Two new offline LFG channels
by Michael Gray 
Jul 16th 2008 at 7:00PM
The first social step anyone has in WoW is your Guild. We've talked about how it can form the core of your player experience, for good and bad. But, not everyone's lucky enough to have a Guild ready-to-go at everything you might want to do, and what's more, ready at a moment's notice. Many Guilds (rightly so) will expect each members to show some individual initiative, and maybe brave at least a few PUGs. Well, a pair of tools have popped up recently to help you get set up with people outside the limited scope of your Guild.As a caveat: Both sites I'm presenting here are relatively new and untried. You're getting in on a ground floor, but we can't promise fame and fortune from them (yet).
While not technically a PUG-finding tool, ArenaArc helps you find Arena teams that meet your server/size need. It's not quite got the robust toolkit of Arena Junkies but for folks who are just getting started in Season 4, ArenaArc is a decent place to look for some fellow soon-to-be-Gladiators on your server. There's at least a few people on the forums who already seem to like it.
Pug-O-Matic gets to the heart of it -- finding a PUG. Of course, I'd argue if you're hitting up a website to put together a group, that group's not really a "Pickup" group anymore. Still, the idea's sound. I had a little trouble figuring out the tool at first, but I later realized I couldn't find anything because not many are using it yet. I guess we'll see if it turns into something.
So, those are two new offline LFG channels. If folks use them, I'm pretty sure both will turn out to be helpful. But if neither catches the interest or zeitgeist of Internet-cruising WoW players...well, you can't use a social network if folks don't network into it.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Instances, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
epsilon343 Jul 16th 2008 7:06PM
Seeing as my server (Arthas - H) seems to be almost completely devoid of groups in the LFG I might have to look into this. But without getting exposure to the population as a whole I don't see this going anywhere.
Pwnxor Jul 18th 2008 4:29PM
LFM RFC, need dps, BE GEARED will check armory PST
Zghuk Jul 16th 2008 7:15PM
hmmm... no support of EU realms? I couldnt find my server and I think ArenaArc wont be spread enough in europe... but the idea is good!
Jeraimee Jul 16th 2008 8:58PM
Pug-o-Matic is still in Beta, I'll have EU support before the end of the week. Thanks for looking and thanks WOW Insider!
Lakk Jul 17th 2008 12:34AM
ArenaArc was just released as well, by the end of the week there will be EU site. Just hoping that it will spread enough there.
Ani Jul 17th 2008 5:46AM
Too bad the PuG-O-Matic guy(s) couldn't give a linkback to styleshout for the template they are using. (http://www.styleshout.com/templates/preview/TechJunkie1-0/index.html)
But still looks like a promising initiative. =]
Jeraimee Jul 17th 2008 2:39PM
Actually, we did. Thanks for looking out for our fellow CC'ers though.
Theungry Jul 17th 2008 9:56AM
There seem to be a lot kinks and bugs still to work out. Example: There was no mechanism to stop me from joining a pug on a server that i had no character for, and then there was no mechanism to remove my name from the sign-up. I'm hoping that this type of stuff will get worked out in Beta, because i like the idea.
Philibert Jul 22nd 2008 10:37AM
Everquest Live had a really nice feature a few years back where they basically created an AIM Client that you could run in Windows, you would log into your EQ server just like you were logging on to the game, but all it did was give you access to the channels.
So you could participate in say, Guild Chat from outside the game client and do /who type commands, send tells, etc to see who was online.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in WoW, so you could say just run a chat client and not have to stay logged into the game all the time just to do some social chat, etc.