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Every story, article, column, piece, and so forth on World of Matticus ever published.

Adding a Guild PvP Division

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I suspect that this is an option that guilds have considered at some point. After all, in Cataclysm, one of the methods guilds can gain reputation and experience is through rated battlegrounds and rated arena. It was something I had considered for a while since a good number of players in the guild do love their PvP. But as it is, I do not have the time to organize players and run the necessary strategies for a successful PvP team. Not only that, I’m the last person in the world who should do any sort of PvP. I only have enough time to invest seriously in raiding or PvPing (and I much prefer raiding). What I do have is the resources and the infrastructure to support a group of dedicated players.

Conquest is now expanding

But I found a solution.

A couple of players in the guild were leaders within the QueueQ cross-realm pre-form group. After a bit of discussion, it was decided we would have both PvE and PvP interests in mind. The commander of the PvP team would have complete control of his group. As long as the recruits he selects adhere to the basic standards and ethics of the guild, they would be welcome. Just because one player is accepted into one part of the guild doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be green lit into the other. A raider shouldn’t expect an immediate invite into a dedicated PvP team and vice versa. Obviously on days where either groups are shorthanded, we’ll consider all of our options. Common sense, right?

Naturally there were a few concerns.

What about players who both raid and want to commit to PvP? Would scheduling affect it? – PvP nights would not coincide during raid nights. They would be held on other days to maximize availability. We also minimize incidents of players having to choose between say arena or raiding to get their points in.
What would the voice infrastructure be like? – I had to rearrange and setup a few extra channels. Now we’ve got two battleground channels and a channel called the waiting room. Any player in the waiting room can be dragged up into the battleground channels when players are needed.
Gear acquisition? – There is a concern that PvP players would want to duck into raids, get PvE weapons, and leave. Loot council helps address that. If we reach a point where our progression oriented players don’t need weapons anymore, then we’d be able to work something out. Otherwise, raiders get priority.

Why PvP?

Why not stick to something simple? Why not just stick to one primary focus of the guild instead of splitting it into two? I guess I wanted to diversify a bit more. It doesn’t hurt to be a little ambitious. Even though they’re not players I have any say in handpicking, I trust the PvP commander has the right people skills and instincts. Not only that, I mentioned earlier about the guild perks. Having multiple methods to gain guild experience will be beneficial in the long run.

Additional exposure

Just like how running an alt raid for a guild can help drive additional exposure, running weekend PvP premades is another way to attract attention. With two capable preform leaders, we could fire off two 15 mans and a 25 man raid at the same time.

Now if players ask whether or not we’re a PvE or PvP guild, I tend to reply with both. I’ll continue to oversee the raiding team along with my officers. Anyone inquiring about PvP gets directed to the PvP leaders. This all looks fine on paper. Now it’s just a matter of determining whether or not it’ll work. I’ll never know unless I try. This is a chance to change up guild beliefs and philosophy for a bit. If PvP battlegrounds is something you’re interested, you might want to check us out.

I do remember reading about one other guild that was going to do the same thing. I can’t remember so I at least know that there’s someone out there who will undergo the same types of problems or issues. Has your guild thought about extending into formal, organized PvP?

Special Delivery: Roundup Of The Week’s Best WoW Leading, Healing and Guild Posts

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Now that my shiny new Saturday WoM feature has been going a couple of weeks it’s not the exciting new toy it was when I first unpacked it with you guys. You know how it works. So I’m not going to spend half a day explaining how I’m going to link you to the best leading, healing or guild posts from the blogosphere, or that it’s because that’s what I do over on my own site, MMO Melting Pot. Nope, this week I’m going to jump straight into that list.

If you’re cynical and knew I was out ‘til late last night (all right, who am I kidding – early this morning) you might say that I’m not my usual rambly self because most of Saturday’s vanished after a particularly good, tipsifying and long fireworks party. So I don’t have much time spare today. That’s if you’re cynical, ‘cos it can’t be true at all. We all know what happens when boomkins get tipsy, and we can’t have hedges catching on fire from uncontrolled lazering all the time.

So, without further ado or headache induced madness, here’s the best on topics close to your heart, straight from the WoW blogosphere this week.

