So, Dhargaul has now hit the lofty level of 77 and has purchased his Cold Weather flying. Now that the regular flying mounts fly even faster since patch 3.2 has landed this week, this means he'll have a much better time accessing a lot of quests as well as more flexibility in getting around to do his quests. Now all I need to do is to raise the 1k in gold so he can dual spec. I also like the buffed stamina that shaman have gotten from the patch, though Dhargual is still a long way away from the 16k in Health that Zuluki has. Gear wise these two toons are looking for similiar gear so you would think that they would very similiar health stats, and when Dhargaul get to level 80 I hope this is true. I'm also beginning to really like to new totem bar addition for shaman. I'm still playing with it so it's not as refined as I would like, but I really like hitting one button and seeing my favorite 4 totems landing on the ground. This will make the harder fights go much smoother since I won't be missing cooldowns due to refreshing all my totems or having to drop them individually. Since I don't macro my totems or put them on my action bars, that means I'm using the mouse to drop them and clicking them one at a time alwasy slows down what I'm doing.
On another note, Zuluki is sitting very pretty at level 79 and only 4 bubbles away from 80. I fully plan on finishing her run on this by the end of next week. She's beginning her rep grinds now too for gear, as well as getting prepared to craft out her beginning epics. I am really excited about being this close to 80 with her and I have to admit she's my favorite toon right now.
Mohg, and Yrkoon are also getting some attention but not as much as my two main characters. Though it may not be the most optimal build, I'm really ready to get Mohg back to Combat Daggers as that seems to be the funnest build and playstyle for me, all I need to do now is to find 2 new daggers for his and he'll be set for a while. Yrkoon is in the same position as Dhar in that I'm now just waiting to have the funds so that he can dual spec Ret/Holy. I'm really eager to get dual specced before he hits Outlands so that I can begin building decent sets of gear for him.
All in all, I feel good about my characters and the state of the game right now. So hopefully his trend will conitnue. :D
Happy hunter all
Dhargaul.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 2
Player retention is a double edged sword that does not allow for a win-win situation. Guilds of all sorts have this problem and the biggest reason why is the player himself. Players will not stay where they feel unwanted, unchallenged, and unrewarded if they feel the guild will not help them to achieve their own personal goals. For these reasons and many more, this means that GM's will never resolve this issue. Even the most dedicated and tightly knit raiding guilds have difficulties with this issue. Here the most common mistake GM's make is trying to keep everyone happy.
I remember reading some time back that the GM for Nihilum (the world's #1 raiding guild who are now operating under a different name) said that his job was to insure he had the right person for the job in each of his raiding slots. Given that the guild only had 50 members, this is still a daunting task. While he considered gear important, he considered experience and the ability to fully play a class even more so. He knew that if every player was an expert at playing their class he could take them through any raid instance successfully regardless of how the guild was geared (for the most part.). Yet, like any other guild, players came and went, though with less frequency. He stated on the official EU forums once that he made no bones about keeping people happy, he just didn't do that. Success was his driving goal and everyone had to be on board with that goal or they couldn't be in the guild.
While this is easy to accomplish within a raid guild since your focus can be more narrowed, accomplishing this in a casual guild is much harder. The vast majority of casual players will only stick to a guild if they have friends there; otherwise they jump from guild to guild a lot looking for a good match. Then you have the players that could care less about the guild and only care about what they can get from the guild. Other players look for certain kinds of guild while leveling and a different kind of guild when they hit the cap. In all of this, the GM really has not say or influence over what will happen, he can only hope players will like his guild and stay.
The key here, I believe for any GM, is to let the players come and go but to try and get to know every person that comes through the guild. This way you can learn who is most compatible to your guild and the guilds goals. This way it will be easier to encourage these players to stick around and more of the will likely do this. While this process takes longer, it does slowly grow a solid core of players to work with as more and more of them hit the level cap. The thing to remember is that casual guilds will either grow slowly with a good measure of quality in the guild or you can go on a recruit ‘anyone’ binges to build your numbers quickly and then deal with the fallout later.
One last thought about player retention. Some players need to be doing things to feel a part of the guild, other’s need to see active players on the ‘who’ list and in chat, while others just need the title above their head. Whether or not guild activities are a presence in the guild seems irrelevant. I’ve been in large casual guilds that maintained a high number of players from all levels mainly due to the fact that the leadership was constantly planning guild events and such. This is a lot of fun and does build a significant community. I’ve also seen guilds who only scheduled dungeon runs and instances only that were successful as well. The key for the GM and officers is to have a presence, regardless of how that presence is carried out. And all of these people need to be actively looking for more likeminded individuals at all times.
