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What's your guild's niche? Help players find your specialized group
What is your guild all about? Many guilds are fairly easily described by their schedules and raid progressions (or their lack of either). More likely, though, the essence of your group -- the part that gives it its flavor and makes it stand apart from other guilds -- is somewhat trickier to describe. "Social," "casual," "raiding" ...These terms pretty much describe most guilds. Even terms that seem fairly self-explanatory at first glance can be problematic for players trying to evaluate a potential fit. "We're a dedicated roleplaying guild." OK, so what's the spin? One RP guild might maintain a military structure and campaign, while another plays out some very adult-themed interpersonal dramas -- definitely not interchangeable concepts! Our experience is that player and guild drama becomes inevitable when members end up unhappily guilded in a group that doesn't truly fit. The Drama Mamas frequently get mail from players who find their guildmates nice enough but still have that itchy feeling that something just isn't clicking. So as we prepare a guide to help players target the qualities they're looking for in a guild and figure out where to find them, we're turning to you for feedback plus a chance to let other players know about what your own guild's niche has to offer. Click past the break for more details on how to participate.
New Attitude, New Home: The warm, fuzzy tale of the guild realm transfer that stuck
Fun and games -- that was the original focus of this article. I was all set to write up a good old-fashioned romp through the community-wide events being run over on Baelgun (US-Horde). As it turns out, the resounding success of Bless the Martyr's public events -- kicked off with a Gurubashi tourney and chased by current plans for a level 1 draenei footrace -- are merely pointers toward an even happier turn of events. This is the story of a competitive raiding guild that had already transferred realms once in order to escape the inevitable neck and neck with another world-class raiding guild. It was an all-business move that worked. Their leadership was still solidifying, though, and some members' conduct was less than stellar. They didn't cement the realm as a friendly home. With a new leader and a new attitude, Bless the Martyr found themselves in agreement that it was time to pick up and scoot their stuff to a new realm yet again. Would they be able to find the sense of community they craved? How long could they expect to spend as the new kids on the block? Would their transfer upset the apple cart, saddling them with a realm full of resentful players shrugging off every chance at interaction? Would established raiding guilds slam the welcome wagon door in their faces?
GuildOx data shows 50% decline in raiding guild activity
This news probably shouldn't come as a huge shock to anyone who understands the ebb and flow of WoW expansions, but GuildOx, a site that collects all kinds of data from the WoW Armory, has discovered that raiding guild activity has fallen 50% since the beginning of 2012. GuildOx site runner Polar tells us that a raiding guild is defined as "a guild that has gained a boss kill or raid achievement within the past month or those guilds that have completed heroic Madness of Deathwing." Activity in this case is defined, obviously, as killing a boss that week. Again, not a huge shock; we're officially in Cataclysm's twilight (heh) years, and drop-off like this before an expansion is to be expected. It's worth noting in this case that the numbers for active raiders might be a little better than what's reflected here -- after all, plenty of guildless people have been able to raid thanks to Raid Finder, and that sort of activity wouldn't be tracked by this metric. One thing's definitely for sure, though -- the game needs a jump start in the form of Mists of Pandaria if Blizzard wants people to stick around. Thankfully, it's right around the corner, but one wonders just how long this cycle can perpetuate. The end of Wrath and the lifetime of Cataclysm showed us that diminishing returns are already in effect, Annual Pass or no, but MoP's endgame is decidedly different than what we've seen in the past. Perhaps things will be different this time.
