Wargaming products and unified clans – good idea?

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

when asking about the FTR QA3, an interesting topic came up. Unified clans in Wargaming products – that is, all Wargaming products having unified clans. In effect, a clan of 300 people could have 100 tankers, 100 pilots and 100 warship captains – well, at least something like that. Is it actually a good idea?

Well, at first it seemed like a no-brainer. Sure – it’s great to have everyone playing under “one roof”, regardless of the product. With the new Chat 2.0, WoT players will be able to talk to people playing WoWp and vice versa, so that’s cool too. But then I remembered my raiding days.

For those who don’t know, I used to play World of Warcraft. Hardcore. Fun fact: I think I know Jingles from back then, if it is the same Jingles, then we played on the same server, he was an Alliance celebrity back then, I was just a regular Horde “grunt”. Could be another Jingles, but I think it’s the same guy. Anyway. If you never played WoW, let me explain what I mean:

In PvE, there were cases of massive amounts of players getting together (“raids”) to take down enemy NPC’s (“bosses”). For such a raid (in those hardcore times), a leader had to raise 40 people (of a specific setup, eg. there had to be like 4 “tanks”, some healers, rest was DPS), organize them into one group and then command all of them to do exactly what was needed in order to win. I am sure you can see the parallels between raiding and clanwars now. This raid organization (“raid leading”, the person was referred to as RL or “raid leader”) took an enormous effort – and I mean that. As a result, almost all good raid leaders had very little life besides the game, or were borderline psychotic. Sometimes both. The famous “Onyxia raid” video is a prime example (the guy starts raging about halfway into the video). And this is not an extreme case, I played under one such guy too.

 

 

Anyway, I’m getting to the point already. A part of raid leader’s job was to organize the group before the raid. That was a very nasty and tedious process (mostly because unless you were in one of the top 3 or so guilds on the server, you had constant problems finding decent tanks, healers and such, resulting in many good raid leaders being also main tanks). So, you’re a raid leader, you’re putting together a group, you have 60 people available, you need 40, you need last few spots, you keep asking in your guild – and what you get is “fuck nah man I am casual”. Even classleaders were driven crazy by this crap, reducing the overall morale in the guild (nothing worse than having 38 people idling in Orgrimmar, while you look for two more healers, two healers are online, but both say they are casual and don’t want to raid) – the raid leader starts raging, people get guildkicked etc. Not a positive thing.

Back to unified Wargaming accounts: this is exactly the thing that is the problem with unified accounts. Let’s say you want to build a successful team for Company battles. From what I’ve seen, it’s much like raiding: you need to be hardcore, you need to know what you are doing, but you also need to have decent pool of recruits. So, imagine your team is almost – all you need are two more decent heavies. You have enough people online, so you ask in clanchat. Noone answers. So you start asking people individually. And following happens:

You: “Hey man, we need two more guys for company, come on”
He: “Dude, I’m playing Warplanes – see that little icon? Warplane player”
You: “But you played World of Tanks a month ago! I know you have a T57!
He: “World of Warplanes player now! Sod off.”

I believe you see my point. This will not be an issue for the top 50 big Clanwars clans – they won’t have problem with this, since people join them to go hardcore. In WoW parallel, the best guilds also got rid of lazy ass “reservists” very quickly. But it might kill a clan that is not yet big, but its core wants to go more competitive. It will give players a good and quick excuse not to participate in clan activities – you’ll simply say you’re a WoWp player now.

How do I know this will happen? Because that’s exactly what happened in World of Warcraft with mid-tier guilds, that tried to raid. Even if you try something easier for starters than going straight to the difficult raids, what you had was a core of players willing to go hardcore and then a bunch of casuals that raided when they were in the mood (and then a bunch of people who showed every now and then, completely casual). Whenever a guild created a “good excuse” to get out of raiding within one guild (for example a rank of “reservist”), people who actually WANTED to raid, but only (for example) on some bosses to get the loot they wanted asked to be transferred to reserve and whenever they were needed (and mid-tier guilds never had that many people to spare, so they were – just like mid-tier clans don’t generally have people to spare when it comes to companies) they just went like “aw man, I’m reserve, can’t you see?” – so the obvious solution was to create the (usually clumsy) DKP systems (pointless in WoT I think) or (very common) for big guilds to create reservist sub-guilds. This caused another unwanted effect that the reservists (who – being casual – usually formed the “chatty guildchat core” of the guild, making the guild chat live with jokes and such) were moved somewhere else and the guild sort of “lost its soul”, but that’s a story for another time.

