Posts with tag guild-applications

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her shadowy cohort Fox Van Allen makes her a sandwich.

Last week, I talked about the application process of joining a new raiding guild and all the little things priests have to keep in mind when venturing out in search of a new guild. This week, I'll be finishing the series with advice on how to seal the deal and become a full-fledged member of your new, dream raiding guild. To do that, you'll need to complete and pass a trial.

A trial is when you play with your potential new guild and show off your actual skill at the game, rather than just your shiny application. It is your one chance to show under their scrutinizing eyes that you're capable of slaying internet dragons with them. For a healer, this is a very stressful time, because it's not as simple as showing up and beating everyone else on the DPS meters. Even if you make no mistakes, it's hard to assess healers if other players around you are equally skilled. Let's discuss some of the finer points of showing others you're a worthy healer, and as the headline implies, put a priestly spin on it.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen handles the shadows (and laundry). Dawn hates Battlecruisers.

Anyone who knows me moderately well will know that at any given time there is a 50/50 chance that I won't be in a guild.

Why? Because like Romeo searching for love, I am constantly trying to find the perfect guild for me. I'm an incredibly volatile person (in every sense of the word) and in the wrong environment I'm not a particularly happy person. If I'm not happy, I don't play well, and if I don't play well then I'm not bringing anything to the raid. Thus I'm always searching, always writing applications, and always redoing my ugly UI every time I crash land on a new server with bright eyes and hopes that I'm finally in the right place.

This month I am once again looking for a new guild and thought I'd let you guys in on the process. So if you've ever thought of taking your raids and PVE a little more seriously, I've got a lot of good information for you. If you also happen to be a healing priest, I have some specifics on what you'll need to be mindful of.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Starting a new guild in WoW is an uphill battle. Make no mistake: It's not an endeavor to undertake lightly. Every server has established guilds that you'll be competing against with an unknown "brand."

Even so, the number of players you need to recruit to experience most of what WoW has to offer is a mere 12-15. In that sense, taking a guild from an idea to a fully fledged community is much easier now than in the past. For players who are unhappy with their current situation and wondering why they can never find a guild that's just right for them, why not create your own?

WoW needs dedicated player leadership now more than ever. Too many guilds are failing because their leaders and officers have burned out on the game after playing for so many years.

Taking up the mantle of leadership brings with it many pitfalls. But of all the mistakes that a new leader can make, these three are the ones most likely to turn into major headaches -- or even guild-shattering drama.

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.

The Drama Mamas roundup post with followup from letters we've featured in previous Drama Mamas columns will run in just a few more weeks. So there's still time to send us an email at DramaMamas@wow.com if you would to share what's happened with your situation since we last heard from you.

Dear Drama Mamas,

I started playing the game about a month after The Burning Crusade was released. I was still a kid, and gave my toon a foolish name. I know my name gets some weird responses, and when I race change to a worgen in Cataclysm, I am going to change my name.

Anyway, I play on a RP server ... which only happened because my brother (who now does not play) randomly picked it when he started. I started playing after him and thus chose the same server. My server is fairly weak when it comes to progression guilds, with only one having defeated heroic Lich King-25 (and it was after 4.0.1). For the duration of my Wrath WoW career, I was in a mid-level progression guild for my server, which got to 11/12 in ICC Regular. I was fairly disappointed, because I really want to get an achievement mount. The guild leader gave up trying to lead, and this week he joined the #2 guild on the server. He said he still plans to lead the guild I am in on his alt, but I know that is not going to work out. You can't lead a progression guild on an alt, while competing for server firsts on your main.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

Last week, I discussed how players interested in Cataclysm's guild perks can get into guilds without becoming "freeloaders." Today, I'll look at the issue from an officer's perspective. I'll examine the drawbacks of having freeloaders in your guild, steps you can take to filter them and methods for dealing with them if they make it past those filters.

What do I mean by a freeloader? A freeloader is a player who is in your guild purely out of self-interest, who has no desire to contribute to the guild in any way. In short, a freeloader is there only for your precious, precious perks.

