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Officers' Quarters: Creating a raid team in a PvP guild
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. The last two weeks we've talking about second raid teams and what to do when that second team blows up. This week, it's time to get back to basics. One officer wants to know how to create a brand new raid team in a PvP guild. Dear Scott, Could use some help with building a new raid group. Let me start off with some history. For the last year I have been in a pretty much PVP only guild. Being an avid raider, my taste buds were tingling for some boss kills. I have been in the guild for about a year and I am a core officer. So my dilemma... I am trying to start recruiting from within the guild so far I have about 7 people who are interested. But I know I am going to need to reach outside the guild for people who want to raid. I have never personally recruited for raiding only led raids.
Watcher clarifies ilvl distribution in patch 5.4
Players participating in patch 5.4's new Flexible Raids have noticed that the ilvl for Siege of Orgrimmar loot is set to 540 -- just below the 541 ilvl of current Heroic Thunderforged gear, but above current heroic gear from Throne of Thunder, which is set at 535 before any valor point upgrades are applied. To some players, it may seem as though Blizzard is now encouraging the same kind of multiple-instance running that occurred with the Trial of the Crusader raid and its many, many difficulties. A thread on the official forums points out that if Flexible Raid gear is better than heroic gear from the previous tier, players will be obligated to run both Flexible and Normal difficulty along with LFR in order to gear up more quickly -- since Flex difficulty doesn't share a lockout with normal modes, it's entirely possible to do so. While the arguments for and against have been both fast and furious, Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas stepped in to clarify just what the reasoning was behind the different ilvls for the different difficulties, as well as the purpose of Flexible Raids.
The Soapbox: On your deathbed, you will not regret gaming
In last week's edition of The Soapbox, Mike Foster reminded us that the grim specter of death comes to us all and asserted that when your time comes, "you will not wish you had spent more time gaming." Mike took the stance that gaming provides temporary joys that can't replace real-life experiences and that it's our inherent responsibility as human beings with finite lifespans to seek out those experiences. He argued that "gaming is a hobby and not a replacement for a life well-lived" and that it's not our gaming achievements but our real life ones that we'll proudly tell our grandchildren. I think we can all agree that it's important to have offline hobbies and interests that help you keep active, but I take exception to the notion that we might regret time spent gaming on our deathbeds. Published data on the top five regrets of the dying actually seems to directly refute this idea, and my life experiences have shown the exact opposite of some of the points Mike makes. MMOs have given me some experiences that I'll probably treasure for a lifetime, and gaming as a hobby has provided me with much more than just temporary joys and escapism; it's helped me discover talents I didn't know I possessed, given me the push I needed to get a good education, led me to employment, and put me in contact with lifelong friends. On my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd spent more time gaming rather than less. In this opinion piece, I look at evidence that suggests we won't regret gaming on our deathbeds and make the case that gaming can be just as worthwhile as offline pursuits.
Officers' Quarters: Leftovers
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. Last week we heard from a raid leader who was weighing the creation of a second raid team. Ultimately, it seemed like a bad idea. This week, we hear from an officer who has already tried -- and failed -- to create a second team. Now he has extra raiders that he's not sure how to handle. Dear Scott, I would like your opinion on a subject- the veritable, hated bench. See, I tried recruiting for a second group in an attempt to make sure that players beyond our core ten were in the guild and seeing raids, but that hasn't worked out for us at all. It's really been a headache to manage and hard to fill (since everybody who responds to my ads is always interested in our weekday heroic runs. However, now that we've scrapped the idea of having a second group, I could use some advice on how to successfully maintain a 13 or so person roster for a 10 player raid.
Breakfast Topic: Joined at the hip
A couple of months ago, my tanking partner of over a year decided to take a break from WoW to focus on real life. In my guild, our policy has always been real life over the game, so there were no hard feelings. Although I was happy for my raiding buddy, I wasn't looking forward to recruiting a new tank. After tanking together for so long, we could predict what the other would do and we worked very well together. I eventually recruited another tank, but didn't feel as comfortable as I was with my old partner. "It will take time," I told myself. I was just making myself feel better, and to be honest, I still don't feel a connection with my new tank partner. I've not had fun raiding lately and that's a bad sign. The social interaction in WoW is as big a factor in why I play as the content is. How about you? Do you have an in-game friend that you team well with? If you raid, how important to you is having a connection with others in your group? How do you feel when that dynamic changes, and what do you do if it does?
Do warlocks bring too much utility to a raid?
