Posts with tag social

Officers' Quarters: Raiding without characters

by Scott Andrews Aug 1st 2011 at 2:00PM

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.

A question for the readership: How important is it to you that the players you raid with are interesting and engaging people? Is it essential, or merely a bonus?

This week, a raid leader complains that his guildmates are boring -- to the point that he's considering leaving the guild altogether. He wants to know what he can do to inject some much-needed personality into the guild.

Hi Scott

I read your column regularly and find it very insightful. I have implemented various pieces of advice within my guild to varying degrees of success so thank you for this. Now however its my turn to pose a question.

How do you create a guild with character? Let me explain this a bit with some history. I have been raid leader for my guild for the last 7-8 months and in the last 2 I inherited the GM tag as he didn't have much time to play. I was practically doing all the work anyway so this wasn't an issue. My issue is two fold, firstly I don't think I really like anyone in the guild apart from one person. And secondly it seems like I play with a bunch of automatons. This isn't to say I dislike anyone but its just they all seem to lack any sort of character and wouldn't say boo to a goose!

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Breakfast Topic: One is the loneliest number

by Caleb Scott Aug 22nd 2010 at 8:00AM

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

There is nothing better than sharing a common interest with friends, but what happens when you find yourself alone in Azeroth for long period of time? You and your friends used to spend hours playing together, raiding or simply sharing idle banter in private messages or even the dreaded trade chat. But lately, it seems that you are the only person playing. Your friends, for a multitude of reasons, simply can't find the time to play anymore. Now you're alone in a big world with no one to talk to and nothing to take the edge off the quest grinding. So what do you do?

Guilds: a toon's best friend Whether it's on a RP, PvP, normal or mixed server, a guild can keep you entertained and chatting throughout that hard grind to 80. When you find yourself stranded in an area where there isn't another living soul in sight, it's always good to know that one /g away is a group of people who will, more often than not, love to hear how things are going, both in game and out. It's a warming feeling to see that the minute you log on, another person is there to greet you with a friendly "Hey, _____."

General and trade chat If a guild is not your thing, it's always nice to take a few minutes between quests to sit in a capital city and share in some banter with your fellow players. General chat is full of other players discussing either the game itself, movies, music or a multitude of other topics. Even trade chat can be fun if you keep up with the latest internet memes, though after a period of time, it came become annoying.

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

Breakfast Topic: Mister Jones and me

by Anne Stickney Mar 26th 2010 at 8:00AM

Jones and I are buds. He's a cat that likes to hang out on the landing in the stairwell of the Legerdemain Lounge in Dalaran. He's a stealthy little guy -- he doesn't even have a listing on Wowhead, but if you stop to give Jones a /pet, he'll purr contentedly. I like to hang out in the stairwell sometimes, just Jones and me -- it's a relatively quiet spot in the middle of a usually busy area, and I can sort through my bags, chat with the guild, ~~harass trade chat~~ engage in some lively banter in local channels, and just hang out without being pestered. I've got a few different spots I like to hang out at, and the locations change every expansion or depending on what I'm focusing on at the time, but nothing beats Jones, he's the best.

I'm not sure why exactly I like finding non-crowded places to sit and chat with people -- it shouldn't really make a difference where I'm typing to people from, but I enjoy the relative solitude in what is otherwise a very busy and populated game. And every expansion it happens -- in vanilla, it was the upper buildings in the Drag in Orgrimmar. In Burning Crusade, I liked the relative quiet that could be found in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath, or the rocks up above the city. In Wrath, it's either the Underbelly, or the little landing in the Legerdemain that I share with Jones. He doesn't mind, he's a pretty well mannered kitty. Sometimes we tell each other fairy tales.

So how about you guys? Do you have a favorite spot to sit and chat? Does the generally crowded nature of Dalaran bother you? Do you, like me, seek out an area of relative solitude to hang out at when you aren't off storming the castle or otherwise occupied?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Breakfast Topic: Fancy meeting you here

by Anne Stickney Feb 18th 2010 at 8:00AM

A random reader email we received this week sparked an interesting topic of conversation among the crew here at WoW.com -- the odd places and ways people happen to meet or bump into fellow World of Warcraft players.

