Kulldam

First, a brief addendum to my previous post regarding Guild Experience & Reputation income rates, as Mumper from Blizzard was kind enough to reply to my post on the topic on the official forums:

Originally Posted by Kulldon

Mumper,

Would it be possible to get some sort of feedback on what *expected* Guild Reputation values players might see from completing Guild Achievements and the like (i.e. What sort of Guild Experience chunk will Guild Achievements, Guild Dungeons & Raids, and Guild BGs reward)?

As it stands now, after carefully tracking Guild Experience earnings while leveling up of ~13,274,000 earned Guild Experience, I gained a total of 885 Guild Reputation during that time, which divides up as 1 Guild Reputation = ~14,998 Earned Guild Experience. I'll safely assume the actual value is 15,000 Guild Exp per 1 Guild Rep, but suffice to say, at that conversion rate, assuming Guild Reputation levels (Neutral, Friendly, Honored, etc.) require the same values to raise as other factions, going from Neutral to Exalted with Guild Reputation will take the equivalent of 630,000,000 Earned Guild Experience for any given individual Guild Member. That's like the equivalent of having to complete 12,480 Daily Quests in Deepholm!

As has been stated before, we don't really have any indication at present what sort of Guild Experience (and therefore Guild Reputation) gains we'll see from things like Guild-Majority 5-man Runs/Raids/Guild Achievements, but unless they are significant boosts over the Guild Experience players see while questing, I can see it taking an astronomically long time for even an active player to reach the upper levels of Guild Reputation with his or her Guild.

Any specific detail would be much appreciated!

Originally Posted by Mumper

You are currently only earning guild rep from questing. Based on this, your rep gain speed will be slow since you are missing out on the other two ways to earn it. (rated BG's and boss kills) We just activated guild xp on dungeons so you should see the rate increase from that. You will see another increase once rated BG's are active. Guild achievements will not affect guild rep since the xp that you earn goes directly to the guild and not the players.

We are watching the rep gain rate both internally and on the beta and we will tune as necessary right up to launch. Guild rep gain is scaled based on the amount of time we think a player should need to invest in a guild to earn the rewards and contribute. It's not something that you can just "grind out" like a normal world faction.

Unfortunately he dodged part of the question by simply stating already known information (rep can be earned from rated BGs and dungeons) and didn't provide any specific information on expected values.

On the plus side, however, he did answer my question about Personal Guild Experience/Reputation gains from Guild Achievements, in that they went with Option A from my previous post, which is not surprising as I predicted that the most likely choice.

He also followed up the above post with a reply to Dialectic by adding a bit more information about how Guild Dungeon/Raid experience will work:

Originally Posted by Dialectic

I honestly don't know if this is how it already works, but it might be nice for guild rep from dungeons to be multiplied by the number of guild mates in the dungeon with you on a boss kill. This would greatly encourage people to queue with guildies, something that seems a little diminished since the dungeon finder was implemented.

Originally Posted by Mumper

This is exactly how it works. We give a bonus based on the number of players present.

I really dig this, because the only thing that makes running trivial 5-man content ad naseum actually slightly less terrible is being able to do so with 4 other friends/guildies. I like feeling that there is a logical step of "progression" for my character (and/or Guild in this case) that promotes me actively working toward something, and if grouping/raiding with Guildies more often than normal supports that goal, I'm all for it.

That said, I'm still skeptical about the actual specific numbers we're talking about here, but seeing as Mumper stated they finally implemented Guild Experience from boss kills this last build, hopefully I can get into a Guild Group and find out what those numbers are like, cause 630 million XP is still a shitton no matter how you slice it.

Shared Realm-First Achievements

Originally Posted by Blizzard

# Realm First! Nefarian - First guild on the realm to defeat Nefarian in Blackwing Descent on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.
# Realm First! Al'Akir - First guild on the realm to defeat Al'Akir in the Throne of the Four Winds on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.
# Realm First! Sinestra - First guild on the realm to defeat Sinestra in the Bastion of Twilight on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

They are available to both 10 and 25 player raids, whoever does it first.

So while it turns out 10-mans get an atta-boy with one hand by being able to actually attempt a realm-first achievement now, they simultaneously get a back-handed bitch slap with the other hand by turning the achievements into a single, shared competition between both raid-sizes.

Primarily, there are two main issues here, which stem from the conflict of interest both a 10-man and a 25-man guild will have when working toward a Realm First achievement.

