Polls are Closed and the Results Are In

Poll of class mains

Turns out the majority of my readers have Priests as mains! Druids are a close second. Oddly enough, the next class is Hunters. I’m a little perplexed as to why Hunters would be reading my blog when my focus is on Priests and Raid Officering.

Well, who cares?

Glad you guys read all the same!

On a complete different topic, I love Keynote! I had no idea it could do cool graphs like that. I can even export presentations on keynote into flash files and AVI’s! Now that opens up a LOT of possibilities for me here in terms of the next step I can take with my blog.

10+3 Personalities Every Guild Leader Needs Around

Personalities every Guild leader needs

Not every Guildmaster feels this way, but I’m willing to bet many of them do.

Face it.

It’s lonely at the top.

You are at the top of the food chain and there is no one for you to turn to for help. Everyone comes to you for advice or guidance about what to do next. On some days, it can be the most frustrating job in the world. But it’s reassuring to know that you are not alone.

While not every Guild has every one of these, I’m willing to bet they have some of them. They can help take the load off of a GM’s shoulders. They do not have to be officers or anything in the Guild, but that decision is ultimately yours.

The Rich Guy

The Rich Guy

Whether or not he gets his money legally or illegally, it’s nice to have a guy like this around. He’s got more gold then he knows what to do with. He’s got 3 epic mounts. Per alt. He’s a shrewd businessman and farmer where money is not a problem at all.

Why he’s an asset: If someone’s repair bill is too high, he can help spot it. He usually comes to raids packed with every reagent, flask, and potion made. Useful to have around in case that idiot Priest (namely, me) forgot his Flask of Mighty Restoration again.

Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he’s generous. Ask nicely.

The IT Specialist

The IT Specialist

He works at a web hosting firm in silicon valley. Or maybe he’s a QA tester at Microsoft. Whatever he does, it’s nice to have the IT specialist around. They are generally soft spoken and tend not to like having leadership positions. Count on them to be extremely intelligent and knowledgeable.

Why he’s an asset: The Guild website is down again and you do not know why. You ask the IT Specialist to take a look. Five minutes later, it turns out you installed the Shoutbox incorrectly. Not only does he fix it, he comes up with a new color scheme for the site that’s more visually appealing, applies a security fix for the forums preventing all those pesky spam posts, and grants membership access to those 40 new members because you forgot how to do it.

You can count on him to help you with Addon installation and configuration.

The Analyst

The Analyst

He spends most of his time reading up on various blogs and sites to learn how to make your raid more optimal. He’s just graduated from college and is in between jobs. He’s got more rings under his eyes than a jewelery store.

Why he’s an asset: Not only does he know how to parse WWS reports, he knows how to read them. After every raid, he will stay up until 3 AM trying to determine how the tank got crushed at the 0:11:46 mark of the Lady Vashj encountered. In other words, he can take numbers from WWS and translate them into something meaningful you can understand. If you can understand the problem, you can fix it.

May get mom aggro once in a while.

The Mom

The Mom

The Mom can instantly sense when something is wrong in the Guild. Her gut feelings are more in tune with the emotions of a player. She knows what to say at the right time. Nothing relieves a tense moment then a calm soothing female voice (that applies in any situation though, really).

Why she’s an asset: She’s able to pry the deepest and darkest thoughts of a player in the Guild. She can silence brushfires with a few tells. She can break the will of even the most devoted gquitter and persuade them to stay one more day. Even though you can’t see it, you can almost see the sad puppy eyes on the screen when she asks you what’s wrong. She’s an excellent sounding board if you need to vent your frustrations because she will actually care.

We love you mom.

The Accountant

The Accountant

He tracks the gains and losses of a Guild in terms of both gold, loot, and manpower. He’s sharp and knows what everything is worth. He can also be known as the IT guy since they are typically good with computers.

Why he’s an asset: He keeps a record of everyones DKP purchase in the past year. He’s able to remember who what what loot when. He makes sure everyone who has attended got the DKP they deserved. Loot will always be accounted for when he is handling it. If there is a discrepancy, he will look into it, fix it, and adjust everyone else’s DKP accordingly.

He also saves you $10 a month on Asprin.

The General

The General

He’s served in the Gulf war. He’s a retired military General. When he barks on vent, everyone listens. He commands the respect of his subordinates and the Guild. He knows when to push his luck and when to cut his losses. He has Murphy’s ultimate law tattooed on his forearm: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. He has contingency plan after contingency plan filed in his brain in case things go wrong. In short, he’s your raid leader.

Why he’s an asset: He researches every boss thoroughly. He combs through videos and strategies trying to determine the strengths and weaknesses of bosses. Then he tailors these strats to work with the resources and personnel that your Guild has in order to successfully down that boss. He will do what it takes to get the job done in a timely fashion. If something bad happens, you can bet he’s already thinking of a way to salvage it.

