All Stories Archives - Page 265 of 301

Build Your Own Guild From the Ground Up: Part 1

September 17, 2008 by Sydera

With Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon, quite a few ambitious players will be looking for new and better guilds. An expansion is a logical time for a guild roster shakeup, and the enterprising raider knows that the best time to look for a new guild is right now. For an excellent guide to finding a new raiding guild, see Bellwether’s four-part series on the topic.

This series of posts has a different purpose. In this multipart series, I will show prospective Guild Masters how to build a new organization from zero. Installments in the series will come out twice every week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. Read on to find out how can you take a bunch of n00bs who don’t know jack about being in a raiding guild and turn them into a well-oiled tier gear-acquiring machine.

Wait, do I really want to be a Guild Master?

Before I tell you how to go about building the guild of your dreams, there are questions that you, the prospective GM, must ask yourself.

1. What kind of guild do I want to be in?

Now is the time for soul-searching. For me, the answer was easy. I wanted to be in a guild that was kind, respectful, helpful, and, at the same time, extremely good at raiding. My personal criteria for the perfect guild were unusual–I wanted a bona fide raiding guild, but I also wanted a supportive environment to learn in. I wasn’t good enough to join one of the top guilds on the server, so I also needed a place that would take someone whose skills hadn’t fully developed yet. The best answer, for me, was to join with others in forming a new guild.

Think about your own wants and needs. How much do you play? What kind of hours do you want to put in raiding? How much say do you want to have in guild decisions? What kind of attitude do you want your guild to have? When you’re designing from zero, you can control all of these factors.

2. How much work can I put in?

If you’re going to be a GM, or even an officer, you need to have free time that you’re willing to dedicate to the daily business of running a guild. At the ground level, you may spend 15 hours a week wearing your GM hat. Charter and rules development, recruiting, and organizing your initial raids will take more time than you think. If you don’t want to put in the time, the job of Guild Master might not be right for you.

3. Do I know people who can help me?

There may be successful guilds out there that are founded on the charisma of one strong leader, but I don’t know any. If you’re going to be a GM, you need to learn to share power. Auzara of ChickGM made a post on this very topic that gets to the very heart of the matter. If your guild is to have a chance of survival, more than one person must be involved in the decision-making. My guild doesn’t even have a true GM. We have a group of officers with equal voting power who trade off the figurehead title once a month.

Choose your officers carefully. Your best friends will not necessarily make the best officers. Find calm, rational, smart people with some free time and a lot of enthusiasm for your guild project. Meet with them weekly, and let them have a vote on guild policy issues. If you are not planning to lead raids yourself, make sure your Raid Leader is an officer. Other than the GM, this is the person with the most power in your guild. He or she will also have to deal with complaints from members on a day-to-day basis, and it is much easier to field these from a position of authority.

4. Why do I want to be a GM?

Before you rush out to buy that Guild Charter, make sure that you’re doing it for the right reasons. For me personally, I wanted the satisfaction of seeing my guild run the correct way. I wanted to have a measure of control over how things were run, because I thought that I could help us avoid the classic pitfalls of raiding guilds. I believed that if my fellow officers and I put in fair policies, we could see new content without being disrespectful of each other or squabbling over loot. I didn’t want anyone to have to grow a “thick skin” in order to raid with us. In short, I wanted my guild tag to be one that members would display with pride.

There are many bad reasons to want the GM position. The first of these is guilt–if you’re only picking up the GM tag because you feel that no one else will do it, you won’t be happy long term. The second of these is pride. Let’s face it, there’s a little ego in everything, and that’s all right. However, you must ask yourself if you’re really doing this for bragging rights, for loot, or for the sheer joy of having power over others. If things go wrong in your guild, being a GM won’t feel so good. In fact, you’ll start to feel like a piece of flypaper as the QQ gets stuck all over you. According to Machiavelli, it may be better to be feared than to be loved, but in the context of WoW, there’s no real reason to fear a GM. If you’re on a power trip, your members can always leave, sometimes taking the contents of the guild bank with them.

