real-life-friends
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Player stories on the official site
Blizzard asked for real-life stories from players a little while ago, and now they've posted a pretty big collection of them over on the official site (this page was around last year, but they've added many stories since then). As Bornakk says, these are personal accounts from players of how playing the game with others has helped them grow relationships in real-life. I'm not sure what exactly the point of posting these is (maybe Blizzard wants to stave off some of that negative media reporting about the game and addiction to it), but then again, if you dive into a few of these, you can see that they don't really need a point -- they're really interesting (and in some cases pretty heartwarming) stories about how players are using this game to enrich real-life relationships.They're still accepting more stories as well, so if you've got a good tale of some WoW-sharing in real-life, hit them up over on the submission page and put yours in the mix. Hopefully Blizzard will figure out a way to get these out into the real world -- harsh stories about addiction are so easy for the media to jump on, but great stories like these are the real reasons we all play this game.
The Daily Grind: Who do you MMO with most, real-life or online friends?
In a past Daily Grind, we asked you how important your friends are to your MMO gaming, and how much influence friends have over which virtual world you reside in. What we didn't ask was whether those friends were people you knew in the flesh, or people you had met online, quite possibly in a game. Some of you did specify in your responses whether the friends that influenced you were RL or online, and it would seem that the answers differ quite a lot from person to person.There are gamers out there with no real-life gamer friends, and one would assume that some of the strongest online friendships are between people from this category, as they finally find folks to share their hobby with. Others might be too hardcore, or not hardcore enough, to play with their real-life friends for a lot of the time. On the other hand, we know plenty of people that only ever play an MMO if they have at least one of their RL pals joining them. If you were to look at one month of your play-time in any particular MMO, would you have spent more time with real-life friends or with people you met online?
Officers' Quarters: Two heads > one
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I sometimes envy those two-headed ogres. Imagine if you could fill out your tax forms and play Warcraft at the same time. Hmm, has anyone actually done that? This week's e-mail comes from a pair of players who want to start a guild as co-leaders. Can a guild survive with two GL's running the show?I have a question or two I'd like to ask you, oh great guild master guru. My friends (RL) are all going to reroll on another server because most of them are new, while I have two 70's already. My friends count a total of around 6, maybe a 7th if he decides to join us on retail instead of private servers. We will start a guild of course and one of my friends (who has a 70 already) and I will be the guild masters. I will be the raid leader and such and he will be the PvP leader. We came to this agreement mutually and have decided that we will be each other's counsel. A small system of checks and balances, if you will. Our main reason for choosing ourselves is because of our extensive experience and we get along together, not to mention work like a well-oiled machine in almost all situations. While this will be our first time actually leading the guild, we have both been officers in several different types of guilds and we have sort of an inkling as to what we need to do.My question is: Is this bipartisan (excuse the loose word usage) leadership a good idea? And could you give us some tips on starting/leading a guild? Just the vital things! :D