I remember reading some time back that the GM for Nihilum (the world's #1 raiding guild who are now operating under a different name) said that his job was to insure he had the right person for the job in each of his raiding slots. Given that the guild only had 50 members, this is still a daunting task. While he considered gear important, he considered experience and the ability to fully play a class even more so. He knew that if every player was an expert at playing their class he could take them through any raid instance successfully regardless of how the guild was geared (for the most part.). Yet, like any other guild, players came and went, though with less frequency. He stated on the official EU forums once that he made no bones about keeping people happy, he just didn't do that. Success was his driving goal and everyone had to be on board with that goal or they couldn't be in the guild.
While this is easy to accomplish within a raid guild since your focus can be more narrowed, accomplishing this in a casual guild is much harder. The vast majority of casual players will only stick to a guild if they have friends there; otherwise they jump from guild to guild a lot looking for a good match. Then you have the players that could care less about the guild and only care about what they can get from the guild. Other players look for certain kinds of guild while leveling and a different kind of guild when they hit the cap. In all of this, the GM really has not say or influence over what will happen, he can only hope players will like his guild and stay.
The key here, I believe for any GM, is to let the players come and go but to try and get to know every person that comes through the guild. This way you can learn who is most compatible to your guild and the guilds goals. This way it will be easier to encourage these players to stick around and more of the will likely do this. While this process takes longer, it does slowly grow a solid core of players to work with as more and more of them hit the level cap. The thing to remember is that casual guilds will either grow slowly with a good measure of quality in the guild or you can go on a recruit ‘anyone’ binges to build your numbers quickly and then deal with the fallout later.
One last thought about player retention. Some players need to be doing things to feel a part of the guild, other’s need to see active players on the ‘who’ list and in chat, while others just need the title above their head. Whether or not guild activities are a presence in the guild seems irrelevant. I’ve been in large casual guilds that maintained a high number of players from all levels mainly due to the fact that the leadership was constantly planning guild events and such. This is a lot of fun and does build a significant community. I’ve also seen guilds who only scheduled dungeon runs and instances only that were successful as well. The key for the GM and officers is to have a presence, regardless of how that presence is carried out. And all of these people need to be actively looking for more likeminded individuals at all times.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Guilds and Guild Mgmt Part 1
Every so often I find myself in the position of watching issues in a guild play out and different results stem from those issues. Every time I see a guild go through these growing pains, I'm always curious to see how it affects the officers and guild master as that is a certain way to define the character of a guild. Guild drama is a given as is the response of the guild in handling it. In the alliance guild LOST SLEEP on Gilneas I've server as a Sr. Officer for around 2 years and been witness to a good amount of evolution within a guild. So it has been interesting to see my horde guild, Malice, experience one of the truths of casual guilds which is having a revolving door regarding membership.
Having tried to be a Guild Master of 2 guilds since beginning to play WoW 3 years ago, I can say that the job of the game masters of these two guilds is a full time job of sorts. Talks with both of them have shown me that these guild masters are the right guys for the job. My principle reason for saying this is; both of them want to have fun and share that fun with like minded individuals. So I'm going to share some of my thoughts from my own experiences.
One of the hardest things to do as a guild master, I believe, is to define the goal of the guild. If the GM decides to keep the guild casual then this is a lot easier to do, though end game concerns do complicate this at some point in the guilds existance. If a GM decides that raiding of PVP is his goal, then the goal is less burdensome but guild management increases a lot. Regardless of the guilds goal though, the GM should have a clear picture of the goal and how the guild should be achieving it, otherwise the guild will never grow or become anything other than a name over your head with a tabard.
Casual guilds are the easiest to manange in that a GM's primary concern is to ensure there are people in the guild and that they are like minded enough to want to stay in the guild and hopefully have fun. And this where the easy part ends. A lot of casual guild end up being more leveling guilds where people come to when they are low level and then leave when they hit the level cap. For all casual guilds this will be a constant, regardless of the guilds goal if the membership is large enough to keep the guild active. If the membership in the guild is small then the casual guild becomes more like a family guild. The larger casual guilds also have the pleasure of becoming casual raiding guilds, and here management of players and resources is key to their survival.
Survival, for a casual guild, is dependent upon a very active GM or a close and active group of officers. I think that there is a misconception on this though about the definition of being active. Active, I feel, means being involved enough in the guild to ensure that the GM and officers presence felt and seen. This does not necessarily mean that a GM of officer needs to be online every night and playing. The GM and officers do need to be active in making sure that they players are having their in game needs met as best as they can. The challenge here though is for the GM and officers to know what is a need and a want. Trying to resolve and/or meet every players wants is impossible and will drive GM's and officers away from helping players. Having a fairly well defined goal will help in resolving what is a need and a want within the guild.
