Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.0.1 -- An officer's perspective
by Scott Andrews 
Sep 20th 2010 at 11:00AM
Most major game patches have a significant impact on guild officers, and in the past I've tried to give an officers' perspective on how the changes to the game will affect the decisions and plans that we make moving forward. Unlike previous patch-perspective columns, however, a reader actually requested this one.
Hey Scott,
I'm a guild leader for a rather small 10-man raiding guild, and I got to thinking today about the upcoming pre-Cata patch that's going to change everything. See, Wrath was the first expansion of WoW that I, and many members of my guild, were ever really active in (a lot of us swapped over from another MMO, together), so I was wondering -- once the pre-Cata patch hits, should we continue raiding? From the grumblings I've been hearing on the PTR, numbers are all out of whack, and with some of the class changes coming, I was wondering if it'd even be a good idea to keep raiding once 4.0.1 hits. I've never experienced the "conversion" from one expansion to another on the raiding front, so I really have no idea what to expect as far as people's attitudes (not just guildies, but possible PUGs, too). In the other games I'd played, an expansion just meant new zones, storyline, etc., but WoW's expansion features a level cap increase, and in this case, a major overhaul in how we play.
Should I expect people to want to keep raiding? If we do keep raiding, should we do so under the pretense that it'll help us learn the major changes to our classes? Or should I just hang it all up and let people do their own thing until the expansion hits and we finish leveling to 85?
Usaya, Elune
Hi, Usaya. Fear not! It's always a strange time during the weeks leading up to an expansion, but it's mostly positive. In general, players will be excited about the game again. You should expect to see more players logging in and more players who want to take care of unfinished business before the new level cap trivializes existing content.
Your questions are focused on raiding, so I'll talk about that aspect of the patch first. The question for many guilds these days isn't whether you should raid but whether you can, given the level of interest and the amount of active players on your roster. Fielding a full team has been a struggle for many guilds, even as far back as February and March, let alone today after the longest content gap in WoW's history.
The raiding situation
If your guild is currently raiding, then there's no reason to stop after the patch drops. Players will want to try out their shiny, shorter talent trees and bust out new abilities against Arthas and his army of undead chumps. If your guild isn't currently raiding, the patch may provide the motivation your guild needs to put together a run. Put something on the schedule and see what happens.
The problem is, as you mention, the numbers will be all out of whack, and even Blizzard isn't sure how it will all shake out. Zarhym mentioned that Blizzard might even have to reduce the 30 percent buff in ICC once the new talents and stat changes go live because the fights would otherwise be far too easy. We won't know for sure how the changes affect our own raid team until we zone in for the first time. Ask your raid leaders to be patient with players while they learn how to deal with all the changes to their class.
If Zarhym's speculation is correct and the patch does indirectly nerf Wrath's raids, then we are likely to see a surge of interest in raiding much like at the end of The Burning Crusade, when raids were directly nerfed by about 30 percent across the board. Players who haven't beaten the Lich King or Halion will want to see those bosses die. Guilds who have been struggling on heroic Putricide or who could never beat Yogg+1 for their proto-drakes will suddenly have a great reason to keep trying.
Another reason to raid would be to farm legendaries for the guild achievement. If your guild doesn't already have a player with Thunderfury, Sulfuras, the Warglaives set, Thori'dal, Val'anyr or Shadowmourne, now is the time to try. You will get credit for obtaining them once guild achievements go live. There's an achievement for obtaining three of them and another one for obtaining all six (the Warglaives set counts as one).
I do recommend, however, taking a break from official guild runs for one or several weeks prior to Cataclysm's release. That gives everyone, especially your raid leaders, a break so they can hit the new content feeling fresh.
Speaking of achievements
Unfortunately, according to Mumper, guild achievements (and leveling) will not go live with 4.0.1 but instead will be added with the expansion itself. That is a major bummer. The new talents and UI changes will be nice for a while, but there won't be much new for players to, you know, do. Officers could have taken their guilds on major achievement-earning sprees to pass the time until Azeroth goes boom, but alas, we'll have to wait to work on the vast majority of them.
Even so, there are a few, like the legendary achievement, that you can get a head start on now or during 4.0.1:
- Guild Vault If you haven't purchased all available bank slots, now is the time to ask members to gather some gold for the cause. Consider hosting some GDKP runs if your guild is gold-poor but gear-rich.
