Call for Submissions: Cataclysm zone reviews
by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 1st 2010 at 7:00PM
Beta testers, we're looking for reviews of the newly renovated zones in Cataclysm. All of the sub-80 zones that have been heavily renovated are up for grabs, with two exceptions: The two reviews linked above, written by our very own Michael Sacco, are the rough examples you should follow for content. For full details on this assignment, follow us behind the break.
Your article should run between 750 and 1,000 words (which is shorter than the sample articles, so be brief and on point.) Please specify whether you're approaching the zone as an Alliance player, a Horde player or both. We will not accept proposals submitted under player names or pen names; please use your full, real name and email. Please include your email address again at the bottom of your synopsis in the body of your submission. Links should be included as full URLs in the body of the copy; no active links, please.
Artwork is not mandatory and you do need not complete the galleries included in our samples. However, if you wish to include images to accompany your written work, all images must be exactly 580 pixels wide and no more than 350 pixels tall. If you do include artwork or screenshots, you absolutely must follow the instructions above to include your email address at the bottom of your submission.
The Seed program currently only accommodates submissions from individuals living in the United States. As much as we love sharing our readers' voices on a broader scale via guest posts, submissions outside of the context of Seed are simply not a viable option for us at this time. We appreciate your enthusiasm, but sorry, no exceptions. If you live outside of the United States and would like to comment on Seed's availability or keep tabs on the status of international submissions, please visit Seed.com.
To submit an article, read up about our guest post program, then sign up for Seed. WoW Insider articles are not listed among Seed's publicly listed assignments; click here to view this assignment and submit your article. (You won't be able to see it unless you have a Seed account.) We'll accept submissions for this assignment until 12:00 midnight EDT on Wednesday, Oct. 13. You may submit more than one article to this assignment. If you have further questions about this assignment, drop us a line at seed@wow.com. Good luck and good writing!
Have you ever wanted to write for WoW Insider? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions, and be sure to sign up for Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider. The next byline you see here may be yours!Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MikeLive Oct 1st 2010 7:10PM
A curious question: why are submitted articles limited to US only? I can understand why AOL's Seed program is, given that it pays for submissions and there's legal issues they don't want to work out, but what's stopping you from publishing stories people write and give to you for free?
Wild Colors Oct 1st 2010 7:22PM
Fear that you will sue them for it later. Fear that any contract they have you sign will end up being void in your country of residence. Fear that they will end up needing to pay money, either to you after the fact, or to lawyers ahead of time to go do some international research.
MikeLive Oct 1st 2010 7:30PM
Wouldn't those same legal issues extend to, say, Blogger?
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2010 7:53PM
There are a variety of reasons why we do not take volunteer work and it's not all legal. It's partially legal issues, partially editorial standards.
In general, we want to pay people for quality work. If it's good enough to be published on WoW Insider we want to pay you for it. Not paying someone for their work opens a great big can of worms that we'd prefer not to deal with.
It's unfortunate that our company's freelance platform does not currently accept international work, but there's not much we can do about that at the moment. We will leap for joy when they do.
Al Oct 1st 2010 8:08PM
As we've seen, they have the capacity for paying Canadians and English.
However, AOL want them hyping Seed, so we're out of luck. As "fun assignment that will include everyone next week." shows, they don't really care either.
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2010 8:15PM
AOL does not require us to use Seed at all. AOL does not get involved in our editorial content or direction.
Ed Ross Oct 1st 2010 9:04PM
QUOTE: "In general, we want to pay people for quality work. If it's good enough to be published on WoW Insider we want to pay you for it. Not paying someone for their work opens a great big can of worms that we'd prefer not to deal with."
Alex Ziebart, your are being terribly biased. It's not just because money is involved that someone will "write better". Or do anything better, in general.
You say that, if someone would write willingly for free, the article would necessarily be horrid. It's not true. There's a whole lot of people out there that writes marvelous things in the web everyday, about any topic. Including WoW players, mind you.
