Blizzcon 09: Guilds - Together We Are Strong
Just got out of the WOW Systems Panel, and we learned some interesting information about upcoming changes for guilds.
First up, guilds will have levels in Cataclysm. Currently they are planning to allow up to twenty levels. Guilds level up when their members doing varying activities like gaining player levels, increasing their faction rep, boss kills, wins in rated battelgrounds, and increasing profession skill.
The benefits of leveling up your guild are guild talent points, which are spendable on the guild talent tree by the guild leader and perhaps officers. Guild talents provide a variety of interesting and increasingly powerful effects as you go deeper in the tree.
Here's some examples:
- Reduced cost for repairs for the entire guild.
- Less durability damage taken in raids for the guild
- Removes reagent cost for raid buffs for the entire raid/guild
- Increased gold drops (the extra goes into the guild bank) from bosses
- Mass resurrection for after wipes
- Raid summon, which summons the entire raid at once
For more guild changes, join me after the jump.
Now, as your guild levels up, they will also earn guild currency, which those with permission can spend on cool things like guild standards you can plant on dead bosses, special mounts and equipment with the guild logo on it, and Guild profession plans, which I will go into in a moment.
In addition to levels, guilds will now earn achievements as well, for completing various dungeons and such with a certain percentage of guild members forming the group (example given, perhaps 75% of the group would need to be guild members).
Now, back to professions. I mentioned guild profession plans. These will be bought with guild currency and will allow the guilds members to learn various interesting recipes. '
The first example, Alchemists would be able to learn a special recipe for health potions that heals guild members for more than normal potions. Or perhaps the potion would take less reagents to make or would use special reagents purchasable with guild currency. Presumably other professions would have something similar for their crafted consumables.
The second and more interesting thing were Guild Heirloom patterns. Guild crafters would be able to make these and put them in the guild vault for any guild member to use. This for me solves the great problem with the refer-a-friend system, as it will allow RAF accounts to gain heirloom items to level up in.
Any pattern or item gained via guild currency will be bound to the guild. So any guild recipes learned will disappear when someone leaves the guild, and heirloom items will get sent right back to the guild vault automatically.
Other new guild additions are a new Looking For Guild system with filters so people can search for casual, raiding, pvp guilds, and even state what raid schedule they are looking for. Also new, a new guild tab with a news feed showing recent events for the guild and an RSS feed you can export to a guild site.
Lots of exciting changes coming to guilds in Cataclysm, we'll keep you posted with any more information we get!
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 22 August 2009
Other stuff like this: blizzcon 09, guilds, world of warcraft
