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 3 of 4)
Kira Sep 20th 2010 1:27PM
I used to have more money than I do now.
nieboh Sep 20th 2010 1:30PM
@Chad
I thought that sounded funny at first too, and was going to post a comment similar to yours, but as I thought about it, it's possible he put together a computer out of spare/donated parts and incurred no further expense in it, or maybe he got it as a present.
Ooh, sudden thought just occurred to me though. Kira, you're not running both of those computers at the same time, are you? Over a month, the extra electricity for the second computer could easily come to $6 (depending on how much time you spend playing each month).
Grovinofdarkhour Sep 20th 2010 1:33PM
I don't care how good or bad someone's economic circumstances are; if you seriously contend that you can afford $15 each and every month for a hobby, but you won't scrape together $6 JUST ONCE to protect both the toons you've invested hundreds or thousands of hours into AND your guild's piece of mind, then you're a self-serving idiot and I'd just as soon you didn't ever turn on your computer, much less log into this game and jeopardize others' hard work as represented by the gold and assets in a guild bank.
Eyhk Sep 20th 2010 1:35PM
Your guild can simply have a lower officer rank with no guild bank access and no authenticator required, and then a higher officer rank that has guild bank access and authenticator required and that should solve your worries. Problem solved.
Daedalus Sep 20th 2010 1:55PM
I'm also extremely suspicious of the "seen my friends with authenticators get hacked" part of all that.
There was that man-in-the-middle virus attack a while back that allowed circumvention, but to the best of my knowledge, the account thieves haven't gotten around them in any meaningful or useful way. The virus required that you and the hacker be sitting at your computers at the same time, and that you enter 3 codes quickly enough for them to remove the authenticator. (Which means they had to recieve and use the codes in the 10 or 15 second window that the codes are good for.) All in all, not a particularly reliable or productive way for the gold farmers to make some money.
Knowing a little about computers and security, I can tell you: a unique-keyed, time dependant, generated code is probably one of the most secure set-ups you can have for something like this. If you really have multiple friends with authenticators that have been hacked, that's a pretty big news story, and you should forward the proof to WoW Insider; I imagine they'd love to run that.
Rialle Sep 20th 2010 2:00PM
I also agree that Blizzard could go a step further by shipping an authenticator to everyone in the Catacylsm box. I think that the compromised MMO account issue is bad enough (not just in WoW, but in other games as well) that it would be in Blizzard's best interests to secure their game's community as much as possible.
There is the issue of hackers tacking an authenticator on an account, but there are a couple things to mention here:
1. That account didn't have an authenticator before. All the more reason to get your own.
2. The guild leader is hopefully making sure that the characters he's promoting to the rank with an authenticator requirement are not compromised as he's doing it.
Spark Sep 20th 2010 2:44PM
-----
Kira Sep 20th 2010 12:49PM
Personally, I think the authenticators should be free anyway. I don't see any good guild not turning this on though, so it's pretty much a no win situation for me. Not to mention that at the rate I lose thumb drives, and the authenticator being about the same size, I'd probably end up losing it, and the fact that I have seen my friends with authenticators get hacked, where as I have not, mostly by using my wow computer for nothing but wow, not even web surfing, and still putting it in fort knox mode. (I know, you'd think I would take the easier route of getting an authenticator) but the fact of the matter is that I could afford the time spent on securing my system where I could not afford the money to buy an authenticator or an iphone.
-----
The best price for generic, non-customized versions of these devices (they're Vasco Go 6 devices) is $9.20 a piece. That's not counting the annual per-user licensing and support contracts that would go with Vasco authentication servers (with comes out to about $32 per device), assuming Blizzard went with that option. Even if Blizzard has made some sweetheart deals on the devices and have implemented their own authentication infrastructure that doesn't involve additional licensing per user... they're not really making much on these things.
Having said that - I'd like them to come in the box. That'd be great. The trouble is, that might open them to encryption device import laws. Which could make each boxed copy a legal risk depending on the current state of the law in any given market. Having said that - WoW (at least Warden if not the WoW client itself) uses encryption. So this might be either a moot point or a really interesting example of how inconsistent these laws are.
