Bind on Guild Recipes

| Thursday, January 21, 2010
In yesterday's thread comments the idea came up of patterns being bound to guilds rather than players. This has all sorts of implications.

Drop rate
Would it go up or down? I have no clue! It probably comes down to the intended level of accessibility and how Blizzard expects BoG recipes to change it. I imagine the drop rate would be lower since the schematic is effectively unlimited, being able to enable many crafters per guild. It might get dropped even further if Blizzard found that all guilds were commonly getting all schematics.

Who can get the crafted goods?
It isn't unlikely that guild schematics would only make BoG items. It would be similar to profession-specific BoPs: they're a bonus intended to be only for those which are in the profession/guild.

If the creations were BoE, then guilds might attempt to control their production in order to maximize profits or to reduce the gear available to competing guilds.

Guild control of crafting
Would this cause crafted goods to be more or less accessible? It could be that this causes a single drop to enable dozens of crafters. That would cause prices to drop as they compete. Or it could be that where before a crafter owned his schematics and could use them however he wished, that power would be gone. Guild control could have all sorts of effects depending on how the mechanic of guild crafting works.

The schematic could be learned by the guild, meaning that any person in the guild with the profession skill can make it. This gives the guild no control of crafting except to remove those who they don't want to craft anymore. That's not a very good level of control. Even worse, for the guild, is that it could be nearly impossible to spot offenses, to spot people breaking any rules the guild tries to make for crafting.

Alternatively the crafting could taught through a non-consumed BoG recipe. This allows the guild to control who learns it but nothing past that.

The item could not teach the craft, but instead only grant the ability. That would allow the guild to control the location of the item and therefore who can craft and when. Guilds might just stick them in the bank and let them be traded and and moved in and out as people want to craft. More restrictive guilds might have one person control access to the item, trading it only for individual crafts approved by the guild. This would be pretty overbearing and most likely any guild that tried this would collapse. With a possible exception of guilds created purely for crafting.


Crafting guilds
If crafting is done with the non-consumable, guild-bound item which grants crafting, then guilds could potentially form entirely for crafting. Players would pay to get into the guild; perhaps a monthly amount to stay in or they might only rent the BoG crafting. These fees might be used to pay for raid runs to farm the schematics within.

Depending on the rarity of the drops, we might see the rise of cartels as players use guilds to monitor and control the crafting of others. Crafting alts will not be in the main's guild for familiarity but instead in the crafting guild for profit.

Are BoG recipes a step backward?
Dungeon finder helps to separate the guild from small group PvE. It makes it so guilds are not required for readily available heroics. This means guilds can exist more out of social connection, rather than the necessities of game mechanics. Presumably this would mean tighter-knit guilds. BoG recipes might reverse this. The low drop rate and guild necessity would tie people to guilds again, this time for crafting.

3 comments:

Ateve said...

One aspect that makes a big difference is how are the patterns obtained, is it by the Uld/TOC random drop, or the ICC you pay a (currently) significant cost.

A rare random pattern can be a significant source of income for a guild, especially if there is someway to restrict who in the guild can use it (similar to how you can set you can repair from the guild bank). Interactions between guilds then become important if only one group has the pattern (Tanking weapon enchants from Uld is a good example, or the AQ enchants). If anyone in the guild can use the pattern you could possibly see one guild selling a membership slot to a crafting alt from another guild to access the pattern.

If the patterns are perchasable (but expensive), then the guild invests in them, but availabilty can drive down prices. This is where you get the formation of crafting guilds, where there isn't alot of need for a guild to buy a pattern for one or two ppl when you know there is a collective that you can go to that will be able to any crafted gear.

Adgamorix said...

If I remember correctly from Blizzcon, guilds will have options for things like this - but it's part of the guild points.

For example you could spec into a mass rez (for the guild) to speed up wipe recovery - mass summons (like the instant teleport from LFG), etc. Other trees included things like more XP from kills, etc - so guilds that were focused on raiding would have certain points they focused on, and social guilds would have others.

In the end it sounds like they are really trying to reduce the amount of guild hopping, and help guilds become more of a permanent thing instead of the name of the week.

Klepsacovic said...

@Ateve: I'd not even thought about the method of obtaining the patterns. That's a whole lot more to consider.

@Adgamorix: That sounds great.

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