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Recent Comments:
Forum post of the day: Cliques aren't just for high school anymore {WoW}
Jul 1st 2008 9:47AM Cliques aren't necessarily bad things, they are only bad if they are set up to exclude and make others around you feel left out. At the base level, a guild is a clique, and it needs to be treated that way.
Want to start making people feel welcome? Have a guild greeting (or individually chosen greeting) that you spam whenever you log on, or anyone else in the guild logs on. Make it silly or meaningful to your guild name. Set up a macro for it, and tell all the officers to do it as well. Make people feel welcome and important, like you are glad to see them every time they log in. Make them feel like they belong.
It's little things like that that will help morale, and help the sense of belonging for guild members. No one should begrudge anyone the opportunity to play with friends and family--it's a game, you should play with whomever you want to play with--but take every opportunity to make your guildies feel like they are part of the group and not just being used for their role, their gear, or their professions.
Treat your whole guild as a clique. Don't try to hold them back if they want to do things outside the guild, help them to achieve their goals. Do they want to raid content you haven't gotten to yet? Help them take their mains to other guilds or raid groups, introduce them to people you might know, but ask them to leave their alts in your guild. Ask them to join a private channel for the guild, friends, and allies, so everyone can keep in touch. Treat them like you value the player, not just the character or what they can do for you, just as you would like to be treated.
People will come and go, but the least amount of resentment and guilt involved in the process, the stronger the bonds between guildies. Your guild members are people, not just characters, and it shouldn't matter which characters are in the guild, their loyalty will remain with the group of people that they feel valued by, important to, and a part of the group. Within that larger group, there will always be people with individual relationships and bonds, but if there's a sense of cohesion in the guild as a whole, that isn't going to matter.
Can WoW be beaten? {WoW}
May 2nd 2008 12:14PM What bothers me most about this conversation is the institutionalized sexism of gaming that is reflected in many of the posters' comments. Children's Week and vanity pets are what women want? Wives won't want their husbands playing games with naked breasts in them? Women won't play because they can't appreciate the "neanderthalian" lore of Conan for what it is, a story and a reflection of a set of cultural values from the time Howard was writing?
F*** you.
I'm a woman gamer. I'm a raid leader and a part of the upper strata of a fairly successful guild with a fiercely loyal membership. Half the guild leadership is women, probably half the guild at this point, and we aren't playing WoW for the vanity pets.
You insult us, and you insult yourselves by thinking this is the reality. You perpetuate stereotypes.
AoC will be successful because it is new, it is different, and it hasn't yet been dumbed-down. The gameplay is unique without being overly complicated. The graphics are gorgeous, and the character creation insures that not everyone will look exactly the same, a serious problem in WoW as you get farther and farther into end-game, where everyone is min/maxing their gear, gems, enchants, etc. AoC will not have rep factions to grind, and that will bring over more and more people as Blizzard continues down the path it started with BC.
There will be plenty of women playing AoC, don't kid yourselves. We are gamers, and we are just as excited about the new MMOs in the pipeline as the men we play with. When you're talking about whether or not AoC will "kill" WoW, leave my gender out of the discussion. I'm looking for gameplay, not vanity pets.
Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding that works {WoW}
Apr 21st 2008 1:01PM We've managed to raid "casually" with a lot of success, but we have a unique situation that may not work for other guilds.
There's a group of us who started running Karazhan together as a group over a year ago at this point--we were all dedicated and serious about progress, and our casual/social guild didn't always see eye to eye with us. Many of us pulled our mains out to run in a more hardcore raiding guild, but we always did Karazhan together, regardless of what guild the players were in. Last October, we made a break from the casual/social guild and started our own, with the core membership based around the KZ group (or at least our alts). A steady trickle of folks followed us, and we formed a solid group with a mix of alts and mains. The Friday night KZ run continued with the same ten people, and we started up a second Kara run with a mix of alts and mains--we call it the Sloppy Seconds run.
Fast forward to now. We've successfully recruited a solid group and are forming up a third Kara group. We kill Gruul weekly, and are preparing to start Mags as a guild. We've got a vibrant and lively private chat channel, and our members who want more serious raiding are in raid alliances or have their mains in raid guilds. In fact, we have so many members with characters in the #14 raid guild on our server, currently running BT and MH, that we've formed a relationship with the entire guild. They bring their alts to our casual runs whenever we need more people, and when they do "fun runs" of SSC or TK, our guildies fill out their ranks. We can see the content without the hours that they run, and we even pick up loot upgrades.
The ten of us still raid KZ on Friday nights, full clear in 2.5 hours. We DE most of the loot, collecting badges and viewing it as a relaxing and fun social run, occasionally dragging in a new guildie or an alt to power gear them.
It works because we've fostered relationships with these groups without losing our own identities. We don't hold our membership back if they want to progress further--as the raid officer I will actively look for groups for any guildie who wants to raid more than the guild does, and will help them gear up their alt for our runs if they want to do so. The players matter more to us than the characters.
For any given run, our raid group may be made up of half KZ-geared mains and half undergeared alts, but those undergeared alts are from experienced players who are serious raiders, and we progress like you wouldn't believe. Most of our guild members who raid with us on their mains are adults with families and responsibilities outside of the game, and I've shaped the raid schedule around their schedule, and that's the schedule we recruit for. So far, it's been working. As soon as we gear up the latest recruits--I estimate about three weeks--we're heading to Mags, then Lurker and VR.
Blizzard tweaks XP at level 70 {WoW}
Mar 31st 2008 4:07PM It's very possible that you do continue to earn phantom xp into level 70, and there's code when you install the expansion that wipes out any above a certain level of "lifetime xp."
Hands-on with Ideazon's Zboard gaming keyboard {WoW}
Jan 27th 2008 8:50PM I don't get to use any of these fancy keyboards or keypads...I'm on a mac, and I mouse with my left hand.
Kinda blows that these things aren't adaptable.
Blood Pact: So you've picked a Lock ... {WoW}
Nov 21st 2007 11:10AM I love my pigtailed gnome lock. Adorably evil. And Escape Artist can be handy.
For pony!
Preparing for 2.3: Guild Banks {WoW}
Nov 5th 2007 2:09PM #14, I think your math is a little off, because you aren't factoring in the banker/GL into the equation. The guild bank slots aren't replacing the existing core banker (who is in their own guild, so probably not a fun character to progress). You've got their personal bags, bank, bank bags, etc., plus whatever you want to invest in extras. I have three bankers right now, and this means I can free up two whole character slots by consolidating it down to one banker and two purchased guild bank tabs. Well worth the 250g in my opinion, because now I have room for more characters at the expansion. I imagine the folks at Blizzard have actually considered the fun of the game, not just people taking advantage of expanded storage.
And for #15, sure there will be a lot of activity over the next month and after the patch as people realize how this can benefit them, but it'll die down. So what if there's a million frivolous guild tags out there? Not like we pay taxes for them...yet. And I know a number of single-player guilds already, or some limited to five or less people, for folks that don't want the harassment of being unguilded, but want to stay as a private group. Should they be punished and kept from having a guild bank because they haven't stocked their ranks with people they don't want or need to have around?
