The sixth round of the Ask the Devs Q&A chats have finally been posted over at the official blog, and the answers are pretty interesting. If you didn’t know already, this round focuses around the topic of guild advancement. As always, I’ll highlight some questions I think are particularly interesting from the roundup – not everything. For the full transcript, head over to the blog and check it out!

Without any further ado:

Q: The guild perks system makes it unnaturally hard to start a new guild, since a guild without all perks is at an obvious disadvantage in recruitment. In addition, it rewards just recruiting random people (who might only care about the perks) to get guild XP. What are your thoughts on this? Will it be addressed? – Lolisa [Europe, English], Mith [North America]

A: We knew when we decided to add guild features for Cataclysm that this was one of the risks. If the guild perks and rewards aren’t interesting, then there is no motivation to join a guild or work to improve your guild. On the other hand if they are too powerful, then you feel shackled to your old guild, even if it’s not a healthy relationship for you. We were careful to only choose perks that didn’t contribute to player power, and we let you keep any rewards you earn if you ever have to leave your guild. The perks are nice, no doubt, but you’re going to have less fun in an established guild of jerks than you would starting your own guild with fewer perks.

We don’t think recruiting random people is healthy for a guild. Rewards are never going to be a substitute for strong social ties. We really encourage as many people as possible to seek out guilds (and we hope the new Guild Finder will help with that), but joining a guild at random will likely end in tears.

On the other hand, there may be some benefit to having less churn on starting guilds. Before Cataclysm, some guilds would get started halfheartedly and then crumble again after a few weeks or months. Maintaining an active guild asks a lot of the guild master and leading officers. If you join an established guild in Cataclysm, hopefully it will continue to be around for awhile. But because of reputation, even brand new guilds may seem like a more serious option than they were before Cataclysm, since the founders of the guild know that anyone interested is likely looking for a long-term home and are not just hopping from guild to guild.

This is a good one, and something that’s been on my mind for a while now – makes sense it’s the first question. Honestly, the questioner does have a good point – some people just won’t join a guild without the perks, but I have to agree with the devs that in most cases, people won’t stick to a cruddy guild because they have the perks, and people won’t skip over a great guild without perks for a bad guild that has them. Still, I could see this being tweaked a bit over time.

Q: Are you planning to address the issue of Guild Leaders mass kicking members, once the guild reaches level 25? – Bloodbliss [North America], Юхани [Europe, Russian]

A: We don’t really have any interest in controlling who a guild leader chooses to kick, or when. Guilds are fairly transparent and simple player-run groups, and we have to be extremely careful about what systems we implement that impact how people can operate their guilds. We could absolutely make it more difficult for guild leaders to kick their members, and that might help very slightly with these situations, but the result would actually be that guild leaders would just be much less likely to invite new members. We want people to be in guilds, as opposed to making guild masters afraid that if they invite someone they may never be able to kick them if they don’t work out.

Allowing players to keep some level of guild reputation is an option we can look into to help with this situation, though.

Wow – I suppose it’s just an indicator of how little time I’ve had to really get arms deep into the game lately, but I didn’t even know this was an issue. That’s a pretty cruddy thing for a Guild Leader to do, honestly. I see why Blizzard doesn’t want to get involved, but I can see how it would be a problem. Don’t expect Blizz to do too much until it gets to fever pitch, though.

Q: Are we going to see guild houses someday so we could finally get a special gather place for the guild, to meet and interact easily? – Ellidryl[Europe, French], Греланд[Europe, Russian], Ledieri [Europe, Spanish], Bodywreckér [North America]

A: Guild housing is something we have discussed many times. It would be neat to have a place for people to hang out, but every time it has come up as a possibility we don’t think that is worth the amount of time and resources it would take to implement (and do it right). This is one of those features where if we ever decided to do it, the benefit would have to outweigh other content we could be working on. Also, we don’t feel that we need any new ways for players to hide themselves away. If possible we at least like people to be hanging around in the cities, if not out in the world. We know that many guilds, despite lack of official guild housing, have designated meeting locations throughout the world, which we think is really cool. If you don’t have one yet it might be something to explore.

Ah, the old guild housing question. And, of course, the answer that Blizzard has given us many many times: they like the idea, they really really do like the idea, but they just don’t think it’s high enough on the priority list at this point to take development time away from other tasks. Interesting. I wonder if it’ll ever be high enough on the priority list – it’s been something people have wanted since Vanilla.