Solution

So, if I was to conclude this entire line of thought, I think just unifying the clans with players from all games in them is in best case pointless, in worst case counterproductive for clans, that want to go “hardcore”, but are facing personell issues. However, what COULD be done (and what I think is a better solution) would be to create separate clans under all three games and at the same to allow their unification under some sort of social superstructure (let’s call it “army”).

An “army” would be a “superclan”, consisting of 2 to n (n being the number of WG products unified in the “army” system) clans with common gold “army” treasury (in case clanwars are unified) and common chat system (turned on by default, just like when you are in a clan now and its window positioned to the left of the regular clan chat window, so it gets instinctively used more than the regular clanchat). Earlier I thought it would be actually okay to unify the clans despite all that and separating them internally into “divisions”, based on what division that respective player wants to be in – “air division”, “land division” and “sea division”, but that would cause some confusion with the current division system (let’s say clan CSA-3 is a “CSA division” – so if we talk about CSA-3 division, are we talking about CSA-3 clan being a division of CSA, or about some internal CSA-3 division, like the “air division of CSA-3″?).

Furthermore, the Army system would have one more advantage: the clans in one army could have different names. So, if we have a unified clan system, what we would get would be, as an example: one clan called “British Tank Corps”, that gets unified and you will get British Tank Corps – Air Division for WoWp. That’s retarded.

On the other hand, in the “army system”, you could have a “superstructure” called “British Army”, with clans “British Tank Corps” (WoT), “Royal Air Force” (WoWp) and Royal Fleet (WoWs). You get my drift. So yea, that’s just an idea.

God this got long. Thanks for reading.

65 thoughts on “Wargaming products and unified clans – good idea?”

  2. I guess you are right. Though I would make the armies have unlimited, or higher cap than 3 (1 tank clan, 1 plane clan & 1 ship clan) to allow creation of bigger alliances than that.

      • Not really. Look at the cluster clans – above mentioned CSA, UNICA community, EXNOM/EXN0M duo, MOOSE/M00SE, BIA, etc. It would be borderline stupid and inconveniet for them to create several armies instead of just one. It also reduces the need to raise clan cap in case bigger maps with higher amount of players come and thus it would still allow for the reserve/training sub-clans to be separated from the main/hardcore clan(s).

    • No. There is a reason the current clans have limited members. Game-wise it’s not good to have a few “superclans”, it reduces the chance of smaller clans appearing in Clanwars. It is true that current big clans have their own divisions (CSA-1 CSA-2 etc etc.), but as these are effectively separate clans and there is no ingame means of control for the leader of the entire clan to manage its divisions forcibly, splits happen, divisions tear away and ho solo etc.

      • In the US-server there are VERY succesful “clan franchises” which comprise of clan-N plus associated clans(f.e.: the burning legion, comprised of EIGHT clans and their respective divisions), some of them with +400 members and only some division being casual, the rest operate as a well-oiled war-machine with the same goal, no rift, no splits and they can control large parts of the map easily.
        int he RU server you have the RED clusterfuck as a prime example

        • Splits will happen eventually, it is human nature to want more – and so do the individual division leaders. If I recall correctly (and feel free to correct me), CSA was also pretty monolithic at one point, but several divisions tore away in the end.

          • but it didn’t happen because people were in different in-game clans.
            technical side of having multiple in-game clans is not so problematic.

            They happen because people like to split, but clans that were only 1 in-game clan are also splitting.
            Multiclans are of course more likely to split, because the rifts inside the clan are a big deeper, there is more strong personalities available and more disagreements about important clan matters.

