Mama GM

Defining Your Guild

2010-09-10T21:25:00.000-04:00

Napps levels her skill in bow

2010-09-10T12:30:00.000-04:00

When you leave your guild in the hands of others

2010-09-03T22:34:00.000-04:00

Nap Time with Napps - Preparing the Guild for Cataclysm

2010-08-20T13:01:00.000-04:00

Blizzard Retracts RealID Implementation on its Forums

2010-07-09T20:54:00.000-04:00

How Blizzard is creating a PR Nightmare

2010-07-07T20:16:00.000-04:00

Forum RealID - How Blizzard's newest RealID implementation will affect your guild

2010-07-06T20:27:00.003-04:00

Nap Time with Napps - What do you do when people RAGE!?

2010-07-02T11:28:00.000-04:00

Building an Officer Core

2010-06-30T20:31:00.003-04:00

Alts, Pugs and Raids - Oh my!

2010-06-27T10:28:00.003-04:00

Video Blogging????

2010-06-25T17:36:00.001-04:00

On my Downtime

2010-03-13T21:30:00.001-05:00

I stupidly acquired some sort of spyware on my laptop of which I do all my home based work and game time on. I'm pretty sure I got it from clicking on someone's link to a WoL report on their application to our guild and I am not sure how my anti-virus programs did not pick it up. (note - I am in no way suggesting that WoL contains malware of any sort, just relaying that I might have been linked to some sort of phising site instead.)

My Hotmail and various other software started to go wonky on me and all 200 something of my personal and professional contacts received a lovely email four nights ago asking them to come join me on some sort of social network. My game frame rates have been awful since then and I had to intentionally change my spec to include Body and Soul for Sindragosa solely because I would freeze up for about 2 seconds as she pulled us in and I would ALWAYS miss running out. Fun times.

So I made the decision to move to Windows 7 and I am just finishing up with my Warcraft install now on disc 2 of Vanilla. Boy, is my PC now moving at lightening speed. I am by no means an IT expert - I leave that up to my husband - but I have to say after using XP, Vista and now 7 I have to say Vista is the laggist out of the three and and a huge memory hog.

My basic setup took less than a half hour to do - with Vista that wasn't even close to the case with all the permission stops.

In any case, sitting here waiting for (now) disc 3 to finish, it made me think of how important having a proper setup to for Warcraft endgame play is. If I wasn't in an endgame progression raiding guild I wouldn't have cared that I had to change my spec to ensure that I got out of Blistering Cold. To me it made a huge difference and really got my goat that I had to. If I didn't have so much crap on my PC I wouldn't have locked up for a few seconds ensuring my demise each time it was cast.

I never understood until now why players would complain on the customer support forums that their latency went up by a 30 or 40. It all about getting that extra in edge play - allowing you react faster and better to every situation.

The Sindragosa fight is very unforgiving in that matter. As I found out, having less than stellar reaction times, whether due to PC or personal ability, means death or a wipe. I for one am happy I've moved to a better operating system and have decided to buy an external harddrive for my laptop to house everything else (My personal and professional photos, financials, etc.) so that I can free up as much space I need to ensure top performance from my not so stellar laptop.

Anyway, with the downtime I have tonight (and only being on disc 5 of Vanilla, sigh) I believe one of my new goals for 2010 is researching every way I can push as much perfomance out of my game play as possible. Whether that is computer performance, play technique or toon wise - I vow to do better in game. I do already spend quite a lot of time optimizing my priest for raiding but I probably have been neglecting points one and two somewhat. I plan on giving some well needed attention to them both.

That's it for now! Time for Burning Crusade and maybe a movie!

When Good Players Act Bad

2010-03-04T13:47:00.004-05:00

I really hate drama and people who try to screw with my guild. Usually it's really easy to pick out the recruits or potential recruits that may bring harm to your guild in one way or another. Sometimes it's not as easy.

I am sure there are many Guild Masters that will agree with me when they say there is nothing more disappointing when someone who started out amazing - great personality, great play style, and good contributor - does a 180 and becomes a guild management nightmare.

What do you do when this happens?

When someone "goes bad" how long do you let it go on? What course of action do you take in the situation? Here is my take on a good way to handle the less than stellar jerks.

1. How long has the guildie been with your guild?

All of a sudden your longest standing top dps attitude goes from respectful and focused to spiteful and wishy washy. Your immediate reaction might be "what the hell is going on here?" Has this been happening for a long time or did this new personality just rear its ugly head today?

In my guild we know that players are not going to be smiling examples of bubbly perfectness at all times. We're all real people, with real emotions and lives - for all we know the player with the bad case of the Mondays might have just lost their job. We ask that players recognize when they are in too foul of a mood to play but sometimes that doesn't happen.

What to do? If this is the first day this has occurred for your guildie send them a tell, ask what's up and point out that they are not usually like this and you're concerned. When I have used this approach 9 times out of 10 I'm usually told X or Y reason and it usually stems from something from outside the game. A suggested night off to go gank hordies in PvP usually cures it.

If this is coming from a player who just joined the guild not long ago (let's say still on applicant status) or that long time member's attitude has been steadily declining for some time now without valid reason, it might be best to reevaluate (with the player) if this is (still) the right guild for them.

2. What happened exactly?

As in life, there are certain deal breakers in game that can potentially seriously harm your guild and should be met with swift action. In Ascendence this means Breaking Blizz's ToS, harassment, threats or anything in game that can be considered criminal in real life. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200 - just GTFO of my guild.

What to do? If the issue was a small one (small as in breaking simple guild/raid conduct rules such as attendance, attitude, loot rules,) confronting the guildie, explaining to them what they did wrong and making the guildie accountable to correct their mistake is the right course of action. Otherwise, major infractions as mentioned above need to be met with a guild kick.

3. How often is this happening?

We once had a guildie who notified us that they were having personal issues and would need to take 2 weeks off from the game. We're understanding and agree real life should always supersede this game. The week before ICC was released however the player in question would be online every night during the entire duration of our raids and when they found out that new content was being released the next Tuesday notified that his availability was suddenly freed up. It seemed very fishy to us but we knew that this person said they were having issues so we let it go.

Soon after, this player would start to hard disconnect after we would wipe a few times always coming back the next day saying they were sorry - that personal issue came up and they had to go. On top of that, this player would afk out when the guild planned on working on old content such as Ulduar for a change always coming back with the same excuse. Being understanding but starting to feel rather duped we asked that the player mention to an officer or the raid lead that they needed to go quickly should the need arise. After that request was ignored, we called the player out on it and they admitted that they didn't want to do old content and when they got angry because of wipes they would intentionally dc.

What to do? As this player had been a long standing in our guild we told him that we had noticed his behavior and gave him the chance to correct it. They promised they would do better. If the actions of the player would have been inexcusable or completely unacceptable and unapologetic I would have performed an exit interview right away.

4. Are their actions causing dissension?

The same player I mentioned above did get better for about a week. However, a new more disturbing attitude started emerging – rebellion.

We have class channels and encourage players of the same class to interact and work with each other to better themselves. We do however notice as an officer team that usually one player from each class is usually looked upon as a leader or someone to go to for knowledge. This player was such a person that everyone looked up to for advice.

I started hearing rumors that comments were being made against decisions made for the guild within the class channel in question (such as returning to older content, players sitting out, etc.) I don’t monitor channels but some players came to me to complain about certain disturbing discussions that were taking place. The culmination of the comments came when we were toying with the idea of recruiting another player of the same class who was slightly under geared but promised much talent and a great fit. The player leading this underground rebellion got the rest of the players of his class very much up in arms and wound up as to believe that we were recruiting to replace them all.

What to do? I decided to end it all and remove the player causing the dissension when I heard that at their coaxing that others of the class were planning on quitting the guild if we recruited the new player. It took all the officers and one other player who didn’t buy into the words being said to convince them that they were not being replaced and bringing in this player will just mean good things for them and the guild.

Once your players do not trust you, don’t believe that what you are doing is for the better of the guild as a whole anymore and dissension sets in, it’s pretty much downhill from there. Be transparent with everything you do and consult the guild when making any decision that will affects the masses. Remove players who are working against all that your guild has built and is striving for ASAP. Leaving bad feelings linger too long is a recipe for disaster in any guild.

The 1 Hour Lower Spire Challenge

2010-02-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

Our guild had a problem. Loot Tuesday - as so many guilds call that first night of a fresh lockout - took us 2 1/2 hours to clear. No matter how much we pushed, no matter how much we pleaded we could not get our guildies to go faster through the first 4 bosses of ICC.

Some blamed it on the vast amounts of trash. Some blamed it on afks and other player issues. Either way, we had a problem and the solution that we had originally came up with was to lock out the instance for a week so we can have more raid time working on new bosses.

Some disagreed.
The goal for our guild is to see as much content as we possibly can before any newer content comes out. That means our current goal is to clear ICC and afterwards work on hard-modes until Cataclysm. (Or, whatever filler instance Blizzard throws in before the new expansion.)

Most of our guildies are on par with each other in terms of gear and we really only have 1 or 2 guildies who are undergeared for the content we are seeing. Nevertheless, being able to see more bosses and get more bosses on farm produces much more gear in the long run than farming the first 4 bosses. For example, we calculated that if a guild merely farms Deathbringer Saurfang from now until each guildie is decked out in 4pc tier sets it would take approximately 2 years before everyone is geared with the Regular T10 tokens.

The above were our arguments for locking out this one week. A full 12 hours on progression bosses would be nice, considering the 2 1/2 hour wing clears we have been having.

