Guild Transfer & Guild Rename Services Coming
Originally Posted by Nethaera (Blue Tracker)
We want to give everyone an early heads-up regarding our plan to implement a guild relocation service for World of Warcraft. The idea is for a guild leader to be able to transfer a guild to another realm. The guild structure remains intact, including the guild leader, guild bank, ranks, and guild name (depending on availability).

Guild members who decide to relocate with their guild may initiate their own paid character transfer. Upon a successful transfer they will automatically be part of the guild when they first log into the new realm. Their guild rank and guild reputation will be intact.

Guild leaders who do not want a change of scenery may also choose to pick a new guild name using another new service. These services are in development and we will be providing additional details at a future point in time.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the guild relocation service in a way that will not disrupt the game play experience. Please note that this feature will require extensive internal testing, so you may see bits and pieces of the service appear on the public test realms. We'll announce further details at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com .

Dev Watercooler: The View From 10,000 Feet
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
So how is the view from way up here? It’s great actually -- we’re really happy with how Cataclysm is going so far, and we have big surprises on the horizon. On the other hand, there are details you can see at ground level that you can’t make out from 10,000 feet.

When we started these blogs, the idea was to foster developer communication to the players without some of the inherent problems of posting in forums. Some players have pointed out recently, and we totally agree, that the blogs up until now have been from a very high vantage point. We looked for topics with universal interest that would feel important and newsworthy. That has worked overall, but we also feel like we’ve lost something from when I used to be down in the metaphorical trenches talking to players in the forums.

So we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to unleash some blogs that are much more conversational and less proclamational (that's a word now). If we deliver on this, it will hopefully feel like you’re eavesdropping on our design meetings. You won’t always learn a lot about exciting new features coming to the game, but you will (ideally) learn something about the design process itself. (When we have big, exciting news to share, or ‘State of the Game’ style blogs, we’ll still do those as well.)

But to pull off this more casual blog style, let’s establish a few ground rules:

1) No promises. I’m going to be talking about a lot of things we might do or things we could do. You shouldn’t interpret this brainstorming as patch notes. Our creative process is insanely iterative. We might pitch dozens of ideas before we find one we like. That can be really exhausting if you’re not used to it. If you’re more interested in final decisions and not idea churn, then this style of blog won’t be for you.

2) Don’t read too much between the lines. I’m going to point out a lot of design flaws in our game. “Oh no! Goatcaller admitted WoW was deeply flawed! It’s shark-jumping time!” Look, Blizzard is very critical about our own designs. There is virtually nothing in World of Warcraft that could not be improved. That has always been the case and will continue to be the case. Just because I’m going to be sharing that more frankly with you doesn’t mean that the game now has more cracks in its foundation than it ever did. There is an old saying (misattributed, from what I understand, to Otto Bismarck) that laws are like sausages; it is best not seeing them being made. My old friend and mentor Bruce Shelley used to apply the same maxim to game design.

3) No complaints about the topic. If we didn’t have an interesting discussion about a topic recently, e.g. shaman mechanics, I’m not going to invent one. That doesn’t mean that the class is perfect, or that we don’t love shaman players, or that the shaman class has no direction, or that the class design is frozen in carbonite. I’m not going to keep hash marks next to every class and spec to make sure I’ve covered their "Very Important Issues" lately in a blog. World of Warcraft design being what it is, we’ll probably eventually get around to talking about everyone on here, but it may take weeks or months or years. My team is responsible for areas of the game including classes, items, encounters, trade skills, achievements, combat, and UI, so my blogs will probably stick to those topics.

Okay, all that preamble is out of the way now. I’ll probably refer back to it sometimes, if we have some players stomping all over the ground rules.

One topic we’ve been discussing lately is the role of Hit and Expertise on tank gear (or more precisely, plate tanking gear). The conventional wisdom is that Hit and Expertise are threat stats, and you may need to swap them out with some of your mitigation stats depending on the situation. Realistically, unless you severely overgear the content, we don’t think that is actually true. Tanks almost always worry about survival first and foremost, which totally makes sense, and are willing to trade off threat stats for better mitigation in almost all situations. It’s much harder to progress if the tank explodes than it is if the cat occasionally pulls aggro. (It’s not quite that simple, but I’m going to gloss over details and exceptions since I spent so much text on the preamble up above).

Once upon a time, taunts could miss, and so Hit was marginally more interesting than it is today. Once upon a time, having a boss parry your attacks could speed up its swing timer, which turned Expertise into a (often weak) survival stat. Boss parries felt very random though, both in the sense that sometimes the tank would suddenly take much more damage than anticipated and there was no easy way to know which bosses had parry speed up. (Today, you can assume none of them do.) Until recently, interrupts could miss, but asking a tank to stack a bunch of Hit just for those few opportunities when they were probably going to hit anyway but disaster would occur if they did not felt crummy too.