        • I’m a member to the Relic community on the NA server. I love being in a clan community that has 400+ members. It makes it so easy to find people to platoon with.

      • You forget that the clan cap may be raised eventually if the bigger maps appear. You may argue that appearance of them will pretty much counterbalance this raise, but I doubt all clanwars maps will be changed. Also, randoms, companies, etc. will still have the smaller maps as well.

        Higher clan cap means that some would be united and thus also creating superclans, but without a way for subdivision to tear away. If they were united in armies, they could still leave because they would still be separate clans.

      • Wow thats actualy a very good argument. I used to think over-farming and closed dungeon type raids killed Lineage 2, but when I think about it now the more important reason was creation of huge, hard to manage clans (that eventualy went limp/inert) that merged into superalliances that made servers two-sided at best, because there just werent enough hardcore players for third side to be competetive.

        I remember at first one skilled, coordinated and geared party (9 people) could have been force to be reckoned with, 2 parties like that were starting to be strategically dangerous in castle siege/mass pvp. Then, when I was quitting, 80 people (at least) blobs were needed to accomplish anything.

        Any Lineage 2 veterans? :D

      • oh my oh my

        Please Frank, you repeated many times you have nothing to do with clans, and maybe better – let it stay that way.

        1. As long as there is a limit on tokens, the number of players in the clan is not important.
        If there would be limit of 100 tokens, then it is better to have 2 clans with 60 active people (and some non playing “tokens” then 1 clan with 120 people anyway.
        2. It’s realy easy to control technically many clans at the same time. What creates a clan is a common teamspeak server, not common in-game tag.
        What you cannot control is community – people will always be making their own cirles within circles and that’s where splits come from.
        3. you are using a parallel which is not really substantiated. WoWp and WoT are supposed to be played moreless simultaneously. You will have some WoT only players, WoWp only players and those who play both.
        If CW/any other endgame would be separate, then having different clans may be of some use. But CW are supposed to be connected, that you need to win aerial battle to be able to use some bonus in ground battle.
        In that case, having 300 people (still limited to tokens) in 1 clan is way easier to manage then being forced to constantly switch from clan to clan.

        Not everything that worked for WoW will be the same for WoT.

  3. Lol, I used to work under this kind of person in a company. (little life and borderlin psycothic CEO)

      • That’s not true, EmperorSafirius. I played Star Trek Online back when it was subscription model and the playerbase there was probably the friendliest I’ve ever seen in a game. Same goes for Star Wars Online, I tried it and the playerbase was fine.

        • Very nicle explained about WoW raids and guild, thats exactly how it happened.
          Why did u quit WoW? I quitted because i didnt like pandaria and because of emerging free mmorpg competition.

          • That’s actually a really complicated question, that I can’t answer without telling a lot about my past life, which I don’t want to, sorry. But a part of it was the fact I didn’t like where the game was going.

        • Hmm, ye, I heard about Star Wars Galaxies, people loved it untill it got the option that you could create a jedi or sith from the start. And Star Trek, I only casually played when it got F2P :P

      • This why I don’t like WoT community, top players are statpadders, very arrogant and just raging. They act like they life depend on the game…. There are exceptions of course, but when i play some random battles, there are always rageing somebody, and it is very boring. I would like see switching off chat in game… -.-”

  4. Oh how i remember the good times in WOW…stopped playing a little after mists of pandaria came out, it has become to easy to play, no more hard tactics for raids, full of players that bought accounts…
    I also dont think that making a common chat with WoWp and WoWs is a good idea. Just imagine the amount of troll in chat :))

    • The tactics in MoP were more difficult than in Cata and in Cata were more difficult than in WotLK. You just had to play real raids and not LFR.

  5. I see it differently; there will be (regular) clans with 140 “tankers”, of which perhaps 80 will be active, the rest “reservist” as you call them. Clans will get more people to have all chips possible, i.e. 100 and continue to play with those active eSports, CWs, etc.