We didn't meet much resistance with our decision, albeit we did hear disappointed mumbles from some raiders except one. He didn't complain, he didn't say a word other than make a very clear statement to the officers that he didn't agree - He declined all his invites to that week's raids.

Now normally this would piss off any guild leader/officer and would probably garner some type of disciplinary action like a demotion or a guild kick, (to be honest when I saw it myself, I saw red,) but we promoted him. Why you ask? Keep reading below.

I did message the player as to why he declined all his invites and is not coming this week. I had hoped it was because he was going to be out of town, but alas, he was not happy with what we planned on doing.

"Why are we locking out an instance for 4 bosses we can clear in an hour?" He asked. I reminded him that we haven't ever cleared the wing in an hour and it has taken, due to trash and player specific needs, close to 3 hours on most Tuesdays. "I can get them to clear it in 1." The challenge was set.

I didn't argue much further. I admit I was angry but I was amused with his confidence. "Alright, if you think you can get the guild to clear it in an hour, the raid is yours tomorrow. And, if you succeed, I'll promote you to officer." If he is able to do it, then he deserves the job I thought and, it can't hurt to have a possibly decent raid lead for once.

"I'll accept your offer." The deal was set.

I set the GMOTD to announce the raid would not be locked out on the Tuesday and that it will be lead by our challenger. His mandate was to have the guild clear it in under an hour lead entirely by him. Any questions were to be directed to him and wished him luck. I then logged off for the night.

I heard throughout the next day that there was a buzz; nobody knew exactly what was to be expected that night. I explained the ground rules to the rest of the officers.

1) The raid is to be lead entirely by the person setting forth the challenge.
2) He must set up the groups himself and perform any sub-ins as needed.
3) He is allowed to ask someone to help him with buff management (asking someone with a buff checker add-on if buffs are good to go.)
4) He has 1 hour from 9pm (our normal pull time) to have the raid complete the first 4 bosses or else I am not to hear another complaint about locking out the raid again.

I explained to the raid exactly why the challenge was put forth and the above rules at the beginning of the raid and that if he succeeded he would be promoted to officer. Almost everyone thought that it sounded like a fun idea and I passed the raid reins over.

What the guild witnessed next was a flawless first wing.

The raid, although easy to set up that night due to the makeup of the players that showed up, was ready to go in 5 mins. We started our first pull at 8h55. Upon entering the first room we were instructed to keep to the left wall and do not deviate at all. Rogues were told to disarm all traps and an apology was given to people still farming rep and possibly wanting to kill every mob. We skipped a whole section of trash.

Marrowgar was reached within 10 mins and killed within a few minutes after. The longest part was doing DKP and loot distribution. Lady Deathwhisper was killed about 15 mins later. We killed trash and got on the boat at about 40 mins into raid and had a surprisingly smooth and non laggy "kill".

The guildies seemed to want him to succeed which was great since anything that inspires in my mind is a good thing. While loot was being distributed from the boat's cache, the raid was instructed to go take their positions for Saurfang. Once done, ready checks went out and our first problem occurred - our first ninja afk of the night.

15 mins before the hour mark with no replacements for this guildie we had to wait. This is why things take long. Real life does happen and our guild understands that but we appreciate someone telling us they need to step away for the moment. If anything slows a raid down is a lack of communicating what is impeding you from performing your duties - afks included.

The guildie came back 5 minutes later. 10 mins to down Saurfang. We did it in 4 and 2 marks. 54 minutes to clear the first wing and I had a new raid lead and a new officer.

Why did this work? The guild kept an open mind to new ideas and we made the challenge fun with a significant reward for accomplishing it. I accepted the fact that maybe we were doing something wrong; Officers and Guild Leaders are human too.

Keeping an open mind as a leader in the guild is a must. Knowing that your decisions don't always have to be the be all and end all to all discussions is key to developing a strong team. Listening to your guildies' concerns, understanding the whole picture will in the end make your guild a more productive and better place to be.

A Val'anyr story - by Napps

2010-02-16T08:48:00.003-05:00

We finally did it. I have been sitting with 30 shards in my bags for months now. Myself and my guild, focused on progression, felt it was best to continue work on the new content as much as possible. Every month or so we spent a few attempts on Yogg-Saron when our group make up wasn't stellar for a progression night or we would pug people in once awhile to try 3 lights.
A big thank you goes out to my guildies who changed that yesterday. I jokingly (alright, half jokingly) asked for a Yogg+3 kill for my birthday so Sunday night being Valentine's day and expecting hardly anyone to come on we pugged a few players and made a go at it.

Pugging Yogg when some players had never seen Yogg before if not a fun thing. Players 2 tier levels above this content still need to play smart in order to down this boss. It's not a tank and spank, and the mechanics are still some of the hardest in the game. Going in without a clue is not an option.

Although coming close to making Yoggy soggy with only 3 keepers on Sunday night, with the pugs and group make up we were unable to down him.

Come Monday night, after being embarrassed all day by coworkers and 5 bajillion (yes that is a word.... in my eyes at least) birthday "thank yous" we logged in to start our regular Monday night raid. I was suprised that almost every single on of my guildies who came were on wanted to run Yogg for my birthday. It really makes me get all warm and fuzzy inside when my guildies all band together to make my day.

We all zone in and go down to Yogg. All of a sudden vent explodes with a bunch of "Uh... it's taking forever to cast an instant cast spell", "I went to buff and my arm is stuck in the air." Instance server crash. A half hour later our toons are finally released and we find ourselves back in Dalaran.

We decided to then go to ICC and continue clearing down Rotface and park ourselves in front of Valithria's hallway. Having been delayed it was close to 11pm and we were about to clear new trash to a new boss; the guildies voted to go back to Ulduar and play with Yoggy again.

The first few pulls of Yogg, were good pulls. We tried a couple of different things to make the fight go a bit smoother than it had in previous nights. It was the 5th pull that proved victorious!

Everything was going flawlessly - our dps was on the ball, we got very close to a 2 brain phase second phase but decided against it since we had a significant amount of tentacles up. The 3rd phase came around when the last crusher was at about 500k health. DPS didn't freak and stayed on their mark. We assigned our rogues, warrior and 1 ret pally to focus down the adds one by one - everyone else was on the boss.

Down a healer as I focused on the dwindling "roar" cooldown bar, I nailed Yogg in the mouth with my shards on the first shot. We spammed the tanks, I healer aggroed a couple of adds twice and luckily got iceblocked both times. Everyone kept their insanity in check - nobody had to be killed. We called turns, we performed sanity checks for our players we focused on continuing the rythym.

I was suprised when the Deux Vox victory sound went off and 3 Light in the Darkness flashed accross my screen. We didn't notice how close we were.

Thank you again to my guildies - You really made my birthday special.

The Penalty Box - How an addon helped me with those /palm moments

2010-02-12T14:20:00.003-05:00

So it seems that I have already broken the "I'm going to post more in 2010" resolution... Sigh. I'm back - I had some major work related things happen in the first month of 2010 that left me exhausted to write during lunch hours or after work. Things seem to have calmed down a bit now so I figured I'd finish a post I started literally the second week of January.

So I had a suggestion from a couple of guildies to add a /sigh rank to our roster. This would be for players who you just "sigh" at and need a place to put them in time out for a bit. ~~Although I don't think we will implement something like this, it really isn't my style of leading~~ We ended up implementing something similar to this called the "Penalty Box" after a couple of "wowzers" and it did remind me that there is this nifty addon that I have used in the past to rework and rearrange the ranks in the guild when I had to add one right in the middle or something.
GuildReRank is an addon to adjust and move groups of people around. Nice when you decide that you want a banker rank or want to add a special rank in your guild right smack dab in the middle of the 8 other ranks.

Since Blizzard only allows you to add a rank right at the bottom, moving players manually up and down (especially if you were adding an alt rank or something similar) can get quite time consuming and perhaps confusing. Using GuildReRank moves large numbers of players up and down the ranks with ease.

Here's how I added a few ranks to my rosters and used GuildReRank to do it:

Ranks I had:

Guild Master (1)
Assistant Guild Master (1)
Banker (1)
Officer (4)
Veteran Raider (15)
Raider (18)
Applicants (5)
Friends & Family (lots of alts and friends)

I wanted:

Guild Master (1)
Assistant Guild Master (1)
Banker (1)
Officer (4)
Recruiter (2)
Veteran Raider (15)
Raider (18)
Applicants (5)
Friends & Family (lots of alts and friends)
Penalty Box (my now personal favourite - empty until needed)

Using the Guild Options menu in game I created 2 new ranks at the bottom of the rank list and named them as the two bottom ranks I wanted appear above - Penalty Box and Friends & Family. I then slowly and carefully renamed the rest of the ranks above it to reflect the above list. I then had to move the players around using the tool.

The tool allows you to move an entire group of players up and down the ranks. That doesn't mean you can blindly move ranks around with disregard. In order for you to "rerank" properly you have to start from the bottom up.

For example, I moved my "Friends & Family" ranked players who were now sitting in the new "Raider" rank, for the time being, down to the proper rank first using the tool. (see example below) Then, I moved my "Applicants" down to the new Applicant rank next and so on and so forth. I made sure I notified my guild, in guild chat, before hand as the "demotion" spam would fill up people's screen as well as the guild log - There was no need to alarm anyone.

