TL;DR

As some of you know I have been in the process of a few things recently. I recently stepped down as GM of my guild, No Vacancy so I could talk some time to concentrate on my personal life. During the between my announcement and the time I had planned to sit down a few things happened which altered the way I approached things. 1)No one offered or even seemed interested in becoming the leader of No Vacancy (in fact the officers first comments was that NV was dead and none of them wanted the responsibility) and 2)I was offered a position to help form a new guild on another server.

Over the course of the process some of the choices I made were poor and thus caused some problems with people who apparently relied on me much more than they showed previously. During the week and a half after my announcement I suffered much ridicule and backstabbing from people who felt that I should be not making the decision to step down. In the end, I decided that I disliked the attitudes and treatment on Drenden so I took up the offer to help with the new guild. As soon as the new guild started recruiting members from No Vacancy made level 1 trolls to flame me and this new guild. So rather than defend myself in one spot, I'll do it globally for the world to see. The following is my response:

(the following is An opinion)( although the readers should check into facts on their own)

Apparently On the dresden server No Vacancy Guild You done wrong has quite the different story. Due to your poor leadership skills, (and not the best players in that guild) You decided to slink out with a few buddy buddies to come to Khadgar to and preach holier than thou with a inflated ego of your own.
We don't need that kinda crap here, so why dont you just wear your pants for awhile here and make some good freinds instead of this ego slink trip. What you did to your old guild to get your self geared and slink off saying you will be gone for the weekend, then commin here and putting on airs about how good you are just wasted 25 bucks.

No Vacancy died because of two things, lack of people who wanted to show up to raids and lack of officer support to help the guild succeed. When we were struggling with DPS on previous bosses the officers solution was to replace everyone who was doing poorly. My solution was to train who we already had to get better and to make sure we had the buffs and debuffs we had at all times (IE - snares up for mage dps increase). Towards the end of No Vacancy the officers and I had split to a point where they would run their own raids which started 15 minutes prior to my scheduled raids or just invite friends instead of going through the previously agreed upon recruitment process. When it came to the point that we realized we needed to rebuild no one (including myself) was interested in putting the extra time in to rebuild all over again. We had done it many times previously and by the time this one came around we were burnt out from it.

Do I feel that I am "holier than thou"? Not at all, but the people who started Concedo Nulli were tired of gearing up people just so they could progress further with someone else as soon as they got geared while we were stuck behind trying to progress again. We wanted to be with like-minded people who wanted to progress as much as we did and had the loyalty to the guild as a whole to do so. The people who chose to join us were in fact some of the better players in No Vacancy and are people who would spend hours on end learning a fight regardless of cost. They are the ones who are willing to lose some of their own DPS just to increase the raids as a whole and so forth. There are plenty of people like that and there are more like that that stayed behind on Drenden. The choice to move servers was made because there are not enough players like that left on Drenden.

As far as getting myself geared. I ran No Vacancy as GM for two years, from tier 4 through now. If it was all a scheme to get myself gear then I sure put in a lot of time for one minor goal. Our DKP system did not favor anyone and I sure wasn't on the top of the DKP list for a majority of LK even though I attended all but 3 raids in 2009. I also didn't say I was going to be gone for the weekend, I said I was going to concentrate more on my real life situation. In fact, here is the direct quote from what I said on the NV website:

Due to circumstances in my personal life as well as recent events in-game I have decided to step down as leader of No Vacancy. I feel that I am not in the same place as a player as the guild is moving towards and I do not want to hinder its progression. I feel like now is a good time for me to step down as my personal life and game life are intersecting.

No Vacancy has got the leaders in place to be able to continue on without me and already has begun to. Since 3.1 has come out I have not been in guild first kills for the first time since our existence. I say this not because I am bitter but because it proves the point that the guild does not need me to survive.

I am also not leaving immediately. I am announcing this so that decisions can be made allowing a smooth transition. I will remain GM for at least a week and continue raiding with everyone in the mean-time. During that time the guild needs to decide who will be my successor, upon which time i will give them leadership of the guild. If the guild feels that my remaining in the guild is hindering in the process then I will leave at any time and give temporary leadership to one of the officers. I want to make sure that this guild survives in my absence. I may be the founder and leader of the guild but it is a group of members who are all like minded and working together, not something of just my own making.

