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WoW Archivist: 10 years, 10 amazing moments
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? In 2004, I bought a brown box with some discs inside it. On the cover was a close-up of a woman with crazy purple eyebrows and an angry bearded guy -- possibly Matt Rossi -- holding a gun. I didn't know anything about the Warcraft universe at the time. I'd watched someone play Warcraft III once (or was it II?). I remember chuckling at the peons' comments as they got to work. That was the extent of my experience. I'd been playing Final Fantasy XI and I loved the concept of an online world. I was hoping for a game that was more accessible than FFXI but with all the cool monsters, grouping, exploration, and loot. I never imagined the journey that I was about to take, the people I would meet, the opportunities that would become open to me as a result of that purchase. Many of us who played back then had no idea what was about to happen to the gaming world because of that brown box. With all the hoopla surrounding Warlords of Draenor, Archivist has been busy covering yesterday's precursors to current content, such as the zombie plague pre-expansion event, patch 3.0, and the original Upper Blackrock Spire. WoW's 10th anniversary events officially ended this week (after an unscheduled extension), and it is past time that I looked back on my own ten years in Azeroth. Here are ten of my favorite WoW moments, in order. 1. Showdown at Uldaman. One of my first PvP experiences in WoW was a complete accident. In late 2004, a friend and I were questing in the cave outside of Uldaman in the Badlands. We were in our mid to high 30s at the time on our first characters. One of the mushrooms we had to gather sat behind an Alliance NPC. I went to right-click to gather it but instead I clicked the NPC and started attacking him. We were flagged for PvP on a PvE realm. We knew it was now open season on us. And on Khadgar-US, Horde players were heavily outnumbered by the Alliance.
Could WoW help you get a job?
Conventional wisdom will tell you that you should generally keep your online gaming hobbies off your resume, unless perhaps you're going for a job in the gaming industry. However, Symantec COO Stephen Gillett tells a different story. For him, including his accomplishments in World of Warcraft was an important facet of his ability to get an executive position at Starbucks as Chief Information Officer, back in 2008. Gillett argues that his time as a guild master in WoW indicates leadership skills, recruitment abilities, and an understanding of the way people interact with electronic media--giving him tools to better guide companies into the digital age. I feel that WoW can very much teach a person leadership skills, particularly those who take the plunge as guild masters and officers, or raid leaders. Coordinating a group of 10 or more people to complete a task is not easy to do.The ability to motivate and organize groups is something that you can take with you wherever you go, and it doesn't really matter where you learned how to do it. Perhaps most of us won't ever put "World of Warcraft Guild Master" on our job applications, but I would be very remiss if I didn't admit that my time in WoW has helped me in the professional world--it was a key factor in my landing this job, for example. For our readers, has WoW contributed to any of your professional successes, either directly or indirectly? Would you ever put your time in WoW down on a resume? Tell us about it in the comments!
Keeping your guild active during the down time
Guild leaders have been sending us a lot of questions in the Queue and elsewhere about how to keep their guild active during the down time between expansions. At this point many guilds have already cleared Orgrimmar and are either slowly working on heroic modes or stalled out entirely. It's not that anyone is doing anything wrong -- they're not -- it's just the nature of players. After things have been accomplished, why bother continuing on? This is totally a normal behavior and shouldn't be taken as anyone abandoning the guild or anything silly like that.* So, life is slow on the forefront of raiding. What can you do? Change your game. Make the game not about killing pixels from this expansion, but about experiencing everything in a social atmosphere. I've had to make this transition a lot, and I've always found it works. End current content raiding Make an official end to the current tier of raiding and move to other activities. Allow for a small group to form that wants to keep pushing into harder heroics and what not, but don't make anyone feel like they have to go. And don't feel obligated yourself too -- it's okay in a guild leadership position to sit out and just facilitate.
The best of Massively's Guild Counsel column
Karen Bryan is a seasoned MMORPG gamer and guildleader who cut her MMO teeth on EverQuest and went on to run guilds in Vanguard, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and beyond. That made her the perfect choice to pen Massively's Guild Counsel column, through which Karen dispensed advice to guild leaders, guild members, raiders, and even guild-less gamers for over three years. In honor of her column's long run, today we round up the very best of her Guild Counsel articles, those saturated in her trademark wry humor, wisdom, and timeless advice for MMO players old and new. Enjoy.
Officers' Quarters: Forging alliances for Mythic raiding
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. In the wake of Blizzard's announcement that Mythic raiding would only support 20-player raids, 10-player Heroic guilds have been left wondering how they will adjust. This week, one guild member wants to know how to manage a successful alliance with another 10-player raiding guild. Hi Scott, I'm a member of a small 10-man heroic raiding guild. We have been worried about the changes to raiding that are coming in Warlords of Draenor, since we are a very close-knit guild of friends. Most of us have been raiding together since early Wrath. We haven't been looking forward to recruiting 10+ more people, so we were thinking of resigning ourselves to running the new Heroic (current Normal) content and hoping not to get bored or lose too many members to other guilds. We recently received the offer of a guild alliance from another 10-man heroic guild on our server.