Over the years Blizzard has created more and more overlap between certain aspects of different classes so as to allow more flexibility in choosing who you bring to a raid. For example, as a long-time druid raider, it still makes me an itty bitty bit sad every time I see a paladin overwrite my Mark of the Wild with Blessing of Kings. I remember the days when those were different buffs, dangit! On Twitter, players have been venting their frustration at Ghostcrawler about just this kind of thing: @ugadawg9288 @tehstool That is true of everyone but warlocks, who probably bring too much. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) July 2, 2013 Now, that's an interesting response, and it got us at WoW Insider thinking. Do warlocks really bring too much utility? In my 10-man raid team, our guild leader nearly always plays his warlock, and there are certainly a number of perks to that. Summoning is very nice, and saves us a run back out the instance if we need to bring in a different toon halfway through. Soulstones have brought me back to life on a number of occasions, the raid constantly asks for Healthstones, and both warlocks themselves and their minions bring various buffs and forms of crowd control that always come in handy. And portals! Portals make many, many things much more convenient.
The living game and the end of nostalgia
The downside to being the equivalent of a WoW immortal, having played close to non stop for the entire history of the game, is that you see a lot of things come and go. Guilds, players, friends, raids, dungeons, zones, expansions. It was all new once, and it all eventually isn't new anymore. And as a result, although I have in the past waged wars of words against nostalgia among the WoW playerbase, I can be as guilty of it as anyone. There are, indeed, a great many things I miss. Some of them I get to see whenever I want, like Blackwing Lair and Un'Goro Crater, others are players who stopped playing, playstyles that are no longer valid (I loved and will always fondly remember the days of fury tanking Stratholme for my guild Eldritch Way over on Kilrogg, then taking the technique into raiding on Azjol-Nerub with Sworn, fury tanking in MC, BWL and AQ before finally speccing prot to tank Naxx) and even places that are just plain gone now. The other day, while doing my weekly scouring of the Barrens I realized that ever since Cataclysm, the zone I remember is gone, baby - Mankrik's wife is buried, and the days where I rolled a horde and leveled it to 60 just so I could attack my own guildmates when they raided the Crossroads are just as buried as she is.
Officers' Quarters: Expansion team
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. Here at the OQ we've heard from a lot of guilds who are being massacred by normal mode Throne of Thunder. This week it's refreshing to hear from a guild that has found unexpected success in Tier 15. They're now weighing a second raid team, but the raid leader has doubts about this expansion. Hello Scott, I'm the raid leader of a casual, family centered guild. We have always been on the lower end of the raiding curve, clearing raids only after they have become old content. However most recently we have been progressing remarkably well during Mists. For the first time our guild has attempted the raid while still current. While only going 3/12 in Throne of Thunder is nothing to the guilds who are now farming heroic Ra-Den, it has greatly lifted the spirits of our guild and it's members; so much so that there is now talk of forming a second raid team.
The Daily Grind: How do you define hardcore?
Earlier this week, a Massively commenter suggested that a games writer who doesn't raid constantly is by definition casual. Our columnist argued that to a games writer, a raiding endgame is just one kind of gameplay, that she felt obligated to do and write about more than just raiding, and that her considerable ("embarrassing" I believe was the word she used) playtime alone made her hardcore. And some games don't even have raiding to begin with! I found the conversation interesting because it shows that many of us disagree on what terms like casual and hardcore mean. I think hardcore comes in all flavors: hardcore sandboxers like Jef, hardcore PvPers like Patrick, hardcore roleplayers like Eliot, even hardcore traders like me. There are even hardcore dabblers, who turn trying out new games into an 80-hour-a-week endeavor. But today, we're asking you -- how do you define "hardcore"? Is it about breadth vs. depth? Time invested? A specific, arbitrary activity? Honorable kills? Or do we use the terms merely to minimalize others -- is it time to retire these words in a genre so enormous? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
A legendary for all, courtesy of Wrathion
It's confirmed -- everyone does indeed get a legendary, if they manage to finish Wrathion's expansion-long chain of requests. However, unlike any prior legendary to date, Wrathion's offering won't be a new set of weapons to wield ... and that's making some players a little irritated. Rather than the usual arming with weapons, Wrathion has instead chosen to give everyone legendary-quality cloaks, enhancing the cloaks received in patch 5.3 with some extra power -- and a little orange text -- in patch 5.4. Yes, some may have been expecting weapons -- but really, Wrathion's offering makes a lot more sense in terms of gameplay, balance, and possibly Wrathion's true motives in this little endeavor as well. In fact, the legendary offered in Mists of Pandaria manages to break every single perception we had about what a legendary is to date.