If you want results, he will deliver them.

The Optimist

Optimist

Nothing can bring down the Optimist. He’s always in a good, cheery mood and it helps rub off on everyone. He’s willing to help people any time. He’s a genuinely kind person who has no hidden agenda and has nothing but nice things to say.

Why he’s an asset: He can help the raid stay cheery and positive. When he joins the channel, he makes everyone in it smile. His “can do” attitude helps provide that last spark of energy to down Al’ar on the last attempt when everyone is weary and frustrated.

He doesn’t care about the destination. He cares about the journey.

The Mentor

The Mentor

He’s a walking encyclopedia of information. He loves to patiently teach people how to do things. He wants to relax and take it easy for a while but doesn’t have any problems with providing wise advice.

Why he’s an asset: He’s been everywhere and done every quest. Twice. He knows where every mob is. He’s memorized all the mats required for every enchant and where to get the necessary enchanting mats. He doesn’t need WoWHead because he IS a WoW Head.

It takes 8 seconds to look something up on WoW Head. It takes 1 to ask a question and receive an answer.

The Connected Guy

The Conneceted Guy

Quite frankly, the connected guy is… well connected! He has friends in high places. He has enough contacts to make a drug cartel jealous. He’s got more names and numbers memorized then a phone book. He’s a great people person because he can connect with them easily. Similar to the Mom, he’s able to tell the good crowd from the bad and sweet talk players into helping him out. He could be your recruiting officer.

Why he’s an asset: Your tank didn’t show up. A couple of well placed calls, and he’ll deliver an even better tank because that tank owes him one. He can hook up one of your guys with a Soulfrost enchant AND knock off 20% from their price. He’s established a rapport with top Guilds and fine craftsmen. He can pull in a favor at a moment’s notice and help pull in the elusive 25th man. He can hook you up with a spot in the elusive 400+ resilience PvP group.

Great for recruiting because he knows a friend’s brother’s girlfriend’s moms nephews dad’s son who has an awesome Priest looking for a Guild and happens to be on your same server.

The Brawler

The Brawler

He has your back in a fight. If you need air support in the Outlands, you can expect him to bring the rain. He thrives on PvP. What makes you cringe will make him grin. He is a literal lightning in a bottle and if the opposing faction gives you trouble, he will respond with lethal force in kind.

Why he’s an asset: Opposing faction at the summoning stone? Call up the Brawler and him and his band of cronies will secure the area for you and your raid. Someone giving you hell on an alt? Let him know and he’ll grab a large slurpie and camp the poor guy until you’ve leveled out of the area. He knows everything there is to need to know about PvP.

You do not want to get on his bad side because he is the reason why ESRB added the M rating.

Honorable Mentions

The Altaholic

He works from home managing his own business. He has a wide array of alts to choose from because he can multitask so effectively with his job. He loves the game and has maxed out his character slots.

Why he’s an asset: Need a tank? No problem. Want to gear up a tank? He’ll switch to his Priest. Need high performance DPS? Choose from his Rogue, Mage or Hunter. This jack of all trades can fulfill any purpose you need in a pinch.

The only thing separating him from running a 25 man raid with 25 of his own accounts is because the police tagged his house as a grow ops facility due to his power bill.

The Motormouth

He talks. A lot. He loves to hear his own voice and that of others. He’s also really annoying. But you have to put up with him around because he’s your MT’s younger brother.

Why he’s an asset: There’s no other available MT.

The Loser

He gets confused over everything. He needs his hand held in every dungeon. He accidentally wipes the raid because thought Vashj was friendly.

Why he’s an asset: He’s so loveable because everyone can’t help but feel sorry for him. He also sets an inadvertent example for the rest of the Guild on why they shouldn’t stand in melee range of certain Naga.

Um, guys? These walking fish cleave!

If you can find and earn the loyalty of players like these, you can expect a well streamlined guild equipped to tackle any day to day problems. It’s never a dull moment with diverse players like these around. The best part is that they just do their jobs so naturally without you having to ask. If you put them in positions where they have an opportunity to grow, watch them take advantage of it and slip into their roles with ease.

Do you recognize any of these players in your Guild? Are you one of these players? Do you enjoy having them around? I know my Guild has everyone but the Optimist.

House Cleaning, Podcast Possibilities, Ret. Paladin Help

Nothing much today. The idea well is running a little dry. Wanted to do a bit of housekeeping and maintenence here.