I'd be really interested in the details of how your friends with authenticators had their accounts compromised. A lot of times we hear of these urban-lore-like rumors of security events but the details are either never produced or the situation turns out to be really different than initially described. Having said that - Two Factor Authentication isn't fool proof. It's possible to do a man-in-the-middle attack but it tends to be easier to detect. So I'm skeptical, but it is possible.
So let's say you do have a nice, locked down system (a bastion host for WoW if you will). You could put a 3rd party software token on it. Blizzard's software token is an OATH HOTP implementation. Someone has looked at the Android authenticator and implemented it on Windows. If you're really capable of locking down a desktop to the extent that putting a software token on the same desktop is an acceptable risk, then you should have no problem in figuring out how to set that up yourself. Having said that - I think you're fooling yourself and this is simply a way to weaken the effectiveness of an authenticator.
Pyromelter Sep 20th 2010 3:33PM
Not only are you wrong about the authenticator thing, you are also wrong about how it's even being implemented.
You don't need an authenticator to be a guild officer, or a guild leader. There is a check box that will require authenticators at any guild rank. You can have it checked or unchecked. This means that no one is forced to have an authenticator for guild bank or officer or any guild rank status. Unbunch your panties about it.
Here's another thing: the authenticator has a mini key-ring on it. So you can put it on your keys. Or just glue it to your desk.
Finally: "and the fact that I have seen my friends with authenticators get hacked"
Link or it didn't happen. There has been no confirmed case of anyone with an authenticator being hacked. Maybe they were hacked before they had authenticators, and then wizened up.
Linnia Sep 20th 2010 8:19PM
"a $6.50 authenticator" is not always a $6.50 authenticator. Mine cost AU$28 because of exchange rates and horrendously large shipping costs - IMO anything that costs more than double in shipping than the actual item is usually not cost effective. In this situation I found the money for it but I can completely understand why many people wouldn't want to pay a month's worth of access fees for an authenticator.
cobusvj Sep 21st 2010 8:07AM
Lol, try +-US$100 for an authenticator... I live in South Africa, and neither my Samsung Omnia, G900 or my wife's Blackberry is an option on the mobile authenticator website for my country. Also, Blizzard does not ship to South Africa, go figure.
So if I wanted one, I'd either have to buy it off a website that imports it for the grossly overpriced US$100, or I have to trust a guildie I've never met to buy me one, do a money transfer to him/her and they ship it to me (which he/she may decide not to do after receiving payment... as I said, I know none of my guildies out-of-game). And then it will still cost me 25 pounds or roughly US$40...
Pocky Sep 21st 2010 8:32PM
This may be a little late to the discussion, but I was thinking about this the other day and had to share some thought...
Easy ways to get $6 for an Authenticator:
- Take a bagged lunch a couple times a week and skip eating out (No, that waitress won’t miss you).
- Skip a couple of beer (It really won’t kill you, honest).
- Forego a couple big bags of Doritos (Or any junk food for that matter. You’re heart will thank you).
- Skip buying a couple lottery tickets (I’ve always had more money left when I didn’t buy them).
- Turn in that pile of empty bottles (Seriously… they stink).
- Buy one less pack of cigarettes (Smoke 2 less a day to draw out what you have, and you should have enough in a week or two without committing murder).
- Make only the minimum payment on a credit card (If you make more than minimum – once won’t hurt).
- Walk more (Spend less on gas and the fresh air won’t damage you either. Just don’t stare at that big, bright round thing in the sky. It’ll blind you).
- Skip a movie night (You’re intelligence will thank you. Most movies these days are crap anyway).
- No, you’re kid doesn’t have to have those designer jeans. Store brand will cover their ass just fine.
- That reefer doesn’t have to be that big (Seriously, mon. Da voodoo will still be da voodoo).
- No, you don’t need that (*insert shiny objects name*) right now. Get it next month.
