PLEASE Rethink the Guild Tree and Path removl

I commented on Paths in another thread.

Guilds aren't a new feature for WoW, and we are really sensitive about imposing any kind of structure on them that might make you feel like you aren't supposed to stay with your current guildies any longer. To that end, there were flaws with guild talents that we didn't like.

Guilds are, for the most part, groups of friends. We don't want features to drive wedges between them. We don't want you to guild hop looking for the talents that suit you best; we want you to play (or in many cases keep playing) with your friends. With a talent tree, guilds would naturally have different talent trees, which creates a reason to bail or guild hop that doesn't exist today. If you didn't like the direction the guild was taking (for example, you were a PvP guy with a GM focused on raid-progression) you might feel like you should leave. That can happen today of course, but you can also stay in a PvE guild just because you like the members even if you don't participate in the same content because you're not losing out on inherent guild benefits.

Furthermore, we felt like the decision-making, for many guilds, would be up to a relatively few people, possibly as few as the guild master. Talent trees work for classes because the decision is up to you. We didn't want to create the risk of drama over choosing those talents or even not being consulted in choosing them.

Another advantage of the perks system is that it's easily expandable. If we want to add new levels and / or perks in later patches or expansions, we can, without having to rejuggle a talent tree.

Q u o t e:
Its called a scapegoat man.. just a made up reason to justify scrapping it, either they coudnt finish it in time or they didnt think they could balance it..in the end Blizard just thinks we are too stupid to see the BS their reasoning is :( Woulda taken alot less flack imo if they jsut admitted they didnt think they could balance it or something instead of this BS.

I'm curious what you think the real explanation would be such that we would want to conceal it. :)

The only difference in the way we are handling the guild talents is it will be possible to get all of them instead of having one person in your guild pick and choose which ones you got. The feature has always focused on leveling your guild to unlock new perks. In fact, you're getting more perks this way than you would have if the decisions had been exclusive.

Q u o t e:
I'm not demanding to have every reward, and I'm not at all concerned about guild talents, since I'm not a min/maxer. But I've been happy in my small guild for four years, and I would love the chance to show some guild pride, modest as our accomplishments may be. I would be disappointed if I couldn't get a mount tabard (or whatever) because we can't field the players to complete X raid on our own.

There are many ways to earn guild levels. We want to make sure nearly every existing guild has a shot at them all. The only question will be how fast you level.

Q u o t e:
I understand not giving the GM all the power, but having a group customization would be fun.

But why would that be fun? Let's walk through it for a bit. Do you think it would be fun to try and recruit new members because you chose the "right" talent build? Do you think it would be fun to try and argue with your members about what the right talents were to take? Do you think it would be fun to feel like you should leave your guild because they took a lot of talents that didn't affect your play style? Those were all the problems we ran into as we started implementing things. Instead of the feature being exciting, it was causing a lot of anxiety for everyone here who was in a guild. Guilds are supposed to be about friends -- not min maxxing guild benefits. There are plenty other aspects of the game where you can min-max.

Q u o t e:

Being a casual guild definitely doesn't sound like it satisfies the requirements to earn anything.

Not all guild achievements are raid-related, just as all normal achievements are not raid-related.

Q u o t e:
I don't like that guild level benefits double dip in the grinding sector. Not only must a guild be active enough to produce these levels, but members who weren't there at the beginning of that "grind" must then grind rep with the guild to be able to access the same benefits.

There are two categories of rewards. The perks are things earned by the guild. If you join a high-level guild, you get those benefits immediately and you lose them if you bail on the guild. They are passive bonuses and a couple of spells, not items. Separately, there are also items you can purchase. The items are yours to keep even if you leave the guild. In order to discourage guild hopping, you have to make some kind of investment in the guild. But you can still choose to leave if in the future you just find that you'd rather be with someone else.

Q u o t e:
Falsehood! Players who guild hop are not INTERESTED in making friends. These are min/maxers who always choose the best gear and best progression over inter-personal relationships. They're mercenaries and meat-marketeers. The people that are truly interested in a guild made up of friends would have enjoyed the additional flavor that guild talents offered, but it would not have been a driving factor in their decision to remain with or leave a guild.

If the social ties in your guild are that strong, that's awesome. We didn't think it was right of us to try and put those to the test however. It's not our place to try to challenge your friendships by offering possible motivation to gain benefits at the cost of leaving the people you like behind.