Breakfast Topic: When does your raid group call progression "done"?
World of Warcraft has become episodic entertainment for many players today: Hop in for a couple of months to see the content, run up a few characters, then dip into the Raid Finder before dropping out again until the next content patch. That's all fine and good for the solo types, but what if you're an integral member of a raiding group? What happens to the raid when members start deciding they've seen enough sights this expansion, thank you very much? Blizzard turns out new content at a fast enough clip these days that many groups never run out of raiding content before the next batch arrives. Problem solved. But what happens when your group tops off the current tier before the new stuff hits? Is there a point at which your leader declares the current tier "complete"? Does your group move on to heroic mode, or are you satisfied once you've run normal? How long does your raiding group keep farming? Do you typically drop out or change characters once you've gotten what you personally want from a raid? What happens to players who haven't gotten everything they want from a tier yet?
Is gearing the game, or does it get in the way?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about gear lately. PvP gear, specifically, how it's changed, and how it compares to PvE gear. I've also been thinking about my fairly awful gear-related luck, in both my guild's raids and the raid finder, and looking back to earlier tiers when, thanks in part to not being quite so busy, I've been far higher in the gear curve far earlier in the tier. As part of my post-grad studies, I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time looking at the psychology of gaming. One of the theories on how games like WoW keep people interested, and a good theory at that, was one revolving around breadcrumbs. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, WoW offers the player lots of small, reachable rewards. Nothing so big that you feel like you're done, but lots of small things that aren't too hard to get to. Perhaps those things are in pursuit of something bigger, but they happen fairly regularly. Think of valor points, for example. A little additional reward for completing straightforward tasks. Reputation is another good example. Or leveling, be it a character or a profession. Gear is much the same, it is the carrot that remains only slightly out of reach, pushing you to play just a little longer. In a PvE context, for an average player at least, you're never really done. Think of Thunderforged gear, this is an additional breadcrumb for those players who are at the top of the ladder already.
Officers' Quarters: One realm's solution to low population
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. Low population realms have been a problem in WoW as far back as 2007 and they continue to be. Blizzard has opted not to merge realms like other aging MMO's have done. For a long time, players asked for these mergers. They've watched their already low-pop realms bleed more players because of the population problem, making the issue worse and worse. Recently, Blizzard unveiled their solution this ongoing issue: virtual realms. Potentially slated to arrive in patch 5.4, virtual realms could be the answer that we've been waiting for. In the meantime, however, one low-pop realm has taken matters into their own hands by organizing their guilds and creating a better experience. They call it the Kargath Guild Council on Kargath-US. I had the pleasure of interviewing two of the minds behind the KGC -- Battlevixen, officer of Bloodsworn, and Merciful, guild leader of The Iron Fist -- about why they founded the council and the challenges they've faced along the way. What was your realm like prior to the formation of the KGC? Battlevixen: Prior to KGC, Kargath suffered from attendance issues that did not allow a lot of guilds and groups to raid. We had a lot of smaller guilds/groups that could not fill a 10man roster. Very few players were able to even pug because of this. There was also almost no communication between all the various guilds. Each guild kept to themselves for the most part. Merciful: In addition to people who just stopped playing WoW, we were losing good players to other realms. The notion is that Kargath is a dying realm, and once that takes root in people's minds, they self-select themselves off the realm.
Eight Years in Azeroth: Slaying internet dragons and guild management
One of the hottest reads in the World of Warcraft communityright now is Shawn Holmes's Eight Years in Azeroth. Old-school players chuckle along with details that today's players wouldn't recognize as coming from WoW. Guild leaders nod in agreement at scenarios that replay over and over in guilds throughout WoW. New players gawk at raiding conventions and gameplay that feels entirely different from the game we know today. "It was 'slaying internet dragons' mixed liberally with a crash course in leadership and team management," Holmes told WoW Insider. "I went from a player who barely understood the necessity of officer-only forums and a guild bank to dealing with the complexities of interpersonal conflict, player politics, the psychological effects of the social ladder, and keeping players both motivated and loyal in the constantly changing landscape of WoW." As Holmes blogs his way through his eight years of blood, sweat, and tears in Azeroth, has he come to any realizations along the way? "Staying true to a moral compass is one thing; keeping an entire guild aligned with those ideals is hard work," he observes. "It's a battle I both won and lost, repeatedly."