It took about 10 minutes to come up with these 12 ideas. Seriously, how hard can this be?
bruceg6069 Sep 20th 2010 1:11PM
I have to laugh at the guild and authenticator idea as the only time I have seen a guild hacked was when the GM themselves got hacked--not one of the members or officers.
Rialle Sep 20th 2010 1:18PM
The guild master should get an authenticator too. In fact, if I were Blizzard, I'd make it so the leader must have an authenticator to enable this feature. I would probably stay away from a guild where the leader forces officers to have one but not himself, at any rate. That just shows you that the guild master puts themselves above their own rules.
Of course, the guild masters you've dealt with could also be lying about getting hacked when in reality they ninja'd the bank for their own gain. (I've seen it happened before.)
sangrael Sep 20th 2010 3:41PM
As a GM I've been enforcing my officers have an authenticator anyways for a while now. About 5 months back we had a senior officer end up getting hacked from a flash vulnerability, and while Blizz was prompt about restoring the items taken from the gbank, it was still annoying. I've personally had an authenticator since the first batch were available for sale, I've spent far too much time in WoW to not pay the paltry amount they ask for peace of mind.
Bellicose Sep 20th 2010 1:14PM
Kira,
At this point you are either stubborn or a troll. I hope you are a troll. An authenticator is inconvenient but so is waiting a week for a guild bank to get restored or your guild waiting for you (let's say you are their 10th member of their ten man raid) to get your character restored after a hacker deletes your toon (their new favorite thing). If this is a deal breaker for you, start your own guild with no authenticator requirement for like minded people. Beware, after you get your bank hacked a few times you'll be hurting for members.
Hagu Sep 20th 2010 1:37PM
I think there will be a lot of people coming back in 4.0.1 to try out their new mechanics and bugs and issues. Do you really want to be staring at an unknown talent tree and action bar on Nov 2? Perhaps even test-driving to see which toon they get to 85 first. Perhaps even coordinate in Guild - it would be best that you did not end up after the first week with 6 tanks, 5 melee, 1 ranged and no healers at 85.
OTOH, the Blizzard design seems to be for most small guilds to go away in cata. ( remember the "top 20 most active in guild" design idea was cancelled) The 3000 person guild can hit a guild achievement 20000% faster than a 15 person guild. A 150 person guild can achieve in a month what would take a 15 person guild ten months. And all recruits know this. In a game where people spend all this gold to replace +16 gems with +20 or use +10 stats over +8, or grind to get hodir exalted for a somewhat better enchant, who is going to join and stay with a small guild even after getting geared up? People should do what they enjoy, but if small guilds were a business, they would shut down. (Unless Tony Soprano owned them, in which case they would suffer a devastating, insured fire.)
skodnoise Sep 20th 2010 1:40PM
Yes, this is very rude, but if you live in an area where shipping Authenticators is legal, then I don't understand how you can afford $12-$15/month and not afford a $6 one time cost. I get that a lot of people don't want to be "forced" to spend money, but if you can't find $6 in your budget, even if it's by saving for a few months (I even think most people can find $6 in their change jar) then I'd really like you to rethink the cost of a computer capable of raiding (I'm assuming raiding because most guilds that have anything worth protecting in the bank are raid guilds) and your monthly subscription.
Cos Sep 20th 2010 1:46PM
I know its a divert, but I'd personally like to see them have separate "Guild MotD" and "Officer MotD", so I/we could leave notes for all our officers at once. Would be great for reminders, warnings about possible drama, account hacks, etc.
That aside, I think it will be interesting to see how things will go in ICC post-patch. We're cutting teeth on 10man Heroics, and depending on how all the changes shake down, it could either be that last bump we needed for some of them, or put some out of reach. Hopefully it's the former :P
Fearmemortals Sep 20th 2010 2:16PM
"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"
What an American-centric point of view
teelie Sep 20th 2010 2:32PM
Most of Europe, Australia, parts of Asia and I'm pretty sure parts of South America have access so it's hardly "American-centric" to say get something that'll make your account more secure.