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Officers' Quarters: When the old guard returns
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. Officers come and go. Real life intervenes, burnout sets in, interest wanes -- these things happen, and officers disappear for months or even years. But sometimes they come back. This week, one officer asks, what then? Hi Scott, I'm officer and raid leader of an intense 2/week 10-man raiding guild that's been running in one shape or another since TBC. Due to some old timers coming back we're now in a situation where our raid consists of 50% officers – and only 3 of them by function. We've always steered closer to adhocracy than bureaucracy, so the title is secondary to most of us – my main concern is that so much communication is now happening within the officer-circle that we're alienating our crucial core raiders for no apparent reason.
Darkfall update brings new clan permissions system
The folks at Aventurine are still working hard on a number of improvements for Darkfall such as new weapons styles, performance optimization, and UI modifications, but in the meantime they've decided to roll out a new feature that should be a great boon to clan leaders and officers. Currently, clan leaders are only allowed to grant clan-related permissions to their members based on clan rank. With the new system, clan leaders will be able to assign permissions to individual players, regardless of their ranks within the clan. In addition, each clan permission will have an associated title that any member with that permission can choose to display if they so desire. For instance, a clan member with permission to recruit members can choose to show the "recruiter" title. Military ranks will remain in the game, but they are now governed by PvP performance and each new military rank is granted automatically upon the completion of specific goals. These ranks have no bearing on clan permissions. The full details on the new system are available for perusal over at the Darkfall official site. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Officers' Quarters: Classic blunders
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Last week, we heard about an incident where a player received a rather hostile in-game mail from an officer after missing a raid following the death of a relative. The issue stemmed from a lack of communication among the guild's officers. Along that theme, this week's email describes a case where lack of communication -- and some other classic blunders -- escalated into a full-blown drama bomb. Hey Scott, So I'm an Officer in a medium sized guild. Our main focus is to simply have fun, help each other out, PVP, raid, and everything else in between. I've only recently become an Officer for our guild as decided by other Officers and the Guild Leader. About a month ago we got a new recruit. Let's call him Jack. Jack is a personal friend of our guild leader which we thought was awesome. Having at least one person you know in the guild personally has always helped us stay grounded in and out of the game. My girlfriend is a recruit in the guild and one of my best friends is one of the Officers. So about a week ago, I logged in to see that Jack had mysteriously been ranked up to Officer rank as well. This confused me. I had been in the guild for almost a year before I was even considered for a role of responsibility. I pulled out my phone and texted my Officer buddy, let's call him Bob, to come over. I explained to him that I didn't think it was very fair that Jack got to be an Officer when everyone else had to work their way up in the guild. To my surprise, Bob had no idea about Jack's promotion. There are only 3 people in our guild that can even rank someone up to Officer and that's our GL, Bob, and another high ranking Officer. Bob proceeded to contact our GL and found out that she had promoted Jack without consulting any of her officers first. Now Bob was pissed.
The Guild Counsel: Let's take a power trip!
Ah, ranks! There's nothing like the highly structured, caste-like system of guild ranks. Even when ranks aren't a feature in the game, guilds will still sort their members into tidy ranks, like member, alt, officer, and the all-important Guild Leader (with a capital G!). A metagame ensues, and it often resembles an episode of My Super Sweet 16, with everyone elbowing in to curry favor and receive his gilded stamp of approval. But what exactly do those guild ranks mean, and why are they so important to people? Let's take a look at ranks and see why they actually can be important (but not the way most view them).
Black Prophecy's clan system outlined in new update
Have you been hungry for more information on Reakktor Media and gamigo's upcoming free-to-play space dogfighter, Black Prophecy? Well then, today's update on clan systems will undoubtedly be welcome news for those of you who can't wait to fly with friends. Some of the mechanics are very familiar, such as a clan leader being able to assign ranks and responsibilities to certain members, as well as the ability for the clan to create their own logo using an in-game editor. Other aspects of the Black Prophecy clan system deal with familiar mechanics turned on their heads -- such as how clan stations will be handled. The word is that players will have to complete faction missions and gather enough resources and members, then they will be able to request their own chunk of space in which to build their clan station. Players will also be able to decide if the station will be opened up to others players in the faction that they're allied with, or if it will be kept for the clan members alone; thus removing any fear of getting your station blown to heck in the middle of a giant PvP clan war. Each station will be comprised of a central command module that will house up to 10 players comfortably, and offer some small vendor aspects. From there, players can add on more modules to their station to not only unlock more room and additional perks, but also more faction missions. Overall, it certainly sounds like an ambitious yet fun system. Check out the shiny new screenshots below, then pop over to the Black Prophecy forums for the specifics on the clan system! %Gallery-94088%
Addon Spotlight: RankWatch
Author Gronzig emailed us a note about this new addon of his called RankWatch, which serves a simple purpose: it alerts you if anyone is using downranked spells. I'm sure we've all seen the player who forgets to train, put on their bars, or update their macros with new ranks of important spells. Heck, I was using rank two of Binding Heal well into Naxxramas, since I had it bound directly to a key with Dominos. If anyone in your party or raid uses a rank lower than the maximum for their level, RankWatch will tell then about it in a whisper. The only exception is for Life Tap, which warlocks will often use rank one of to proc effects without taking much of a health hit. Back in the day, healers would commonly downrank heals as a mana-saving measure (if I recall correctly, Heal rank four was a staple in classic raiding), but this strategy is long-gone (since patch 3.0.2), because downranked spells now cost the same amount mana as top-rank spells (or more). Configuration options include turing off the auto-whisper and ignoring certain players, which are both vital for a potentially-annoying mod like this. Overall RankWatch looks like a useful little tool, if only so I no longer have to worry about checking up on myself. Download RankWach at Curse
Requiring authenticators for guild bank access
m0rtis has an interesting question over on WoW LJ: should guilds require authenticators on the accounts of everyone in the guild with bank access? Authenticators are relatively cheap, if not free (and still in stock most of the time nowadays), so if you're running a guild and in a position where your bank is important enough to protect, should you be able to require authenticators to keep guildies from getting hacked?There are a few caveats here that m0rtis doesn't mention, but we will: first of all, there's no way to guarantee whether someone is using an authenticator or not, so while you can make guildies promise, there's no real way to check up on them. Second, not all guild banks get emptied out due to hackers -- many guild banks get ninja'd by someone within the guild, and there's no authenticator that can protect against that. So having authenticators on bank members (or at least having them promise they've got them) isn't 100% protection. But it is something.
