit for how they want to play the game. As it currently sits, they have to talk to me to find out if they are even interested because there isn’t enough room in the guild finder to determine on a very basic level if it will even work.

Indicator if the person who sent a request to join is online or offline. So, ideally, the end goal is to be able to send an invite to people who are offline (via the mail or whatever) so they can accept it when they log in next. But if that is too cumbersome in the short term, please at least add a way that I can tell by looking at the request if they are online. The last time I tried to recruit via the in-game tool, I had to search the who list to see if the person was online. If online, I could whisper them to ask if they still wanted to join. (I consider popping an unexpected invite randomly in their faces to be quite rude, so I always whisper first.) If offline, I would send them a letter in the mail. A button to auto-port their name into the mail field would be very handy as well. (Especially for those characters with funky letters.)

Priority #3: Guild Perks

The guild perks are outdated to say the least. We haven’t gotten new pets/mounts/shirts or really anything at all in a very long time. I’ve seen a lot of people voicing the opinion that “there’s no point to being in a guild.” While I disagree with that opinion, I can understand where they are coming from. There is no real tangible benefit to your character’s growth to be gained from being in a guild. The big exception to that is mythic raiding.

For a guild like mine, the benefit is largely a social one, and like we previously discussed, most players have a very difficult time find a guild with the current guild finder that actually provides social benefits. I suspect that a large portion of the player base has already given up on finding those social benefits, so it will be necessary to entice them back into guilds via other means.

Cashflow:

These “challenges” haven’t been updated in forever. The dungeon challenges in particular are almost never completed in my guild, and as far as I can tell, they don’t work. Or at least they don’t work properly. They don’t complete for seemingly random reasons. It completes for timewalking, and that’s about it. Why would it matter if I’m on a 120 helping a couple of guildies level through normals?

It’s also super weird to have a “dungeons” category separate from a “M+” category. Why is there a cashflow perk for rated BG, but not for arenas? And why is there only one raid boss kill available when the whole point of most raid guilds is to kill several raid bosses every week? Doesn’t it make more sense to have several smaller raid perks instead of one big one? Wouldn’t it make sense to incorporate newer content like world quests, islands, and warfronts into this feature as well?

I get not wanting cashflow to be op, or to simply line the pockets of a greedy soulless GM. But really, why DOES it go into cash in the gvault? Why doesn’t it go into a separate repair fund that is inaccessible to everyone (including the GM) except through repairs? Why doesn’t it pay out partially into a guild’s repair fund, and partially into the pockets of those members that helped complete the challenge?

Even better, let me tie a cross-server community to my guild so that those on other servers can tap into (and contribute to) that repair fund and participate in gchat.

Reputation:

This is a largely untapped area of potential where guilds are concerned. There are a few different directions that this could go, so I’ll explore some different ideas.

Reputation boosts as a guild perk. I think this is something that could be added as a passive bonus for being in a guild without being op. It would be helpful for those that enjoy farming reputations or paragon caches without being too strong. It could also be massively beneficial for those who just want to finish that darn pathfinder. It could work as a flat bonus (like the human racial), but personally, I think that is fairly boring. I would prefer to add the idea of warforging rep as a guild perk. You could get a little green fwoosh when it procs, and your log shows you earned X bonus rep.

Guild reputation as a paragon rep. I’ve been in the same guild for 10 years. Guild reputation has been completely useless for basically forever. Why not add it as a paragon rep? When you fill your guild reputation bar, it could give you a cache with some gold, random consumables or profession items, and also automatically deposit some items/gold into the guild vault.

Consumables unlocked for guild rep. These could be low cost rewards for having a certain amount of guild rep. Some things could be just a small boost meant to replace more expensive consumables like flasks and pre-pots in situations where they aren’t really needed, like a 2% damage flask while in the open world (usable while leveling or for world quests). Maybe a flask that increases run speed by 20% while in old raid content for transmog farming, or a potion that only works in dungeons that provides a small splash to single target attacks. Other things could be just for fun – such as a potion that turns you into a random dinosaur. Or a confused class potion that “borrows” a spell from a random guildie in your group for 2 minutes (similar to the old druid symbiosis spell).