The Guild Counsel: What do you need to be a guild leader?
The other day, I came across one of those inspirational posters that takes a word and then uses each letter to spell out a quality that makes up the word. And it got me thinking about what words best describe the essence of a good guild leader. There are as many different types of guild leaders as there are grains of sand on a beach, and many of them are successful. But if you took all of the longtime guild leaders and deconstructed them, what qualities would they all share? Let's look at the most essential qualities of a guild leader in this week's Guild Counsel.
Officers' Quarters: The raid-aholic
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. In this week's email, a raid leader has grave concerns about his guild leader, who puts personal performance and volume of raiding above the good of the guild. Hi Scott I'm a co-raid leader of a fairly successful raid team. Our guild leader describes himself as a raid-a-holic. It was something we used to tease him about but I'm now concerned it's becoming a problem. He has never taken his turn sitting out on standby like the rest of us. He'll only ever accept being put on standby if it's farm night, and he doesn't need gear. My co-raid leader and I try and be absolutely fair on the confirms. When the GL was our top dps, it was an easy excuse to take him often, and then we didn't have to rock the boat. Recently for the first time ever we standbyed him on progress night. That night there was just no other option unless we wanted to be grossly unfair and that was just a step too far. So we were fair and we standbyed him. As soon as he saw the calendar he went mad and started posting in /g, in /o, on battle tag status, on his twitter account which doubles as the guilds (where he posts all our kill videos), that he hoped we wiped all night, as the kill wouldn't count if he wasn't there.
The Guild Counsel: How to find a good pre-launch guild
There's a wave of new MMOs on the horizon, and with each one comes a surge of enthusiastic fans ready for launch day. Some are so excited that they want to hit the ground running by joining a guild before the game goes live. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pre-launch guilds for each upcoming game, and joining one early can help get the most out of a game from day one. But it's hard to find the right guild when you can't really see it in action. How do you know whether the guild you join will end up being the best fit for you? Let's look at how to link up with the best pre-launch guild in this week's Guild Counsel.
Officers' Quarters: Gdivorce
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. To lead a guild effectively, its leaders have to be on the same page. In this week's email, a guild's founding officers have a fundamental disagreement about the direction of the guild. One of them wants out, and she wants to take her half of the guild with her. Hi Scott, here's a little question: A few years ago, my boyfriend and I started our own guild, mainly for the extra storage space and to share profession materials between our characters (we both have plenty of alts). A few months ago, we decided to turn it into a raiding guild, invited a few friends who then in turn invited a few more friends and so on. Then our first disagreement happened.
The Guild Counsel: What EverQuest Next Landmark means to guilds
With the arrival of EverQuest Next Landmark's alpha, the buzz is all about how the game is a fresh change from what we've been used to in MMOs. And actually, in some ways, it's a return to the roots of the MMO industry. But EQ Next Landmark is also redefining the whole concept of guilds, perhaps in the process raising the question of what guilds will look like in the future. In this week's Guild Counsel, let's look at how Landmark could drastically change the way we think about guilds in MMOs.
Officers' Quarters: My roommate is a slacker
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. As a guild leader, it's never easy to tell someone that they aren't pulling their weight. What happens when that person is your roommate? hey Scott. few months back, me and my dad revived our old guild, and it went soo good! within weeks our ranks were swelling with people, having a good time etc then we started raiding, all was well untill we started progressing properly. one of my raiders (Bob for this story) has an itemlvl of ~563 yet doesnt pull his weight as dps (Mage) he tends to slack if he thinks he can get away with it, threatens to get angry etc if people keep complaining about his damage. heres the real issue. this raider is my roommate and longtime friend.
The Guild Counsel: Guild-friendly Vanguard features I know I'll miss
When the news of Vanguard's sunsetting broke, I got thinking about what best describes the Vanguard experience to those who didn't play it. And the one feature that sums it up best is the /rope command. When the game launched, it came with more than a few bugs, and one nagging problem was that players would get stuck in the terrain or even fall through the world. To help solve the problem, players could target the stuck player and use the /rope command to summon him out and up to their spot. Much of Vanguard was like that: moments of frustration from bugged content, but also moments of teamwork and community pulling together to make it work. Vanguard was the diamond in the rough that never got polished. It was a gorgeous world, with some hints of truly innovative gameplay, but it was often overshadowed by intrinsic problems at the core of the game. Despite it all, Vanguard has one of the best communities around, and there were many ways in which the game brought players and guilds together. Let's look at what will be missed in this week's Guild Counsel.
Officers' Quarters: The guy who won't run back
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. What kind of monster never runs back after a wipe? This week, a guild leader is pondering his options after one of his raiders fails to grasp the teamwork aspects of raiding. Hi Scott! In June of 2013, I formed a guild with a few close wow friends, all who were part of the guild we were previously in which fell apart. The guild has prospered. We started off as a Flex only guild and have come along way since, currently 13/14N. Nine out of the ten raiders are great apart from one, an officer and one of the original members of the guild. He's a good skilled player but his attitude has left me speechless quite a few times. He has rage quit raids before because we couldn't raid till normal raid time. He has threatened to rage quit raids because he was subbed out to give another raider a chance at loot. He challenges every new tactic we have for a boss. If you don't share his opinion well, ill just say he's headstrong! He never runs back in after wipes either. It got to the stage where I was sick of him but I just couldn't bring myself to do anything about it. He followed me to the new guild and trusted me. I know now that that was stupid to do. I let it go on too long and it has led to some drama.