Needs generally follow along the lines of completing class quests, having access to excess materials for use in developing professions in the guild (i.e. guild banks), the potential for non-PUG groups, and comraderie. Everything else is pretty much a want. Some guilds may add more to this, but for a casual guild this is pretty much it. Here though, it needs to be said that access to guild banks and groups for instances are not definites, players just should be allowed limited access or the ability to ask the guild first in these matters.
Regarding larger casual guilds, especially ones with a fairly good number of level capped players, good GM's will slowly delegate out some of the guild responsibilities. In my alliance guild LOST SLEEP, our GM is just that, the GM. Among the officers we're divided up along these lines of responsibilities; Guild Bank Officer, Raid Master, PVP Officer, Assistant GM, Guild Photographer, Guild Reporter, and so on. I am under the impression that several of the other larger casual guilds on Gilneas are set up similiarly. This has helped LOST SLEEP a lot in that it's not up to our GM to toil away his days working on ways to keep the guild members happy about end game content.
The main issue I see over and over with larger casual guilds in player retention. So many players are so fucused on getting the best gear they can and this usually means that the casual guilds lose a lot of players when they hit the level cap. In some ways this isn't a bad thing for casual guilds in that they will gain a reputation of being a good leveling guild and a lot of people will want to leve through while in the guild. The advantage of this is that the guild will see more new faces and will be able to add some of these players to the guilds more permanent roster when they find players that fit in well with the guild.
Having tried to be a Guild Master of 2 guilds since beginning to play WoW 3 years ago, I can say that the job of the game masters of these two guilds is a full time job of sorts. Talks with both of them have shown me that these guild masters are the right guys for the job. My principle reason for saying this is; both of them want to have fun and share that fun with like minded individuals. So I'm going to share some of my thoughts from my own experiences.
One of the hardest things to do as a guild master, I believe, is to define the goal of the guild. If the GM decides to keep the guild casual then this is a lot easier to do, though end game concerns do complicate this at some point in the guilds existance. If a GM decides that raiding of PVP is his goal, then the goal is less burdensome but guild management increases a lot. Regardless of the guilds goal though, the GM should have a clear picture of the goal and how the guild should be achieving it, otherwise the guild will never grow or become anything other than a name over your head with a tabard.
Casual guilds are the easiest to manange in that a GM's primary concern is to ensure there are people in the guild and that they are like minded enough to want to stay in the guild and hopefully have fun. And this where the easy part ends. A lot of casual guild end up being more leveling guilds where people come to when they are low level and then leave when they hit the level cap. For all casual guilds this will be a constant, regardless of the guilds goal if the membership is large enough to keep the guild active. If the membership in the guild is small then the casual guild becomes more like a family guild. The larger casual guilds also have the pleasure of becoming casual raiding guilds, and here management of players and resources is key to their survival.
Survival, for a casual guild, is dependent upon a very active GM or a close and active group of officers. I think that there is a misconception on this though about the definition of being active. Active, I feel, means being involved enough in the guild to ensure that the GM and officers presence felt and seen. This does not necessarily mean that a GM of officer needs to be online every night and playing. The GM and officers do need to be active in making sure that they players are having their in game needs met as best as they can. The challenge here though is for the GM and officers to know what is a need and a want. Trying to resolve and/or meet every players wants is impossible and will drive GM's and officers away from helping players. Having a fairly well defined goal will help in resolving what is a need and a want within the guild.
Needs generally follow along the lines of completing class quests, having access to excess materials for use in developing professions in the guild (i.e. guild banks), the potential for non-PUG groups, and comraderie. Everything else is pretty much a want. Some guilds may add more to this, but for a casual guild this is pretty much it. Here though, it needs to be said that access to guild banks and groups for instances are not definites, players just should be allowed limited access or the ability to ask the guild first in these matters.
Regarding larger casual guilds, especially ones with a fairly good number of level capped players, good GM's will slowly delegate out some of the guild responsibilities. In my alliance guild LOST SLEEP, our GM is just that, the GM. Among the officers we're divided up along these lines of responsibilities; Guild Bank Officer, Raid Master, PVP Officer, Assistant GM, Guild Photographer, Guild Reporter, and so on. I am under the impression that several of the other larger casual guilds on Gilneas are set up similiarly. This has helped LOST SLEEP a lot in that it's not up to our GM to toil away his days working on ways to keep the guild members happy about end game content.
The main issue I see over and over with larger casual guilds in player retention. So many players are so fucused on getting the best gear they can and this usually means that the casual guilds lose a lot of players when they hit the level cap. In some ways this isn't a bad thing for casual guilds in that they will gain a reputation of being a good leveling guild and a lot of people will want to leve through while in the guild. The advantage of this is that the guild will see more new faces and will be able to add some of these players to the guilds more permanent roster when they find players that fit in well with the guild.
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