Blizzard has announced the Icecrown Citadel raid access progression. In short, there are four wings and each will be progressively unlocked over weeks after the 3.3 release. The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated and the Lich King must be defeated on normal mode before heroics can be attempted. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. Blue Post
GuildOx is a service that ranks guilds from World of Warcraft based on their raid achievements. It does this
quickly and accurately by reading the raid achievements of guild players from the official WoW armory.
What is special about GuildOx guild rankings?
GuildOx is fast, simple and accurate. We only do guild raid achievements, meaning we only need to pull down a single page from the armory per guild member.
We have also worked hard on optimizing our armory crawler process and have designed it to be extremely efficient.
This allows us to process many, many more guilds per day than other services - providing you with the most up-to-date guild rankings.
How does GuildOx work?
When you add your guild, Guildox will add the players of your guild to the local queue. Our servers will automatically query the armory
to fetch raid achievements for each player (this typically takes a few minutes). You need to have at least 20 characters (of any level) in
a guild to qualify.
Does GuildOx look at other achievements?
GuildOx only lists raid achievements for guilds. It is designed specifically for guild progression. It does not look at personal achievements.
How often does GuildOx refresh the achievements?
Guilds with at least one raid achievement are automatically refreshed around once every 2-4 days. Top 100 world-ranked guilds are refreshed every
24 hours. You can re-submit your guild at any time via the "Add Guild" function and your latest raid achievements will be re-assessed within
minutes. Note that you do not need to manually re-submit your guild - it will be done automatically over time.
How does GuildOx award boss kills/achievements?
GuildOx filters pug boss kills/achievements, guild member changes and character server transfers by looking for a minimum number
of players in the guild with
the same achievement earned on the same date - the threshold is set to a minimum of '10' players for 25-man achievements and
'6' players for 10-man achievements. For example, if four players of a guild join a 25-man pug and earn a 25-man
achievement on that run then this will not count as an earned guild achievement.
We also award 25-man achievements when at least '15' players in a guild have completed the achievement, regardless of date achieved.
We award 10-man achievements when at least '8' players in a guild have completed the achievement, regardless of date achieved.
How are the 'progress' achievements selected and scored? Why don't you use complex scoring rules?
GuildOx features '25-Man Progress' and '10-Man Progress' tables. We select the progress achievements that represent traditional
guild progression. This includes all boss kill achievements,
selected zone clearing achievements and selected hard-mode achievements where additional loot is awarded. Each selected progress achievement
is simply weighted with 1 point. Tables are ranked first by score, and then by date/time of the last progress achievement.
We don't use complex scoring systems since they are not necessary for accurate guild ranking, confusing for guild members to understand and
assigning custom scores to achievements is a very subjective matter.
How is the 'achievement' scoring calculated?
GuildOx features '25-Man Achievement' and '10-Man Achievement' tables. These tables show guilds ranked by their total achievement points
based on Blizzard's achievement scores. We include all achievements classified as 'raid' except those that are awarded to individuals such
as 'When the Volcano Blows'.
How are the World Ranks, US/EU Ranks and Realm Ranks calculated?
GuildOx uses a simple ranking mechanism - 'Progress' rankings are first sorted by the number of progress achievements gained and then by the
official armory date of the last achievement gained.
'Achievement' rankings are first sorted by the total of the Blizzard achievement points gained and then by the
official armory date of the last achievement gained.
Guilds that are tied are shown with the same rank number.
What are the limitations with the world-first and server-first ranks for any given achievement?
We crawl all ranked guilds over a period of a few days - this means that there may be guilds that have just earned an achievement but are yet to
be crawled and listed by our service. Some smaller guilds may also have earned a meta achievement but may have rotated their member base
considerably for each raid and may not have met the minimum requirements for GuildOx ranking.
I have updated my guild and new achievements are showing but my world/realm rank has not yet updated.
World, region and realm rankings that are shown on individual guild pages and site banners are updated every 4-8 hours.
How can we show our guild rankings on our guild web site?
GuildOx offers site banners via javascript html code. You can find the code to these at the bottom of your guild's page in GuildOx.
Simply copy this code and paste the code in the HTML source your web site to have it display your world rank, US/EU rank and realm rank.
Why do you bother with 10-man rankings?
We believe that 10-man raiding deserves its own rankings. There are many 10-man raiding guilds out there and we have not forgotten them.
What are the 10-man 'strict' rankings?
The 10-man strict rankings show the achievements of pure 10-man raiding guilds. A 'pure' 10-man raiding guild is one that does not
participate in 25m progression content. We recognize that 25-man guilds or guilds that regularly
participate in 25m pug runs often have a distinct advantage since they can gear up at accelerated rates and move faster through 10-man content.
Consequently, our 10-man strict rankings exclude guilds which access any 25-man content that offers higher ilvl gear than what the
current 10-man normal content provides.