- Dungeon Diplomat, etc. There are guild achievements for being exalted with various groups of factions, culminating in United Nations. The game already has 55 factions, so you can theoretically earn this achievement right now. Take a poll to see who has done the grind for the more difficult or obscure factions in the game. Then support individuals who volunteer to rep up with the factions your guild still needs.
- Dinner Party, etc. You can't get credit for placing feasts yet, but you can gather the mats and cook them. Gigantic Feast is probably the cheapest to craft, but it's not a particularly useful item. The same is true for most of the profession achievements, such as Dust, Dust, and More Dust. You can gather the items for it, but you have to hold onto them for now. I hope you bought all those bank vaults!
- Working as a Team Smaller guilds may not actually have all the professions covered. Consult the new guild UI to see what everyone has leveled up and try to fill in the gaps. Doing so is quite useful beyond earning the achievement.
The changes to the guild UI are pretty sweeping. They range from the mundane (class icons in the roster pane) to the mandatory -- guild leaders would have thrown a fit if Blizzard didn't improve the guild rank functionality (thankfully, they did). If you're planning to make major changes to your ranks, I'd suggest waiting for the patch to drop.
A new feature recently unveiled in the beta is the ability to bar members from specific guild ranks if they don't have an authenticator tied to their account. I'm crossing my fingers that this option goes live. If so, I will require an authenticator for every rank that has any guild bank access at all, and I recommend that every guild leader do the same. Access to any tab is access to everything for a hacker. Personally, it's getting really old putting four dozen stolen and then restored items back into the bank vaults. There is simply no excuse for a player not to have an authenticator these days. They've been available for years now; they're ultra-cheap; shipping is free if you need the hardware version; and they make life easier for yourself, your officers and Blizzard's staff. If you're an officer and you don't have one, you're risking some major hassles for you and your guild.
The new UI will also allow you to create events, manage the bank, sort members by several different criteria (including professions) and see who has done or looted what (much like the armory, but for the whole guild). Eventually, the guild UI will be your source of info for your guild's leveling, perks and rewards, as well as how much each member is contributing to your level.
A few other patch changes of note:
- The currency exchange will meld triumph and frost emblems into a single batch of points. You may want to encourage members who are currently in the process of gearing up to save their triumphs until after the patch. That way, they can use triumphs to purchase frost gear.
- The new stat system will in some cases radically change your players' gear. If you offer or sell gems and enchants from your guild bank, be sure to stock up on them now while there is less overall demand.
- Glyphs are also changing significantly (and will be permanent), so a stockpile of glyphs in the guild bank would be quite helpful to your members as well. In addition, you'll want your scribes to churn out a massive amount of Vanishing Powder so your raiders can optimize glyphs on the fly.
- Hunter pets will suddenly offer a wide array of raid buffs. If your raid is often missing one or more of these buffs, encourage your hunters to level pets of the appropriate type.
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas and suggestions at scott@wow.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters! Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
traptinacivicsi Sep 20th 2010 11:50AM
For serious? A 'SPORTSfashion' website... on a MMORPG blog site?
Get outta town.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2010 11:15AM
Something I've noticed on the PTR is that occasionally I'll see over someone's head: <Recruit of [insert guild name here]>
I wasn't able to figure out exactly what led to that, and sometimes it would go away, then come back. I wasn't the guild leader on the PTR guild, so I couldn't experiment with the guild UI to try and figure it out. Do you know what this is all about, and if so, could you enlighten me?
Arednel Sep 20th 2010 11:30AM
I notice this on the beta too, aligns with people's guild ranks.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2010 11:42AM
"aligns with people's guild ranks."
See, I thought that, too, but when my wife joined the guild, her rank was "Initiate" but her over-the-head tag said, "Recuit of." Then when she was promoted to member, it didn't change to "Member of," or anything...it just disappeared. Does it just automatically show up when you're at the starting rank then?
Jadissa Sep 20th 2010 11:35AM
Does anyone know how the disenchanting achievement works? Can I stockpile greens from Deadmines for my guild?
ecwfrk Sep 20th 2010 12:47PM
After the expansion is released, if you are in a guild, you disenchant stuff and it counts towards the achievement.