I immensely enjoy being a GM and No Vacancy has been the most progressed and best guild I have ever been in in my 9 years of being a guild leader. I will miss the ins and outs of it but it is for the best for me right now. I hope that the future brings great things for No Vacancy and I look forward to following its progression.

A couple of days later after realizing that no one was interested in taking up the leadership of No Vacancy I posted the following:

It has become apparent that there is no one who wishes to keep No Vacancy running as a raiding guild when I leave on Thursday.

With that in mind No Vacancy is formally shutting down operations as a raiding guild as of Tuesday morning. The current 10 man run that was started last week will try to continue on Monday night but there will be no more official raiding nights or times from here out.

Elite Alliance has offered a merger of our members into theirs. This has been facilitated by Tockety and Rallys so get in touch with them if you are interested in joining their guild.

Former member, Zakarum has started up a new guild and is probably also looking for members. Former member, Muffinbuffer, is starting a guild on another server soon and is also someone else you can talk with.

Anguish (Formerly Arctic Wrath) is looking for Holy Priests, Resto Shammys, Ret Pallys, Shadow Priests, and Elemental Shammys for their raid team. You can fill out an application at www.anguish.dkpsystem.com

Insurrection is looking for a tank (either prot pally or DK) and 1-2 healers. Applications can be filled out at http://www.insurrection-guild.com

Juggernaut group 15 is looking for S Priest, Warlocks, Mages, Hunters, and Holy Pallys. Application can be found at http://juggernaut-guild.guildlaunch.com/

Now is a great time to get into a guild as progression in Ulduar is new and Drenden is overall behind a majority of the other 241 US servers. Some of the people in NV guild were ranked top of their respective class in gear so most of you should not have any trouble finding your way into a decent guild on this server.

I am bummed that NV is done but I know that all good things must come to an end and everyone will find their way and land on their feet. Good luck on wherever you end up and I hope that you get to meet the goals that you want for yourself. The opportunities are endless and maybe one day we will find a former NV member in the top US/World guilds. It was a pleasure and an honor to be the GM of this fine guild for so long. I enjoyed all of it and would do it again if I had the chance.

As you can see I offered people many choices to move on and tried to facilitate that for them as much as I could. They were even given the choice to talk with Muffinbuffer, the leader of the current guild that transfered to Khadgar that I decided to join up with. So it is not like I left the guild hanging, I tried my best to help them succeed in my absence. I also did not have the final say in who was going to be invited to join or not, as I do not currently lead Concedo Nulli. I gave my suggestions and those suggestions were taken into account by the other members of the transfer team. I do not know specifically who of al the suggestions were asked or not.

Then he gutted the guild bank while none of the officers were on, auctioned off the contents, and distributed the proceeds among the "active members" of the guild.

Note that I am not saying that he stole the guild bank's contents, he didn't. But he did use his power as GM to gut the guild bank, thus making things difficult for those who wanted to keep the guild going.

Yes, this is true the guild bank was sold off and the proceeds split to all members who had been active with the guild in the previous two weeks and still remained in the guild. 23 people got portions of a 38,787 gold guild bank based off of time in guild. This process was done in the middle of the night (which is when I play the most) but it was begun with other officer knowledge and support. I started doing it at the time an officer was on but didn't finish up until that officer had logged off. This was decided upon after the realization that No Vacancy was not going to remain a raiding guild. It was not done for malicious reasons as suggested.

In retrospect I realize that my decision to finally transfer and not make that transparent has caused a lot of hurt among players who expected me to blindly lead them continuously. I had initially decided to just help from afar in choosing a server and a name and etc but the malicious comments I got from current and former NV members made me hate the server so much that I left it. So while I agree that I didn't always do the correct thing in my departing, I feel that 1)it's a game and 2)it's a game. Regardless if I was retiring, transferring, decreasing my play time, etc the same outcome would have happened. The players that I worked with before would have considered me out of their respective e-lives either way. So while I may have made a few poor choices along the way I always treated the members in the guild with respect and tried to help them out as much as possible. I would hope that they would show the same courtesy to me and the guild I am part of now.