Conclusions

If you’ve gone through these questions, and you still want to run your own guild, stay tuned for the next installment in the series, in which I explain how to develop a set of essential rules and policies for your new guild.

Illidan down!

September 16, 2008 by Sydera

I would like to interrupt your regularly scheduled witty commentary on healing strategy and guild management to bring you an important update in the in-game life of Sydera. My guild, Collateral Damage of Vek’nilash, has killed Illidan! Oh yes, we were far behind the leading wave of progression, but this kill was nonetheless thrilling.

The death of Illidan is an in-game milestone with special meaning for me. When Collateral Damage started up, we had none of the advantages that raiding guilds typically do. We are the product of a merger of two casual Karazhan guilds, and with one or two exceptions, our players had no previous raid experience, either in Vanilla WoW or other MMOs. We had new main tanks, a new raid leader, and a new healing coordinator (who, at the time, didn’t even realize that Regrowth spam was bad–oops!). We are a grassroots guild built from the ground up–and if you, dear readers, had seen our first attempts at Maulgar, you never would have thought that these same people could ever down the final boss of Tier 6.

When we started raiding, my endgame goal was to see the inside of Hyjal. Not necessarily kill any bosses there, but just see it. However, once we killed Vashj, I started to really believe, and to outright promise all of our new recruits that we’d be dancing on Illidan’s mangled, bloody corpse by the end of the summer. And well, a few days before the equinox, here we are. As you can see from the screenshot, we also brought out our formal wear for the occasion.

Priest Racial Changes: The Twitterati Reaction

May 5, 2013September 16, 2008 by Matticus

Yes, that’s right! I called them the Twitterati! They’re my fellow WoW playing and tweeting homeys on Twitter. You’ve read Wyn’s reaction to the news. Here’s what the rest of the Twitterati had to say (Brackets is their blog, if applicable):

@eliah: One more in a long line of things removed in LK that Blizz has realized were a bad idea to begin with. “Hell, it’s about time.” (WoW Insider)

@Aylii: Sure. Imo, it was time they changed that, now you don’t have to roll a dwarf to be awesome. (Murloc Queen)

@danielwhitcomb: I think they’re awesome as hell. Sort of sucks that Chastise is gone, but so much <3 for baseline Devouring Plague and SoH. (WoW Insider)

@karlajean: liking that I’ll be getting Devouring Plague, but I wonder if this is a move to placate everyone else, not help the priests. also starting to think Koraa just hates shadowpriests (KarlaJean)

@ladydanotte: WoW moving towards cookie cutter classes. I kinda like idea of racials having slight advantages 4 game complexity & interest. (Lady Danotte)

@Doug_Williams: Its all about Blizz aiming toward homogenization, you don’t need to have a dwarf or drain-o, you can bring anyone you want.

@Medros: as a non priest, they never made sense to me. I don’t get a special bonus for being a human Paladin, NE Druid, or Draenei Paladin (All Things Azeroth)

@pikestaff: though I never played a priest I always thought the racials were a very unique and cool thing about them… sad to see them go. (Aspect of the Hare)

@shinmeko: Pros: Kept Symbol of Hope. Cons: Gave everyone else symbol of hope. Maybe this will shunt draenei disc priest monopoly howeva. (shinmeko)

@macanima: I hate this homogenization kick Blizzard is on. All the flavor of priests is identical now. We’re heading towards two classes: caster and hitter, with heal/harm and hit/prot trees. (macanima)

/end creative outgoing link exercise

Priests, WotLK, and Wyn’s Thoughts

September 3, 2012September 15, 2008 by Wynthea

My first reaction to the news was utter, stunned silence. Anyone who’s ever been on vent with me (or listened to a certain blogcast) knows how rare that is. There were no words to encompass my shock and depression.

