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World of Warcraft: Guild Relations Program Announced
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Blizzard has announced the launch of the World of Warcraft Guild Relations program, a program designed to strengthen relations between guild communities and WoW developers, while providing other benefits to participating guilds.
We're pleased to announce the official launch of the Guild Relations Program. The primary goal of this program is to strengthen our interaction with World of Warcraft guilds and also strengthen the interaction of guilds among each other.
The inaugural members of the Guild Relations Program are:Additional details concerning this new program, including what your guild can do to become a member, can be found on the Guild Relations Program main page. If you haven't done so already, you can check out the Guild Relations forum, which is a great place to discuss the game and interact with members of the program.
- Sleeper Cartel
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- Blackrock Legends
- Exanimus
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Read more here.
Comments
With their current crop of Everquest ex's as developers, Blizzard will continue to churn out more Guild-centric content and further alienate other customers who are silly enough to keep paying for development of content that they will never see.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Just further proof of how clueless and absolutely despicable Blizzard is. It's utterly amazing how the game concept at the beginning was so very casual and dead set against raiding has come full circle and has fully embraced the elitist attitude. I used to think of Blizzard as an honorable company, now they are nothing more than hardcore pricks who laugh in the face of antagonizing the huge casual player base that plays their game.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
I can understand the focus on guilds, though I personally am not a member of a large guild.
From a development perspective, Guild-centric and other multi-player additions just make more sense than focusing on solo content. For example, lets say Blizzard takes the time to develop and realease a set of new soloable regions in the game. Players will grind through those areas and dry up all the quest opportunities in far less time than it took to develop it. At that point, for a player who has gone though the region, the region might as well not exist any more -- there's nothing for the player to do.
However, if the developers took that same development time to create multiplayer / guild content, it remains a viable activity forever. Granted, a player may become bored with a particular multiplayer activity after a short time, but it remains active content for the player if he decides to come back to it later -- which is more than can be said for solo content.
So when it comes down to it, Blizzard simply gets more bang for their development buck with multiplayer / guild-centric releases. That said, I hope that they do not completely neglect solo content. I'm sure a large portion of their player base spends significant time soloing. It would be nice to see the addition of solo and small-party instances. Yes, I know that you can solo lower-level instances at a higher character level, but the drops are completely level inappropriate by then.
Overall, I guess I support the active addition of guild-based releases, but Blizzard needs to give some love to the multitude of soloers soon as well.
To the above posters. WoW is an MMORPG. That's right, the second M stands for MULTI PLAYER. If all you want is solo content go play your console. To think Blizzard should not focus on guilds is ridiculous.
Also, I really think people are reading more into this. It just shows how some people have the "world revolves around me attitude".
Just because you're NOT in a guild doesn't mean you don't enjoy group content, you can be in a guild and mostly solo or be on your own and mostly group with various friends from various guilds. Its not fun to have to live and play a game under someone elses rules and playstyles and thats how most WoW guilds in my experience play. While I like to group I dont like the idea of how WoW style guilds are run in most cases. Only strengthing their relationships with guilds is further proof that if you want to enjoy endgame you have to live under a set of tyrants rules in order enjoy anything. That you have to spend countless runs on an area just to build up rep in your own guild to be eligible to maybe see some payback for your effort. Ultimately their guild and gear centric tactics pushed me away from WoW (though I still love blizzard i just hate their mmo). I enjoy being able to pick up a group or just make a group with friends and enjoy content but the idea that all 'epic/raid' style quests have to be done by large groups (which know usually means a guild) is utterly ridiculous, if everyone was given a fair shot or fairly rewarded at the end of raids some of the uber guild reliance would finally die off.
