So, I've been building on this idea for awhile now, and enjoyed the thread about guild banks awhile back, as its one of the primary parts to my idea. Here's the deal: Guilds in WoW right now are nothing more than a glorified chat channel. They were the same in Everquest (I quit at GoD, may have changed by now), same in Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and Final Fantasy XI (Those are the MMO's that I've played that I can think of off the top of my head). I unfortunately havent played Eve Online, as I'd liked to have experienced that guild system first-hand, but alas.

Guilds have the potential to be so much more than a chat channel. Here are some of my ideas, feel free to build on them and suggest more! Weeee~

1) Guild Bank. I won't flesh this out too much as it has already been discussed quite a bit in another thread, but the obvious points are a an actual guild bank with a graphical interface, with permissions set by the guild leader, allowing donations, transfers, purchases, so on and so forth. Lots of potential.

2) Raid Keying/Flagging. This idea deals primarily with backflagging woes, but could be altered/improved to be useful for other reasons. But basically, once a guild (I'll use my own as an example), Crunch, defeats a zone boss, they are then "flagged" for that zone. So once my guild conquers Karazhan, defeating Prince Melchezaar, my guild is then flagged for Karazhan. What this means is anyone wearing a Crunch tag can now zone into the Karazhan zone as if they had The Master's Key. They can still complete the quest to obtain the real Master's Key. If they drop the Crunch tag, they lose the ability to zone into Karazhan unless they have the physical key (resulting in a 1 minute deportation if currently zoned in).

This would alleviate *some* of the backflagging woes associated with a very linear system like TBC is set up to be. If your guild is currently trekking through SSC, but has not downed Vashj, then at least you don't have to worry about a new person not having a Karazhan key before they can jump in for a Nightbane kill for their SSC attunement. Although I'm not really sure how to handle that from a balance standpoint, perhaps they would be required to get the physical key before they were allowed to obtain a keypiece from that dungeon (Master's Key required before you can pick up Blazing Signet from Nightbane). At least it would also be nice from a friends/family standpoint, where people just want to play with their friends. Farm content is usually a good place to do that.

Another option is to flag the guild upon some completion of some criteria earlier on, before a zone-boss kill. But then limit the "officially unkeyed" people in some way, like inability to pick up loot until physically keyed. Anyway, potential here.

3) Raid ID's and Loot. This one jumped into my head after reading the recent PVP/PVE loot thread, knowing how frustrating it is/was to raid a zone week after week and see the same old crap over and over again. Each guild could have the option of running a "guild" raid. A guild raid would have saved data associated with it, and would only allow guild-tagged people into the raid. Once a "guild raid" is running, it would persist until replaced; it would not reset weekly (There could be a limit of 1, or even multiples of any given zone allowed). This would allow data to be collected, for loot purposes. Each subsequent week of a zone would change loot drop rates based on what dropped last week. I'm just throwing numbers out here, but everything that dropped in the previous week would have its drop rate reduced by 50%, and that lost rate would then be spread across the remaining items in the table evenly. If the same item dropped again that second week, then on the third week that particular item would have a 25% (or smaller) chance of dropping, and so on. This would do much to alleviate the problem of having those mail gloves drop week after week and get sharded every time. I might end up finally seeing my chess event healing leggings, and we might not have to shard that 7th King's Defender (yeah, I know, sorry warriors). Seriously, every keyed warrior in our guild has one. Given that I'm pretty sure that particular drop is meant to be somewhat rare, its pretty stupid that we've had 6 in uh, probably 10 chess clears?

Anyway, I had a couple of other minor ideas but this post is already too long. Bottom line is, the guild system could be fleshed out in SO MANY WAYS its mind boggling. I'd love for WoW to be the first game to actually do it (that I'm aware of).

I agree with your ideas for a guild bank, so much could be done there.
Flesh out the guild interface, more information provided in the guild interface.
Incorporate DKP systems into the guild interface.
Raid/event calander/signup system in guild interface.
Guild forums ingame.


Basically take (almost) everything people do standard for guild websites, and put that right in the game.

