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Nihilum recruiting: females need not apply [Updated]
Top EU guild Nihilum is recruiting a few serious Horde raiders on Magtheridon (EU). And not that I play on the EU side of things, but if I did, I wouldn't be welcome to apply. Why? According to GM Kungen, there are a lot of reasons they don't recruit females, but the one he highlights is the need for recruits to have a "high 'abuse tolerance.'" And a bit later in the thread, poster Awake adds that female applicants are avoided because of drama. And while I know there are immature girl gamers who can bring plenty of drama to a guild, I know equally immature guys who can be just as bad. So to me, personally, it makes better sense to simply not recruit idiots of either sex.However, in discussion over at wow_ladies, zeolla points out that a girl in the middle of a group of boys can sometimes cause problems without doing anything:Insert a girl and Guy A and Guy B have a crush on her. They end up bickering, which annoys the other guys who may like her and so forth. A girl gamer can just be in the middle of a conflict like this without doing ANYTHING. Usually in this situation if she says she's not interested, she becomes a 'slut' and lots of fighting occurs.So perhaps for a group so completely focused on a single goal (end-game raid success) having uniform member base just makes it easier for everyone to get along with as little fuss as possible -- and focus completely on the guild's purpose of bleeding-edge PvE domination.Update: There's been a lot of interesting commentary on this post, some of which I'd like to highlight here.Zuuler: "Throw them [girls] into a social environment with a bunch of geeky boys who would normally be afraid to talk to a girl directly and you have problems erupting. I think the same could be said if a predominantly female guild had a few males in it, the exact same problem would occur." I'd like to hear about any all-female guilds out there...!Deathlike: "It's not a misogynistic ideal for Nihilum to be a guys-only guild; in fact, it's exactly like most sports: there's women's hockey and men's hockey." In line with Zuuler's comments, this may be accurate. Just that the all-female guilds in the game aren't as obvious -- because they aren't competing in content on the level of Nihilum.Duromiir: "...if the GM has trouble with immature players on this level, I'm not sure why he hasn't /gkicked the worst of them to set an example and kept on only the good players who are also good people. I *can't* imagine that they have any shortage of applicants." This is an excellent point, though with a guild specifically trying to achieve world firsts, I wonder if there's time to deal with any level of potential "drama" and remain competitive with the other major guilds. Time is crucial when trying to score "firsts" and an evening of raiding lost because a key player /gquit could be the difference between making headlines and getting an unnoticed "world second."
Social guild events
One of the things my guild does is bi-monthly guild events. Every now and then we all get together and do something fun or crazy, and then get together in Stormwind or Darnassus to have a few ceremonial ales and /dance around the fireworks. We have a few people in the guild who set the events up, a few folks volunteer/get drafted to help out, and everyone has a good time. No real guild progress is made, no huge bosses downed, just general craziness and fun. We do occasionally n00b races, where we have members make level 1 alts, summon them to a secret location and have them run to another secret location, usually PvP flagged (with some of our experienced PvP'ers riding shotgun to prevent any spawn camping). Gift swaps during the holidays, and so on. Does your guild do any fun social events? Got any concepts I can steal...uh...use with appropriate credit?
Breakfast Topic: The rush to 70
Well, the rush to 70 is just reaching its stride. On my server, I did a quick "/who 70," and during prime time I saw about 17 people on (one of them in my guild). Another guildie is at 69, and a few more are at 67, which means a good ten or fifteen will be 70 within the weekend, most likely, and there will only be more after that.And yet frankly, I'm not all that concerned with getting there. Sure, you might say it's a copout (I haven't won the race to 70, so I'm quitting), but even though I played for quite a bit after the expansion first released, my leveling pace has pretty much dropped back down to normal-- not too fast, not real slow. Enough to make the quests fun, but enough to keep it moving on the rewards end. And even though I'd be getting more XP in the other zones, I haven't even left Hellfire Peninsula yet-- partly because I want to see all the great lore and scenery, but partly because, like Mystic Worlds, I'm really in no rush to 70.Because while all the "good" raiding is at 70-- the exclusive 25-man endgame stuff-- that's also when I stop earning XP. And unless I'm headed for a specific item or attunement, it seems to me that playing solo without XP is a waste of time. The game ends at 70, and I'm in no hurry to end it. So what about you-- are you making (or have you already made) the mad dash to 70, or are you stopping to smell the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh?