As you can see above, the arrows that are highlighted show which ranks you can move around. Greyed out ranks are unmovable. It is very important to remember to make sure the rank you are moving a group of people to has no one else in it before you move them - otherwise you will be blending two ranks together. (That is, unless you mean to blend two ranks together)

In any case, I have used GuildReRank many times in After Midnight and Ascendence so far - it really is one of those time saving tools when you need to restructure a little bit and tweak things from a guild operations stand point.

Happy New... Resolutions!

2010-01-07T17:29:00.001-05:00

Let me start with wishing each and everyone of you a Happy New Year with much health and prosperity, love and comfort in 2010.

With 2009 behind us and the bright promise of 2010 in front of us, I felt it was time to finally post my resolutions for the upcoming year for everyone to see and perhaps hold me accountable to.

2009 was a tough year for me, not only in game but in my personal life. With many health issues (some from pregnancy and some just to plain bad luck) 2009 will forever go down in my mind as one of the most painful years of my life.

In game, it was the year of After Midnight, dealing with coming back to the game in full raiding force with the haters trailing along the way. Going from a pugging guild to a full raiding guild, stressing out to keep everything running smoothly and finally deciding to leave the server was big.

Now 2010 I'm hoping to bring less stress, more positiveness and a drive like I have never had before in real life as in my raiding life.

So here it is. Love it, hate it - let me know what you think, but this is what I plan to do.

In 2010 I resolve to...

IN GAME

Become a better Raid Leader - I tend to panic when I feel the raid is losing control and make mistakes when calling things out because of the panic. I plan on being calmer this year all around so raids can be called calmly and accurately.
Not care so much about what other people think of my guild leading style - in 2009 I got hurt when someone would attack me in game, put me down for decisions I made, etc. I know I am a good leader; I have people who have been playing with me for years and followed me to another server. If I wasn't a good leader people would not follow. I am not going to be afraid anymore to put myself out there anymore. Which is why I am now not afraid to say After Midnight transfered to Turalyon and we're now called Ascendence. If people want to be obessive rolling alts after my old toon name of Napaeae and post on any forum they can, so be it. It's quite sad really that someone has decided to do this and I'm choosing to feel quite bad for them.
Know the difference when it is time to be a friend vs. GM - In Ascendence, we do something called a "promotion interview" when your 2 week trial period is over to ensure that the applicant likes it in the guild, give them feedback and to hear their feedback. I recently had to do a promo interview for a friend that I have known for almost 4 years. I told him before I started that I was "putting my GM hat on" and took a deep breath and gave him his feedback as a player, guildie and prompted him to give us his candid feedback about the guild. Being the one to evaluate a friend has scared me so much in the past I have tried to avoid it as much as possible. I plan on being more direct this year and this time around. As for the interview with my friend, the "GM Hat" comment prompted giggles and after the open convo about playstyle and guild politics, we joked about how my husband was fail for not paying back the 8 gold he had borrowed the night before.
Not allow people who call me "friend" to try to use in game - Incidentally, I have also recently had someone try to use our friendship to make me feel bad about not giving them something in game and accusing me of shunning them from my "inner sanctum" so they could get what they wanted. I usually have ended up in previous years bending over backwards trying to accomodate people who do this... It has stopped this year and with this event.
Do more achievements - Which will probably need to include PvP. As well as this achievement which this person has promised to help me with since he made me screw it up on 2009. /shakes fist
Take time off - In 2009, I had an almost 100% raid attendance. That is over a year period. I must have missed at max only 2 to 3 raids last year and holding a 4 or 5 day raiding schedule. I raided no less than 208 nights last year and that is not including running 10 mans on the weekends. I'm quite suprised I didn't burn out. I'm thinking if 2010 is a repeat that hoping to not burn out might have a different outcome. Let's not take the chance shall we?

IN REAL LIFE

Fix my health issues - Even when I was young I was in pain a lot. After I gave birth to my daughter the pain has increased 10 fold and I find myself some days not able to function in even the most mundane situations. Getting on the floor to play with my daughter can sometimes be excrutiating. I resolve to follow everything my doctor tells me to do to "fix me" in 2010.
Lose weight - I know everyone resolves to do this, but forthe reason stated above, I need to do it for my health. I'm not crazy over weight but I do need to lose the baby pounds from pregnancy. Hubby and I are going to try this diet; a couple of my friends are on it and now look "Fabu".
Write more - I haven't been writing as often as I would have liked. I started this blog to actually get me away from working on our website, to contribute to something bigger than myself, start a new hobby and stop me from mindlessy trolling forums. I want to up the number of posts I make a week to at least 1 a week; perhaps I might enlist a friend to get the number of posts within the blog up to 2 and put a different perspective to things.
Buy a new Home - My house is starting to feel very small. It needs a lot of work and if Ace and I decide to have another little one this house is not going to suffice. So if anyone is selling around the lower Laurentians just outside of Laval/Montreal let us know. We're going to be thinking hardcore this year about moving into a nice 3 or 4 bedroom cottage.
Breath - I found I haven't taken much time for myself this past year. 2010 is going to be about repairing the damage both physically and mentally and I'm going to start with just taking a breath.

What are some of your resolutions this year?

List of abilities to add to Grid for ICC encounters

2009-12-19T20:23:00.003-05:00

I have received requests from players to help them summarize what they need to add to Grid for all current ICC encounters. I figured I would list them here since it useful for all players to know who has what on them for any given fight. The ones below are specifically useful for healers but I will note if it is useful for a tank or dps player to add them as well.
I suggest adding the below to your center icons for quick identification during a fight:

Lord Marrowgar -

Impaled - Will hit 3 people on 25 man and is very apparent when it does as there is nothing to dispell or cleanse on the fitght that will confuse the iconary. Good for healers and dps to note these.

Lady Deathwhisper -

Dominate Mind - Good to know who is being mind controled so you don;t try to heal then at that particular time or its your job to call out the MCs for CC. Anyone who needs to CC should have this one their grid; not only the healers.
Necrotic Strike - This negates 14k heals so healers should know when someone is inflicted by it. Healers and tanks should know this.
Frost Fever - Does periodic damage and slows the target. Can be cleansed. (although this usually shows up anyways through a properly set up grid for priests) This is for anyone who can cleanse diseases.

Deathbringer Saurfang -

Boiling Blood - Good to know who has this as they will needs heals and a Disc Priest bubble will stop Saurfang form getting BPs (Not confirmed) Also players can Iceblock, HoP and Cloak out of it. For Healers and dps that can remove the boil.
Rune of Blood - If you're a tank or helping call the taunts if needed you'll need to know quickly when this is up.
Blood Nova - If a player has this it might be usefull for them to get out of range of everyone else if they are in range. (I haven't tested this one out yet so not sure it works) It doesn't work.
Mark of the Fallen Champion - Super important to have this on grid as the target will be damaged when the tank gets damaged and will need tons of heals to stay alive. They also give BPs back to Saurfang with damage and if they die a percentage of health is returned to DBS upon death. You also don't want to battlerez anyone who died with this mark.

I will update this as soon as I get to test the Blood Nova ability on my grid.

I'm taking my guild and you're taking my money! (An answer post)

2009-12-17T17:26:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago Thespius from World of Matticus had an interesting post on the possibility of paid guild transfers much like you would for a paid character transfer or faction change. In the article, he relayed some tidbits about a possible future service Tom Chilton from Blizz let his interviewers know may be coming down the line at a much future date - Guild Transfers, speculation being released with Cataclysm.

Although I commented that I felt that the transfer service would include one toon (the Guild Master) and the guild name, bank contents and levels (as Cataclysm will offer guild "leveling") and not every member of the guild, I was curious to guess at what cost a full guild transfer would entale if all members of the guild were to be included.
We could assume that Blizz would only allow the GM and the bank contents of the guild to transfer as each individual is repsonsable for their own account and Guild Masters do not own their guildie's toons; they shouldn't be allowed to dictate whether someone transfers or not. In which, transferring a guild and one toon shouldn't be too expensive. However, what if Blizz made a package deal where each guildie were allowed to "approve" the transfer by filling out a Guild Transfer form at the request of a GM who wanted to transfer their guild?

As just having moved 24 players to a new server and created a new guild we can safely assume that a package deal of that magnatude would be very expensive and there would be question of who pays for the cost; the player or the GM.

For example, 24 players came with my husband and I to our new server. Each person transferred at least 1 toon, some moved as much as 4. 24 players at $25 each is $600. I know many brought over at least 3 toons; I can safely say about 16 alts were transferred as well. That means Blizz made about $1,000 of our guild transfer. That is a hefty sum!

If Blizz wanted to make it easier for players to move around as a guild, a package deal could be made for a mass transfer consisting of at least 25 toons (a full raiding group) at a discounted cost. Let's say 20$ a transfer if you could get 25 or more players to sign a transfer charter. With it, you get the entire contents of your guild bank, its tabs, name and levels once it is implemented. Perhaps it would entice guilds to move around as wanted and in the end effectively making more money for the company through marketing of the lower transfer costs?

If Blizz does not intend to have packaged total guild transfer deals for players and have the guild transfer remain the sole and individual transfer of the GM and their guild, I would think they would treat the guild an another entity on its own effectively making the cost to transfer oneself and their guild at the cost of 50$ ($25 for the player and $25 for the guild)

All in all, had this been implemented already in any form I would have been completely appreciative of the service. Moving guilds, whether it be for the cost or the planning and execution involved is a long and hard process; having the entire contents of your bank and the structure remain intact would have been welcome.

What do you think? How do you think Blizz would implement a total guild transfer?