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A Bad Judgement Call

Many of you are familiar with my DKP posts from a few months back. In one I talked about the typical "pitfalls" that inherently come with them. I have also written about the use of DKP systems to help with policy enforcement. Well not too long ago we ran into an issue in No Vacancy involving a combination of these.

We were working on Sartharion with three drakes up and were having issues with people frequently failing at fire walls and void zones. We had tried as many things as we could think of to get people to pay more attention and fix their mistakes, but nothing seemed to work. So one night I announced that each failure would bring a 50 DKP deduction. It seemed to work as our failure rate decreased dramatically. So we continued with the same policy on subsequent nights of attempts.

However, the policy which worked the first night worked adversely the next. It wasn't that people started failing more, it was the fact that people decided they didn't want to raid anymore. During this night we had people who failed frequently just up and leave the raid. When asked why their reply was simple "I don't want to lose any more DKP." We even had a particularly loot greedy person leave the guild that night.

In the end, we re-evaluated the policy and completely agreed it was unfair. Even though the top DKP earners in the guild had over 1,000 DKP the average was in the 400's. We refunded all DKP and put in a lower penalty.

The moral of this particular story is to approach your penalty and bonus policies in a more methodical way. I randomly chose the 50 DKP as we were starting. More than likely I got the idea out of my head because I watch too much Onyxia Wipe Animation playbacks. But we never sat down and pre-planned it. We didn't think about how it would effect overall performance, just how it was effecting current performance.

This mistake was a costly one for our guild too and it was all my fault. We have not gotten S3D down yet and now we have attendance issues for Ulduar. We lost one member through it and there are a few others who haven't been on as frequently since it (although part of that is because we have let too many people in the guild who aren't used to real progression and really are just in it for the gear farming).

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It's not me, it's you!

As I'm sure you all agree, my attempt at a Valentine's Day post was horrendous. So much so that Matticus, the one who prompted the WoW bloggers to do some V-day posts, didn't even mention that he read it (and I don't blame him). So I was in the shower today and I came up with a great idea that I figured I'd share to show that I am not the most pathetic blogger on the face of the WoW universe. Those looking for a Fun Run post stay tuned, still collecting images but hope to have one out by tomorrow at the latest.

Sometimes along the way you get a guildy that just defiles the meaning of being a guildy. They are greedy, rude, annoying, or any other amazingly awesome trait that one would want in their guild. Sometimes they are the best player that you have though. So what do you do?

Get rid of them. The one thing that I would say is my "motto" for guild leading is that "No one is so important that they are not replaceable". Now I know that motto sounds like I am, in fact, the jerk in the guild but take a look at this example in No Vacancy's past to understand.


Recently, we had a healer who went missing for three weeks straight and then as sudden as he disappeared he came back with no word. We aren't the type of guild that cares too much about such things because well personal life is personal life and unless it effects the guild we stay out of it. This guy comes back and instead of being quiet he starts telling us how to run things, whispering me that a particular tank shouldn't be tanking because he didn't like the spec (apparently all DK's MUST be Frost in his eye's), and generally just being rude. He was a vanilla WoW raider, of which our guild has little of, and he felt like since he raided this content years ago that regardless of our current progression we should listen to his every word. Mind you, since he had disappeared we have gotten progression of at least 5 new bosses with that DK specced the way he was and running things the way we have always run them.

Finally at the end of the night it came down to a point where loot was being passed out on an item he wanted to bid on. Now in No Vacancy we have a system where if you don't show up to a certain amount of raids over an amount of time you get demoted to initiate and have to work your way back up (unless there is a real reason[like vacation, accident, baby, etc] that you let us know about). Initiate's can not bid on gear unless it rots and then it is opened up to initiates and offsets at the same time. 

So this guy started bidding as if he was a member and long story short he was extremely unhappy that since he was a healer that he wasn't getting special consideration in regards to bidding. Although the item ended up rotting and he got to bid and win on it anyways this apparently was a slap in the face to him. He then proceeded to whisper me and threaten me ("You are seriously going to go there?" he says) in which I quoted our rules and the fact that regardless of who anyone was no one gets special treatment. He didn't like that and so left some rude comment in guild chat and gquit. There were a few "huh's?" from those guildies not in raid at the time and then a long discussion in vent over it.

