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The Classifieds: Fun stuff to do with a dragon
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Bored between ICC raids? Looking for some fun to pass the time until Cataclysm? Why not three-man Onyxia? Three players from <Under the Influence> and <Alliance Regulators> on US Kul Tiras-A recently took down the 10-man version of the ol' girl herself. The eloquently named Humandude and his partners in crime, Mastarjuice and Darkdaemon (two paladins and a 'lock), pulled out the kill in 25 minutes after nine wipes and buffs including scrolls, drums, flasks and their own group buffs. "Our strat was to have the warlock focus on the big adds while occasionally seeding down the whelps," Humandude reports. "Consecration and our tank's Seal of Command DPS tank spec took care of the majority of the adds. Our warlock, after (we killed) the big add, took a few shots at Onyxia and dotted her up, then went back to his focus fire and Seed rotation. On a side note, he was destruction, because we needed replenishment." More on the Onyxia take-down plus several other feats of meta-gaming magic, this week's massive set of Random Acts of Uberness, our new looking for guild section and more, after the break.
The Classifieds: Of pugilists, gaming research and LFG
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. We've got a little bit of everything in this week's The Classifieds: a player who leveled to 80 as a pugilist (unarmed/fists only), a research study seeking your input on gaming's effects on existing relationships, and the debut of our LFG feature for players still searching for the right guild fit. We'll get to those and more -- but first, what's rapidly becoming your favorite feature around these parts, the Random Acts of Uberness ... Sampaguita, <Ordo de Lupo>, US Nesingwary-A "Three of my guildies and I were running random heroics the other day, and we zoned into Forge of Souls with Sampaguita as our fifth player. This particular group, still in the process of gearing up, was having a little trouble handling the larger trash groups. We wiped once on the way up to Bron. Sam was incredibly encouraging and patient, helped us with strategy, and kept up a steady stream of humor in chat to help us not lose our nerve. Bron dropped Nighttime, and everyone rolled Greed, and it went to one of my guildies. Sam mentioned that it might be fun to have to play around with, and my guildie handed it to Sam in trade. Sam offered to pay some gold for it, but my guildie said no big deal. ..."
The Classifieds: The Glory of the Uber-Hero
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. You guys really gobbled up the megadose of uberness in last week's Classifieds. "While most heroics I run are absolutely clinical (little talk, fast runs), there are still enough jerks out there to make me appreciate this acknowledgement of not only those players who make this game fun most of the time, but also those willing to recognize them for doing so," wrote Daco. "A hearty thx to all mentioned here for their uberness." jjtwalton concurred:"I can not believe how awesome this feature is. I don't end up looking at races, guilds, GearScore, progress, enchants or achievements ... Alllll I see is people doing the right thing, the good thing and having fun. It's a testament to humans in general, I guess, but I thought I would chime in with my two cents (pennies in England!) and say bravo and /highfive to the WoW community who are being so awesome." We'd love to keep it up -- and that's up to you! Send your shout-outs for the coolest players you've grouped with to Random Acts of Uberness at TheClassifieds@wow.com. Please try to keep your tales to 150 words or less. In other Classifieds business, we've got a new spin on recruiting we'd like you all to try out this week, too. But first, back to the current week's Random Acts of Uberness, and one PUGger who earned what should be a new achievement named in his honor, The Glory of the Uber-Hero: Anonymous PUG leader, Emberstorm battlegroup-A "On this night, the group's tank said, 'We're going after two achievements here; is that ok?'. (I love achievements; this was fine.) During the run, it came to light that two of the team members were helping a third polish off the Glory of the Hero achievement. I mentioned that I needed a few of those sub-achievements as well. 'Show me,' the tank says. ..."
The Classifieds: The most uber players of the week
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Welcome to the Uber Player Edition of The Classifieds. As you know, we've been building Random Acts of Uberness, a section of the column devoted to shout-outs to the folks who've made your PUG experiences shine. With more and more submissions every week, we're inevitably approaching that time when we'll have to start editing notes for length. But not this week. This week, your stories were so inspirational, your experiences were so uberific, that we simply decided to turn over the bulk of The Classifieds to the Random Acts section and let the uberness run wild and free. "I'm not to proud to admit it: when we're short on tanks, my husband and I will let our kid tank for us -- our just shy of seven-year-old, who diligently (and with trade chat disabled and parental controls on, his toon parked in our friends-and-fam guild instead of the casual raiding guild our mains are in) ground his teeny gnome warrior up to 80," writes Haelmari of US Eonar-A. "Tonight, we and some guildies needed a random. He wanted to play. Win/win, right? "We lacked a healer. ..." The uber resolution of Haelmari's situation, after the break.