Day 6 - 8 - The Announcement

2009-12-11T15:24:00.004-05:00

Last post I wrote before After Midnight transfered servers...
_________________________________________________

Someone let the cat out of the bag. "Thanks for not inviting me, I guess I am not good enough to be in your 'clique'." It tore at my heartstrings, but made no sense, as that particular player hadn't raided with us in months. Oh well. I was expecting people to be upset; just not tonight.

I hadn't planned on telling people until Thursday. I wanted to make sure everyone got a good week of raiding in with the guild, got a few upgrades for those that were staying and make sure I ran wowmeteronline reports in case people needed them to find another guild. Looks like I'll have to tell everyone sooner...

Had we been able to tell everyone on Thursday, it would give a night of goodbyes and we would disband the guild on Friday. I wasn't quite sure what to do or say when one of our "Friends" status guildies exclaimed that he knew and was upset he wasn't asked to come in guild chat. A couple of people freaked out. "OMG STFU WTF are you talking about?" No one really believed him. I wanted to cry but didn't say a word. In fact, no one said anything and the topic died right there rather quickly.

We raided good and hard that night. Regular ToC on a loot Tuesday for some people if like waving donuts in front of Homer Simpson and him exclaiming "Don't mind if I do!" People were happy, I was happy.

Wednesday. I stressed out all night about telling the guild. I knew that I had wanted to tell the guild on Thursday but I found out that the rumour (well truth) that a lot of players were leaving the server was spreading like wildfire. Time to talk.

I started raid invites. So far so good. Everyone was called into vent. Breath. Officer chat is notified I'm announcing. People are on the edge of their seats. Exhale. "I have something I need to let you all know."

Most of the guild took it well. It helps when most of the guild is coming with. A few players I knew couldn't come and I knew they would be upset. One person was devistated. I felt bad but a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I felt much much better.

Most people who know me know I don't like keeping secrets. I find that if I keep them in I tend to blow up or get incredibly stressed out. Upon telling the guild I felt as though I had opened up the flood gates and any and all stress left my body. Of course, I didn't like the fact that I hurt a few players feelings. Some people left the guild that very night. It was painfully obvious no one was able to focus through the raid that night and some of the players coming felt it was no use waiting to transfer on Friday.

Thursday, a lot of people had already gone. I didn't see a point to staying any longer. Everyone in the guild knew that it was time to say goodbye. We had planned on disbanding Friday but hanging around for posterity's sake made no sense at this point. Some people not coming had already left and with After Midnight actually being a shell of what it was just the night before, there would be no raid tonight.

I said my goodbyes to some of the other GMs on the server and my friends I had made outside of guild. Told good guilds I had some players not coming who would be great fits with their guild and they should snap them up while they could. (And tapped Arkness on his hand for trying to take Dovi! Grrrr :)) I then said my goodbyes to the guild. It took about 5 minutes from start of my goodbyes to the end and then After Midnight was no more.

Our guild did not implode. Our guild didn't go down in a blaze of drama. Our guild changed. Our guild grew and moved onto what most felt it should. After Midnight might be no more on Uldaman but the players of the new guild remained for the most part the same with renewed zest for the game on another server under a new name.

I transfered tonight. Uldaman was like a little town. Little towns were never for a city girl like me.

Day 4 and 5 - The Wait

2009-12-05T18:41:00.002-05:00

Second post I wrote about After Midnight's Move. Please remember this was written a few days ago and is meant to chronicle my thoughts on the matter.
________________________________________________________

So we started a private post to the players who have shown interest in coming with us and whom we'd want to come to a server transfer with us. I feel bad. I hate having to have to keep secrets like this. I have always toted that we led transparently; I think that is why my husband and I have been so respected. Hiding this just feels... dirty. But, this is a new begining and new beginings sometimes means going cold turkey. Time to think about myself.

Here's the problem, we want to raid, drama free, without the BS and with everyone carrying their weight. I like everyone in After Midnight, I do. I just don't think everyone will fit in with what we are trying to build. Also, do I really want to bring the girl who distracts my raiders by showing pictures of her boobs to everyone? No. Do I really want to bring the player who only shows up to loot tuesday and whines when we wipe on progression bosses? No. I'm sure looking from the outside looking in people are going to hate me for this move and not inviting everyone to come with me. I pay my $15 bucks too (oh wait, I pay more like $45... website, vent, account... but that's neither here nor there,) do I really have to spend my time dealing with that BS? Even when I did deal with situations like that with a gkick or something, no one can let things go and I end up being trolled for months. Fun times.
So we have 24 people who are coming. We almost have an entirely balanced raid group. I know we're going to have to recruit when we get there and it will be hardtimes for a bit to get the raids off the ground. With 24 trusted players, I think we're going to make it through the tough times.

The buzz is exciting. People are cleaning out their banks and doing crazy farming sessions in anticipation for the new economy. Some are scrounging up the cash to make the jump in a few days. We are scheduled to leave on Friday; many are set to leave before then. A couple of people have already transfered over alts and are doing pugs to get to know people on the server. We know we're going to need some melee dps and healers; everyone is instructed to keep their eyes out for players who fit our bill.

The plan is to have open concept leading. Of course we will have the regular officer structure and will be holding our own version of "Raid Leader Idol" but we're not going to have class leads anymore. The original setup will be voted by commitee on how the players want things to roll. I'm thanking lucky stars that we all want the same thing. Progression in a non-hostile envrionment; I trust everyone will do what's best for the guild.

Our website is being revamped by my husband and one of our main tanks whom we found out was a programmer. Out forums sucked horribly so we're hoping to find another provider that has the widgets we need but more functional forums. We also need to fix up our application process; After Midnight's questions didn't make sense for what we wanted to achieve. There is lots of work to do.

I'm terribly nervous about the move, it's been 4 years since I have been on another server. I'm also going to have to eventually tell the players who are not coming. I know there are people who we have asked too that are not planning on coming in the end. I'm hoping they can keep the word to themselves before I do announce it. I doubt that will happen but we'll deal with it if the time comes. I want to be able to be the one who tells everyone what is happening. I don't want anyone else to have to deal with the brunt of this. It's my responsability to deal with the harsh reality of the secrecy, and I know there will be people who will not understand why.

Day 1-3 - The Decision

2009-12-04T20:06:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in awhile because the game had gotten me down and stressed out to the point where I almost quit the game. After thinking long and hard about the situation I decided to stay and the guild decided to to rally around and transfer for a fresh start. I started to write about the process and will start posting what I wrote over the next few days. After reading back through the posts it almost feels like I went through some "12 steps" program. I hope you enjoy...
___________________________________________________________

Burned again. I have been on Uldaman for more than 4 years now. I have been leading guilds for about as the same amount of time. Since I have started leading, I have heard it all. Seen it all. And, seem to have been through it all. It hasn't been always a barrel of laughs.

Uldaman is like a small town. Everyone knows everyone else's business. All it takes is one good trolling in trade or the forums and you seem to get blacklisted. The people here never ever forget. Ever. Pugging is horrible, the progression even worse and the trade trolls are the kings of the server and are immortalized. Ranked 175th out of 200 some-odd servers, low rung doesn't even come close to how I feel about this place.

Uldaman has been good to me and it has been bad to me. Uldaman will always remain Uldaman to me; a crappy instance that once done with it no one wants to go back.

Over the 4 years I have struggled against the odds to keep my guilds going. Not once have I disbanded a guild or had a guild fall apart on me for reasons that I could control. I have kept my guilds going until the last physically moment that I could bear. Quitting the game for a year due to pregnancy being the only reason why I have had any previous guild end.

Having discussed this with my male counterpart GMs on this server, as a female it seems that I carry a heavy load of criticism daily on how I run things. I have done nothing different than any of the other guilds out here, yet I have been called every name in the book the favourite being "Bitch". This really only happens when I put my foot down and assert the rules implemented for the guild. Someone breaks them, they are in the wrong, I am the bitch. Go figure.

Once again, I have been burned. A couple of guildies break a few rules; hey, causing drama, sexual harrassment and abuse of our loot rules is not that bad right? Not in these people's minds it seems. After immediately "laying the law" the bigger issue starts. The offending players are gone, and the rumours start to fly. "Get out while you still can. The guild is falling apart." is whispered to a player on trial status. She immediately gquits. "I hope, naps is taking the high road and not bad mouthing us, that would be unfortunately immature of her." They were lucky that I didn't tell the guild at first what was done. The gloves came off when the applicants started asking me why I would invite them to a guild that was about to fall apart.

After letting loose, and telling the guild exactly what took place in order to maintain the peace and stop the rumours, I had guildies come to me saying "thank god I don't have to go through this alone now". The stories of sexual harrassment were sickening, the comments made in private that were brought to light were depressing. I am done.

The constant attacks from exguildies. The hate mail from deleted toons. The level one alts whispering me just what they think of me. The rumours from ex guildies meant to destroy what our guild has worked so hard to do. I am done.

1 week ago I was about to delete my toons and quit the game. A game is only a game until someone gets hurt. 1 week ago my officers banded around my to take the brunt of the work off my back and keep the guild going. 3 days ago the show of solidarity of those within the guild was astonishing. I know that for the most part the people in my guild are awesome. The ones who are able to work as a team have remained and we will strive on to reach our goals. Just not on this server.

3 days ago. The majority of my guildies decided they are done with this server and we should leave together. After Midnight is not dead. After Midnight is surviving and transforming into what it should be, into what it deserves. Just not on this server.

