Guild advancement

Guild advancement was a feature which allowed guilds to level in a way similar to characters.

There were 25 levels for a guild to progress through. Experience towards level progression was gained through guild member participation in dungeon and raid boss kills, battleground victories, Arena victories, and profession skill-ups.

To qualify for guild XP, a raid or PvP group needed to be be composed of at least 80% guild members (with some exceptions, see exact numbers below). Participating in any of these activities also granted players reputation with the guild, which allowed them to purchase unlocked guild rewards like heirlooms, recipes, pets and mounts. Originally, there was also going to be a guild currency and a guild talent tree system, but they were simplified; guild talent trees became a set of linear guild perks without exclusive choices, and guild rewards are now purchased with gold instead of an additional currency type.

Earning guild experience

A guild was able to level up to level 25. Advancement in levels was done in a manner similar to player characters: a variety of tasks earned experience which counted toward advancing to the next level.

Activities which earned guild XP included:

• Boss kills in a raid or dungeon while in a guild group
• Rated Battleground or Arena wins while in a guild group
• Completing quests / daily quests that reward experience
• Completing Guild Challenges

Although present at launch, Blizzard removed the ability of guilds to gain Guild XP from completing achievements in a hotfix deployed soon after Cataclysm's release.

Raid and dungeon boss kills

Guild xp for boss kills was scaled on a few factors:

• Boss level
• Normal / Heroic (Heroic dungeons have a 1.5 multiplier on all guild experience earned.)
• Number of guild members present (more xp for raids, since they are limited to once a week)

Guild experience and reputation caps

During Cataclysm, caps on guild experience and reputation gains restricted the rate at which players could advance guild levels and their personal reputation with the guild. These caps were removed with the release of the Mists of Pandaria pre-patch.

The daily cap on guild experience was 7,807,000 XP, and was indicated on the guild's experience bar in the Guild window. The daily cap on guild XP was removed at guild level 20, so during the last five levels there was no limit on experience gains. Among other things, this allowed guilds to "race" to achieve  [Realm First! Guild Level 25] instead of being predetermined to all reach it on the same day, as they would have had they all been hitting the same daily cap through the final levels. See the table below for the time that was required for each guild level up to 20 (assuming the cap was hit each day).

The weekly cap on Guild Reputation per individual member was 4,375 rep. Thus it took approximately 9½ weeks in a guild to reach exalted, provided you had enough guild activity each week to reach the cap. The weekly cap reset along with Daily Quests: 3 AM server time on Tuesday Morning for US servers, and 3 AM server time Wednesday morning for EU servers.

Guild levels and perks

Main article: Guild perk

Membership in a guild grants several passive and active abilities known as "perks" that improve quality of life in various aspects of the game. Until the removal of guild advancement, these abilities were gained by leveling up the guild; all members received access to all abilities the guild had earned. Guild perks were a primary motivator in leveling up guilds as quickly as possible.

With the removal of guild levels, only six perks were retained, automatically granted to all members of all guilds: [Mass Resurrection], [Mobile Banking], [Mount Up], [Hasty Hearth], [The Quick and the Dead], and [Guild Mail].

This chart illustrates the progression of guild levels and their perk rewards before the system was removed, including how quickly guilds could expect to earn each ability by hitting the daily guild experience cap every day starting at Cataclysm's release.

Level	XP Required	Quests Needed (Post-5.0.4)	Days Needed (Pre 4.2.0)	First Possible Date to Get	Spell	Description
2	16,580k	277	3		[Fast Track] (Rank 1)	Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 5%.
3	18,240k	288	6	2010-12-11	[Mount Up]	Increases speed while mounted by 10%. Not active in Battlegrounds or Arenas.
4	19,900k	332	9	2010-12-14	[Mr. Popularity] (Rank 1)	Reputation gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 5%.
5	21,550k	360	13	2010-12-18	[Cash Flow] (Rank 1)	Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 5% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.
6	23,220k	387	16	2010-12-21	[Fast Track] (Rank 2)	Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 10%.
7	24,880k	415	20	2010-12-25	[Reinforce] (Rank 1)	Items take 10% less durability loss when you die.
8	26,530k	443	25	2010-12-30	[Hasty Hearth]	Reduces the cooldown on your Hearthstone by 15 minutes.
9	28,190k	470	29	2011-01-03	[Reinforce] (Rank 2)	Items take 20% less durability loss when you die.
10	29,850k	498	34	2011-01-08	[The Doctor Is In]	Increases healing received from bandages by 25%.
11	31,510k	526	39	2011-01-13	[Mobile Banking]	Summons your guild bank for 5 minutes. 3 second cast, 1 hr cooldown, must be Friendly with guild to use.
12	33,170k	553	44	2011-01-18	[Mr. Popularity] (Rank 2)	Reputation gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 10%.
13	34,820k	581	50	2011-01-24	[Honorable Mention] (Rank 1)	Increases Honor points gained by 5%.
14	36,490k	609	56	2011-01-30	[Working Overtime] (Rank 1)	Increases the chance to gain a skill increase on tradeskills by 10%.
15	38,140k	636	62	2011-02-05	[The Quick and the Dead]	Increases health and mana gained when resurrected by a guild member by 50% and increases movement speed while dead by 100%. Does not function in combat or while in a Battleground or Arena.
16	39,800k	664	68	2011-02-11	[Cash Flow] (Rank 2)	Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 10% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.
17	41,450k	691	75	2011-02-18	[Guild Mail]	In-game mail sent between guild members now arrives instantly.
18	43,120k	719	82	2011-02-25	[For Great Justice] (Rank 1)	Increases Justice points gained by 10%.
19	44,780k	750	89	2011-03-04	[Honorable Mention] (Rank 2)	Increases Honor points gained by 10%.
20	46,430k	774	96	2011-03-11	[For Great Justice] (Rank 2)	Increases Justice points gained by 20%.
21	48,090k	802	*	*	[Ride Like the Wind]	Increase flight path travel speed by 25%.
22	49,750k	830	*	*	[Working Overtime] (Rank 2)	Increases the chance to gain a skill increase on tradeskills by 20%.
23	51,410k	857	*	*	[Bountiful Bags]	Increases the quantity of materials gained from Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, and Disenchanting by 15%.
24	53,060k	885	*	*	[Bartering]	Reduces the price of items from all vendors by 10%.
25	54,730k	913	*	*	[Mass Resurrection]	Brings all dead party and raid members back to life with 35% health and 35% mana. A player may only be resurrected by this spell once every 10 minutes. Cannot be cast when in combat or while in a battleground or arena. 100 yd range, 10 sec cast.
Total	845,670k	14095