One of our guildies asked some members of other guilds that he was friends with what they thought and a few came back with that we should have given him a special treatment because he was a healer.

Now generally I would have been more receptive to his predicament if he hadn't been 1)rude in vent during the raiding process inciting multiple whispers as to what he was doing here and 2)he hadn't been so combative off the bat about his demotion (and maybe calmly explained why he disappeared for three weeks as a reason to get re-promoted). As it was, I was pretty unwilling to back down that he was just not as important as he felt he was, especially since we had gotten multiple bosses down without him in the weeks he was gone.

Now I know that, at least for our server, there is a great healer shortage but no matter how in need a guild is for a specific class it is not worth the headache caused by someone who feels they are more important than the rest of the team. Especially when you are playing a class in which your fellow healers consist of an officer in the same class that performs better.

What would you have done? How can you back up an attitude versus a class (whether well played or not)?

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Guest Post: The Final Installment

Today is the third and final installment from our good friend Bobette on what it takes to be a guild leader from a members prospective. A reminder about our Fun Run for tomorrow night. Remember to get your Death Knight past the starting area before the raid time. Everyone is invited so ask your friends/guildies/roommates and join us for some fun. Brigwyn over at the Hunting Lodge has graciously offered their vent services for this event too! I look forward to seeing you there!

Extra-curricular activities. While the obvious events that your guild might want to participate in are raids, don't think that they are the only events that your guild members will want to participate in! You can help guild members feel more at home by having events outside the raid rooms. Host a steam-tonk tournament, play a game of find-a-guildy, Old World Raid Night, join Kree's Fun Run, RP events or a good old fashioned guild party. All of these events (and more!) foster friendships and guild cohesion and gives a nice change of pace for your guild members.

Comm check. Utilize communication tools, such as a guild website or a Ventrillo server for ease of communication. Just as a Ventrillo server will make your raiding communications easier, a website will help organize guild information and communications, showcase kills and achievements and document useful skills of guild members. If you can't quite get used to the new in-game calendar, you could try out Group Calendar as well, for scheduling guild events. Make sure everyone knows all the appropriate information, so they know when to show up to events.

Recruit. Recruiting can be a difficult task. Sifting through potential recruits can be hard work - but sometimes you are left searching high and low for recruits and can find no one. Be sure that your guild has the numbers for what you want to run, with some cushion just to be safe. If you find that your numbers are dropping a little, recruit. If you're having a hard time getting runs to go at all, it's past recruiting time. You don't want your guild runs to dry up and hardly be a trickle while you're hoping for recruits to show up. Recruit early, recruit often.

Officer on deck. Having officers appointed in your guild will help alleviate the pressures and duties that you have as a guild leader. Instead of trying to be a one-man-band you can be a 5-piece ensemble or even the equivalent of an orchestra, if your guild is big enough and requires that many officers. Appoint people who you know you can trust with the jobs they need to do, such as class leads, raid leaders, recruiting officer, guild bank/dkp manager, guild events officer, website manager. The list can go on to fit your guild's needs. They will assist you when you are online and they will help keep the guild ship shape when you're offline. These are your right hand men (and women).

Even though the items discussed in these posts are numerous and might seem daunting, they will become second nature to you if you're not doing them already - many are common sense, after all. Your experience as a guild leader might even bring up points that haven't been addressed here.

So, do you have what it takes?

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Guest Post: Be the Boss

Today is installment number two from our good friend Bobette on what it takes to be a guild leader from a members prospective. Before we delve into todays post a friendly reminder (yes I am going to continue to bug you until Friday) about our Fun Run. Everyone is invited so invite friends and join us for some fun. Brigwyn over at the Hunting Lodge has graciously offered their vent services for this event too!


Be the boss. You are the leader, after all. This directly relates to being active in your guild. No matter the size, a guild will need someone to get the ball rolling - that's you. And by you, I mean you doing it, not throwing the task to someone under you and basking in your shiny guild leader title glory. Scheduling runs, sorting the bank, keeping tabs on how the players are feeling/doing, all that sort of thing. However, for all that to work you need rules. I know, I know - everyone hates rules, but they really are there for a reason. It's better to lay down some ground rules to have a guideline than just saying, "The rules are - there are no rules!" and then having the guild explode. Usually they're basic things like be nice to others and don't steal loot, but they still need to be said. It'll be a help in the long run, trust me. And if the time comes when those rules are broken, stand behind your rules and enforce them.