Mounts and Pets:

This is the obvious gimme for guild rewards. We haven’t had new mounts or pets in ages. I don’t think it would be terribly difficult to do something like a balloon with the guild crest.

Other ideas for guild content:

Guild treasure hunt – talk to an NPC to start the hunt, solve riddles as a team, search the area to find a chest.

Guild warmode missions – this could be used to encourage guild groups into the same area for some guild vs guild warmode.

Guild based side-story scenarios – rather than focusing on me as a player, why not create some scenarios designed to be played as a guild group to forward the guild’s reputation in the world.

Conclusion:

I prioritized things this way because I need to have officers more or less on track before I can really bring in new people. The core I have now is quite drama free and low maintenance. Adding new people always brings the risk of changing that balance, and requiring some moderation from officers. Once I have officers again, I can bring in new people, but lack good tools to do so. Once we have recruitment tools, people will need a reason to join a guild.

But I’m tired now, and hungry to the point where I’m not really thinking straight anymore. I’m sure there are some better ideas out there, and I’m curious to see what you guys think.

Also - Fix PvP

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

From the recent Q&A

I know that those posts have been out there. I don’t want to say that no one has done this. But for you specifically, if you’re voicing the concern that guild management tools are lacking, it would be super helpful just so we could understand the relative weighting, popularity, and demand of each of these features and what it is you miss most so we can prioritize that accordingly.

Sigh. Really?

Blizzard, you can scroll back through this thread as easy as we can.

However, if you insist that we continue to do your job for you as we have now for years as Guild Leaders (for free, with these now very questionable tools) so be it.

Firstly, so you understand, I’ll paraphrase Fumal from October 26, 2018

"Guild Masters need to individually determine what it means to be an “officer” in their respective guilds, not some Blizzard employee(s). We don’t need clumsy, one-size-fits-all, top-down interventions (“is officer”) imposed upon our personal guild community. Give us customization, let us manage at the local level, decide to distribute or not distribute power and responsibility as we see fit.

(I changed it slightly Fumal. My apologies)

Very basically. For my guild, we used the separated permissions to:

A} Weed out undesirables

B} Learn who was interested in helping the guild out.

C} Reward various levels of participation / helpfulness / trustworthiness etc…

D} Distribute guild power to take some of the burden off the Guild Leader’s shoulders

BloodOath is not a business, nor is it military. However, we do borrow some concepts from both of those. I’d bet many guilds do whether they realize it or not.
We of course have ranks. Each rank has it’s own unique rewards and responsibilities. As you rank up, those rewards and responsibilities increase. We use these increased privileges as incentives to do well, be helpful / useful to the guild as a whole. Solo players who keep to themselves, the unreliable, “sometimes players” etc… rarely if ever rank very high, or at all.

Think about the corporation that is Blizzard.

With all due respect:

Slapping the “is community manager” checkbox title on some fresh new “recruits” from the Acti-Blizzard mail room, then setting them loose would be foolish. The same can be said for giving CEO power to the community managers. That would be unthinkable.

Yet this is what Blizzard expects us “Guild Managers” to deal with now.

“Is officer” is a bad joke. How this isn’t blatantly obvious (especially after these many many months with dozens, if not hundreds of well written posts here on this thread explaining exactly why) is hard for me to grasp.

What do we “miss most?”

Everything dear Blizzard…

Everything.

Please separate / revert / generally fix the guild permissions.

Thank you.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Continuing my read-through of the thread where I left off (I was up to September posts). Since someone at Blizzard gets confused if the posts aren’t specific enough, I’ll try to quote only the most specific parts of the posts from now on. You can go to the original if you want to read the whole thing.

Please give us the individual permission customization we had prior to patch 8.0. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking for.

For further recommendations to help guild management, add a complete log/record system for the guild bank so the guild master can keep track of cumulative records on gold deposits, gold repairs, gold withdraws, item deposits, and item withdraws. If WoW developers can create and maintain a statistics tab with all kinds of totally useless information for my character, they can add a simple feature that lets me keep track of a few guild bank records.

Now, I don’t know where these suggestions go priority-wise. Definitely the permissions part is number one, of course. But I think the guild bank suggestion is a good one that definitely should be added at some point.

