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Drama Mamas: How to deal with an overzealous guildie
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. One way or another, this week's letter writer is going to give her biggest fan the slip. Dear Drama Mamas, I'm a GM of a casual RP/social guild. As such I do my best to be diplomatic, friendly, and keep things friendly and inviting for my guildies. We've kept it going for years with ups and downs and I'm incredibly proud of how little drama we've had all things considered. I'd hate to be the source of any drama so am considering this a preemptive strike. There is one particular guildie who isn't breaking any rules, is a wonderfully creative RPer, and annoys the everliving crap out of me. It's not his fault, it's a personality thing. He rubs me the wrong way. We're very different people with different senses of humor and priorities etc and so on. And that'd be fine, I'm an adult perfectly capable of getting along and keeping the peace with people I don't necessarily jive with. Except that he is DEAD SET on becoming my BEST FRIEND FOREVER. To the point where my dislike has steadily grown into a total reluctance to log on.
Drama Mamas: Giving up on the team that gives up the farm
Image: Wowhead Having kids in the house keeps it real -- even (especially?) when it comes to PvP. With my 12-year-old daughter and I both plowing through moderate Arathi Basin obsessions, I have to admit that she's got a better handle on the social aspect than I do. How so? I've had to put myself in time out and cool off my knee-jerk reaction to whiny losers. The background: Leveling my most recent lowbie through her 20s and 30s in AB was absolutely, utterly glorious. My teammates were relaxed, and my opponents didn't spend more time emoting /kek or /spit or making strange gestures at me than they did focusing fire on me (yeah, the healer ... ouch). The 40s flashed by, too, albeit with a little more arguing among my teammates over strategy. But once the 50s hit, the losers (in multiple senses of the word) came out in full force. As soon as a single player declared we might be too far behind to pull off a win, half the team would crumple into an orgy of chat despair. Players would stand dead in the graveyards in order to continue textually bemoaning their fate. When your team gives up, what should happen next? Is it time to launch a rallying cry? Decry a lack of sportsmanship? Call out culprits? Ignore the whole thing and let the downward spiral continue?
The Art of Wushu: The war for server time [Updated]
Scheduled events are a huge part of Age of Wushu. While each player has the option of enjoying the game at his own pace, scheduled events mark the major ways people can have an impact on the world at large. Because these events have to occur at a specific time, their placement will always be convenient for some and inconvenient for others. Recently -- and without warning -- Snail changed the server time in response to complaints about various events being inconvenient. This time change was influenced by a vote thread on the official forums, but was otherwise invisible; there were no warnings in the game's launcher or via in-game announcements until days afterward. The lack of communication about the time change was bad enough, but unfortunately, listening to the vocal minority had much larger, far-reaching problems for players. [Please see the end of this article for Snail's appended response to these arguments.] I was going to talk about meridians this time, but addressing this topic was something you requested. You came to the Massively tip jar. You emailed me directly. You messaged me in game. You even came to my house and said, "Hey man, you should write about how messed up the time change is." You asked, and this is my reply.
Free for All: The importance of those first moments in a game
This week, I decided to download and install Aion. I haven't played it since beta. Although I was not impressed with it at the time, my favorite Aion columnist has been covering the game in such a way that I knew some good things had happened to the game. And after all, it's free now. Right? I was nervous from the moment I installed the game. NCsoft hosts a notoriously odd account management system. Sure, once you break the code and understand how to make an account for your master account that signs into your game account (or something like that), it might seem elementary. Until that moment, though, the system makes you feel like an idiot. It makes you feel as though the publisher literally doesn't want you to play the game. I had a week filled with such moments. The frustration I felt led me to today's topic.
The Soapbox: The best complaint is an empty seat
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. This is a public service announcement for you. Yes, you, with the post open for the message board and your finger hovering over the "post" button. I can't see what you've got written there, but I'm willing to bet some form of "turning the game into World of Warcraft" is there if you're posting about another game. Or possibly FarmVille. Hopefully I'm getting warm. Look, the point is that I now you're about to post this hateful diatribe about threatening to leave. But I've got a better suggestion for you. How about you delete that post, unsubscribe, and then head outside for a walk with some friends. Play a different game, maybe an offline one, for a couple of days. Don't whine and just leave.
The Guild Counsel: I have a complaint!
Complain, complain, complain. If you're a guild leader, chances are you've had a moment or two when you've felt like all you do in game is handle members' issues. And if you haven't led a guild, one of the main reasons you've probably avoided doing so is because you don't want to handle the drama of member complaints. Whether you're a tough-as-nails captain or a fresh-faced greenhorn with good intentions, member complaints are one of the biggest things that wears you down and even causes you to give up leadership and leave altogether. In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at a few ways to handle guild complaints while hopefully keep your sanity at the same time.
