World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion was a significant change for Azeroth and the people who live there, and the release of Cataclysm Classic gives players a chance to revisit the glory days of 14 years ago. While the most obvious changes to Cataclysm are the reimagined zones and new quests after Deathwing, the most significant is the overhaul of the player guilds system, which now has its own leveling system, perks, and guildwide achievements.

WoW Cataclysm Classic makes some changes to the guild perks and leveling system compared to the original version. Today we spoke to lead software engineer Nora Valletta and principal game designer Kris Zierhut to talk about why the team wanted to make the change.

They told us before the conversation that one of the main reasons was that the original guild system encouraged players to join super guilds, which actually went against the original spirit of the guild and needed to be urgently resolved.

From Leveling To Reputation

In the early days of World of Warcraft, players were advised to join a guild because the sense of community is a huge draw in MMORPG-style games. Recognizing this, Blizzard wanted to improve the game’s guilds system and introduced a leveling system for guilds to encourage players to join.

At first, it seemed like a good idea to allow players to level up a guild together to earn rewards, thereby strengthening the community. But this approach has led to the destruction of smaller guilds.

The leveling system for guilds encourages you to build a guild with numerous members, because the size of the guild does not change the experience rewards you can get. This means that a large guild will give you the same rewards as a small guild, but a small guild will be difficult to level up, and a large guild will be easy to fill up.

After the release, Nora said that she found that some players in small guilds would quit their guilds and join the large guilds to get more rewards. And those newly formed guilds could not find people to join. They were very sorry for the demise of these small guilds, which prompted them to want to change.

Nora sighed and told us that they knew very clearly that this was a problem for players and would bring some difficulties and unhappiness to players, so they couldn’t make the same mistake again.

With mounts, pets, and transmogrification appearances, World of Warcraft players go to great lengths to get them. But because some of these items are locked into a leveling system for guilds, it creates a lot of impersonal, large guilds. New players invite a lot of players to join for these rewards, which attracts more players with similar requirements.

So in WoW Cataclysm Classic, the leveling system for guilds was changed to a guild reputation system. Players can earn a reputation in a guild just like any faction in the game, and rewards are awarded based on reputation. This will not only allow smaller guilds to survive, but also prevent players from joining and leaving to retain their reputation.

Changes To Perks System

Guild perks are more valued by players than mounts, tabards, and pets. Likewise, guild perks are only available in large guilds. These perks can increase the speed of a player’s mounts, allow them to bank or send messages to members of their own guild as needed.

Zierhut told us that many perks are now granted to players immediately when they join any guild, and one of them is the removal of Cash Flow perk. In original Cataclysm, when you had Cash Flow, every time you defeated an enemy, you would receive an additional 10% of WOW Cataclysm Classic Gold, which would be automatically deposited into your guild bank.

This idealistic view does sound good, but some opportunistic players will take these extra rewards directly from the guild leader. Zierhut explained that the original intention of creating guilds was to be a place for communication, not this. The change they are making is to make guilds a means for teams to move towards one or more common goals.

In addition to the removal of Cash Flow perk, “Have Group, Will Travel” was also changed. This perk was also very bad in terms of player response, as it made summoning stones completely useless and would teleport the entire group to the location you needed.

This caused some players to be interrupted immediately while doing their own quests, interrupting their game progress. The perk was eventually removed from the WoW Cataclysm Classic world after one expansion, which was good news for many players.

Although some players may not be used to these changes, they should not feel pressured. The creative team has been working hard to make the most appropriate changes to the guild since the release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm Classic, and they also hope to see more posts on social media from players praising this change. Finally, I wish you have a merry game with them!