Big Crits, a new WoW reality series
At the end of the summer last year I had this crazy idea: to make a TV show about a raiding guild. I was inspired by the relationships and interactions in my current guild and how much they impacted me personally -- both good and bad. I fleshed out the idea over beers (many beers) with some friends. We talked about logistics, equipment, participation, but most importantly, the goal. I wanted the show to be about the people, to be about the interaction between the raiders. And I don't mean ninja-looting drama-mama QQing. I wanted to explore the things that go on in a group of people trying to work together online to accomplish something great. There's more to raiding than drama. Things like, as I'm fond of saying, "the soul crushing 1% wipes and the absolute exhilaration of taking down a new boss for the first time." I worked on a pitch and reached out to friends & family in "the biz" but I spent most of my time trying to explain concepts such as a "raid" or a "boss" or that when I said "guild" I meant a group of MMO gamers and not an actor's or writer's union -- which made for some very confusing conversations at first. Frustrated, I wasn't sure I'd ever convince anyone this was an idea worth doing. But I knew it was.
The Classifieds: The littlest achiever
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. We're always tickled when we run across a player who's found a new way to play the game. Check out the progress, then, of young Femortality on EU Blade's Edge. The wee level 1 blood elf paladin is so young that she doesn't even merit an Armory listing, yet she's already earned a whopping 1,500 achievement points. The offspring of experienced player Nylou, Femortality has permanently blocked her XP while she slaves away over her hot achievements. Femortality's fervor was forged on a now-deleted character that she once hoped would become the lowest level character to hold the title The Explorer. "Once I got my title, I felt the thrill of doing something hard at an extremely low level, and it (was) addictive," Femortality admits. "So I decided to move on and get any achievement I can get without leveling up. I don't know how many achievements I can get in total. I do know that I want them all and that over 2,000 are possible. I am sure this character will never, ever level up." This may be the strangest toast ever, but ... Here's to never hearing that glorious ding! There's bigger (much bigger) news in the progression category this week, as <Paragon> pops off a world-first hard-mode Lich King kill in 10-man mode. Let's crack open The Classifieds ...
The Classifieds: The Syndicate marks 14 years of gaming
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Kudos to The Syndicate, the oldest continuously operating online gaming community, on marking its 14th anniversary. The Syndicate includes a robust WoW Horde community on Zul'jin. With more than 625 active members, The Syndicate prides itself on a lack of turnover and drama, claiming that more than 550 of its members have been with the guild more than year. Highlights of its 14-year history: Charitable work for Youth Opportunities Unlimited, The American Cancer Society and support for deployed military personnel "Legend of The Syndicate," a book covering their first 10 years Featured in MMO documentary "Second Skin" and plans to be featured in the upcoming documentary about Richard Garriott Annual conferences attended by members, game developers and PC hardware manufacturers, including sponsorship from game developers allowing 200+ members to attend the 2010 conference A studio for Prima Games print media strategy guides Trademarking The Syndicate name and incorporating the guild Numerous consulting opportunities in MMO development Featured in more than 75 internet articles, three books, more than a dozen print magazines and numerous newspaper articles Kudos to The Syndicate on its longevity and continuing contributions to building a vibrant online gaming community. Let's crack open The Classifieds ...
The Daily Grind: Do you invite your friends?
Not every game has one, but several do -- the opportunity to invite a friend who hasn't played the game before, or try and entire someone back to the game again after a prolonged absence. After all, we have friends we know outside of our games that still enjoy flying around and smashing orcs (or alien horrors, or gang members, or anyone unlucky enough to wander into your space), and it's fun to bring people you interact with anyway into your favorite virtual world. You've got automatic leveling partners and people who know how you like to work, what could go wrong? Well, they could not like it. Actually, they could get annoyed at you bugging them about the game and decide not to play based solely upon that. Or they could wind up going in a completely different field of the game than you enjoy, or they might bring a whole bunch of real-world drama into a world you had been using to avoid that drama. So there might be good reasons to let your friends just keep enjoying whatever they like and keep your MMO friends separate. What do you do? Do you invite your old buddies, or do you stick with the fresh start?