Are freeloaders a problem?

A few freeloaders on your roster won't be a major issue, in most cases. You can simply hope that they'll keep to themselves and won't actively cause problems. They may even chip in some guild experience when they have an active day. Small guilds may actually decide to seek out such players to help them level up faster. I don't recommend it, but you will level faster with more players, up to a point.

Larger guilds won't benefit much from inviting freeloaders. You'll get all the experience you need from the players you trust, so there's no real advantage (aside from a little extra cash) to inviting more players. In fact, doing so carries a bevy of risks.

Most "srs bznz" raiding guilds require an application. Of course, about half the time, these applications are just to get into the guild's raid, while the other half requires the application to even get in the guild's non-raiding ranks. Either way, the entire point of an application process is for a guild to take a look at a new player, check out their gear, and get an idea whether the player is viable for that guild's content.

I'm not sure who invented the current version of the generic "raiding application," but it seems like most guilds use the same rough format. There's some questions about PvE, gear, spec, and even some questions about PvP. (Of course, guilds that don't give a whit about PvP will probably skip this question, but I still see a lot of raiding applications that do care how many honorable kills you've acquired.

Let's take a look behind the cut and talk over some of the most common questions you'll find on raiding applications, and what you should consider when answering those questions. Of course, before we do that, remember: the best advice is to be honest, open, and avoid being tricksy.

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. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

On January 24th, 2008 at 9:27 p.m. central I was officially welcomed into the WoW Insider family. At 9:52 p.m. central that same evening Alex Ziebart was brought on board. Between the 25 minutes that I was on staff and Alex wasn't, I had already leaked three Blizzard secrets, pissed off Blizzard PR four times, got an angry email from Ghostcrawler about calling warriors the redheaded step children of WoW, and was fired and rehired at least five separate times by Liz Harper.

Alex, my friend, you have a lot of catching up to do. Get crackin' you whipper snapper!

In all seriousness, between my first post and this one, the two years I've spent writing here have been awesome. It's a job that I never thought I'd have, and definitely one that I never thought I'd stay in this long. And out of all the columns I write, penning The Queue twice a week for you all is some of the most fun I have. So let's get to it!

Justin asked...

"What's Frostmourne doing in the armory?"

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.

The comments section is usually a cacophony of voices seeking to agree or disagree with the main post, discredit previous commentors or make some pointless point ("first" -- /facepalm). This week, readers pulled together in a more truly interactive relationship, offering up questions, tips, insights and well thought-out suggestions and ideas. Take a trip through the pickings this week on ways to make professions more interesting, more Star Trek Easter eggs, getting real about DPS, copyright issues, snappier headlines ... and even a post devoted exclusively to guild and player recruitment notices.

Our friend Lassirra (who has just recently started writing Scattered Shots for us here at WoW Insider) has a great post over on her personal blog telling Hunters how to apply for a guild, but really, most of her advice would work for anyone trying to move on up to a better guild situation. I've long said that one of the key indicators of a guild worth getting into is that they require you to apply, so following these tips when actually filling out that application will very much help you find your spot in the game, whether it's raiding at the highest levels, teaming up with other PvP afficionados, or just getting yourself in the right casual circles.

The first few suggestions are just about following the rules: answer all of the questions, don't be weird, and don't put anything on the app (like major drama in your history or major spelling errors or offensive language) that would let the guild's officers give you a definite "no" right away. Second, know your character and your class. As Lassirra's twitter people say, the standards for most guilds' recruitment (even great guilds) are pretty low. As long as you're easy-going and you know how to play your class and have an interest in bettering your character, you're going to be pretty much instantly accepted into 90% of guilds out there. You don't have to throw together a big Flash presentation (though it might help).

And finally, don't worry about rejection. This may all sound like applying for a job, but it's not nearly that serious -- if one guild decides to pass on your app, go find another one you like and apply there. The extra time will be worth it: if all you've done in terms of being in a guild so far is join up with someone shouting in the Trade chat, you owe it to yourself to, as Lassirra says, put the time in to find a guild that's right for you.

