Talking to Bornakk about Raid Rewards in Cata

[Dooz]

I do appreciate the calm discussion in this thread

I'm not sure it matters if Blizzard is discriminating against small guilds. Blizzard always favors size. 25-man raids get better (or more in Cata) loot. 5 man arena teams get more points than 3 man.

Blizzard has done a great job of making a ton of solo content. You could roll new toons and quest for a looong time if someone didn't want to deal with anyone else. They have also made a huge multiplayer aspect to the game, and I don't have a problem with them rewarding more people working together. In this case, since the rewards are eventually available to all guilds, they're not putting that big of an advantage on big guilds.

QFT .... all of it.

[OzPhoenix]

First, I said people, not YOU. Second, I never said that ANYONE said that this is the only way to level, I said that people are acting like the only way to level with significant progress is through a big guild. Nowhere in that sentence did I say anything about raiding. What I inferred, however, is that it's all just more whiny Chicken Little BS.

Well, there's plenty of people on both sides of this argument in the WoW forums who do nothing but embarass their side of the debate. So, let's ignore those people, and concentrate on the points we specifically are raising.

Um, yeah, that's why anyone who has a guild in WoW will be able to participate in the Guild Perks system, no matter the size of the guild. Because you gain experience in many different ways, including small group and solo play.

They'll be able to participate in most aspects of this new system. Most, not all.

The system IS open to all playstyles.

No, it's not. An aside from whether it should or shouldn't be, let's at least agree that it's not. A single member, single character guild run by a player who never entered an instance would get next to nothing from this system.

You want a reason? Because come raid night, when you're up against non-trivial content in appropriate gear, if 3 people don't show up, a real guild, who actually raids together still has a chance of being able to make some progress in that raid. Likewise, 20 people could probably work through a 25 man, 12 certainly aren't. Anyone else they pug would just be a bonus to make things easier.

Some ICC10 bosses have now been 5-boxed if I'm reading correctly some of the threads. Certainly Naxx bosses have. There's a raid making progress with 5/10.

And I think it's far more appropriate to say it's the price you pay for not wanting to participate in a certain aspect of the game. When someone whispers you saying "What kind of guild are you in?" you don't say you're a raiding guild. You don't even say you're a social guild, or a leveling guild. You're 1 guy chillin by himself. You're a vanity guild. You're not excluded from raiding, you can raid all you want, you're just not going to get a bonus for it just because you fill half the slots while being as anti-social as possible. And honestly, 5 or 7, vanity and private guilds are still unlikely to get the raid-lead bonus because most of them aren't raiding together. Most of the ones I've seen through the years still have to PuG 5-mans.

Here at least we agree, it's definitely the price I have to pay for remaining in my own guild. I just don't think the price is fair. Fortunately however, it is small.

I could turn around and say :

it's anti massive guild - because only the top 20 contributors per day advance the guild,
anti RP guild - because there is no RP bonuses and you have to participate in normal content {quests, kills, instances} to get guild XP
anti PVE guild and/or anti PvP guild - because people who don't do PvE/P aren't getting the same bonuses as people who do

Yes, it is slightly anti-super-sized guild. But then, Blizzard probably did that to prevent those guilds from running too far ahead on the guild advancement ladder.

Yes, it is anti-RP guild, given no RP achievements, but then I think Blizzard would find it difficult to design achievements accessable to RP and RP alone. Still not being an RP'er myself, I'm not advocating their interests in this thread.

As to whether it's biased for or against PvE or PvP, I don't know. I haven't looked into the deep mechanics of the system to see what's what. But, and here's an important point, I don't PvP and I accept - fully - that it means I'll advance my guild slower. But I do raid and I feel completely entitled to ask for the same recognition of that with 5/10 as a guild with 7/10.

Blizzard should just scrap the whole thing because it's all unfair and too many playstyles are excluded, amirite?

Well, I'm glad the smilie was there, the sarcasm alert... hehe. Personally, I think the system will, on the whole, be beneficial to my own playstyle - just not as beneficial as it could have (should have) been is all.

[OzPhoenix]

I wasn't comparing guilds to raids, I was comparing guilds to guilds. Your 5 characters technically aren't a guild, they're half of a guild; but Blizzard is giving us a little leeway by saying 7/10 and 20/25 is acceptable. Those 3 sentences I wrote were their own separate ideas.

