Guild Advancement & Professions

Unfortunately I was unable to watch some of the WoW panels that happened today, the DirectTV broadcast is only showing one of them.  Luckily Blizzard has been posting recaps on their web site for those who aren't in Anaheim.  I just went through the Systems panel recap and I see that there's some information relevant to crafters.  It looks as though professions will be a part of the guild advancement system.  Within this system are some pretty key features that I think will help solve some long-standing problems with guild crafting.



Guild advancement is basically an achievement/leveling system for guilds.  It looks like guild members will be able to earn experience for their guild through such activities as leveling, boss kills, PVP, leveling and profession ranks.  In return the guild will be able to unlock access to a number of perks for its members including guild recipes, special reagent vendors, vanity pets and heirloom items.

The way that it's currently planned to work is that a guild would use some form of guild currency to buy new recipes that would be unlocked for everyone in the guild.  Guilds would also have the ability to create heirloom items that would be available to players within the guild.  It looks like guild vendors would stock reagents that could be purchased by guild members as well as unlock guild-specific versions of crafted items that could potentially have fewer reagents.

There is also plans for a guild news feed, which is mentioned in conjunction with profession information being made available to all guild members.  It's unclear if this information is shared via the news feed or some other mechanic, the interface graphic has no indication either :(

Personally, I think making tradeskill information available on a guild-wide basis is long overdue.  So "thank you" to whoever decided to finally implement this.  It has been a huge pain to coordinate crafting between guild members, compounded by the fact that some folks just aren't on at the same time.  I know for awhile during Burning Crusade I actually kept a notebook list of folks in my guild who won epic loot recipes, so I'd be able to remember who to pester to get items made.  This is a pretty sad way to track guild crafters, when all the data is in the game and just needed a UI so players could use it.

I also like the idea of guild-owned recipes, it seems like a much nicer way to handle the raid drop recipe.  At least I hope that's the implementation they're planning, I always thought it sucked that the one dude who happened to be in the raid when the recipe dropped was the one who got the recipe.  How often does it happen that this is the guy who's not a core raider?  Or even worse, leaves a month later and takes the epic recipe with him.  If they do decide to have guild-based recipes, they need to make sure that players lose the recipe when they leave the guild.  We wouldn't want to encourage guild hopping, now would we? <no, we wouldn't>.  I think stuff like this would also strengthen guild loyalties if players knew that they'd be losing their heirlooms and guild recipes when they left.

There's a lot of neato stuff in this systems panel that's not related to tradeskills.  If you want to read the whole article for yourself, you can find it at the Blizzcon web site.
Posted by Kaliope at Saturday, August 22, 2009
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10 comments:

  1. > "Personally, I think making tradeskill information available on a guild-wide basis is long overdue."

    Dead right on this issue Kaliope and I can give you a much more recent example - JCs needed to coordinate buying of the new epic gem recipes after 3.2 was released was a major headache, to maximize recipe coverage for the guild/friends. It's even worse as a consumer, trying to hunt down the person who can cut you that +str gem. Who had that recipe again? It's getting better ofc as time passes and JCs are beginning to catch up on all the recipes, but at first it was a major headache.

    > "If they do decide to have guild-based recipes, they need to make sure that players lose the recipe when they leave the guild. "

    I definitely remember reading about guild heirlooms and that it will work this way for them, i.e. if a person gets a guild heirloom and leaves, the item will jump back to the GB. No idea about recipes though.

    I hope they give some loving to fishing, the mechanic is getting a bit annoying and tedious over long periods of time. Especially when trying to fish pools, my cursor will sometimes miss the bobber when it jumps due to the pool being an "object".
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  2. Thanks for reminding me of the JC situation - my guild had the exact same problem. Luckily I had saved up enough tokens to get about a dozen new cuts, but most of the folks in my guild had not. Even still we were trying to coordinate who was buying what, but if people aren't on at the same time it's harder to do that. Having a master guild list of owned recipes would go a long way to alleviating problems like that.