  6. Well you point out some valid stuff but at the same time some of your reasoning is based on early assumptions of stuff we don’t know how they will be implemented, to name some:
    1) we don’t know if you’re going to have a filter in each game to show only online people for *THAT* game, or maybe separate “clan chat” windows, one for the game itself, one for the “unified global clan”, (or all in one window with icons like you’ve said, that would be the worst option) it all depends on how WG will implement it…
    2) i’m hoping for the unified clan system, it will make easier to expand a powerhouse to the other games and maintain the reputation (albeit my opinion is biased as i’m in one of those powerhouse clans that only have active players and there’s absolutely no problems getting more than enough people for team/cw/TCs), otherwise you’re open for conflicts of interest like being in rival clans for different games(big NO NO).
    3) about the naming: that’s your problem for picking some “tank” name for your clan, i don’t see it as an issue, pick something general. As a somewhat “general” rule(take it as it is) i’ve observed that ALL the top 10 clans(some old, some new) don’t have “ridiculous” tank/division-specific names and are general/nonsensical/fun stuff (ex: my little ponies, havok, angels of death, simp, red sky, forge, guerrillas, lobsters, crabron, Peoples Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Action Committeh, Ottercratic Teutonic Theocrats of the Eternal Reich) or have some small mention in the description but not the name itself(RELIC armored).
    Usually the clans with “N-number armored cavalry divisionn HOORAHH SEMPER FI” and crap like that are very casual or very bad or both

    • 1) Filter is a filter. World of Warcraft also had a filter not showing reservists. Didn’t help any. People simply percieve reservists as dead weight.
      2) Same could be said for operating under an “Army name” – if the Army is called “Disciples of Steel” for example, the same name could be used for other games
      3) Yes, it is “my problem”, but the biggest clans were founded early on, when WoWp was not even an idea yet. Some of the “tank” names are very old. You have to work with current status quo, not just theoretically. All those clans would have to spend gold to rename, if they didn’t want a “tank” name in WoWp, which I percieve as unfair.

      • Several of the clans i’ve named are the current top, old clans with “tank” names are not competitive -at least empirically-.
        Top clans also would have no problems spending a measly 2K gold to rename (seeing as they pull 40/50K gold per week and their players usually compete in pro toruneys with cash prizes)

  7. Silent, I can tell you do not take part in Clan Wars. Setting up a raid in Everquest or WoW was kids-play compared to you trying to get four (and I am sure some clans have even more) teams at the same time for Clan Wars matches. That means 60 players, who have to be fit into correct teams with correct tank and who also are familiar with the tactics the team-leader intends to use.

    Also, I am pretty sure all clans use some sort of activity reward system (“DKP” as they were called in Everquest, and later in WoW etc) by which Clan Wars gold is handed out to members (there are multiple variations, in some clans you get paid per match you play, in some clans per evening you have signed on, in some clans you get a set amount if you have taken part in “enough” matches per week/mont, in some clans combinations of these, etc). I have heard of clans who also pay for participiation in company matches or 7/42 matches.

    In essence, nothing new under the sun. What the combined chat means is that you can chat with friends in other WG games, but it won’t make it any harder (or easier) to set up CW, company or 7/42 matches.

    • Ever tried to put together a team for 40 man Blackwing Lair in vanilla WoW? :) Sorry mate – in this case I know EXACTLY what I am talking about. Both systems are roughly comparable (the CW organization engine is a topic for itself – it’s extreemly unwieldy from what I’ve seen, very uncomfortable, but on the other hand you are missing such joys as 15 minute paladin buffs for 40 people). It’s the same really: 40 people have to know exactly what they are doing, where exactly to stand, the tactics (“YOU ARE THE BOMB!”) etc.

      • I played L2 and we have no problems with 5-8 pp (1 party – 8 players). In 3-5 mins we ready to take raid with 1-2 raid pp and 2-3 defenders parties. Its all comes from clan micro management and discipline in clan. You have leaders and parties leaders basicaly they know all theyr members whats subs profesions players have, and most of the time same players go into same party (you make always good players with good equipment for fighting vs enemy, other has sublass and equipment and focus for raids) so most of the times there is no problem at all with 60-80 peapole in clan. Afcourse if you pick all randoms noobs then you will have chaos and shit in your clan. ALl depends on how good leaders and subleaders controls the clan members.