If my guild fails to meet the qualification for a guild by some technical standard, then why is Blizzard making this concession of reducing it to 7/10? Why give any leeway at all?

Because Blizzard said so. They obviously want > 50% of the raid make up to be from the same guild.

If we all agreed and mindlessly followed everything Blizzard said, simply because Blizzard said it, we'd all be posting on the WoW Forums with our real names. Blizzard isn't always right - recent events have quite adequately (re)proven that.

As Khatovar said, how difficult is it to leave an alt in your guild to hold the bank? I have my main in a raiding guild, where we all share the guild bank. I have 4 alts with 4 different guild banks holding all kinds of illegal goods from south of the border. My main will continue to get achievements and guild perks, while the alts, that I could care less about, don't get squat.

It is a possible solution and one we've already discussed on my server. This however doesn't address whether the requirement forcing this was fair or not.

TIME TO START 10 BOXING!

I just couldn't level multiple teams. It'd kill me... hehe.

[OzPhoenix]

the idea behind guild vaults is not to give single players more storage space... moreover a single player (regardless of the number of characters) does not comprise a guild. you may be able to have a guild with only a single character in it but that is surely not the intention of the mechanic. it is merely a fail safe to save a poor guild master from not loosing everything if there's a mass exodus or some such thing. I think your assumptions that blizzard doesn't like small guilds are kind of based around some misguided assumptions.

My assumptions about Blizzards attitudes to small guilds are based on the mechanics of some elements of this system and indeed Bornakss own statements in the thread stating Blizzards lack of concern about the effects this may have on small guilds (effects which, of course, were then blown out of all proportion in the WoW Forums).

it should be noted that a guild is traditionally a group of people who work together for a common goal.

Yes, but those groups can be large, small, massive or tiny.

that said it is sad to see that guild alliances will be at a slight disadvantage when it comes to raiding but that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Yes, it is the way the cookie is currently crumbling, but needlessly so.

[OzPhoenix]

I do appreciate the calm discussion in this thread

Yes, it's nice to have somewhere to talk about WoW and have reasonable expectations of intelligent replies.

I've got no problem with anyone disagreeing with me here - in fact, I like a good debate - it's something that's sadly lacking from the WoW forums.

[MiRai]

Just add "Cataclysm's requirement of 7/10 or 20/25 for certain Guild Perks" to this list:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1&pageNo=2#39

/thread

[Tonuss]

I don't think that Blizzard is discriminating against small guilds. They've been moving away from the large guild mentality for some time now, shrinking raid sizes and making content more accessible. I'm not sure what they are seeking to prevent with the 7/10 and 20/25 setting, and I don't think that they see it as set in stone or anything. With time they might relax it, they've shown a tendency to favor solutions that include more people.

They do seem to be moving away from the concept of small vanity guilds or fly-by-night guilds (the ones that invite anyone who is on and make all kinds of plans and then fall apart after two weeks) and trying to encourage people towards larger and more stable guilds. Why? No idea, and I doubt that they'll discuss it. If it's just some kind of experiment, then there's a good chance that they'll relax the rules a bit as time goes on. Blizzard seems to change its mind a whole lot when it comes to WOW.

[OzPhoenix]

Just add "Cataclysm's requirement of 7/10 or 20/25 for certain Guild Perks" to this list:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1&pageNo=2#39

/thread

Yes, a good post of Palehoofs - seen it before, and a funny read.

[outdrsyguy1]

Here's my take, they have to pick a point where most of the group is guild, otherwise, why not just 3 people, why not 2, hell why not 1 person and just split the credit 1/10 or 1/25... you get the point, they are trying to get kind of a minimum guild size so that it's not easier just to pug and get your slice of credit. I think it should be 2/3 your guild personally if you want guild credit.

[OzPhoenix]

Here's my take, they have to pick a point where most of the group is guild, otherwise, why not just 3 people, why not 2, hell why not 1 person and just split the credit 1/10 or 1/25... you get the point, they are trying to get kind of a minimum guild size so that it's not easier just to pug and get your slice of credit. I think it should be 2/3 your guild personally if you want guild credit.

I just don't see why Blizzard simply didn't do that.

You bring 5 people to a 25 player raid or 2 people to a 10 player raid your guild gets 20% of the advancement points. You bring 3/10 you get 30% and so on.

This cut-off makes no sense, is arbitrary, more complicated than it needed to be, and anti-small guild.