I'm afraid I don't follow you there. I can't think of a system where anything but dedication will be the prime factor in determining who's first in clearing content. The amount of time you spend on content is clearly proportional with how much earlier you are in clearing said content. As far as this is concerned, ranking in terms of seems fine.

The reason I've been using "better" in quotation marks is because everyone seems to have very opinionated and individualized perceptions of what the meaning entails. World first kills, most content cleared, most efficient, least wipes, etc. The view you seem to subscribe to seems to be one of efficiency over dedication. The example you also give, much in line with the one I gave, presents the extremes of those two things we've been comparing: a guild with a greater focus on dedication, and a guild with a coordinated cadre of the world's fastest-learning raiders who seldom raid since they're all paramedics and firefighters with odd real life schedules. In truth, most guilds who vie for the first place title are most likely somewhere in the middle, with a similar level of in-game performance and dedication to their competitors (this is especially evident in light of WotLK because of the achievement system, where some raid achievements are clearly skewed more in favor of guilds whose players are better at avoiding boss hazards, maintaining a high level of DPS/TPS and being very, very efficient at what they do: the first several guilds to snag these achievements are also the ones who are the earliest in completing content). Yes, there are outliers, but if that extreme level of dedication (with comparable performance) or that extreme level of performance (with comparable levels of dedication) defines which guild is the first to clear content/acquire achievements, wouldn't they be more deserving of their title for going above and beyond the others?

If you really feel the need to reward those for having the least wipes and spending the least amount of time on their first encounters, is there a problem with just adding that as a separate ranking category? I'm not exactly sure how we can go cataloging that for all guilds without having all guilds participate in actively submitting WWS parses or something, but it seems it would be for the best if such an additional system was possible. It would at least clear up any argument over which guild is "better," since the very vagueness of the term seems to be the focal point for any dispute.

Mideci - that's a good idea, to minimize time differences between achievements. Right now I don't do anything with the date the achievement was gotten, but maybe I should add slight bump.

I'm not sure how to go about fixing it so a huge guild with a small raiding core won't get bumped down because of their size. I'll think about it and we'll see if we can't come up with something. That is a core flaw in my logic, for sure. Right now I'm working more on the reporting back out in fun ways the achievement data I have than the ranking logic though, so that'll be slightly lower on my list.

Obsidyan - I agree with you! The only thing to remember is that some achievements are a lot easier than others. What about a guild that's done all the easy ones, versus a guild that's just very confident and is going for the harder ones? I tried to account for this by using a percentage of realm players to generate a score for an achievement.

I basically do 1 - Percent-who-has-achievement to get a score for an achievement. So if 98% of the world has something (1 Honor kill, for example) then it's worth 0.02 points. If 3% of the world has it (10 man OS +3D, for example) then it's worth 0.97 points.

You can't track all achievements, however, since a lot of people find them meaningless, outside of the hard mode ones. For me, personally, all achievements except the hard modes ones are meaningless. You may be able to make an exception for 6 min Malygos, but even that is iffy. This reminds me of a conversation in guild last Tuesday. We were going for spore loser and the raid leader was giving us reminders and telling us not to do anything stupid. One guild member said, in effect, "Since we're going for an achievement, aren't we technically doing something stupid?" That sums up my feelings on the matter and I'm sure I'm not alone in it.

Looking at the list of Ulduar achievements, there's going to be some dumb non-hard mode achievements again. I don't see the point in including them in the tracking.

Because IMHO the difference between two guilds which have all the hard ones is... The easy ones.
I think all the achievements must be included in the tracking. But, i agree with inktomi here :

Yes, some achievements (the hard ones) must have a better percentage than others.
Your method is good.

And to answer both of you : that what the point of my post, the "boss kill date" ranking must be removed. Meaningless for bosses that can be pugged, meaningless for Ulduar because everybody will clean the easy modes at nearly the same time.
Rankings that are achievements only are - for me - the best possible rankings.
Blizzard wants achievements to be the "PvE progression", so rankings must reflect that.
Blizzard wants everybody to see all the content, so everybody can kill all bosses, so rankings must not take boss kills in account.

Yes, but some of the "easy" ones require you to do something so stupid and have no worthwhile rewards that most guilds will just skip them. If the underman achievements, for example, are not tied to the meta, most guilds will skip them.

What it boils down to, is that some of these achievements will only be done by guilds to increase their ranking on ranking sites. In essence, you'd end up ranking guilds not on how well they play the game but on how well they play the ranking sites. Because almost nobody without an interest in ranking site padding would do those achievements.

True. Except if you want to do "100%" of the game. And "do 100% of the game" is what hardcore guilds want to do, right ?
Even if this is stupid, or too easy, they'll do it. And they'll do it as fast as possible.

True... Or not.
Underman heroic Malygos is *not* easy. It's not "hard", though. But such an achievement deserves a place in the rankings.
But, you're right, Naxx20 and Sarth20 can be considered as jokes (except Thaddius, maybe. That's why he has an achievement just for himself.)