And yes, you can stockpile greens now.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2010 11:49AM
Is it just me or do some of the guild achievements seem like a bit of overkill?
http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/5423/
Winning 3-0 without dying? 100 times? Does that seem like it would take forever to anyone else, or am I just being a wuss? Is 5 question marks too many for one comment? How about 6?
chyllyphylly Sep 20th 2010 12:15PM
1 person doesn't have to win 3-0 100 times.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2010 12:38PM
"1 person doesn't have to win 3-0 100 times."
I understand that.
But the requirement of being "in a guild group" means that at least 8 of the 10 folks in your group must be guild members. So, 100 wins -- and not just wins...but damn near perfect wins -- where 8 or your guildies are there? Since this is in a rated battleground, you can assume you'll be teamed up against groups with equal experience to yours, so even the chance of a regular win should theoretically be only 50/50. But perfect wins?
So, my question still stands.
Rialle Sep 20th 2010 1:03PM
Since I'm not sure what Twin Peaks entails, but I find it reasonable that PvP oriented guild of decent size could achieve this. I've gone 3-0 WSG plenty of times with a mostly guild group, so if Twin Peaks is similar, then I see it as doable over time. I think the point is to encourage guilds to queue up for BGs together here.
Pyromelter Sep 20th 2010 3:22PM
shouldn't be hard. aren't you a pally? you've got 8 zillion ways to not die. Also, hunters.
Carson Sep 20th 2010 5:21PM
If Twin Peaks is anything like Warsong Gulch, then a 3-0 win should be the default result for a guild premade vs. PUG match. i.e., if you DON'T win 3-0, you should feel disappointed.
Shouldn't take too many evenings of BG'ing to get.
traptinacivicsi Sep 20th 2010 11:49AM
"A new feature recently unveiled in the beta is the ability to bar members from specific guild ranks if they don't have an authenticator tied to their account. I'm crossing my fingers that this option goes live. If so, I will require an authenticator for every rank that has any guild bank access at all, and I recommend that every guild leader do the same."
This is one among many of my favorite changes to guilds, as I know a few people who refused to get authenticators until their 3rd time being keylogged, and I don't wanna go through that drama for every new anti-authenticator member we get. :)
@cutaia
I think it's like the whole temporary recruit status that most guilds do on live, only now it goes into the guild title so that anything that player does, isn't DIRECTLY representing the guild, as people know he's a new guy. ..or something to that effect.
Though I'm not sure, I have seen it a lot on Beta.
lethian Sep 20th 2010 12:42PM
ya know, when i see people get hacked, or as i like to call it compromised, i have to wonder what they did that was careless. see i will have been playing 3 years end of this nov. and not once have i been "hacked", imo people really just need to be more careful, im an officer of a guild, which used to raid and i plan on getting doing that again in cata. However, imo people should not be forced to dish out any cash for a rank, even if it is only 6 bucks. if an officer or a Guild leader wants them to do that so badly they should pay up for it. i would never ask someone to do something that would cost them extra money of any amount like that.
threesixteen Sep 20th 2010 1:09PM
i agree with lethian on this issue. i've been playing since 2007. no authenticator. no hacks. never had any trouble at all. i just can't figure out what people are doing that causes their accounts to get compromised. makes no sense to me. i suspect many times it's friend's that share passwords or kids of parents accounts that do 'funny' things... not to say i don't support authenticators; by all means, get one if you feel you need it, but to MAKE me have to buy one is ridiculous. i know i know, just downrank my guild membership level to prevent bank access. that's fine, i'll live with that. just sayin.
Eyhk Sep 20th 2010 1:33PM
It happens with phishing links, links to supposed wow videos that ask you to install the latest Adobe Flash player but installs their own software instead, emails that look like Blizzard support emails asking you for your password to verify account security, etc. It's actually pretty easy to trick non-savvy users into giving up information or installing software on their system. All you need is a bit of social engineering Jedi mind tricks and better-than-your-average-Chinese-gold-farmer English and sometimes not even that.
Luftwaffles Sep 20th 2010 1:45PM
It's possible that most people *are* careful about what they do and where they go. But anyone who has any children or siblings knows that won't help when someone else unknowingly uses your computer to go someplace dodgy. It happens. This is why authenticators are a good idea even if you're the most careful person in the world.
Spark Sep 20th 2010 2:01PM
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lethian Sep 20th 2010 12:42PM
ya know, when i see people get hacked, or as i like to call it compromised, i have to wonder what they did that was careless. see i will have been playing 3 years end of this nov. and not once have i been "hacked", imo people really just need to be more careful
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Not this again. Every time "authenticator" is mentioned, we get these responses.