Q: Are there any plans to allow for easier alt access to the same guild rewards as someone’s main character? Perhaps some kind of +rep item that is BoA and can only be bought by an exalted character? – Serule [North America], Xheevas [Europe, French]

A: This is one of the main reasons 4.1 has new guild tabards with 50/100% bonus to rep. We made sure to place these at friendly and honored so they would be easy to obtain by alts. We are considering adding an even larger bonus to an exalted, BOA version as well. Great minds think alike!

Hah! Awesome – I was wondering when this was going to happen, and sure enough, we have it already. Well done!

And that does it for another round – we skipped a lot of questions this time, but they’re all pretty interesting. Make sure to read the full thread for the whole scoop!

How have I never seen this before? I can’t tell you if we’ve covered it here before, but I stumbled on it again this week and had to share it. At this point I think everyone’s familiar with the Fountains of Wayne song Stacy’s Mom even if they’re not familiar with the band – and you should be, they’re pretty good.

The whole video is pretty much hilarious, and a really tolerable way to listen to the song if you’ve been worn out on it. Enjoy!

This story was difficult to believe, but it comes around every so often. With each passing expansion, the feat becomes more and more difficult to do, but it’s happened once again: someone’s managed to get their character all the way to level 85 — the level cap — without killing a single mob. They managed to get experience from exploration and gathering only, specifically herbalism and mining. Here’s the scoop from PC Gamer:

Playing on the US RP server Feathermoon, this player achieved what most thought impossible (while still maintaining one’s sanity): grinding through 85 grueling levels via gathering Professions alone. Think it’s all a hoax? The proof is in the profile pudding—Everbloom’s character profile plainly shows that he/she/it has reached the level cap without killing a single enemy. But what’s this? One completed quest?! Not exactly—this was an unfortunate misstep, where a quest was completed simply by opening a letter from an NPC (which Blizzard couldn’t redact). Nonetheless, this is an imposing achievement, especially considering that the character was created around last November.

For the players who think they’ve seen and done it all in Azeroth, this seems like the ultimate challenge and test of will, akin to old Diablo II challenges of pacifist Hell completions. Everbloom highly recommends the experience, saying:

“Being on the ground and sneaking around mining and herbing and eventually archaeology, going everywhere to get every single point of discovery xp that you can, really gives you a chance to see an amazing world up close and personal. I spent hours swimming around reefs and flying to the farthest reaches of the maps… I have been playing since day 1 on other characters and I even have an original Loremaster (you know, back when it was hard) and I saw so MANY new things with Everbloom that it really made it worthwhile for me to continue on with this character, and each level was a major achievement!”

Everbloom’s character sheet is here, and one look at the detail page proves the point. It’s a really impressive feat, and she’s been talking about it on the forums, where I would urge people to go and congratulate her on an incredible job well done.

Congratulations, Everbloom!

What a helpful little guy he’ll be!

Have you ever felt alone while soloing? Wish you had someone to chat with about what you were doing, or sick of alt-tabbing out to do extensive research about the tasks at hand and wish there were more help in-game available to you at all times?

Well say hello to Crabby, the Dungeon Helper! He’s here to make sure that you’re all set for whatever tasks you may encounter in the World of Warcraft, and is here to help you when you need it!

He’ll occasionally pop up and offer you bits of advice that can be especially useful, and help guide you when you get lost. Check it out:

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a helpful friend at your side, ready to provide you with tips and hints when you’re stuck? A friend who’s there to provide encouragement, who will help you pick yourself up off the floor after the fifteenth wipe of the night? Someone who will stick with you — no matter what?

Everyone can use a friend like that… a friend like Crabby!

You’re a hero. An adventurer. A sword-swinger or spell-slinger for hire. Whatever your character’s motivation may be, if trouble doesn’t find you, it’s because you found trouble first. But what do you do when Asaad throws down a grounding field? How do you respond when the Faceless Corruptors enter Erudax’s room? Eventually, you’ll be thrown a curve ball that you can’t catch. When that happens, you’ll be glad to have Crabby at your side!

Crabby uses a complex and extensive set of context-sensitive situational heuristics to analyze your current status in real-time; that’s tech talk for “Crabby always knows what’s up.” He watches your every move with his all-seeing eyes. Nothing escapes his unwavering gaze; not even the slightest nuance of your play style goes unnoticed. Before long, Crabby will know what you’re going to do before you even do it. And he will use this knowledge to help.

Crabby is able to tell you exactly what’s going on and what you should do. His many useful tips will appear in the bottom right corner of your screen, where he hangs out, ever patiently, waiting for you to need his help. Of course, whether you follow his advice or not is entirely up to you; Crabby may possess an advanced level of artificial intelligence, but we’re reasonably sure he doesn’t have any feelings you could hurt. Reasonably sure. But just in case, the ability to remove Crabby has been disabled for now.