Officers' Quarters: Topping the charts
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.According to wowjutsu.com, more than 25,000 guilds in the world are better than mine. That's rather disheartening in an objective sense, but I also have no idea how they get their info or determine these ranks. (The info also appears to be a bit outdated.) Despite our abject failure in the rankings, somehow we seem to be doing just fine. We're adding new recruits at a steady pace, raiding frequently and successfully, and having plenty of fun doing it. So 25,000 is a large number, but it's just a number. Does your guild care about their worldwide rankings? This week's e-mail comes from a frustrated raider who thinks his officers put too much emphasis on climbing up the ranks.Dear Scott,I've had a few issues with members in my guild lately that I feel put too much importance on guild rankings. I'm sure you are aware of the sites like www.bosskillers.com and www.wowjutsu.com. I see these sites as sources of controversy, others see them as a sense of where they stand on the realm and in WoW in general. We have officers trying to push our guild into doing fights, EoE 25, when we haven't even done EoE 10 yet. Naxx is still a constant wipe fest, with many of the easier achievements not yet complete for a majority of the guild. We have a lot of under geared people that still run around in Heroic and SSC, yes SSC, gear but that doesn't matter to them. We beat Kel'Thuzad one time so we are ready in their eyes. We would leave bosses up in Naxx so we could go spend the night wiping and never be able to get around to getting a full Naxx clear.
Officers' Quarters: Unchart(er)ed territory
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It's no secret that the game we all know and love is in a period of transition. Many basic assumptions of Warcraft are changing, from the way loot is itemized, to the way buffs work, to the very nature of raiding. Amidst all this change, I decided to update the document my guild wrote to define our basic principles and guidelines. Written in 2005, it was astonishingly outdated. I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised. Someone who stopped playing back when Blackwing Lair was the endgame would barely recognize WoW if they rolled a premade 80 on the beta servers today.We call this document our guild's philosophy. Many guilds call it their charter. However you label it, right now is a great time to reevaluate exactly what your guild is all about and what your basic rules and beliefs will be going into the next expansion.
Exteel's top ranking players and clans now viewable online
You guys sure do talk a lot of crap in-game. Let's see if those bragging rights really do belong to your clan. Now everyone really knows who the heck the top bots in Exteel are with the latest ranking feature on the Exteel website is live which displays player and clan ranks. There is no extra software to install, no manual profiles to keep up to date, all you have to do is log on and smash each other into smithereens. You can also search for clans and pilots too see where they stand, there's actually some jerk out there named Legolas. You know what to do if you see that player roaming in-game. Both ranking lists will update every 24 hours, early in the morning and the ranking system is currently in-beta so players can expect more features later down the road. Be sure to check out our Exteel coverage, or jump right into the game by downloading the Exteel client.