Wings Over Atreia: As the Forts Turn
Today's episode is brought to you by the letter QQ. The remnants of battle could be seen wafting in the currents of the Abyss -- feathers both dark and light tumbling about. The victors shouted, drunk on the energy of conquest. The defeated limped off the battlefield, returning home to mend their wounds. Meanwhile, safely back in town, eyes glance at the chat box... "OMG!1! We lost our fort! The world is ending, there is nothing for me to live for -- I am canceling my subscription!" Speedylips throws herself to the floor, body convulsing with sobs as she cries out in utter agony at the unfairness, the pure torture of it all, while all around her others are kicking and screaming. "WAAHHHHHH!"* Not to be confused with Warhammer Online's trademark cry of battle "Waaaaaaggghhh," this cry* is the sound of desperation among the Daevas of Aion. Or -- in truer words -- infantile tantrums. Yes, tantrums. What else would you call it when people bemoan the change of fort ownership with vicious verbal attacks on others, excessive blame-placing, and numerous announcements of quitting that scroll by in LFG so quickly your head spins trying to catch the actual snippets of relevant chat? Yet this is the common sight whenever one faction starts losing some Abyss real estate to the enemy. And to be perfectly honest, I don't get it. In a game that is built on the give and take of battle, why do people get so put out when they suffer a setback? This is exactly what Aion needs to thrive. I will admit, I cheer when the opposing faction turns out and succeeds in conquering a fortress. Why? Before you brand me a traitor, cut a swath past the cut and I will explain.
The Anvil of Crom: Time to move on?
Welcome back to The Anvil of Crom, Conan fans. This week I'm going to tackle something a bit off the beaten path. I've been messing around with the Refuge of the Apostate on various toons, and our Choose My Adventure Bear Shaman is holding in his late 30s as I attempt (so far in vain) to get some dungeon time in before moving on to the Field of the Dead. Something's been on my mind lately, though, something that's not entirely unique to Age of Conan but is nonetheless a significant part of the overall fan experience. In a nutshell, I'd like to discuss AoC's community, and at the risk of offending (or more likely, inciting) portions of it, why it's so unfortunate.
Time Is Money: Hate mail from competitors
Welcome to Time Is Money! This is the column where Basil "Euripides" Berntsen is occasionally allowed to post stuff that's too short for Gold Capped, but too long for Twitter. Have comments or questions about the in-game economy? Email Basil! We received a note from a reader this week, and I felt it was appropriate to get the Drama Mamas involved. While this is a situation somewhat unique to auctioneers, it certainly has dramatic potential!
The art of pricing
I hear this all the time: "Hurrr! Undercutters are ruining this market! Durrr!". Today, we're going to talk about this. Undercutting doesn't ruin markets, high supply does. Also, if it's still profitable, the market's not ruined, it's just being taken away from you. Cut your margins and undercut back. Or buy them out if you still think they're wrong and you're right. But markets should be protected from undercutters! Balderdash. Markets are a place where people can sell their goods for any price they want. You're describing collusion between sellers to reduce "lost profits," where every time someone wants to undercut with a new auction, they do so by the smallest possible amount. More often than not, all your competitors will have the same cost that you do, and as soon as they see you commit to an auction, they'll undercut you right back. If everyone is knocking a copper off the next highest auction, they only way to undercut successfully is to try camp the AH and make sure you're always the competitor who has visited most recently. Needless to say, this is a colossal waste of your time, and you would probably make more money per hour doing argent tourney dailies. The only way to effectively sell your product in a market with a lot of competitors is to undercut by more than just a trivial amount. You need to make it just cheap enough that your competition is less likely to undercut you, but expensive enough that you're still making money.
Guildwatch: Bad form
The shot above actually takes place after Rigged denied instance-ninja'ing the last two bosses of Naxx... until his guild found out that, according to his achievements, he really had taken their kills earlier that day. Strange how all of a sudden plenty of justifications (Naxx is easy, it was only two bosses, "I was bored") jump to mind after he's caught, when before all he could do was deny it ever happened.That story and more in this week's Guildwatch, which you can click the "read more" link below to read. If you've got tips about guild drama, downed (especially downed -- we could use lots more good Ulduar news), or recruiting notices, make sure to put it in the format you see below and send it along to guildwatch@wowinsider.com (yes, we're still working on getting that email address changed to wow.com, give it time). And in the future, you could see those tips right here.