Flameseeker Chronicles: Raiding in Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 has been criticized in the past for not having having much PvE content for guilds and large groups of players. Several months ago, guild missions were added and helped fill that gap, but apparently we have more to look forward to. ArenaNet's Chris Whiteside was chatting with players in the game and was asked whether or not we'd ever see raiding in Guild Wars 2. His reply was, "Our answer to raiding may very well be in the works! It is something I am very excited about and will be unique to GW2." What could this mean for Guild Wars 2 and its players? What kind of unique spin could ArenaNet put on raiding? Let's dive into those questions after the break in a video edition of the Flameseeker Chronicles!
Officers' Quarters: 7 ways to stop the bleeding
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. The good news for raid leaders these days is that so much help is coming from patch 5.4, if what's on the PTR is any indication. Flexible raiding could be a lifesaver for guilds who stalled out in today's challenging normal modes. Virtual realms could inject new blood into every realm. The Throne of Thunder raid should see an across-the-board nerf from the patch, too. With all of these changes on the horizon, what raid leaders need to focus on right now is holding on and keeping their teams intact. The bad news is that no one knows when the patch will drop. We are likely at least six weeks away from 5.4, and probably longer than that since Blizzard has new systems to test and a new raid to tune. This week's email comes from a raid leader who isn't sure he can make it: Hello Scott, I am the current Raid Leader of a 10 man raid guild that considers ourselves to be progression-focused, semi-hardcore, or whatever you want to call it. We raid 3 nights a week for 3 hours a night, keep logs of all our runs, and really push to be successful. In the past, this worked out fairly well for us, as our guild maintained a top-10 place on our server according to wowprogress.com all through tiers 12, 13, and 14. However, since the release of MoP the members that made up the original progression team have been slowly bleeding away for one reason or another. At first, these losses could be absorbed by the extra standbys on our roster as well as a few people that swapped from our more casual 2-night-per-week team. Eventually we had to start recruiting out of guild in order to fill our raids each week. Generally speaking, for each player we lost the replacement we found was of a lesser caliber, whether it be in skill, gear level, or dedication. With the release of ToT and the difficulty of certain bosses (Horridon for example), our progression has begun to seriously stumble.
Drama Mamas: Being deaf and raiding
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. I had to edit this week's letter for length, but it's still a long one so that you can get the whole story. Howdy Drama Mamas, [...] To begin with, I'm a male deaf gamer. I've been very blessed with great support systems in all areas of my life and have made friends both on and offline who have been extremely supportive of everything that I do. But I'll also be the first to tell you that I'm not perfect but I do try to avoid drama where I can.
The Guild Counsel: How to deal with the summer slowdown
Summer is coming. With the arrival of sunny skies, warm temperatures, no more school, and vacation days to spend, it's inevitable that things will slow down in your guild. Summer is usually a slow time for games as well, since expansions and game updates tend to arrive later in the year. On the surface, summer can be a dangerous time for your guild, with the possibility of frustrated members causing drama or even leaving the guild entirely. But you can make summer work in your favor and keep your guild happy as well. We've explored this before, but let's look at some additional ways to avoid the summer slowdown in this week's Guild Counsel.
Officers' Quarters: Flexible raiding and you
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. Just when I think I have Blizzard figured out, they throw us a curveball. Only a month ago, I made the case on the Starting Zone podcast that raiding had evolved into three difficulty levels, and those levels could be compared to the easy, normal, and hard modes that most single-player games offer. I wrote in a column that normal mode raiding should now be labeled "guild raiding," because it took a certain level of coordination to succeed at that level. Normal raiding is no longer PUG friendly. I said on the podcast that Blizzard is still figuring out just where the difficulty of normal modes should lie on the curve. It seemed that once their encounter designers figured out the appropriate tuning for the three modes, that is what raiding would look like for all foreseeable upcoming tiers and expansions. As it turned out, Blizzard had a new raiding system hidden up their sleeve the entire time -- a system that few could have predicted. Let's look at the potential impact of this new way to raid and how your guild might need to adjust.
The Nexus Telegraph: Raiding in WildStar is its own creature
When WildStar comes out, it is going to have raiding. It's going to have the sort of raiding and group content that is meant to be challenging. No facerolls intended here; you'd better bring your A-game on raid night, or you will be facedown in the dirt so often that people will think you're doing a performance piece on the Kennedy family tree. I am not a lover of raiding. This is not difficult to find evidence of on this site because I've talked about the issues with group-only endgame antics on more than one occasion. Heck, I wrote about how raiding turns you into a horrible person. So you would think I'd look at what we know about WildStar's endgame and start facepalming, possibly whilst shaking my head and muttering obscenities. But I'm not. I'm totally cool with what we've been told so far about the endgame because there's much more than just the raiding aspect in the game, and I'm intrigued by how it's working out.
