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Officers' Quarters: Speechless
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. A few weeks ago, I ventured the opinion that raiding addons aren't optional. They are an essential tool for raiding well, and even if you think you're pro enough to go without them, it's a matter of courtesy to your fellow raiders to use them. This week, we have a similar scenario, but instead of an addon, the raider in question refuses to use a microphone and claims that it is a medical issue -- despite some evidence to the contrary. Dear Officers' Quarters, I was tasked with creating a healer roster for scheduled 10-man raids. As expected, some members did not make the cut. I told the backup healers that three things must improve before they could be pulled in for non-farm content. Gear (with gems/enchants) Raid awareness Encounter knowledge One of the backup/benched healers had an issue last raid. She fixed #1 after much prodding ("but this is only blue gear -- it doesn't need gems/enchants"). She still has issues with #2 (compounded by the lack of microphone). She still hasn't fixed #3 on new kills. The x-factor is her lack of microphone.
Phat Loot Phriday: Unidentified Cooking Utensil
The gingerbread men were winning. Despite Throgg's valiant attack with Cookie's Tenderizer, the tiny pastry warriors were making their way over the ridge. But things went south when the gingerbread men reached the edge of the stove. Now Throgg and Lolegolas were huddled behind a kitchen island, ducking the assault of gumdrop buttons and candy canes. "That's it," Lolegolas said, reaching into his bag. "It's time for the secret weapon." "What are you going to do?" Throgg asked incredulously. "The Unidentified Cooking Utensil," Lolegolas muttered with a growl. "They stand no chance." Throgg furrowed his brows as Lolegolas pulled the weapon from his bag. "That's ... plenty identified. That's a cooking pan, little elf." "Hush," the blood elf said. "Now is the time to fight!" Unidentified Cooking Utensil Type: Off-hand Stamina: 2 Intellect: 2 How to get it: You get it by completing the quest The Titans' Terminal in Darkshore. How to get rid of it: Sells to a vendor for 3 silver and 91 copper. Alternatively, you can break it down into Strange Dust, Greater Magic Essence, or Small Glimmering Shard. %Gallery-96786% Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com.
The Guild Counsel: Let's take a power trip!
Ah, ranks! There's nothing like the highly structured, caste-like system of guild ranks. Even when ranks aren't a feature in the game, guilds will still sort their members into tidy ranks, like member, alt, officer, and the all-important Guild Leader (with a capital G!). A metagame ensues, and it often resembles an episode of My Super Sweet 16, with everyone elbowing in to curry favor and receive his gilded stamp of approval. But what exactly do those guild ranks mean, and why are they so important to people? Let's take a look at ranks and see why they actually can be important (but not the way most view them).
Officers' Quarters: How a guild dies
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. This column is a special one for me. A reader wrote an email to the Drama Mamas, who passed it along to me as a topic that seemed more appropriate for OQ. When I read the email, it struck quite a chord, because the issue the guild leader raises is one that led directly to the collapse of my own guild. Yes, my own guild is finished, and so I can now reveal what guild I led and why it is now defunct in the hope that others can avoid the same fate. But first, the email: My girlfriend and I are the founders of a casual raiding/leveling guild. It's always been an eclectic mix of people, and it's one of my favorite parts of playing WoW. We're both friendly and empathetic, and people tend to develop bonds with us. We spend time together to the point where they feel comfortable in asking us for advice with serious real-life problems. However, the major problem is that our guild is that it's highly focused around my girlfriend and I. It feels like the only people who can lead a raid are the two of us, for example. People help in other ways, like donating to the guild bank or recruiting, but there isn't much leadership in the guild.
The Guild Counsel: Teacher by day, guild leader by night
Last week, as I listed my guild leader New Year's resolutions, I made a passing reference to my background as a former teacher. This led to a great question by Massively reader Mike Azariah, who wrote: "I still do teach. Do you find that helping others (especially new players) starts to fall into a lesson?" I've had discussions with other guild leaders in the past, and it always strikes me how often they talk about how the job of guild leader parallels, and often enhances, real-life occupations that involve leadership skills. This week's Guild Counsel will take a closer look at Mike's question of how much the job of teacher relates to guild leadership.
Officers' Quarters: Be kind to your tanks and healers
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. If you've queued as a DPS for the dungeon finder lately, you've probably marveled at the estimated time and wondered what happened to all the tanks and healers. Maybe fewer players want to tank when crowd control is necessary; maybe fewer players want to heal when mana must be managed. Maybe it's the fact that gear is more critical at this point in an expansion, so people are shy about signing up for those roles. Or maybe all the tanks and healers are skipping the unpredictable dungeon finder crowd altogether and looking for guilds to join. Whatever the cause, dungeon finder queues for DPS are absolutely brutal at the moment. If you don't want to wait 30-plus minutes for every run, you're going to need tanks and healers in your guild who are willing to run heroics. You may wonder, why wouldn't they be willing to run heroics? After all, the content is fresh, the upgrades are flowing, and most people still need justice and/or valor points. The question isn't so much whether they want to run heroics; the question is whether they want to run heroics with you, right now. This week, I'm going to focus on what players and officers can do to avoid stressing out your tanks and healers and help them to enjoy the game along with everyone else.
The Guild Counsel: New Year's resolutions
This past year for me has been the best year of my guild-leading life, primarily because I'm surrounded by terrific players who are also terrific people. We've had times when key members step away from raiding, and immediately I'll have several members volunteer to roll up new characters to fill the void and meet class needs. We've had issues, as all guilds do, and we have had disagreements, but I'm guilded with people who are classy enough and level-headed enough to understand the big picture and give the benefit of the doubt. As I raise my glass to toast my guildmates, I also look forward to next year. As guild leaders know, you can never rest on your laurels, and I have several New Year's resolutions. Read on to see what I hope to accomplish, and then share your resolutions for 2011.
Officers' Quarters: Critter Kill Squad tips and tricks
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. Strangely, the guild reward that players seem most excited about in the early days of Cataclysm is not the Kor'kron Annihilator or Golden King but the Armadillo Pup. We all have a long way to go to earn the mounts, after all, but we can all help earn the pup whether we're running Heroics at 85 or leveling a new character. This noncombat pet is unlocked by earning the achievement Critter Kill Squad and getting exalted with your guild. Ending the carefree lives of 50,000 critters seems like a monumental task, but smart guilds can take advantage of some special tactics to earn this achievement in no time. Let's take a look at how you can earn this adorable pet for your guild.
The Guild Counsel: The crisis of cliques
Last week, a few readers offered up a terrific subject for the Guild Counsel to take a look at -- cliques. Those little pockets of exclusivity can wreak enormous havoc on an unsuspecting guild. Guild leaders want their guilds to resemble Little House on the Prairie, but what they get is a sinister version of Married... with Children. Why are cliques dangerous, and how should a guild leader handle them? Read on for some handy advice and helpful tips!
The Guild Counsel: Want to join my guild?
Out of all the issues involved with guild management, there's nothing more important to a long-lasting guild than a solid, time-tested process of screening potential members. Surprisingly, when you look at many of the traditional methods of filtering potential members, very few of them actually succeed in rooting out whether an applicant will be a good fit or not. Sure, a guild and its applicant both want to progress, they both want loot, and they both want to succeed. But when it comes to things like pace, behavior, playtimes, or guild culture, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to find that perfect match. I've seen many ways to screen applicants, and believe me, I've let some real stinkers into guilds I've led. Let's look at some of the more popular screening techniques and see why they're not always the best ways to evaluate applicants.
Officers' Quarters: The guild achievement controversy
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. Less than 24 hours after Cataclysm went live, Blizzard announced a major change to the way guilds would level up in the brand-new system: Guild achievements no longer provide experience. The change came as a shock to many players. Typically, major shifts in design philosophy such as this occur during beta or even earlier. However, as Nethaera explained, the beta did not provide an accurate picture of guild experience from achievements because most characters were templates without their own achievement history. It seems shortsighted that Blizzard did not anticipate a rush on guild achievements, particularly in the early days of the guild leveling system when there are so many juicy perks to unlock. Not to mention, achievements were the only way to get around the daily experience cap and powerlevel your guild. If anyone should know the lengths that players will go to in order to reap rewards, you'd think it would be Blizzard. As it turns out, the game's developers somehow did not see this coming and, unfortunately, the timing of the announcement could not have been worse.
The Guild Counsel: Expansion pains
With winter comes a wave of MMO expansions, like EVE Online's Incursion, EverQuest II's upcoming Destiny of Velious, and, of course, Blizzard's Cataclysm. It's always exciting to have new content, but for guilds, a new expansion can lead to growing pains, competition, and major drama. The cohesive team atmosphere you worked so hard to build can quickly dissolve the moment servers come up, as members race towards the new level cap, new skills, and shiniest toys. How can guilds wade through the chaos of an expansion and keep an even keel? Read on for a few tips on how to avoid having a cataclysm within your own guild.
Officers' Quarters: Cataclysm guild roundup
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. This is it, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight at midnight PST, Blizzard will knock down the velvet ropes around the expansion's leveling zones and usher in a new era of World of Warcraft. At the same time, Cataclysm will provide new guild features, including leveling, achievements, and reputation. Certainly this is one of the most exciting times in WoW's history to be a guild officer. This expansion provides new tools, new goals, and new opportunities for guilds and those who lead them. The question remains: Is your guild ready for it? After the break, I've linked to every Cataclysm-related Officers' Quarters column, as well as some other columns that may help you with issues related to the increased level cap, the redesign of WoW's raid system, and other expansion matters. Our members are counting on us to provide a stable and effective guild community before and after we all hit 85. Let's not disappoint them!
The Guild Counsel: Time to pack your bags?
With the arrival of beta for games like Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic, and several big games due to launch next year, it's inevitable that some guilds will choose to leave their current game for the green pastures of a newer one. But moving a guild from one game to another can be as challenging as a real-life move. Sure, you might not need to deal with trucks and heavy-handed movers, but you certainly have a lot of baggage to handle! Thanks to some terrific questions sent in by Starseeker, I take a look at the difficult task of moving your guild to a new game. Read on to learn how to transition as smoothly as possible and start your guild off on the right foot in your new surroundings.
Officers' Quarters: Managing the alt invasion
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. I'll never forget that first month after Wrath went live and the endless requests from guild members to invite their death knight alts into the guild. The second anyone rolled a DK, they wanted to bring that toon into the roster to be part of the social experience as we all explored what the new expansion had to offer. I couldn't blame them. It is painful to be cut off from your guild during such an exciting time. As it turns out, the DK influx was only a small taste of what the Shattering has wrought. Now it's troll druids, tauren paladins, and undead hunters springing out of the woodwork, or dwarf shaman and gnome priests for Alliance guilds. Even this, however, is just the rumblings before the earthquake. In one week, a deluge of goblins and worgens will engulf our rosters. How can we manage this alt invasion? Let's take a look!
The Anvil of Crom: All I want for Christmas
Buuurrrp. Ah. Begging your pardon, but you know how it goes this time of year, leftovers and all that. Seeing as how this is a Thanksgiving holiday weekend here in the States -- and the annual Christmas shopping orgy has begun -- it seems an appropriate time to indulge in a bit of list-making with regard to Age of Conan. I don't normally do lists here at The Anvil of Crom, as many seem to be the game journalist's equivalent of the oh-crap-I've-got-a-deadline-but-no-topic safety net. Occasionally, though, they serve a real purpose. In my case that purpose is bitching politely talking about what I'd like to see Funcom add to its AoC recipe. So, in honor of the pilgrims and their pilfering of North America (or the cold turkey sandwich you're no doubt stealing from your fridge at this very moment), I present to you three things Age of Conan should pillage from other MMORPGs. Join me after the cut for the rundown.
The Guild Counsel: It's a playground, not a sandbox
Last year, I volunteered to be a playground monitor at my daughter's kindergarten. Armed with nothing but a whistle, a dodge ball, a few jump ropes, and a box of chalk, I took on a class of 15 adorable, energetic, screaming kids. The first day, I left with my ears ringing, my pulse off the charts, and a desire to run far away and never come back. But over time, I began to learn how to organize fun games for the class, keep things under control, and provide enough flexibility and freedom that everyone could find a way to enjoy recess. Let's take a look at the lessons I learned on the rough turf of the playground.
Officers' Quarters: Impending doom
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. As the dawn of the Cataclysm era looms, new guilds have been springing up on every realm, hoping to tackle the expansion's challenges. Founding a guild is no easy task -- it requires dedication, patience, and hard work. How can you be sure it's all going to work out? Well, you never can. However, if you can identify signs of trouble early on, then you stand a much better chance of heading off some major problems later. This week's email is from a guild leader who's already sensing divisions in his fledgling community. Scott, I have been playing WoW for some time now. I had joined a guild last year and made several friends in it. However, we had several differences we felt over what we wanted and the direction the guild was going. So we parted ways with the guild, leaving behind many friends. We started a new guild and are starting to recruit, establish guild rules and goals, etc. However, I am worried that differences among guild members and especially officers may become a problem. We have several very kind and patient officers and others who are less so. How does one manage the two groups (i.e., still get things done in a kind and patient manor and keep those with shorter fuses from turning off new members or current officers)?
The Guild Counsel: The job you come home to
In the comments to my first column about guild management, I noticed that several readers referred to guilds as "work" and to guild leading as a "job." While some guilds do subscribe to (and thrive on) that philosophy, it's a big reason some players are turned off at the idea of joining a guild. In this week's Guild Counsel, I'd like to take a closer look at the idea of guilds as a second job. Are guilds really the job you come home to? And if so, should it be that way?
Officers' Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3
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. Welcome to the third and final column exploring the various pros and cons of raid size in WoW's upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Before we talk about the final category, let's recap. In part 1, I examined the various gameplay considerations that come along with the different sizes. Gameplay We can only speculate about relative difficulty. 10-man raids offer fewer options for dealing with specific boss abilities and/or adds. Position-based abilities are easier to deal with in 10s. Player deaths are not as crippling in 25-mans. It's easier to cover for someone else's mistake with 25 players. In part 2, I talked about the logistics involved in running each size and the rewards you can obtain from them. Logistics A 25-man raid requires an intense recruiting effort. "Cat herding" is flat-out easier in 10-man raids. More raiders mean more attendance issues and technical issues. Subbing is easier in a larger raid. Scheduling difficulties are easier to manage with more players. Loot is easier to distribute in 10-man.