GuildOx finds the world's most experienced raid boss killer
Guild ranking and progression tracking site GuildOx has assembled data on World of Warcraft's most experienced raider in terms of boss kills -- a Troll mage named Meltymon from the Destromath (EU) server. Meltymon has 5,389 raid boss kills, most on normal difficulty, going back to the beginning of the game's raiding challenges. Now, while Meltymon isn't the most experienced raider in terms of content completed, since heroic Ragnaros is still unaccounted for, the number of total raid boss kills over the lifetime of the character is still pretty impressive. The most interesting part of the ranking on GuildOx is that the most raid boss kills do not come from characters in the cutting-edge guilds. In fact, most of the higher-ups on the list are from guilds doing normal content each week with a smattering of heroic kills thrown in. The larger, more progressed guilds tend to do the content on their mains until completion for world firsts and then swap to alts or take time away from the game until a new patch hits and new challenges appear. All of these new rankings on GuildOx are possible because of the new APIs we had talked about in the past and are really providing developers and site owners with some cool tools to play around with. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Catch The Raid's world premiere for free
Hot on the heels of 2009's Second Skin, MMO players are once again the subject of an in-depth documentary about their lives and playing styles as Gamebreaker.TV is hosting the world premiere of The Raid for all to enjoy. Directed by gamer Kevin Johnson, The Raid follows a guild of World of Warcraft players who tackle some of the toughest challenges of the game and open up about what being a raider means to them. The 20-minute runtime examines what drives players to the raiding scene and introduces outsiders to the collaboration and competition that goes on during these events. The primary focus, however, is on the social aspect of raiding and how it binds a group of people together for a single purpose. You can catch the documentary after the jump until Wednesday evening at 10 p.m. EDT. Please note that the film starts around the 26-minute mark if you don't want to sit through the pre-show interviews. Give it a watch and let us know what you think -- did The Raid hit the spot or miss its target?
Call for submissions: The shape of guilds to come
How will Cataclysm's evolving raid progression plans shape your guild? We're betting that many of you raid leaders, guild officers and GMs are already making plans for what's ahead -- growing to accommodate an additional 10-man team, stretching to resize or reschedule your existing groups, maybe even shrinking down to become that tight-knit squad you've always dreamed of. Now's the time to begin considering the possibilities. WoW.com is looking for submissions for a roundup article on how the changing face of raid progression will be affecting your guild. We're looking for thoughtful reflections, between 50 and 200 words, on the road that lies ahead for your particular guild or raiding group. Preferably, you're the GM or an officer of a guild or the leader of a regular raiding group (although we won't discount submissions from other types of players). No Chicken Little or QQ submissions, please; our comments runneth over with delicious tears already, thanks. As with all guest post call-outs, only the best submissions will be accepted. Here's what to do: read up about the Seed program, sign up and then submit your article (you can't see the article page unless you have a Seed account). Unfortunately, we are currently only able to take submissions from individuals living in the United States; we hope to be able to accept international submissions in the future. We'll accept submissions for this call-out until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 29 -- that's right, just a couple of days away. Good luck!
"For the Horde" gets world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10
With the heroic versions of Trial of the Crusader going live yesterday, raiding guilds are already venturing into the more challenging versions of Tier 9. As of evening Tuesday EST, the European guild For the Horde has claimed a world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10 (a no-wipe full clear of the instance) on 10-man heroic Trial. Unfortunately, I don't speak German so I might be missing some of the finer points related on their website (anyone who can shed more light on this, please drop a comment!) but it looks like they weren't deliberately aiming for the achievement until they reached Anub'arak with all 50 attempts remaining, and then decided to go for it. Next in achievement progression? A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity -- repeating it without any gear from 25-man ToC, which is broadly equivalent to the Herald of the Titans achievement. Ouch.Boubouille at MMO Champion has since confirmed that the Swift Horde Wolf and its Alliance counterpart the Swift Alliance Steed are drops from the tribute chest upon completion of the no-wipe clear, and it's quite possible that the mounts also drop from the 25-man version as well. However, I doubt we'll be seeing A Tribute to Insanity-25 this week, as none of the guilds doing the heroic-25 mode have reported a wipe-free experience thus far.We'll keep an eye on guild progression for you, and congratulations to For the Horde!
