The recent news from Blizzard about the increased importance of guilds in came has bought some other great new features to the forefront.

For me this has been one area of WoW progression that has been lacking over the years. It’s supposed to be a social game after all.

It’s pretty fundamental. It’s a massive overhaul in the way guilds work and the whole dynamic of social play. Though it’s too early to be certain, it looks like very good news indeed.

On logging in after patch 4.0, the first thing you might notice is the new guild GUI. The old style guild communication is gone; this is a whole new system. A screen showing your guild achievements through the various instances is displayed, along with the new achievement point total. Yes guilds now have guild achievement points.

Guilds such as WoW Relentless and WoW Defiance will start to see the legendaries that they have managed to achieve are now displayed prominently in their guild tab, along with a guild news ticker (an in guild CSS feed) that will show all member the results of raids and events. Right down to individual loots and level ups.

I don’t know about your guild, but in mine we have a small guild tax after each raid. It goes in the guild bank and is used for lower level members to get repairs or buy potions. It’s a fair system, but it’s still irksome. Well, know that will change. Guild talent points can be spent on ”loot bonus” that will invisibly add a certain percentage to anything you loot, but transfer this extra straight to the guild bank.

The way guilds deal with professions is also due to change. Every member will have a permanent link to their profession in the guild tab for all other members to see (and link to if needed). No more shouts and whispers ”Can someone link me …” It will all be there.

Guilds will even get achievements for progressing through professions including a grand achievement for having all professions maxxed out within the guild. Blizzard are taking social gaming and professions seriously. This has to be good news if WoW’s ascent is to continue. These issues were top of my list of things that needed careful thought, and it’s great to see that Blizzard are taking some real steps here.

So love all round for guilds here.

To see the Blizzcon 2009 video on this topic and add to the debate go to The Warcraft Blog. For the best gold guide currently available visit The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide