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Breaking Up is Hard to do

February 28, 2011 by Lodur

Things change. This is one of the only true universal things that will remain constant. Every day you log into the game there is always something changing. Whether it is your gold totals, your gear or just what content is active at the time. Things change from an administration perspective as well.

These last few weeks I went through a large series of changes. It started with me stepping back from raiding for a bit due to personal reasons, and has culminated with me now leaving my former home on Zul’jin, Unpossible. That’s right folks, I am no longer a member of Unpossible, a place where I have done everything from dinging 60 and killing Ragnaros with all the way up to the current content. It was not an easy decision, in fact it was one that I dreaded and hemmed and hawed about. I’m not too ashamed to say I lost sleep over it. At the end of the day though I had to do what was right for me, and so I’ve moved Lodur to a new home.

Over time things will change in a guild. As people drop out of the game, or come back, or new people take charge as officers and old ones drop away. Over time the climate can change, and you may find yourself in a position where you don’t feel you fit 100% anymore. This is something we get contacted about quite a bit through email, about how you gracefully quit. Well, I recently have first hand knowledge of this and figured I would share my insight.

Take time making your decision

Before you make the decision to quit, be absolutely sure that this is the right decision. Weigh the pros and cons. Think about why you are considering leaving your current position and guild. Are you leaving to take up a position with another guild? If you consider the environment you’re about to join. Why are you considering them? Before making your final decision, see if you can maybe make an alt in the potential guild to see how everyone is. Maybe see if you can hang out on their vent or mumble servers.

The key here is to really not do anything brash. Take your time and evaluate all the angles before you hit that /gquit. The last thing you want to do is quit only to go somewhere else and realize that you didn’t want to quit in the first place. It’s never an easy decision, and honestly it shouldn’t be. It’s a big decision, especially now that there are other things to consider like guild level, perks and reputation.

You’ve decided to quit after all, now what?

Assuming you want to leave on good terms, give notice. A heads up, a forum post, even a notice to the officers or gm is nice. It’s also good for you to get a goodbye post if your guild has forums. This gives you a chance to say goodbye to your friends, and also to make sure everyone knows what is up. Without notification, a guild quit can cause quite a stir, and one of the last things you want to do is cause a stir.

When contacting guild leadership about your pending gquit, there are a few things that you need to do.

1.) Be clear about when you are expecting to be gone by

2.) Be clear about why you are leaving. If there are things that need to be addressed or concerns that are causing you to leave, be sure to inform them. Even if it’s something as simple as a shift in playstyle and times. Management will usually be interested in why anyone is leaving so that they can fix any problems they come across.

3.) Be respectful. Again if you want to leave on good terms, try to keep that in mind while you’re writing your resignation letter to the leadership and any farewell posts.

Sounds like leaving or resigning from a job right? Well, in many cases it is just like that. When you’re in a guild you tend to spend a lot of time with these people. If you’re a raider, it can be as many hours as a full time job. It may sound silly, but in the world of MMOs that’s something very true.

Personal note from Lodur

Leaving Unposssible was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. When I hit the send and submit buttons on my PMs and forum posts it was honestly quite an emotional thing. Having spent the vast majority of my WoW career with this group of people, drinking with them, gaming with them, sharing personal support with one another, it was like leaving a family. My decision to leave was based entirely upon my own personal issues, and it was the best of a series of bad options available to me. My departure was in not the result of failure on the part of leadership or anything else like that. I still have the utmost respect for all my friends, former raiders and former officers from Unpossible, and I never had, nor will, have a bad thing to say about them. If you’re on Zul’jin looking for a home, look them up. So for anyone from Unpossible that I didn’t get to say goodbye to, I will still be around and you better not be strangers. We’ll cross paths again soon, you have my word on that.

So how about you folks? Have you ever had an emotional moment leaving a guild or stepping back from the game? How have you left guilds before if you’ve done so? Why did you leave?

PTR 4.1: Holy Word Sanctuary and other Screenshots

February 26, 2011 by Matticus

This post goes without saying. There are going to be a few spoilers in here. If you’re not into that sort of thing, mark as read and move on.

But here’s a look at Holy Word: Sanctuary.

Yeah.

I know.

I don’t think the graphics work is complete yet. It just seems a touch small. Actual affected radius is still the standard size. Bliky over there on the right is still being affected by it.

* Yes, that’s my PTR UI. I just picked a random compilation and set it up because Real UI wasn’t functioning properly.

The current Zul’Gurub load screen. Wonder if its a placeholder or if it’ll be updated with WoW 4.0 tech.

Quest area just to the left of the entrance as you stroll in.

Also the front area of the instance. Learned fast that the cauldrons provide a 90% magic resist buff. Once you kill that mob that’s got those tendrils attached to it, the area gets flooded with gas which is where the cauldron kicks in. Don’t dispel it. You’ll find another cauldron further down along the path.

Nesingwary’s camp under siege. Many snakes. Handled it.

Found this on the ramp leading up to the raptor boss area. Frogger, yo?

Sup Bloodlord Mandokir? Way to instan-gib me. (Hint: Remember those spirits back in the day? Yeah, don’t release)

Ran into the first boss already where the old ZG snake guy was. Dude is absolute nuts. Likes to paint the whole ground with poisons and stuff. Some kind of nature resist will be handy to have.

Note that it appears heroic level instances at tier 2 when randomed into offer 140 Valor points (twice that of current). No word on whether you can run tier 1 and tier 2 for a combined 210. Gut instinct says its one or the other. Will verify and confirm later. Some problems with zoning back into the Zul’Gurub portal. Looks like theres a few phasing bugs that need to be fixed. For now, if you want to run ZG, I advise you abandon all ZG related quests. You can teleport into it via the dungeon finder. But if you die (and you will), then you won’t be able to zone in since the portal is non existent in that phase.

More to come…

Tough Call: Are your officers carrying their weight?

February 26, 2011February 26, 2011 by Viktory

Welcome back for another week of cupcakes and snugly puppies.

Psych!

We both know we’re not here for that, so let’s get down to business. What follows will be Part 1 of an 18-part epic series. When I am through, angels will descend from on high and carry the compiled works to the Vatican for safe-keeping. Ages from now, historians will place this up there with The Illiad, Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Hey, a guy can dream right?

Recently we discussed the important roles and differences between the GM and the Raid Leader. In a 10-man strict guild, you may be able to get by with only have these two officers and some trusted guildies from whom you can expect honest answers. However, I find that even 10-mans and almost certainly 25-man raiding guilds run better with multiple officers.

In my experience, and from what I’ve been told by other leaders, there often arises a situation where guilds have officers who seem to be the Deputy of Do Nothing. (As opposed to my own favorite title: Deputy of Awesome.) I have found that this unique problem can stem from three sources.

Not a Leader – These are the officers who may be great players, may be long-term guildies, but once they become an officer, they don’t really do much other than give their opinion when prompted by the RL or GM.
Fatigued Leader – They were great officers but are not just phoning it in, and are only around out of a sense of obligation.
No-Confidence Leader – They would do a great job, if they thought they had the back-up and the RAA to do it. As it stands, they feel that the average member has more say than them and may be tired of the squeaky wheel getting the oil.

The Deputy of Do Nothing is a drain on your raids efficiency and on the potency of your leadership team. As the Captain of this ship, it’s up to you to diagnose this malaise before it spreads to the rest of the crew.*

(* unless, of course, they have no authority while in raid and everyone knows it. In which case, carry on.)

Not too long ago, I read an article about someone who’s trying to have a “Guild Without Officers”. While I don’t agree with this idea, I thought the insights below were especially suitable to this conversation:

“I look back on how it used to be, with too damn many officers, all of whom did very little to actually help the guild, preferring instead to treat officership like some sort of insiders club where they could talk amongst themselves in their little clique. I recall making rules and chivvying and cajoling and beating my head against the brick wall that was getting anyone else to step up and take responsibility for anything.”

How do I spot this before it’s too late?
Part of being the GM includes an unwritten commitment to your members that you will make sure the rest of your leadership team has the responsibility, authority and accountability to handle their respective areas. Therefore, you MUST make sure that among your GM duties you include your due diligence. Kick the tires, shake the branches and see what turns up.

