In Development - Guild Banks and Voice Chat - Page 7

Dwargue · 05/17/07, 10:59 AM

Another aspect of VoIP is the resource requirements.

I'm not talking about Blizzard servers' capacity to handle it, but rather, players' systems. As far as current games go, WoW has pretty low hardware requirements.

Having recently *finally* upgrading my system, i can say that running WoW on the old 1900 XP with a crappy nvidia 256mb card, even with 2 gigs of ram, left little room to run Vent on the same computer. I got around this by running vent on my laptop (incidentally, never had to deal with trying to get an overlay program to work).

I just think adding a feature which would require additional system resources will prompt as much whining as it will glee.

Dakous · 05/17/07, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by vicious

If they have seperate options for the guild bank, i think it will be extremely powerful... ie guildmaster control checkboxes ala the current interface for:

- add items to Guild Bank
- remove items from Guild Bank
- use Guild Bank funds to repair

At the risk of wondering if you read the very first post, from the screenshot:

"The potential for abuse is obvious, but Blizzard seems to have it covered. Guild leaders will be able to set permission levels - so, for example, guildies of certain ranks can deposit but not withdraw, or only withdraw certain types of items, or only withdraw so many items per day. [...Guilds can use "tabs", which can have similar permission settings on a per-tab basis.]"

Kazanir · 05/17/07, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by Dakous

At the risk of wondering if you read the very first post, from the screenshot:

"The potential for abuse is obvious, but Blizzard seems to have it covered. Guild leaders will be able to set permission levels - so, for example, guildies of certain ranks can deposit but not withdraw, or only withdraw certain types of items, or only withdraw so many items per day. [...Guilds can use "tabs", which can have similar permission settings on a per-tab basis.]"

This thread is full of people saying, "OMG there needs to be separate permissions and controls and logs," and proving that they didn't read the original post and article.

Lujaar · 05/17/07, 1:17 PM

I'm curious about the last line in the guild bank article. It suggests that WoW's customer service would take action against people who gut their guild banks and jump servers. My understanding is that that's not currently actionable - anything on a character on your account, you're free to do what you want with, good faith of your guildies be damned. Does this indicate a change in policy, or did the magazine misinterpret?

vicious · 05/17/07, 1:19 PM

my intent wasn't for there to solely be permissions, what i meant was that i hope it has an off-hand permission interface that didn't require being at the bank, so you cuold turn things on and off with ease and control.

i did read that article, just glazed over i guess when i got to the second paragraph

Zifna · 05/17/07, 2:18 PM

Originally Posted by Lujaar

I'm curious about the last line in the guild bank article. It suggests that WoW's customer service would take action against people who gut their guild banks and jump servers. My understanding is that that's not currently actionable - anything on a character on your account, you're free to do what you want with, good faith of your guildies be damned. Does this indicate a change in policy, or did the magazine misinterpret?

Well, the items on the guild bank won't be *on* anyone's account. I think that their policy that you are free to do what you want with items on your own account will remain constant, but that they were unsatisfied with how this policy worked out with regard to Guild Banks.

Once they take Guild Banks off peoples' accounts, they can implement a different policy with regard to banks while retaining their same policy with regard to the freedom to use your own account as you choose.

That was how I took that anyway.

Trouble · 05/17/07, 2:40 PM

Has anyone actually gotten a hold of the magazine and read the article? I read somewhere that there was like a 13 page article about WoW. I'm curious if there was anything else interesting written in there that hasn't been picked up yet.

Aditu · 05/17/07, 4:19 PM

I think VOIP is a long overdue feature for WoW but its usefulness depends entirely on its implementation:

-How will it be integrated with the Guild box?
-How hard will it be for the Guild officers to moderate it?
-How hard will it be to setup separate channels?
-How quick will development on it progress?

Among other things.

As needed as VOIP is/was, I think a more important feature would be to completely redo the guild box in general to include more information. Having armory level of detail in game, for instance, would be amazingly useful.

shieldb · 05/17/07, 5:59 PM

Originally Posted by Thelyna

Semi-OT, but I think there's a way to filter ventrilo so that everyone's volume comes to you the same ... not sure how to do that though.

Hijacked this from our guild forums, which was in turn hijacked from somewhere else (not sure where):
- Go to Setup
- Enable Direct Sound
- Select the SFX Button
- Select Compressor and click Add.
- Under Compressor Properties use the following settings
- Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use 6 personally)
- Attack = 0.01
- Release = Around 500
- Threshold = Around -30
- Ratio = 100
- Pre delay = 4.0

Seems to require a disconnect/reconnect from vent to take effect when you set it up initially, but this has been working like a charm for me. No more individually adjusting folks up or down the first time they talk

what · 05/17/07, 7:41 PM

I think the idea of a guild bank is a great idea. It's actual implementation will make or break it though, much like the LFG system which even after a couple revisions still hasn't taken hold like it should have.

Obviously there hasn't been a lot of information about the system posted on it, but I think there are a couple blatant items missing from the short description:

Guild funded respecs: This happens a lot in our guild and I'm sure it happens fairly often in others.

A real time permission system: Some method that allows a guild leader to tell someone to go pick something up from the guild bank that they wouldn't normally have permission to get. When the player tries to pick the item(s) up they get a warning saying they don't have permission but can request it. Upon request the guild leader/appropriate officers get a pop-up allowing the player to withdraw whatever is needed.

Requiring a trip to the bank and a permission change for one offs will quickly be a painful task.

Mem · 05/18/07, 9:28 AM

I think the voice tools will be more interesting for less organized groups like PUGs or smaller guilds (which seems to be the focus group for this project anyways). I cannot imagine that larger guilds and raids are willing to put all eggs in one basket in terms of communication. I know quite a lot of folks who idle on our TS server while playing a different game or just waiting to be asked for a quick instance run.

The guild bank scheme looks much more interesting. Especially since it seems to offer protection at least against gun and run scam. (slowly draining resources might still be possible but its probably pretty difficult if there are several people who can at least check the ins and outs.
I don't think that my guild will use it extensively because we only fund the very basics (flasks for tanks and sometimes pots, otherwise everybody has to look for himself) but I know guilds where this works quite differently and who will be very interested in this feature.

Cadfael · 05/18/07, 11:20 AM

This will be a little bit odd for me and my group. On our realm it is quite common that you don't have raid guilds, but raidgroups. The difference being, that the raiding members are in different guilds "by design", sort of. This has evolved and it's practically impossible to reverse now. It hase become a tradition.

Now with guild banks it will be fun to observe if there is more people willing to change the mindset regarding this issue.

Deris · 05/18/07, 11:51 AM

How long will it be until people begin financing and running in-game banks/financial services with Interest rates, etc? I know I could use a 5kg loan, and paying 5500 back over time wouldn't be so bad!

Avair · 05/18/07, 1:32 PM

How long will it be until people begin financing and running in-game banks/financial services with Interest rates, etc? I know I could use a 5kg loan, and paying 5500 back over time wouldn't be so bad!

Unless they introduce some combination of:

A) Binding contracts
B) Credit ratings
C) Automatic paycheck withdraw (I take 5% of your AH sales, monster gold drops and vendoring) -I believe Eve did something like this with automatic payments to guild banks
D) Secured collateral loans (Don't pay me back by X date and I get to repossess your epic mount)

I don't see anybody making sizable loans. The default rate would be huge and Blizzard isn't going to enforce it.