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Officers' Quarters: Spawning grounds
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, especially after the Wrath of the Lich King beta went live last week. In many cases, hardcore raiding guilds just aren't making the Big Push anymore. Many have simply disbanded. Prior to the expansion, there really isn't much reason for raiders to keep going at the same pace, unless there's still content they haven't seen. So what are all these raiders doing in the meantime? Some, much like salmon, are instinctively returning to the ancestral casual guilds where they first spawned. But should those guilds take them back? This week's e-mail asks exactly that.Hello Scott:I am a high ranking officer in a casual raiding guild on Khadgar.Recently several top raiding guilds on my server are dissolving. Our guild is a casual raiding guild that are slowly progressing in SSC. We received several requests from former guild member that express interest in coming back into the guild. Most of them said they miss the friendly and fun environment our guild provides while still doing decent raiding.
Officers' Quarters: Pointing fingers
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.In an online environment where people rarely, if ever, come face-to-face, it can be quite easy for misunderstandings to occur. Ninety percent of the time, these misunderstandings happen because someone makes an assumption about another player's intentions based on something they did or said. In those circumstances, who is to blame: the person who didn't make their communication or intentions clear, or the person who jumped to conclusions? In my opinion, both share fault, but pointing fingers gets us nowhere. This week's e-mail is a good example:I was just booted from a guild and I have a question about the circumstance. I took an enchanting recipe from the guild recipe tab and learned it. They accidentally put it into the wrong tab, so instead of the private tab they put it into the open guild tab. I apparently wasn't supposed to have it and was booted. Now I have a guild harassing me and demanding I replace the pattern. I would like to but it won't get me back into the guild but it might hurt my chances for getting into another guild. What should i do and is it really my fault?
Officers' Quarters: No empty slots
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Last week I talked about the problem of filling raids, as TBC winds down and summer heats up. But some people are lucky enough to have the opposite problem: Too many people want to go, and there just isn't enough room for everyone. That's what the author of this week's e-mail is facing. Scott: I'm in a guild that's been progressing quite steadily in T6 content now that no one needs attunement for them. We got 4/5 Hyjal and 3/9 BT quickly, and while we've been a bit stymied on Archie we're getting to the point where we'll have him down soon enough. The problem is, well, not much of a problem really for, oh, 25 of us. You see, we're one of the two real raiding guilds on our server, Alliance side at least. The rest of Alliance is fighting their way through T4 content and just starting their way on the T5 stuff. But the serious raiders love to join up with our guild, a lovely thing for the most part. Of course, this means that we've usually got 35 people on a raid night wanting to run. A few too many.
Officers' Quarters: Empty slots
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.One of the primary struggles I face in a guild with no attendance policy is getting warm bodies to fill 25 raid slots for every raid. It seems like it doesn't matter how many people we recruit these days, we just can't seem to get enough people to make it happen all the time. As new players join us, old ones get burned out or stop playing altogether to wait for the next expansion. Based on this, you might already conclude that I can't really help the person who wrote this week's e-mail -- and maybe I can't! But I've learned that sometimes other factors can come into play, and this person might already be onto one of them.Dear Scott, I am in a raiding guild that usually runs about 3-4 raids a week and currently we are progressing through Black Temple as we have already cleared Mount Hyjal. [. . .] Recently we have had some issues with people showing up to raids and it seems to coincide with when our guild leader (raid leader) is not able to make it to the raid. If our raid leader doesn't log on we can't seem to fill out a 25 man raid but when he does log on we have no problem. Not really sure why this phenomenom happens but it seems to happen every time.
Officers' Quarters: Cracking the whip
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Remember when The Burning Crusade launched and everyone was in a big hurry to ding 70? Apparently some guilds are still leveling up. This week's e-mail doesn't mention whether these are new players or rerolls, but the problem is the same: What should you do when the people you're counting on just aren't leveling up fast enough? I am a member of a small guild on Gul'dan server. I sympathize with and thank K for sharing his guild problems. Our guild is a lot younger and most likely smaller than his is or was at one point, but as we progress to get our members leveled up and geared up for raiding I can already notice a slight discontent, similar to what K described. We are very casual right now and our leader is letting the guild "breathe its own air", by not imposing any strict rule. This is done to allow the players to feel comfortable as they level up. The only real rule, more of a suggestion I would say, that we ask our members to follow, is to disregard any dungeon quest and just concentrate on leveling up as fast as possible, without having higher levels running you through areas.