The problem is that there aren’t a lot of stats that are interesting to tanks. Stamina and Armor are great, but their stat budget is often in lockstep with item level. (It would be interesting to consider if we could make that not the case once again, but that’s the topic for another blog.) We got rid of Defense as a stat that tanks needed to worry about. We have managed to make Mastery pretty good to excellent for tanks, so that’s at least one stat they like to see. Dodge and (if you’re a plate-wearer) Parry are good, and slightly interesting because of talents like Hold the Line. But beyond that, it starts to go downhill. Sure Haste and Crit can sometimes be fun, but really they often aren’t worth the trade off. That leaves us with Hit and Expertise. We’d like to make them more interesting to tanks. But how?

One way is by turning them into defensive stats. They are defensive stats for Blood death knights, because the DK self-healing is tied into Death Strike, which can miss. It might be possible to do something similar for the other classes. Imagine if Shield Block had to actually hit the target. Presumably you raise your shield, but not high enough to intercept the incoming blow. Now hit becomes a mitigation stat for warriors as well. We might have to adjust the mitigation amount on Shield Block or give warriors a small Hit bonus so Hit capping wasn’t totally unreasonable, but you get the basic idea. You could do the same with paladins (make Holy Shield more interesting?) and druids as well (Savage Defense could proc on a hit).

Is this a good idea? We’re not sure yet. You won’t see this change in the 4.1 patch for certain. There are trade-offs to making Hit and Expertise more valuable. Gearing as a tank might be more fun for experienced players, but it also might be more challenging for less experienced players. The number of struggling tanks in your Dungeon Finder groups might go up. Some less knowledgeable players (and to be fair, this stuff doesn’t exactly explain itself on the character sheet) might stack Hit way too high at the expense of a more valuable mitigation stat, such as mastery.

It is the kind of thing we’re talking about though, and if you want to make a contribution to the tanking forums but aren’t quite sure on a topic, here is one potential possibility.

-Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer of World of Warcraft. He still has Buru’s Skull Fragment.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Guild Transfer & Guild Rename Services Coming, The View From 10,000 Feet started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 127 Comments
  1. Maester's Avatar
    I'm pretty damn sure that even thinking about making Hit an important stats for Plate wearing Tanks is something we tanks should be QQing about, instead of the payed Guild Realm Transfer.
  1. antonatsis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Buzzinjoe View Post
    None of the shit Blizzard makes available through their store is game changing. The crap you buy through micro transactions in F2P games makes a massive difference. In terms of actual gameplay you pay a monthly fee and are on equal footing with the billionaire across the sea. That's what you pay the monthly fee for. Good luck being equal to that same guy in a F2P game if he can spend 1000 bucks a month on armor and whatnot and you have a mere 20 bucks spare a month.

    Blizzard isn't the only company charging for character transfers, renaming of chars, change of appearance etc etc in their MMO. ALL MMO COMPANIES DO IT. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!!!!!!!!

    Previously you could only get a guild transfered with gbank etc intact if there was a free char migration open from your server. And even then it required talking to a GM for it to be done.

    This lets guilds transfer as they please, which is a huge perk if you find yourself on an imbalanced server. The guild I was in before quitting had 1.7 million gold in the gbank at the time. My guess would be that number increased by now. Most of our members were WELL over the gold cap for transfers. Now everyone can chugg their gold in the gbank and transfer all their cash along with just 1 or 2 characters instead of needing 10 char transfers or buying crap on the ah before a transfer.

    If you have a reliable GM this should not be an issue what so ever. If your GM is a tool, then what the hell are you still doing in that guild?[COLOR="red"]
    .
    i dont have an issue with this since i dont play but what about people that are forced to transfer that way?