    They were supposed to talk more about Fishing at the second Item/Class/Prof panel, but from what I read in the recap it's not there. Have no idea what happened, perhaps they decided not to discuss it.

    I know a lot of peeps are saying this expansion is more done than they expected, but from what I heard at the I/C/P panel, there's still a lot that hasn't been fleshed out. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the things they shared this w/e get changed between now and release. With everything they don't know right now, they may have to modify things they've already decided in order to make these "unknown" components work. Sorry, I know that sounded weird but it made sense when I thought it!
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  3. Oh dear all the new JC recepies not available the instant the patch went live? Is that really an issue?

    Interesting Blizz are finally looking at guild halls or similar features many other games have.

    Gobble gobble.
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  4. Well as far as I know no one has balked at the idea of collecting all of the epic recipes over time, at least I've not heard it. It's more about guild crafters being able to coordinate their purchases to reduce redundancies and cover a larger range of items for the guild. I know I'd rather not waste tokens buying a recipe that another guildmate has, I'd prefer to get something else we might need instead. Without any ability to see what other guild members have acquired, we cannot focus our efforts on the right items. Most core guild players I know try to use their professions to help the guild and themselves, so an interface that allows us to see/share/compare recipes between players would be extremely helpful.
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  5. This sucks. Because there are many raids who are just raids and not guilds. I'm not interested of changing my guild to whoever I raid with at the moment.

    I think most raids include people from multiple guilds.

    Also, if raid drop receipts are bound to the guild, you won't be able to keep it if the guild disbands. Good luck finding 30 spell power enchant. I doubt there are that many guilds still around who raided MC back then.
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  6. > "Oh dear all the new JC recepies not available the instant the patch went live? Is that really an issue?"

    @BoBTurkey, for raiders, yes, re-gemming as quickly as possible is an issue. I suspect the same can be said of people doing high-level Arena PvP.
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  7. > "I think most raids include people from multiple guilds."

    I think it's too soon to worry about implementation details. I'm sure Blizzard are not so stupid as to leave out mixed-guild raids in the cold w/regards to raid recipe drops. Heck, one upcoming feature which was mentioned was the ability to invite an entire other guild to a raid organized via the built-in calendar, so obviously mixed-guild raids are something Blizz are counting on.

    > "I doubt there are that many guilds still around who raided MC back then."

    That's a good point. Lower-level enchants are still useful for twinks. So I'm not sure what will happen in the case of a /gdisband. Guess we'll have to wait and see.
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  8. On a slight tangent, if you want to have guild crafting before Cataclysm, I suggest Altoholic. It's an awesome mod for people (llike me) who have multiple characters and need to handle their gear, trade goods, instance/raid lockouts, etc. It also records tradeskills across characters - and even tradeskills of all guildies with the mod. It's really quite handy, so myself and a raidmate (the two main JCers for the guild) used it quite well to coordinate the gem cuts.
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  9. I've actually been using Altoholic for awhile now for myself, it's quite invaluable for telling you which toon has which reagents. I find this especially helpful when crafting old-world stuff cuz I never remember who I leave stuff on. I knew that it had guild functionality (it always includes guild bank tallies in my list), but hadn't really thought of using it to keep tabs on other guildies. I may bring that up on our forums and see if I can get a few peeps to go in with me and try it for that. Thanks for the tip!
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  10. I think perhaps raiders were over estimating the value of epic gems then.

    Say you have a dozen gem slots and for arguments sake they are all red gems. You upgrade from 19SP to 23SP which give you a grand total of 48 additional SP. I'd be surprised if 48 SP is making or breaking your raid.

    This is a common misconception about the importance of gear for the success of raids. Player skill and experience is far more important.

    Anyway we're getting way off topic.

    Some sort of pattern master list for professions listing those in guild that have a particular pattern would be very handy.

    Gobble gooble.
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