Well, there's really not much to talk about, to be perfectly honest. Path of Titans idea is scrapped, Guild Talents are gone. There's going to be even more competition and name calling among guilds now, especially with Guild RSS feed, Guild Achievements, etc. This, I really don't like. I enjoyed "We did X!" over the recent "You noobs haven't done X!" elitism of WotLK. An ex-member of our guild didn't stop bitching about to a rival guild after we killed Freya Knock x3, rubbed it all over their faces.
Accomplishments in WoW is for personal satisfaction, and while it's fun to race server firsts and have some friendly rivalry, to the point of progress is the norm and thus lack of it is a cause of booing -that doesn't really suit me.
I'm going to high-light some changes that are relevant for high-end guilds:
Guilds: A lot of crappy fluff, which, if I don't have to exactly go out and grind ZG outside of my guild's weekly content farm for, I won't mind cool rewards like mounts with guild tabard and such. But most important point is Guild Reputation, you're going to need these to buy the rewards that your guild has unlocked.
Now again, from what I've understood, rewards are fluff only. If you can earn Guild Rep in only raids or trading with guildies or such, then I'm a happy fella that now has a metric source to measure my members' contributions.
Raids: There's a few changes, most of them I support. A quick glance over them:
Different raids, same bosses: Say, you went to Naxx this week and killed up to Patchwerk. Now, once your guild's raid catches up to Patchwerk, you both can join the same instance now. Sounds fun.
More Algalon: Heroic raids will have exclusive Algalon raids with half a tier above loot. More bosses = Fun! But, even now the casual crowd (Who has been given access to all the raids without even attunements just so they can see the content they complained that they were unable to see) complain how Algalon was for hardmode raiders only. I hope Blizzard won't listen to them for this one instance now.
Splitting it up: You can 'downrank' a 25-Men raid lockout to 10 men, for cases like it's Tuesday night, some assholes blew you up and you've got only 20 people, so you downrank your ID, and go with 2 x 10 groups. It only can do good.
Path of the Titans scrapped over: Personally, I've got mixed feelings. It was going to be another gold sinker that forced the raiders to put more effort into (Which already is a lot in the beginning, with insanely high prices for flasks, foods, enchantments and crafted epics). Also given the slow nature of its explained progression, either the raids would be balanced around the premise that guilds had max Acheology already, or not at all. In first case, it would take a fresh recruit months to get him in proper position to raid among the others, in the second case, the profession would make any half-decent raider just way over the top (even if it was just a simple %5 damage/health/healing increase).
Matt at World of Matticus said Cataclysm lost one of its selling point probably because of release rush, but I disagree. Path would make either characters overpowered, or the ones without it miserable. Neither are profitable for a raider guild, who's always looking out for bright talents on their side even if it's a fresh re-roll. I think it's nice that it's gone.
Hmm.. I just wrote a really long comment, but my internet messed up and I think it got lost *sigh*
ReplyDeleteWhat I was saying is that I have mixed feelings about the changes, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and see how things work out.
I hope that the new guild things - while mainly fluff - is still something that makes people more insterested in being in a guild.
At the same time though, it doesn't necessarily help us find more people willing to raid. Maybe I've just had bad luck, but in WotLK my general impression has been that most people prefer PUGs to being in a raiding guild where they are expected to show up X nights a week.
While the "more flexible" raid IDs might help you join your guild's raid when they catch up to you or the other way around - I feel that it is also another reason for casuals to stay casuals. They won't be locked to the group that only managed 4 bosses - but can join another group that can continue after that.
I guess I'm looking for like-minded people that want to actually raid seriously. I'm sure they're out there - I've just had some bad luck this expansion in finding them. Sure, I could have abandoned my guild and joined a hardcore one - but I can't abandon my friends. While I do want to raid seriously I also find WoW a social game and I want to play with my friends.
(As a sidenote we do raid, but not as much or as well as I'd like to since we can't fill the raids but have to reply on other people - and without being mean they're just not always that good.)
I really hope that the importance of finding a good guild will be re-introduced. Vanilla and TBC (Until 2.4) were about having a good guild and being a responsible player. That's changed a lot as you've said.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping to launch a guild ready for Cataclysm, that's serious about raiding and has aims to clear hardmode content. Currently I'm contemplating between whether going with a 10m guild or a 25m guild. Choices...
I have to admit that with the current changes to raiding I would prefer a 10 man guild. Sure, 25 man might feel more epic and big or something.. but I like the close-knit feeling that you can get with 10 people that work closely together.
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong, or living in a dream world, but I like to think that with 10 people you can find enough that you trust to be there. Finding 25 like minded people aren't as easy.
And with the gear being the same, the 25 man raiding doesn't seem to have much of an allure anymore. Sure, some more emblems.. But I think I'd rather take my close-knit 10 people over a bunch of 25 people whom I don't all know and trust.
But that's me and I'm a cynic ;)
The best part about these changes is the fact that they are now planning on making 2 instances with 6 bosses in them.
ReplyDeleteMeaning there is actually more content to raid tbh (unless ofc the instances aren't ridiculously easy like Naxx/ToC - fingers crossed there).
This also means that people can spread their guild raid nights and lockouts on different raids. Let's say 25 man will concentrate on Raid x for this week and 10 mans go for raid y and complete that.
The next week it will be the other way around.
Although in all honesty i dread the day 10 mans will get same loot as 25 mans. As it will again be a lot harder to find an actual decent 25 man guild. As even now in WoTLK it is just really hard to even get 25 people together into a raid (unless ofc it's a farm run).
Another great thing with 2x6 setups that I've overlooked is, the sit-outs during raids.
ReplyDeleteNow, most guilds usually take two days to farm a big raid content. This means first night is the night where easy first bosses are downed, and the crappy loot that's been around ages is distributed. Second nights are the real deal, getting up to the last boss himself, where you get the best experience and rewards.
This used to cause dramas in guilds when people were picked for the first night and not for the second.
Now, you can make it so the guild clears Raid 1 on Wednesday and Raid 2 on Thursday, and you can alternate the players that you swap, so those who see R1 will see R2 the next week and so forth.
As for 10/25 problem, I'll be adressing those in next few days. Currently standing, I'm leaning on having a reliable 10M HM raid guild over a 25M, and I wouldn't set my goal to be a 25M unless I had an abundance of players who wanted to join my banner, as opposed to training cats and dogs to learn how to hardmode. I know it sounds the easy way, but I'm kind of tired after 5 years of herding, as fun as it may be at times.