Talk to your members. I’m sure you’re probably running heroics, or BGs or whiling away the hours getting that fishing feast while in Mumble with your teammates/members.
Try to recall the last time you had an in-depth conversation with your officer.

Did they prompt the conversation or did you?
How many solutions did they present to the problems your team was encountering?
How many of those solutions have been implemented?

Review how organized/engaged their part of the team is on your forums. If this is something that is important to you or your guild community, your officers should be on top of it.
Lastly, think of what you would be doing if you were in their position. Don’t think that just because you don’t play healer, you can’t tell a healing officer what to do. Management skills are not class-specific, and chances are you were once doing their job. At minimum, you will come up with some ideas to discuss next time you talk to them. At best you’ll see that there are opportunities that you both can capitalize upon.

How do I prevent this?

The first step in preventing anything, is to clearly state your expectations upfront. After all, human nature dictates that people will operate to the level that is expected of them, and if you don’t set that bar, you’re asking them to decide how to run your guild. You and I both know that the reason you promoted someone to a position of authority is because you trust their opinion, intelligence, communication skills and reliability. So the only thing missing is your guidance/structure to tell them how you want these skills applied.

Rule #1: Do NOT promote all your friends.
Rule #2: DO promote everyone you can trust in your absence
If Rules 1 & 2 overlap, you should either make more friends are trust more people.
Clearly define the duties of each officer position
Grant them authority to do their job as they see fit. Nobody can do a job well if they think they have to ask permission.
Agree upon how often you expect feedback from them. Ex: Post-Raid Debriefings, Weekly Status Reports or End-of-Tier strategy sessions.
Make sure their position is easy enough for the rest of your team to understand. You don’t want anyone saying “what does he do again” or “he’s an officer just because he’s friends with XYZ, he doesn’t do anything”.
Make sure they are NOT the type of person who settles for just doing their job description. Good leaders appreciate new talent and new ideas. Encourage those people who could probably do your job. They will keep you fresh and your team will benefit.
Let them know that it’s acceptable to come to you for help BEFORE a fail.
Establish a routine or set reminders for yourself to remember to review these steps and refine them where needed.

Next week we will continue and discuss what you can do once you’ve spotted the problem.

As always, comments, suggestions and questions are appreciated. Also, the CD of my stand-up routine is available at the table by the door. I’m here all week. Tip your waitress!

Our Cho’gall 25 Video and Heroic Halfus down

February 25, 2011 by Matticus

We actually killed Cho’gall several weeks ago, but I didn’t have time to properly edit and such. Check out the new guild intro that Brian created for us. Loooove it!

Scored a heroic Halfus kill last night with 5 shots on him. The tough part is definitely making sure the pulls are stable. The second hardest part is ensuring those interrupts are not missed because those shadow novas just destroy. Once I get the perspectives from other players in the raid, I’ll get our kill video up with our Mumble audio. Think I’ll put that on our recruiting page too. If players can’t make the livestream, they can get some idea of how we operate from that at the least.

That boss feels way easier than Nef, that’s for sure. Back to work on taking out the dragon on Monday. We seem to fare better with 6 healers as opposed to 7. I suspect its because the phases go by quicker and there isn’t enough damage being passed out which means overall the healing is less. However, having a 7th healer grants us that extra safety net of being able to account for anything that could trip us up. A 7th means we can counter those Cackle’s easier. Except we’re still taking so much damage. Are we supposed to spread out on those phase 2 pillars to mitigate something?

Have a good weekend!

Evaluating Your Raid Group by Time Spent on Boss

February 24, 2011 by Gaia

The idea of trying to come up with a working series of classifications for different types/levels of raiding guilds seems to be one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion on and most people love to discuss.

If you caught the Weekly Marmot a couple of weeks ago, Lore discussed some of the differences between the extremely hardcore, the super casual, and “everything in the middle” when it comes to raiding guilds. It is that “everything in the middle” group that I think seems to inspire so much discussion.

