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Officers' Quarters: Expansion team
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Here at the OQ we've heard from a lot of guilds who are being massacred by normal mode Throne of Thunder. This week it's refreshing to hear from a guild that has found unexpected success in Tier 15. They're now weighing a second raid team, but the raid leader has doubts about this expansion. Hello Scott, I'm the raid leader of a casual, family centered guild. We have always been on the lower end of the raiding curve, clearing raids only after they have become old content. However most recently we have been progressing remarkably well during Mists. For the first time our guild has attempted the raid while still current. While only going 3/12 in Throne of Thunder is nothing to the guilds who are now farming heroic Ra-Den, it has greatly lifted the spirits of our guild and it's members; so much so that there is now talk of forming a second raid team.
Officers' Quarters: B teamed
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. This week's email comes from a player whose guild recently made the always-difficult, always-drama-fueling decision to form an A team out of their raiders. Is creating an A team the right move? When you wind up on the B team, what's next? Hi Scott, I'm a member of a medium-sized guild that has been running two raid teams simultaneously up until recently. These teams weren't fixed; group composition was mixed up every week. I rather enjoyed that, as it meant that I got to play and interact with lots of different guild members, and there was little room for cliquishness. However, the other day guild leadership announced that this was all going to change. Going forward, most of the officers will be in a fixed "progression team" while the rest of us will be left to our own devices. There should still be enough of us left to form a second team, but we'd pretty much have to make it work ourselves.
Officers' Quarters: Culture shock
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. This week's email presents an interesting situation about recruiting, loot, raiding, and drama. I'll let it speak for itself. Help Me Guild Master Guru - You're My Only Hope!!! I've written in the past and you've been helpful. I have a doosie for you. My guild has been around for almost 3 years and I've been a guild leader and officer for about 4 years. We're your average run of the mill raiding guild with a little more than half of the heroic bosses down in DS. We're more than just a guild, we're a family. Our focus is on raiding and killing bosses. Our policies and mission reflect that focus. We recently had a discussion among our leadership about possibly absorbing the core members of another guild that's falling apart. They raid with a little more intensity than we do, but we have members that want to raid at that intensity. So there was discussion about having one group raid at that intensity and our other 2-3 groups just mosey along like we've always done. The problem was, the officer from the other guild that I was discussing this with had his own ideas for this raid team that didn't quite jive with us (especially regarding the loot policy). One of our officers was extremely vocal and emotional against this happening. The discussion derailed and that's no longer an option.
Officers' Quarters: Be careful what you promise
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Promises, promises. Politicians make them all the time. In fact, many of them get elected based on those promises. No one seems surprised anymore when a politician fails to deliver on a campaign promise, yet our guild members usually expect us to do what we say we will. Could it be that guild officers are actually held to a higher standard? Let's look at this week's email to find out! Hello I am an officer (well one of 2) in a medium sized semi raiding guild We also have a large number of "casual" players in our guild. During LK era, we had 2 different 10 man raiding teams going on. Both groups I took the time to rotate different players out each given week so everyone had a chance to raid.The second group was also made up of some of the first group's alts. This was very stressful on me due to I would take all week to get the groups ready only to have someone say at the last minute would say oh I can't make it 5 minutes before raid started, then I would have to rework the "group composition" in a flurry to be able to start the raid on time. Well during Cata we all agreed we did not want to do rotations and only wanted to do 10 man raids and wanted two solid 10 man groups with the same people every week ( with a stand by if needed), so we could work as a "family" unit and mesh well together.
Officers' Quarters: The A team question
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. The "A Team" -- in WoW, it's not a bunch of guys in a van who help people by . . . shooting other people. Rather, it's your best players grouped together to the exclusion of other guild members. Most guilds don't have the numbers to fill two 25-player teams, so this issue usually relates to 10-player runs. The forming of a 10-player A team can be riddled with drama. This week's e-mail asks whether allowing an A team is the right choice. I enjoy reading your perspective on guild leadership. I'm hoping you can give us some ideas on balancing progression versus inclusion. We are an established raiding guild that works on the top tier of content. While we are not a guild that makes server first kills, we steadily progress through the content and see hard/heroic modes on 25 man difficulty. Our raiding core is pretty solid, although there are levels of skill, from very high to adequate. We typically complete the ten man content, and use the ten mans as a base to gain experience on the twenty five mans. Our problem mainly rests on the makeup of our ten man groups. One school wants to have the maximum number of people get in the ten man groups. This school spreads our best players among multiple groups. All of the groups have some success, but because there are weaker players included, these groups usually hit a wall on harder fights (Heroic Anub or the Wing Bosses of ICC). There is a lot of frustration on the part of our best players when this happens.