Officers' Quarters: When to give up
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.If you were reading WoW Insider over the weekend, you might have noticed a couple of rather depressing posts. Adam talked about when you should make the personal decision to stop raiding. Then Jennie talked about the reasons why raiding guilds break up. I might as well continue the trend, but at least I have the excuse of a reader's e-mail. Last week I addressed the problems that small guilds will face in the coming months. This week, by request, I'm going to look at larger, hardcore guilds. And I'll also examine a nasty stereotype in the community that continues to proliferate.I am in this guild for the past 2 years of my WOW experience. This is my first guild, and my only guild so far. The atmosphere was friendly when I first joined it to join my real life schoolmates, hoping to down boss and experience content together. But a couple of drama and event took place, and my friends all quit the game which they felt was taking too much of their time. The original management when I joined all left the game due to other real life commitments and burnouts from over-WOW-ed. So with a twist of fate I took over the role of Guildmaster. The other veterans in the guild has other reasons that forbid them from taking the helm. And so I begun my quest to reform the dying guild in the dying server. We are a guild with predominantly Asian players, but we welcome western players too. But apparently playing in a US server meant you always have to being abused at for being Asian. Some people just cannot differentiate Chinese Farmer and general normal Asian players. And so I have been working for the past 6 months trying to recruit new blood into the guild and keeping the raiders around. We finally managed to down Rage Winterchill only in the past 2 weeks, after the top end guild in our server's endless poaching of our raiders to warm their bench . . . And a few other core raiders announcing their quitting of the game soon. And now I feel I don't enjoy WOW the same anymore. It's no longer the same for me.
Officers' Quarters: A crossroads for small guilds
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Small, casual guilds often have it the toughest of all. They don't have the numbers to run the 25-player content. They often have only a small handful of tanks and healers. With such few resources, how do you attract anyone new in order to maintain any semblance of a guild after people quit? It looks like life may become much easier for these guilds once Wrath of the Lich King launches. But that puts all the small guilds at a crossroads of sorts. What, this week's e-mail asks, should they all do in the meantime?Hello Scott, I am an officer of a guild on the Llane server on the alliance side. Our guild has existed for the past 2 years and have been very casual and most of us have become good friends through the course of the game. [. . .] We were clearing kara weekly at one point and since we are a very small guild, we only had 1 set of tanks and healers. The kara farming stopped when our Main Tank got all his drops and seeing that Kara was as far as we were going at that time, just stopped tanking to level an alt. He got bored and blamed us for not gearing up any other tanks. We were recruiting actively at that time and got a few other tanks, but we never had any set times for raids. This killed the spirit for the people who were new and they moved on to other guilds. Of course this hurt our numbers and we finally got back to doing Kara about 3 months later with the core group's alts filling in the tank and healer roles. A note about our core group . . . we gelled so well that we used to do Moroes with no crowd control and 7 out of 10 players in blues and greens. The group just worked and we made the best out of it. With alts tanking and healing, we got to clear Kara.
Officers betting against the raid
After the 20th Supremus kill the game can get a tad boring. There's no doubt about it. Raiders know well that you have to spice things up to keep it fun. One way to do that is to have a lively bunch of people you raid with. With them things can get "interesting" at times. The fellow officers and I in my guild have decided to make things interesting by betting on the number of people that will die during Supremus.For some reason Supremus always manages to kill a few too many people. Not too many that we can't one-shot him, but enough that it makes you scratch your head. No one dies on Illidan, Council, etc... but Supremus? Run for the hills!So to keep the fight interesting someone picks a number, say nine. That number is "the line." Myself and a couple others will take under the line, and a couple others will take over. If less then nine people die, each of us gets 20g. If more than nine die the other folks get 20g each.Is betting against the raid like this a good thing?