Play fair. Another part of being a leader is being the mediator. Spats between guild members do come up and you will often be called upon to be the referee. Whether the warrior slighted the hunter's DPS or two priests are arguing over an offhand, you need to be there and you need to be unbiased. See both sides of the issue and do what is fair. Not the easy thing, not the spiteful thing - the reasonable thing. If it's an issue that a player has with the guild, be understanding of their position and needs. Sometimes if you offer to meet them in the middle it will clear things right up. But above all, do NOT be stubborn or immature. Your guild members will appreciate you being fair and just, even if you have to be a hardass sometimes. This also applies to rule enforcement.

Encourage reading. There are several sites to help with learning encounters and strategies, such as Bosskillers and Wowwiki. As the leader, you definitely need to be read up on whichever raid your guild is running, but you should also encourage your members to take a few minutes and watch a video of the encounter or read the strategy so they have some idea of what to expect. It's no fun to stand looking at a raid boss for 10 minutes as you try to explain the fight so that everyone understands it. There is nothing as embarrassing as a raid leader fumbling to read a strat as everyone buffs, hoping that he's got everything right. Proper Prior Planning. Learn it. Love it. Remember: educated guild members make a stong, confident, successful guild.

Have some class. While you have a main of a certain class and perhaps an alt of another and know how those classes work, you need to know a bit about all classes and specs to have things go smoothly and get the full value of your players. Each spec has something different to bring to a raid and also to their group members. You also need to know this to distribute the loot that bosses drop.

Don't get in over your head. Do you remember being a little kid at the swimming pool, and tip toeing towards the deep end, and all of a sudden you're under water and can't breathe? Know your limitations. By all means, aim high - just don't melt your wings. Know the abilities of your guild as a whole and don't lead them into something they're not ready for. Also, don't overestimate individual members. Maybe your tank buddy doesn't quite have the stats to be main tanking yet, maybe the mage doesn't have the DPS to help the group, maybe the priest isn't settled into his new spec yet. Challenge your members, don't set them up for failure.

Know when to quit. Perhaps the most sober of the advice here. Sometimes you just have to quit banging your head against the wall. If it really comes to this, you'll be grateful, your guild will be grateful. Live, learn, try it again later.

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Guest Post: Do You Have What it Takes to be A Guild Leader?

Recently a Twitter friend of mine came to me and asked if they could anonymously guest write a post for me. I thought that it would be a great idea as this is a person who is not a GM nor an officer in their guild and can provide some insight to those of us who have a long background in guild leadership. It is always refreshing to see what the general member has to say. Over the next few days we will hear from this anonymous person (let's call her Bobette) about what it takes to be a guild leader, from a member's standpoint. I have decided to not add my commentary to these entries. Oh and before I go, remember we're running the Fun Run this Friday! Make sure to make your DK and get those quests done! See you there!


Do you have what it takes to be a guild leader?

Think about that for a minute. Many of the people who read this would probably say yes. In fact, lots of people DO say yes every day. They're the ones soliciting your signatures in all major cities and starting areas or splitting off from other guilds with their friends. Any person can start a guild and be the leader. But not everyone is able to lead.

Be a people person. The very essence of a guild is its members and if you can't get along with them, then the guild probably is going to take a downward turn, and quick. You need to be friendly to your members, promote cooperation and inspire your members to do better. If you're crabby and hate it when people send you tells asking a question about a quest, seeing if they can get something out of the guild bank, whether you're available to help them start an instance run or just talk about their problems, you're probably not ready to be a guild leader. I cannot stress this enough - if you have charisma, you can go a long way, even if you have to work on the other parts of this post.

Sincerely yours. Be earnest about your relationships with your members and officers, about the guild and it's direction. Successful guilds have leaders that are leaders full time, not just when they feel like it. If you're enthusiastic about your guild, your members pick up on that and take pride in the guild as well. Enthusiasm is infectious, and that kind of infection is good.

Be active within your guild. Anyone can log on and do things for their character as they please, but when you have a guild, there is always something to do with or for it. Run instances with your members, help that lowbie with that hard quest, farm some mats for the bank, chat in guild chat or Vent. You don't have to do them all every single day, but be present within your guild. Include everyone - even the shy quiet mage over in the corner. You chose to start a guild - be active in it.

Patience is a virtue. Dealing with people is tough sometimes. Players can make huge demands of their guild leaders. Even if every member only asks for one little thing, multiply that by every member in your guild. It adds up awfully quick. Try to keep a level head when things get to be more than your patience threshold can handle: count to 10 or even step away from the game for a bit if necessary. Patience can also be in short supply when your guild is learning a raid - sometimes it takes a few tries to get a strategy down.

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Exploring the Four Learning Styles

Have you been struggling with getting your raid team to learn fights? Do some members seem to grasp the concept of the Safety Dance faster than others?

It's no secret that some people learn faster than others, but maybe it's not the way they learn. Maybe it's the way you are trying to teach them. Gwaendar over at Altitis wrote a great post on "The Four Learning Styles and How They Can Help Team Progression". In this post they write about how you may have been trying to teach people the way you learn which is counterintuitive to the way others may learn.

Read up on this and then look at your own team and figure out what type of people you have and how you might be able to improve to make your team that much better.

My biggest change?

Keep your pre-encounter briefing short and to the point. The theorists and reflectors will have done their preliminary research, the pragmatists only want the telegraphic style short overview and the activists want to rush straight into battle. Long explanations will just waste everyone’s time for little concrete benefits.

I am well known to talk way too much before fights. Over time I have learned to shorten my explanation of fights and just give the key points and go.

I'm a Theorist and an Activist, What are you?

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Tracking those 10's!

Well the bus finally arrived(as you know) and I had a nice New Year's vacation at my best friends house. The trip back was uneventful but I was pretty tired the whole way so I didn't write any more during that trip.

So I was poking around the internet one day and found this website that I thought people would be interested in. Ever since the inception of the Achievement system people have gotten addicted to getting more and more achievements. Well how do you rank? This site can tell you. Mine shows 119 but my guess is the next update I will be much higher. Not bad considering I started after BC launched.

Now granted it's not updated super often but it gives you a general idea and if you are lucky enough to check your character the day it was refreshed you may see a more correct number(mine shows 3780 but my actual number is 3930). Can you believe the highest world achievement person is well over 7k!!

And there is a search function so you can look up all your friends on all servers and see what they have.

If anything this gives you something to play with while you wait in angst for my next blog post!

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WoW Patch 3.0: Recruitment

I must admit that recruitment is one of my weaker guild management skills, however, I do about 90% of No Vacancy's recruiting.

It used to be that I needed to recruit for specific classes, but with the changed I mentioned in yesterday's post we can now recruit for the raid roles instead, broadening our prospects.

This means you can be much pickier in your recruitment, picking the best players to fill these roles, even if it means you have tons of a single class to fill in the gaps.

Tanks now all have the ability to main tank(and aoe tank), healers all have HoTs(and group/raid heals), more classes can de-buff now.  And although well played pure dps classes will still rule the meters, well played hybrid classes will no more be significantly behind. That coupled with the fact that all raids will be both 10 mans as well as 25 you can recruit for less and still do more.

Now, before the craziness of leveling re-begins, is a great time to recruit.  With the easiness of raiding that is currently BC content you can give people a taste of what raiding is somewhat like and possibly get those under-geared folks that are good players added to your roster.  It will also get people who thought they'd never have a chance excited for leveling up with your guild and raiding at 80.

It is also a great time to test out the talent, as well as your older members, and give them pointers as to how to fix something they may be lacking on in performance(spec tweaks, shot/spell rotations, etc.).  True, level 80 will have a few more talents , not to mention some people re-rolling Death Knights, but for the most part you can get your members top notched now before it starts getting hard again.

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WoW Patch 3.0: Raid Setup

Hopefully by now both you and your guildies have for the most part figured out your raid specs, and maybe even had a few practice runs with them.  I'm sure that you've seen the fact that you now have tons of buffs, and figured out that you are in fact receiving almost all available buffs.  you should also be seeing a ton more de-buffs.

