Like many, I was anticipating the raids since they were first announced. Before GW2 was brought out, I was a big raider in a high up raiding guild in World of Warcraft, and so the thought of being able to raid again was very appealing. Although the raids themselves are very well made and I love the fact that they’ve been made to always be relevant, without having anything making them too easy in the future, there just seemed to be something missing.
At first I was raiding with my guild and even joining in with pugs whenever I could. Getting the first boss down was a great feeling, just like with any new raid boss kill I’ve been a part of in WoW, but with one main difference: There’s nothing to say you ever did it with your guild. Nothing in or outside of the game to say you were a part of your guild and helped kill this boss at this time. Even your personal achievements won’t tell you the date in which you killed it. There’s no leadership board to show which guilds have killed first. So there’s no real guild pride to show off any kills, other than posts on facebook or other social sites.
Looking at the pvp league at the moment, that has a great drive to get your team higher. You personally have a mark to show where you stand in the ranks and an in game leadership board to show where your team is. This kind of thing would be great with the raiding. Not just something to do to get a great item of armour made, but something to really have pride about.
In WoW, people loved to raid for the content and higher armour, but true raiders did it to get their guild higher on that board. To be the first guild to kill a boss and have your name belong to the group that did it. For a true raider, the only reason to get the higher gear, was to make getting the next boss down possible. As in GW2 gear is redundant, this means the achievement is that much more sacred. That there’s less about lucky drops that helped a certain group more than others.
Achievements would be great with a date. Having guild achievements, or perhaps just having the history list more in depth and showing that you truly make a difference to the guild, would be amazing. Having something like with the pvp team leadership board, but with times and guilds for the raid kills, would really make the raid experience, like with the guild hall, a truly great reason to belong to any guild.
If there’s a fear of having people leaving guilds just to be a higher raid guilds, well, that’s already happening. But at least in GW2 there’s an option to be in many guilds and perhaps this could actually help control that. People will have pure raiding guilds for getting higher in the board, and another guild for everything else. There are already pure raiding guilds, but without anything to really make kills noticeable, those guilds might as well only exist instead of a LFR.