Testing strategy reading abilities, Part I
Everyone reading this site knows that it's pretty important to read strategies for the various boss encounters in WoW. No matter if they're from Boss Killers, our own Ready Check, long threads over at Elitist Jerks, or home made modifications, studying boss fights outside of the game is essential to success.However sometimes it's kind of hard to tell if everyone is actually spending the 15 minutes to read over and understand the strategies outside of the raid. This is particularly troublesome for the raid leaders and officers, since some of the fights can be very hard to explain without first having an understanding of where and what things look like.We're having this problem in our guild right now. Not that big of a problem, granted, but it's still something we'd like to get better at. So last night our guild master made a map of the Kalecgos play field, detailing where everyone should stand (I know that some readers will comment that it's not necessary, but it's what works for us). In the bottom right hand corner there's a derogatory yet funny message about yours truly, something along the lines of a suggested act I can go do to/with myself. It's obvious, it's funny, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.Tonight the GM will go around and ask each of the 35 or so raiders we have in the guild, "What was out of place on the strategy map I posted today?" If they can't answer correctly, they won't be raiding with us again anytime soon.
Officers' Quarters: Broken alliances
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.No, this column isn't about one of the most annoying Horde-side quests ever. Seriously, who actually goes back to Badlands -- the farthest possible point in Azeroth away from any Horde zeppelin or portal -- at level 50 to do this one stupid quest with subpar rewards? Does any quest in the game out-level its zone more than this one? OK, so maybe the beginning of this column was about that quest. The rest of it, however, is going to be about ending your alliance with another guild, because that's what this week's e-mail is asking about. Hello Scott:Your Officers' Quarters: Dark pacts [columns] helped our guild a lot. I am an officer of an progressing casual guild. We currently have enough signups that we no longer need an alliance. The alliance guild helped us somewhat in progressing so it's hard to tell them to simply go away since we have enough guild members to fill the raid. My question is how should we approach the alliance guild to peacefully break the alliance and make most if not all the people happy?Thanks,Findra
Bumping your recruitment posts
Many guilds out there have their recruitment posts up on both the realm forums and the global recruitment forums. One of the big keys to a recruitment post is to keep it up on the top of the forums so everyone sees it, and sees it before any other posts. This means that you and your guildies have to bump the post to the top of the list, and bump it quite often.The global recruitment forums recently underwent an upgrade, where the forums were split into Alliance and Horde factions. This has helped a bit with the number of posts per day, and has thus lessened the number of required bumps a recruitment posts needs to keep it on the front page.However, you still have to bump it quite a bit.
Officers' Quarters: What's in a guild name?
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Naming your guild is a funny thing. You want it to stand out in some way, but, at the same time, you don't want to give it such a weird or offensive name that people are embarrassed to walk around with it above their heads. It can be an agonizing decision. I remember back in the days before my officers and I founded our guild, we exchanged dozens of messages trying to find the perfect name. So I can sympathize with the author of this week's e-mail, who discovered that her carefully chosen name had also been chosen by another guild with some eerily similar characteristics.Hello, Scott. I don't know if I have a conundrum, a mystery, or a coincidence. I find it kinda funny more than anything else, but wonder if I should feel some concern or do something about it-- More than a month ago, I split off from a friendly, pretty well-knit social guild to form my own of same. I had decent ideas about the sort of people I wanted together, and still have aims of trying to build a Kara team (I follow the casual raiding articles religiously). We're still very small, but we're out there, and we have a pretty notable guild name. It was also the only guild of that name across all servers -- I checked the Armory at that time. Just last night I happened to be trawling the armory, looking up some friends and their gear, and, of course, popped in my own guild name. Much to my surprise, I see a brand new guild (~10 members) on another Normal server with the same name, cross-factioned. Further, their guild tabard is nearly identical (save for a slightly different border; the colors and image are same), and their GL is the same class as I am, a Blood Elf to my Human.
