guild-management
Latest
Officers' Quarters: The great raid size debate, part 2
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. Last week, I received an email asking me for my thoughts on raid size in Cataclysm. As it turns out, I have quite a few thoughts -- three columns' worth, in fact, covering four different categories: gameplay, logistics, rewards and intangibles. My goal is to help officers and their guild members to choose which raid size is best suited for their guild. A week ago, I wrote about the gameplay category. This week's column will cover two topics that have been linked together throughout the history of the game. From the very beginning of WoW, Blizzard has made a connection between more difficult logistics and greater rewards. Molten Core, Onyxia, and later 40-man raids rewarded the best available gear in their respective heydays. Throughout The Burning Crusade and Wrath, 25-man content yielded the best items. For Cataclysm, this paradigm is shifting. Let's take a look at the logistics involved with the two raid sizes and the rewards that each size offers.
Officers' Quarters: The great raid size debate
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. Cataclysm, as you are probably already aware, brings with it massive changes to the raiding scene in World of Warcraft. Certainly the most controversial change is Blizzard's desire, announced in April, to balance and separate 10- and 25-man raids -- namely, both sizes will share the same lockout and loot tables. The 10-man scene, widely regarded as inferior throughout WoW's history, will be designed to have approximately the same difficulty as its 25-man counterpart. Reports from the beta dungeon forums indicate that 10-man bosses are currently much easier to bring down than their 25-man versions, but we can only assume that Blizzard will take steps to even out the difficulty according to its stated goal. In the weeks following the expansion's launch, it will be extremely interesting to see how this whole situation shakes out. These changes will force most guilds to choose one size or the other as their primary raiding focus. As I've previously stated, this is a good thing. Many officers right now, including the one who wrote this week's email, are wondering which size to choose. Officers' Quarters is here to help! Hail Scott, What is your take on 10-man versus 25-man raiding in Cataclysm? Our guild would like to continue raiding 25-mans, but several of the other raid guilds on our server have apparently decided to switch to 10s. Are they jumping to conclusions, or are they on to something? Is this the end of 25-man raiding, and are we in for a repeat of the guild implosions and massive raider unemployment we saw when 40s were dropped to 25s?
Officers' Quarters: Scorched by raider burnout
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. It's been more than 10 months since Blizzard introduced major endgame content to World of Warcraft, and raider burnout is at an all-time high. In times like this, hardcore players often look to casual guilds as a refuge from the demands of more serious organizations. It's not always a bad thing, as I'll discuss, but sometimes taking in these hardcore refugees can lead to major problems. This week, an anonymous officer tells his tale: Hi Scott, I'm currently an officer in a guild that started as a social/leveling guild, but toward the beginning of this past summer, we had some level-capped players who decided to take on raiding content. We were having a lot of fun at first whether or not we successfully downed bosses because we were finding a way to stay socially active in our social guild. During this period, one guildie and I became de facto raid leaders because we were always there on raid night and always the two who got the groups organized. This was when I also got promoted to an officer position. The problem I'm facing now is that we ended up recruiting a couple of new members who had burned out on hardcore progression raiding and wanted to take a more casual approach to raiding.
Officers' Quarters: Raiding addons aren't optional
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. Raiding addons aren't optional. They're just not. I'm sure that many people will disagree with me in the comments below. However, I firmly believe this. I'll explain more below -- but first, here's the email that has prompted me to take this stand. Scott, Good news/bad news -- I've recently been promoted to co-guild leader. So now I'm in the position of resolving drama. We are a casual, positive training guild that lets people do whatever they want whenever they want. Our guild rules are basically no swearing; no begging; if you want to raid, get Vent. We are currently running ICC-10 and have just started a second ICC-10 and an ICC-25. The problem is that our Group 1 off tank refuses to get any addons -- not Pally Power, not Deadly Boss Mods, none, zip, zero, zilch, nada. His computer is less than a year old and he is terrified of viruses and won't listen to reason that downloading from sites like Curse is safe -- and yet won't get an authenticator, either.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm, part 2
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. Last week, a reader wrote in to ask about some dos and don'ts as a guild leader during the character leveling process of an expansion. Obviously, we're focusing on Cataclysm here, but many of these tips will be relevant for any expansion with a raised level cap. Part 1 provided four tips: Have a plan. Organize group activities. Don't rush anyone. Set a date for the endgame. This week I've got five more.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm
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 this spring from No Starch Press. The weeks after an expansion goes live are a strange time for guilds. After months of working as a team toward a common goal, most members go off on their own to level up through solo quests. Since raiding at the cap is impossible and raiding old content isn't nearly as interesting as questing in the new zones, your guild can find itself strangely fractured during this time. This week, one guild leader wonders how to keep a guild from falling apart during the leveling process. Scott, I was a member of a "raiding" guild in The Burning Crusade (they didn't do too much raiding), but I hit level cap a week before Wrath of the Lich King came out. The guild basically came apart at the seams before anyone hit level cap. Then they tried to reform again a little before ToC and nothing really worked out. Now I'm running my own little raiding guild and don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. What keeps a raiding guild together through the leveling process? I was thinking about putting in incentives in our loot policy for people getting to cap, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. What are some things I should be doing, and what are some things I shouldn't be doing? Thisius Hells Vanguard Sisters of Elune (US)
Officers' Quarters: Content is easy
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. It's been a while here at Officers' Quarters since we've tackled some good, old-fashioned guild drama. This week's email comes from a guild leader dealing with an abrasive officer (and real-life friend) with a penchant for long, sudden and unexplained AFKs. Hi Scott, I am the guild leader of a new 10-man guild. I created the guild equally with several real-life friends and we co-share the leadership. The problem lies in this: One of the real-life friends has been doing things like going AFK for 45 minutes in the middle of a raid. This was a guild-led, non-scheduled ICC-25 PUG, but he gave me little warning and then disappeared for 45 minutes, which included the first two bosses.
Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.0.1 -- An officer's perspective
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. Most major game patches have a significant impact on guild officers, and in the past I've tried to give an officers' perspective on how the changes to the game will affect the decisions and plans that we make moving forward. Unlike previous patch-perspective columns, however, a reader actually requested this one. Hey Scott, I'm a guild leader for a rather small 10-man raiding guild, and I got to thinking today about the upcoming pre-Cata patch that's going to change everything. See, Wrath was the first expansion of WoW that I, and many members of my guild, were ever really active in (a lot of us swapped over from another MMO, together), so I was wondering -- once the pre-Cata patch hits, should we continue raiding? From the grumblings I've been hearing on the PTR, numbers are all out of whack, and with some of the class changes coming, I was wondering if it'd even be a good idea to keep raiding once 4.0.1 hits. I've never experienced the "conversion" from one expansion to another on the raiding front, so I really have no idea what to expect as far as people's attitudes (not just guildies, but possible PUGs, too). In the other games I'd played, an expansion just meant new zones, storyline, etc., but WoW's expansion features a level cap increase, and in this case, a major overhaul in how we play.
Officers' Quarters: Mailbox roundup redux
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 this spring from No Starch Press. Here at Officers' Quarters, I receive a number of emails every week that don't get featured in the column for various reasons (which I explained last time I did a roundup). Once again, it's time to examine some of these shorter -- but no less interesting! -- topics. This roundup's theme is Cataclysm concerns and preparation. Just the two of us Hello, I have tried to find this info but I cannot seem to find it anywhere, or I am really terrible at finding things. Is there going to be a minimum guild size to participate in guild leveling? I started a small guild for myself and my son to play in and we are having a great time, but I hoped we could take advantage of these new features without joining a larger guild or recruiting into the existing one. Obviously we would not get any experience for raids or dungeons, but what about questing and professions, or even rated battlegrounds? Thank you for your time, Callidor
Officers' Quarters: Accelerating guild achievements
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 from No Starch Press. News broke last week of a new Cataclysm beta patch that added a host of guild achievements to the game. MMO Champion has the full list. Some of these achievements -- such as looting 200,000 gold from creatures -- you may decide to allow to simply accumulate over time. After all, most of them can be earned through the natural course of events, assuming your members participate in all aspects of the game. However, if you'd like to pursue these guild achievements aggressively, this column is for you. Let's take a look at how you can accelerate some of these achievements and how you can motivate your guild to help. First of all, let's talk about the motivation that the game itself will provide. Earning guild achievements, according to August's guild advancement Q&A, provides "nice, fat chunks of experience [that] feel great when you get 'em." We also know from blue poster Mumper that "anything that grants guild XP will also grant guild faction." Putting two and two together, we can conclude that earning a guild achievement will also award the players who earned it a hefty dose of guild reputation. This extra guild rep and guild experience may be motivation enough. But why stop there? Let's take an active role, as officers, in providing organization and incentives.
Officers' Quarters: March of the freeloaders, part 2
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 from No Starch Press. Last week, I discussed how players interested in Cataclysm's guild perks can get into guilds without becoming "freeloaders." Today, I'll look at the issue from an officer's perspective. I'll examine the drawbacks of having freeloaders in your guild, steps you can take to filter them and methods for dealing with them if they make it past those filters. What do I mean by a freeloader? A freeloader is a player who is in your guild purely out of self-interest, who has no desire to contribute to the guild in any way. In short, a freeloader is there only for your precious, precious perks. Are freeloaders a problem? A few freeloaders on your roster won't be a major issue, in most cases. You can simply hope that they'll keep to themselves and won't actively cause problems. They may even chip in some guild experience when they have an active day. Small guilds may actually decide to seek out such players to help them level up faster. I don't recommend it, but you will level faster with more players, up to a point. Larger guilds won't benefit much from inviting freeloaders. You'll get all the experience you need from the players you trust, so there's no real advantage (aside from a little extra cash) to inviting more players. In fact, doing so carries a bevy of risks.
Officers' Quarters: March of the freeloaders
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 from No Starch Press. Guild perks are coming, and with them a big change in the way guilds are perceived. In the past, some players shunned guilds for one reason or another. Maybe they didn't want to bother with the social aspect of the game. Maybe they had a bad experience with a guild and never had the urge to find a new one. Maybe, like the writer of this week's email, they felt like they wouldn't be able to contribute enough. Hi, I wanted to suggest a topic or at least get your opinion on something. It seems like the guild rewards in Cataclysm are pretty much irresistible. Even though I'm a long-time guildless player (because of my completely unpredictable playtime, my last attempt at being a guildie was in Asheron's Call 2, if that means anything to you ...). I'm going to be looking for a guild to join because I want to have a shot at some of that good stuff.
Officers' Quarters: Pitchforks and torches
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 from No Starch Press. Wipes are a fact of life. Everyone wipes. How you deal with these situations can be crucial to your guild's success. Some guilds cultivate an environment based on blame, where everyone's first thought after a wipe is, "Who messed up?" Sometimes, it's easy to figure out who is at fault: Someone with a spore goes the wrong way, or someone gets mind-controlled by the Blood Queen after failing to bite his assignment. When it's not easy to figure out, some guilds use a different strategy for assigning blame. Here is one such case: I have a real dilemma. I'm an officer, one of six, in a semi-serious raiding guild. We have 30 core raiders who raid with us, and one of them until recently was one of our druid healers, and the issue surrounding him is my dilemma. A little background information on the guild, since it is relevant, is that we have a strict rule involving loot due to some people in the past who have abused our requirement for Vent in that they wouldn't use it, or they'd log in but leave their headsets off. This caused a lot of problems with wipes and caused the officers, GM and co-GM to agree that a rule would be made that was you must be in Vent and actively listening at all times during a raid in order to be eligible for loot. This is what caused the initial problem. The player of this druid healer I mentioned before applied to our guild and told us on the application that he is deaf.
