From IgoMir - Guild leveling details.

[Vitandus]

Your guild will get experience for players earning rep, killing bosses, doing dailies, getting achievements, Arena and BG wins, crafting, leveling up, and more. The top 20 earners in the guild each week will have their contributions turned into XP. Previous contributions won't factor into a particular week's XP, so every member of the guild has the chance to be a top earner each week.

Guild experience, once accrued at the end of each week, will be converted into guild currency, which can be used to buy a myriad of items, including reagents, tabards, pets, profession recipes, heirlooms, and Guild Talent points.

Guild Talents will be things like a Mass Resurrection spell on a 30-minute cooldown, removal of reagents for buff spells, and increased gold drops in the world and instances. Guild leaders can respec guild talents, though the method and cost (if any) is currently unknown.

As your guild levels up, the amount of ingredients necessary for your guild recipes will get cheaper. An example would be lowering the number of Frozen Orbs (or the equivalent) necessary to craft a weapon by your guild blacksmith. The guild interface will also allow you to browse through any and all recipes available in your guild.

Guild-crafted heirlooms will cover every gear slot, according to Brack, and, like any guild-crafted item, will remain bound to the guild. If you leave the guild, your Guild-Bound items will automatically deposit themselves back into the guild bank.

Guild achievements are also in the works, such as an achievement for crafting a legendary, or for getting a certain number of players to the maximum profession level. A guild can also get an achievement automatically if a certain percentage of players in the guild have it too. It's unknown if guild achievements will provide XP or currency.

Brack also noted new Armory improvements for Cataclysm, like RSS feeds for guild news and lists of all available guild recipes.

Lastly, it'll be possible to set up a guild tax so that an adjustable portion of all looted gold goes straight to the guild bank for every member. Further details on the feature are unknown.

Getting a solid recap of the panel has proven difficult, so if any new info's come out that we've missed, we'll be sure to let you know. Blizzard EU should also have an official recap on their IgoMir 2009 page shortly.

[James]

I'm going to put here what I told Pat.  

"Guild experience, once accrued at the end of each week, will be converted into guild currency, which can be used to buy a myriad of items, including reagents, tabards, pets, profession recipes, heirlooms, and Guild Talent points."

.,.. unless those items are given to every single person in the guild, this is nothing but trouble. And guild leaders have enough trouble with people whining and bitching about loot without throwing in something else for them to deal with.

Due to benefits being built over time, this will pretty much kill any 'new' guilds before they get off the ground unless they're all very committed. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Lastly, it'll be possible to set up a guild tax so that an adjustable portion of all looted gold goes straight to the guild bank for every member. Further details on the feature are unknown.

I saw this and I thought "Yeah, good luck with that" ... then I realized a 5 year old raiding guild could easily charge admittance and tax their members with all the the benefits they could provide. Again, I don't know how I feel about that.

Just a really big change with as many potential problems as benefits.

[Vitandus]

My thoughts:

I am going to focus on the guild talents first. Those will help the guild as a whole.

The guild tax is an interesting idea. Warhammer Online had it, and I liked it as a member of a guild. It removed the need to remember to actively tithe. It would also mean those in HDL that never make a gold or item donation but are always buying items at half cost are contributing in some fashion.

[James]

It would also mean those in HDL that never make a gold or item donation but are always buying items at half cost are contributing in some fashion.

I'll be honest here, and mention some stuff I'm not proud of.

The problem is that it would blanket the whole guild and penalize those that do contribute. I don't contribute anything to the guild. But I also never touch the guild bank. I think I've had Patrick craft 1 thing for me with a recipe he picked up in a guild raid, but that could also be tossed up as friend-benefit as much as a guild one.

I just log on, screw around, and log off. Completely and totally 100% useless except for offering people grouping opportunities. I don't ask anything of the guild, they tend to not ask much of me, so it all balances out. I have my own 'personal' goals that I like to accomplish, and those usually end up costing money in some form.

I'm not selfish enough to be like ZOMG MY MONEYZ for every little cent. However, if there's a 20% tax against me, it would be motivation enough for me to just move my character to Maelstrom. It would depend exactly what is taxed and how much is taxed.

It's not about guild loyalty. It stops being a family and starts being a business arrangement. That's what it's always been for raiders, but for us casual slackers - not so much.

But, again, this is a ways off and we have yet to see exactly how they're going to do it. That's just my initial thoughts.

[Duey]

It would be smart if they would add a function to set a guild tax level for each rank.
Then the people that are casual or do not raid can be taxed less or not at all.

[Vitandus]

Perhaps, but I have found it's the more casual folks that take the most advantage of the guild bank.

[Dave]

They sure are stealing a lot of ideas from Warhammer aren't they?

Warhammer guilds had the benefit of tithes as well as taxes, so guild members could set their own amount to contribute. The two guilds I was in did not tax, and only used tithes. I believe officers and GLs had the ability to see the amount of contribution as well, so it promoted participation and contribution.