Posts with tag gm

A bit of an odd story has been floating around the WoW community today, revolving around former GM Amanda Lewis and her claims against Blizzard for alleged copyright infringement and voice misappropriation. Lewis claims that Blizzard, without permission, used her voice and songs in creating the baby murlocs, the adorable squeaky versions of the terrifying fish-man abominations. The complaint seeks damages for the misuse of her works.

While we don't have much more information other than the bit that's been reported, one of the key factors could be the clauses in her contract governing what happens to things employees create while on the job. Many companies have such invention policies in place to capitalize on employees' ideas and give them a place to go with said ideas to potentially make them real.

The interesting part of the complaint -- and for me, the most heartwarming, because you could tell a lawyer wrote it -- is that Lewis is claiming the baby murloc has become the de facto mascot of World of Warcraft. What do you guys think? When I think Warcraft, I think orcs, humans, war, yadda yadda -- not baby murlocs. If you're interested in a bit more of an in-depth analysis, look forward to my Lawbringer column next week.

Here's hoping for a quick settlement or summary judgmgrlrglrglrlglgglrrrllll.

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

The issue of age in WoW has been debated in this column before. Some guilds have age requirements. Some do not. We have discussed whether it matters that the progression raid you find yourself in is led by a 15-year-old or a 25-year-old. For some, it does. Maturity and language are the usual reasons given for age restrictions. For others, if the person does his job, who cares if he is 13 or 33? A 33-year-old can be more immature than a 13-year-old. As this topic has been debated before, that's not what I'm going to explore. What I'm curious about is, does the age of your guild leader matter?

Leading a guild is, I believe, first and foremost, a labor of love. Essentially, you get very few thanks and an awful lot of "waaaaah." It's not unlike being the leader of a small country. No one thanks you for spending four hours putting together a schedule for the month, but they are quick to complain when the right complement of people doesn't log on, so a raid has to be postponed. You find yourself dealing with inappropriate behavior from all levels. You have to call people on the carpet for something they are or are not doing. They pitch a fit and leave in the most drama-provoking manner they can. You look at what you, personally, would like to do and schedule one event to, say, get that last Burning Crusade raid done for the meta -- only no one shows up. There are all sorts of people online, but they are off doing their own thing. Three days later, someone says, "Hey, how come we never run X?" ... which just happens to be the raid you wanted to run. Bang your head on the desk much?

Submitting a GM ticket has always been sort of an arcane process -- you're not really sure where your ticket goes, or to who, or what steps have been taken to resolve your particular issue. It's a pain! Thankfully, it's always been a long-term goal of the support department to demystify and improve the support process for players, and Blizzard has unveiled a big new step in that direction: a new support website.

What's so great about it? Well, it collects all lines of communication for support in one place and attempts to provide automated help for your request where applicable, while you wait for a representative. The biggest improvement, though, is that the site lets you track the progress of your support requests. This includes tech support emails, billing inquiries, and yes, GM tickets. You can edit your ticket while it's in the queue, track it, and even update your ticket and place it back in queue after it's been closed if you feel it wasn't addressed properly.

The full text of Blizzard's announcement is after the cut.

This may seem like common sense to a lot of people, but it came up as an issue recently on the official Customer Support forums. The message is simple: Don't file false GM tickets. Whether you're doing it to get back at someone you dislike, to play a prank on someone, or just because you're bored, don't do it.

Support forum agent Nevalistis points out that false reports are is against the Game Master interaction policy. Each GM petition is taken seriously, and if the GMs see a pattern of frivolous or false reports, they can and will take action from warnings all the way up to suspension or permanent account closure.

Those of us who have tried to petition a GM lately know how long the queue times are -- so from all of us with legitimate problems, please make sure your ticket is legit. It may save your account, it may save a GM's sanity, and it'll certainly help those with real problems get the help they need a little faster.

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Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

This week, we tackle a topic that I find rather scary, as a mother of a budding drama queen and gaming geek.

Hi,

This may be way beyond the kind of thing you can help with but my guild has recently suffered a few bits of drama that have revealed a worrying situation and I'm having a hard time working out what to do next.