Some of us find fellow players through work, some of us meet them on the street or in the store, and there's no real way to identify them. Whether it's a hoodie, a sticker on a car, or someone making the familiar mouse and keyboard hand motions when mentioning they play video games, there's a peculiar thread that connects the millions of people that play WoW. It's identifying that thread that can sometimes be tricky. By the end of the conversation, it was pretty much decided that WoW players need some sort of signal to indicate they play, a secret hand gesture of some sort.

As for myself, the most random of these moments was selling my television. I found a buyer who arrived with a friend to pick up the thing and noticed the friend was wearing a WoW hat. Upon asking him if he played, I discovered not only did he play, he had played on my server, and not only had he played on my server, he played a character that I'd randomly /licked in Dalaran out of sheer boredom one evening when turning in a cooking daily.

Small world.

With a game that has over 11 million players, running into someone that plays the game at some point in real life is almost a given. Where have you met your fellow players? What's the most random, unexpected moment you've run into someone that plays WoW?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

How reputation governs the game

by Mike Schramm Dec 11th 2009 at 4:00PM

Ravius over at Kill Ten Rats ruminates on the importance of reputation in these very social games that we're playing with each other, and it resonated with me in terms of a few different things going on in World of Warcraft right now. We've talked lots before about ninjas and how that back-and-forth works -- in that case, karma is directly driven by what other people think of you, and of course that's seen more weakly in lots of other places around the game, including guild recruitment, your friends list, and just the general server at large.

Ravius talks mostly about the negative reputations we earn, and certainly that's a powerful motivator for a lot of people. But positive reputation is also a strong force in this game -- I'm interested to see how we deal with earning and keeping positive reputation in the new Dungeon Finder and eventually the Battle.net system. Gone may be the days when you build up a good reputation by saying "remember me if you need a good DPS" at the end of a run. It'll be interesting to see what methods we replace that one with.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Guilds, Instances, Raiding

How we learn the jargon

by Mike Schramm Dec 5th 2009 at 2:00PM

We get a lot of requests here on the site from researchers trying to study you World of Warcraft players. Everybody with a research grant, apparently, wants to study you -- your psychology, your interaction, and the relationship you have with your avatar. We get so many requests, actually, that we usually have to pass -- we're not smart enough to choose which ones are legit and which ones aren't, and if we posted them all, we'd do nothing but post requests for survey answers all day. But I like the way alckly has done her research over on WoW Ladies LJ: she posted a question about WoW jargon, and you can see everyone's answers right away.

We definitely have lots of jargon to go around, from LFG to twinks to PuGs and a lot more. But what's most interesting about all of these answers, to me, is the way it spreads. There's a little bit of Googling and research going on, but really it's a very social thing -- you see "wtb" in the trade channel, and then you ask someone you know what it means (rather than looking it up somewhere else). Thus, definitions of the terms are very organic: "pst" could mean "pssst, here's a whisper" or "please send tell," and yet because they both mean the same thing, both meanings propagate. Likewise, usage tends to be a very social thing -- the person who types "LFG strat need heals" won't type "would u like 2 go to strat?"

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends

Groupcrafting: The art of getting a group together

by Mike Schramm Jun 19th 2009 at 7:00PM

Tales of the Aggronaut sent us this multipart guide he wrote on one of the things we all do in the game that might nevertheless be tough for a lot of people: actually getting a group together. It sounds like a simple thing (just ask people whether they want to group up or not), but as you probably know from experience, sometimes it can be pretty tough. So TotA set out, instead, to do a from-the-ground-up guide, from how to find and network with people in the game to how to build a group piece-by-piece.

And I like it a lot -- he starts with a preamble with some general networking tips, including finding social channels to join (many guilds and realms have a few social channels constantly filled with folks LFG or interested in playing socially) and putting together a solid friends list, then goes on to explain how to communicate (probably a great read for anyone in any part of the game) and then how to actually build a WoW group, from core classes to splitting up class roles. Very impressive -- while most veteran players have probably heard or done this stuff before, it's nice to see a clear, concise guide that starts at the beginning.