The Classifieds: The Spectacular Wipe Club
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Huzzah! We have a winne -- err, loser to announce! Proudly claiming the lead in our Spectacular Wipes Challenge is the stalwart PUG from US Thrall-A shown in the Sarth-3D video, above. "This was a zerg attempt prior to release of 3.1, the first done Alliance-side on Thrall-US," writes submitter Popalicious. "While we don't all come from the same guild, most of us were friends and some of us had been guilded together prior to the release of BC (though I think the hunter in this video was a total PUG none of us knew at all, heh). I was the only one who had successfully completed Sarth+3 on 10- or 25-man in the group, so it was kind of awesome fun to see the spam when we finally did get it down. I was proud of us for sticking it out, but the QQ over Vent when this wipe came up ... 'OMG one more poison proc and he would have died!', 'One more tick of Ret Aura ...' After this wipe, one of the rogues went back to Zangarmarsh and farmed up some Firebloom, convinced it would be that one little extra push we'd need. But sadly, it just wasn't meant to be that night. We did complete it successfully the next week with almost the exact same makeup." This group's 223-hp spectacular wipe easily bests <Spectacular Death>'s 1,475-hp gem. Can your boss wipe beat that? Send in the best of your worst to TheClassifieds@wow.com. Now let's crack open The Classifieds ...
The Classifieds: Me too
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Skilltastic death knight Raegwyn of EU Zuluhed-H isn't the only player who's become renowned for soloing older instances and bosses. Demonstrating the power of the light is Kurushimi, a paladin from US Staghelm-H who's working his way through the heroic five-mans of Northrend. Already under his belt (all heroic): Azjol-Nerub; Culling of Stratholme; Halls of Lightning; Drak'Tharon Keep; Halls of Stone; Old Kingdom; The Nexus; Utgarde Pinnacle; The Oculus; Utgarde Keep; Gun'drak. Back in Burning Crusade content, Kurushimi has also soloed Magister's Terrace, Doom Lord Kazzak, Doomwalker, Morogrim Tidewalker, Al'ar and High Astromancer Solarian. See more of the carnage on Kurushimi's YouTube channel. There's plenty of new content to talk about this week, too, with world firsts and guild rankings popping like mad. Let's open up The Classifieds ...
The Classifieds: You ought to be in pictures
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Ready to see your name in lights? Looking for Group Productions (which is not the fun-loving crew pictured above) is looking for WoW players to appear in Warcrack, a feature-length documentary about people who play World of Warcraft. The project's creators, who are both experienced film and television technicians, are now scheduling webcam interviews with candidates. Attracted by the myriad personalities featured in our 15 Minutes of Fame, the LFG team turned to us for advice in tracking down a few specific types of players: someone who's currently creating a costume for the next BlizzCon a top 100 guild GM an accomplished Arena veteran If you think you fit the bill, check out more about the project and get in touch with the team at Looking for Group Productions. Let's open up The Classifieds ...
The Daily Grind: What do you look for in a guild?
A large part of MMOs is the social aspect of gameplay, and a large part of being social is trying to find a guild that suits your style. From listening to guild recruitment shouts in cities and recruitment channels to reading all of the recruitment posts in fansite forums and official forums, there's many things you need to take into consideration when picking a guild. So for today Massively readers, we wanted to know what you look for when you're choosing your guild. Do you look for a casual environment where you can go at your own pace with other guild members? Do you look for a guild that's all about the PvP? Is roleplaying a high priority on your list? Or do you want to go for a guild that does all of these things in different combinations? Give us your thoughts on this matter by dropping a comment on this post. We're interested to hear how you make this difficult choice!
Guildwatch: We're over applications, too
The image above is a little tough to read, but you can probably get the gist: someone posts on the forums that secretly, he's been taking things from the guild bank and selling them off on the AH to make money for himself. He posts on his alt, supposedly, but whoops: he leaves his forum signature up. And the very next post is someone from the guild saying he's been caught red-handed, with a gkick imminent. Moral? Steal if you want, we guess, but never, ever tell. Or at least don't use your forum sig when posting on your alt. Much more drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch, which starts right after the break. We are super low in the buffer for tips, so please be sure to let us know about your guild's action in Icecrown, any recruiting you're doing, or any drama you see on the forums by sending us a quick email at guildwatch@wow.com. Thanks! Enjoy this week's column.
Guildwatch "makes a potion out the QQ"
The story here is all about sweet, sweet ego: Aliana had a sense of entitlement while raiding -- she was angry that items she would really like to have were going to someone who could only do 4k as opposed to her 9k, thanks to a lousy so-called fair DKP system. We'd like to think Grator is a true Guildwatch fan: we just sit back, listen in, and make a delicious potion "out the QQ." Lots more QQ potion in this week's Guildwatch, along with the last downings before Icecrown and recruiting notices from around the realms. If you have something to send us (and please do -- the coffers are running a little low, probably because guild business has slowed down pre-patch), throw us an email at guildwatch@wow.com. Hit the link below to read on.