EVE Online blazes into The Empyrean Age
Massively has been beating the war drums as EVE Online enters a new era in PvP: The Empyrean Age expansion. This time of factional warfare will sweep players of all four races in New Eden into a whirl of conflict never seen before in the game. PvP will no longer be limited to low sec ganks, 0.0 alliance warfare, or Empire war decs. For the first time, it will be integrated with the storyline on a massive scale. And all the while, embedded reporters loyal to their respective factions will be conveying news and swaying the masses of New Eden to their cause. With all of this build-up to the expansion's release, there's a great deal of information to absorb. So we've written about what exactly The Empyrean Age is, and what it is not. Our columnists at Massively have written on the background of the conflict between EVE's races, and torn through some of the complexities of EVE's factional warfare for you as well. Although factional warfare has been tested extensively, these radical changes to the universe of EVE Online require a hefty amount of downtime to deploy. But after the full day's downtime, the shardless galaxy of New Eden will be set ablaze at 02:00 GMT on June 11. While you're rocking back and forth in your chair waiting for the server reboot, check out Massively's ramped up coverage of the sci-fi MMO and get yourself into the mood for tearing into the hulls of your rival faction. We suspect that a number of EVE vets are going through booster-level withdrawal symptoms today; so for the truly hardcore, CCP posted the full patch notes in all its 18-page glory on their provisional 'downtime site'. And of course, there's always time to watch Clear Skies a few more times while you wait for New Eden to ignite once again. %Gallery-24797%
June 10th marks the dawn of EVE's Empyrean Age
CCP announced today that EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion will go live on the 10th of June. The expansion will be free for all EVE players. Features added include factional warfare with a ranking system, new agents, a new region of space, details on hidden deadspace complexes, and new system occupancy rules.EVE's in-game news sources have been filled with reports of one violent diplomatic disaster after another, setting the stage for the all out war to come. In addition to those reports, CCP commissioned writer Tony Gonzales to write a novel (also titled Empyrean Age) that reveals in detail the back-story of the conflict.Empyrean Age is already live on EVE's test server, Singularity. User reactions have been positive so far, and we suspect this update will offer plenty of satisfactory content to tide users over until the Ambulation update downloads later this year.
Full Empyrean Age rank list exhibited in dev blog
Soon, EVE Online's entire galaxy will be sucked into the black hole of war. This is good news for pilots; wartime is the best time to make a name for yourself. EVE's Empyrean Age expansion adds the framework for catastrophic, galactic factional warfare. And for players looking for recognition for their victories, a ranking system will be deployed as well.The latest post at EVE's dev blog describes the ranking system in detail, and lists every single rank (and each rank's associated insignia) for all four factions. From Amarr's Paladin Crusader to Caldari's First Lieutenant and Gallente's Shield Commander, all the way up to the Minmatar rank of Valklear General, they're all there for your examination.CCP's Ginger also noted that the team is exploring ideas ("these are not promises") like "tying [ranks] into dungeons in space and adding additional equipment and ships to the loyalty store that will only be available at certain ranks."
Crazy names for guild ranks
Corrosiveaffy on WoW LJ wants to know if there are any good ideas out there for guild ranks, and I can tell her that there are tons. There's the standard "rookie," "officer," "raider," and "veteran," but it seems like some guild ranks are even more creative than the guilds they're named after. I've seen all kinds of stuff, from "larva," "pupae" and "queen," to the old "padawan," "jedi" and "master" mentioned in the comments. One guild I was in way back just had two ranks: most people were "peons," and the GM was the only "king."Usually it's funniest when they tie into the guild's name somehow -- I like the example of "The Nouns of Adjective" from the LJ comments, where the GM is called the "Pope of Punctuation." I know there are some more excellent ones out there, but whenever people fish around for them, they seem a little hard to come by. What are some of the best guild rank names you've seen?
The Digital Continuum: Statistical Anxiety Separation
One thing I've taken to recently is lurking over at the Nerfbat forums, where many great minds discuss a lot of different things concerning massively games. One idea in particular has given me a spark of -- probable -- insanity in regards to something I've been giving plenty of thought to lately. The insane idea is this: What would a massively game be like if character avatars had no stats?After reading though several different concepts presented in the thread responsible for this lunacy of mine, I started to wonder why every one of them focused on keeping with the fantasy motif. To me, it seemed obvious that if you're going to delve into a massively game where the characters have no numerical (or numerical-like) levels, stats or personal equipment it, was going to have to happen in something other than your standard fantasy adventure. That's when two unexpected things came together for me and I realized something. A game where characters don't have any stats attached to them could exist with a difficult-to-design IP that's quite near and dear to me. What's the property, you ask?
Officers' Quarters: Rank and file
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Greetings, fellow officers! This week's question concerns guild ranks -- a topic that will see increasing relevance as Blizzard rolls out the new guild bank system in patch 2.3. Hi Scott,I'm the GL of a largish casual adult guild that is growing fairly rapidly. I inherited the GL role 10 months or so ago, and we've enjoyed a great deal of stability ever since thanks to a close, friendly atmosphere, lots of support from higher members, strong but fair decision making on everyone's part, etc. However, I also inherited a bunch of officers. The previous GL made pretty much anyone an officer who wanted to be, without clear roles or responsibilities. This hasn't been too bad up to now, but the lack of organization is starting to strain a bit as we grow in size and start to raid. It seems like a good time to revisit our officer roles and guild ranks. I was curious which officer roles and ranks you use in your guild, or systems that you've found successful?Cheers,Jim
More on PvP in Patch 1.12
We've gone over some of the PvP changes that will show up in patch 1.12 - both cross-realm battlegrounds and the new world PvP objectives. However, this is not the only change coming. When patch 1.12 goes live, the honor curve will be softened, somewhat, allowing a larger number of players into the upper ranks. There are no specific details on the numbers here, of course, and it's unlikely we'll understand the full impact of such a change until after it's been up and running on the live realms for a while. [Fan art by Guillaume Bonnet]