Officers' Quarters: Jerk message of the day
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I've spent the past six weeks talking about raiding, so I think it's time to get away from the topic and talk about something less drama-ridden, like the guild message of the day feature. What could be more straightforward and less controversial, right? Well, as this week's e-mail reminds us, no part of leading a guild is completely free of incident.Would rather not name the guild but it's on Bronzebeard EU. Only the Guildmasters (of which there are 10) can set the message of the day. Despite this security, an offensive homophobic message of the day appeared one day. I'm afraid I didn't see it as I wasn't online while it was up, but when another Guildmaster saw it, it was immediately removed. No one owned up to it and no one could think who would do it, so one Guildmaster (a friend of mine in real life) logged a complaint with Blizzard to try and find out who set this message.
Breakfast Topic: How does a raiding guild avoid the fate of Death and Taxes?
So it's been a day or so since we first heard that Death and Taxes was disbanding, and since then, DnT member Xi- has posted a somewhat lengthy explanation as to why. In the end, the biggest reason Xi- gave is pride. Many people, he says, just stopped thinking about the raid and the guild as a whole, and were more focused on their own advancement and their own needs, and became impatient when a boss did not fall easily. When it was time to progress, many of them, even officers, would disappear and stop supporting them. He also does get in a few Risen style digs about how none of the BC content was half as good as Naxxramas up until Sunwell Plateau, but he did manage to sound a lot more classy than Risen did. But the point about pride, about guild members who disappear for a while and expect to pick back up where they left off when they return, and about people who never show up for progress kills, or show up and complain if the boss doesn't fall after one or two tries, that rings true with me, as I am sure it rings true with a lot of current and former MMO raiders, whether from WoW or other games.
WoW Insider Weekly
Once again, we're breaking down the most popular weekly features of the past seven days. Our writers work hard to get terrific weekly features up for your enjoyment, so if you missed these the first time around, don't make the mistake again. Guildwatch: Going too farGuildwatch has drama, downed, and recruiting news from all over the realms all in one place. Did your guild show up this week? Spiritual Guidance: 30 if statements that priests should adhere toMatticus himself walks you through the ins and outs of being a Priest (and there's some good advice in here for you other classes, too). Scattered Shots: Why certain pet families are so popularAre bears better than boars? Should snakes shank scorpids? Are Ravagers more radical than Raptors? Daniel Whitcomb lays it all out. Around Azeroth: Grand Theft AzerothAround Azeroth asks readers to mix up their WoW with a little GTA. Arcane Brilliance: Level 70 checklistYou're a mage, and you've just hit level 70. What now? More after the break!
Officers' Quarters: LF Raid Leader PST
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. A few weeks ago, my first and most important suggestion for casual raiding guilds was to find a committed raid leader. These days, however, good raid leaders are even rarer than good tanks. The author of this week's e-mail asks, What do you do if your guild doesn't have anyone willing to be the RL? Dear Scott, [. . .] My guild, Winding Path, came to be during the MMORPG, Asheron's Call, and has been in existence since February of 2000 (3 months after the retail release of AC). We're a family and friends based guild of roughly 85 casual, playing members whose core belief is friends>lewtz. We've gradually worked our way through Kara and are *finally* <whew> making some progress through ZA (slowly, but surely). We have some amazingly talented players, intelligent people, kids as young as 10 who make the adults look like n00bsauce sometimes, and more belly laughs than you can shake a stick at. We may never see Sunwell Plateau until a 4th or 5th expansion ;) , but the points you make in regards to the fun being of the utmost importance was something that I have hammered home in the eight years my guild has entrusted me with the leadership of our family. I thank you for sharing that with the rest of the WoW community, as I fear it is heard far too little. My greatest issue, however, is one that even after all this time, not even I have been able to resolve. A few months ago, we were forced to terminate the Raid Leader for our guild for several reasons. The biggest issue, though, is that on multiple occasions, he failed to show up for raids without notice, which we forgave and ignored. Unfortunately, the last time this happened, we learned he had actually been playing his Horde character on another server, running Kara with his other guild. Quite a slap in the face, and well--to me, a definite expression of his disinterest in his position as our RL.