Also,

Guild housing, with trophies for each boss and possible for server 1st kill etc.
Allow hearthing to guild house.
In house vendors.
In guild VOIP.
In game talents spec viewable.

Tons more, too tired right to list them all.

Aslong as they dont let the players anywhere near the custimisation of guild housing then im okay with it. From experience it left UO a really ugly place, a real eye sore.

The idea of a guild bank has been around longer than I can remember, might it be that the (maybe majority?) of the players who just pvp would see no benefit? Thus putting it quite down on the developers list of things people would like to see.

So maybe we could broaden on these ideas to account for all guilds, just a thought.

I agree with everything said above.

Guild housing is a concept that could be developted in so many ways.
If you would implement some form of currency earned by bosskills, or pvp progress of some sort.
You could make it possible for guilds to buy their own alchemy labs, special anvils, a guildbanker etc.
Basicly anything that makes it the "hang-out" spot for you guild.

There could even be a pvp aspect of it all, where a guild could raid another guilds house,
that would earn the attacking guild some kind of reward upon sucess.
Hiring guards for your guildhouse would also be possible with this currency.
(this could ofcourse be abused, so something to prevent that would need to be implemented)


Should also be possible to see what instances members are attuned to in the guildtab.

As Jeffonious said above, everything guilds use their website for should be implemented in
the guildinterface.

Anything to assist guilds with creating a more unified or group feeling would be a good thing. Symbols and icons have always been an important link in the chain of guild identity, but in my experience it's not always easy to pump out some quality designwork as a guild unless you're lucky and have some designers/really creative people walking around. If part of the role that websites, logos, avatars, signatures, guild movies, funny/cool news and other creative expression now plays could be taken up by things the game supports natively, that would be very welcome.

You could also have guild oriented quests, like mini versions of the one to open AQ40. It could include collection of materials, killing specially summoned bosses, etc. And you could get rewards like a guild mount (mount then becomes available to any guild member), etc.

And any guild rewards that a member has vanish when they leave the guild.

Looks like it:

Anyone that's played GuildWars for any serious amount of time will know that guild housing can be a source of pride and enjoyment.

We had so much fun cobbling together all the vendors you could have living in there, and there were multiple "looks" you could opt for and everything.

I really loved out guild hall

One big design hurdle that I could see when it comes to guild perks is the question of what to do when things turn sour in a guild. What happens to a guild bank when it disbands? Does everybody get a cut of any cash or items? If I have eight alts in the guild, do they all get their fair share? How do you decide to split the items up? You could alleviate the distribution concerns by just destroying everything in the guild bank, but then that's months of work lost in an instant. I could see leadership struggles become more intense as well if the top position entailed control over shared resources.

If they add new guild features into the game, maybe they should hire a divorce attorney to settle these contentious issues.

Blizzard has set many times over the years they want to implement more guild functions, who knows when they will actually get around to it (maybe its the project the newbie intern gets, and never quite gets to deploy stage...)

I've never played it but I'm told the guild functions in EQ2 are phenomenal. One nice thing about TBC is the lessening of the guild bank except for consumables, which should be driven down even further in 2.1.

I think what it comes down to is that a guild is what you make of it. The primary function of guilds in wow is to associate players together who enjoy playing together.

While I personally would love to see your backflagging and guild bank ideas, it doesn't change the fact that guilds are essential cornerstones of every server and are absolutely necessary to do almost anything in a coherent fashion. I know many people who play because of the people in their guild just as much as their enjoyment of raiding. Its important to recognize this before saying that it is just a chat channel.

I would agree, except that our group has always been a conglomeration of people from different guilds, and as such it *is* just a chat channel. The fallacy rather lies in how much is contained in that "just".

For many people, myself included, "just a chat channel" is the only reason we're still playing the game.

Uh, we're not talkin philosophy or anything here guys, just in-game functionality. Everyone knows that a lot of people play this game for the groups of people they play with. Pretty sure they'd still do that even if "guilds" didnt exist at all.

I would absolutely kill for a Guild House with trophies for each boss in a raid zone. Add a drop to each boss that starts a quest, which you then turn in to your butler, and that puts the appropriate trophy in your trophy wing or whatever.

