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Officers' Quarters: More on raid saves
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. Part of good leadership is admitting when you've made a mistake. I admit it: When I wrote last week's column about trash farming, I was operating under the old raid ID system where the ID is shared among everyone. As many of you were quick to point out, that is no longer true. Each player simply gets saved to the bosses they've killed, plus any required bosses for those killed bosses, if the player didn't kill them. If you (like me), completely forgot about this new system, here's the full explanation of how raid saves work now. I wish I could say that I was jet-lagged from traveling halfway around the world, feverish with a strep throat infection and disconnected from WoW after not playing for more than a month. Actually, I was all of those things when I wrote the column. It's not an excuse for fumbling such an important point. There really is none, but I hope my readers will forgive my lapse in accuracy. I'd like to thank everyone who pointed out the error for the benefit of any readers who may have been confused. Now that I actually know what the heck I'm talking about, let's revisit the issue and talk about a few other controversial topics in the context of raid saves.
Wings Over Atreia: Drop -n- shop
Hot topic! Hot topic! Fresh outta the community oven! In a much-hyped announcement a while back, NCsoft proclaimed that drop rates in Aion were being significantly increased in the 2.1 patch. The company even employed a certain wide-eyed Shugo named Victor to outline his experiments and prove that drops now rained from the skies. For a while, there was much rejoicing in the lands of Atreia. *cue Monty Python soundtrack* Oh, there were some naysayers who cried that an end to the economy as we knew it was at hand (not totally incorrect), but for the most part, Elyos and Asmodians alike flocked back to Aion with the promise of more wealth and gold loot. I even found that my bags could not hold everything that dropped during Taloc's Hollow runs, forcing me to to delete items in order to pick more up. Alas -- that was then, and this is now. The pendulum has quietly swung back the other way to the what-exactly-does-a-loot-drop-look-like side. From personal experience, I can attest that getting drops now is about like pulling Stormwing's teeth... with only your bare hands and maybe some dental floss. The change is obvious, so why all the hush-hush? Currently it feels like a classic bait and switch: Market an enticing feature loudly to get players then remove it with equal secrecy and stealth. And to top that off, there are murmurs that the devs plan to implement changes that put a halt to the popular selling of loot rights. Aw, don't kick us while we are down! Make sure you aren't on cool-down and zone past the cut to explore this bane of many a Daeva's life (drop rates) as well as the practice of selling loot rights within Aion.
Officers' Quarters: The ethics of loot selling
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. A few weeks ago I wrote a column about husband/wife guild leaders who were using the old double-roll scam in a new way now that loot doesn't bind to a character for two hours. I also mentioned in that column the new trend in raids, particularly PUG raids, of offering gold for an item that someone else has fairly won. This week I received an e-mail from a player feeling guilt for selling an item. I'd like to address his situation first. Then I'll talk about what you as an officer should consider when this situation arises in your guild. Dear Scott, I wasn't entirely sure who to ask for this, and seeing as how the Officer's Quarters column you write seems to be the most "Dear Abby" esque that I can find, well, I figured you might be able to help me out. With the recent implementation of being able to give "mislooted" items to other qualified members of a raid upon a bosses completion, there has obviously been a lot of abuse to this new change. Abuse which, until very recently, I had been abhorrently against. However, I was put into such a situation recently, and well, suffice it to say, I am a bumbling hypocrite.