Good! I mean, who wouldn’t want Crabby around to help? Check out the images over at his information page – look how much he loves to help! He’s a helper crab, yes he is.

(psst. By the way. He appears on all World of Warcraft sites, too. Browse around and enjoy! He’s such a helper.)

Wow, Blizzard is really intent on bringing new and interesting 5-man content to the game. Today they announced the Tomb of Immortal Darkness, a new 5-player dungeon that will blow your mind. Here’s their description:

Deep beneath the crumbling tombstones of Duskwood’s Raven Hill Cemetery, a dark and mysterious power is emerging. Drawing strength from the blackest night and fiercely jealous of the sighted, a once-devoted follower of Leotheras the Blind is spreading his shadowy tendrils across the land. Heroes of Azeroth must delve into his pitch black lair to face Omgsogoth, Dark Lord of Twilight, before the world is plunged into eternal night.

Making use of cutting-edge Deep Dark® technology, the Tomb of Immortal Darkness is a new five-player normal and heroic dungeon that will be introduced in patch 4.1.11. Three new bosses, with unique features and mechanics, will put your group to the test: Omgsogoth, Dark Lord of Twilight; the maniacal Twisted Spiral Fool; and Duc Ulah, The Winged Keeper. Featuring new daily quests, updated monster models, and all-new unique loot, you’ll find you really can’t believe your eyes…

Face your greatest fears in the paralysing dark of the Tomb. Tremble as you stumble blindly towards Omgsogoth’s chamber. Panic at the claustrophobic atmosphere, and feel terror cloud your senses. Will you find your way, or will you be lost, never to return?

Check out the gameplay videos there too – the dungeon looks incredible! So much depth of field, and so much to explore! You could literally go over it a thousand times and never see the same details twice!

I cast magic missle!

You know, I don’t want to get into the habit of posting one person’s videos every time they’re released, but this parody of the hit television show Hoarders by the one and only WoWCrendor deserves as much love as it can possibly get on the Web.

If you’ve ever watched Hoarders, you’ll understand why this is so funny. And you’ll have the inexplicable urge to go clean out your character’s bank. Or at least roll a bank alt to keep all the crap.

Blizzard held another Q&A session with its developers recently, taking forum questions from interested parties, just like last time. Same as last time, you can read the whole set of questions and answers on the official forums, but we’ll take a look at some of the new and interesting ones:

Q: Why can’t we have a pure, straight up, unadulterated Death Match style Battleground? – ???? ???? (Taiwan), Gulantor (North America/ANZ)

A: We think Battlegrounds work better when there is a goal that the team can work towards. Huge melees with lots of players tend to be chaotic by nature so there is less room for skill to influence the outcome. It feels more random, and the more random the system is, the more arbitrary the rewards will feel. It might be something we try someday.

For example, emergency buttons are balanced around the assumption that only a few players are ganged up against you. Even in the 5v5 Arena bracket, it’s very difficult to survive being focused by so many players at once, so you feel like you don’t have many options. There is a reason that most of our Arena attention is on 3v3 – it just feels the best.

You know, I had been wondering about this one too back when I was spending more time in battlegrounds – some people would love the “in and out” nature of having a battleground they could hop into and hop out of just to grab some honor in a short period, and in a game that’s perpetually ongoing that they could play for as much free time as they have without worrying their departure will negatively impact a team.

At the same time, the sheer number of empty multiplayer game servers in the world kind of tell the tale that when there’s no one interested in playing that all-out deathmatch style game, the few people who do want to play would have a horrible time doing it – or worse, they’ll just give up because it’s not the epic experience they’d actually want. After all – I’m sure the people asking the question are thinking of massive 25 v. 25 battle arenas with fast re-spawning, not a 3 v. 3 match.

Q: CC used to be the big thing for arena, but now it’s all about damage. Is it the direction you are taking at the moment? – Thatis (Taiwan)

A: If crowd control really was as weak in Arenas as you’re claiming, then Holy paladins would be the healer of choice and Resto druids wouldn’t have much of a role. But the Entangling Roots and Cyclone of the druid make a huge difference in Arena, and we see a lot of healing druids.

