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Children of a lesser guild
The worst part of guild membership is, by far, watching a guild die. I've seen guilds die from poor recruiting practices, internal drama, and, in one memorable case, a disgruntled member with /gkick privileges. But the most painful death I ever saw was that of a large casual raiding guild in which I was an officer. We weren't very good, and we never progressed far, mostly because anyone decent in our guild was immediately recruited away by one of the high-end guilds on our server. We kept it together for several months, but in the end, ten of our best players (including our two tanks and the best healer) were poached away by another guild. Eventually, the guild leader and I left too. Judging by his post on the EU General forums, Aires, GM of Flames of the Phoenix on EU-Terenas, is having the same problem. His small Kara guild is being eaten away by larger guilds who whisper his members, invite them to come to 25-mans, and then ask them if they'd like to join. Admirably, Aires does not cry about it or name names, but asks a general question: Is it ethically right to poach members from smaller guilds who don't approach you first? Opinions seem to be divided. On one hand, few people will argue that it's "nice" to cannibalize a smaller guild, and many SSC/TK guilds who do this to "loser guilds" would scream bloody murder if a BT/Hyjal guild did the same to them. But every server also has a limited supply of players who don't suck, and new recruits do have to come from somewhere. Plus, there's no real way to steal a player who doesn't want to be stolen in the first place. The thread also contains a rare personal opinion from a Blizzard employee. CM Vaneras says that your answer to the question basically depends on why you play the game. If you play for what Vaneras terms "shiny epics", you probably won't see anything wrong with poaching, while those who play for "the cameraderie and accomplishments of a guild" will hate it. What do you think about guild poaching?
Some Death Knight details from the EU forums
This isn't groundbreaking new information, but over on the European forums, CM Vaneras has provided a summery of information on the new Death Knight hero class. However, while not groundbreaking, it does clarify a few things and drop tiny fragments of new information. First up, the Death Knight's 6-rune resource system:Imagine it [the runes] being three different energy pools which you can change the size of before you get into combat. These runes, we know, will be etched on to the Death Knight's weapons and can be changed at any time out of combat. But it sounds like the details on weapons etching are still up in the air:There's no final decision or announcement on how multiple weapons would be etched, or how weapon switching may affect the etched runes. What has been discussed to some degree is that the main-hand weapon would be etched and that's it, but it's too early to say what would be allowed in the final game. What level the Death Knight will start at is still unknown but what races may play them is up in the air. Though during our liveblog of the WotLK demo, we were told that Blizzard's plan was to have the class available for all races (to cheers of "Gnome Death Knights ftw!" from the crowd), Vaneras expresses less certainty... more quotes and info after the jump!
How to AoE for fun and profit
I'm very suprised we haven't posted this video before, but I took a gander through the archives, and while we've touched on the magic of AoE mages before, I don't think I've seen it. If you want to know how to hit up a whole bunch of mobs at a time while playing your mage, this extremely thorough guide will teach you top to bottom.And for everything else you want to know, you can check out also very in-depth text guide by Bangy posted over on the EU forums, who also references the video above. He covers everything, from spec to process to the best spots to do it at every level. Mage AoE is extremely powerful when set up correctly-- for grinding in the right places, it almost breaks the game. There are a lot of compromises that have to made in terms of how and where you can do it, but in the right place with the right abilities, there's no faster and easier way to crush whole groups of mobs at a time.
