guildmates
Latest
Breakfast Topic: How well do you know your guildmates?
I used to have guildmates -- but now I just call them "friends." We abandoned the "guildmate" tag somewhere along the line a few years ago, after it became apparent that we all preferred adapting our gaming to our group size rather than our group size to our gaming. That's not to say we're not open to the idea of new people. But the people I play with on an ongoing basis across multiple games don't call each other "guildmates," even though we've never met in real life. We're on Facebook, in IM, and on TeamSpeak even when we're not gaming together. We're just "friends." I've known some pretty nice guildmates who made great "game friends," though. I learned all the details and odd little things about them that you do when you spend entire evenings with people on a regular basis: the nicknames they call their family members and pets, what they like on their pizza, what they studied in college, what time they get up for work. Even so, we never developed that crossover bond that leads to offline friendship. I removed their cell numbers from my contacts list once there was no longer a need to see if they could fill in on an off night or to let them know to come quick, the world boss was up RIGHT NOW! Still, I can't even imagine being in a guild where the only thing I knew about my guildmates was their character names. Simply unimaginable. How well do you know your guildmates? Are they merely nice people you game with, or have you built a toasty little internet friendship? Not a few guilds make a habit of annual or even more frequent real-world meetups (like The Incredibles, above). Have you ever met your guildmates? How well do you know most of the folks you play with?
Breakfast Topic: Have your guildies inspired you in real life?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. We all have people in our guilds who are better at WoW than we are. They have amazing reaction times, are great leaders, or put up amazing numbers on the damage or healing meters. But often we know little about the person behind the keyboard. Since my guild is full of mostly adults, we talk a lot about real life in guild chat and on our guild forums. Some of the stuff is merely about TV shows we are watching or books we are reading; seriously, we have a 15-page forum about MMA from all the UFC fans in our guild. Occasionally, however, truly major life events are discussed, some of which are sad and some are inspiring. We have used the forums to say goodbye to a few members for reasons ranging from personal tragedy, to moving and changing jobs, to simply getting tired of the game. Some of the stories inspired me to make changes in my own life. One of our guild members talked about his diet and how through exercise and cutting out some fast food, he has lost nearly 60 pounds. This caused me to start watching how much I was snacking during raids and got me back to the gym. Another guild member went back to college for his master's degree, and this led me to look into what it would cost for me to go back and get my culinary degree. Two of our guild members got engaged, and this led me to realize I had better start thinking about ring shopping before my girlfriend gets fed up with me. Do you ever discuss important real-life events with members of your guild? Have any of their stories made you examine your own life? Have any of their advice or personal insights inspired you to make changes or tough choices in your life?
The Daily Grind: Meeting your MMO pals in real-life
This weekend, several local friends and I have been hosting a number of our real-life guild-mates. (We locals are all guilded together with the exception of one or two of us who have left that particular MMO and moved on.) Originally, it was just to be one or two people, but grew in size until we were a pretty solid rolling force when we decided to head out and catch Watchmen - first for some, second for others. That said, we've been friends for years, traveling to each other's weddings, parties, and all the rest - but most of us met via MMO. This morning we thought we'd ask you - have you ever traveled just to hang out with your MMO friends in real-life? Do you guys make travel plans to take vacations together (like say, a cruise) like some of our group does? Or is it something you really wouldn't ever do, short of seeing them at a convention or meetup for your favorite game that you might attend?
The Daily Grind: When have you had enough?
Sometimes, we play games well past their expiration date. Long after it's stopped being fun, a particular game continues to get our attention. The reasons for this vary: You want to unlock every Easter egg; you can't afford anything new; you play through as a soothing exercise, trusting in your foreknowledge of every beat of gameplay to relax you enough to fall asleep.However, with an MMO, there are different considerations. Perhaps you're holding out for that patch you're hoping will fix that one annoying bug. Maybe you love your guildmates too much to consider quitting. Whatever the reason you keep playing, there comes a point at which you just can't hold on anymore, and you cancel your subscription. Tired graphics? Abusive chat? Constant griefing? What's caused you to finally quit a game?
Testing strategy reading abilities, Part I
Everyone reading this site knows that it's pretty important to read strategies for the various boss encounters in WoW. No matter if they're from Boss Killers, our own Ready Check, long threads over at Elitist Jerks, or home made modifications, studying boss fights outside of the game is essential to success.However sometimes it's kind of hard to tell if everyone is actually spending the 15 minutes to read over and understand the strategies outside of the raid. This is particularly troublesome for the raid leaders and officers, since some of the fights can be very hard to explain without first having an understanding of where and what things look like.We're having this problem in our guild right now. Not that big of a problem, granted, but it's still something we'd like to get better at. So last night our guild master made a map of the Kalecgos play field, detailing where everyone should stand (I know that some readers will comment that it's not necessary, but it's what works for us). In the bottom right hand corner there's a derogatory yet funny message about yours truly, something along the lines of a suggested act I can go do to/with myself. It's obvious, it's funny, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.Tonight the GM will go around and ask each of the 35 or so raiders we have in the guild, "What was out of place on the strategy map I posted today?" If they can't answer correctly, they won't be raiding with us again anytime soon.
The Daily Grind: In-game holiday gifts
The holidays are upon us, and you know what that means! That's right -- lots of pie to be had! No, seriously. It means 'tis the season to be on the lookout for cool things for friends both near and far. Of course, as obvious as it seems, one of the things we've heard bandied about is the idea of giving in-game gifts to in-game friends. Know a raiding Resto Shaman in WoW who is always complaining about bag space? Why not get them either a Healing Potion Injector or a Mana Potion Injector! For games with player housing, you can always craft up something nifty for their in-game house. Have a collector on your list? You can't beat non-combat pets -- or whatever it is they're collecting. We think one of the best gifts we've heard suggested is the gift of time. Now we're not just talking about timecards (although those are always pretty awesome in our opinion) -- we mean making time to help friends with a tough quest, or running a mission/instance that's proven problematic for them. Of course, you could always just take the easy way out like my guild does and just send each other cards in real life! It's always nice to see snailmail that isn't all bills at this time of year, and it's pretty cheap to do. (Of course, be warned if your guild is anything at all like mine, you may not get some of the holiday cards until Valentine's Day...)Now that we've given you some of our ideas, what kinds of things will you be thinking about giving to your in-game friends? Do you have anything you've been crafting up for your guild-mates? Is there something that you'd like to get as an in-game gift yourself? Or do you think the whole idea is totally nuts and we should really get out more?
Addon Spotlight: Fubar
Fubar is one of those addons that I didn't know I needed until I tried it out. It lets you display information in a bar at the top and/or bottom of the screen -- all the numbers and meters that you want to always have handy, without having to click on anything or hover your mouse for tooltips. Fubar itself provides a framework for the Fubar modules (downloaded seperately) to display this information for you -- anything from your durability to your current experience (with rest) to the time of day (both in your time zone and on your server). I personally find one of its most useful features to be that it can show you how many of your guild mates and friends are online at any given moment, then let you hover your mouse over the number to see a tooltip list, with clickable names for whispers or invitations, just like a regular IM program. To be honest, I actually tried out its competitor, Titan Panel, long before I had heard of Fubar, and then switched to Fubar because it feels more flexible and lighter on my system. Fubar is made with Ace, which usually helps addons feel smoother somehow; the difference between Fubar and Titan is what made me go looking for other Ace addons. Also, the other thing I love about it... is that it's called "Fubar!" and most of its companion module addons end in "fu", as in "QuestsFu" and "MoneyFu!" I just love my addons with a extra helping of humor sauce.