Officers' Quarters: We love you, but L2P
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Hot off my month-long, four-feature dissertation on casual raiding, I've decided to answer some e-mails that relate to it. This week's e-mail is about a subject that comes up quite often in casual raiding guilds: When someone is generous, helpful, and an all-around great member, but who just isn't getting the job done in raids, what do you do about it?Hi Scott,I'm an officer/co-GM of a humble, little raiding guild, looking to have fun, grow and progress with our members. [. . .] We take raiding seriously enough that we're not wasting our time (everyone is on time and comes prepared), but we also have a lot of giggling and laughing in vent during raids, even when we wipe. All would be fantastical and perfect . . . except my guild is in sort of a predicament with a certain guild member. He's been with us for a while now -- long enough to not be considered a new member. He's a friend of mine, as well as a friend of our other co-GM. He's a healer and quite well geared. Probably the best geared in the guild. [. . .] Along with all the effort he's put into improving his character, he's also a decent guy. Whenever someone in the guild needs help, whether it be for a quest or for an empty raid spot, he won't hesitate to stop what he's doing to come help out. [. . .] So, he seems like a top notch guild member. Well geared, puts effort into his character, and is a nice guy. Problem? He knows he's well geared, but he doesn't know he SUCKS at healing.
Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding that works
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.This is it, folks. This is the final column in my four-part feature about how to take your casual raids to the next level. For parts one, two, and three, click on the purple words with lines under them. I've noticed in the comments under these features that a few people seem confused about the difference between casual and hardcore raiding. One reader from last week, Ger, put it best:The point of "casual" is to concentrate on WoW being a fun game more than a chore, but if you want to raid then be prepared to take some dang responsibility and not be a liability to 9 or 24 other people.That one made me laugh. It's a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I like that definition. Let's recap what I talked about previously, and follow that up with some more suggestions.
Officers' Quarters: The road to mediocrity
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.We've all come across those mediocre players. They are the hunters that can DPS but don't know how to trap a mob; the shamans that never break crowd control but windfury their way to the top of the aggro list every single pull; the warriors who excel at single-target tanking but can't hold more than one mob at a time. Where do these players come from, and how do they stay so mediocre after 70 levels? The author of this week's e-mail thinks he has the answer: The road to mediocrity is built by your own guild.Scott,I enjoy your Officers' Quarters articles on WoWInsider.com, so maybe you can tackle this subject for me in your next piece: I am now a casual player (played since beta and used to be hardcore) and I'm in this nice and friendly social guild. I'm not an officer, nor do I have the desire to be one. I just want to log on and do whatever I feel like with my limited play time. This guild puts no pressure on me and I appreciate that. The guild leaders' philosophy is to be helpful to one another – helping on whatever is needed by other members. Guild members get rank up by how much they help others. This was a noble idea . . . but there's a huge caveat. One of the things that lower level members often ask higher members for help on is to run them through instances. However, there's a very bad side effect to this: mediocrity.
Ties that blind
When you show up to Archimonde attempts on a Monday night, you don't really expect much apart from a fun night with lots of wanton death and slaughter, albeit not for Archimonde himself. Killing Archimonde is pretty much out of the question at the moment. He's the kind of type-A boss who likes to demand absolute perfection out of his visitors, and that's not really what we're prepared to offer right now. We are more of an experimentation guild, the type that slaps things together with duct tape and then cheerfully proffers them for inspection, the type of guild that wanders off while important historical events are occurring, absorbed with what's going on with that duck by the pond or an interesting tree. Despite this, or possibly because of it, we've progressed pretty quickly. Too quickly to avoid leaving people behind, according to some, in the wake of an ugly blow-up that happened early in the evening and continued for the rest of the night in a flurry of tells, vent binds, and and anxious messages.All guilds have problems and all guilds have drama; if you read the site you have the opportunity to see a lot of what goes on elsewhere if your own guild isn't host to a ton of trouble. My own wasn't for the most part until last night, and I tend to read Officers' Quarters and Guildwatch with the sense of clinical detachment you might expect from a surgeon's dispassionate survey of a necrotic limb. Not so much so anymore, I think. Guild-ending matters are usually the result of a slow burn you recognize only in hindsight, and when I read of of break-ups it's hard not to think about the names you don't know and wonder who was the whistle-blower, who tried to save the ship, who abandoned it altogether, and who was simply lost along the way. Guilds are fragile families. This will be an interesting week.