As you can see, today's Daily Quest is brought to you by the letter P. Look people, it's the best I got til the PTR comes up. Oops, I just did it again. Phooey! Aiighh! I can't stop!

• Our very own Matt Low has a word of advice on raid management that applies to just about any situation in the game at World of Matticus. Don't let your guild runs turn into the picture above.
  
• Matticus also has a great piece on what guilds are looking for in applications. It goes nicely hand in hand with our own 8 Things Raiding Guilds Want To See From Their Applicants.
• Flash of Moonfire has a multipart series on Paladin Healing of Naxx-10
• Part 1 - The Arachnid Quarter
  
• Part 2 - The Plague Quarter
  
• Part 3 - The Military Quarter
• Rawrbitchrawr has their seventh podcast up. In this one they discuss Ulduar, upcoming changes to Hunters, Mages and Warlocks and leveling spec plus ability rotations for Death Knights.
• Diaries of a Marksman Hunter has posted their first podcast. They gathered many different Hunters to cover a variety of topics.
• The Holy Light lists their Top 10 Wintergrasp QQs.
• Armory Musings looks at different ways to weigh the importance of gear and finds an AddOn that fits the needs of his massive ongoing WoW Armory stat project.

Casual Hardcore has an excellent post, titled "Not All Guilds Are Created Equal," on the mental process you'll want to engage in before applying to a raiding guild. It dovetailed pretty neatly into a recent post by our own Matticus on "6 Ways to Reject a Guild App Without Sounding Like an Angry Ex." Both articles have a lot of sound advice that's well worth your time if you find yourself looking to change guilds or get into raiding; the former is written a bit more from the perspective of a player-applicant, the latter from the officers charged with saying yes or no.

While reading these, I was reminded of comments I've seen on guild applications during my time as a raider. Some simply expand upon the points addressed by Casual Hardcore and Matticus; others were slightly different sentiments people were prone to airing whenever they recognized certain undesirable patterns. I've never been a recruitment officer (my guild leader has correctly observed that, as a soft touch, I would cheerfully rubber-stamp every match-girl, axe-murderer, and mortgage lender on the server), but over time it's been hard not to get a sense of what that person would want to see when they open a new application:

[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Readers put their heads together on all sorts of topics this week: the basics of tanking, the lore (or lack thereof) behind Deathknights from every race as well as Deathknight profession leveling, and a long thread on add-ons readers crave.

Readers also talked about the recent world-first raiding accomplishments – who cares, and who doesn't? Readers on both sides of the coin came together in a round of applause for SK's Kil'jaeden kill video. Readers got into a scramble again over the age-old issue of age, before finally uniting to reminisce about unconventional dungeon runs.

Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.

[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The excitement of the all the new Wrath of the Lich King buzz this week must have gone to some readers' heads, making them testier than usual. This week saw several squabbles in post comments, from mild differences of opinion to outright controversial debate. News about the shape of raid instances to come brought out plenty of opinions both for and against the new raid sizes. Should Arthas be 10-mannable? With even well known raiding guilds such as Death and Taxes burning out and moving on, are raiding applications still necessary in this day and age?

The comments got hot and heavy in a post that sparked plenty of discussion about racism in Arena team names. Readers also seemed of two minds at the efforts of top-tanked 5v5 Arena team M L H, who've turned out to be prolific points-sellers. But commenters pulled together in a post advising one reader whose system seems to have slowed to a crawl. And reader Kershner wrapped it all up on a chilled note for the weekend with a great macro to help us kick back and enjoy some fishing.

Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one, silly!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.

[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Readers seemed to be on helpful mode this week at WoW Insider, with lots of mechanics and theory questions addressed in post comments. The Very Serious Business of Guild Business was definitely top of mind, as readers shared insights on raid scheduling, application procedures and fine-tuning the performance of lovable but noobish guildmates. Readers also talked about wearing their WoW on their sleeves, the whole e-sports concept and the continued fill-in-the-blanks-until-WotLK trend of retro raiding.

Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.