And it's even nicer to see a guide that emphasizes the social aspect of gameplay. Even here at WoW.com, we're all about gameplay tips, from profession insights to class balance discussion, but sometimes we overlook that to play a social game like World of Warcraft, you sometimes need to focus on social skills. As much as theorycrafting and gear upgrading can help, sometimes it's better to learn how to be friendly and social instead.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Instances, Raiding

Find in-game friends on Livejournal's WoW Friending meme

by Mike Schramm Jun 18th 2009 at 2:00PM

The WoW Livejournal communities are really some of the best citizens in the WoW community at large -- they always have interesting discussions and insights going on over there, and if you ever need a question answered or just want an opinion on something in-game, they're always ready with some insight. That's why I think this WoW Friending meme that spirdirslayer has going on is such a good idea -- basically, if you're over on Livejournal and are looking to meet a few players on your realm, you can head over to the page, find your server, and then enter your information along with a few survey questions and check out who else is playing with you in-game.

I almost wish Blizzard did more social networking stuff like this -- through the Armory, we can find out everything we need to know about each others' characters these days, but there's not much we can learn about the people behind those characters. Our own profiles here on WoW.com help with some of that as well, but it would be nice to have it all integrated in the game somehow: examine a character and find out that their player is living in the same town you are. Completely optional, of course -- not everyone wants to socialize to that extent. But for those interested, it seems like it would be a lot of fun.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves

Officers' Quarters: Unsocial

by Scott Andrews Jun 1st 2009 at 1:00PM

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

What does your guild mean to you? Is it a community of like-minded players enjoying the company of their peers, helping one another to meet goals, and overcoming challenges together? Or is it simply a means to an end, a treadmill of raid attendance and loot rewards, where you slog through the necessary steps but never feel any real companionship with your fellow raiders? Some guilds start off as the former -- a fun, social organization -- and then end up as the latter -- a tier-set assembly line. This week, one officer wants to know how this can happen and what he can do about it.

Hello Scott,

I'm facing a dilemma that I'd like to share for a possible "Officers' Quarters".

I am an officer in a medium-sized European raiding guild. We have always been proud on our mature and social playerbase. It is one of our spearheads to provide fun raids in a relaxed atmosphere. But lately, the social aspect has been degrading. Ever since the launch of Wrath and people rushing to level 80 something has changed. Where TBC provided a challenge and a common goal to work towards (mainly progressing through the different raid instances) Wrath has left us with a lack of common binder.

Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

UNLV researcher studies WoW social interaction

by Mike Schramm May 20th 2009 at 7:00PM

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas' student newspaper, the Rebel Yell, has an article up about a student there named Michael McCreery, who's studying how people interact in online games. Unfortunately, most of the article is about the game itself (most of which we already know, obviously), and there's not much about how he actually did the study: apparently he had people play WoW using only the ingame chat, and surveyed them afterwards about it.

How exactly that tells you how to "quantify the social interactions of participants in the game so that future online games can build better environments," we have no idea, but we'll leave that to the experts. Basically, McCreery and his team are examining how people use and interact with others in the game to see how we project ourselves and our characters.

Eventually, he wants to do something "education or therapeutic" with the information, though that too is left pretty open. Virtual environments like World of Warcraft do definitely engender ties between players -- is it possible that those ties can be used in an academic or therapeutical setting? Definitely an interesting line of research.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Guilds, Odds and ends

The Queue: Locke

by Adam Holisky May 7th 2009 at 5:00PM

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

Do you ever get the feeling that WoW is like some sort of purgatory? That you're trapped in an endless loop of hellish deviations intent on consuming the very soul from which all things good and pure spring forth from? That this game is indeed nothing but the true game which ends all games, and like Sisyphus or John Locke you'll be stuck pushing the boulder up the hill towards a higher level for the rest of your life?

And with, let's throw a little social philosophy in your faces.

Adoisin commented...

"I hate people telling me how to change my spec and how to play. I'm a mage who puts out between 2-3k dps, depending on how bad my lag may be at the time. Sure, I may not have the cookie cutter spec. But it's my game, I am paying for it, and I will play how I want. Want me to change? Fine. Start paying my fee and you can tell me how to play."

Filed under: The Queue

Zarkmark tries to help you rate PuG players

by Mike Schramm Apr 16th 2009 at 9:00PM

There have been a number of sites lately, especially with the recent rise in endgame pickup groups, designed to help you find and examine potential PuGgers quickly. But none of them have made it quite as easy as Zarkmark, a site that allows you to quickly rate anybody you come across ingame by "zarking" (rating them up) or "marking" (rating them down) them. Then, they offer a quick search, which will not only give you a one-click link to the Armory, but an easy-to-read screen of how many people have rated the player you're looking at. Theoretically, ninjas will never find a group again.