Blogroll

Besides, I need to work on finishing up this blogroll. I feel guiltier and guiltier with each passing day looking at my inbound links compared to my outbound links. I plan on reorganizing my entire blogroll into an epic sized blog roll. I will finish this thing by Friday after combing through Google Reader and adding and removing links.

Podcast

This has absolutely nothing to do with World of Warcraft.

If you’re into Starcraft custom campaigns and the like, head on over to Campaign Creations. I helped keynote a 20 minute discussion with their admin (Lavarinth) and one of their leading project designers (Iskatumesk). Topics revolved around their custom Starcraft campaign competition (with prizes), upcoming features, and other stuff!

So if you’re into Starcraft, give it a listen since I’m the one hosting it.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a podcast for a long time. The only thing holding me back is mostly technical. It’s the audio conversion and the effects and the like. I might even go as far as creating a monthly or maybe even weekly video explaining boss encounters from a healing perspective such as how to assign your healers, how to handle certain parts of the event and so forth. There’s only so much detail that staring at text can do. Even watching first person videos can’t give you the overall picture because it’s from one person.

What else could I do? I’d love to audio interview certain players or bloggers and find out what makes them tick!

Again, nothing concrete but definitely an idea I’m mulling over.

In the mean time, check out the cast. I need to get better at speaking. But we are our own greatest critic, right?

Expanding the Frontpage Tabs

Right now, the main page tabs have only 2 choices: Priest related and stuff for Raid Officers. I’m going to expand that sometime soon with my personal favourites and most popular. CSS styling is quite annoying, however.

Characters

So Valoray (my Retribution Paladin) now has Thunder. What enchants would you recommend? This whole DPS thing is a little strange to me. I’m not used to seeing 4 digit crits.

It’s strangely satisfying!

The Chain of Progression in Raids

Raid members ready to go and do something

In case you’ve ever wondered what raid bosses and instances to do in what order, I’ve compiled a list here from Karazhan onwards. This list is aimed mostly at Guilds who have started raiding and aren’t sure what’s best for them or their Guild. Obviously you can do them in any order that your Guild likes, but there are some bosses which should be done first before going into other instances.

Edit: Rankings are based largely on difficulty level and convenience for Guilds.

Karazhan

Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Shade, Chess, Prince.

Once you’ve taken down Prince a few times and you think your 10 man team is up to snuff, you can go proceed to go after Nightbane, Illhoof and Netherspite.

You’re also ready to start tackling the first 4 or so bosses in Zul’Aman.

Mallet with a wolf

At this point, your Guild is now officially ready for the 25 mans. Your first 25 man test?

Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon

Take down High King Maulgar then follow up with Gruul. Once you’ve gotten them down easily, consider going after Magtheridon.

Magtheridon himself

There’s quite a few Guilds that I know of that have completely skipped Mag in favour of launching right into TK and SSC thinking that Mag is too much of an effort required. To them, I say Mag is a piece of cake compared to boss fights at the Tier 5 level.

The reason you go after High King, Gruul and Mag is that these 3 bosses are idiot checks for your Guild.

Can the people in your raid handle being in the spotlight with important jobs?
Can your warlocks enslave and kill simultaneously?
Is your mage quick enough on the spellsteal?
Do your healers trust each other enough to not overlap each other and just do their jobs?

For Gruul, the question you want to ask is if your raid members are able to work together and cope with shatters. Are the tanks geared enough to do their job? Do players know how to run away from each other?

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of Guilds skip Mag initially. Don’t be one of them. I highly advise giving Mag a few shots. Here, you’re testing the discipline of your raid and the endurance of your healers. You also want to discover how quick and effective your DPS is in a 25 man unit. Mag also sets your guild up to have 4-5 skilled and geared tanks. Once you get past the initial phase 1 hurdle, it’s up to the healers and your 10 volunteers to click cubes. If 10 people can’t click cubes properly and time it, you’ve no business being in SSC or TK.

Tier 5 Instances (SSC and TK)

There’s essentially 2 ways you can go about it. You can go into SSC and clear straight to Lurker. The alternative is to crash TK and bring down Lootreaver Voidreaver followed by Solarian.

Hydross in SSC

While your working on those 3 bosses (in any order), your tanks should be gearing up for Hydross.

Now at this stage, I suggest working through the T5 raid’s in an order like this:

  • Voidreaver/Solarian/Lurker
  • Hydross
  • Tidewalker
  • Fathom-Lord
  • Leotheras
  • Al’ar

At this point, you’ll be at the coveted 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK mark. Take your pick between Vashj or Kael.

I’d say give Vashj a couple of shots but that’s because I find her a little little easier as compared to Kael who I think is a whackjob.

T6 Raids (Hyjal and BT)

I don’t have a clue here. I heard it’s Rage Winterchill and then straight into BT for the first 3-4 bosses.