“Why?” I will be asked. “Racials were so stupid. We were the only class that had to worry about what race to roll to THAT extent. This will make things much easier.” Perhaps. But I am a Priest-class enthusiast. I have two level 70 Priests. One Human, one Troll. I have a handful of Priest alts just to experience the flavor that their new spells give. (Starshards is so Pretty!!) I am not a role-player, but I would find it impossible to not spend so much time with someone without learning a little about their personality, and I somehow don’t think any of my Priests will be the same without abilities shaped so directly by the life-experiences they had before I met them. How can you be a faith-leader for your faction, a student of the Light and Shadow, without developing a few personal opinions?

And so it is with a desperately heavy heart, a crinkle in my nose, and tears in my eyes that I say farewell to Hex of Weakness and Shadowguard. Admittedly, Renwein will not miss Feedback – we didn’t use it much – but Wynthea will no longer mock Paladins and less-gifted Priests as they attempt to dispel the curse preventing their heals’ full value. No more will I have a funny little purple satellite for company, which had a clever habit of proc’ing Shadow Weaving and Blackout when I was Shadow-spec’d. Maybe I’m taking it too hard. I probably am. I just looked forward to levels 10 and 20 so much with each new race…. and now it won’t matter. My lowbie Priests will be deleted, since they serve no purpose.

Frankly, this latest blow to my class-pride hits a little harder because of how I feel about Priests’ role in general. Go dig up your classic-wow handbook. The one that hasn’t been updated, that still comes with the game. See where it describes the classes? It talks about Priests being the premiere healers in WoW. That’s why I rolled my first one 3 years ago. It’s why I’ve stayed with the class for so long. Other classes can do other things – Paladins and Druids can also tank, all the other healing classes can Melee DPS, and Shammies and Druids both can caster-DPS as well. Sure you can go Shadow – but Blizz has pigeonholed Shadow Priests into raid utility and mana-return. (In my opinion, if Shadow Priests were supposed to be competitive on DPS, Mind Flay would have a 40 yd. range like everyone else’s bread-and-butter spells. Among other things.) Shadow Priests have to fight tooth-and-nail for every scrap of damage and respect they get. Holy Priests…. well, we were what the class was originally designed to be. That’s why classic Tier sets were all Holy-based. Priest was synonymous with healer.

But now, Druids are gaining a circle-of-renew. Paladins if glyphed properly will be able to AoE heal. Shamans have raid-wide utility, in addition to the original work-horse AoE heal. And Priests? The spell we and our raids have come to depend on is being given a 6-second cooldown. (That’s right, all the new patch notes show that that abominable nerf that went away on the Beta realms is BACK and going LIVE.) Take a look at the new Priest Healing spells: we get TWO.

Divine Hymn – You recite a Holy hymn, causing the closest 10 enemies within 0 yards to become incapacitated for 20 sec., and heals the closest friendly targets within 0 yards for 4506 over 6 sec. 20% of base mana, 1.5 sec cast, 3 min cooldown.

and our 80-point talent: Guardian Spirit – Calls upon a guardian spirit to watch over the friendly target. The spirit increases the healing received by the target by 40%, and also prevents the target from dying by sacrificing itself. This sacrifice terminates the effect but heals the target of 10% of their maximum health. Lasts 10 sec.

All our other talents are focused on increasing the amount healed by spells we already have, or the speed with which they are delivered. (oh, wait, that got nerfed a bit, too.)

In the rush to make every spec viable, and to homogenize the capabilities of the classes to avoid any specific requirements for any given raid…. Blizzard hadn’t stripped Priests of what made us special – our flexibility as healers – but added those utility spells to the other healers. This latest news goes further – rather than leaving us with our level 70 spells in a level 80 world, it actively takes away MORE of what makes us unique.

I will continue on. I am still very excited about a lot of things coming up in Wrath. The scenery continues to be beautiful, and Dalaran is the best-developed capital city ever. But now, my unbridled enthusiasm for the xpac is tempered by a sense of loss. I reveled in being the strongest, most adaptable healing class, and the class which, in my opinion, required the most fore-thought, planning, and knowledge of game-mechanics of all. I’m sad that both of the sources of my loyalty to the class are eroding. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’ve familiarized myself with Death Knight mechanics.

Luv,
A very depressed Wyn