Guildwatch: Topping meters on every character, every night
It is a kind of poetry, really: the lament of the shunned looter. Bullgrim was clearly unhappy that after all of his hard work, his strat sharing, his walking of the guild through old raids, his bringing of 110% every night, and his passing up of "numerous offers from better guilds," the RNG decided to keep him from getting the piece of loot he really wanted. A shame. But great art comes from great suffering, and this is definitely great -- well, it's kind of art. Kind of.Lots more art (depending, once again, on your definition of "art") in this week's GW -- we've got guild drama, downs, and recruiting notices from all across the realms. We're almost cleared through the backlog of guild notices (sorry if we had a delay on yours there -- we got a ton of them all at once), so we'll give out the email once again: to see your guild here, drop us a note (and please keep it short, sweet, and clear) at wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Click on to read on!
Shamans disappointed yet again in 2.4 notes
Yes indeed, odds are that if you talked to a Shaman this weekend about patch 2.4, you got pretty much the same feeling that the video above conveys: Shamans, especially enhancement Shamans, aren't really thrilled about what we got out of the patch. We've been hoping for (finally) buffs, including an update on how Blizzard is going to deal with our totem and mana problems. We were hoping for shields to get reinvigorated and redesigned. We were hoping to see big changes to the class, and instead we got... a new Stormstrike icon, and a totem timer?The biggest Shaman change is the one to Earth Shield (which only affects Resto, since they're the only ones that can use it-- it costs less mana, and lasts for six charges instead of 10 (not great for raiders, but not bad for PvPers), and there was a small buff to Healing Grace (now gives a chance to avoid dispells). There is one Elemental change-- Call of Thunder now gives 5% crit rather than crit only to Lightning spells. But those changes do nothing to alleviate Shaman concerns (and you might have heard that there were many), and the rest of the changes are bugfixes and UI updates almost no one was asking for.Yes, yes, QQ more and all that, but the story here is that Shamans have been basically ignored yet again, even while Blizzard admits that there are problems with the class. So when are the fixes coming? Blizzard has already said they're not making sweeping changes to any classes in these content patches-- maybe our chance as Shamans will finally come with the expansion.
Breakfast Topic: Relieving stress
Usually we think of WoW as a way to relieve stress that we acquire in real life. Yet sometimes stressful things happen in WoW, and we need to find ways in real life to relieve them. I find that whenever something like this happens in the game, from battleground whining and insulting, to trouble finding good roleplayers, it does me a world of good to write about it on WoW Insider in some constructive manner. Not only do I address the problem in myself this way, resolving my own attitude towards it, but I do something that, I hope, helps other people who are experiencing the same problem in their own gaming as well. Many WoW players have blogs of their own, and I presume writing there has a similar effect.What do you do in real life to relieve stress from WoW-related problems?
WoW is a game -- you're supposed to enjoy it
In the battleground matches I've played lately, it seems that somehow the number of people complaining and whining has decreased, even though our faction seems to be losing just as much as before. Instead, the Alliance players I fight with seem almost depressed, as if every match is a torture to them -- they don't shower blame on other people, but instead say things like, "I have a dream that one day we might win a BG," or "Golly, this is horrible, I hate Alliance PvP." They have their heart set on a particular PvP reward, and as soon as they have enough honor or marks, they will heartily abandon their fellow teammates to the sad task of losing to the Horde day in and day out.It's true that losing isn't fun, and whatever the reasons our side seems to be losing all the time seem quite outside of our control. That's hard no matter which faction you're in. But there is a thing we've all heard about growing up called "good sportsmanship." When we play competitive games with each other, the idea is that we're supposed to enjoy the actual playing of the game more than the winning or the losing. Indeed, as with anything in life, if you get too attached to the outcome of a particular endeavor, you are less likely to do well than one who plays for the love of the game itself.I've been thinking about this lately because I myself don't want to log on to WoW only to feel like the game is like banging my head against the wall. It has helped a great deal to realize that whatever rewards we get are more like milestones along the path, not really an end in themselves. After all, if I play, it should be because I truly enjoy playing, not because I absolutely must posses some item that will be out of date in a few months no matter what I do. This realization has enabled me to pace myself, so that I don't allow long losing streaks to carry on for hours and ruin a good part of my day. If I'm losing a lot, I can stop and do other things, then come back to it another time with an entirely fresh set of allies and opponents -- and more importantly, a fresh desire to do my best and improve my skills. WoW is supposed to be fun; but if it isn't fun for you anymore -- whatever the reason -- then it's time to either change your approach or do something else.