        • WoW is unique. I started to play in TBC and was raid leader in Cata and Mop. And you had to have 25 people who not only listen but who can actually think about what they are doing. And do it over and over for several hours while boss refuses to die. And you must draw pictures about how people must move and assign roles, warnings etc. HC raiding in WoW is so unique people can’t understand it if they did not try it.

    • Not BW, but vanilla MC and Onyxia yes. In a raid-alliance of four guilds. Happy days. Still, it was easier to organise two times a week from four guilds in all 4 tanks, 4 healers, 1 warlock, 3 paladins and 2 hunters (and the rest mages and rogues) than it is at times to organise enough CW teams, know the moment to moment diplomatic situation, answering/ignoring “siema, I am werry kuud pler, invte to klan!!!!”. Every day of the week, Being able or not to chat with WoWP players really doesn’t seem to do any difference :p

  8. A tag for me in WoWp is useless, but I intend to play the WoWs seriously. And I am sure many more players will do the same (or wot and wowp, or wowp and wows or just one of the three).

    So, the best way is to give the clan a choice of giving the player only the tag where he wants to play. The player gets to play competitive in the games he chooses, and the clan still can have 100 “available” players for each game.

  9. I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal.

    Another problem with the WG suggested unified clan system is the reputation in randoms and elsewhere. Right now you can expect that when you get someone from EFE as an example, he has at least some modicum of skill. Having WoWP focused players playing under the same tag would be detrimental to the reputation of the clan. And tbh saying that “Ok. You are a tank player. You cannot play WoWP at all in randoms unless you are good enough” is extremely unfair to the player and is completely opposite of what WG is aiming to achieve (players participating in more than 1 game).

    Having official alliance (e.g those armies you talked of) system would solve this issue. And most importantly a player should be able to be in a different clan in different game. Otherwise hardcore players would have to choose which game to play.

    Personally this is very important to me. In WoT I am in EFE and in WoWP I am in DFA (according to noobmeter I was EU top5 player during the Open Beta). And both of those clans are so good and elitist that it’s nigh impossible to produce a clan with players of equal quality in both games.

    • But you van be in different clan in WoWp what a problem, i dont see? In WoT you can be in EFE, in WoWp – 1st flying divion of noobs [1FDN], as i understand. If EFE crats the same clan in WoWp is your choice to be in the same clan like in WoT or not.

      • Except in the current WG proposal that would be impossible. Their current proposal is that we all would be in a single clan regardless of the game. So if I am at EFE in WoT I also would be in EFE in WoWP.

        That’s the whole issue. They are proposing that you are only in a single clan regardless of game.

        • I dont think so, becouse they will have huge problem, basicaly if you have full clan in WoT then automaticaly all WoT players become in your clan members in WoWp? But if only 10 players will play WoWp? So you can be in any clan then, or hire new players from WoWp only becouse all slots reserved to WoT players? But if most of them dont have account in WoWp how it will work? It will be huge mess then, logicaly you CANT restrict players of choise in what clan they want to be in different games.

          • Everyone has an account automatically accross all WG games. Even you have an account in WoWP right now.

            Because WG is trying to unify the clans that’s the whole reason why SS even posted this

            http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/11/08/8-11-2013/

            See that

            “- in time the same clans that exist in WoT will be enabled (ported into) WoWp
            - clans will be unified in all 3 WG games
            - (connected with the WoWp and WoT clans unification), maxmimum amount of people in clans will be increased, but the amount of tokens for CWs will remain the same – this increase is to allow clans to recruit WoWp players
            ”

            So yeah. WG is trying to do it.

  10. you raise very valid points, Frank. Having been a raid leader for many years, I can agree entirely with your diagnosis: a game like an MMO has *many* reasons to play – many things to do – and only a minority are there to raid, even in a raiding guild. In WoT, there are, what, four things to do: CW, Team Battles, 7/42, Randoms. Maybe five if you count Random – Platooning and Random – not Platooning as two different things. Filling a team for one of these 4 things in WoT is not super difficult – it *can* be a problem with not enough people joining CW/ Team Battles/ 7/42 because they just want to random pub, but it’s nothing like filling a raid group in an MMO.