I've never had to rely only on a guild for Raids and larger quests in DDO. DDO's proven that smaller scaled groups for epic/raid (12 man groups in ddo) style content works and it promotes more community between guilds and single players than WoW's guild centric everyone gets screwed if they're on their own tactics.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't have some relationship with guilds in order to perhaps add something more to the guild system like a real way to rank guilds or build up some sort of world / guild relationship like EQ2 guilds work but at the same time they haven't even attempted to make it sound like its ok to be an individual. Individualism is important to me, being in a guild just means your a cog. It doesn't how ever mean you only want to solo, that is a huge misconception. I always prefer to stay out of guilds but make good relations with just about anyone I meet so that I dont have a hard time getting into groups. The few times in my history I've joined a guild is usually due to my friends either running the guild or the guild is rather relaxed and just a way to easily make a group when needed. The huge infrastructure guilds just dont cater to the type of playstyle that me and alot of others have.
From reading their website this program should be open to all players. The requirements they have for reconginition are things single players are more than able to do on their own. It astounds me that this option is only available to guilds.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
@ elvenangel
Good point that the issues of guild support versus multiplayer support are two different topics. I admit I tend to lump them together in my own mind. I guess the main reason I do so is because of my experience with pick-up groups. The vast majority of my PuG experiences have been in the frustrating-to-maddening range. For the most part, I would rather skip multiplayer content such as raids, rather than put up with a PuG.
I hate to say this, but this is the kind of thing that severely hurt Everquest II. I know they meant it to be a good thing, but in the end, they mostly listened to the voices in the biggest guilds and they tend to whine and drown out the voices of the majority of the game players, which is a shame.
Blizzard - damned if you do damned if you dont.
Haters bang on about blizzard not listening to thier players when developing content.. then Blizzard set up a program to get ideas from their most active community members (and like it or not those are the people in guilds - guilds typicaly experience all aspect of the game unlike the solo player) and the haters still persist with their childish rants.
As I touched on above Blizzard wants guilds because they are mini communities within themselves... bouncing ideas amoung a group of friends is better than amoung a group a strangers.... it does not mean that Blizzard will just focus on RAID ideas.
I am a bit different than you/many I guess. Guild grouping FOR ME in MOST MMO's has proven to be boring about 89% of the time. Why? Not really sure, but I will give it a shot at explaining. Goes something like this: While grouping with guild members is great I also realize that it gets boring because our tactics are known and it seems a bit repetitive. I like building relationships guild wise to make it easier to group, but I also like PuGing to meet new people.
PuGing allows me to experience that fear factor threat of losing. Makes me work harder I guess. Being in guild groups you pretty much know what's going to happen and has no mystery to it. PuGing to me makes that dungeon or quest feel that much more different each time. Gives me a tiny adrenaline rush to think that this moment could be the moment we wipe. I get that anyways while being in a group with guild members, but it's that much more powerful with people I know nothing about.
Not really certain this has anything to do with content being put into the game. Seems to me this is more about guild forum participation and what can be done to enhance guild participation. Maybe special treatment will come along for the individual type players also in the future.
I certainly don't have a problem with Blizzard soliciting information from the player base. I think the reservations being expressed on this thread center around whether the gathered information will be representative of the "average" player, and thus present Blizzard with an accurate and balanced view of the needs of their player base as a whole.
In the description of the Guild Relations Program, Blizzards states that member guilds will be given opportunities to more directly impact the course of the game -- such as private chats with the game design team, and invitations to closed beta-testing sessions.
The vast majority of WoW players do not participate in guilds that are high-profile enough to warrant inclusion into Blizzard's Guild Relations Program. This means that the opinions of the minority of selected guilds will impact the game experience of the majority. So it seems natural to ponder what the long-term outcome will be if the opinions of the minority are not representative of the will of the player base as a whole.
I understand that Blizzard isn't planning on taking marching orders from the elite guilds to the exclusion of all others, but the fact that they have announced their intentions to give more weight to the opinions of a small minority is concerning to some of us.
I certainly don't have a problem with Blizzard soliciting information from the player base. I think the reservations being expressed on this thread center around whether the gathered information will be representative of the "average" player, and thus present Blizzard with an accurate and balanced view of the needs of their player base as a whole.