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2010 9:17PM
"If it's good writing we want to pay you for it" is not at all the same as "if we don't pay for it, it will be bad writing."
Kittens Oct 1st 2010 9:21PM
Sooo.. if the choice of platform is not AOL's decision but purely WoW Insider's, what is keeping you guys from trying to find another platform that will not leave out submitters from the rest of the world? I don't know if another good option exists, but clearly many readers are asking for it. And is it really so impossible to accept submissions from other countries through email or something and then just pay them?
I'm not planning on writing anything, but I do see some very nice international commenters on here that could write some really interesting/entertaining stuff :)
Kittens Oct 1st 2010 9:27PM
Also! I am wondering if the 'great big can of worms' of not paying someone for their work could simply be circumvented by just making them sign/check a box that says they agree they will not get paid for it?
Al Oct 1st 2010 9:37PM
"AOL does not require us to use Seed at all. AOL does not get involved in our editorial content or direction."
So you could use whatever system paid Turpster and Cadistra, you just don't want to?
That's your choice, just remove the "We'd like to, but can't." You'd probably avoid this discussion coming up so often if you also mentioned it before the break, so first-timers don't open the article, get disappointed and bring it up again. Just saying.
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2010 9:38PM
Well, we have to use Aol's platform if we choose to take freelance work, because that's how the company takes freelance work. There is no other option there. Well, besides signing a contract, but that's a completely different beast than Seed. You would sign a contract if you were becoming a part of our editorial staff and we can contract writers from anywhere in the world. It's a very different situation than Seed and requires a lot more paperwork.
Aol does not, however, force us to take freelance work at all. If we didn't want to, we wouldn't. Easy as that. Everything we do with Seed is up to our editorial staff. If we decided to stop taking freelance work, Aol wouldn't get involved whatsoever. So the suggestion that Aol wants us to hype Seed is quite silly. In the three years I've been here at WoW Insider, they have never involved themselves in our editorial content/direction.
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2010 9:42PM
Turpster and Cadistra were contracted. So is Zach from the Philippines. All of our writers from the UK have been contracted. Anybody from anywhere in the world as long as they have an address can write for us on a contract. If we contract someone, we plan for them to be on our editorial staff for a good, long time.
Seed simplifies and streamlines the process so we can accept one-shot submissions without any substantial paperwork. No contracts, nothing like that. You submit a piece, we buy it, that's it. That's why it's restricted to the US only right now. The more countries that get added into the mix, the more complicated the process becomes. That doesn't mean it won't happen, that's just why it can't accept just anybody. The process changes for every single country in the world based on local laws and regulations. The process for me in the US is not the same as someone from Canada or something from the UK or someone from Australia.
JC_Icefox Oct 1st 2010 7:43PM
Deathwing went plumb loco and started wrecking everything.
Where there was once mountains, valleys lie.
Where there was once grass, lava flows.
I will now do an interpretive dance to simulate the destruction.
/target [Snapvine Watermelon]
/cast [Sledgehammer of Wrath]
-Fin
/bow
A5 Oct 1st 2010 7:43PM
Vashj'ir: Target not in line of sight. A love story.
Iirdan Oct 1st 2010 7:53PM
It's more of a love triangle, really. "You can't use that here" is involved as well.
Thorie Oct 1st 2010 7:49PM
I'm up for it, I've never done Journalism work so it definately won't be very pleasant. I'd like to focus mainly on my favorite zone - Thousand Needles
Noyou Oct 1st 2010 7:58PM
Do we really have to go through this every single time a call for submission goes out? If you feel the need to get your submission posted that bad, make a friend in the US and have them submit it in their name.
Ed Ross Oct 1st 2010 8:53PM
Yes, Noyou, we DO have to go through this again and again, because this limitation is beyond ridiculous.
Plus, if a person writes something, he/she wants to get the credit, not let someone else have their name attached to it.
It's not because something doesn't bother you that it won't bother someone esle. Try to view things from the other person point of view.
Rufio Oct 1st 2010 8:58PM
That's a good idea!