    example No1
    you go with a guild for years 90% of your wow friends are from that guild...eventually the guild decides to transfer you will follow even thought you dont want to transfer so much

    example No2
    you are in a guild and manage to do sh!tload of things together you make a name for yourself you are somebody in that guild you are one the those guys...and the leaders of the guild decide to transfer you will go with them even if you want it or not because every wow achievement(not the game mechanic)you have is with them and you are actually someone among the sea of anonimity of wow

    example No3
    you are a last chancer most of the guilds you have found suck and you find a good guild with good lads and pretty reasonable progress for you it was your last chance as a "faction name"it was that guild or change faction since you know the server and they decide to transfer you will go with them because you found a place to enjoy the game

    in all of the above examples the GM and officers aren't mentioned as bad people or good ones they just took a decision that decision will cost you and 80% random$ thats why i think is not something good but then again i dont count since i dont play anymore and my examples are healthy examples of a vast number of wow players into that i dont give example of people that just want a guild and will stick to the 1st decent they find no matter what change they do...or people that care for loot and are on a guild that deliver what they want....it forces you to pay and the argument of you dont have to pay is not valid cause the pressure from your guild mates/wow friends will be a big factor for you and most people think hey its 25$(thats a random number btw)
    as for the F2P and P2P at least in F2P you know what you are doing in what blizzard does is treating you like a 12 year boy that will chew what ever it gives you and hope that people that are grown ups and dont actually care about the given amount of money will back it up...iam one of those if i was in a good guild hell 25 or 30$ would be a lot of money to give for that guild every now or then

    again to clarify myself i dont bitch about this i just think its the first bad micro transaction that blizzard will put in the game and in Greece we have a saying which ill roughly translate :P
    if one evil is coming countless are following!
  1. Buzzinjoe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by antonatsis View Post
    i dont have an issue with this since i dont play but what about people that are forced to transfer that way?

    example No1
    you go with a guild for years 90% of your wow friends are from that guild...eventually the guild decides to transfer you will follow even thought you dont want to transfer so much

    example No2
    you are in a guild and manage to do sh!tload of things together you make a name for yourself you are somebody in that guild you are one the those guys...and the leaders of the guild decide to transfer you will go with them even if you want it or not because every wow achievement(not the game mechanic)you have is with them and you are actually someone among the sea of anonimity of wow

    example No3
    you are a last chancer most of the guilds you have found suck and you find a good guild with good lads and pretty reasonable progress for you it was your last chance as a "faction name"it was that guild or change faction since you know the server and they decide to transfer you will go with them because you found a place to enjoy the game

    in all of the above examples the GM and officers aren't mentioned as bad people or good ones they just took a decision that decision will cost you and 80% random$ thats why i think is not something good but then again i dont count since i dont play anymore and my examples are healthy examples of a vast number of wow players into that i dont give example of people that just want a guild and will stick to the 1st decent they find no matter what change they do...or people that care for loot and are on a guild that deliver what they want....it forces you to pay and the argument of you dont have to pay is not valid cause the pressure from your guild mates/wow friends will be a big factor for you and most people think hey its 25$(thats a random number btw)
    as for the F2P and P2P at least in F2P you know what you are doing in what blizzard does is treating you like a 12 year boy that will chew what ever it gives you and hope that people that are grown ups and dont actually care about the given amount of money will back it up...iam one of those if i was in a good guild hell 25 or 30$ would be a lot of money to give for that guild every now or then

    again to clarify myself i dont bitch about this i just think its the first bad micro transaction that blizzard will put in the game and in Greece we have a saying which ill roughly translate :P
    if one evil is coming countless are following!
    You do realise that all 3 of your examples already occur right now, yeh? This new service will not make any difference. The only thing this service offers is the option to take your guild with you (not the people in it) without having to empty the guild bank and spread it across characters in preperation of a transfer. The way I understand it, all members including the GM will still have to pay for a seperate character transfer.
  1. Cows For Life's Avatar
    Anything that lowers that barriers for a guild leader to move and take everything with one click is a good thing. Anyone that thinks otherwise is just a hater.
  1. Madrail's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Scratches View Post
    Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler (Blue Tracker)

    [...] I’m going to point out a lot of design flaws in our game. “Oh no! Goatcaller admitted WoW was deeply flawed! It’s shark-jumping time!” Look, Blizzard is very critical about our own designs. [...]
    brb, making character named Goatcaller...
    Seriously, that was awesome. I lol'd irl.
  1. Ceresc's Avatar
    What I am curious to know is what about guild mergers? I'm not worried about guild relocation but it would be nice if I could merge my guild with the other guild I run with and maintain my guild rep. In fact the whole guild would like to merge but no one wants to lose their rep to the merger so we stand divided.
  1. Fojos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rolly View Post
    Blizzard is already making hundreds of millions if not billions in profit, when is enough enough?
    They don't make close to hundreds of millions profit. You really don't know what you're talking about.
  1. Repellerar's Avatar
    Problem is Blizzard is getting away with a subscription AND micro-transaction game, it's insane, we pay monthly we shouldn't have this micro-transaction filth shoved in our faces.
  1. khh's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rolly View Post
    Paid guild name change and server transfer. bwahahahahahahahahahaha So now the real reason for guild perk implementation comes out.
    i can even imagine Bob Kotick going: "people are transferring their characters between realms, and remaking their guilds all the time. how we are not making any profit with it?"
  1. Fojos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Repellerar View Post
    Problem is Blizzard is getting away with a subscription AND micro-transaction game, it's insane, we pay monthly we shouldn't have this micro-transaction filth shoved in our faces.
    You don't need to buy it.
  1. Repellerar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fojos View Post
    You don't need to buy it.
    Oh my bad, thought it was required. Oh wait it is required, the server transfers, name changes and in-game items are in fact core mechanics that change gameplay. Twist it how you will but it's still true. These services should be included for the price of our monthly fee. It's hardly justified by Blizzard, but there is nothing we can do about it other than complain.
  1. mmoc44e5154f48's Avatar
    WTB level 16+ guild. Offering 100k gold (more for a higher level guild). You can clear out the guildbank before selling. Achievements not important. Members and name not important either, as I will be transfering and name changing. Serious replies only, whisper me.

