World of Matticus

For GMs – Enjin 2 year anniversary means 40% off for you

March 5, 2011March 4, 2011 by Matticus

Our premiere partners at Enjin are celebrating their second birthday! (Disclaimer: I do advise them when it comes to their services from a GM perspective and the actual links are affiliate links).

From one guild master to another, I can’t recommend their services enough. In the past, I’d use my own combination of forum software, blog software, and EqDKP hacks to manage my guild’s online presence. On of top of that, I had to stress over the looks, too.

Now I don’t know about you but as a guild master, I’d rather spend my time actually playing the game with my guild instead of having to fret over the technical stuff.

I don’t have to worry about loot tracking. They do it for me.

Attendance? That’s taken care of.

My guildies can keep track of each others blogs.

The best part? An actual recruiting form for applicants. In the past, we had a separate forum where users had to copy and paste an existing application template into a new thread. It was archaic! But with their modules, all we had to do is come up with the questions.

Their promotion started a few days ago. But it ends tomorrow! If your guild’s web contracts are coming up for renewal, consider using Enjin to power your guild instead.

Enjin offers three plans. Here’s the scoop on their current deals:

SAVE 40% when you prepay for 1 year on any plan!
SAVE 40% on all themes and headers!
SAVE 30% when you prepay for 6 months on any plan!
SAVE 20% when you prepay for 3 months on any plan!

Their Ultimate plan is the best value if you opt in for a year. With the 40% discount, that’s $17.97 a month. For smaller guilds, Premium might be the better option for you. For a year on the same promotion, that’s a $5.37 a month.

That’s approximately three dollars a month without having to fret about technical issues, upgrades, or other problems.

But hey, if you’re still sceptical about their services, you can always move your entire guild and try out their premium plan for a month first. See how your guild likes it.

Hurry! You only have a day left before the deal expires!

More Frequent, but Smaller Content

March 4, 2011 by Matticus

Yup, I saw the post too. My heart sank a little bit when I read it. With 4.1 on the PTR, I thought for sure we’d be able to get some new raid action in fairly soon.

Nope! Not the case. We get Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub in 4.1 (which is awesome, by the way. It’s as if the difficulty level for 5 mans just got reset. It’s the same feeling I got when I entered heroics for the first time in quest or reputation blues).

In the past, updates were fairly large and substantial. I remember the Sunwell patch when it first debuted had a new raid, a new daily quest zone and a new 5 man. The Trial of the Crusader 3.2 patch introduced had a new battleground, a new raid, a new 5 man, druid models and other stuff. I can’t help but wonder how less bored would the player base have been if those releases were staggered.

The problem with this new system is that new things coming out may not be appealing to everyone. Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub might not appeal to the old school variety. Maybe a new future battleground gets released but as I don’t PvP very often, I wouldn’t exactly be diving head first into it either. Instead of one large patch with stuff that’s cool for a wider variety of players, the new design approach is smaller updates with stuff that’s cool for a certain subset of players. I can’t say for how its going to be. I haven’t participated in this type of model before. But you know, I’m totally willing to chance it.

On the plus side, this grants us additional time to get as deep into heroic raids as we can. After 65 attempts, we finally took out Nef. We threw a curveball in our progression and took down heroic Halfus last week. Our sights right now are going to be aimed at Al’Akir on Monday. After that, it’s a toss up between Al’Akir, heroic Chimaeron or heroic Atramedes.

Haven’t quite decided which way to go yet.

Maybe I’ll flip a coin.

Enjoy the weekend.

Matticast Delayed This Week

March 2, 2011 by Matticus

Long story short, I apparently mouth breathed like a boss into my mic the entire show. This among other issues means that Episode 10 will be slightly delayed. But oh man, it’ll be an exhilarating one! We roped in a surprise guest as we discuss the finer things in life like chicken nuggets and engage in heated, yet lively debates on what type of pizza is the most superior (Meat deluxe: Meatball, sausage, pepperoni, beef, pesto chicken and ham. Or the heart attack pizza).

Just kidding!

More raiding tips, everything you ever wanted to know about Battle Res and the steps you need to take both personally and as a guild to transform into a performance oriented raid group.

Keep the e-mails coming! We love reading ’em. If you have any questions or problems in your guild, we’ve got a listener line. Chances are, you might have a problem that other players or guilds are experiencing. Go ahead! Be that kid who raised their hand in a class of 600 people to ask a question that was on the mind of everyone else (Unless there’s like less than 10 minutes to go until the end of class, then keep your hand down and save it for next week so we can all leave on time)!

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…