Guild advancement

Guild advancement was a feature which allowed guilds to level in a way similar to characters.

There were 25 levels for a guild to progress through. Experience towards level progression was gained through guild member participation in dungeon and raid boss kills, battleground victories, Arena victories, and profession skill-ups.

To qualify for guild XP, a raid or PvP group needed to be be composed of at least 80% guild members (with some exceptions, see exact numbers below). Participating in any of these activities also granted players reputation with the guild, which allowed them to purchase unlocked guild rewards like heirlooms, recipes, pets and mounts. Originally, there was also going to be a guild currency and a guild talent tree system, but they were simplified; guild talent trees became a set of linear guild perks without exclusive choices, and guild rewards are now purchased with gold instead of an additional currency type.

Earning guild experience
A guild was able to level up to level 25. Advancement in levels was done in a manner similar to player characters: a variety of tasks earned experience which counted toward advancing to the next level.

Activities which earned guild XP included:
 * Boss kills in a raid or dungeon while in a guild group
 * Rated Battleground or Arena wins while in a guild group
 * Completing quests / daily quests that reward experience
 * Completing Guild Challenges

Although present at launch, Blizzard removed the ability of guilds to gain Guild XP from completing achievements in a hotfix deployed soon after Cataclysm ' s release.

Raid and dungeon boss kills
Guild xp for boss kills was scaled on a few factors:
 * Boss level
 * Normal / Heroic (Heroic dungeons have a 1.5 multiplier on all guild experience earned.)
 * Number of guild members present (more xp for raids, since they are limited to once a week)

Guild experience and reputation caps
During Cataclysm, caps on guild experience and reputation gains restricted the rate at which players could advance guild levels and their personal reputation with the guild. These caps were removed with the release of the Mists of Pandaria pre-patch.

The daily cap on guild experience was 7,807,000 XP, and was indicated on the guild's experience bar in the Guild window. The daily cap on guild XP was removed at guild level 20, so during the last five levels there was no limit on experience gains. Among other things, this allowed guilds to "race" to achieve Realm First! Guild Level 25 instead of being predetermined to all reach it on the same day, as they would have had they all been hitting the same daily cap through the final levels. See the table below for the time that was required for each guild level up to 20 (assuming the cap was hit each day).

The weekly cap on Guild Reputation per individual member was 4,375 rep. Thus it took approximately 9½ weeks in a guild to reach exalted, provided you had enough guild activity each week to reach the cap. The weekly cap reset along with Daily Quests: 3 AM server time on Tuesday Morning for US servers, and 3 AM server time Wednesday morning for EU servers.

Guild levels and perks
Membership in a guild grants several passive and active abilities known as "perks" that improve quality of life in various aspects of the game. Until the removal of guild advancement, these abilities were gained by leveling up the guild; all members received access to all abilities the guild had earned. Guild perks were a primary motivator in leveling up guilds as quickly as possible.

With the removal of guild levels, only six perks were retained, automatically granted to all members of all guilds: Mass Resurrection (guild perk), Mobile Banking, Mount Up, Hasty Hearth, The Quick and the Dead, and Guild Mail.

This chart illustrates the progression of guild levels and their perk rewards before the system was removed, including how quickly guilds could expect to earn each ability by hitting the daily guild experience cap every day starting at Cataclysm's release. The daily experience cap was quickly patched to be removed at level 23, and later adjusted to level 20, then removed entirely in patch 5.0.4.

Guild items and guild reputation
Participating in various activities earns members Guild reputation. Members can buy special items (with gold) based on their current reputation level. Many vendor items require guild achievements to have been earned by the guild to be sold by its vendor at all. The ground mounts, heirlooms, 7th bank slot voucher, and Wrap of Unity all used to have guild level requirements, but are now sold by all guilds immediately.

Guild achievements
Guilds are able to gain achievements for killing bosses, obtaining a certain membership demographic, and other activities. Some achievements reflect achievements already available to players.

Warlords of Draenor
On 29 June 2014, Watcher announced that guild experience and leveling would be removed from the game with Warlords of Draenor, along with the Cash Flow guild perk. The following was posted in response to a tester inquiring about missing guild perks in the Warlords of Draenor beta:

Patches and hotfixes