Ultimately, we think there has to be a place for both crowd control and damage. It can be just as frustrating to be chained from a fear to a poly to a stun without having an answer as it can be to die to two dudes killing you in a few GCDs without an answer. We don’t want Arena in particular to be all about which comp has the best layering of crowd controls that don’t share diminishing returns, because that greatly lowers the number of viable comps out there (and why rogue-mage-priest dominated in earlier seasons). We have taken steps this season already to nerf both out of control damage and excessive crowd control for some classes.

The best thing you can do is just keep providing feedback when you think something is broken. Many other players will disagree with you, and at times so will we. The signal to noise ratio for PvP balance is frankly always going to be bad, and the design calls are extremely subjective. We are constantly amazed that some players playing very powerful specs perceive themselves as weak or interpret very gentle nerfs as soul-crushing. That doesn’t mean that we’re never going to listen, but it does mean the burden of convincing us something is broken is going to be high, probably higher than it is for PvE.

Ouch – holy blowoff, batman! Although I can’t say I disagree here. I think Blizzard is acquising the point that they’re paying more attention to damage, but they’re trying to strike the balance between damage and crowd control. I disagree that seeing a lot of resto druids somehow means that holy paladins aren’t the healers of choice in battlegrounds (that’s like saying “hey, the fact that a exists means there must be less of b,”) but I see their point. Balance is what’s important, and they’re always open to your feedback.

I hope the person asking the question got that same message, because I could see how the tone at the beginning is kind of a diss. A loving one, but a diss nonetheless!

Q: Can I hear your thoughts of the survival abilities of the Warlock on PvP? – Mccoll (Korea)

A: Overall, we think they’re fine. Warlocks in PvP often compare themselves to Shadow priest, and to be fair, Shadow priests have some very potent emergency buttons, particularly Dispersion. Warlocks have good self-healing (which also to be fair, was nerfed recently), abilities like Demonic Circle and fears that are good for both offense and defense. Once Shadow priests lose their defensive dispel capabilities, we think they will be less versatile and their entire package will be more comparable to warlocks.

I love this question only because it was asked. I remember the days when warlocks were unstoppable damage and destruction machines in arenas. If you had a lock on your team, you were pretty much guaranteed to win, and if you had one on your team and another on the other team, it came down to who had the most resilience. Thankfully, no more.

So – this set of Q&A questions were pretty heavy on the PVP side of things. If you’re a heavy PVP’er, what do you think of Blizzard’s responses and the questions they selected to respond to? What would you have asked if you had the opportunity? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Are you all tired of riding your sparkle ponies around? Good, because the Winged Lion is on its way to the Blizzard Store!

See the guy above? MMO-Champion uncovered it in a recent datamine, and it bears all the glorious, sparkly, sunshine-y indications that he’ll be a for-purchase mount from the Blizzard Store, the same way the Celestial Steed was.

If the winged lion (which some people have taken to calling the Sunshine Lion) is the same price as the Celestial Steed, players will be out $25 USD to pick one up, and Blizzard will rake in the cash, as usual. A lot of people who didn’t like the Celestial Steed model have been commenting around the Web on how they’re really eager to get their hands on this one, and vice versa – the only thing for sure is that when it’s available, it’ll almost certainly be a hit.

What do you think? Would you spend money on a virtual mount? Did you buy a celestial steed, and what do you think of the sunshine lion? Sound off in the comments.

Okay, I simply have to give WoW Insider credit for introducing me to this video yesterday, and it’s simply glorious.

It has nothing to do with World of Warcraft, but it does have something to do with Blizzard – specifically with Starcraft 2, and if you haven’t played the original StarCraft, get ready for some spoilers. What? Seriously – StarCraft has been out for like 13 years – you don’t get to call spoiler on the original title. Thankfully, there are no spoilers for Starcraft 2 in the video, because…well…ponies.

If you want to see the source video that the audio was pulled from, it’s below. Honestly? I think they have the dubbing better with the ponies.

I admit, I have a bit of a problem. I’m losing motivation and interest in World of Warcraft. For most people, this would equate to a play-break; a time where they just don’t play for a while and then regain their interest slowly over time. That’s been working for me to some extent – I actually haven’t logged in for a while now and I’ve been toying with other games (ssh, don’t tell!) but I’m starting to wonder how the next time I start to feel a little down about the game that I can keep myself up and motivated to keep playing and having fun.

So, I figured I would ask you, fair readers: how do you stay motivated when playing World of Warcraft? How do you manage to log in regularly? Is it something you look forward to doing the moment you get home? Or maybe it’s something that you do for your friends and guild-mates? Maybe you’re passionate about the lore, or you’re passionate about role-playing?

What’s your secret sauce? Let us know in the comments.