Guildwatch: "You guys raid like little girls"
Ok Blizzard. We give up. Patch 3.3 can come out now, please. Guilds are cleaning up even the Tribute achievements in Trial of the Crusader, and pretty much everybody is just sitting around waiting for Icecrown to drop. Even drama is taking a break -- with plenty of loot to go around and everyone getting what they want, nobody is actually fighting any more. Where's our crazy ninjas and raiding breakups? We need to get some new progression content, and soon! Way too much "good" drama (including a daring emergency Vent call) in this week's Guildwatch, alongside the usual downed and recruiting notices. If you don't see something you like, you can help: send your tips about drama, downed (hopefully we'll see lots of Marrowgar downs next week), and recruiting news to guildwatch@wow.com. Meanwhile, this week's GW is after the break.
Dyack dismayed by layoffs, anticipates growth in Ontario
Following yet another report of company restructuring resulting in job losses, outspoken industry veteran Denis Dyack called industry-wide layoffs within the last year and a half "staggering." However, the Silicon Knights boss does see a brighter future for development over the next five years, at least in the Canadian province of Ontario. "Before, Ontario was a little isolated, there wasn't a lot of videogame companies here. But that's going to change. With all the positive steps that the government's done," Dyack told GamesIndustry.biz. Dyack's hopeful outlook for Ontario comes, in part, from Ubisoft's July announcement to open a new studio in Toronto -- a move Ubisoft hopes will bring 800 new jobs to the region over the next decade. According to Dyack, new business in Ontario means the province will be able to combat recruiters who remove developer and designer graduates from the area. "It's really depressing going to [University of] Waterloo to recruit and we see that Microsoft was there before us and took all the best people. The tax payer paid for that education," he lamented. With development expanding in Ontario, Silicon Knights can finally start combing schools for talent to help produce the (Sweet Lord, make it happen) sequel to Eternal Darkness.
Guildwatch: Analyzing the situation
If there's one thing you can take away from this week's GW downings, it's that most guilds are ready for Icecrown. We're seeing lots and lots of guilds finishing off the Trial of the Crusader, and quite a few of them are even starting to nab the Tribute achievements. For endgame raiders, Icecrown can't show up too soon. Fortunately, while you wait, there's lots of guilds looking for more and drama to read through as well. You can click the link below to read this week's Guildwatch, and don't forget to send us your tips: drama, downed or recruiting, we want to hear it all at guildwatch@wow.com. Enjoy!
Guildwatch: "these guilds in which this game is revolved around"
There's a distinct lack of crazy drama on the servers lately, and I think it's not necessarily because the raids are easy (guilds are still hitting hardcore achievements as they should be), but just that there's no guildbreaker raids out there right now. If you can beat ToC, you beat it, and if you can't, you can go back and do Ulduar and heroics, gear yourself up, and move on. I will say this: it seems much easier for a guildleader to avoid drama and issues later in the expansion cycle, when gear is plentiful, rather than right away. That said, there's still lots of good drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch. Click on to read more, and don't forget to send us your tips (especially drama) via email at guildwatch@wow.com.
Guildwatch: The waiting game
More and more guilds are becoming just like Zen, above -- they're downing Anub in Trial of the Crusader, and then wondering just what's next? The answer, of course, is Icecrown, but even our best estimates have that release a month away still. Not that anyone's blaming Blizzard yet -- quite a few guilds are still working on hard modes, and more people are worried just what'll happen after Icecrown (though I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard still has a few cards up their sleeve for that one). But still, at this point, guilds are reaching their limits, and we're starting to see the calm before the storm of raiding in patch 3.3. That doesn't mean Guildwatch isn't busy -- we've got the usual downed, drama, and recruiting notices from around the realms. And if your guild is still active, be sure to tell us about it: send a tip to guildwatch@wow.com, and you'll see it here in the future. Read on for more.
Guildwatch: No tabard, no loot
Some stories of drama on the realms aren't directly guild-related, but they're just too good to pass up. The one above is just such a story -- one of our tipsters was just flying around Azeroth one day when a conversation in General caught his eye. One unlucky Time-Lost Proto-drake seeker ran into his very own Griftah, and ended up with 425 less gold and a very "unusual" toy item. That story and more in this week's Guildwatch, which starts right after the break. If you have downed, recruiting, or drama news for us, feel free to send a tip in to guildwatch@wow.com, and you might see it here in the future. Read on for more!
