As a regular reader of your blog and coldheat.de I find it funny, that Chris just posted an entry saying "It is really easy for guilds nowadays, to equip e.g. their MT's to the niveau of the ones already in the raid in about just a few weeks because of the different raiding instances on different ID timers. Players are more exchangeable than ever".

Now: Let's start the discussion!
 

I think the difference between the opinion on AFK Gamer and Coldheat is the one between guilds *willing* to equip recruits and theoretically *being able* to do so.

I remember some raiding guilds trying to encourage people to give more resources to the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj opening war effort by organizing some sort of lottery. The more you gave, the higher was your chance to win. And the top prize was a "guided tour through Molten Core", with the lucky winner receiving all the loot he could use.

Of course a guild which raids Molten Core regularly has no problems beating LBRS and UBRS often enough to get a recruit his Onyxia key. But most raiding guilds refuse to do that. They just put "Onyxia key" on the list of requirements for even applying to the guild, and let the candidate struggle for himself with some pickup groups to get his key, which is rather hard.
 

I don't see a problem here in that while green 60s can't join the most uber guild on the server, there will always be new guilds just starting to run UBRS and trying to get into MC that they CAN join.

There's not just two levels of guilds in WoW, there's a whole spectrum, and you work your way from one to the next, or you 'grow up' with a guild. In fact, that's probably the way you should do it, because you lack the skills to be MT in A'Q 40 if you have only run Strath dead, even if you somehow get handed good gear.

It's silly to think a newly minted 60 has a right to be mad if a seriously uber guild doesn't want to let him join and run him through 3 dozen runs to equip him - he wouldn't even be playing, he would just be getting gear-PL'ed.

Sammy
 

Smarter guilds (i.e. the ones you want to join) look for a few indications of quality: play skill, attitude and demeanor, and commitment. Reasons why 4/5ths of the apps to my guild are rejected:

1. Too many of a class in the guild. We will invite the person to join if that is the only issue, but the apping toon must be designated an alt, and the applicant must roll a new main and level the main up. Sounds harsh, but we don't want to reject good people just because of their class (good people are hard to find), and we don't want to upset current guildmates by recruiting too many of one class. We do have a pretty active alt guild (most of our officers can be found there on non-raid nights), so we offer the best of both worlds: a fast and fun leveling environment, support to get keys and attunements, and even occasional training nights if we think some people need to learn2play (regular sessions in Winterspring to teach tanks to tank, for instance).

2. Immaturity. We have a few teenagers in our guild, and they are very mature for their age. But most teen apps are rejected, because the app reads like they are looking to make the guild officers their surrogate parents. Needy people will find no home here.

3. Bad reputation. No exceptions. Want to reform? Find Jesus.

Granted, very few guilds are run this way. Our raid leader is tough during raids (but he doesn't raise his voice), and a really nice guy outside of them. With this structure, we have gone from wiping on trash in MC in late February to nuking Onyxia (one shotted her last night for the first time) as well as the first 6 MC bosses in about 3 1/2 hours last night.

Tobold, I wish you lived in US time, because you would love my guild - no drama, friendly and generous people, and 26 epics just last night.
 

I was a bit surprised when I saw the attunement material requirements. I'd thought (hoped?) that Blizzard had an inkling of what players anticipate with regards to things like attunement, grinding and reputation. Obviously not.

However, one point which no one has mentioned yet is that Naxrammas is going to be the hardest 40-man dungeon in the game when it goes live. If your guild isn't nearly through AQ40, you probably shouldn't bother with the attunement yet. (And remember that AQ40 is harder than BWL is harder than MC. So if you don't have MC on farm, forget BWL. And if you don't have BWL on farm, forget the middle-to-end of AQ40.) I believe the quote was something like:

"The first boss encounter in Naxrammas will be approximately on the same difficulty level as the twin emperors in AQ40."

There are hardcore raiding guilds on my server that only got passed the twin emperors within the past 1-1.5 months. (And we've had AQ40 open for a while.)

So even though the Nax attunement may look ugly, relatively few people will need it since the dungeon is going to be prohibitively difficult anyways. And those that do need it will probably be Revered with AD anyways.
 