  • About Vortex: The Structure of a 10-man – an excellent post by Kae at Dreambound about how her 10 man guild is set up. She goes through everything from structure, to policies, to roster, loot systems and more, explaining the thought behind each and how they work out in practice. If you’re starting a 10 man guild or in one that needs a shake-up I couldn’t recommend Kae’s post more as the place to start getting some ideas.
  • I have three posts titled “what’s a casual raiding guild?” – After some abortive attempts Klepsacovic has posted some of his thoughts on defining casual guilds, over at Troll Racials Are Overpowered. He looks at what casual guilds need, just like any other guild, and why they can fail. The post’s short but sweet and it might give you pause for thought to consider how you view casual guilds.
  • Conducting Guild Meetings – Blacksen talks about why regular guild meetings are so very important to a raiding guild, and how to conduct them. He also lets us know what pitfalls to watch out for and how useful long term timescales are when planning in meetings, before going on to look at the same concepts for officer-specific meetings. His thoughts on “groupthink” relating to officers are particularly interesting.
  • Do You Know I Feel This Way? – Analogue over at Looking For More has let us into her deepest and darkest secrets about being a healer. She says early on that she’s going to make some sweeping generalizations in her post and she does, but look beyond those and it’s a thoughtful read for any healer out there. She’s looking at how she feels about healing in general, and her apprehensions going into Cataclysm – are you feeling the same as Analogue?
  • Beta Healing Counterpoint: Fun and Efficiency – last week I featured Vixsin of LifeinGroup5 talking about the new healing in Cataclysm being a good thing. Well, this week, she’s got a follow up, and she’s looking at just how needing to be more efficient healers will balance with our fun-factor. What is “being efficient” going to mean for us, and how does it apply to something as varied as healing? How does it play out in a team-based environment, when we’re all trying to show just how efficient we can be individually? Vixsin’s got thoughts on all of these things.
  • Dual Resto Specs? – Rank 4 Healing Touch is looking at the possibility of having to go dual specced resto to get the most flexibility out of the tree. He’s worried that some resto talents will underperform in some situations, but there seems to be so many to pick up. He seems to be looking for other opinions on how necessary two resto specs might be come Cataclysm, so drop by and let him know your thoughts – this might be quite a salient point come Cataclysm.
  • Why Every Healer Should Care About And Track Shields – this is just one in a series of brief posts Zelmaru’s done on tracking healing-related information, and how to do so using Grid. You can find the rest of the posts on Murloc Parliament in their own special ‘addons –> grid’ category – she’s covered a lot of angles from HoTs to Prayer of Mending. Might be something useful for you there.

So that’s it for this week. I hope you find something interesting there – certainly a good spread of topics to choose from this week.

What do you think – have any of these in particular caught your eye, or are you hoping to see more of a specific topic?

Cap on Rebirth and Soulstone?

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Zarhym just dropped a bomb for us raiders. With Rebirth being restored to a 10 minute timer and Soulstone creation at 15 minutes, the devs have decided to add an additional limit.

You can only use 1 Rebirth or 1 Soulstone per attempt on 10 player raids and any 3 combinations for 25.

The design for combat resurrection effects has changed a good deal for Cataclysm, and we want to make sure players are clear on how spells like Rebirth and Create Soulstone now function. Rebirth has a 10-minute cooldown and Create Soulstone has a 15-minute cooldown. On raid boss encounters, you can only use one of these combat resurrection spells (so one Rebirth or one Soulstone) per attempt for 10-player raids. For 25-player raids you can use three forms of combat resurrection per raid boss attempt (so three of any combination of Rebirth and Soulstone). The count is incremented as soon as a player accepts a resurrection, so one can always choose not to accept if he or she wants someone else to get the resurrection instead. There is no equivalent of the Sated debuff (which tracks Bloodlust/Heroism usage), but you will get an error message if you try to resurrect too many players, and we might add tracking to our raid interface if there is demand for it. Outside of raid content, you can use as many battle resurrections as you have available.

Source

As a GM, I have a few issues with this. I understand the design intent behind it so that we’re not using 8 Druids in raids or anything. As it is, I feel that I’m burning through Rebirths more often then I like but I do enjoy having the safety net that they offer. Ultimately, we need to do better.

My question is what will happen with the Reincarnate from Shaman. I remember Divine Intervention was removed as a form of wipe prevention. I wonder if a Shaman will get exempted or it it will count. The limitation begins when a player accepts the resurrect not when it is cast upon them.

I’m hoping they’ll add a tracking interface to it. I had to use addons like RaidCooldowns to determine which Druids busted their Rebirths and who has theirs available. Ideally, the interface will tell me who used their Rebirth so I know who not to call on when I do need one. Speaking of hope, it seems a bit of a stretch, but I  hope our defensive cooldowns will not be limited in the same manner. Can you imagine only using a certain amount of Hymns or Pain Suppressions and Guardian Spirits per encounter? That would be a big problem.

We’re limited on second chances now if this gets final approval. We really need to pick and choose which players to select for a resurrect.

What I did at BlizzCon 2010

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Well, I’ve been sufficiently jet lagged for a little bit, but I am happy to say that I’ve fully recovered. BlizzCon 2010 was an amazing time, and I am quite happy I got to meet many of you at the various meetups. For those of you who bought me beer, thank you! For those of you who bought Matt beer, thank you for the free entertainment!

Seriously though it was a great time, and I hope that next year I’ll get to meet even more of you. I got to hang out with Matt’s guild a little bit, and those guys know how to have fun. Never let it be said that Conquest doesn’t know how to party, I will fight you to the death on that one! I got to meet other bloggers as well, and really just had a good time chewing the fat with everyone.

My guildies were also in attendance, and we had something like 22 show up. That in and of itself may have been the most fun. You see, this year, one of our officers announced that he will be leaving us come Cataclysm. Well, at least as far as raiding is concerned. For those of you who have followed me over the years, you may recognize the name. Zabos, our hunter class lead, one of our DKP officers, and guild scapegoat has intentions of leaving us. He’s been around since this game started, and was a founding member of Unpossible. He was the reason for our very first lady Vashj low percentage wipe.  This announcement, of course, made us all very, very sad. So with all the guildies heading to BlizzCon, we decided that we simply had to show Zabos how much we loved him. And a plot was formed. Let me share with you a message sent to all guildies attending BlizzCon 2010 from the guild leader himself.

If you look carefully through the list of people I’ve sent this message to, you may notice the absence of one name in particular. This is no coincidence, and this brings us to the contest itself. This year, I’m going to be holding a competition among those Unpossible members who will be in Anaheim, all of them but Zabos. IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE KEEPING A SECRET, DO NOT READ FURTHER!

Objective: To successfully concoct and carry out a unique and hilarious practical joke on Zabos, in person, in Anaheim.

Group Size: This is a team competition. Group sizes can be anywhere from 2 to 4 people. Prior to the 21st, you must let me know who will be in your team.

Restrictions:
In the interest of keeping everything legal, and prevent any kind of nastiness after the fact, here are the restrictions and general guidelines of the competition:

  • The jokes can not result in bodily harm
  • The jokes can not result in permanent damage to property
  • The jokes can not be malicious in natures: example – no racial slurs, no emergencies in the family, etc.
  • The general tone of the jokes needs to be mischievous. At the end of the day, we don’t want to piss him off too much.
  • Sabotaging another team’s efforts is NOT allowed. The more successful jokes, the better.

Any breaking of the above rules will cause your team to be disqualified.

How Jokes Will Be Judged: In order to receive credit for the entries, jokes must be documented. Judges will need to have visual or audio proof of the jokes themselves. Acceptable forms of documentation are:

  • Audio – recorded conversation from the joke itself
  • Video – live-action video of the joke
  • Photograph – self explanatory. If the joke is staged, a before and after picture for example

This was met with great cheers from the guildies, and the game was on. Teams were chosen and shenanigans were afoot. At least, we started as teams. Shortly after arriving in Anaheim, it turned into a guild wide effort. It eventually ended with a marriage license, a lot of gunk on his car in various NSFW images, and some very, very interesting pictures. I’ll spare you the details for the sake of tact. Moral of the story though, if you intend to leave us, expect to be shown how much we love you… in force.

In the end we had a great time and it was really good to see my guildies face to face. It’s something I know a lot of people take for granted, but putting a face to that voice on vent can be pretty cool. I had met most of the guildies before hand but there were some new faces, and I finally got to hang out with my entire Forest of Win which made me very happy.

So what about you? Any BlizzCon 2010 stories to share?

It Can’t Come Any Quicker

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I remember this period during Burning Crusade. It was the final month leading up to Wrath. The wait gets harder as the days go by because you just want Deathwing to blow up the world already. Everyone is anxious. I’ve set a date on the cessation of raiding operations (November 22nd). We’re going to use the final weeks to wrap up any outstanding drakes and then take it easy for a bit. It’ll take every ounce (joule?) of energy I have to stay focused. Cataclysm debuts on the 7th. My exams are on the 8th and the 11th. I was the first player in my guild to reach 80 and it pains me to know that I cannot defend my title as guild first max level player.

It seems silly, but it’s one of the few things I take pride in. Some players prefer to take their time and enjoy the scenery. Why not explore the world and visit the areas that have changed, right? But I already did that in beta. I just find the 80-85 grind exhilarating and even more so when under a clock. Some of the members in my guild are ambitious. They’re anticipating reaching 85 on the Friday morning. I wonder how many work hours will be lost due to people exercising their sick day options.

Not only that, it’s NaNoWriMo. Every year I tell myself I want to participate and try it. Every year, I discover that the amount of time I have continues to dwindle. One of these years, I will place my blog in stasis and actually do it. I love writing guides, opinion and advice. The two styles of writing I never really got into: Poetry and fiction. I don’t expect to write a sonnet any time soon. But a dwarven special operations team? Possibilities.

The guild atmosphere is restless yet restrained. The search continues for the ever elusive holy pally. I want another one. I also want an elemental shaman, a rogue, and a warlock.

Things I’m working on:

Videos on how to get to the new instances – With commentary. Completely improv. Maybe I’ll RP it. If these bode well, I’m tempted to create additional videos of other aspects of WoW.
Craftable loot list – More for the guild. Identifying which items we can craft at max level. The more items we can create, the less reliance we’ll have on the RNGness of dungeons for the appropriate drops.
A getting started guide on what zones to hit – I won’t tell you how to do which quests, but I can point you in the right direction
Facebook fan page – Why not? No link yet, but I’m sure if you’re determined you’ll be able to find it easily. I need some time to add extra screenshots and videos to it. It needs some kind of substance.
Healing in a Z-Axis environment – An underwater zone. A raid boss who is the wind itself. Healing in all 3 dimensions isn’t the easiest thing to do but there are some things to keep in mind.

Happy tuesday! Good luck hunting down those stray elementals. I have yet to see one.

Is it here yet?