[Takoda-kul-tiras (Takoda)]

Cross-posting another thread I found this morning. This GM posted a long list of guild management tool suggestions in response to the Q&A.

This is what I want from the guild management interface

Dear WatcherDev, In your recent Q&A, you requested concrete, specific suggestions for changes in the guild management tools. As a guild leader for 11.5 years, I can speak to what I, and my officers, would like to see. I want the ability to add more ranks. Nine is not enough. Players have a sense of attachment to a guild when they feel longevity is rewarded. I don’t care if I have to cough up 10k gold per new rank but I want the ability to reward people for being here. I can see this could get…

[Lucyclawless-durotan (Lucyclawless)]

Takoda’s post is concise and clear on some of the major issues. I have an issue that was not discussed in that post and I feel it needs mentioning.

The Guild Roster needs to be restructured. GMs and officers need the ability to manage the roster more efficiently.

Currently the roster is limited to 999 characters, with notes that only the officers can read and/or change and no transparency is allowed to even the player whom the note is intended for,

Personally I am using a Spreadsheet to echo details that I feel are crucial to maintaining the roster. This should not be necessary if they could just make some changes.

1). Instead of individual characters, we need a player profile. While some have only one character in the guild, many of our members have many more than one. My server is connected so a player could potentially have up to 31 alts in our guild. Perhaps allow the player to select which character will be their main. Or give the guild master the option of locking it so they can’t change it without permission. Within the profile, give the officers the ability to promote/demote/kick all characters within the profile or to select specific characters within the profile to manage.

2). Bump up the character cap on guilds. Currently the restriction is 999. Either bump this up or perhaps change the limit to 999 player profiles, with no limit to alts, aside from the server limits.

3). Notes on characters / profiles should be bigger. Preferably long enough to include a log. (i.e. Joined 3/16/2011, promoted to officer 12/25/2012, retired 8/14/2014, returned 8/25/2018.) I would also like there to be an option so that notes may be transparent to the player and/or the guild while they are still restricted on modification to just officers.

4). How difficult would it really be to include a link in-game to the WoW armory profile of each character. This way notes are not needed for things like “ilvl 406 tank, max alch” a quick link to wow armory shows this info already.

I feel like this is going back to beating the dead horse, but Takoda’s post was so informational, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to append to it.

[Takoda-kul-tiras (Takoda)]

I knew I was forgetting some things! How could I not talk about roster management? Thank you. I agree with all of your suggestions here.

I really like the idea of a player profile and unlimited alts. Since we’re getting 50 toon per server limits, this is probably going to become more necessary over the next expansion or two. Might as well future proof it now!

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

Excellent ideas about the guild roster, Lucy.

I know Ion wants us to prioritize our needs, but it’s hard when so many of them are truly necessary. I guess I would prioritize the ideas as follows:

1. Guild permissions separated
2. Guild Roster restructured (including making the cap on membership be players, not characters)
3. Guild recruitment tools reworked
4. Guild perks added (including guild halls).

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

Since we’re throwing out a few ideas, I’ll toss out one or two things I posted here months ago for the sake of anyone from Blizzard (maybe) reading this who cares.

First of course I’d like to see the permissions restored as they were.

I explained why a few posts above.

To add some functionality to the guild ui, (for me anyway) it’d be helpful to be able to send someone who’s requested to join the guild via the much outdated in-game guild recruitment tool (please update the recruitment tool) an offline acceptance so they can choose to join the next time they log in. If they’ve applied to more then one guild, perhaps the ability for said recruits to see the multiple acceptances from various guilds upon login, so they can choose among them.

I for one need more room to make both officer and general notes. Meaning, for me at least, I would like far more space to be able to write much more detailed notes. Also, maybe a place for GM only notes. Sometimes, (again, for me at least), I need to make a private note, reminder, etc… to myself as the Guild leader that I don’t necessarily need or want all (or any) of my officers to see.

Sometimes leaders need their privacy.

As a side note. A poster above had some great ideas, and I agreed with many of them. However, a “stopgap” fix for guild permissions is one idea I am not so sure of.