The idea came up during an officer meeting. The idea was presented to our core and 17 to 2 voted in favour. We then presented the idea to most of the raiders and so far reaction has been positive. Many of us are finished with this server and are hoping to start fresh somewhere else.

The research for a new home has been arduous. We wanted a PvE realm. We wanted something with better progression, player base, economy, pugging situation and mature population. We found what we are looking for an players wanting to come have unanimously voted in favour. Were going to go.

There are much more planning to do before we do go, but the situation is ripe for change. ICC is at the brink of being released, our DKP is about to reset, our website subcription is up and so is our vent server.

I will be keeping a log of our transfer process here and will most probably post this when we're done. As I am expecting major trolling I will not be disclosing where we are going or what our guild will be called. This is a clean cut. We're ripping off the bandaid in one fell swoop. After Midnight as it is will cease to exist and hopefully we'l be finally left alone.

The Bench: Our Saviour

2009-11-06T11:23:00.006-05:00

The Bench. No one likes to sit on it. Everyone plays World of Warcraft to actually play, rarely do we want someone to tell us that we have to sit out that night. But unfortunately, with the inability to scale the difficulty of instances to the amount of people in your party, having to sit out is an inevitable part of playing wow within a raiding guild; game mechanics simply do not allow for more than 10 or 25 people per instance. In a perfect world, a raid guild would have 25 players, all encounters would require the same amount of tanks, the same amount of dps with no bias on melee or ranged and the same amount of healers. Life in game however simply just does not work out that way.

We obviously know that a perfect 25 man "same player group" scenario does not work; even with the aid of Dual Talent Specialization and allowing healers to go dps and perhaps a tank to heal, the need to "afk for real life" aspect of the game also doesn't allow for a raid roster to cap at 25. I have mentioned once before real people play the game with you, not just NPCs. Recruiting more than the allowable 25 man raid instance is a necessity.

After Midnight last night ran into the issue of not having enough available tanks to get a Trial of the Grand Crusader run off the ground. I personally do not like to over recruit. I have ridden the bench before and yes, it is not as fun as being in the action with everyone else. So, having three dedicated raider rank tanks with near 100% attendance, we felt we did not need to recruit anyone additional lest we have someone riding the pine. However, last night it would have been awesome had we had a well geared pinch hitter ready to come in to help the raid out.

Now, we do try to rotate people in and out of our raids. We recruit quality players for our guild and we try to give everyone, as much as possible, the same amount of play time when we can. However, sometimes when I open up a raid spot for a class where we have had players go on hiatus or suddenly change their attendance habits, I'm sometimes approached with the question, why? Why are we recruiting when there is a possibility that X or Y player will show up?

The Bench. No one likes to sit on it, but it is sometimes a necessary evil to ensuring your raid group continues on in a well oiled manner. If X or Y player does not show up, it causes us to have a spot unmanned for the night. Especially in key roles that can be detrimental to your raid that night. In the above example I gave about our TotGC run, we were missing a tank, a key need for the Beast of Northrend strategy; you need more than one and sometimes more than 2 to rotate the impales. Having one or more tanks going MIA from a tight raiding roster can be detrimental to your group.

Blizzard at the beginning of WotLK said "bring the player not the class" the unfortunate reality is that is a half-truism which Blizz admits. While it is easier in Wrath to bring varied types of classes to your raid without qualm, the inherent needs to bring a certain amount of players per type of role is still there.

So how do you treat your "bench"? After Midnight will be looking for a couple of new tanks for our raiding roster to enter the raiding rotation we now have with our current players unfortunately making our nightly bench a little heavier but keeping our raids going. Although I don't like having people sitting out of our raids too much, I've come to realize recruiting more than enough to cover player absenteeism is key to a successful raid schedule at times.

How large is your raiding roster? How many raid groups are you running a night?

Selective Raiding: When guildies don't show up.

2009-11-04T21:31:00.008-05:00

What happens when content gets so stale your guildies don't want to do it anymore? What do you do when only a couple of players are not interested in doing the majority of the raids your guild runs, save for the ones that will upgrade their gear?

It's no surprise that hot on the heals of patch 3.3 players are becoming burnt out and bored with the lackluster, lore devoid 3.2 patch. The fear of being left behind in progression and not completing the content before release is stressing the few that are still trying to master it. Yet, because repeating the same 5 bosses (6 including the revamped 4 year old Onyxia) is less than appealing to most, many are looking to these instances merely as a means to gear themselves for the final fight, Arthas.

Many guilds have now abandoned the now out-of-date Ulduar and are treating it like yesterday's news, Naxxaramas. However, there are still several guilds who run Ulduar hardmode achievements as a guild goal since not many have seen Algalon 25 man let alone completed all the instance's hardmodes.

We have been lucky here at After Midnight. We have most of guildies dedicated to what the guild voted for in patch 3.2, continue Ulduar hardmodes as well as focus on Trial of the Grand Crusader. We rarely have had guildies get selective with what they show up to.

How can you figure out if you have players who are trying to pull the wool over your eyes by only showing up to certain raids or the proverbial loot days?

Our guild has implemented a tracking sheet housed by one of our officers. Each raid our officer notes attendance and who steps out of what boss. At the end of the month we trend who has been showing up to what instances and check to see if we have anyone abusing our 60% raid attendance system in this way. There are also various attendance tracking tools you can use as well such as EK Raid Attendance which can automatically take attendance for you at various points of your raid.

If you are in a guild that has opted to continue with Ulduar on top of the "new" content, how do you deal with the players that only show up to what people have aptly named "loot Tuesdays"? Or, how have you reacted when top dps have asked to sit out or have not shown up to the old content because it is beneath them, even if the guild's focus has been to complete it?

When Guildies Lie

2009-10-26T13:24:00.005-04:00

People who know me know that I hate being lied to. Whether I have known you for years or a few months, by lieing to me you've pretty much lost all credibility and might have cost the friendship in my eyes. Whether it's big or small getting the full truth and nothing but the truth is the way to go to win points with me. Not only does telling the truth win you respect but allows you not to go on anyone's shit lists.

I consider most of the guildies in my guild, if not all, friends. I would hope that all my guildies tell me and my officers the truth when it comes to situations, whether it is why they were not at the raid that night, why they have to leave the raid or why they can't do something during a raid, etc. Egos, for a raiding guild always need to be put aside. While for personal issues you don't need to tell the whole story (Hey, I need to go RL calls right now), making excuses and lying about why you are not able to perform are different.

If your computer is crapping out, you really don't get the fight or for whatever reason you need to be carried because you don't want to be replaced those reasons need to be told. The difference of downing a boss on progression might be the difference between 24 people understanding and performing to having the whole 25. Keeping performance issues to yourself is wrong. Be truthful as to why you can't do something within a raid and you may very well find out someone has a helpful solution to work whatever it is out for you. I have found that some people are so scared to be embarassed that they don't understand the strategy of a fight that they just hope they will blend in with the encounter and mistakes would go unnoticed. People who speak up and do what they can to get it right will just end up performing better once they fully understand.

If you are just not into the raid; your 10 man group is not that appealing to you tonight, you'd much rather go play around on an alt and be left alone. Don't lie to your guildies and say you have company coming over or your house just caught fire. A simple, "hey guys, I'm not into this tonight and sorry I need to bail," goes a really long way. Lieing and getting caught (or in some cases not being good at all at hiding the lie), is very detrimental to your reputation and could possibly cost you much more than a raid spot the next time. Guilds, especially tight knit ones, are full of friends, would you lie to your friends in real life?

What about people who don't show up? I once had my suspicions one of my guildies used to share raid nights with another guild and alternate between the two always showing up for our minimum amount he needed to so he wouldn't lose the raid spot. Upon further investigation, and finding out that was the case, that player immediately lost the raid spot. Being truthful wouldn't have gotten the player booted from the guild.

I have told guildies that have been less than respectful and have lied to me or anyone else for that matter in the guild that this game is played with real people behind those screens. As much as the little chracters might look like NPCs at times, the respect needs to be there for the reality of the players on vent, in front of their computers, sitting at home and very much real.

What are your thoughts? Do you think lieing is just another aspect of MMOs? Or do you think that being truthful in game as in real life is the way to go?

Goodbye to a WoW community pillar

2009-10-21T17:10:00.005-04:00

It's been a long time since I have gone and checked over at Dwarf Priest since the writer of the blog mysteriously dissapeared almost a year ago. However I was doing a little catch up reading at my favourite "Gobble Gobble" blogger and saw that Bob Turkey posted that MK from Dwarf Priest finally posted!

There was much speculation as to where she went from dying, to /quitting WoW due to real life or becoming ill (the real reason).

I for one am glad the Dwarf Priest is alive and alright. Dwarf Priest has been an indispensable resource for many priests who play wow. Ever post was a tome invaluable information on every subject, from gearing to her famous leveling guides.

Although due to illness, we will be losing out on MK's interesting theorycrafting and insightful posts, I wish her well in her battles with health and hope that everything in real life works out.

Check out the Dwarf Priest's latest and last post here.

When /played means /quit

2009-10-20T13:22:00.000-04:00

I haven't entirely fallen off the face of the planet. Things have been really crazy for me in real life so I haven't had time to actually sit down and actively write something. My daughter has been sick and cranky. Work has been hectic to say the least with the end of the year coming close. And, I have been devoting free time (when the little one is asleep of course) to managing the guild and optimizing our raiding structure.

The article I am working on is taking longer than expected due to the aforementioned lack of time.