That's right. If these achievements were not in the meta, nobody would do it.
But these easy achievements exist ! And because of that, these easy achievements should be in the ranking. But yes, I agree that they deserve just a small "percentage" of the ranking.

Now, remove the easy achievements. A guild killed all bosses on day 3, and have done Sarth3D on day 10. Another guild killed all bosses on day 8, and have done Sarth3D/Maly6min/Immortal on day 15. The second one is better than the first one, it's obvious. But most of the progression sites say : the first is better than the second. I completely disagree here.

I would say that this makes your guild better than others, because you are playing the game in the context of what Blizzard has given you to do more of in the game. Yea, you don't get anything for it other than a flag in some database - but isn't your time worth something? You spent the time, they sat around grinding gear (or whatever they were doing that didn't result in achievements) - you should be the "better player" in the context of how Blizzard has designed the game.

If this is the case, then my guild isn't hardcore. Nor are tons of other guilds who currently consider themselves hardcore. The people who want to do 100% of the game are probably limited to less than 100 guilds worldwide. And for them, ranking these achievements are completely meaningless.

Simply put, there is no reason to do these achievements in the normal flow of the game. The only reason people do them is to pad their rankings on ranking sites.

Even in the context of the game, most of these achievements are pointless. They don't drop loot. They don't advance the story. They're not fun. The only reason guilds do them is that some ranking site includes them and that might help recruiting.

edit: Just to summarize, I believe the only things worth ranking are the ones that everybody who can would still attempt if no ranking sites exist. Currently, outside of Sarth 3d, the other achievements fail this criterion. Only a very few select people would bother with all the other achievements.

Actually Blizzard differentiates achievements and hard-modes. And I don't really see the point in mixing non hard-mode achievements with boss kills, because you can hardly call doing achievements "PvE progression", guilds were never ranked by Brutallus speed kills or other things like that. That way I completely agree with how Wowprogress and Guildox work - they have separate rankings for progression and for achievements.

I think 6min is hard-mode Malygos. Like timed Hodir will be hard-mode Hodir (according to my informations), which is required to access Algalon. And like some other timed achievements will be in Ulduar.
And they're all optional. But isn't the goal of a hard-mode (and an achievement) to be "optional" ?
Yes, you chose to do it or not. You chose to do Malygos 6 min or not. Like you can chose to do Sarth3D or only Sarth. It's optional too

Maybe I'm confusing a progression site with an achievement site. You're probably right. But a hard-mode is an (optional) achievement. So this is linked in my mind, this is all about achievements and hard-modes : optional things that makes the fights harder, or funnier. Isn't "Momma Said Knock You Out" the hard-mode for Faerlina ?
That's why I think all achievements should be in the rankings, because they're the "low content hard-modes" today

Hard mode gives extra rewards with higher item levels while achievements don't.

Let me give you an example here. We have Easter coming up next weekend. We know we may be short for a 25 man run. We decided to do a 20 man run last nite followed by a 20 man run Easter weekend. We did Nax and got a couple achievements. We then did Maly and got more acheivements. Then OS and more achievements. OS we ended up 10 manning it so we could get people the achievement for not getting hit by lava. For Maly we got our casters and healers to get the final blow while riding a hover disk. So it was an extremely productive and a very fun nite. But what does this tell you? It was fun. But anyone can do it as it's super easy. It should not count towards progression.

Only things in which get you extra loot or higher I levels should be counted towards progression scores period.

Sarth3 doesn't have extra loot besides the drake which is just as much of a vanity reward as "the Immortal". Should it count? I think it is pretty clear that Blizzard intends for the meta-achievements to be the end-of-tier goal for progression raiding guilds so any achievement on them is fair game.

There is a line between pure achievements and hard modes. A thin line, but a line none the less.

Hard modes are a way for raid leaders to pick a difficulty level appropriate for their raid. Of course the best guilds will want the hardest difficulty possible. So in Blizzards eyes if they likely would say progress is measured by the difficulty of the encounter so Sarth0D would be worth x points and lose y points per week and Sarth3D would start out at Z points and lose y per week but a guild would not get credit for both. Killing Sarth2D would replace the kill for Sarth0D just like killing Saph replaces clearing all 4 quarters in Naxx progression. Sarth should be concidered 4 seperate and distinct boss encounters with increasing difficulty.

Achievements are rewarded for doing something in the game like killing bosses or making encounters artificially hard by gimping the raid in some way, and are usually completed by overpowering and/or out gearing the achievement and that is why some achievements that do reward anything are being locked into a specific gear level because it is no longer an "achievement" at higher gear levels. I would give a nod to achievements in the form of Bonus Points. But you would need some subjective way of defining the difficulty of various achievements which will invariably be argued.

Why not just create a composite ranking system?