    Once clans are unified across games however – yeah, I can see this being a problem as well. If I’m in WoWP (as I am at the moment) and the clan call goes out for a CW team and, well, I want to fly instead of drive, *everyone* will be annoyed: me, because I’m there to fly; the tankers because I’m in their clan list and goddamn it they want the team and they *know* I have that tank in my garage. And yet there’s no easy solution: already I’m finding myself distanced from my clan, as I’ve spent more hours flying recently than tanking – if I could be in unified chat, that would make things a lot easier. Of course, I could be in the TS server as well, but TS usage differs from clan to clan.

    I think this will become a problem for EFE and other good clans as well, if WG go ahead and allow some sort of CW-interaction between WoT and WoWP. IF it becomes possible to call in airstrikes, or something, then the top clans WILL develop air wings… and then they’ll face the same problem as MMO raiders everywhere. Inter-game interaction would also put a lot of strain on the clan alliances/ families within WoT: if BIA-4 has to get it’s own airwing to support it’s CW activities on top of BIA-1, 2, 3: that’s a lot of extra flyers to be found somewhere, of good enough quality to assist (no offense to any BIA members: it’s just the largest clan alliance that came into my head first).

    but yeah: first-world problems and all that. At the end of the day, it’s better to have more people available, even if not all of them are interested in the same thing at the same time. 300 mixed tankers/flyers/sailors is still 200 more potential CW team members than 100 tankers.

    • Seriously, it’s easier to keep track of 300 people in 1 clan playing 3 different games then 250 people in 3 different clans in 3 different games.

      WoT tools for organising anything are crap, so you rely on other tools – and they are adaptable.

      And there will be multigamers.
      If i have 60 multigamers and 240 specialists, then I can choose from 140 tankers, 140 pilots, 140 captains.
      \I don’t expect planes and tanks will be fought in CW simultaneously. WG suggests otherwise.
      So it’s better to have bigger pool of available players in every game – and if CW are to be connected you need cooperation on map anyway, so dividing clans over neccessity makes no sense.

      I much prefer to have 300 members and 100 tokens in wot, wowp, wob, then to have lesser amount of members (cause multigamers take 3 spots) and every time when someone new joins to be forced to click “accept application” in 3 different places.

      About other then CW activities of a clan? Well at this moment if you want to play company you play, if you don’t you dont’t, so what is the difference if you want to play wowp insead or randoms or just to chillout not playing at all?

      • oh I forgot 1 important thing – the whole idea of connecting WoT and WoWp in CW is awful. WoT clans will have to create their aerial forces to stay competitive and that will increase the strain on leadership way too much, it doesnt matter if clans will be unified or not.

  11. If we’re discussing tools for CEO’s/Leaders/Commanders – however you call them – WoT is a TOTAL CRAP. There is no way to effectively communicate with your clan members, announce important things etc. You have to use external tools which aren’t connected to the game and thus ineffective and tedious to use. I remember my forehead flat from an ultra-high-powered facepalm when I tried to set up something like this for my clan and stumbled upon a wall constructed of different people saying “I won’t use a forum, because forums are an obsolete concept” or “I won’t use a facebook, because it steals your privacy”. E-mails won’t work as well, because first you have to get the addresses from people which can be hard sometimes and then half of them doesn’t check their inboxes OR your mails land in the spam folder automatically and they don’t even have a clue. From my experience as a leader of a Blood Bowl local league I know, that SMS is the only way to get to people fast and effective, but it won’t work so well with 100 people as it did with 16… of course this is the case of a clan that doesn’t want to be pro and DEMAND people to give emails/phone numbers etc. All of these problems and overall level of teamplay could raise IF THERE WAS A FUCKING WAY TO SET AN M.O.T.D. FOR CLAN MEMBERS OR SENDING A (SOMEHOW MORE VISIBLE) MESSAGE TO ALL LOGGED IN CLAN MEMBERS AT ONCE! Not even talking about mail inside the game client. FFS, at leasty a possibility to post in the clan chat IN A DIFFERENT COLOR available to the commanders…

    • But that is the same with every game. In WoW serious guilds required written application on forum. And you had to announce whether you will be available for the raid or not. If you want to play seriously you must choose people who are willing to communicate with each other. A special forum is the best way. If somebody doesn’t want to talk to you way should you play with him.