What is the 10-man 'strict' criteria?
Guilds will be excluded when they earn any Coliseum 25 normal kills or any Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills.
Please allow 3-4 days for a guild to be excluded from the strict list after earning an excluding kill. Guilds must also have
their 10M Progress World Rank be better than (lower than) their 25M Progress World Rank.
Normally guilds will earn these 25m kill achievements when either 10 players complete a kill in the same raid or when 15 players complete
the kill over time.
We have added a special trigger for the Coliseum 25 normal kills that will exclude a guild from strict rankings when 5 players achieve
any boss kill in the same raid or a total of 10 players achieve it over time. For example, if your guild pugs Coliseum 25 normal
then you will be excluded from the strict
rankings when a total of 10 players in your guild participate in the Beasts of Northrend 25 normal kill
(or if 5 of them earn the kill in the
same raid). Note that it still counts if this kill takes place before the new strict criteria was introduced.
Please ensure you discourage your guild members from participating in any Coliseum 25 normal and Ulduar 25 hard-mode
runs if you wish to remain on the strict rankings. Also be sure minimize the recruitment of players that have previously achieved these
kills since they will contribute to the guild total, regardless of when they achieved it. Note that VoA 25 and Onyxia 25 are exceptions and
can be pugged without risking your 10m strict status.
Special tip: If you wish to remain on the 10-man strict list over the long term then be sure to have your guild stay within
the criteria - we are unable to remove earned achievements once they are in the GuildOx database.
Also note that the criteria will change as new content is released.
The best approach to future-proof your strict ranking is to advise your guild members not to run any 25-man
content that features higher iLevel gear when compared to the current 10-man normal content. We reserve the right to tighten the criteria
at any time if we judge that guilds are 'gaming' the strict rankings.
But Coliseum 25 normal drops the same iLvl gear as Coliseum 10 hard mode, why can't we run Coliseum 25 normal and stay 10m strict?
It is true that Col 25 normal drops 245 iLvl gear and this is the same iLvl at Col 10 hard mode. However, guilds can gear up at twice the
rate if they run Col 25 normal and this is clearly an unfair advantage
- GuildOx ranks guilds based on the rate at which they earn achievements/kills. Yes, we understand that you can get iLvl 245 gear from
Emblem vendors and other sources, but we have drawn the line at Col 25 normal.
My guild has dropped off the strict ranking tables. Are we locked out forever?
No. We will relax the criteria as new content is introduced. Be sure to stay
within the intent of the strict rankings and you will be eligible some time in the future.
What are you planning with the 10m Strict criteria and patch 3.3?
Our current plans for patch 3.3 will be to relax the 25m TotC normal criteria and Ulduar hard-mode criteria 1-2 weeks after the release of
patch 3.3. Guilds that were previously excluded due to these measures will be eligible for the 10m strict rankings.
We will also be introducing new criteria which
will exclude a guild from the strict rankings if they run 25m normal Icecrown Citadel and 25m hard-mode TotC.
A guild has disbanded, gone inactive or merged on our server - can I get the old guild deleted?
GuildOx will automatically remove guilds from the database when they have less than 20 members. We do not do manual removal of guilds.
The armory is not showing an achievement but we have completed it. Can you do a manual adjustment?
GuildOx relies 100% on the official data from the armory. We only take data from the armory and make no manual adjustments. If you feel as though
the armory is in error then you need to take this up with the armory team at Blizzard.
How do I get access to GuildOx ranking data to use in my web application?
We make guild ranking data available as XML data using the following URL format:
We use syndicated advertising but aim to filter out gold-selling or power-leveling ads from our web site. If you see an ad that violates
Blizzard's terms of service then please contact us and provide details on the URL of the advertiser and we will promptly filter such ads.
Contact Us
GuildOx is written and maintained by Polar (Polarise of Proudmoore-US)
If you are contacting us about an achievement not showing, please ensure you have
(1) read the minimum requirements for earning an achievement as discussed above,
(2) manually refreshed your guild using the 'Add Guild' option,
(3) checked that the minimum number of guild member's achievements are showing accurately on the wowarmory and
(4) checked the wowarmory is available. Please provide armory links for the required number of players so we can follow up.
If you are contacting us to ask why your guild is no longer listed on the strict rankings then it will be either you have earned an
Ulduar 25 hard mode achievement or you have had a total of 10 guild members participate in an Icehowl kill in Coliseum 25 normal over time (or
5 members earn a simultaneous kill). This achievement cannot be reversed.
If you are contacting us to have a guild removed as a result of a merger or disbanding then please note you need to wait for the member numbers
to drop below the GuildOx threshold and GuildOx will automatically remove them. Allow one week for this to occur.
If you are contacting us to tell us that the date of your achievement/kill is incorrect then remember it is UTC/GMT time that is used
(not server time) and the date+time is pulled directly from the wowarmory.
