#0 - March 18, 2010, 5:04 p.m.
Thesis: WOTLK and its subsequent patches has shifted the balance of power away from guilds and towards individuals.
RPG’s are about improving your character. Upon reaching maximum level that means getting better gear. It’s what drives us. It’s what makes us stay up all night drinking Mountain Dew and eating Hotpockets. WOW players love shiny purples and will do whatever we have to in order to get them.
There are some who will come and say that gear is just a means to an end. They will claim that gear is just a tool to take on tougher and tougher content. I say that is some deep denial.
If Blizzard put a plain white box in the middle of the Arathi Highlands and told players to stand there clicking on it for 4 hours in order to get tier gear, the Syndicate would have to evacuate Stromguard Keep and move to Arizona to escape all the players in the zone.
In the past the only way to get epic gear was to join an organized raiding guild. People sometimes filled out an application similar to a job. Joining the guild meant submitting to the rules, policies, and decisions of the officers. Some of the rules a guild might have:
- A loot policy such as DKP or loot council restricting who can have what gear when.
- Requirements for new members to raid without being eligible for loot for a period of time.
- Requirements to be on at certain times and/or be required to raid while online.
- Members being placed on standby waiting to see if they are needed.
- Penalties for mistakes in raids or other infractions. (50 DKP Minus!)
- Decisions to gear up certain characters first like the Main Tank or the guild leader’s girlfriend.
- Requirements to farm for consumables or perform other activities outside the raid.
This is not to say that all raid guilds are or were abusive to members, in fact many are great people. However, the fact remains that in the past the guild held all the power. The power of who got what loot.
Wrath of the Lich king has changed all that, at least for the majority of the player base. Acquiring loot is much more the individual’s responsibility now.
- Tier gear is acquired exclusively from badges. Even 25 man raiders must individually farm badges to go with tokens.
- The previous tier gear and off-set pieces can be acquired by anyone willing to run heroics. This means new level 80 characters don’t have to be carried by a guild before they can start raiding.
- Secondary raids such as VOA and the weekly raid quest offer extra badges and rewards.
- All raids are now puggable to a certain extent. This means if your guild tells you to go on standby, you can just go out and join a pug and at least get some reward.
- Through badge rewards, crafted gear, and pugging the first 4 bosses of ICC 25, an individual can fill almost every slot with item level 264 gear.
- The zone wide ICC buff starting at 5% and going to 30% will eventually lead to pug groups killing the Lich King.
Now there are still those individuals who want the bragging rights of server first or downing hard modes. They will continue to submit themselves to the structure and rules of raid guilds, and that is fine if that is what they want. They will get the heroic version gear. (psst- don’t tell them that ours looks the same)
However, Wrath of the Lich King has given the rest of us the freedom to join smaller guilds and raid with our friends. We no longer have to serve “the man”. We can get gear on our own. We finally have our freedom!
<Insert clip of Mel Gibson on a horse with his face painted>
Having read about the planned enhancements of guilds in Cataclysm, I am excited to see the convenient features they are looking to add. I think loyalty to a guild is commendable, as long as that loyalty is true. A player should join or stay with a guild because they enjoy the people, not because the guild can give them loot. I hope whatever Blizzard has in store for Cataclysm will continue to empower the individual.