The Guild Counsel: Seeking a guild? Watch for these red flags
Each week in this column, we explore common issues in guild management, with a focus on tips to be a successful guild leader. But this week, let's turn the tables a bit and look at things from the perspective of an unguilded player. With the rise of free-to-play in many MMOs, there's a larger pool of players from which guilds recruit. But before you take that guild invite, there are a few red flags to be wary of when joining a guild. For every good guild, there's a guild out there that makes you regret clicking that "join" button and leaves you wishing you had those misspent hours back after you leave. In this week's Guild Counsel, let's look at what to avoid when you're considering joining a guild.
Officers' Quarters: Helping a tween tank
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 is from a guild leader in a delicate situation. One of his younger raiders is holding the guild back, but he doesn't want to upset her. Her highly protective father is also a member. Heyo Scott! My problem comes in the form of a raider who's enthusiasm and dedication are impressive, but who's ability are not. I'm Co-GM of a guild that's been together for about a year. In that time, we've gone from only having one or two people on all day to regularly having 10-15 at any given moment. We raid 10-man normal and Flex mode, everyone in the guild who can make it to raids regularly is happy with the situation, and even those who leave for greener raiding pastures always leave behind their alts because they just enjoy the community so much. The problem is that we are slowly bleeding away some of our best raiders due to our lack of progress.
The Guild Counsel: There are no bad players, only bad guild matches
If you had to pinpoint the source of what causes most guild drama, it almost always comes down to the guild's screening process. We've certainly looked at recruiting before and how important it is to create a system that effectively matches up your guild with like-minded players, but all too often, when there is a problem with a new member, the frustration boils over and the finger pointing begins. Is it the player's fault for being a bad seed, or the guild's fault for poor management and vision? Guild leaders and players often hold long-standing resentment, and you can see it in the comments section here at Massively as well, but it's time for a change. In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at why even the "worst" player has a good guild match out there and why popular thinking needs to change when it comes to judging who is "bad" and who is "good."
Officers' Quarters: Lessons from a guild split
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 doesn't have a question for me. It's the story of a guild with clashing raid cultures. It includes some great lessons for officers about the consequences of trying to do too much. In addition to [our progression team] Team Elite ("TE"), my guild ran 2-3 other 10-man teams throughout MOP. The other teams were not as intense due to differing skills and play styles. However some resentment did build. Some players did have the "greener grass" syndrome and wanted to be a part of TE. So when spots opened up, a handful of them ended up moving over to that team. This was the main reason for the resentment. Other raiders saw themselves as "farm system" groups for the "major league" group. For the record, I was on TE for the first tier only. After I moved to other teams, I really gained the perspective of the other raiders, and I started to feel that resentment as well. I saw a huge shift in attitude from the TE players, even the longtime members.
The Guild Counsel: Recruitment tips in the age of free-to-play
Free-to-play is here to stay, and in just a few short years, the MMO landscape has changed dramatically. It seems like just yesterday that games like SWTOR and RIFT were adamantly insisting that the subscription model was the best plan for them. And four years ago, if you had suggested that most MMOs would adopt a free-to-play business model, people would question your sanity. Today, if you claim that the subscription model is the best bet, you'll get funny looks. The change has had an impact on guilds, and it's caused many guild leaders to have to rethink the way they recruit and manage their guilds. Let's take a look at how the free-to-play movement can actually help guilds build and maintain a healthy roster.
Officers' Quarters: Stop it with the invite addons
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. I have to admit it: as someone who has been guilded in WoW for nine+ years, and who plays on a decidedly Horde-light server, it hasn't been until the past few months that I realized what a damn nuisance these addons are. I've been playing alts lately, trying to decide what class and spec I want to raid with in Warlords of Draenor. (I'm currently a feral druid, which I may stick with.) Since I'm out of character slots on my home realm, and I've never really played Alliance, I decided to roll some Alliance characters on a realm with a healthy Alliance pop. I didn't know anyone on the realm. And I didn't really want to join a guild, since I wasn't sure how much I would play those toons yet. I had no idea what I was in for.
The Guild Counsel: Seven New Year's resolutions every guild leader should make
As 2013 comes to a close, it's a good opportunity to look back at your guild's year and remember the success and memorable high points you reached together. For every guild that made it through the year, there are hundreds if not thousands that didn't. There are many challenges to running a guild, and sadly, there are too many potential pitfalls that can cause even the most cohesive guilds to fracture and fall apart. The start of a new year is a good time for guild leaders to make a few resolutions to strengthen their guild and make the coming year more enjoyable for all. Let's look back at some helpful advice from the past year's Guild Counsel as we look forward to 2014.