Mercs and their role in EVE's industrial warfare
Much of what's written about EVE Online focuses on the darker aspects of the game. It's not surprising, as those topics are often the ones most interesting to players and non-players alike, but EVE has a very deep industrial side to it as well. It's a side that gets much less fanfare; R&D (invention), manufacturing, trading, and investment are all possible within the game and occur in tandem with EVE's more violent pursuits. Most every ship, after all, has been manufactured and sold (or re-sold) by another player. Those who engage in EVE's industry on a serious level often come into conflict with rival corporations and alliances in wars played out on the market, which sometimes spill into formal war declarations and combat. But if you're not interested in or inept at PvP, what are EVE's industrialists to do? While an industrialist may not be well-versed in the art of war, he or she can play to their own strength: financial influence. EVE has a number of merc corps who are willing to solve problems, be it through armed escorts in hostile space or simply obliterating your opposition... assuming you can meet their price. Benilopax, of Warp Drive Active: Industry podcast fame and an E-ON contributor, relates his experience with contracting mercenaries to solve such problems, in what he refers to as 'the dark side of industrialism'. "There is a growing use of mercenaries by industrial entities to either take out the competition or keep them from easily making a profit," Benilopax writes for EVE Tribune. If you're interested in knowing a bit more about this side of the game, start with Benilopax's article (and A-Team reference) to see what it's like to deal with mercenaries in EVE Online.
Mercenaries 2 developer walkthrough previews different 'approaches'
Those who enjoyed the economics-meets-explosions gameplay of Pandemic Studios' Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction will no doubt get a kick out of the latest trailer for the title's upcoming sequel. The three ExOps personalities we came to know and love in the first Mercs are making a comeback, and in the above video, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames lead designer Scott Warner gives us a sneak peek at how these well-trained operatives, you know, operate.The gameplay looks solid, but for those of us too busy to watch a five-minute video on a Saturday afternoon, we'll briefly break it down using A-Team archetypes: Jennifer Mui is Templeton "Faceman" Peck, Mattias Nilsson is "Howling Mad" Murdock, and Christopher Jacobs is an amalgam of John "Hannibal" Smith and B.A. Baracus -- only he doesn't pity fools. He hastily shuffles them off this mortal coil using their own grenades.
Video: Halo 3 meets The A-Team
Honestly, who doesn't like a good A-Team parody? That's right, no one, because everyone likes The A-Team (and Mr T, of course). We've seen a Gears of War A-Team parody before and, frankly, we're surprised it took this long for a Halo 3 version to come across our proverbial desk. Created by the folks at No Scope Comics, the video poses the Master Chief, the Arbiter, and the other two Elites from Halo 3's co-op campaign as the whole gang from The A-Team. It's a surprisingly accurate take on the original intro actually. Enjoy.[Thanks, Andrew H]
TurpsterVision: Lord of the Dings
Every Tuesday think "T" for Turpster and take the "a" in "day", capitalise it, remove the little bit in the middle, turn it upside down and you get a "V". Put the two together and you'll have TV for TurpsterVision -- the best Internet video podcast on Massively! (Never mind that business about it being the only video podcast on Massively...) Hello and thanks for joining me again for another fun filled feature here on Massively! I love my job, it totally rocks, I get to have all sorts of fun and hopefully you guys enjoy it a little bit too. I normally am happy with you guys turning up and leaving the odd comment or two below though this week I have to ask you for a favor. On Saturday, just after the WoW Insider Show, I was chatting to everyone's favorite Shaman Crybaby Crusader who was just heading off to a D&D game. I then posed the question to him, "which was the most awesome and manly of DnD characters." Obviously I chose the correct answer and Mike chose the wrong one. Let me know which way you swing in your comments: Bard or Wizard? Who wins? You decide!(Oh and there is a video or something like that after the break!)