On the WoW front, things have been going great for AM. We're working on hardmodes, getting closer all the time to our target goals. Players are working together to achieve more and more progression. We have become more rigid in our ways than we were almost a year ago; players know what they are expected to do and when they are not performing do not make excuses of why. At the end of the raid night we almost always have people who might have been off their game asking what they could do to change or asking for advice. The majority of players within our structure are actively bettering their skills with every raid. Recruitment has been ongoing and going smoothly. I anticipate great things come IC when it is released.

In other news, I want to stress the fact that World of Warcraft is indeed a game and please please please treat it as such. After Midnight was hit recently with some incredibly sad and disturbing news. One of our officers unfortunately might have spent a little too much time on the game and is facing a possible divorce from his wife because of it. With promise to delete his characters, stopping his subscription and having his kids destroy the game CD's he may be able to salvage his marriage. I hope and our guild hopes that everything does work out for him in the end.

I know I play the game way too much than I should but I don't feel the brunt that our guildie has felt; playing with your significant other helps in that regard. But at what /played is too much or is it relative to your situation?

For example, my husband and I only play when our daughter is asleep. The game is our down time. Nothing on my end really suffers due to the game (except maybe chores, but who likes to do chores anyways?) But lets say I was working 2 jobs, I had limited time with my family and I chose to play the game rather than hang with them. Or, if my husband didn't play would it be right to not be spending my free time with him instead?

The news that we were brought about our guildie was an eye opener to say the least.

What have you put off / given up in order to play the game?

Yoggy is Soggy!

2009-09-10T09:56:00.003-04:00

Sorry for such the delay in posting. Things have been mighty busy for me in real life as in the game. Work had been nuts and we have been pushing super hard on progression content that I have not had the time to step away and write.

I am on vacation this week and have been working on a collaborative effort article on what every recruiter should know about each class and the most important questions you should ask during interviews. It's going to be more of a guide with input from some of my guildies rather than a commentative article.

In other news After Midnight is finally over its progression road block; we downed Yogg-Saron last night. I always hate running into bosses that the guild can't seem to wrap their head around. Everything clicked last night and we finally got it just after midnight. (very fitting)

So other than Algalon, that makes After Midnight as having cleared all WotLK instances with having downed Anub'Arak this week as well.

I'm mighty proud of my guildies on their dedication and hard work this week. Onto to hardmodes!

How Guild Recruiting Helped My Career

2009-08-20T20:29:00.001-04:00

I just hired my first employee.

The experience was a little nerve wracking; Would they like the job? Are they going to accept the salary? Will they fit in with my team? I didn't realize how similar it is to guild recruiting until after the experience.

In February 2009, I was promoted to my first supervisor position which included several management duties including some human resources tasks, hiring being one. I was extremely nervous during the search for a replacement for one of my employees who had decided to leave the company. This wasn't a game; I had full control over who would get the job and who would not, which meant I got to decide who would be on our payroll. This was real.

How did being my guild's recruiter help me with my employment practices? I had aligned our guild with real-life day-to-day practices and viewed our in-game goals and tasks as being similar to real life situation as you would run an organization. This made it easy for me to make allusions to situations I would encounter during my work day. Here's how guild recruitment aligned with how I played out the hiring:

1. Screening the Applicants

We expect our guildies to apply to the guild via our forums. They must state experiences, skills, previous guilds, etc. Effectively, this creates a raiding "résumé" that we use to screen potential recruits before offering them an interview for a potential raiding position.

I have become a pro at screening applications to our guild and this skill has helped me in screening the applicants to the position I was hiring for at my work. Being able to scan through a multitude of curriculum vitae, picking up on highlights and skills that would be a good fit for the position is a must. Going through hundreds of apps over the years, has help tremendously.

2. Interviewing

My biggest fear during raider interviews is that once they get the inside scoop of how we run things, they won't want to join. This goes back to what I was very nerve wracked for during the interview process I just went through. Would they like the job? Are they going to accept the salary? Will they fit in with my team?

The criteria for joining my guild are not necessarily being the best player in the world. We have brought in players who we knew at the time weren't the greatest but were incredibly eager to learn and we saw potential in them. Team players are a must and they best fit in with the personality of our guild to be up for consideration. The "salary" is our ability to clear the content and the raiding spot we offer; are they willing to put in the work to get the raid spot?

Since the job opening that I had to offer was an entry-level position, I wasn't necessarily looking for someone who had tons of experience. Someone who has done the job before would have been nice, as there wouldn't have been such a learning curve. But, an eager fresh out of school worker, willing to learn and put in the effort to do their best was all I was looking for. Since we work in teams it was important for me to find someone who would work well within our work environment.

Since I have already gone through the interviewing process with my guild and expectations for the position I had to offer were not a big stretch from the game, it was surprisingly easy to make the jump from play to reality.

3. The Formalities

Bringing players into the guild, advising them of the raiding schedule, asking them to adhere to the rules and having them sign up for the website are all normal things that I ask/tell my guildies upon joining.

Formalities in every organization are the norm. As in work, the guild has a structure in order for things to work smoothly. The basic information I supply or collect from my guildies allows me to manage my resources better.

Upon hiring the new employee, I had already made a mental note of what I needed them to submit for the position. I just assumed that there was info like SIN numbers, start date, blank cheque etc. which were asked of me on my first day in the office needed. Knowing that I myself had to be prepared within the structure of my workplace for things to run smoothly, as in my guild, I scored brownie points when my superiors asked if I made sure the new employee would be bringing the items of info they needed.

In the end, the whole experience was a positive one. Something I attribute from having so much experience with various types of personalities during interviews in game. I am quite looking forward to doing my next one and perhaps fusing more tips and tricks from the game into my workplace.

LFG?

2009-08-17T17:14:00.003-04:00

I know this is a shameless plug but I figured it's my blog what the hey!

After Midnight is recruiting dedicated, mature and talented raiders for their raiding roster. We currently have a good amount of healer, dps spots open as well as one tank spot. While some guilds might have seen a slump in the Summer months in their attendance, we are anticipating the reverse come the school year as many of our players have school-aged children who need attending to during the week.

If you think you would be a good fit for our raiding roster please do not hesitate to contact myself, Dovizioso or Gedoraf in game on the US-Uldaman Server.

Our website is http://www.aftermidnightguild.com/ should you wish to apply outright.

Hope to hear from some of you soon!

Napaeae

Gear>Progression or Progression>Gear?

2009-08-13T15:05:00.001-04:00

That is the question.

Everyone loves getting a fresh shiny new piece of gear. The joy of upping your stats making your toon hit (able to be hit) harder or heal better is very satisfying. But at what point is getting more gear moot for progression in the current content?

This is the issue that the new raid lockout extension has brought about. For example, After Midnight is able to clear Ulduar right through to Yogg-Saron now within 2 raid days should we stay focused and not run anything else such as VoA or ToC to interrupt our timelines. As long as everyone is able to stay on track and we don't have to switch people in an out this is not a problem. However, we still haven't downed Yogg yet, something I attribute to never having the same team of players each night and having to re-teach the encounter constantly. The majority of the guild would like to see the SOB go down, turned on his back floating in his own filth no matter how many times we attempt it.

Here's where the lockout extension comes in; we can now have those multiple attempts past the original lockout to work on Yogg WITHOUT having to re-clear the instance. This means more nights to work on him, more nights to get his health percentage lower and lower and less chance the guild will get rusty as time passes between attempts. Locking out may mean that a progression kill may be had with the little extra time we were able to get but it also means that it is a whole week without new gear drops. Something which excites most guildies who are progression minded and upsets those that lose out on a week to get a potential upgrade.

According to imba.hu our guildies have the necessary stats/gear to down any encounter in Ulduar, and although having best-in-slot everywhere sure adds a slight pack to the punch, we should be able to easily down the Yogg-Saron encounter in our current situation. Yet, some players still argue that if we had more gear we would down it. The complaining from a vocal few (very few) makes me believe that they would rather have those grapey goodness drop like candy from the sky rather than spend the time for the thrill of a first kill.

This leads us back to our first question, what is more important for a raiding guild, encounter progression or gear progression?

In my honest opinion, and according to the goals listed in our guild rules, it is to see the content and conquer it no matter what the stakes. Having a gear level appropriate for the content is key, surpassing it is not necessary. I think the raid lockout is a great way for a guild on the cusp on downing a new boss to have the extra time to do so before a raid week reset. There is so much content in the game now that the guild can be doing to still receive their new upgrades; through the heroic 5 mans and 10 man instances. Badges are acquirable anywhere, from any instance, the heroic dailies now even spew forth the new Emblems of Triumph should you pick up the required quest first.

My advice to players upset with guilds extending raid lockouts for an additional week in the name of progress is the same to anyone who is not happy with their current guild; if the grass is greener elsewhere, no one is going to hold it against you if you go. Think about your priorities in game and find a place that is appropriate to them and stick with it. Most Guild Masters' are happy to accommodate their players as much as they can, but if a player's personal goal or ambition varies greatly from that of the guild's manifesto, it may be time to look for another guild lest your Guild Master asks you first.

Thrown Into the Driver’s Seat: Haphazardly Acquiring a Raiding Guild

2009-08-12T15:29:00.003-04:00

During a dedicated Warcraft player’s gaming “career”, one sometimes gets thrown a couple of curveballs along the long strange road of progression. Especially being an officer in a guild, dealing with the day to day challenges that arise within the game whether it is your guildies’ personalities, intra-guild relations or random players in general, looting, scheduling and everything in between; things do not always turn out the way we like. However, nothing is more daunting than suddenly finding yourself at the helm of a guild when your GM decides that either leading is not for him, quits the game altogether or just has the need to move onto different waters.