It would truly, truly suck for us to be reading responses from players who said "I've been with Death Kitties for 6 years, but they don't raid a lot and I enjoy raiding. Currently I can get my raiding fix with some other casual friends. But I really want the raiding bonuses that can be earned by a raiding guild and Death Kitties just isn't interested in pursuing those. So I feel like I should leave the guild that I helped create. That sucks."

Q u o t e:
Welcome to the World Of Warcraft balancing team.

I sincerely wish that they'd actually spend more time "Fleshing out details" or "Thinking things through"

If you were a game developer, perhaps you'd make different choices in our shoes. It's a subjective business and if you were super passionate about guild talents, perhaps you could have come up with a model that solved all of our concerns. Sometimes those concerns are visible early and sometimes you really have to get into the meat of the implementation before you realize the problems. We think the Blizzard development model has worked pretty well for over 15 years. Part of that model is being willing to cut something (features, or even titles) that isn't working out, no matter how much effort we've put into them. Keeping a feature that didn't work but that was clearly the pet feature of some developer has marred several potentially good games.

Q u o t e:
Now you guys are taking things out?? this is almost like false advertising lol but you guys have made it to where it isn't.

As I mentioned in the above response, we have killed entire games and even game worlds before. If you go back and look at previous expansions of World of Warcraft, and certainly vanilla, there were features on the list that eventually were scrapped or changed into something completely different. As with much of our design, the alternative is not to share any information until we are 100% sure it is going to come to pass. That would mean you would know almost nothing about Cataclysm at this stage though, which would also be pretty frustrating. Every good game studio I know cuts features (and titles!) all the time.

It's like sculpting in stone. It's like good writing. You carve away until what you have left is the best you can make it.

Q u o t e:
Okay, which one of these is you?

Oops. Apologies to Death Kitties. I had no idea it was a real guild, though I really should have by now.

If you guys get a lot of new apps, you'll know why. :)

Q u o t e:
I guess I'm confused then about what, precisely, it getting the axe here. It was my understanding that guild leveling and guild talents were tied together and the decision was that both were being done away with to be replaced by a modified glyph system. If this understanding is correct, that doesn't seem like much of a guild-related benefit so much as just another way you can customize your experience on an individual level. It could simply be that I've misunderstood the information that's been presented thus far in that regard.

I think this is a common problem. Some players focused on "cut guild talents" without reading what we are doing instead.

Imagine you are a priest. Some of your spells are talents, such as Penance and Circle of Healing. If you take Circle of Healing, you don't have enough points to get Penance. Talent trees are about (sometimes tough) decisions. However, many of your other spells you get by leveling, such as Prayer of Mending and Mass Dispel. You don't have to make a hard choice to get those, but you do have to put some work in.

The guild bonuses used to be talents. They are now more like leveling spells. We call them perks now instead of talents. We haven't cut any content, but just changed the UI from boxes with prereqs to a list.

Q u o t e:
If you weren't happy with them, the talents are either too beneficial, and should have been toned down, or you leave the guild.

Right, and this is the problem right here. If we had shipped this feature, you might have left your guild because of the feature. I'm a champion of engineering "interesting decisions" into the game, but I don't think choosing to no longer play with your friends in order to have more character power is an "interesting decision." More like a slap in the face. :)

Q u o t e:
Ghostcrawler, can I please join whatever guild you play on? I figure you all must be a bunch of very nice people who aren't the typical #!***#%s I often find in this game.

Sure! But be warned that our hazing ritual is pretty dehumanizing.

Q u o t e:
Cataclysm will be a great update but it's potential as an expansion doesn't feel as great as what we were presented at Blizzcon or compared with what Wrath brought us. I guess we've only had 'dance studio' to be disappointed with so this kind of retraction caught people off guard.

I try not to make ranked lists of features between expansions, because it always feels like you're comparing apples to oranges ("Now with 14.2% more raid bosses!') and has a lot to do with how interested you are in any of those features ("Fishing has a new icon!"). I'll just say that Cataclysm is massive, feels really polished even at this early stage, and has a ton of content. It feels a lot like two expansions, because you have the 80-85 content as well as an all new 1-60 experience. We don't sing the praises of our quest design team enough. They have poured their souls into this expansion and you realize that from your very first quest. There are just so many "holy crap!" moments.