Officers' Quarters: Critical mass
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.How many members should your raiding guild have? It's a simple question with a complex answer. This week, one reader wonders whether his guild simply has too many people.Hi, Scott.I'd like to first mention that I'm a big fan of your column, Officers' Quarters. Rock on! And today, I'd like to ask you for advice on the problem that my guild is facing. I'm a member of a raiding guild, one that hovers just below the best guilds of our realm. We have cleared 10man Ulduar, and I was lucky enough be there as I'm a member of our 10man progression team, which is now doing hard modes. Our 25man . . . well, thats where the problem comes in. Back in May, we didn't have enough strong players to really progress past antechamber. Then things started coming up for our raiders -- we couldn't do a 25man guild run for whole 3 weeks in May-June due to lack of people! So our officers aggressively recruited people, some of them geared members of a reputable guild that recently went down and some of them friends transferred in from other servers, and our new recruits recommended us with their friends who were also exceptional players. After 3 weeks of no 25man progression, we found ourselves with just under 40 people online for our raid night.
Making that transition from casual to hardcore guild
The Hunter's Mark has an interesting post regarding making the transition from casual to hardcode raiding for if you decide that you have enough of PuGs or your casual guild and want something a bit more hardcore. Although aimed at WoW the ideas and concepts are true for all the other games that also have a similar raiding system.The guide starts off with the important point of checking that your current guild doesn't already have plans for that already, not burning your bridges with your current guild leadership because that may well be asked what you are like by your new guild and then where to go to actually find your new guild. It follows up with actually getting onto your guilds raids if they use DKP or a system like EPGP, how to be prepared through doing your homework and finally how to keep that spot when you get it so that you can continue raiding.
8 things raiding guilds want from their applicants
Casual Hardcore has an excellent post, titled "Not All Guilds Are Created Equal," on the mental process you'll want to engage in before applying to a raiding guild. It dovetailed pretty neatly into a recent post by our own Matticus on "6 Ways to Reject a Guild App Without Sounding Like an Angry Ex." Both articles have a lot of sound advice that's well worth your time if you find yourself looking to change guilds or get into raiding; the former is written a bit more from the perspective of a player-applicant, the latter from the officers charged with saying yes or no.While reading these, I was reminded of comments I've seen on guild applications during my time as a raider. Some simply expand upon the points addressed by Casual Hardcore and Matticus; others were slightly different sentiments people were prone to airing whenever they recognized certain undesirable patterns. I've never been a recruitment officer (my guild leader has correctly observed that, as a soft touch, I would cheerfully rubber-stamp every match-girl, axe-murderer, and mortgage lender on the server), but over time it's been hard not to get a sense of what that person would want to see when they open a new application:
15 Minutes of Fame: Anthropologist digs into WoW Part 2
"I never thought of playing WoW like that!" neither did we, until we talked with these players. Check out a whole year's worth of player profiles in our "15 Minutes of Fame: Where are they now?"
15 Minutes of Fame: Anthropologist digs into WoW
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.While we've written before about academics who are researching WoW from within, we're not sure that we've seen anyone whose primary fieldwork is the PvE raiding experience. Meet Alex Golub, Ph.D., an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii. Golub plays a Resto Shaman in a Wrath-era raiding guild who's researching what he calls the culture of raiding -- "why people do something as crazy as run 25-mans four days a week." "There is a lot of research on WoW, actually, but most of is based either on crunching Armory data to produce statistical analysis of game play, or it is more 'cultural studies' where people play the game a little and then write something beautiful about it," he explains to 15 Minutes of Fame. "My unique angle is that I am doing anthropological fieldwork in WoW, living and playing with a raiding guild and putting in 20+ hours a week keeping them healed and decursed." The main themes of Golub's research (ahem): "American cultures of self-control, efficiency, masculinity and success amongst players of WoW." We asked him to boil that down for us. "I study how guys behave badly in Vent, and how/why people become emo and/or talk about why other people are emo," he explains. "I'm interested in how you get a group of 25 people to keep calm and collected as they try to do something really emotionally important to them, which requires relying on other people when its difficult to see them face to face."