Officers' Quarters: It's a secret
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 from No Starch Press. Normally, for the introduction to this weekly feature, I write a little bit about the topic at hand before I post the email that will serve as the focal point for the discussion. This week, however, I don't want to spoil the tale for you before you read it. So, let's dive right in! Hi! I just recently started reading your column, and even bought your book on guild leadership for my husband's birthday. I have a question about behavior as a guild leader, and am curious as to what you think of my situation. I started playing in a family-oriented, RP guild on Moon Guard about two years ago. I joined just a few weeks after the guild's creation, and made quite a few friends among the other members, even meeting my husband through the guild. Sadly, I had to leave the server for a while, due to real life issues with a stalker that was trying to track me through the game. Fortunately, those issues were resolved, and my husband and I decided to rejoin the guild, even though we knew things would have changed. We were welcomed back, and I was even promoted back to a position just under my old one as an officer, allowing me to help recruit as some of our guild members had taken time off. However, my guild leader then did something that hurt me deeply, making me wonder what I saw in the guild in the first place.
Officers' Quarters: Destructive criticism, part 2
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 from No Starch Press. Last week, I began addressing what is one of the most complex and difficult duties an officer or raid leader must occasionally perform: giving out unsolicited constructive criticism. As the email that sparked this discussion proved, such conversations can be volatile. With the wrong approach, you can destroy friendships and lose guildmates. Let's continue to examine the right approach. To recap, here are the first two steps from part 1: Consider your guild's criticism culture and adapt your approach accordingly. Plant the seed of taking personal initiative to research and improve play. At this point, you have to be a little bit patient. If your guild is on the brink of collapse over performance issues, you can't always afford to let this situation play out. However, the safest bet is to give the underperforming player another week of raids to show an improvement. Keep a close eye on him during this week. Examine his spec and gear to see if he's made any adjustments. Record a combat log to see if he's using the appropriate class abilities. Watch him during boss encounters to see if he is following instructions and executing the fight properly.
Officers' Quarters: Destructive criticism
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 from No Starch Press. In the day-to-day duties of an officer and a raid leader, few endeavors are more fraught with the potential for drama than doling out performance advice to your players. Constructive criticism, no matter how well-meaning, can become destructive in the blink of an eye if it's not approached delicately. After scaring off a healer, the officer who wrote this week's email is looking for a better way to deal with these situations. Scott, As an officer in my guild, I take care of several things, but the big three are raid leading our second 10-man group (which is not easy as a healer, by any stretch of the imagination), making sure our priests are doing what they are supposed to be doing both as dps and healers, and any extra healers, making sure they're doing their job right. The first two are interesting enough, especially since there's very little consistency with our group, and our number of priests waxes and wanes with the seasons. But the big problem here is when I have to "fix" a healer. Now, I know no one likes to receive constructive criticism, and officers like even less to give the constructive criticism for fear of running off the guild member. Recently, I've had to talk to two different healers to try to help them out with their healing, one was a holy priest, the other a restoration shaman. Now, I have some pretty hefty experience with both classes as healers (I have two max level priests, and a max level shaman, and I've healed in raids on all of them), so I find myself at least somewhat knowledgeable about the classes, but by no means do I consider myself an expert. I'll leave that to Elitist Jerks. At any rate, the two healers, after speaking with them separately in tells, I found that the priest was more willing to work with the suggestions I'd made, and there was a huge improvement the following night in our raid. The shaman, however, was very adverse to my suggestions. Here's where the meat of the problem comes in.