Unless you happen to have chosen the unlikely combination of mining and enchanting as your professions, it isn't even technically possible to get these items yourself without using the auction house or guild bank.

I have to ask, if you're not moving into Naxx as a guild, why would you even want to get the attunement? You're right, there's virtually no way to solo the attunement, but then there's absolutely no reason to.
 

Oh, I don't plan to visit Naxxramas ever, I don't have the guild for it, and don't enjoy the playstyle leading there. I just commented that attunement by spending money is not very creative. I object to it out of pure game design reasons.
 

L'Emmerdeur said... "3. Bad reputation. No exceptions. Want to reform? Find Jesus." Very funny.

I agree that the gap is growing between casual and hardcore. Raiders are not replaceable unless a guild wants to spend siginificant amounts of time gear up players in addition the existing raid/farming time. And there is no guarantee that a player will even stay after you've spent your time getting them attuned and geared. Things come up and people to leave the game or decide to guild elsewhere.

Home-grown guilds are the best but what happens when the players have been on those toons for a year or more and are tired of being the MT, healer, decurser and banisher/taxi?

When Blizzard increases dungeon complexity and attunement requirements the widen the gap. I'm constantly amazed by the number of ppl in an RPG content to grind PVE dungeons for loot. Blizz had introduced a game crack like no other. And lets not get started on the guilds on PVP servers doing nothing but organized PVE!
 

I guess saying guilds could gear up new members really quick these days is just as correct, as saying the gap is enlarging soon. Guilds have to put effort into this, just as potential new members have to put effort in there application to meet requirements. Just like i wrote in my last entry, the playerbase is so huge, that guilds do not need to put effort into gearing up new applicants yet, but they could gear up a naked new applicant within 2 or 3 weeks to be effective in AQ/Naxx. Why dont they do this? Cause still a full Tier2 geared toon for most guilds means, this is a skilled dedicated player, wich is BS.

I will also say, that you can still ignore the "gap" from a gear perspective. Besides the warrior class and i mean the tanking ones, there is almost no class wich does not work in PvE at all without the proper items. This is one problem i did not mentioned yet. Cause items in WoW are so accessible, items already diminishing the "skill" argument. You have Ashkandi warriors, who dont know crap about tanking mechanics.

The few real hardcore guilds i know, do not even clear MC or Onyxia anymore. One single MC+Onyxia clear is like 30+ Items? With this stuff even a naked player could work in AQ/BWL or up. Yes i know there is the random class-only factor, but the generic Epics alone would be enough, and both of those events should take a experienced guild 5 hours at max. 5 hours to gear at least 2 players.

Unless raiding guilds spend a lot of effort to raise potential replacments, and I don't know any guild doing that, they are going to paint themselves into a corner.

This is a really neat statement. Right now we can watch this happening in Everquest as far as i know. Almost every top endgame guild is looking for new members and they slowly realize, that their requirements are illusionary today, so they will have to lower that and buff up new members on their own. WoW guilds will get into the same situation someday. Right now a single players value, even the most hardcore ones, is low. When this game sees its first big burnout, this will change.

To comment on the Naxx key quest: the quest itself is... well unspectacular. It is a classic grind, without a cockblock, wich is ok i guess. This will be a quest, many players wont even be affected by it yet. When this content is playable for the majority, things like the crystals and the orbs will be vendor trash. What i do not like about this quest, is the fact, that it uses a mechanic wich is... what 2 patches old? They introduced the crystals weeks ago, and already building endgame content around it.
 

I've started a guild and we r now after 1 year of play on the point that we have BWL on farm status.
I must say, I'm bored with the game to the max.
It's all grinding and grinding and then some more.
The challenges put in by Blizzard are an insult to the intellegence of the common folk even!.
I don't see why blizzard makes to skill lvl which players need to have individualy higher.
I understand it's hard to make something real challenging when 6,5 million people r trying to figure it out.
Then it won't be a challenge for long but plz raise the individual skill lvl needed by players in the high endgame raid instances.
Then guilds can see who r actually skilled players and who r 'gold buying, epic farming idiots'.
Then maybe a gap will appear between skilled players and not skilled players, which is a good gap and not a gap that isn't solvable.
(sorry for my english, hope the message gets through).

greetings Z.