Breakfast Topic: Guild origins
Last night in the top secret WoW Insider clubhouse, Matticus, the Double Dans and I got to talking about our guilds a little bit. The sorts of people in them, that kind of stuff. I don't remember exactly how, but eventually we came to the topic of how our various guilds got started.Dan O'Halloran (now known as Big Dan) is still with a lot of the folks he played with back in Everquest, and many of them have been together through a number of MMOs over the years. Daniel Whitcomb (now known as Little Dan) had a guild back in Everquest as well, and while he's not in a guild with them anymore, he's still kept in touch with many of them. My guild (and Little Dan's current guild) technically didn't come from another game, but rather a large message board a lot of us have frequented for years. Bunches of us have played other games and MMOs together over the years, but ultimately that forum was the connection. We've lost some people here and there, but we've gained a lot of people as well.
"Inside Higher Ed" compares raiding and teaching
Inside Higher Ed was pretty much the last place I ever expected to see a serious article on World of Warcraft. The study of MMORPG's isn't really part of mainstream academia (...yet), so imagine my surprise at finding an article comparing effective raid leading to teaching. Alex Golub, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii, contributed an article on his guild's attempts to kill Kael'thas pre-patch.
The marathon raid day?
A friend and I were idly wondering about the possibility of tackling all Burning Crusade raid content the way you'd watch the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy on a rainy weekend: doing it all without stopping, intent on a glorious finish. Nobody's arguing that the point of such a marathon is to have fun every second while you're doing it; I'd say this is the classic undertaking where it really is about the destination and not so much the journey. But let's say you had an enterprising bunch of raiders sitting around bored on a weekend and your choices were either raiding Tarren Mill again or trying something adventurous. Or if you had Wrath coming up the next week and you wanted to conduct a triumphal tour of the content your guild had conquered, stopping only to relish the wholesale slaughter of bosses who'd given you so much trouble (here's looking at you, Gurtogg). Would it be possible to cut a swathe of destruction across the BC raiding landscape all within the space of a day?Assuming a bunch of experienced raiders, we came up with the following figures:Karazhan: 2-3 hoursGruul's Lair: 1 hourMagtheridon: 45 minutesSerpentshrine Cavern: 3-4 hours Tempest Keep: 3 hoursZul'Aman: 1 1/2 hoursMount Hyjal: 2 1/2 hours Black Temple: 3-4 hours Sunwell Plateau: 4-5 hoursOn the low end, that's 20 hours and 45 minutes. On the high end, it's 25 hours (and I have to pause here for a moment's respect over just how much raid content Blizzard programmed for BC). If you lopped Kara and ZA off the marathon in the interest of doing only 25-man content, an experienced (albeit insane) raid that stomped each site and methodically proceeded to the next with no wipes along the way (probably not likely in Sunwell) could probably wreck BC raid content in maybe 18 hours start to finish (giving them a little extra time for travel and bathroom breaks). Has anyone been crazy enough to try this? Should anyone be crazy enough to try this?
PvE to PvP transfer impact
Since PvE to PvP transfer option became available, I've kept a close eye on my own realm to see if there'd be any discernible change to transfer patterns both on and off. As far as I can tell -- no. I've seen a few people transfer off but there doesn't seem to be any more so than usual. Only a few players did so purely for the purpose of PvPing on a different battlegroup, and most of them, like Zach Yonzon, had previously been PvP-realm transfers or rerolls anyway. The flood of high-level PvE to PvP transfers gloomily predicted by many doesn't seem to have materialized. People who'd rather play on a PvE realm are doing just that, and most of the people who'd rather play on a PvP realm were already there (never saw that one coming, eh?). I thought at the time that Blizzard's decision would probably have its biggest impact, not on PvP players, but on PvE raiders who had previously been restricted to recruiting PvP-to-PvP, PvE-to-PvE or (much less commonly) PvP-to-PvE only. If you've ever been in a raiding guild which found great recruits from the "wrong" kind of realm, you're probably familiar with what a headache that was.I play on a medium population PvE realm that launched when Burning Crusade hit. Since we're not really at the cutting edge of either PvE or PvP content as a result, mine is probably a bad sample size as we're not a hotbed of transfers either way. So, I'm not sure if my own experience is representative. If you're playing on a medium-to-high population realm, either PvE or PvP, are you noticing any difference to the traffic patterns, on or off? If you're on a low-population realm, has your situation improved or worsened?