Have an 'achievement' score. 15/30 gives you 250 "Red" points, 20/30 gives you 350 red points or whatever (weigh them by how many guilds have done it before). Then have a speed score for non 'gimmick' achievements (Yogg+2, Yogg+1, Yogg alone, etc.) but not necessarily the gimmick ones (Lumberjacked). December gives you 15 "blue" points for Yogg+1, March gives you 5 "Blue" points for the same. Then create a composite score that is an amalgamate of the two. This 'purple' score could be the default ranking system. People who care about speed would be able to filter out "Lumberjacked" where as people who think speed is kind of silly can take a look at completion (speed could be the tie breaker for completion).

Perfectly solves the issue, IMHO, with a bit of balancing.

I think doing sarth3d should count. Why because it's difficult. In fact sarth3d 10 man is the hardest encounter currently in the game. There may be fine lines or grey areas. But this isn't one of them. This one is red and making your eyes bleed it's so obvious.

You know, the more I read about it, the more I tend to agree. I've sort of been going down that path for a while on realmranker - really putting a lot more work into the reporting on achievements than the ranking. Sure, the ranking is there and works, but I'm really working on having more reporting for achievements and statistics, so you can use the site more as a "who has won AV the most? Who's killed boss X the most?" sort of dashboard for your guild/realm/world.

Of course, I'll leave the ranking in, and I could take the achievements out of the ranking and just use the statistics and pure boss kills, but for now - I'm going to work on the dashboard views into the data I've collected.

BTW - anyone know Java and want to help out with RealmRanker? I've been thinking of community sourcing the whole thing and trying to get some community involvement going so I'm not the sole dev. PM me if you're interested.

inktomi, do you plan to add european realms to your database?

Achievements are progression. There's a physical reward towards finishing (heroic) glory of the raider. Don't argue that most wow players will pass on the chance of getting a 310% drake. However, it's also true that the meta-achievement contains both hard and easy mode achievements. I think few will disagree that 3D, immortal and 6min malygos being the only "hard" ones in the bunch. You can disregard spore loser and less is more, since they aren't included in the meta-achievement, and a guild shooting for glory of the raider might skip them.

I believe the reason why significantly less guilds finish subtraction and dedicated few than 3D is because they were stuck finishing 6min malygos and immortal. From wowprogress;

Heroic: You Don't Have An Eternity: 2192 (3.85%)
The Immortal: 1065 (1.87%)

In fact, a lot fewer guilds are able to finish these two compared to Sarth 3D, in either 10/25man modes. I think wow progress is doing a good job ranking these achievements on their achievement site. On the other hand, guildox achievement page just adds up the total achievement score from t7 (and t8), disregarding the time you acquire it, or the relative difficulty of the achievement.

I don't think 6-min Malygos is that difficult that less than a third of guilds being able to do Sarth 3d are finishing it. Most likely, guilds are skipping it since many don't care. It also doesn't make sense for guilds to skip the underman achievements because they're focused on immortal and 6-man Malygos. You need to do them for the meta anyway and many will opt to get the easier achievements out of the way first.

No, you won't. You will not bother with easy achievements until you have Immortal. Why? Because only the meta truly matters. And short of the meta, only the title means anything. So you delay your 20-man Naxx every week and go for Immortal. Until you get it. That's what every semi-serious guild would do.

As for "progression", the only thing left is achievements and the limited boss kills that are hard. In Ulduar, maybe Yogg will be a bit challenging on normal (I dunno) and Algalon kills alone are "progression". The entire remainder of progression? Finishing the challenging achievements and getting the meta done. Then, if there are "harder modes" than the meta requires, getting them done to. That's progression in WotLK. I'm sorry some people haven't full picked up on it, but that's it.

A good ranking would acknowledge the kills of the bosses, sure, and then would include finishing any relevant (i.e. challenging achievements in the meta or beyond it in terms of challenge) and would acknowledge the meta completion.

How things like guild size are relevant to this, I can't see at all. Is that cause my guild has a ton of casuals and a small raiding core? Maybe. But I still fail to see why having more people should get you downgraded.

I still am of the argument that only boss encounters are progression and each hard mode available counts as a separate encounter else you have guilds that do sarth0D ranked the same as sarth3D except for any time difference factoring.

I could possibly see the not dying achievements as being counted as an additional difficulty on top of the hard modes but there is no achievement for not dying on Sarth3D nor do I see one for any Ulduar Hard modes so untill Blizzard adds those . . .

The other activities involve doing something that gimps the raid and usually involves overgearing the content in that you need the gear from the instance before you attempt the achievements. If anyone has any examples of guilds doing naxx achievements that haven't killed KT or Saph. Please post. But I still see achievements as something to do after an instance is on farm to make it more interesting. Achievements are for adding a little more fun to a guaranteed kill. Progression is when you enter an instance a little unsure if the boss will die.

Achievements can be aborted (even undermanning, you can do wipe prevention, reset the encounter, and summon more people) and still kill the boss. Hard modes are kill or wipe, you can't start sarth3d then half-way decide to do 2d. Guilds can also decide to do other "achievements" that blizzard doesn't give credit for.

Also think about it from this angle, if hard modes existed but the achievement system did not. Would you count Sarth3d as progression? Would you count 90sec Sarth3d as progression? Would 20man Sarth3D count as progression?