How would you deal with it? Would you excel and thrive at the job maintaining the raiding level of the guild or bettering it? Or would you crack under the pressure?

The following dialogue is the story of one player/officer named “Arkness” of The Wrath of Medivh on the US-Uldaman Server. I had the chance to chat with Arkness recently about his sudden “acquisition” of the WoM one of Uldaman’s progression guilds and with his permission am posting the interview below.

___________________________________________________

Napaeae: So Arkness, how about we start with an introduction, can you please let us know a bit about yourself, your toon and your current position in The Wrath of Medivh?

Arkness: Ok so my name is Andrew, most of the guild knows me by 'Drew" or by ' Ark' my toon is a Human Protection Paladin, and currently I am GM, Raid Leader and Main Tank of The Wrath of Medivh

Napaeae: Wow that's a lot to have on your plate, did you have the raid lead and Main Tank responsibilities before you became GM?

Arkness: Yes I was Raid Leader and Main Tank before being GM, one of my raiders said last week that they had been in the guild for about a year and "Ark has always been the voice of WoM on vent. Every raid he was the one that lead it."

Napaeae: Obviously you since you had the Raid Leader role before becoming GM, it must have been a natural transition into this new leadership role. But how did you suddenly become GM in the first place?

Arkness: LOL So one night after a raid, we (the GM at the time, another officer, and me) are sitting in the officer channel of vent discussing various items and as with all guilds one of those topics was those members that have questions/comments/complaints/QQ to coin a game phrase. We were discussing some of the ‘QQ’ that I had heard throughout that evening’s raid and part of it was in relation to the GM’s acceptance or un-acceptance as the case was this time of another healers input into a situation during the raid. Apparently hearing this was the straw that broke the camel’s back to coin a phrase and he started messing with the guild rankings some. At first I thought he was messing around as he promoted me to Exec. Officer then back to Officer. Then after that he promoted me to GM and /gquit. He then proceeded to log in all of his alts and /gquit on them as well and that’s how I became GM.

Napaeae: Wow that is sudden! How did you react at that time when you became GM?

Arkness: Well honest initial reaction was "Oh Shit, What's going on?" I felt a bit overwhelmed and taken aback by the situation. I honestly figured that he was just pissed off and would be back on one of the following days. It was quite a sudden shock.

Napaeae: Obviously, once everyone realized that he was not coming back, and it sunk in you were the new GM, how did your guildies react?

Arkness: Generalized reactions at first varied from: 'omgwtf' to 'what the hell just happened' to 'Oh shit, Ark's GM we're all going to die'. Most however already trusted me as a leader, so other than the initial shock weren't too worried about it. I even got quite a few "I got you back, bro." from some of the long standing members.

Napaeae: That's great that you received so much support. It must have felt good!

Arkness: It did, I have a very close network of friends within the guild. We talk outside of WoW and their support has been great as well.

Napaeae: What was your first act as GM? What did you change? What did you keep the same?

Arkness: Well official first act as GM, was that evening in calming the masses. Naturally the guild members had tons of questions after the former GM quit and I was promoted. I made an announcement in guild chat, “That the old GM most likely had several reasons for doing what he did. He didn't share these with me. However, everyone needed to remain calm and the situation would be addressed by the officers and those former officers and former GM's (2 former GM's were on RL breaks and have since quit playing WoW as well.) and that I would hold be the GM for as long as they wanted/allowed me to do it. “ No it probably wasn't that nicely worded that night, but that's the basics of it.

The second and my actual first act as GM was to keep the 'status quo' at the time. One of the former GM's (one of the ones on RL break) suggested in the officer's forum to "I guess we should cancel tonight's raid and have a vent meeting to work out what's going on from here." and my response was, “Hell No, I refuse to cancel that evening's raid… That’s just not the message I want to send right now."

Honestly I haven't changed much. I did start enforcing more of our standards. Raiding had became rather lax during Naxx. Trash was easy, bosses were easy, and people were coming unprepared, unread on strats, or just not attending raids as much at all. So I started making sure consumables were used, people had read up on strats, that they were focused, and that they truly wanted to be there with us. WoM has a great history and a great background to it. Not much needed changing except our attitude towards raiding.

The biggest change I made was to fully open recruiting, this accomplished two things: One, it let everyone know that we ARE a raiding guild. Their positions as raiders was not set in stone and it stopped the preconceived notion by many applicants, that they would have a hard time finding a position within our team.

Napaeae: Seems like you handled the situation rather well and quickly! How did the guild react to the changes that you did make (i.e., opening up recruiting, etc.)?

Arkness: They reacted fairly well overall, attendance is up, performance is up, and generally attitudes are much better. That combined with several new members that are wonderful people and players have helped get things back on track after the summer slump.

Napaeae: And how about you? Have you become more comfortable with the idea of being GM? What do you like and/or dislike about it?

Arkness: I love being GM, but it does have its moments and yes I have more gray hairs now. The best part of being GM is the pride that comes when the team goes out there and does well. Just last week when we went to the Crusader's Coliseum, we went in and one-shot the Northrend Beasts encounter. It was awesome fun and one hell of the morale booster and there is a certain level of pride knowing that I helped lead them to that.

What do I dislike? Mostly just those that do seem to be 'me' centered. Every guild has them, those people that are more 'phat lootz' oriented then helping the team and guild progressed. I also dislike the fact that hiding when I need quiet time is more difficult now days.

Napaeae: Haha, you'll get used to the lack of privacy/"me time", I lost mine about 4 years ago.

Arkness: Rofl, I thought it was bad having kids! Now I have a whole guild that likes to track me down!

Napaeae: After going through this experience yourself, what advice would you give to those suddenly finding themselves in your shoes?

Arkness: Take it slow and easy, surround yourself with good friends that are like minded and guild focused, talk to everyone (even the quiet guy that's just a 'friends and family' member has great input), don't beat yourself up too hard when something doesn't go exactly as planned, and most of all to have some fun with it otherwise being GM can become one of those dreaded "J O B" scenarios real quick.

Napaeae: Great advice! Anything else you'd like to add?

Arkness: Yup one more quote I'm stealing... “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.” - John Buchan

Napaeae: Isn't that the truth... Great quote. Thank you, Ark, for spending some time talking with me this afternoon about your experiences.

Arkness: No problem, I'm overly flattered that you asked me to come hang out and talk. Good luck in life and WoW. I'll see you around Uldaman.

Would you like your Guildies' sunny side up or poached, Sir?

2009-08-10T19:14:00.002-04:00

I work in the advertising industry for my day job. This has helped me out countless times in guild recruitment. As all advertisers are, I am also quite eager to get our name out there in the hopes of catching that lead, that buy-in or that "customer" to join our guild. As guild leaders we all have something to "sell" it may be a raiding spot, a casual laid-back atmosphere or maybe even a little Role Play as suits your guilds needs. How do you go about getting the sign-ups you need to make your guild a successful one?

I have rarely come across a guild that had less than noble intentions in their recruitment practices. For the most part when someone has left our guild for possible greener pastures on their part the receiving guild was the one approached not the guild approaching the player.

What about those times when a guild actively recruits your players without prior inquiries?

I have experienced this about 3 times in my GM "career". Each time has been very different from the last. The first time was a very blatant attempt at poaching our core players with the promise of mounts, money, and dibs at loot. With the 2 following times were done more subtlety and were more effective.

Types of Poaches :

1. Green Eggs and Poach Approach

This is the type of poaching that is downright blatant. The Poacher may approach you outright in a capital city one day saying things to the effect of "Wow, your gear is great! Why are you running with THAT guild? We could offer you so much more." Or, after initial approach, outright offering gold, mounts, extra dkp etc as a "signing" bonus for leaving your current guild to join theirs.

How to deal as a player? This depends on what motivates you. If you are looking for a place that will provide you with bonuses upon joining and you don't particularly have any attachment to your current guild, then it's totally your choice whether you take up the offer. If you're not interested, you can let the inquiring party that you're quite happy with you guild and if you feel the need to advise your GM that you were approached in this manner, do so. Telling your GM, especially if they are down to earth and won't go overboard on the offending party, allows your guild to keep tabs on possible intra-guild issues.

How to deal as a GM? I'm a big fan of letting it go if I don't have prior relations with that particular guild. With that said, if I have had dealings with the guild's GM before I tend to contact them and let them know I know what has occurred and nothing more. Usually, if the poacher has an ethics they apologize right away.

2. Eggs Benedict and other Extravagant Poaches

This poacher may constantly talk you about their guild. They may never come out and outright ask you to leave your current guild but allusions to "Gee, I wish we had someone like you app to our guild," are in constant use. They may message you every time you log on to talk about how your guild is doing. They use any negative statement that you may make about your guild no matter how little ("OMG, we wiped on FL trash one night) and swear that kind of thing never happens in their guild. The Poacher will paint such a wonderful picture of their guild in the hopes to sway you in their direction. Once they feel that trust is gained they will outright ask you if you would like to join after hearing any minor complaints which they have blown up in their minds. (Wow your guild must be so horrible!)

How to deal as a player? Again, if the approaching guild entices you, you are more than welcome to join in hopes the pastures are greener. If you are not interested, for the most part this poacher can get pretty annoying and you may end up putting them on ignore or just appeasing them with one word answers after awhile. Being direct and telling them, "Thank you for letting me know how your guild runs things, but I think I will stick with my current position," usually stops the poacher in their tracks.

