Guildmate Circumvents Guild Leader, Goes Straight to Blizz GM’s

Boy what an eventful week this has been so far. There seems to be an increase in epic stories happening across the WoW blogosphere. I’ve got an interesting story of my own to share.

There’s this Guild that I have vested interest in. Let’s refer to them as "Raised Villains".

The other day, one of their members was having a lively discussion with another player within the Guild. A miniature exchange broke out and everyone had a big giant hissy fit. Words were said, insults were flung, until eventually one member called the other member a "British cigarette".

He huffed and oh did he puff. He got so angry he wanted to tell mommy that Tommy called him a word that rhymes with "sag".

Unfortunately, mommy Guildleader wasn’t around to discipline Tommy. So Steve McQueen decided to take it upon himself and go past mommy and straight to daddy GM.

Sure enough, daddy GM came flying into the room and banned Tommy for 2 days without video games.

I don’t know about you, but I found that absolutely outrageous. Sure calling someone "jet lag without the jet or the lag" goes against the TOS. But there’s an unwritten code out there somewhere that says you don’t tattle on people like that to GM. However, I do have a twisted sense of ethics. Most guys I know would take their lumps and fight back. Going straight to a GM would be an unfair advantage. Personally I think it’s quite cowardly.

Yeesh. Kids these days. If everyone got banned for saying things against the TOS, there would be no one to play with. Quite frankly, that’s why the ESRB gave this game a variable rating (Game experience may change with online play).

So here’s the lesson: If you’re going to diss someone, diss someone over a medium where it can’t be tracked like on vent.

Resources for the New Guild Leader

I just wanted to highlight some links for any up and coming Guildmasters who aren’t sure where to start looking for the various services they will need to set up and organize their guild..

Guild Webhosting

Enjin (Affiliate link) – Free. Contains forums, item mouseovers, roster, news management, calendar, progression indicator, multiple themes available (Demos, upgradable)
Guildomatic
– Free. Contains forums, item mouseovers, roster, news management, Ad-Supported (Demo, upgradable)
Shivtr – Forums, character profiles, image gallery, events calendar, guild bank interface, polls (Free trial, $8.99 /month)
Guild Launch – Free, Forums, calendar, guild progression, RapidRaid loot management system, guild bank interface, armory interface, 10 MB file storage, Ad-Supported (demo, upgradable)
WoW Guilds – DKP system, bank management, raid progression module, WoW MP3 player, event management, over 70 templates to choose from, guild stats, armory interface (Demo – $9.88 /month)
Guild Universe – Forums, calendar, event management, guild application, roster, news management, polls (Demo, upgradable)
Guild Portal – Forums, polls, mail, content management system, raid calendar, bank management, roster management,  (Demo, equals to $5.00 /month)

Webhosting

Dreamhost (Affiliate link): Dreamhost powers World of Matticus (500 GB Disk storage, 5 TB monthly bandwidth, $5.95 /month depending on prepayment).

Forums

Yuku – Free, hundreds of skins, customizable polls, member management (premium available)
Free Forums – Free, daily backups, over 100 styles, member management, data recovery (premium available)

DKP and EPGP

DKP 4 Guilds – Inhouse DKP management, raid attendance logs, raid bank, item mouseovers.
EPGP Web – Web interface for EPGP users.

Voice Servers

Nationvoice (Affiliate link): My personal vent provider of choice. I’ve been with them for over 5 years since my early days in Counter-strike (50 users for $14.99).
Typefrag – An alternative to Nationvoice. A number of Guilds I know use them (50 users for $9.99 and they have a special where if you order for a year, you get 50% off).
MMO Mumble – Mumble hosting service. $5.63 for 25 slots.
Raidcall – Free, no dedicated servers needed.

General

Warcraft Realms – Online WoW census. Tracks a player’s guild history.
WoW Jutsu – Ranks guilds based on their progression. Filterable by battlegroup, server, and faction.
WoW Progress – Ranks guilds based on their progression. Filterable by battlegroup, server, and faction.
World of Logs – Think of it as a really indepth damage meter. Takes your combat log and outputs it into something meaningful.
WoWpedia – The encyclopedia of WoW. Useful for learning about raid instances and the trash therein as well as boss strategy.
Boss Killers – Various strategies for killing bosses.
Ask Mr Robot – Online tool for figure out what gear to get next on your character. Optimizes reforging and augments. Customizable stat weights.
Icy Veins – Class information and raid strategy

Recruiting

Elitist Jerks – One of the largest theorycrafting communities. $25 per thread.
Tankspot – Available to Tankspot donors only.
WoW Lemmings – WoW forums aggregator. Sorts the latest posts on the Guild Recruiting forums on the official WoW site by faction and class.

5 Raid Saving Lessons From Dr House

house

 

Today is April 28th. Does anyone know the significance of such a date? If you can’t figure it out, today is when all episodes of House begin airing! So who is House anyway? Here’s a quick excerpt courtesy of Wikipedia.

Gregory House, M.D., is a maverick medical genius, who heads a team of young diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Most episodes start with a cold open somewhere outside the hospital, showing the events leading to the onset of symptoms for that episode’s main patient. The episode follows the team in their attempts to diagnose and treat the patient’s illness.

I can’t help but draw several parallels between House’s quotes and beliefs along with raid healing in WoW that I wanted to share with you.

"Everybody lies."

This is one of House’s mantras. When raiding, some raiders can lie. Whether they’re aware of it or not isn’t that important. For healers, it is absolutely crucial for us to find out why they died, how they died, where they died, and what we can do to stop it from happening again. For this reason, we turn to useful tools like WWS, Recount (which isn’t working right now), or the new death tracking replacement mod called Expiration (Note that the latest versions are always at the bottom).

Remember that these addons and such explain to us objectively how the player died and they only tell us part of the story. The other half is circumstantial. What were they doing leading up to their death? If you can figure out the answer to that question, then you can stop it from happening again. Sometimes the solution can be as simple as moving a few yards to the right or as extreme as player substitution.

"You can think I’m wrong, but that’s no reason to quit thinking."

If you don’t believe that a particular strategy or role isn’t going to work, that’s fine. I’ve been known to disagree with the way healing is done and my guild colleagues are like that with me as well. The beauty about WoW is that it forces people to think critically if they want to succeed. If something doesn’t feel right or if you think your talents are better off suited to doing something else, file it away mentally and then address the issue when the opportunity presents itself.

"Read less, more TV."

Reading boss guides are good. But they can only do so much. They’re best used for knowing the mechanics of an encounter. Now videos, on the other hand, are much more exciting. Watching videos shaves some learning time off of fights. You have a better idea of what to expect when you go into an encounter.

But nothing beats good ol’ fashioned experience.

"If we were to care about every person suffering on this planet, life would shut down."

You can’t heal everybody. If you try, you’re going to lose everybody. You get to play god in a video game and decide who gets the heals first. It’s up to the raid to pray that you make the right call. The wrong leads to a wipe and the right one leads to a clutch raid saving performance.

"Everybody does stupid things, it shouldn’t cost them everything they want in life."

Mistakes happen. I trust by now that everyone has played this game long enough to understand that sooner or later, someone is going to screw up. That doesn’t mean they should get ejected from the raid or from the guild just yet. Obviously if the same errors are repeated, you’re free to exercise your own judgment. The only way to reduce the chances of mistakes happening again is constant training and practice.