Best. Guild. Application. Ever.
I've only ever written two guild applications, but I used to pride myself on writing a damn good one, the sort of application you might see written by the manager of a successful hedge fund, or possibly Mother Teresa. So I had my doubts when tipster Roflharris wrote in to tell us that a friend of his, MsFahrenheit of Sylvanas-EU, had submitted what was possibly the best guild application of all time to Anointed, but it's completely true. You'd have to try pretty hard to top this fully-animated, written and visual joke-infested riot. I just about died when he hit the part about how he got class leader and what attempts on Kalecgos were like.MsFahrenheit applied as a resto Druid and it looks like he was accepted, not that I would have expected anything less. There's not much more I can say apart from please see this; you'll be glad you did. Just so you know, it takes about 6 minutes to play from start to finish.(A non-audio version is here if you absolutely must, but the audio version is funnier).
The one you never win
Recently the guild hit Supremus again -- or, I should say, Supremus hit us. You'd think this would be a fairly easy fight to master. Supremus has two phases: the first is a lot like Gruul except with no cave-ins, knockback, or Shatter, and during the second phase, he aggros random people and tries to reach them while moving at the approximate pace of a snail. Oh, and he sprouts volcanoes under other players that you have to avoid. These two phases alternate until he's a giant pile of rubble in Black Temple's scenic courtyard.Yep. Easy.We can't do it.The guild's been farming Black Temple for months and most of the usual roster is rocking at least 3 or 4 pieces of Tier 6 -- yet the vast majority of our Supremus fights end with more than half the raid taking a dirt nap. We've reached the point where even this is still usually a one-shot, but it's more than a little disturbing. How can you one-shot Illidan with 24 people still alive...and somehow fail to steamroll the giant McLootLoot?To be fair, it's not just raids. I've seen players break out in a cold sweat over Talon King Ikiss on heroic Sethekk (which always confused me; the great secret of the fight consists of tanking him in the doorway). Others cite Grandmaster Vorpil, the event before the second boss in Blood Furnace when you don't have a Paladin tank, or Warbringer O'mrogg on heroic Shattered Halls (actually, all of Shattered Halls can pretty much bite me. I hate tanking that place). My own personal nemesis is Vexallus on heroic Magisters' Terrace. I've even taken a group with two mages and a rogue in T5/T6 here and wiped 3 times. What gives?
Forte Gaming goes the way of the Alamo
Forte Gaming, one of the top guilds in World of Warcraft and the world's first to kill Anetheron, disbanded over the weekend. Their web page cites recruitment woes, long delays between content releases, and continually postponed raid times as reasons for the fall. "For many it has felt like a slowly sinking ship for some time and now it's over," says the guild's last post.Forte was consistently ranked in the top two or three guilds in worldwide rankings and stayed in a tight race with Nihilum for game firsts, snagging no less than nine legendary Warglaives from Illidan in the Black Temple. In their three-year reign, they changed realms three times. Although the raiding arm of the guild (EU Boulderfist-A) will no longer exist, they will still maintain a more casual form of the guild on their previous server (A-Kazzak-EU).
SK Gaming interview: Kil'jaeden, Sunwell, and why to stack +haste
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Insider_interviews_top_World_of_Warcraft_raider'; Recently WoW Insider caught up with Neg, a restoration-specced Orc Shaman who raided with Nihilum before leaving recently for SK Gaming. An experienced player who has seen all of Blizzard's raid content, from Molten Core through Sunwell Plateau, Neg's talked to us previously about high-end raiding and what Sunwell was like on the PTR. As he's become one of a small group of raiders worldwide to finish the whole zone, we've asked him some follow-up questions about guild stability during the transition to Wrath, what Sunwell was like going live, why there are so many Shaman nowadays in high-end raiding, and the best and worst raid content on offer in WoW.If you didn't catch our first interview with Neg, you can find that here, but read on for an inside look at the toughest raiding you'll find in the game:
