wow-guild
Latest
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!
Breakfast Topic: How did you choose your guild?
The people you play with make up the heart and soul of your World of Warcraft experience. They'll make the game a delight you keep coming back to or a misery you can't escape soon enough. What this comes down to is that who you're guilded with makes or breaks your game experience. A bad guild or, worse, a good guild that's falling apart will make you rush offline to a good book or a favorite TV show rather than spending your idle time in Azeroth. Of course, it's not always straightforward to find the right guild for you -- it's all too easy to have mismatched goals or schedules that turn what may have seemed to be a great group of players into a guild nightmare. When I'm in need of a guild, I tend to follow my friends around, which always seems like a good formula but doesn't always work out. But it's hardly the only way: all you have to do is be unguilded to get numerous (unsolicited) guild invitations and the guild recruitment forum is always brimming with new guilds LFM. So, just how do you go about picking that perfect guild?
Breakfast Topic: Why join a guild?
There are lots of reasons to join a guild: it makes it easy to find groups and raids, you have guaranteed company while you're playing, and most importantly, guild perks. In case you've been living under a rock, guild perks give you great bonuses for guild membership based on your guild's level. Perks can boost the amount of experience, reputation, and honor you gain, make your hearthstone cooldown shorter, and even make flight paths go faster. So, really, the question seems to be why not join a guild? The question's been asked on Reddit and it got me wondering why my own alt of choice (for the moment) is currently unguilded. It couldn't take much more than a polite request to jump on the guild bandwagon and get my hands on those yummy, yummy perks. It would stop the regular requests I get to join guilds (even if you've turned off guild requests, you do frequently get whispers) and it's not as though I'm in a demanding guild at the moment. And yet when I don't feel like doing much (or dealing with others), I hop on to my alt to solo for a while. And what about you, fellow players? Are you guilded or unguilded?
Blizzard introduces guild mentoring program
Blizzard today introduced the guild mentoring program, a new initiative aimed at getting new players involved with a guild. On select realms, one guild of each faction will become a mentoring guild, getting its name changed temporarily and helping usher in new players to all the fun that is WoW guilds. The program isn't very widespread, existing only on 14 US realms and 13 EU realms at the moment. There are lots of details of the program that are important to those looking to get involved in this. Overall, this should be a nice way for Blizzard to not only encourage new players to find a virtual home, but for the veterans of us to extend a helping hand in a very warm, friendly, and Blizzard-backed way. It'll be interesting to see what effect this has in the long term! Check out the full blue post, including a list of EU and US realms, and an FAQ, after the break.
Guild transfer service coming soon
Good news for those guilds who want to move to a new realm -- Blizzard will soon allow the ability to transfer the guild and its structures easily with a guild relocation service. It appears that there won't be a single massive "transfer my guild button" that moves everyone over all at once, but instead, each guild member will have to pay their own way over to the new server. Once they get to the new server, all their guild bank, guild reputation, and so on will be over there. Blizzard's full statement is as follows: Nethaera We want to give everyone an early heads-up regarding our plan to implement a guild relocation service for World of Warcraft. The idea is for a guild leader to be able to transfer a guild to another realm. The guild structure remains intact, including the guild leader, guild bank, ranks, and guild name (depending on availability). Guild members who decide to relocate with their guild may initiate their own paid character transfer. Upon a successful transfer they will automatically be part of the guild when they first log into the new realm. Their guild rank and guild reputation will be intact. Guild leaders who do not want a change of scenery may also choose to pick a new guild name using another new service. These services are in development and we will be providing additional details at a future point in time. As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the guild relocation service in a way that will not disrupt the game play experience. Please note that this feature will require extensive internal testing, so you may see bits and pieces of the service appear on the public test realms. source
Celebrating a guild anniversary in style
Pink Pigtail Inn has what is probably the most involved guild anniversary I've ever seen. We've seen quite a few anniversaries and events come through Guildwatch, but this one takes the cake: a huge competitive scavenger hunt, complete with out-of-game clues, banned class abilities (so teams could be balanced out), and even self-made quests involving the guild's lore. It's probably rare to find a group of officers that can be this committed to something normally considered "an RP event," but obviously it worked out, because the whole guild really enjoyed it.The context Larisa puts this in, however, is even more interesting. According to the Daedalus Project (a series of surveys of MMO players -- we've mentioned their work before), the majority of players can't celebrate a guild's anniversary anyway, as they haven't been in their guilds for even a year yet. I've never considered it, but it's true: while we are very attached to our guildies when we do find a good guild, we aren't really attached to them for very long, relatively speaking. There are stories of guilds going on for decades, but even those guilds have players coming and going -- if your guild has the same group of people playing together for a few years, you're probably in a smaller group than you think. PPI's example is a great one for any guilds who have been around long enough to celebrate it.
How not to apply to a guild
The Wordy Warrior covers a well-traveled subject in an interesting way in her latest post. We've already talked in-depth about how to get into a good raiding guild (and we've even covered some amazing guild applications), but straight from the trenches of guild leadership, Ariedan sends an open letter to anyone applying to her guild with, some might say, the wrong attitude.Here's the thing: especially if you're applying to a progression guild, odds are that they don't need you. They're progressing just fine, and bringing you in just opens the door for more drama. It's a risk, and it's your job to convince them to take that risk, hopefully for the benefit of both. So if you show up to an application and don't take it seriously, and flip out when they question your background, and expect them to take you on without any proof you'd be valuable to them, don't be surprised when they laugh you right out of their forums.We're probably preaching to the choir here -- if you're reading this site, you probably already have at least one clue, and are either in a guild you like that is not a raiding guild, or are in a progression guild that you got into because you were able to justify that risk. But if you're still having trouble figuring out how to get where you want to be, take WW's advice to heart: it's on you to justify your entry to the guild, it's not on them to put up with you.