Of course, theory is theory, and right now, the Zarkmark directory is pretty empty, so odds are that for any given player you look up, you won't really get much feedback. But you never know -- if players jump in and populate the site (and it wouldn't help to have a little help from them -- instead of just an Armory link, it would be nice to see a player's gear and achievements right there on the page), we might eventually get a pretty accurate picture of what someone's reputation looks like.

In fact, I'm a little surprised that Blizzard hasn't ever considered a reputation system in-game. Xbox Live carries one off pretty well -- even though I've never actually used it to consider who I do and don't play against, I have rated players and I know it's very easy to see scores if I wanted to. Given the rising numbers of VoA ninjas and PuGing in general, it might be worth it for them to give each player a socially-created rating in the LFG interface.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances

"My Life as a Night Elf Priest"

by Mike Schramm Apr 1st 2009 at 4:00PM

A University of California Irvine anthropologist named Bonnie Nardi has been studying one of the strangest cultures known to man lately, and she's going to be presenting her findings in a book called "My life as a Night Elf Priest" -- that's right, she's been taking notes on the weird sociological experiment known as Azeroth. It sounds pretty interesting -- she's been examining the way Chinese and American players play the game (and of course the differences between them), and she's also looking into how games like WoW can bring us closer together rather than isolating us socially.

It's funny -- as a genre and a technology, MMO games are actually in the absolute earliest phases of their history. Socoiologists and psychologists have been studying real humans for thousands of years, and yet it's only in the past few decades that they've gotten access to MMO games, like little petri dishes of condensed human behavior. Nardi may be one of the first to try and scientifically examine how players use (and are affected by) this technology, but she'll definitely be far from the last.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends

The WoW Headhunter helps with guild recruiting

by Mike Schramm Mar 23rd 2009 at 5:00PM

Last week we were kindly invited on the PixelatedGeek podcast (thanks, Erin and Nelson, for having me!) and while there, we heard from Darren of WoW Headhunter, a brand new site that wants to get you or your guild hooked up with some new guildies. The site is pretty barebones: you can look through available guilds or enter your own. But they do add a little something new: whenever you enter a guild into the site, you can create application questions and even run through a survey that charts your guild along four lines: between Reckless and Deliberate, Social and Competitive, Fun and Serious, and Learner and Veteran. So you can choose between the Reckless Competitive Veterans and the Deliberate Social Learners.

Kind of a fun idea. Unfortunately, the site isn't too populated yet (I couldn't find recruiting guilds on either of the servers I frequent), but it did just go live today, so it may take some time for recruiting guilds to find their way over there. And unfortunately, while there is an option to put an Armory link in your profile, the site itself doesn't tie in to the Armory directly, so you still have to go searching for metrics when players apply (would be nice to see a list of what achievements have been done by the player, as well as some common stats to compare).

But it will be nice to have a list of guilds to browse, along with a little more info about them, all in one place. If you've been looking for a guild for a while with no luck, there's one more option.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Guilds, Odds and ends, Raiding

What to do when a player dies

by Mike Schramm Mar 16th 2009 at 5:00PM

This AP story is making its way around the community -- Jerald Spangleberg's daughter was faced with a growing problem when he passed a way: figuring out how to notify the guy's in-game friends. As online relationships grow more and more prevalent, relatives of those who pass away are often having trouble notifying some of the deceased closest friends. Even Blizzard can't help in this situation, apparently -- they have no policy or rules to deal with players who have died, and no way for relatives to log in to the game without the password to let guilds know what has happened.

You might suggest that these relationships aren't that big a deal, but when you think that guildies are encountered almost nightly, while real-life friends connect only when schedules allow (maybe once or twice a week), you can see why it might be important to let the ingame associates know what has happened. Unfortunately, all of the solutions so far are pretty morbid -- there are sites that will send email for you, or some players have left lists of contacts to reach when they move on.

The importance of online relationships is likely to increase in the future if the past few years are any indication. And given that the average player is getting older even as they're making more and stronger friends online, it might not be long until we've got a much better solution to deal with this problem.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard

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