The daily experience cap was quickly patched to be removed at level 23, and later adjusted to level 20, then removed entirely in patch 5.0.4.

Guild items and guild reputation

Participating in various activities earns members Guild reputation. Members can buy special items (with gold) based on their current reputation level. Many vendor items require guild achievements to have been earned by the guild to be sold by its vendor at all. The ground mounts, heirlooms, 7th bank slot voucher, and  [Wrap of Unity] all used to have guild level requirements, but are now sold by all guilds immediately.

Guild achievements

Main article: Guild achievements

Guilds are able to gain achievements for killing bosses, obtaining a certain membership demographic, and other activities. Some achievements reflect achievements already available to players.

Warlords of Draenor

On 29 June 2014, Watcher announced that guild experience and leveling would be removed from the game with Warlords of Draenor, along with the [Cash Flow] guild perk. The following was posted in response to a tester inquiring about missing guild perks in the Warlords of Draenor beta:

Re: Missing Guild Perks? | 2014-06-29 15:42 |  Watcher

What you're seeing in the current build is a change that's mid-implementation. Since the introduction of the guild system in Cataclysm, the nature of guild leveling and guild perks has shifted from being a reward for dedication and collective effort, to effectively being a penalty and barrier to entry for new guilds. We've made it easier to level guilds over the years, allowing low-level quests to count fully towards guild experience, and removing weekly caps on progress. That helps ease the barriers, but it's more of a band-aid than a true solution to the underlying problem.

Our current plan for Warlords is to effectively remove guild leveling (you could also think of it as "all guilds are automatically level 25"). We originally came up with two dozen perks in order to offer something at every guild level, but without the continued need for that granularity, we can streamline the system a bit. Many perks can just be rolled into default behaviors, since a majority of players already had them and the world was designed and tuned around their existence: Flight path taxis can just inherently move 25% faster instead of requiring "Ride Like the Wind"; Honor rewards and item costs can be balanced as if you had "Honorable Mention"; and so forth. For most players, who are in max-level guilds, nothing should perceptibly change.

We still want to incentivize guild membership, aside from the social benefits, so we're keeping conveniences like faster mount speed, instant guild mail, Mass Resurrection, etc., as exclusive benefits to all guilded players. The guild achievement system, and unlocked items and other benefits through completion of guild achievements, will remain as-is. We'd like to emphasize that system a bit more as a yardstick for collective accomplishment, rather than guild level which primarily just reflects individual effort.

The Cash Flow perk is obviously popular, though in most guilds it actually contributes less gold to the guild bank than something like Guild Challenges, since it only applies to looted coins. However, it also fuels some degenerate player behavior: if you've made an alt lately, you've probably noticed that you can't go more than a minute or two without receiving a guild invite - typically from "leaders" who are looking to recruit armies of often-unwitting players to both level guilds for later sale, and to increase the amount of Cash Flow gold that is siphoned into coffers to which only they have access. It can be a meaningful amount of gold for one player's pockets, but for something like a raiding guild, Cash Flow gold barely makes a dent in something like total repair costs. We're removing the Cash Flow perk in Warlords.

We do recognize that it's essential for guilds to have ways of financing their costs, and we will offer alternative, and more lucrative, options for doing so in Warlords (for example, bringing back some Bind on Equip epic drops in raids).

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Patch changes

• Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14):
  • Guild experience and leveling has been removed, and all perks are earned by the guild immediately upon founding.
  • [Cash Flow] has been removed.
    

• Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28):
  • [Chug-A-Lug] (Rank 1) replaced by [The Doctor Is In].
  • [Chug-A-Lug] (Rank 2) replaced by [Working Overtime] (Rank 2).
  • [Happy Hour] replaced by [For Great Justice] Rank 2).
  • [Have Group, Will Travel] replaced by [Ride Like the Wind].
  • Daily Experience Cap removed.
  • Guild experience for quest completion has been changed from 25% of quest experience to a flat 60,000 for green or better quests, gray quests no longer reward experience.
  • Guild level cap was not and will not be raised in MoP
    

• Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28):
  • The daily guild experience cap has been increased by 25%.
  • The weekly guild reputation cap has been increased by 25%.
  • The guild experience cap is now removed at level 20, down from level 23.
    
• Patch 4.0.6 (2011-02-08): Once a guild hits level 23, the daily cap on experience gained is removed.
  
• Hotfix (2011-01-18): Guild experience daily resets should no longer sometimes fail to occur.
  
• Hotfix (2010-12-13): The guild experience gained from quests has been greatly reduced from 100% to 25%.
  
• Hotfix (2010-12-08): Guilds no longer receive guild experience when earning guild achievements.
  
• Patch 4.0.3a (2010-11-23): Added.
  

External links

FranksPlace.org WoW Patch 4.1 Guild Challenges

• WoW Insider's coverage of BlizzCon 2009
• Wowhead's information from a press event detailing changes to the system