    </sarcasm>
  1. mmoc2d15916f46's Avatar
    Guild RENAME...finally, yeah !!!

    BTW, how much?
  1. mmoc10930da336's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by LilSin View Post
    I can see the guild transfer going so horribly wrong.... Help!! Been hacked, my guild is gone! Along with out 500K golds, crafting mats gears..
    How exactly?

    If the guild Master and officers have authenticators and look after their computers, then everything is fine. If they don't, hackers can get all that without having to use the transfer thing..
  1. kushlol's Avatar
    I think this idea could be great but I think its about time blizzard reduced the prices of all paid services. We already pay a pretty hefty subscription so they need not milk us dry. All paid services should take at least a 30% drop in price.
  1. Buzzinjoe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Repellerar View Post
    Oh my bad, thought it was required. Oh wait it is required, the server transfers, name changes and in-game items are in fact core mechanics that change gameplay. Twist it how you will but it's still true. These services should be included for the price of our monthly fee. It's hardly justified by Blizzard, but there is nothing we can do about it other than complain.
    Mounts and pets don't change gameplay. Not a single MMO offers name/faction/realm changes for free. Those are not micro-transactions.

    You don't have to name change you can just reroll. You don't have to take your current character to another realm, you can just level a new one. You don't have to transfer your guild, you can just create a new one.

    They don't have to offer any of those services. Be glad they do.

    ---------- Post added 2011-03-24 at 04:33 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by kushlol View Post
    I think this idea could be great but I think its about time blizzard reduced the prices of all paid services. We already pay a pretty hefty subscription so they need not milk us dry. All paid services should take at least a 30% drop in price.
    15$ a month is no 'hefty fee'. I pay 50 bucks a month for my gym (it's a very nice gym). I buy a newspaper every morning for 1.50 bucks. And I get much less enjoyment out of that newspaper than I do out of a game.
  1. sdgrover91's Avatar
    For someone like myself and my wife. I believe this will be a great service. We transferred our main toons from a PVE server to a PVP server to raid with some RL friends during the last couple months of WotLK. Both toons are Day 1 toons having well over 500 days played on each toon. Since the release of Cata we have seen a dramatic drop in membership due to the lack of raid progression. I will not get into the reasons for that because they have been dragged through the mud on so many other threads it would be pointless to bring them up here. With the release of Rift we lost the three main officers and the GM. They turned the guild over to my and I would love to be able to transfer the guild, including bank, rep, and rewards to a PVE server. I would love to not loose another guild bank, this one with 7 tabs, to a server change as we already have 2 guilds with 6 tab banks on servers we no longer enjoy playing on.

    I think this is a great idea and look forward to the implementation of this on live servers.
  1. Kazlehoff's Avatar
    Gruid Transfer is a terrible idea. this is going to go SO SO BADLY.
  1. mmocd2c91edc49's Avatar
    The thing about every single item from their shop, is that it's vanity item. The thing about every paid service is that you essentially NEVER have to use it, if you dont want to.

    Dont make a big deal about this. It will help the guys willing to spent the bucks on changing server with their guilds, it will change NOTHING for the average person.

    Drama for drama's sake is so boring.
  1. Rolly's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fojos View Post
    They don't make close to hundreds of millions profit. You really don't know what you're talking about.
    Have a read http://investor.activision.com/reports.cfm those numbers you see, you know those ones that are in the thousands, each one of those represents a million dollars. So 1000 of those numbers equal 1000 million dollars and "HOly Cow" how much is a billion dollars, well there Junior, 1000 million equals 1 billion. And notice the name at the top, it's Activision/Blizzard, as in one company.

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