Does anyone have an idea of what should come next?

Chamber of Guilds: Integration of Cliques

Chamber of Guilds meetingI recently stumbled upon a forum thread on WoW’s Guild Discussion forums about an organization called the Chamber of Guilds. Curious, I decided to go check it out.

So what is it?

Roundtable is a cross-server, cross-faction guild that allows past, present, and future guild leaders and officers to get together and discuss any issues that they may be experiencing and see how other guilds deal with it. Everything from guild involvement and events to instances and loot is discussed. This is more a “Chamber of Commerce” type situation where we exist to provide information and discussion. How you apply that to your Guild is completely up to you.

Turns out their next meeting was on Sunday the 13th and I signed up for it to learn more. Think of it as an online conference involving GM’s from a variety of Guilds around WoW. Every 4-6 weeks, they all gather up on Ventrilo to discuss topics that are of interest to other GM’s. In these talks, GM’s share their experiences and solutions with other GM’s so that everyone learns.

Boy, what an experience! Even though I wasn’t a GM, I’m technically a recruiting officer for Carnage. I’ve certainly been in my fair share of senior positions in other Guilds.

You have to be in the same Guild as everyone so you can participate effectively. If you don’t have a mic, you can still comment in Guild chat alongside those speaking on vent.

After a brief introduction by the main speaker (Penlowe), we instantly dived into the topic of the day.

Cliques Within Guilds: Are they a problem?

The main issue here was on the topic of cliques. A good way to kick off a good discussion is with a definition, which is what the speakers did.

Guild:
Def’n: an association of people with similar interests or pursuits; especially : a medieval association of merchants or craftsmen

Clique:
Def’n: a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons; especially : one held together by common interests, views, or purposes

A problem that is a frequent occurrence among Guilds of any size, any level, and any progression is the formation of cliques within Guilds. Typically, these are close knit groups of friends who have known each other for a long time. What typically happens is that there are players who will run with no one else BUT the players that they know and that they trust. Obviously a clique by itself is not able to tackle higher end difficult content which is why they apply for Guilds as “package deals”. Now they could come in groups as small as two or in groups as large as a self sustaining Karazhan team. Depending on the players, this could be a severe problem as they could all refuse to run with certain other players and grind Guild progression to a halt.

This could manifest itself as an even larger problem when such a large group of players could effectively dictate the course of actions a GM could take, particularly when the clique consists of your main tank. I would not be surprised if GM’s have been held hostage in a manner similar to this. I’ve often said before that a Guild revolves around their tanks and healers.

Dealing With Negative Cliques

What was suggested was that Guild objectives be made known to them before coming in. Tell them that you are a casual guild with little to no desire for end game. Or tell them that you are a progression guild which values performance over preference (my personal stance). If there’s any problems or issues that have arisen, it should be “nipped in the bud” (I could not have put it any better myself). Deal with these brushfires swiftly before it grows into a forest fire. GM’s need to be willing to grow emotionally distant and effectively give these players a way out or fire them. Sometimes it pays to be heartless.

Encouraging Cliques to Integrate

1 of the proposed methods that some of the GM’s suggested was to force rotating Karazhan rosters and here’s the reasons why:

  • Players grow outside of their comfort zone and learn to adapt to other players
  • Helps eliminate why cliques exist in the first place
  • Players become more sociable

The downside is that there is going to be a large amount of player shuffling going around so that different raid days can be accomodated for different players. I heard an example from one GM where she had shuffled a student with a curfew and a working security guard who had to do his rounds. Time’s were scheduled so that players who had not had an opportunity to tango with a boss could have a shot at taking him down (IE, Nightbane).

Closing Comments and Feedback

The talks were about 2 hours at max and it seemed like everyone had a good time exchanging ideas and techniques. Not everyone had a mic and those individuals had to type in guild chat to keep up with everything. As a first time participant, I restricted myself mostly to typing in game. From what I know, there are minutes being compiled. I even recorded the entire 2 hour conversation before my power got jolted for a second erasing the first half of the discussion. My plan is to convert it to an MP3 and compress it down to little audio clips for anyone interested in listening. Think of it as audio highlights.

My participation was limited. I was more of an observer than anything. I had a mic active but I felt out of place using it. Actually, I felt kind of intimidated. Everyone in there seemed to literally be a GM and I felt outranked in every aspect.

Maybe it was the fact that I appeared to be surrounded by female speakers =).

Whatever the case, I will definitely be at the next Chamber of Guilds meeting. It certainly makes for good blog discussion. It was made clear to me after the meeting that all leaders and officers are welcome (which includes class leaders, officers, GM’s, raid leaders, recruitment, etc). What do you think about cliques? Do you have any within your Guild?