Before I get into the primary conflicts, however, it is worth pointing out that many, many players bring up the ever-so-tired argument of "difficulty balance" between 10- and 25-man raids when talking about this shared realm-first achievement issue, and while I disagree with the majority of posters regarding the difficulty balance issue in upcoming Cataclysm raids, I don't want to rehash any of the points I've made in previous posts about it, so it should be stated for the record that the inherent issues with a single realm-first achievement being shared by both raid sizes are in no way related to raid difficulty.

Issue #1: Accessibility

Generally speaking, it is safe to assume that the overall roster size of a 25-man Guild will moderately or sometimes drastically surpass that of a 10-man Guild. Consequently, again ignoring the actual difficulty of the raid entirely, with a shared realm-first achievement, almost every 25-man Guild will be obligated, or at least compelled, to circumvent what might be a normal raiding schedule and/or roster for their 25-man raid to instead gather 10 players that are better geared and/or more readily available, to attempt the achievement earlier and perhaps even more often than their 25-man raid can.

This compulsion is further exacerbated by the fact that, if such a chunk of 10 players are able to gain even a single additional night of raiding against a particularly difficult boss or raid, that offers them a huge advantage of knowledge and experience toward accomplishing that realm-first achievement over other raids, especially those that choose to wait for their normal 25-man raid group.

This issue is further emphasized when discussing realm-first achievements for the first tier of raid content, as early in the expansion, when players are leveling and gearing up to be able to start raiding, it will be much faster for a 25-man Guild to find a group of 10 players who are leveled/geared enough to make attempts at said realm-first achievement than to do the same with the normal 25-man.

Now, this isn't to suggest that 25-man Guilds will not or should not be able to go into 10-man raids a week or two before the entirety of their raid force is ready for 25-mans and start learning the encounters -- obviously high-end Guilds have done such things in the past, even on alt characters if necessary, and will continue to do so, and if that is their thing, more power to them.

Instead I'm suggesting, especially in the raid environment of equality between raid sizes that Cataclysm is trying to implement, that 25-man Guilds should not feel obligated to downgrade to 10-man raids for the ability to stay competitive with their respective 25-man Guild competition on the server, which will undoubtedly feel the need to do the same and downgrade as well. This brings me to the second issue raised by this implementation.

Issue #2: Exclusivity

With a shared realm-first achievement system, rather than encouraging equality between 10- and 25-man Guilds, players will instead simply be encouraged to compete against Guilds that are not on the same level.

For example, on our particular server of Hyjal, there are a couple fairly high-end 25-man Guilds that typically compete with each other for Realm First achievements/progression in the past, and I have no doubt they will continue to do so come Cataclysm. However, in the same vein that a 25-man Guild doesn't want to be obligated to form and run a 10-man Raid for a chance at a realm-first achievement, a 10-man Guild should not feel obligated to compete against a (generally) much larger 25-man Guild.

Roster size plays a huge role in the overall skill and flexibility of a top-end raiding Guild, and consequently, most 25-man Guilds will have far more resources to draw from when forming and raiding, especially those that might typically compete for realm-first achievements. An active roster of 35-40+ people in a 25-man, for example, offers a great deal more flexibility in both raid makeup and raid schedule than an active roster of 15-20+ in a 10-man.

That said, I'm in no way suggesting that a 10-man Guild that pushes to be a "hardcore" Guild, but in the 10-man format, should not have competition from a similar 25-man Guild, or even similar 10-man Guilds. With normal achievements and bosses, I have no issue if a 10-man Guild has to get a particular achievement or boss down 2nd or 4th behind a more active 25-man Guild; in that situation, we're still able to achieve it and get credit.

However, the issue here is that a realm-first achievement is a very binary thing, where only the first Guild gets it, and all else are left out in the cold. Therefore, because of the typical differences between 10-man and 25-man Guild rosters, a shared realm-first achievement will cause a great deal of exclusivity issue.

Solution

The best solution is basically two-fold and both pieces are equally important:

• Realm-first achievements are not shared, but split into two separate but equal (in terms of reward; same title or mount or what not) versions of 10-man and 25-man.
• Realm-first achievements are exclusive by Guild tag, thus a Guild that achieves the 25-man version cannot also achieve the 10-man version and vice versa.

Those two alterations would solve the conflicts of interest of 25-man Guilds while also keeping the exclusivity issue in-check by separating the availability of realm-first achievements to both raid sizes.