Guildwatch: The drama trifecta
I never, ever thought this would happen, but apparently people are actually trying to be the biggest Guildwatch drama story now. Someone emailed a tip in hoping that his drama would be highlighted here on the front page, and unfortunately, while his tip was good (a massive PvP battle after a forum flame war), it just didn't match up to this mega ninja/ gquit/ game quit from Barthilas. But better luck next week, drama queens!This week's GW starts right after you click the link below. And don't forget: the place to send all your info about drama, downings, or recruiting notices is wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Onward!
Loot hoping, and loot whining
Cryptos posts on the forums about a subject very near and dear to my heart: loot whining. It is one of my great flaws that whenever I get close to a boss that I know drops something I really want, I can't help but share my excitement with my fellow party members, and sometimes (more often then not, unfortunately for them) my guild members. I'm sorry to say that I'm the guy he's talking about-- I'm the guy that is about to fight Murmur telling the guild, "man I sure hope my pretty dress drops." And it's a sign of how amazing my guild really is that they put up with me talking about it all the time.But then again, loot is basically why we play the game in the first place. Shouldn't I, and players like me, be able to share with our fellow players what loot we're going for, to let them in on the stuff we hope we get? Is it right for this GM to actually threaten to disenchant a piece of loot, just because someone says they want it?I definitely agree it can go over the top-- one of my pet peeves is people who join a PUG and try to "reserve" not-yet-dropped items, especially when there are others in the party who would obviously roll on it. And for my part, I've already noticed that I should keep my loot hopes to myself-- my guild doesn't really care about me getting every little upgrade I want. But good loot is the reason why many of us play this game, and so it's only expected that we should be excited at the prospect of getting it, and want to share that with fellow players.
Guildwatch: Roses are red, violets are blue, I /gquit, and f#($ you
Is that title too harsh? Too bad-- drama ain't pretty! It is poetic, though, as today we've got a /gquit rant that sounds more like free verse than anything else.Click the link below to read your weekly dose of drama, downed, and recruiting notices for the week. And remember: your tips fuel this poetry corner, so send tips, anonymous or otherwise, to wowguildwatch@gmail.com.
Dealing with younger players, both good and bad
We've covered this kind of thing a few times before (quite a while ago-- man I'm getting old), but it's an issue that I find perpetually interesting. Tviokh over at WoW Ladies had to deal with a bad kid in her guild-- he constantly requested help for stuff that was easy to do himself, and constantly bugging the guild to try and fight a world dragon that no one really had any interest in fighting. Finally, the kid blew up in whiny 10-year-old fashion, and /gquit... only to pester another guild with his whining and begging.Now, I should emphasize (since I am older, and have learned to be more and more patient over the years) that this is in fact a bad kid. While there are lots of younger players in Azeroth, not all of them are whiny beggars, and there are quite a few of them that are fun to have around. We've got a kid in our guild, and while he misses quite a few raids (because he has a little bit of a problem doing his homework sometimes-- his parents are in touch with our GM, and the fact that they keep him from playing when he shouldn't be only tells me that they're good parents), he's a fun guy to have around, and a respectable hunter.Yes, he sometimes bugs us (as level 70s) to run Sunken Temple with him because it's his favorite instance, but in general he's a good kid. So Tviokh's experience isn't necessarily the norm.Then again, there is part of me that still wants that adults only server, and I can definitely understand why some guilds don't allow younger players. But, as I'm sure WoW-playing parents will attest, not all kids are trouble.
Apple admitting, repairing laptop whining and discoloration problems
Always the good corporate citizen -- well, maybe not always -- Apple has finally fessed up to both the MacBook discoloration and MacBook Pro whining issues that have been plaguing customers since the notebooks were released, and has agreed to fix the problems free of charge. We already knew that the company was sneaking new logic boards into Pro models that had been sent in for unrelated repairs, but now the "high-pitched buzzing sound," as it's technically known, has been officially acknowledged in a support page on the Apple website. An inquiry by DailyTech revealed that affected notebooks fall under the standard one-year limited warranty -- meaning that all MacBook Pros are covered -- and that the solution involves replacing either just the fan or both the fan and the logic board. The discolorations, meanwhile, have not yet been publicly recognized, but AppleInsider is reporting that a recent company bulletin intended for retail and service partners indicates that white, 13-inch MacBooks in a specific serial number range will indeed be eligible for a new top case and corresponding screen bezel -- assuming that approved cleaning solutions have been proven ineffective. Overall, not a bad resolution; sure the admissions could have come sooner, but instead of blaming the discoloration on dirty customers, attributing the whining to tinnitus sufferers, and calling it a day, Apple came through in the end and took the responsible course of action.Read- WhiningRead- Discoloration
