Posts with tag summer

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.

I try to be a glass-half-full sort of guy, especially when I write these columns. (I don't always succeed, but I try.) In my opinion, leaders should be optimists who prepare for the worst. Today, however, I have a rather pessimistic message for you: Firelands will not save your raiding guild.

What I'm seeing with my own guild and what I'm hearing from all of you, week after week, is that guilds are struggling right now. With Cataclysm offering no new way to advance characters, long-time players are tiring of WoW's endless gear treadmill. Slots are becoming tougher and tougher to fill as players grow bored or frustrated with tier 11. Officers are burning out at a blistering pace. The playerbase, in general, is poised for something truly new -- not just a rehash of old raids.

Firelands is our best hope -- but I'm sorry to say, it won't be enough.

We're in the dog days of summer at this point -- the sun is high and hot, the beaches and swimming pools are full, and if you're a kid, the days are long and lazy. Which is probably why we've got all the kids in game lately -- as donnyman notes, when school lets out and summer is underway, the population of Azeroth seems to get much bigger during the day. Some might say that's a good thing: more people playing means more PuGs and more AH buying and selling, while others might say they don't really want more of the younger audience in the game.

I haven't had too much experience with this lately, as most of my gametime is in the evenings and on weekends, so I already see most of the school folks as I play. But I do remember the yearly migration of kids to video games -- I worked at Gamestop for about a year and a half after college, and sure enough, whenever school let out, we had more kids in the store talking about how they'd spent all day yesterday playing online.

So is it a problem for you, or have you even noticed the influx of summer visitors at all? We have to be careful not to generalize here, as while some younger folks can cause issues (either by acting like kids, or just by filling up the instance queues), there are certainly others who act very mature for their age. Some of them, especially with parental supervision, can actually make model players. So the question here is: how have you experienced the sudden rash of schoolkids?

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

My guild's members mostly reside in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. As such, the summer is a great season for us: barbecues, outdoor sports, beaches and lakes, hikes and bike rides -- it's a lot of fun! However, it's also the season where my guild's raiding schedule seems to hang by a thread. And this year is no different.

People aren't online as much. Their free time shifts around completely. Some members hardly play at all. It starts to become difficult to fill raid slots. Sometimes it becomes impossible, and we have to cancel raids for a little while.

On top of everything else, we've been plagued by a string of technical problems this year. It started out with with one of our healers getting all laggy on us for no apparent reason. Then someone's PC was attacked by an undetected virus. Then another one of our healers had their PC die mid-raid. Then a tank's motherboard exploded.

This is something I would like to be doing right now. Maybe in a slightly larger facility, not to mention one without its own face. I once saw a screen shot on the World of Warcraft homepage that had a Gnome standing inside of her Voidwalker. So I wondered, you know those giant water elementals found here and there? Yeah, totally on top of that sport.

I thought now would be a good time to use this idea, seeing as how some people are starting school again soon. Missing summer? Try this!

See you next week!

There are a few unmistakable signs of summer -- the days get longer and the sun stays up later, the smell of barbeque drifts around the neighborhood, and oh yeah, the Midsummer Fire Festival starts. June 21, tomorrow, marks the start of the Midsummer Fire Festival in game, and this year we've heard that there's going to be some new things going on. In addition to all of the old festivities (firepole dancing and flame honoring, or desecrating), there are lots of new things to do as well -- Ahune the Frost Lord is threatening the Slave Pens (he's a boss similar to the popular Headless Horseman of Hallow's End), and there are new daily quests around, including a "torch tossing" event and a bounty on a Twilight Cult NPC.

Stay tuned to WoW Insider -- we'll have coverage on all of the new stuff in game, as well as fill you in on exactly what's going down when during the Festival. It lasts until July 4th, and right around then there are also lots of terrific fireworks shows ingame as well -- those goblins really know how to put on a good time.

This time of the year brings with it an influx of guild applications from the younger crowd. These applications are often done with zeal and lust for a summer's worth of gaming that is unappreciated by adult players. After all, school's out and what better way to enjoy the good weather than to spend it sitting in front of a computer screen?

My guild in particular has seen an increase of the 15 to 18 year old crowd applying to raid with us. Unfortunately many of these applications are not on par with what we're looking for in raider's gear and experience (we're done with the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and are working on the Sunwell). Everyone is also 18+ in our guild, and we'd like to keep it that way.

However, we have seen a couple of applications come our way that have stood out from the rest. While these people are young, they have shown excellent communications skills, along with solid understanding of their class and raid awareness. While we have covered applying to a guild before, I think it would be appropriate to talk for a moment about some tips for the younger crowd trying to get into a guild this summer.

Here's an eBay auction that might be worth watching: A rather spiffy looking bronze statue of an Orcish Wolf Rider. While the statue looks pretty awesome on its own, what's intriguing is the source: the seller claims that this is the statue created exclusively for Blizzard by WETA employed sculptors Eden Small and Daniel Cockersell. You may recall this article in the OC Register (Alex Ziebart reported on it for WoW Insider here), which mentions the commission of a 12 foot high version of this statue for the courtyard of their new headquarters, to be installed this summer.

Certainly, the statue looks pretty good, and it has an impressive pedigree. Daniel Cockersell himself has also created some pretty good looking Warhammer sculptures, and Small and Cockersell have also worked together on official merchandise for the upcoming Prince Caspian Movie and Doctor Who, among other things.

I'm not sure I'll have the money to get in on this auction, since I imagine it'll get pretty high, but I do sort of want to head down to Irvine this summer just to drool over the larger version. I'm sure it'll look pretty sweet if this smaller statue is any indication.

I have to admit to being curious as to which Blizzard employee decided they'd rather have a bit of extra pocket money instead of the statue, though, or if there's another reason that this statue has appeared on eBay, and from a seller in Ireland, at that.

[Thanks for the tip, Lim!]

Aren't your teachers & authority figures supposed to encourage their wards to go out & live life; stop & smell the roses? Well, this article from the USC college paper, the Gamecock (shut up, Beavis), takes a more refreshing approach, listing a whole slew of online summer activities guaranteed to keep you indoors, pasty-white, and out of shape.

Will high-schools & Universities offer extra-curricular gaming activities pretty soon? Will my kids be able to earn extra credit for playing MMO's? Man, I wish I wish school was like that in my day...