I've been playing since WoW has been released (2004). I've been toying with personal computers since... well... let's just say FAR longer than that. I've never had either my desktop or my game account compromised. I do numerous things that make myself a hard target.
Having said that - I'm not immune. And neither are you. The deck is stacked against us. It is the wise player that protects themselves. And Blizzard has made it very convenient (and probably at their own expense) to have a very good tool that will help us to that end.
The world of malware is a business. There are groups out there who manage compromised systems (botnets) and write malware for a living. They rent resources on the botnet. They sell malware as a service - what kind of malware targeting what kind of data with what features. They also sell additional features such as VPNs and proxy services. Then you have people that pay those folks so that they can get illicit data; credit cards, bank accounts, identity information, game accounts, etc. Once they have that data, they sell it on the black market. Game accounts (like WoW) get a better price than credit cards. Then you have the people who use that data to do whatever scam they're interested in. In our case, it's looting our WoW accounts and then using them to run exploits, spam advertisements, or mule gold / items between servers, or deliver goods to paying customers. The scam can involve many levels or just a couple. The economy of scale allows a lot of leeway. It costs about $200 to get started (that's a small amount of botnet resources and a basic malware package).
The malware package is one of the key pieces. This isn't the old-fashioned hacker producing hand-crafted code to attack you. This is entirely modular software that can swap out targets (i.e. game accounts) and vulnerabilities (i.e. zero-day Flash vulnerability) as customer options. And it's the zero-day exploits that could get even hard targets like me.
A lot of folks I know that get exploited are behind patches. Usually it's Adobe products. Usually they're shocked as they're only browsing "safe" sites. Syndicated contents (especially ads) means we can never be sure of where the source of anything is (and that's not counting the times when malicious javascript is inserted quietly in to compromised sites themselves).
Most exploits start as zero-day, un-patchable exploits. It isn't until security folks find these things in the wild that the fix is figured out. That means we all start behind the curve. And that means even hard targets like me COULD potentially get hit as we browse to a trusted site that's been compromised to be one of the first to serve up the latest malware.
Security is your business. Don't pass the buck. Take control of your situation. And don't get fooled in to thinking "security" is a destination; that you will reach a point that you are "secure." Security is a process. And part of that process is taking advantage of every tool we can. Authenticators are a great tool - easy to use and cheap. You're only fooling yourself if they are available and you're not using it.
I should note that Authenticators are cryptographic devices and some governments restrict such things. If you're in a such a position, then you have a good excuse as that tool may not be available to you.
Roboticus Sep 20th 2010 2:57PM
Sparks, you seem to know a bit about this, so let me ask, to what extents is the behind-the-curve period of vulnerability still risky for someone who uses No-Script and the highest level of other browser security settings (let's assume for convenience I don't fall for social engineering)? It seems to me that the No-Script approach would still offer a level of protection against unknown threats, as it simply won't let anything run that you don't allow (assume also I don't allow anything at all). While I understand that the very second I allow something, even something safe like a youtube video, I expose myself to risk. In theory though, if I never did allow anything, wouldn't at that point a compromised wow account be almost impossible from the mechanisms you described?
I ask because I don't know, but if the conjecture were true (or even just had a big increase in security), then it does hold that those who get hacked are partially responsible.
Darboux Sep 20th 2010 3:07PM
http://xkcd.com/792/
One potential avenue to a compromised account that I don't often see mentioned, yet I suspect is how many are taken over, is reused passwords on less secure sites. I suspect mine was compromised this way.
I too have always been very careful with my account details. I never fell for a phishing attempt, had 0 malware or spyware on my computer (per 10 different scans) and shared my details with no one, and yet my account was compromised. What I did have, however, was a bad habit of reusing passwords all over. When battle.net changes rolled out, my WoW account name, which had previously been unique, now matched my email, which is my username to dozens of forums and websites I signed up for over nearly a decade, its fair to say many of these I stupidly used the same password on. Breaking the low security on a password list for someones privately run gaming related forum (or even being done by an admin itself) and then trying those email and password combos against WoW and other popular games would be a no brainer.
The xkcd comic above from last week deals with this exact issue! I'm still not sure if this is how I lost my account, but I'm sure its how many have. To be safe after I got my account back I changed not only my WoW password, but stopped using the password that had failed to protect me there on all websites, systematically changing any account that shared this password.