WoW Insider Best of 2006: Server, Class, and Guild
The year is almost over, and that means it's time for us to take a look back, and pick some of the best (and worst) of Azeroth in 2006. This year saw a lot of innovation, a lot of whining, plenty of killing (both PVE and PVP), and almost saw the new expansion (we have to save something for next year, right?).Last week, we took your nominations for ten different categories. Over the weekend, the WoW Insider staff deliberated. I'd like to say there was a lot of arguing back and forth, and even some throwing of items around the room at each other, but truthfully things went pretty smoothly (everyone agreed I was right). And so, without further ado, today we present the Server, Class, and Guild of the Year for 2006. Click the link below to see the winners.And come back every day this week, as we award all the other categories, including Player of the Year, Best (and Worst) Blizzard Move of the Year, and even NPC Friend and Enemy of the Year.
Shawn Fanning's Rupture: social software meets WoW
Shawn Fanning's second post-Napster startup will be far more L2P than P2P -- set to launch sometime next month, Rupture is a virtual social community for World of Warcraft. The details regarding the functionality of the site are a bit slim, but it's clear the project will go beyond something like Warcraft Social, which is a completely external social network to WoW, as well as beyond the data extraction functionality provided by Allakhazam via WowReader and Thottbot via Cosmos plugin. Rupture will reportedly pull in-game data and publish it to a personalized site guilds can use to track stats and better manage their playing. Rupture's investors include Ron Conway and Joi Ito, venture capitalist and level 60 mage of We Know fame. Considering Ito's investment history in social software and stated interest in developing guild management tools, my hunch is that Rupture will look a lot like groupware for guilds. As an officer in my main guild, I'd agree that current in-game management tools are lacking. Tools like GEM are a start, but the idea of a one-stop shop for guild management is appealing. A web-based tool would also be ideal for officers and players who can't fire up the WoW client at work but might have time to log in to the website during the day. Of course, many guilds (including my own) already have their own websites with forums and DKP tracking, so the question will be whether this tool will be compelling enough to replace or augment home-grown systems already in place. A hosted solution like Rupture might be a great solution for a new or smaller guild to access a central management space without requiring someone to have the tech-fu (and the time) to hack something together via PHP Nuke and EQ DKP, etc. What do you guys think -- does your guild get along just fine with your current management systems? Is there a market for this kind of tool?[Thanks, Undying]
Guild banks? Someday!
Guild banks are inching closer and closer to reality. According to Enoyls in this thread, Blizzard initially planned to implement guild banks for the expansion, but that has been pushed to the back burner, and the banks will make their appearance in a post-expansion patch.Sure, it is a little disappointing to hear that they were planned for the Burning Crusade but have since been pulled, but it is great news that they are very much on Blizzard's radar. The current system of storing items on alts works, but it is annoying...and wouldn't it be nice to have a guild bank everyone could send items to? Instead of having MiningBank or ShardVault alts? What features would you like to see included in a guild bank? Should everyone in the guild be able to view it? Do any other MMORPGs have a well-implemented guild bank feature you'd like to see Blizzard copy?
Forum Post of the Day: Guild halls
Though many MMOs do have some type of guild housing available, World of Warcraft doesn't have any such option, nor are there (to my knowledge) any officially acknowledged plans to create them. However, there are players out there who would very much like to see some sort of guild housing in the game -- and some of them have hit up the suggestion forums with incredibly detailed proposals. Poster Kinn presents us with an in-depth (too in-depth to be succinctly summarized) look at what guild halls could be like, and the thread has garnered over 20 pages of mostly positive responses. So what do you think? Would such a system benefit the game? Would another type of system be better? Or is guild housing a silly idea in the first place?
So you want to be a raider...
Jumping from leveling up to end-game content can be daunting -- and if you've done nothing but run 5-player instances before, how to get into raiding may be a bit mysterious. Well, Coriel, of the Blessing of Kings blog has written up a great two-part guide on how to make this jump. Part one covers what raids are, why you might want to do them, and what to have (gear, levels, professions, etc) before you try to get into a raiding guild. And part two covers how to find the raiding guild for you as well as how to apply and make a good impression. I'd write tips of my own, but I honestly think Coriel has covered all the bases.