      • Never played WoW, only WAR (which had a decent system) and… here comes the main source of my rant… EVE. Shit, EVE has a better communication system then many real life enterprises :P

        • I didn’t play the the EVE but if these system require to log into the game its a problem. The forum can be watched on the phone or even during work :)

  13. That leads me to one simple question: Why limit Clans to 100 members?

    It’s a stupid artificial limit without any real reason I can imagine …

    • The limit is to prevent “superclans” of over 1000 people which would be an unfair advantage holding territories with tank locking in effect – a virtual endless pool of tier 10 defenders that way.

  14. Ok WG… you can have unified clans like that if you make CW’s a unified battlefield 100km x 100km across…. bet you won’t do it – so don’t even think about it.

  16. Clans should be separated by game and a proper alliance system should be implemented.

    There is already talk of in-client support for alliances being developed that would include unified chat, etc.

  17. I think, Frank, that you are mistaken when it comes to ideas you propose – although i understand your concerns and grounds for them.
    Every clan struggles with problems of organizing people to play together, you need enough ones that can devote time at a certain hour. So, you need them to be hardcore enough to participate, doesn’t matter in which game. Global map is to be unified between games, we still don’t know the details and probably even WG hasn’t formulated them yet but i imagine some air strikes inflicting random losses on tanks entering battle or supply chain problems, lowering province income without conquering it etc – it may hurt you but will it kill you, especially when WoT is still the core WG product, they don’t want to destroy? And WoWp isn’t interesting enough to be an excuse of not playing – especially when you can check your clanmates’ stats to confirm.

    What i see needs to be implemented is splitting global map to “theaters” – from the very low tier ones, so even starting players can try and participate; campaign is not enough, especially when you start from 6tier. I’m not deluded that they actually can grab anything (not from the very beginning), but they could at least start and try how it feels – “get involved”.
    You can balance this by abysmally low income and justify with different war periods or sth. like that.

    • This. This kind of an idea works on several levels: from indirectly bringing more profit to WG via garage slots perhaps, through including players of low tier and creating fun low tier battles, to being an entry point for new clans, in a more affordable way. Fully supported.

  18. Just a minor thing it would be Royal Navy rather than Royal Fleet

    Otherwise i agree to an extent

  19. The WoW hard cap on raids was the shittiest design mistake they made in the entire game. Before WoW, EQ had no such cap. You could tackle a boss with 30, you could fight with 50 or you could zerg it with 100 players. No one gave a shit about it and you never had to sit out on the fun because the arbitrary number of raid spots was already filled.

    The top guilds that killed stuff first also had the lowest numbers average on their raids while the 100 player zerg usually lagged an expansion or two behind, because it takes forever to gear out 100 players.

    There was absolutely no downside to the unlimited raid size, it was better in every way. If tuesday was raid night for your guild, you knew when you logged in that you’d be raiding that day. You didn’t know what, because stuff spawned in the open world and not in guild-saved instances, but you knew you’d raid.

    In WoW, you didn’t know if you got to raid on raid night, you might have 43 so you might have to sit out, you might be 37 so the raid would have been cancelled. Forget about your guild probably being capable of taking a few bosses with 37, the number was so branded into the players brains, leaders were more likely to call a raid off than attempt without the full raid. Another advantage EQ had, Sony didn’t tell the players how many people they had to bring to the Plane of Hate or Trakanon’s Lair or Temple of Veeshan. But Blizzard told the players to bring exactly 40 to Molten Core, exactly 10 to Zul-Fuckit and exactly 25 to some place in outland, I dont even remember the names after 7 years yet I still know EQ zones after 12…