Posts with tag promotions

Blizzard offering 7 days of game time to select accounts

by Anne Stickney Oct 25th 2014 at 8:00PM

If you haven't upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, you may want to check your email. In fact, even if you have upgraded your account, you may want to check your email. Blizzard has quietly released a promotion giving players 7 free days of game time for select accounts, randomly offered to both current and returning players. As with any promotion, scams are an inevitability, so if you do see one of these emails pop up in your inbox, don't click any links in the email itself, just to be on the safe side.

Please note that this is a limited availability offer -- the promotion isn't being offered to all players. Community Manager Bashiok clarified the nature of the promotion on the official forums yesterday.

Bashiok

From time to time we run different promotional offers for a subset of players, but they're generally not something offered to everyone. Which is why this may work on the accounts that were offered the promotion, and not others.

source

However, players are reporting that they have received the promotion without the accompanying email, so you might just have a present waiting for you on your account. To check, log into your Battle.net account, click on your World of Warcraft license, and head to the Referrals & Rewards tab at the bottom of the page. If you have been offered free game time, a link will allow you to activate the game time and apply it to your account. According to the email, the offer expires on November 5 -- so make sure you redeem your game time now, before the offer disappears.

Filed under: News items, Warlords of Draenor

Officers' Quarters: 7 tips for becoming an officer

by Scott Andrews Jan 21st 2013 at 12:00PM

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.

So you've been reading Officers' Quarters for years and you're curious about this whole leadership thing, but you don't know how to go about getting the attention of the existing officers. This week, a player follows up on a previous OQ column to ask how she can get promoted. I've got seven pieces of advice for her, but first, the email:

Hey there Scott!

Awhile ago, I wrote you about starting my own guild with a few family members, and you advised me to stay in my current guild and work my way up to officer.

After reading your advice, I have a few follow-up questions.

My main concern is how to go about becoming an officer. I don't want to necessarily just blurt out "hey, I wanna be an officer", because if I were the GL, I'd think that the person who said that was demanding the position. However, if I don't say anything, how will the GL know I'm interested?

Like I said, I know I'm not owed anything. I really love the guild I'm in and have lots of ways I'd like to see the guild improve. Any advice you can give would be great.

Thanks,
Guilded Warrior

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Officers' Quarters: 3 resolutions to improve your guild in 2013

by Scott Andrews Dec 31st 2012 at 12:00PM

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.

If your guild has been struggling during the last weeks of 2012, now is the time to take steps that ensure a better 2013. Here are three ways you could get the New Year started off right.

1. Add fresh blood to the officer ranks.

Are your current officers pushing themselves too hard? Or are they doing barely anything at all? If so, then it's high time you took a look at what needs to be done around the guild and who's actually doing it. You may have some lame-duck officers who shouldn't be officers anymore, and some hard-working regular members who deserve a promotion.

Adding new officers -- and/or culling useless ones -- can energize your leadership corps. Having more hands to man the ship can spread the work around and ease burnout symptoms. New officers also means new ideas that can spark new guild activities or better approaches to old ones. New officers can also inject some much-needed enthusiasm as they seek to make their mark and prove to the vets that they are worthy of the rank. If your guild has been stagnating lately, a new officer or two can liven things up.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Officers' Quarters: Leaks in the ship

by Scott Andrews Oct 1st 2012 at 9:00AM

An Alliance ship takes fire from a Horde airship

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.

You know things are bad in your guild when a newly appointed officer decides to leak private officer information to nonofficers. This week, an officer/raid leader seeks advice for a guild that feels like its sinking.

Hi Scott

I belong to a small social guild with less than 400 on the roster. Given that a lot of people have alts the number of players is going to be a lot less than that, though I'm not sure of the actual figure. Recently the GM posted on the MotD that the guild needed new officers and could people please send him recommendations. The next day I logged on and saw 4 people being congratulated on their promotion. I'm a senior officer in this guild and I had thought that it would go to a vote before anyone was promoted. . . .

I asked the GM why we needed more officers and what their responsibilities would be. His response was "we're down to 16 and need more for advisor's and to help the guild". None of the officers currently have specific duties and everything falls to three of the senior officers, myself and two others. Most of the officers don't even attend the meetings he promoted them to advise at.

This morning I logged on to drama as the new promotion (that I'd had reservations about) had leaked some officer notes to their friends in the guild. These notes I admit weren't flattering but they were accurate of their behaviour which is why there were there.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

World of Warcraft skills in the workplace

by Robin Torres Jul 7th 2012 at 8:00PM

WoW players usually spend a large amount of their leisure time in game. It's a shame that so much of what we do in Azeroth doesn't translate well on Earth. I spend a few hours a week farming herbs while digging for artifacts. If I were writing a performance review for myself (I can't stand those), how could I list that? Ability to perform tedious tasks patiently. I don't think my supervisor would be impressed.

But most people agree that quite a few skills we acquire and hone in WoW are useful into the workplace. Recently, Neri at Neri Approves! blogged about how being a guild master helps her outside of the game. Warcraft Street's Frinka tackled the same topic, but her angle is gold earning.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Officers' Quarters: Desperate appointments

by Scott Andrews Apr 2nd 2012 at 3:00PM

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.

It's certainly no rare situation when a guild leader has to scale back his or her time due to offline obligations. The right thing to do is appoint someone who's willing and able to cover your own slack. But what if that person isn't even an officer? This week, a guild member wonders whether it's time to panic.

Hi Scott!

Recently I joined a re-roll guild that has been around since the first of January. The premise of the guild is simple: new members can only join with a level one character and must level up within the guild without the help of outside resources. For a while, this worked out well. Everyone became fast friends and the guild grew to be called "the fam." But now we are approaching another month of "re-rolls," and drama has reared its ugly head.

