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Officers' Quarters: When a sense of obligation covers up 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. Officer burnout takes many forms. Sometimes it manifests as a subtle, creeping bitterness. Sometimes it shows up suddenly, as unexpected rage. Sometimes, it's a feeling of emptiness, like the one described in this week's email. This week, I'll look at this particular form of burnout and talk about what this officer can do to cure it. Dear Officer's Quarters, I am an officer in a fairly successful 25-man raiding guild (currently #2 on our server). I've been part of the guild leadership for over a year at this point, and my tenure has been characterized by my dedication and hard work. My guildmaster has privately told me on several occasions that he feels that I'm the person in the guild that "tries the hardest." However, of late, I feel that my hard work is no longer rewarding me with anything, not even a feeling of accomplishment.
Officers' Quarters: Mailbox roundup 3 -- guild leadership
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. 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 the first 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 guild leaders. High rank, low numbers Dear Officers' Quarters, I'm a relatively new member to an active 10-man raiding guild. Our guild is slowly pushing through Cataclysm raid content, and we are taking a slow and steady approach to progression raiding. We've downed Omnotron Defense System and Magmaw both times during our first two weeks of Blackwing Descent raiding, but now that we're considering switching gears and trying some Bastion of Twilight, we're running in to a bit of a problem: very low DPS out of some core raiders. When we first began stepping into Cataclysm raiding, I assumed it was gear related and that, after time, our DPS would go up, making the fights much easier. However, with an almost identical core group tackling these encounters, some of the raiders' gear has improved tremendously, while I'm still seeing similar DPS on the meters. This problem is also compounded by the fact that one of the biggest culprits of low DPS is our guild leader.
Officers' Quarters: Choice and consequence
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. Guild officers are faced with difficult choices all too frequently. Not every choice seems momentous at the time, but occasionally time and consequences prove that it was so. That's why it's helpful to look back at the decisions we made and consider how those choices determined the state of our guild today. Now that we have all fully embarked into the Cataclysm expansion, it's an interesting time to look back. Did a good decision during the lead-up to Tier 11 help to ensure a fun and successful content progression? Or, as one guild member is wondering, did a pivotal choice during Wrath doom a guild to mediocrity? Dear Officers' Quarters, This is neither a current issue nor one I had real influence on, but it concerned me and a tough decision by our officers. During Wrath, sometime shortly after patch 3.3, our guild was among the better casual guilds on the server. I was a relative newcomer. Due to my insistence in playing a Beast Mastery hunter, and my abysmal luck in getting new gear drops, I was not among our best DPSers, but I held my own and was usually the last to die in a wipe. The problem came up when a new guild member, a Marksman hunter well beyond me in gear, was showing off Zod's Repeating Longbow, which he'd just obtained in our guild's secondary 25-man run. At the time, I felt rather miffed that this new hunter had obtained the bow before me, especially since that hunter was an alt.
Officers' Quarters: Guild wars
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. Guild splits can be traumatizing for all involved, often ending in bruised egos, stabbed backs, and rancor all around. (Yes, rancor isn't just that monster in the pit under Jabba's throne room.) In the best outcomes, the two factions can ignore each other and go about their own business. Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out that way. Sometimes, as you'll see in this week's email, one faction isn't content to live and let live. Sometimes, it's war ... I'm an officer in a smallish casual raiding guild. We just recently got enough of our players geared enough to start raiding and are starting the process of continuously wiping on early bosses to learn the encounters. The officers aren't freaking out about our difficulty in completing the encounters or the fact that some of our members still aren't raid-ready yet, because we understand that the game has barely been out a month and some people didn't get it until Christmas or later. Our problem has been that a couple of the more hardcore members have been causing quite a fuss and complaining that the guild is going nowhere and in some cases, openly attacking officers and general members in guild chat. This has gone far beyond the occasional good-natured ribbing and has become a major source of tension in the guild.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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)?
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.
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)
