Welcome to Episode 3 of The Matticast. This week Matt, Borsk, Kat, and Brian discuss:
- Problems with the Dungeon Finder Tool
- What to do with bad puggers
- We give you tips for handing the challenges you face as a Guild Leader in our reader topic.
Don’t forget you can send us your questions or topic, and be sure to checkout and participate in the listener topic every Wednesday.
Great episode, good work on adressing the whole female issue. It’s a sensitive subject and approaching it is kind of a bold move I guess. Kudos!
Thanks so much for the positive response! It’s definitely a hot button topic with some people, and I think it’s important to have these kind of discussions in a mature fashion =)
Have I been hearing Matt say “Get out of dodge”? :>
Also, my GM and her significant other got together because of how the guy spent years pretending to be a woman. I dunno how they actually got together and had 3 children, it’s slightly creepy.
All the same, it’s really great fun to act girly on places like WoW, although I did worry when a guildy had to confirm that I was indeed a guy after hearing me over vent.
I totally did say Get out of dodge :\.
With regards to the dungeon finder tool, I’ve seen a lot of people complain that it keeps dumping them to the same instance over and over. A common mistake is that these same people never even thought of checking the specific dungeon finder option to determine what dungeons are accessible to the group.
I found out this way that one of the players didnt discover most of the instances and had only discovered a few, hence, the team was getting always Deadmines or Stonecore (or similar).
We also used this fluke to just farm one particular dungeon, Halls of Origination, but letting friends just discover this dungeon only so that everytime we do a random, we will always end up there. Since that zone offered widest rewards suitable for all classes as well as gain badges.
Just my comment…
I love Halls of Origination. I just found it to offer the most bang for the buck in terms of the time to reward ratio. So many possible badges and so many bosses. The odds of something dropping useful to you is much higher.
An interesting podcast, the first one I have listened to, I shall certainly listen to more of them! On the topic of women and manipulating drama funtimes, there is a flipside to that coin – that sometimes it’s really hard to just be friendly and female at the same time. This is a fairly long comment, so well done if you read it all!
I’m female, I’ve been playing since vanilla, I’m now 22. I would never intentionally take advantage of someone, but I’m not an unfriendly person. You’ll never catch me calling anyone hun, talking about my boobs or fluttering my eyelids. Generally speaking, both in WoW and out, I am one of the lads.
I will be the first to admit that during my first year of playing (when I was just 16) my naiveness got me into a few situations I really didn’t want to be in. After this year of learning I had retreated into a shell where I would only play male toons, and was incredibly cagey about my gender if pressed (which doesn’t happen often when your toon is male!). I’m more prepared to give leeway to younger girls because of my experiences here. I think that sometimes they just don’t realise what they are doing, and that telling them and giving them a chance to learn how to deal with being surrounded by guys is the right way to approach it.
I have known women of the type described (most of them older and actively attempting to manipulate). But I’ve had some troubles of my own of a related, but slightly different nature.
Problems of my own from other members of my gender. Girls can be very cruel to other girls. I was in a situation during BC where I was the best priest in the ranks. The other priest was also a lass, unfortunately wasn’t all that good, and she really had a problem with me – as did the other lass in the guild by extension. I was often picked over her for heroics because I was a better option for success. With me it would get done, with her it could be a wipetacular adventure. But to her, I was taken because I had manipulated all the men into my pocket. Really I had done nothing of the sort. They were simply my guildies, and a few of them my friends.
But as these ladies were quite vocal in their opinions (quietly vocal of course, through whispers and other mediums I could not see. The only indication I had was that they were both generally pretty frosty towards me.) I worry that some of the people in the guild who didn’t know me very well may have had me wrongly painted with that brush because of what they had said.
It was incredibly frustrated once it had been revealed to me it was happening. I was wise enough to know that I wasn’t doing what they claimed unintentionally. Just trying to play the game and get on with folks.
I don’t think the situation was ever really addressed, possibly because the lads who made up the officership were absolutely clueless as to how to address it. The priest eventually stopped playing, and her accomplice ended up being kicked from the guild for an unrelated incident.
Thankfully some good experiences have made me more comfortable. My toons have gradually shifted back to a majority of females, and I’m now fairly open about my gender if asked simply because I know how to handle myself if an issue with it comes up.
In my experience though, this problem seems to be skewed towards more casual environments. I’ve seen less of it as I’ve gradually moved into more progress driven groups. Having been in a progress guild for a little over a year now, I haven’t seen any behaviour like this since joining. We’ve quite a few lasses in the ranks and I’m pleased to say they’re all of a similar mindset to me. Perhaps it is simply because everyone is more focused, or that our average age is probably closer to 30 than 20.
Either way, it is so refreshing for me to be able to get on and play without having to worry about the problems I’ve had in the past. I’m glad to see the issue approached because it is a particularly difficult one to deal with from a leadership point of view. Guys pretending to be girls for free stuff, is a hilarious, but terrible situation. It can give the real girls more of a bad rep!
-Kati-
PS. To my knowledge, between casual and hardcore = medicore ^~
I am interested in your “minimum Performance standards” For your raiders. Does this refer to stats, ilvl, etc., or other things like Survivability, dps/hps output?
Is this a posted list, or just class specific standards you expect them to meet?
Laikia: Generally, there are specific standards and preferences. There’s survivaiblity. Numbers. SOme ilevels. Augments. I’ll see if I can wrap this up for a short post sometime over the weekend. For an idea, see the recruiting page: http://www.nerzhulconquest.com/legionrecruiting
I’ve had people quit a raid (was filling the last spot or two in a 25 man) when they realized I was female.
I keep running into the: Girls don’t play WoW, and if they do, they don’t play plate classes, and if they do, they don’t tank, and if they do, they don’t RAID LEAD.
Hey Matt, Kat, Borsk and Brian,
Great cast and incredibly entertaining. Keeps me laughing on my long commute past few days.
What is the Theme song on the Podcast? I’d like to check out the artist cause it is pretty groovy heh.
thanks and keep up the great content and laughs
The track is Lex by Ratatat from the album Classics. A lot of their stuff is in the same vein, great music to relax to.
As a topic suggestion, I’d recommend discussing 4.0.6 as it has a WIDE range of changes.
Personally, I don’t recommend the nerfing of heroics. The mechanics are all doable as they are and its easy enough to get by once you learn the encounter.
Another point to look at is the Disc & Holy tweaking. Personally, the Disc tweak was long overdue, however, the Holy tweak is making Holy more a requirement in raids. Just the Chakra buff lasting 1 min alone will make every holy priest out there to get Tier 11 (4 set) bonus asap. Not to forget that Surge of Light now procs of the other Direct Heals and can crit o.O
I liked healing the way it was at the start. Challenging LOLz. Its basically a learning curve. Learn/adapt to survive and to progress. So am not altogether sure if the other tweaks are needed.