Our GL just announced an impending life change and since then he's been markedly absent from our roster. One member posted on our forums noting that activity had declined, and another responded with suggestions on how to improve the current state of affairs. A few of the officers replied agreeing and disagreeing with various points, but the general consensus was that the members were not happy with things as they were. Before I go any farther, it helps to understand the... unique, way in which our officers are appointed.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Officers' Quarters: Classic blunders

by Scott Andrews Sep 5th 2011 at 4:00PM

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.

Last week, we heard about an incident where a player received a rather hostile in-game mail from an officer after missing a raid following the death of a relative. The issue stemmed from a lack of communication among the guild's officers.

Along that theme, this week's email describes a case where lack of communication -- and some other classic blunders -- escalated into a full-blown drama bomb.

Hey Scott,

So I'm an Officer in a medium sized guild. Our main focus is to simply have fun, help each other out, PVP, raid, and everything else in between. I've only recently become an Officer for our guild as decided by other Officers and the Guild Leader.

About a month ago we got a new recruit. Let's call him Jack. Jack is a personal friend of our guild leader which we thought was awesome. Having at least one person you know in the guild personally has always helped us stay grounded in and out of the game. My girlfriend is a recruit in the guild and one of my best friends is one of the Officers.

So about a week ago, I logged in to see that Jack had mysteriously been ranked up to Officer rank as well. This confused me. I had been in the guild for almost a year before I was even considered for a role of responsibility. I pulled out my phone and texted my Officer buddy, let's call him Bob, to come over. I explained to him that I didn't think it was very fair that Jack got to be an Officer when everyone else had to work their way up in the guild. To my surprise, Bob had no idea about Jack's promotion. There are only 3 people in our guild that can even rank someone up to Officer and that's our GL, Bob, and another high ranking Officer. Bob proceeded to contact our GL and found out that she had promoted Jack without consulting any of her officers first. Now Bob was pissed.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Officers' Quarters: An exclusive party

by Scott Andrews Sep 21st 2009 at 2:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

I get a lot of e-mails, many more than I could ever cover in this column. I hear about a lot of drama, drama of all different kinds, for all different reasons. So it always piques my interest when I read an e-mail like the one below, with an entirely new kind of guild drama. This one sounds more suited to a middle school class than a guild, but here it is: secret party drama. Read on for the details!

I am a member of a fairly progressed raiding guild. I am a member of the main raid. I am not an officer, but almost all the regular raiders are officers. In many ways the guild is good. Raiding rules and loot are fair.

However, it has become clear that the guild is dominated by a clique and that promotions to officer and most raid invites are largely based upon becoming part of the in group. Recently it was announced during raid that we would be taking a week off as many would be out of town. After the week off, during Vent chat, it became clear that the many out of town were all out of town together. That is, the guild officers were invited to an in person party (some traveled to go to it, others didn't but all were invited). I also learned that the officers intentionally tried to keep the party a secret beforehand.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Requiring authenticators for guild bank access

by Mike Schramm Sep 3rd 2009 at 7:00PM

m0rtis has an interesting question over on WoW LJ: should guilds require authenticators on the accounts of everyone in the guild with bank access? Authenticators are relatively cheap, if not free (and still in stock most of the time nowadays), so if you're running a guild and in a position where your bank is important enough to protect, should you be able to require authenticators to keep guildies from getting hacked?

There are a few caveats here that m0rtis doesn't mention, but we will: first of all, there's no way to guarantee whether someone is using an authenticator or not, so while you can make guildies promise, there's no real way to check up on them. Second, not all guild banks get emptied out due to hackers -- many guild banks get ninja'd by someone within the guild, and there's no authenticator that can protect against that. So having authenticators on bank members (or at least having them promise they've got them) isn't 100% protection. But it is something.

Filed under: Items, Tips, Guilds, Economy, Account Security

Is Recruit-A-Friend a game-killer?

by Natalie Mootz Sep 4th 2008 at 7:30PM

After reading Outland Bound's amusing tale of an encounter with a level 59 "Recruit-A-Friend" player wearing level 26 pants because of the triple-leveling benefit, I got to thinking about the gameplay ramifications of this promotion. As a marketing professional as well as a student of game design, this promotion seems to me at best a bad idea and, at worst, a game-killer.

As tight as the Blizzard team claims it is, and as much as it professes to act only in the best interest of gameplay, this promotion may have been poorly conceived. It seems like the Marketing Department had a great idea to accomplish two goals: (1) acquire more accountholders and (2) encourage current accountholders to stay. However, I wonder how well this idea was vetted by the game design team. My guess is: not well at all.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Leveling

Get DirecTV, play WoW free for 11 months

by Eliah Hecht Aug 18th 2007 at 6:50PM

For those of you who are interested in satellite television (and in the USA), DIRECTV is currently running a promotion for new customers: if you subscribe to DIRECTV and activate your account, you get a code good for 11 months of game time. In case you don't already have a copy of the game, they'll also give you a code good for upgrading a trial account into a proper account, which also comes with a free month of game time. So that's 11 months for existing WoW players, or a copy of WoW and twelve months for new players.

Note that this offer doesn't apply to existing DIRECTV subscribers, and also that they won't give you a BC upgrade code, so you'll have to buy that yourself ($40) if you don't have it already. But if you're looking to set up satellite TV service, you should jump on this -- even at the cheapest subscription rate (buying six months at a time), 11 months is worth $143. What's better than WoW? Free WoW.

Filed under: Tips

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