Blizzard has finally taken pity on us raid leaders and made it much, much easier to set things up.  Don't have a Boomkin for Improved Faerie Fire? No problem, a shadow priest has the same sort of de-buff now for casters and a hunter can provide the same thing for melee. Have 6 melee show up? Easy, they will still get Leader of the Pack and Battle Shout and even Strength of Earth totem while in the caster group.

MMO Champion came up with a great little web program where you can set up test raids and see how easy it is to get a cohesive group with what use to be a suboptimal player pool.  no more need to cancel a raid(or do a lesser farm raid, or have someone respec to play an alt) just because the one prot Pally in your guild couldn't make it that night.

Of course this also means you can bring your best players, regardless of which class they choose to raid with.

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WoW Blizzcon News - Day 1

Some of you may have been there, some may have been keeping up with the news by friends(like I was), some maybe even got the DirectTV broadcast(which from what I hear cut out a lot), and yet some of you may not know anything about the goings on of Blizzcon.

For all you noobs out there Blizzcon is the annual Blizzard Convention held in California(because they are too cheap to do it on the east coast). Usually at this even there is much hype of the brand new games or expansions that Blizzard is coming out with. Normally there is some major announcement that they wait until this day to tell people. Oh and of course there is always lots and lots of lines to get your swag or to play that new hyped expansion or game. And you get to watch people as they walk around dressed up as their favorite World of Warcraft or Diablo or Indiana Jones(oh wait he wasn't created by Blizzard?) characters.

Unlike past year this year's announcements were pretty bleh. I am happy that I didn't care to want to go to Blizzcon this year(not much of a convention guy to tell you the truth, maybe if it were say in New England). The ultra major news they released at their opening ceremonies was that the Wizard class would be playable for Diablo 3. /yawn I personally have never gotten into Diablo myself but even people who did play it thought that wasn't a good enough announcement.

For us WoW fans though we did get some announcements in the form of the Class Panel discussion held later in the day with Tom "Kalgan" Chilton and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street("There is a rumour on the forums that I'm a hot chick. You know it's true!"). I'm not going to talk about specific class changes, if you want info on that then visit WoW Insider's live-blog or the shortened version at MMO Champion.

I just want to hone in on the things that will effect us for raiding. The largest announcement for us in this session was the announcement of the ability to dual spec. Now not all details were given out at this so don't get too too excited just yet but the announcement is well received by us anyways.

What is Dual Spec? Well from the discussion today it's the ability to hold two separate specs and interchange them when needed. This will let people change their spec at whim without physically going back to the trainer. There was no mention as to how this will be implemented or if it will cost more gold. This will not be able to be used in the middle of arena matches though so no "OMG it's a Ret pally, spec ferlol!" moments, sorry. Dual specs will not mean just one set of gear although it will still mean certain classes will be able to do it without carrying more gear(IE - shadow priest to holy priest).

So how does this help us? Well the obvious. The "I need 3 tanks to kill all this trash to BigBossDude but he is a one tank fight", the "o crap, master healman has dc'd but we are on fast trash timers here", the "man you suck as resto, go boomkin and be useful" moments come to mind. Now you can have everyone come prepared for two specs and never have to cancel a raid because you are missing something but have a plethora of another. This is great news for the single player as well as the raid leaders!

Oh but there is more, the panel also has brung to light the reason why they are making all these class spec changes. "Bring the player, not the class" is their new motto. They don't want to make ability's so overpowered that you need to cancel the raid and they don't want it so that only one class has it. One example to this is that feral druids and warriors now have a viable aoe tanking ability. They want to make skill and gear worth more than buffs("Jimmy can't come ->No Wind Fury -> Cancel the raid")or potions(Potion lockouts, drum lockouts, etc). Buffs will not stack anymore but aura's and most buffs are raid wide. There will be multiple ways to get the same benefit which means you will have more room to bring who you want, rather than who you need. They want us to bring good players, not have to suffer with sitting out the good ones while the ones that need to learn are inside.. learning.