For me at least, I want the permissions fixed correctly, and for good. I for one am willing to wait a little longer for the proper fix instead of trying to deal with some clunky temporary “duct taped” fix that isn’t really a fix at all.

And now back to our show.

Many months ago, I posted the idea of a Guild Hall for ALL guilds (even the tiny or one / two person guilds)

I was a little more then shocked when I saw how well received it was. Someone even “borrowed” the post I originally made, and used it on another thread to promote the idea of guild halls. Unfortunately I have not checked back on it. I do however hope they do well with that.

So. Guild Halls:

Here’s what I can remember from my original months old post (Yep, I am way to lazy to go looking for the original.

(Fumal I am not)

With scaling, I’d hope that most of the following would be possible.

Imagine your guild hall. It’s instanced of course. Only members of your guild, or those invited by your guild can enter. For me, I’d have the entrance for the Guild Hall in a major city like Stormwind, or perhaps even an entrance in multiple cities. Perhaps each new entrance could be earned over time by the guild. There would be guild banners hanging outside the entrance that you and all of your guild would see as their guild colors / crest.

Inside you may find things like a “guild library” In said Guild Library is a tome of history. If you “read” this tome, you’ll be able to view the history of your guild and it’s members both older and newer starting from it’s very day of creation to the present. Who’s come and gone over the months and years, your adventures together as a guild ie: Your Guild took down The Lich King back in 2009 when Player B was still the GM etc…

Inside your Guild Hall will perhaps hang more Guild Banners of your own creation. You of course made them using the new and improved tabard / guild banner creator / designer.

(Blizzard, please improve the old tabard designer and include banners for our new guild halls…)

The new and improved tabard / banner designer has many many more crest designs, borders, and colors to choose from. Perhaps even the option to include the guild’s name (or an abbreviation thereof) can one day be included.

There could be several quest givers inside as well. These would of course be guild only quests. Some would always be available and some could be unlocked by doing certain tasks, quest lines, or achievements only doable by certain professions or even classes.

Example: A Blacksmith only quest-line to get the guild a proper legendary or three. These would be more like the old days of Wow, not the newer Legion versions. (Not that I didn’t enjoy those. I did) For me though, the fun and excitement of the challenge was missing …

There could be guild only quests to unlock guild rewards of all sorts. pets, weapons, vanity / cosmetic / xmog items, glyphs (Blizz, we need glyphs back as well please) enchants both practical and cosmetic for weapons and even armor. (Why not have an enchant to make my helm, cloak, and or shoulders I never show anymore drip blood or brew, or glow brightly with hideously awesome skulls / ghouls, smoke, feathers, etc… so that I might be more likely to show them off?

(Feathers? Eh, ok)

These should be made to be doable with both large, medium, small or even one person guilds. Although in my opinion it should be a bit harder for the smaller guilds to accomplish these things, just not impossible.

The quest givers in the guild halls should be able to have many new quests for a great many variety of in-game interests, Proffs as mentioned, fishing, pets, guild perks, treasures, mounts, toys, titles, etc… (perhaps some quests thrown in to help speed up some of the harder reputations to gain, even from older content)

I’m pretty sure there was a lot more stuff mentioned in my original post, and a few of these things in this post (for better or worse) I came up as I was writing.

(Feathers? Eh, ok)

I know not all of these things are good (Feathers…?) or even practical ideas, and maybe most, or even all, are not ever going to happen. But since Blizzard asked, and we’re throwing out ideas…

At any rate, that’s what I could remember from my old post plus a few new ideas that popped into my head. I’m sure many of you reading this can come up with some great suggestions if you feel like adding anything to this.

Thanks for reading.

[Takoda-kul-tiras (Takoda)]

First, I like feathers. I’ve been complaining for years that I want feathers in my braids and mane. And also on my belt, and my boots, and my bracers and my TAIL… Why can’t I shake my tail feathers!!! …ahem… I like feathers.

For me at least, I want the permissions fixed correctly, and for good. I for one am willing to wait a little longer for the proper fix instead of trying to deal with some clunky temporary “duct taped” fix that isn’t really a fix at all.