In the description of the Guild Relations Program, Blizzards states that member guilds will be given opportunities to more directly impact the course of the game -- such as private chats with the game design team, and invitations to closed beta-testing sessions.
The vast majority of WoW players do not participate in guilds that are high-profile enough to warrant inclusion into Blizzard's Guild Relations Program. This means that the opinions of the minority of selected guilds will impact the game experience of the majority. So it seems natural to ponder what the long-term outcome will be if the opinions of the minority are not representative of the will of the player base as a whole.
I understand that Blizzard isn't planning on taking marching orders from the elite guilds to the exclusion of all others, but the fact that they have announced their intentions to give more weight to the opinions of a small minority is concerning to some of us.
Thank you for stating what I attempted to state, but apparently screwed up saying
Oh great they are going to get feedback from the raiding guilds, as if they weren't already. This will further move the game from the major portion of their playerbase.
Large guilds have different needs than the majority of players. Most players are not in large guilds.
Get a clue Blizzard!
SOoooo... did anyone else think that the 'rewards' were kinda lame for the work required to get into this 'Select Group' ?
Here's how I read the page they posted:
"Ok if you will Create Movies for us - for free
and
Fan Fiction for us -for free
and
Guides for us, lots of good high quailty guides ya! erm.. for Free
oh ya, and participate in forum discusions alot to generate more interest in our game n stuff... (for free,)
here is what you get in return:
Beta invites where you can help up test our game to make it better - oh and this isn't really exclusive...lots of other folks will get Beta invites too...this DOES better your odds though... oh and other than your monthly subscription, you don't have to pay us a thing to test our new designs out.. that we are still working on... that you will esintialy be helping us work on... ahem.
AND
Private discussions with the Devs!@ where we can brain drain you n find out what will help us make the game more fun / addictive so that we can emplement those things in the game and get lots more folks like you payin and playin our game - and guess what you don't even have to pay us anything to bask in the glow of our presence while you get to give us your feed back! aint that swell?
And
hm... that's about it - but reading back over the list... it's not really much incentive yet so we will leave the option open in case we need to offer something 'real' to you guys to get you to help us...
OH WAIT! how about this!
- We'll make up a web page that lists your guild on it so that the whole world can see that we duped Y'all into working for us for free! won't that be special...
---
OK /sarcasam off.
I DO see the benifit of getting a chance as a player to help develop the game... I just get a little put out to see the 'SPIN' dropped on this - I mean lets be honest, Blizard is asking for help from the Guild community to make the game better - that's great! But to try to make it seem like some great Honor that you have to Earn?
(apperently my Sarcasm flag went active about here again.... hope you enjoyed the one spot of honest comentery... I should never type on forums when I'm tired...)
Popycock I say! that's just Hog Wash! They should be lavishing Uber ingame cosmetic enhancements on those that get selected at the least!
I want a Flag that I can Raise above my head that proclaims loudly to the rest of the lowly non worthy players of the under world of warcraft lets just call them 'the masses' for short - this Flag should have a Brilliant Symbol on it, and a tool tip that explains that I am a part of the Elite Secret Society that helps to shape the Very FABRIC of the world that they are allowed, (by my will and my Developer Overlords alone,) to Exist in. - and that's just a the start! In Game Gold is always nice - Free Play time! now were talking! Give my guild Credits on the next expansion disk! YA BAYBE E YA! I'm on a Roll!
- hmmm... that little paragraph in there of non sarcasm kind of says every thing I wanted to say without using all those lines of text around it... I should just delete every thing but the summary... naw - mayne some one will find humor in it. I'll just re-post it as the closeing statement...
"I DO see the benifit of getting a chance as a player to help develop the game... I just get a little put out to see the 'SPIN' dropped on this - I mean lets be honest, Blizard is asking for help from the Guild community to make the game better - that's great! But to try to make it seem like some great Honor that you have to Earn? That is Not such a great Idea."
Thank you,
zWolf -out.