About a month ago a young girl (mid teens) joined the guild, we don't have a specific age range although as a casual end game guild we expect a certain level of maturity. She didn't interact much with the guild although one guy who helped her out a bit she really latched onto. She wouldn't run heroics unless he was there and they often moved into different vent channels to be alone. After a couple of weeks we had to kick her from the guild as she simply couldn't take criticism. It also turned out that she had recently been pulled out of school due to depression although some of the higher level officers in the guild were speculating on if that was genuine or was an excuse.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

It happens to all of us at one point or another. You're riding into Stormwind, perhaps admiring the dragon head that someone has strung up on the gates, and you're headed to the auction house when your eyes light upon the Visitor's Center. Inside, a bright-eyed young hero, very much like yourself, is speaking to Aldwin Laughlin, the Guild Master. Suddenly, you think, "That could be me. I could be in there, buying a guild charter and designing a tabard. I could found my own guild."

You dismount, take the first two steps at a bound -- but suddenly, you stop in your tracks. All at once, you stagger under the weight of responsibility. The trouble with starting a guild, you realize, is that once you do it, you actually have to run a guild.

Of course for some, this isn't a drawback -- it's a perk! There are plenty of aspiring guild masters out there who have a vision, execute it, and become great leaders. Then there are those of us who consider starting a guild but balk at the particulars; others who create small, friends-only or alt guilds just to have a fun guild name or a guild bank; and many more who are happy to leave the burden of leadership to someone else.

Have you thought about starting your own guild? If you went through with it, how did it turn out? Is the guild still around today? If you thought better of it, what stopped you? Or are you still making up your mind?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

My husband is our guild master. He's also our guild recruiter, website maintenance man, raid leader and master looter, as well as one of the top DPSers on fights he doesn't have to choreograph. He's the reason I play the game, as well as part of the glue that holds our guild together. As such, he's a big inspiration to me. Not only is he in a demanding leadership position, but he knows the classes and helps people improve their characters and rotations. Between us, we have many classes at 80 and he plays them all well.

Me ... not so much. I raid endgame on a couple characters, but I wouldn't be the player I am without his help. Now, I've heard many of the stereotypes out there, from the dreaded wife aggro, to the girlfriends/wives who play and people wish they would go back to the kitchen, ad nauseum. I will be the first to tell you my downfalls. Heck, my idea of successful PvP is Nova, Blink, Invis and fly away! But I try my darndest to not be that GM's Wife. If I look bad, he looks bad, and that reflects poorly on the guild.

I'm sure we all have horror stories of wives not pulling their own weight, but I like to think I'm here on my own merit. I am a DPSer, a healer, the guild chef, the potion brewer, a pet and mount collector, a girl and the GM's wife, and I'm proud of it. Are you a gaming wife, or a GM's wife -- and if so, how do you assert yourself among the good ol' boys? On the flip side, where have you seen significant others not making the cut?

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

The video game industry is affected by the legal world far more often and much more deeply than you can imagine. (Unless you are a lawyer, in which case you know the trials and tribulations of conforming to all sorts of regulations and laws around the world, just to release a video game.) Just look at how much Blizzard had to change Wrath of the Lich King for a Chinese release! The Lawbringer aims to give you a look into the pop topics that relate to the games we love and play every day, with some practical advice to help you avoid some of the more nefarious and potentially surprising issues that crop up alongside virtual worlds.

This week, The Lawbringer gives you some basic tips on dealing with internet harassment, in game and out. The sad fact is that there are people out there looking to ruin your day, and not just by corpse camping or spamming trade chat. Hopefully, with a little knowledge on your side collected from people who have already had to walk this rough path, you can successfully fight back.

There are some things in World of Warcraft I wish I could have done differently. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like had I rolled a different class other than a priest. There are bosses that I wish I had killed before they became irrelevant. Alas, it all boils down to time that I wish I had. As both a GM and a player, it is difficult to foresee the results of your actions and you never know what the correct choice is. Even when killing bosses and healing my raider group, I've made crucially wrong decisions. And it sucks when I realize a global cooldown spent on a Pain Suppression instead of Power Word: Shield would've saved a wipe.

Have you ever experienced a moment or made a decision that you've regretted since?