In many ways, I do agree with you here. However, we don’t know the timeline to detangle permissions. If we’re talking about getting permissions fully detangled in 9.0, and they can do the “IsAdmin” thing in 8.2, then sign me up for “IsAdmin.” If we can get permissions fully detangled in 8.2, I’m happy to wait.

Basically, I don’t want to have to wait another 9 months to hear “It’s coming Soon™.” And then actually get fixed permissions 9 months after that. If it’s going to take that long, I’d rather have a small improvement to keep things going while we wait for a proper fix.

So. Guild Halls:

Ahhhhh, guild halls. I have really mixed feelings about this. The basic idea is a very attractive one, and would definitely go a long ways to restoring guilds to the central place they deserve in an MMO.

However…I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, EVER want a guild garrison. I do not want to spend two years building up a guild hall only to abandon it in the wilderness of another planet in an alternate timeline when the next expansion comes out.

And I’m really really sorry Blizzard, but I do not have confidence that you guys would deliver on a proper guild hall. (Please prove me wrong. I dare you!) A guild hall would need to last through expansions, carrying over from one to the next, for years. We would need to be able to get new improvements and upgrades and work on it more or less continuously for 10+ years.

I mentioned guild halls in discord last night to see what would happen, and there was an instant flurry of excitement. Suggestions of decor, guild vendors, and a portal room extension were thrown out. The interest is there, for sure. But then someone (I swear it wasn’t me) said, “No game has ever done a guild hall right.” There was a sad chorus of “Yeah…” and the conversation died.

So, if Blizzard does attempt guild halls, it will be an absolutely giant task.

…feathers are cheaper…

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

However…I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, EVER want a guild garrison. I do not want to spend two years building up a guild hall only to abandon it in the wilderness of another planet in an alternate timeline when the next expansion comes out.

Agreed 100%

Having alt issues, I have literally dozens of mostly useless garrisons already…

A guild hall would need to last through expansions, carrying over from one to the next, for years.

Also agreed 100%

In fact I meant to state that clearly in my other post, but I guess I got sidetracked by…feathers…

The guild halls should be continually upgradeable for many many xpacs to come. Attractive places to hold guild meetings, events, etc…away from the general population of Wow to avoid gawkers / looky loos, toxic trolls (not the good kind like Venjin) etc…

Yet not so attractive that people want to spend all their time in them or are in any way “forced” by the game to do so. (I’m looking at you WoD)

Blizz. How about throwing in a dance hall within the guild hall for some good time boogieing guild fun?

Yeah. Now I’ve really gone and asked for too much…

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

However…I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, EVER want a guild garrison. I do not want to spend two years building up a guild hall only to abandon it in the wilderness of another planet in an alternate timeline when the next expansion comes out.

And I’m really really sorry Blizzard, but I do not have confidence that you guys would deliver on a proper guild hall. (Please prove me wrong. I dare you!) A guild hall would need to last through expansions, carrying over from one to the next, for years. We would need to be able to get new improvements and upgrades and work on it more or less continuously for 10+ years.

^This, 1000%

If Blizzard could design and deliver real guild halls done right, it would be a major game changer. It would be a turnaround for WoW and signify that Blizzard is once again committed to its core philosophy of making great games for gamers (not investors).

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Still continuiing through the thread, picking out specific feedback to highlight.

Can we PLEASE get an update about what Blizzard thinks about the proposed changes in this thread?

The main ones being: Reverting and expansion of guild rank customization instead of the consolidation of “is Officer.”

And my own suggestions of having multiple Chat channels with customizable permissions and optional persistant chat.

Those changes would make things so much better IMO. I want the guild and community features to be as amazing as possible. But right now they are bare-bones and we are much better off using Discord.

As you can see, Nysalla’s priorities are:

1. Guild rank customization (reverting to the original permissions and expanding on it)
2. Chat channel improvements (multiple channels with customizable permissions and optional persistent chat)

Seems like pretty straightforward requests. I think someone with a law degree ought to be able to understand the post with little trouble. (Honestly, it shouldn’t take any degree to understand it.)

[Mceuan-dawnbringer (Mceuan)]

They want details? As if this thread hasn’t been concrete and detailed and respectful for how many months?