Officers' Quarters: Rating Cataclysm's guild perks, part 2
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 this spring from No Starch Press. Last week, I reviewed the perks that provide money and convenience. Today, I'm going to talk about (and rate) the remaining perks, which I've divided into three categories: active abilities, professions and points. Active abilities Currently in the beta, two guild perks offer castable abilities. It's not clear yet whether everyone in the guild will gain access to these abilities, whether they will become available to a given player once a certain level of guild reputation is achieved, or whether the guild leader will be able to assign them to specific guild ranks as they do now with other actions, such as inviting new players. Time will tell. Have Group, Will Travel Summons all raid or party members to the caster's current location. 2-hour cooldown. This perk is, frankly, a godsend for getting raids started. No more clicking giant rocks or warlock portals over and over again! People who are lagging behind everyone else might still wind up begging for a summon, but compared to summoning 23 other people one by one, this is a walk in the park. It amazes me how many people can't be bothered to fly to a raid entrance, but that's another story ... This ability will also be useful for bringing players together for group questing, roleplaying or world PvP. The best part is that the summon occurs at "the caster's current location." I wonder if there will be restrictions on that. Could a Horde rogue sneak into Ironforge and summon 39 other players right where she's standing? If so, the possibilities for mayhem are endless. 5 salutes out of 5
Officers' Quarters: Rating Cataclysm's guild perks
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 this spring from No Starch Press. Cataclysm is finally in beta and the information floodgates have burst! One of the most interesting revelations for officers is the unveiling of guild perks -- or, at least, Blizzard's current pass on them. I'm sure that, like everything else in the beta, these perks are subject to change. We also don't know how long it takes to obtain them, but it seems like Blizzard's intention is that every guild will be able to unlock them eventually. As you may recall, I was unhappy with Blizzard's decision to give us perks instead of talent trees. I stand behind that opinion, but there's no use in dwelling on it. So let's rate the perks! I've broken them up into five different categories: money, convenience, active abilities, professions and points. This week, I'll be talking about the first two categories. (Note that I am listing only the highest rank of each perk.) The money perks Cash Flow (Rank 2) Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 10% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank. First of all, wow, that's going to be a lot of money flying into your guild bank, especially for larger guilds. If 100 players loot 100 gold from enemies, that's an extra 1,000 gold for the guild. The best part about this perk is that it is not a tax -- the money is generated by the talent, not taken out of what a player loots. The only problem here will be figuring out what to do with all that extra cash! I never felt completely comfortable with the random cash donations that guild members would make to our bank. We couldn't have afforded to unlock all those bank slots without them, but it never felt quite right to me. As for the money that's left over after you unlock all the vaults and the money that's donated later, how do you spend that money in a way that's fair to all of your generous contributors? Hopefully, with this perk, you can tell players to keep their money. They will earn gold for the guild just by going about their business. 5 salutes out of 5
Officers' Quarters: Guild reputation in Cataclysm
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 this spring from No Starch Press. Two weeks ago, Blizzard revealed all the latest updates concerning their game plan for Cataclysm. Among them were a host of changes to the new guild systems and a guild UI overhaul, which were originally announced at BlizzCon 2009. Last week, I discussed Blizzard's decision to axe guild talent trees in favor of automatic perks at each level. Most of you disagreed with me on the issue, and I wasn't surprised. Most people would rather have all the perks, and I understand that. I still believe that offering guilds a way to define themselves using in-game elements would be incredibly useful, but we'll have to keep waiting for that. Moving on to another part of Blizzard's plan for guilds, I'd like to talk about guild reputation and where I'd like to see Blizzard go with it. No more guild currency Part of the announcement in mid-June was that guild currency as an idea has been scrapped. Instead, players will be able to purchase rewards with gold. I don't think anyone is mourning the loss of yet another type of currency.
Officers' Quarters: In defense of guild talents
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 this spring from No Starch Press. About a week ago, Blizzard revealed all the latest updates concerning their gameplan for Cataclysm. Among them were a host of changes to the new guild systems and UI overhaul that were originally announced at BlizzCon 2009. Today I'd like to focus on the removal of guild talents. In future columns, I'll address other changes. Guild talents get the axe Two of the biggest announcements from last week were not new features but the cancellation of previously announced features: Path of the Titans and guild talents. I've heard a lot of complaints from people about removing the Path, which is to be expected -- it was considered a key feature of the expansion and a long-awaited means to customize your character beyond talents after glyphs, in the words of Ghostcrawler, "didn't live up to what they could have been." It's a shame they couldn't make the Path work, but I'm hopeful that the revised glyph system will compensate for its loss. On the other hand, I'm not hearing nearly as many complaints about the removal of guild talents. Again, perhaps, this is to be expected. After all, Blizzard's plan is to replace them with unlocked perks that you receive automatically as your guild levels up. In other words, every guild will get every talent. Awesome, right? For guild members, yes. For officers, not as much.