The science of /gquitting
So I just joined a great guild two weeks ago (as my warrior is getting ready to start raiding), and today I saw a sight many of you have probably seen before: the guild's first officer has apparently been having problems with a few people whose "names he won't mention," and posted a fairly polite /gquit message on the guild's message boards. So I did what most people in that situation would do: I grabbed the popcorn. I doubt this guild will break up (it's got a fairly solid background and lots of members), but if it does, it'll be a sight to see.And then I notice that Relmstein has today posted a nice article about this very subject. He says there's two reasons guilds break up: Either the guild leader decides to quit and take everybody down with him (or her), or guild drama creates a big enough rift in the membership that eventually everyone wants out.In the first scenario ("death by self destruct"), there's one leader who's convinced there's nothing that should happen in the guild without their say. Weird decisions are made, and ideas or help are refused by the leader. Eventually they decide it's all over, and a few /gkicks later, it's all over but the crying.In the second ("death by divide"), one or two members of the guild gets angry about something that happens, and starts fracturing the guild apart (usually by gaining power and then abusing it in the eyes of the leader). This one is much more fun-- there's usually a few spirited in-game conversations, a few long rants on the message boards, and eventually everyone /gquits away, as Relm says, "quietly in the early morning."Is there any way to stop it? Relmstein doesn't give any answers to that one, and in my experience it's completely true that most disbands fall along one or both of these lines. But maybe that isn't so bad-- a guild isn't really a family or a job, even though it has qualities of both. It's just a voluntary grouping of people with the same interests in game. One guild breaks up, another comes along. And either way, it's always fun to watch.
When Your Guild Hits A Wall
My guild has been trying the C'Thun encounter for nearly 4 weeks. We can clear all the other AQ40 bosses with little effort, but C'Thun still eludes us. For me personally, this is not a big deal. Our guild is what I would call hardcore-lite, as we only raid four nights a week and have loose attendance requirements. Honestly, I am pleased we got this far. And who cares if we wipe? A night of wiping in WoW is better than a night of working or mowing the lawn, right? However, a lot of my guildies, especially those who joined after we got BWL on farm status, are starting to complain, no-show, etc. People are mysteriously losing connection, having family emergencies or are just not signing up. People are happy to show up for the BWL farm session on Wednesday, and for the nights we clear to C'Thun, but the C'Thun nights are becoming an entirely different story. We don't want to institute punishments or start dangling carrots, but we are quickly running out of options. We are going to try a new "No BWL Runs Until C'Thun Is Beaten" policy next week, so hopefully that motivates some folks. Don't people want to be there for the first kill? Or is it more exciting to run the same bosses again and again with no challenge, just the slot machine aspect of maybe getting loot? I am quickly beginning to see the advantages of a more hardcore guild with more rigid requirements.
Of Guilds and Government
Terra Nova has an opinion piece up on democracy in virtual worlds. While we organize ourselves into self-governed guilds, where does it go from there? From my own experience as a guild member and a guild leader, the governance involved in even small organizations can be a headache, and I can only imagine it getting worse with increased size and complexity. Anyone have any opinions on democracy, from a World of Warcraft perspective?
50 DKP Dives -- the new Leeroy
The words "50 DKP MINUS" are becoming somewhat legendary even in non-WoW circles, but have you ever wondered about the guy who originally uttered them? Wagner James Au has interviewed Dives, leader of the Wipe Club, and the interview contains some real insight into the life of this particular raid leader.Turns out that, for those following the Onyxia Wipe closely, Crushim didn't actually get -50 DKP once the situation was explained. Thank goodness for that then.
Breakfast topic: Guild drama
The phrase "guild drama" is one that crops up a lot in WoW; the necessary consequence of a large group of individuals all working towards a few common goals seems to be tension, strife and disagreement. From personality clashes to mergers and alliances, you need to deal with a lot of other people's business to get far in the endgame. Even if you choose to bypass raiding and focus on your PvP, more politics come into play over rank and honour.I've had a pretty easy time of it so far -- my guild is reasonably small, so we're part of a larger alliance which is working out well for now. However, I'm well aware that the inevitable will happen; one day someone's goals will change, and the peace will shatter. Guild drama can't be avoided -- in fact, some guilds like to wear past problems like badges of honour on their sleeves, showing the world that they can stick together through thick and thin. Others stay mostly drama-free, through choice or design, but delve into even the quietest guilds and you may find more than you bargained for.Do you prefer life with the added complications of guild politics, or have you given up on the drama and gone for a quieter life elsewhere?
Guild Leadership for the Rest of Us
Some recent drama in my current guild has lead me to seriously consider starting out on my own. And while I know it wouldn't be easy, I think it could be very rewarding to build a guild from scratch and work at learning end-game encounters with a new and different crew. Lucky for me, the Daedalus Project has results from a survey of guild leaders, and it may not be all its cracked up to be. Whether you're a guild leader or guild member, it's an interesting read.