Okay.

1. Revert the guild permissions, and have it fully restored by 9.0. If a stopgap is necessary to improve by 8.2, I’m okay with that, but I want permissions back to where they were prior to 8.0.

2. Roster Management. In addition to the fantastic suggestions above, I want a search bar and iLevel as a sort function instead of Achieve points. Also, I’d like to be able to ban accounts when I have to remove someone. I don’t want them sneaking an alt back in.

3. Chat channel improvements would be fantastic. With multiple layers of leadership, having multiple ‘officer’ chats would be handy.

4. Recruiting. The in game tool is outdated. Let us have a ‘token’ to mail to an interested party, and if they want to join the guild, they click the token. GMs can set permissions on who can send tokens, and the receiving player has the choice on destroying it or clicking it.

5. Guild perks. Please make guilds relevant again. Master Looter needs to be an option for guilds only. Please review the perks (they are currently rather underwhelming), and guild halls. All I need is a feasting hall, banners from every faction we’re exalted with, and trophies of legendaries and raid bosses. Bonus for having it something that can be upgraded and tweaked over multiple expacs.

6. Feathers. Takoda needs them.

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

I’d like to be able to ban accounts when I have to remove someone. I don’t want them sneaking an alt back in.

This.

This idea has been mentioned a few times over the course of this thread, and it is still one of my all time favorite ideas regarding the improvement of guild functions when I see it brought up.

Over our guild’s many years, players attempting to return especially on alts unknown to us has been a serious issue.

More times than I’d like to remember, we’ve had disgruntled former guild mates rejoin us under an alt and attempt to cause drama within the guild.

I also love the idea of “Guild Tokens” to invite offline applicants.

I often send an in-game mail to offline applicants anyway. This would certainly compliment that.

Feathers. Takoda needs them.

And of course,
Feathers for Takoda.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

So, continuing my read-through. I’m quoting my self this time because I gave some very specific feed-back about how to improve guild recruitment:

I would definitely like a better recruitment function. GM’s (or whoever they’ve appointed as their recruitment officer) should be able to extend invitations to interested players even if the players are offline. Then the player can accept the invitation when they log in.

Of course, the guild recruitment tab ought to allow for at least a brief questionnaire so guilds and those searching for a guild home can have some idea if they’d be a match. Not every guild is a raiding guild with a website and their own testing process. Casual social/leveling guilds have their place, and there are plenty of players who would like to join such guilds. Anything that can help players find the right guild for them (and vice versa) would be much appreciated.

Now, the permissions are still the #1 priority. I would put recruitment at #3, after improvements to the roster (#2). This is because GM’s need the management tools before they recruit more members. And then, of course, guild perks (#4).

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

Blizzard.

Jusuf Nurkic just broke his leg.

There’s your timetable.

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

toxic trolls (not the good kind like Venjin)

Fumel can attest:

I am drunk.

Not Toxic.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Here’s some more specific feedback from September about ways to improve recruitment:

Revamp the guild recruitment/finder browser. The new browser will have detailed information on guild such as inception date, a brief, personalized summary from the GM (limited in characters of course), number of accounts enlisted, last active date of the top two ranks, achievement score, and an actual listing of any online members with their guild-specific ranks.

Players could register themselves as looking for a guild with checkboxes for specific desires/needs and a short bio in the browser. Guilds could browse the pool of players actively seeking a guild. Invites could be sent by GM’s and empowered guild members via mail if necessary.

Also implement an avatar for this function at each faction hub near the guild vendors next to a post-board for flavor.

I thought it would take me longer each night to find a post with specific suggestions on improvements. It’s true that the majority of posts are simply deploring the permissions change and the lack of response from anyone at Blizzard. However, it turns out that detailed posts aren’t really that hard to find.

Now, people haven’t really been prioritizing–probably because we pretty much all agree that fixing the permissions is the number one priority. Honestly, I think Ion’s comment about prioritizing is more smoke and mirrors pretending to say something when he’s really not.

But anyway, as I said before, recruitment is important, but not as important as managing the guilds in the first place. My priorities:

1. Fix permissions
2. Improve the roster functions
3. Improve recruitment
4. Add guild perks