Looks like it takes something bad to get me writing. We’ve been on a raiding break for a while, I had an amazing time leveling an alt and not feeling pressured to raid, everything’s been quiet. I wasn’t even excited about Cataclysm, I was loving the changed world so much I didn’t want to go back to “serious” leveling. But it’s here and guildies’ excitement got to me too.

One of the best parts of Cataclysm was knowing that our collective efforts will make a difference. We’re a small guild and most of us are friends, so it’s not like I need a carrot to make them stick around, but I was looking forward to getting achievements together and leveling the guild. Seeing achievements pop up in guild chat, seeing our shammy get to 85, seeing our guild get to level 2 (then back to 1, then back to 2) felt so nice. It was us! Our guild was getting better! We could get to 85 and run heroics and raids and kill critters and get our guild leveled even faster!

Or not. Blizzard decided that XP from achievements was imbalanced, so they removed it completely. Er, what?

I was a bit confused on the subject until recently, so this is how it used to work:
* You did your thing, doing quests or dungeons, and the guild gained XP up to a cap. The cap is very low, making the pre-Cataclysm complaints (OMFG you’re killing small guilds!!!) worthless. We had maybe 5 people active on the first night, and around 10 on the second, and we hit the cap in no time.
* You gained guild achievements (e.g. doing heroics or raids in a guild group) and the guild earned extra XP, beyond the cap. This was removed.

The result? All guilds that have some active players will level to 25 on the same day, due to the “gated” progress. The argument, I think, is that it’s making it fair for small guilds, because the big ones would otherwise ding 25 in a few days.

So what? I’m in a small guild. We’re here because we want to be here. I don’t give a flying fuck if some 25-man guild gets the perks before us. Working together for our smaller goals felt amazing and Blizzard took it away. I’m not a whiner and I generally agree with Blizzard’s reasoning, but I simply can’t understand this one. Wasn’t it easier to just make the achievement gives significantly less XP? Even that small amount would still be an incentive.

If I knew I was contributing to the guild, I would gladly go clear Mount Hyjal or Scarlet Monastery. If the achievements are now just shiny numbers on a list, I am not even going to bother. I have all the personal achievements I wanted; if I don’t have something on my characters, it means I don’t care. Some people like to see achievements flashing just for the sake of it. I never got the point unless they showed something about skill (heroic achievements in ICC, for example), had a reward (Stinker!) or amused me in some way (To All the Squirrels I’ve Loved Before). Going to a level 70 raid with 8 other people from the guild, just for the sake of it, is less fun to me than leveling my non-heirloomed warrior who dies every 3 kobolds, and this killed a part of my Cataclysm enthusiam.

I don’t expect Blizzard to read my blog, but the thread on the official forums has some very articulate posters. I hope they listen to them.