Bleeding edge world-first type guilds are just simply in a different league for the most part. They are formed with people who push themselves beyond what most of us are able to in pursuit of being able to say that they are among the best in the world. From what I was able to find, these guilds raid up to 30-40+ hours a week until they have cleared all of the available content, and then they quickly fall back to the 2-3 hours a week it takes them to clear all of the available content for a few months until a new tier of content comes out.

While I probably would have been able to pull that off while I was a student in college, it’s just not something I am personally able to commit to at this point in my life. So instead I land firmly in the “everything in the middle” group. Most of us in this group raid somewhere between 8 and 20 hours a week (2-5 days of raiding at 3-5 hours a raid) For the majority of the people in this group, there is one “shared” goal that I believe defines this group. This one goal is simply to clear all of the available content, including hard modes, before the next tier comes out. There are also a lot of people interested in the competitive aspect of trying to clear the content ahead of as many other guild’s as possible in an effort to end up as high as possible in the various rankings as possible.

The issue that seems to cause such a surprising level of stress and consternation among people in this group though is based on the assumption that we should be evaluating ourselves in the same way that the guild’s chasing world first kills do.

New York Marathon

The whole discussion tends to remind me of the New York Marathon for some reason. In the New York Marathon, the goal is simple; each participant needs to run 26 miles through the five boroughs of NYC in the fastest time possible. Among the ~45,000 people running, there are only a small handful of ~10-20 people who have any real chance of actually winning the race. For the past few years, the winner has usually clocked in at just over 2 hours. That is two freaking hours to run 26 freaking miles. The level of training and raw ability involved in accomplishing a feat like that is something that most of us are just never going to be able to experience first hand. The average finish time for the marathon is four and a half hours. The longest record time for a finisher last year was nine hours and forty-five minutes, anything over 10 hours is not counted as having officially finished the race.

There is a lot of news coverage that goes on during the race every year and invariably you can find at least a couple of people whose journey seems particularly appropriate for this post. The people I am talking about are the ones who will do something like stop partway through the race to join their families at brunch for an hour or so to catch their breath before continuing on with the race. There are also a lot of people who simply end up walking most of the course. That being said, I think that there is something to be said for anyone who can cover 26 miles on foot in a single day. It should count as an accomplishment.

My proposition for guilds and raid groups that are trying to evaluate how well they are progressing is to stop trying to compare your own performance to the rough equivalent of a professional athlete. I would instead propose that one of the best ways to evaluate your team’s progress is instead to look at how many hours it takes you to progress through the content as well as how many attempts it takes you to kill each boss. I think that one of the most important lessons that we can learn from “the professionals” is that our time spent killing things should rapidly taper off once we have cleared them once or twice. While I don’t think that any of us should be trying to claim that there are a lot of similarities between a guild who can clear a full tier of hardmode raid content in a manner of a few weeks and a guild that takes a few months to clear the same content, I think that one important similarity is simply looking at the amount of time both groups put in to accomplish the same task.

I posted a report card for my own guild a couple of weeks ago outlining how much time and how many attempts it took us to clear all of the normal mode content (12/12 normal modes) and I was pretty pleased with the results considering that we only raid 9 hours a week. It took us just over ~45 hours of raiding. Had we had the time to devote to it, maybe we could have cleared everything before December? We’ll never know but in the mean time I can be happy that we are well on pace to accomplish our goal; clearing all current content before the next tier hits the live servers. WowProgress and GuildOx say that we are ranked ~500th in the US for 10man guilds, but that doesn’t account for our choice to take December off, or our choice to only raid for 9 hours a week (and it shouldn’t account for those either.) There is no way to fairly evaluate yourself against another guild unless you either both agree to follow the same basic route the world first guild’s take (the clock is always ticking) or somehow devise a way to accurately measure how much time your group actually spends (something that isn’t really possible, and would be ridiculously easy to cheat at) and so in reality, unless you are competing for world or server firsts, the only people you are competing against is yourselves and Blizzard’s timeline for the next tier of content.

How is your guild or raid group doing so far? Do you keep track of any similar statistics for your own group, or do you measure your progress in some way other than the number of bosses you have killed?