Hearthing to guild houses would be nice, but it would pretty much be the same as a hearth to a major city, no? Since I'd assume the entrance to the housing would be in a major city.

In house vendors for what? Just blacksmiths? Perhaps if they REALLY want to go all out, allow turn-ins of future 'Wartorn Cloth Scrap'-esque items to make resist gear or whatever they want availible.

In-game VOIP: Don't really see a need for this. Too much overhead for minimal gain, I'd think.

In-game Armory would be pretty nice.

As potentially sad as it is, I think that I would buy a small expansion that just added guild and maybe personal housing to the game. Hell, make it another gold sink and have you pay to make the house larger.

And I just saw that post from Tseric about in-game VOIP, so I guess they're working on it, but I don't really see a huge point. Sure it would save some money for the guy in the guild who pays for the Vent/TS server, but they'd have to use a universal codec for macs, and isn't Speex problematic?

In terms of guild housing I'd like to see accomplishment-oriented options. I.E. there'd be plenty of basic options in terms of wallpaper/siding/roof tile etc, but certain options would become available for example if you had 10 or more PvPers exalted with all BG factions, or if you'd killed a given boss.

Go ahead and make 'em flavorful too... Kill Ragnaros to get tiki-torch-esque sconces to guard the doors to your house, Nef & Ony for a Black Dragonscale Roof. Sapphiron for an Ice Spike Moat.

Or, here's an idea:

Set a certain number of guild houses out in the world, in addition to the regular instanced guild houses. These houses would become "contested" for a set period once a week, not to exceed 4 hours in length, or 2 set periods of 2 hours. During these hours the houses become difficult PvP objectives.

However, they wouldn't be solely PvP objectives--your PvE progress would help you defend them as well. For example killing Ragnaros would give you a few L60 nonelite fire elementals to guard your doorstep, A few L70 nonelite Infernals for killing Malchezaar, maybe a moat with evil SSC fish in it for killing Vashj, up to the point where you have cleared Black Temple, where you get a mini-raidboss-esque guard.

You could hold them with just PvP hax, but your PvE hax make them easier to hold. With only a few per server, having one would be real status symbol, while limited "attackability" times make capturing one an accomplishment you could crow over for a while and defending one a non-IRL-crushing proposition.


(You could even expand this to say that your PvE "guards" could be brought to attack an enemy guild house, if you didn't currently possess one).

This is something I've mulled over for a while, if you couldn't tell. ^_^

If there's too much handy functionality in housing, like portals, vendors, forge/anvil, hell, maybe even battlemasters or an auctioneer.. Cities become ghost towns.

Which is probably why there's no AH in Shattrah by the way.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to the idea of guild houses, just that exactly what you could do with them would have to be considered very carefully.

Thinking further, the idea's extensible - redecorate the blacksmithing areas of the major cities according to which guild has the highest average crafting skill (or highest individual skill, largest aggregare ilvl of items made, etc). Halls of fame on the walls to maintain a tally of excellence across the server.

Only danger of extending it to crafting is that it would be free advertising for the best crafters, and may lock newcomers out of the market for bespoke goods. Given that most craft goods go viah the AH anyway, I don't see why that need be a problem though.

Is the guild bank really relevant now?
Back when things like mc trash drops, elementium, aq40 tokens, possibly zg stuff and frozen runes were stored, with the addition to pots for things like loatheb. Nexus shards etc. BoEs were also sometimes stored.

Now, the first/last categories are non existant. Resist craftables are simply stored with the person that can craft them -- ie a tailor might have lolarcane resist materials, fr materials, etc. The gear is given out as soon as it can possibly be made.

Pots and flasks are something members provide for themselves (because if it is a bank that provides it it ends up being some odd 3-5 people farming for the whole guild). Titans/fortification can also be carried by the tanks with the exception of someone else paying for them in case.
Void crystals are stored with the guild enchanter who either does the enchant or just gives them away when needed. Personally, I think it's instant to get anything from anyone at times other then 5am, either the person who has the stuff is on, or someone that knows their account info.