Lastly(I know you have already reached the TL;DR phase), they are making the game have less emphasis on threat. They rather have fights have emphasis on moving around and healing, not halting all dps cause the tank has not enough aggro. No more staring at aggro and waiting 5 minutes while your Pally builds up enough threat for you to cast 3 frostbolts and wait again. Now you wait a few seconds and unleash hell!

Some of this stuff is coming out with the new patch, some we will have to wait for a while, but all of it spells some great changes for us to look forward to. Raiding with these new changes is going to be exciting and it will really lend opportunity to some interesting fights for them to come up with rather than the same old stuff with a new model(not that it wont happen anyways).

Thanks for sticking with me through this long one. If tomorrow brings more pertinent info from Blizzcon I will try to keep updated. Until then, back to your regular scheduled blog.

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WoW Calendar

Freaking finally. Blizzard has looked at all the used addons that most guilds use and has made their own versions of them.

No Vacancy has been using Group Calendar since we started up and a lot of us have been using it since well before that. It's a great addon but it has its glitches. For one, as GM I can not edit or remove any other members post on the calendar. I must be online on that account to see the newest signups since I last logged(I have two accounts so this poses a problem sometimes). If I change computers information can get lost even under the same account(I have multiple computers so thats an issue too). But all in all this addon is great and I have touted its praises all the way up until now (and will continue to do so if the Blizzard one ends up being a huge phail).

Anyways, back to the Blizzard version. This version is great. I can edit and remove other people's posts(no more Fail-mades on my calendar!!), I can see who has signed up from other accounts, and it's all stored server side so I don't have to worry when I change computers. And you can invite people to your raids and if they are in your guild it has an autocomplete feature so you don't have to remember how to spell that guy who's name is ohgfljhsgfljkh(but you still have to figure out how to say it in vent.

Also, it shows all the in-game info that you might want. For instance, it tells you when the Darkmoon Faire is around and where it exactly will be. It lets you know the start and end date of all those special holiday seasons (YAY BEERFEST!), lets you know when every instance you are saved to resets. And so forth.



But the best thing about it is that no one has to download some new addon to use it. Everyone in the guild already has it. So now there is no excuse that you didn't see the raids posted because your addon is out of date. For us, signing up to raids is required, now there is zero excuse. I Love it!

What else has Blizzard given us for us to help run our guild? I shall find out and let you know if they actaully did. Tomorrow, the new in-game threat meter.

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WoW Starting a guild #4: Listen to your guild

Whether you form a dictatorship style guild or an everyone gets a say democratic type guild make sure you always listen to your guild members.

Your members will always voice their concerns and you need to listen to it if you want to keep them. Sure, there are some people who join your guild who think the know everything and just blab about how if it was their guild they would do it this way and that you should do it their way and blah blah blah. Ignore them and if it gets too bad make them leave. But everyone else, listen. If everyone wants free donut fridays then try to give it to them. Obviously, if its an unreasonable request, such as free crack fridays, then don't worry about it. I'm sure they can get their crack from another source anyways.

But in all seriousness, if you don't listen to your guild as a whole then you won't have one that does anything because everyone will go find somewhere else that will listen to them.

Remember, what your guild does is about your guild as a whole, not about what they can do for you. No matter how good you are, you will not be worshipped as a god among digital men so get off your high horse before you even start.

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One person can make a difference?

One of our officers just returned to the game. A few weeks ago he was hacked during the same weekend he had a death in the family so when he returned he was pretty just upset about the whole ordeal and so decided to take a break from the game. After a week or so of not hearing from him we figured he had made the decision to make it long term so we started recruiting to replace his raid spot. Last night he returned and it's really amazing the reactions that were received. People were quite elated.

It's really funny how one person make a huge difference in how things are going. The officers are really happy that he is back because he was a great officer. He was in charge of setting up the groups in raids, he acted as a backup raid leader, and he was good at keeping people level headed about things. Not that the rest of us can't do it, he just has the gift of doing it better than us.

The rest of the guild was glad to have him back too because he provides a huge amount of dps and I think people generally look up to him as one of the better players(another reason the officers like having him back).

I just think it's great that one person can really make the difference to the people around them. Of the billions of people in the world and the millions that play this game it's easy to feel like a number that means nothing, but when you are that one person in all of the others that makes the difference it's a great feeling.

Welcome back Boza, glad to have you here.

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