A guildie got the above whisper Tuesday night. (I have blocked out the website so as not to promote this phishing attempt.) We have reports of this happening to a lot of people in-game right now as yet another attempt to get you to go to a site, so they can steal your login info and defile your characters.

Let's dissect the above whisper:

• It's one whisper made to look like two. This will work if your chat settings match the scammer's chat settings, but if you've fiddled with your font or chat window, then the formatting will be off and the scam will be more obvious.
• The whisper is from a garbage name. All "players" I've seen with random characters have been scammers or gold selling barkers. So anything after such a name should be considered highly suspect.
• It says [Game Master]GM. The scammers aren't even trying here. Blizzard GMs have names and have <GM> before their names.
• It sends you to a non-Blizzard site. Don't go to any website you get in tells or in-game mail as a general rule. If you have received a ban of any kind, you will receive an email to the account you have on file with your subscription info.

Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.

We know, we know: A hot, fresh Succubus managing your every need - in game, in Vent, on the forums ... How's this a problem, again? Unfortunately, we suspect the reader who submitted the headline question this week was thinking of the more traditional type of succubus: the life force-sucking vampires who impose a real-life Curse of Exhaustion on their hapless victims. Yeah, this guy from this week's headline sub-mission (har, har) has got it that bad. The Drama Mamas exorcise his demon, plus explore what to do when you catch a young guildmate indulging in some not-so-pretty behavior, after the break.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Monday afternoon. I know I am! Well, actually, I don't know that. I'm writing this Sunday night, and I don't have a time machine powerful enough to show me what's happening tomorrow afternoon. Ideally, though? I'm having a wonderful time. Ask me tomorrow (which is today), and maybe I'll have a different answer.

Ryael asked...

"I was watching the BlizzCon feed online and there was a short interview with a man that was advertising how you could purchase a sizeable poster with one of our characters on it. Any idea what site that was from?"

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Patch week? Oh, yeah. Speaking of patch week, we all knew that patch week was going to be rough. We knew there would be delays, and bugs, and restarts, and false starts. We knew that hardcore players would gripe, that newbies would be confused and that there would be plenty of contentious debate from all sides.

What we didn't know is that we could be caught unaware by even geek crafts. Take it from mibluvr13, who took one look at the baby Hordie shirt
featured in this week's World of WarCrafts column and began groping for the Escape key. "Ooooh, god," mibluvr13 moaned. "I never thought WoW.com would punch me in the biological clock. BRB, having a kid."

The week in reader comments, through the bleary eyes of our punch-drunk, patch-distracted readers, after the break.

The We Have a Tabard series is designed to help guild leaders, officers, members achieve their goals to maximize their cooperative experience.

I'm relatively new to leading a raiding guild. I've been working on building and training my team for about six months. I've been leading the recruiting and correcting members, managing raids, and in general trying to make my online family as functional as possible. It's a lot of work for one person, and no matter how much I love my guildies I have to admit that I am tired.

The best thing that I've ever done for myself and my guild is to ask for help. I have some great players in my guild that are well respected by other members and the server community. They have expertise in areas that do I do not. Probably most importantly they are less likely to mince words than I do and are willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Having some backup has helped some become more invested in the guild and has really lightened my load.

Choosing who to ask for help can be a tough call. It does little good to select only your favorites or your friends, if they are not successful leaders. Take several factors into account when selecting a council of officers:

One of the things which captivated me when I first started playing WoW were the whispered myths surrounding GMs. Being that this was my first proper foray into the magical and mysterious world of online gaming I had no real idea of what exactly their strange beings where except that they were uber-powerful and acted as both peacekeepers on the forums and tech support in-game.

Over the years, I've submitted my fair share of tickets. Indeed once during the Wrath beta I and a bunch of other hapless explorers got trapped under Dalaran bank and I had to ask a GM to teleport them out (being a druid I just teleported to Moonglade -- after twenty minutes of waiting for my hearthstone to cooldown and them remembering I had an escape route). However in all my dealings with them in-game I've never actually met a GM in-game (on the other hand I've met a bunch in real life). So I want to know, readers, have you ever seen a GM with your own (virtual) eyes? Did they appear to you in that robe get up seen in the manual or as something a little more scary? Come on and spill the beans, I want to hear about all your fascinating GM encounters!