Actually there is probably no AH in Shattrath, because everyone would just be there. Its far more convenient of a location than pretty much anywhere else, and on even low population servers, it would be so laggy with both alliance and horde players there it would be near unbearable (see Ironforge on many servers before shared auction houses in major cities went live).

Also in EQ2, despite the fact you could sell items from your house, the cities were typically far from empty, and even if they were better functionality for sales, travel etc, results in an all around more convenient play experience which is never a bad thing.

Housing and all these other things is probably on the back burner as Blizzard is playing a perpetual game of catch up with content. Either people blow through it too fast and have nothing to do, or its overly difficult for the bulk of players which results in inevitable retunings. Then there is the addition of things like Skettis content and Ogri'la faction - why? So non raiders have something else to do, as they've done most things worth doing to them already and are just twiddling their thumbs (and no raider is gonna turn down free money from quests).

Going back to the tracking idea for loot, they could implement an in-game tacking system for boss kills as well. This could lead to an in-game ranking system that was viewable in a common public area. Also, with this type of tacking system the guild houses could be linked to first kills, number of kills, etc. More kills = bigger house, etc. Certain boss kills give heads like Nef and Ony, turn in those heads to receive different functions for your house.

Also, the idea of having an AQ40-style turn in system to receive a "building permit" would be cool, and it would limit the number of guild houses so that every single guild wasn't able to have them, only dedicated guilds. The other option would be to have a raid quest in order to get a "building permit". Something fairly long but not impossible.

Also, like someone said before, I don't think I'd allow users to customize their houses too much. It could lead to some very poor designs, I mean, look at some of the guild tabbards out there.

Still, having a guild bank in the house would probably be the best part of the whole idea. I think making it work like a half AH / half bank would be good. Players can put things in the bank and charge "points" for them. Items have a point value and when another guildie buys them you receive points for the purchase of another banked item that you might like. Also, again back to the boss kill tracking, you can receive bank points for raids that you attend so that you could use those point for enchant mats, etc. Sort of like a DKP system but completely customizable by the GM, who sets parameters for how the bank and point system works.

A lot of the ideas being presented here are going a little too far, in my opinion.

If guild housing was implimented I'd expect nothing further than a guild bank and a repair vendor. Further features would just obliterate cities, as if the majority of them aren't empty as it is. Going as far as raiding another guild's house - I just don't see any sort of practicality in that. Wouldn't the guild house be one building in a city, anyway? Where it zones you into an instanced house? How exactly would you raid somebody else's guild house?

Guilds are nasty, difficult creatures to control. It takes an absurd amount of effort to keep a guild organized and running smoothly. You have to deal with recruitment, guild drama, planning and organizing raids, preparing for those raids (pots and whatnot), dealing with raid points, building and maintaining a website (with forums, RP tracker, etc).

Guilds are the primary social construct in WoW. They keep many people playing the game. I would be very surprised if failing guilds wasn't one of the primary reason people quit playing. That's why I'm so confused why they haven't made in-game guild support tools a much higher priority. Anything they can do to make leading and running a guild easier seems like a fantastic investment of resources. Some examples:

• In-game DKP tracker. The guild leader could set-up DKP trackers with a multitude of options. People could open up the guild tab and check DKP, item drops, and boss kills. The leader could then set the loot options in a raid to "DKP" and the game would handle everything for them. I imagine the leader would need an "override" button to make a given item FFA if it needed to be decided via a different set of rules.
• Guild bank. As discussed a number of times so far in this thread - this would be a huge boon to guilds. It would help raid preparation by providing a ccentral storage for pots, and prevent the plethora of bank alts that must violate Blizzard's "don't share accounts" policy by necessity.
• Raid scheduling interface. Give guild's in-game calendars, and allow members to schedule events on it. Anything from "5 man heroic Arcatraz, Wed 6pm" created by a member to "TK A'lar attempts, Sunday 6pm" created by the raid officer. Allow the creator to set-up rules for confirming people for these raids, or just let them handle it on their own. An important part of this would be a reminder option so people could have pop-ups to remind them about the raid they're confirmed for a day, or an hour in advance. This could even come with a "form raid" button that automatically invites everyone online that's confirmed into a raid.