How to do deal as a GM? There is nothing much you can do other than trust that your guildies have faith and confidence in your guild and will stick around. If someone is unhappy they will leave anyways and there is not much you can do.

3. Sunny Side Up with Friends

This poacher may be a long time in-game or real-life friend of yours. They joined another guild and tell you about it all the time. They may be having a blast and want to share that with you too. Hey! Who wouldn't want to surround themselves with their friends right? So they contact their GM, they have a spot open just for you! What do you do?

How to deal as a player? Well, this one is a hard one, and totally a personal choice like the previous instances. It basically comes down to 2 choices, stay with you current guild that may be perfect strangers but probably works for you or join your friends guild and be with friends. Whatever you do choose don't ever feel bad for your decision.

How to deal as a GM? There is NOTHING you can do and NOTHING you should do. Who are you to limit friends playing with friends? This is what the game is about anyways, right?

All in all, finding out your players are being poached is quite the annoyance but there is not much you can do if someone has it set in their mind that they are going to leave the guild. Letting the poachers know delicately that you're aware of the situation may alleviate unwanted advances should your guildies complain, however for the most part let it go and have faith that your guildies have your back. Leading with confidence usually instills confidence in your players and is the cornerstone to a strong long living guild.

Gut Feelings: Part Deux

2009-07-31T14:23:00.002-04:00

So as promised, I did some soul searching and polling of a few of my friends, officers and coworkers about how to deal with gut feelings about a situation or someone when you don't have any proof to confirm what your gut is telling you.

It seems to me that gut feelings are just a precursor to investigating what is the root cause behind why it is you feel that way. Are you having a bad day? Are you being particularly paranoid? Are you noticing subtle trends regarding something that your subconscious is picking up before your conscious?

Let me give you an example of how I took care of my uneasy stomach this week with the advice I was given:

I suspected for awhile that one of my long standing guildies was unhappy. However when approached all responses were "I'm ok." So I let it go. I also, from keeping my eyes open recently saw indications of another guild (that recruited some of our notable drama laden ex-guildies) were trying to get this guildie to leave and join their new guild.

With that scenario painted, here are the steps I took to figure out if my gut feelings were justifiable.

1. Weigh the Evidence

As with most of my long standing guildies, I have set up communications outside the guild to keep up on day to day news whether it is MSN, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I noticed that statuses and conversation that had subtle undertones to it, which probably gave me my first warning that something was up. That, combined with prodding comments from said ex-guildies probably solidified the gut feeling that some poaching was going on. Add a little late night private vent channel discussions with said players and you got yourself a very suspicious situation.

2. Discuss the Situation...

...In confidence, with someone you trust.

I spent a good while talking about my thoughts and feelings with a trusted officer who gave me a little perspective on the situation and compared with me his views and feeling on the subject. It helped get my thoughts in order and find out if others might be seeing the same thing I was.

3. Confront with an open mind

The last step I took was to bring the guildie into a private vent channel with the officer I had my discussion with, and had a no-bullshit, guild related only conversation with the player. I laid my suspicions flat out on the table, and asked flat out if it was true. In fact, the guildie confirmed indeed they were thinking of leaving to join the guild I had suspected. That yes they have been unhappy for awhile but haven't done anything because they have been in the guild for quite a long time and thought maybe it was just a passing feeling. Although, the guildie couldn’t give us any direct point of which to work on to make their situation in the guild better, it still opened the lines of communication that seemed to not be there before. I believe if you are very direct with the player it prompts the player in return to be very direct with you.

The officer and I did not get angry, did not give ultimatums, kept an open mind, stayed professional and open to anything that was said; I believe that to be one of best things to do when confronting suspicions. You just don't know what the actual situation is and can't yet form an opinion about it without actualizing what is going on with the person in question.

In the end, my gut feeling was confirmed and my uneasiness with the situation calmed by now having the flat out facts. By taking these steps, I avoided days or weeks of agonizing supposing or speculation and embarrassment if my suspicions were wrong. By doing less internalization and more communication (which is key in any organization whether it be a workplace or a guild) we were able to pinpoint the problem (or in other situations lack thereof,) and come to a conclusion or understanding about it.

Napaeae's To Do List

2009-07-31T12:00:00.000-04:00

1. Finally Organize my bank space so I can easily access gear sets for 3.2 changes

2. Finalize my 3.2 gear wish list

3. Decide how After Midnight is going to approach the Coliseum and how that affects our raiding Ulduar.

4. Decide what we are going to do with Raid Lockout Timer Extensions

5. Decide if we are making a new DKP tier for the new instance (~~I'm thinking not until T9 is released~~ Tier 9 "Trophies" are showing up in loot tables already)

6. Farm (Raiding is getting expensive!)

7. ???

8. Profit?

Gut Feelings and Drama

2009-07-23T12:25:00.002-04:00

I'm an Aquarius III (born in the 3 quadrant of the month), and a characteristic of my sign is having a strong empathy and intuition about things. I tend to feel when something is not right or if there is a negative energy surrounding someone. At the risk of equating myself to my dog, Bailey, it's the same as when salespeople come knocking at our door; he wags his tail and want to be pet by one visitor but, the next visitor he's growling and snarling trying to get the person to go away. He has a great sense of a person's personality and tries to protect our home.

In real life, I tend to steer away from people who cause me to have that pang of doubt in my stomach about their intentions. I have been known to remove people from my life who have caused drama or pain. In game, as GM I believe it is important to stay objective. Like a workplace, sometimes you have to work with the personalities you have and even though you get the feeling something is wrong with someone, you almost have to ignore it and base opinions on actions rather than feelings.

But at what point do stop ignoring gut instinct?

There have been several times in the past few years I have had my "spidey senses" tingle about a situation or person in relation to the guild, that I have ignored and treated my decisions based on actions, only to have an immense amount of drama happen within days or weeks of the feeling.

Now, I cannot arbitrarily go around removing players from the guild that I get bad vibes from, nor can I go around paranoid about every situation that goes on, but at what point do you act upon those primal urges to remove the problem outright without a concrete action to base it upon?

Everytime I run into a situation that could have been stopped by acting upon my feeling right away, I tell myself, "Next time I am going on gut, forget objectiveness!" But how does that align myself with being the fair and just guild leader that I am/try to be?

I'm hoping to make a guide post about this soon, but I am looking for input. How do you deal with your gut feelings and drama in your lives or guilds?

Phase wha?

2009-07-20T08:52:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note to my guildies whom I am super proud of for getting Phase 1 of the Yogg-Saron fight down in 3 attempts last night. Let's get through the next phase tonight!

Girl Power?

2009-07-19T14:58:00.000-04:00

I know the majority of Guild Masters out there are men. There’s no doubt about it. However, there are women out there who like to take leadership roles as well and you know what? Thrive at it sometimes better than their male counterparts.

Now, I’m not saying that I am the best guild leader in the world. In fact, sometimes I feel like I am downright crappy. Personally, and I don’t know why I do this, I tend to be very soft on people in the guild where as in real life I’m not entirely the biggest doormat like I am in game. That’s why I enlisted my assistant GM Forth who tends to put things in perspective for me and is not afraid to be the bad cop to my good cop. But I am sure I bring a different perspective to leading than some of the other male GMs out there.

When I am recruiting or dealing with inter guild relations I find it very funny when someone comes to me very pleasantly with an issue or a question and I get approached with “Hey Dude, thanks for the info or thanks for dealing with x, y , z…” When I reply jokingly “Its ‘hey Dudette’,” I’m often taken aback that attitudes change to the negative or even surprise. “You’re a chick and the GM of After Midnight? Oh, sorry ma’am!” or “Whatever girls can’t lead guilds yours must suck!”

I have heard of guilds that don’t recruit women at all for various reasons; either they are a distraction to male players, they bring drama, they don’t play as well, etc. (On a side note some of the women players in our guild can out play the men twofold, and I have seen my fair share of male drama queens in my years of leading.) For whatever reason, a person that avoids women in game or brings a misogynistic approach to them leading is very telling to their real life approach to the opposite sex. There have been many of time I haven’t been taken seriously because of the difference of my private parts or have been called every name in the book when I make a decision or “let someone go” from the guild; something my male friends would rarely experience for the same actions. Those would be the same people I would avoid in real-life, why should I surround myself and the women in my guild with people like that?

So what do I do or try to do to make leading an easier for me? (Try being the operative word)

Let it roll off your back

Probably not exactly associated to being a woman, but when you get insulted or put down or called out etc, specifically because you are a woman (or anything else for that matter) let it roll off your back. I struggle with this the most. I tend to take things very personally because of the amount of work I have put into the guild, but being put down because I pee sitting down shouldn’t be a reason to get upset. Let it go, and appreciate your ignore list.

Don’t be the doormat

Sticking to your guns as a guild leader is an essential part to fair leading, so why do women tend to feel guilty when they need to play the bad cop role? I think sometimes it leads back to the whole old-fashion way of raising girls that they need to be kind and nice at all times. I was pretty much raised as a tom-boy but was still formed to be the “accommodating one” where as my brother was able to run around and act however he wanted towards people with disregard and it was seen as just being a boy. Now, because I don’t like to have people angry at me, I blame this on my mom, I tend to accommodate players who end up using me as a doormat because they know can. The only advice I can give to other women leading out there don’t do a Napaeae and let people wipe the mud off their feet on you.

Surround yourself with good people

I have had a total of 2 players who in my opinion had no respect for women ever recruited to my guild; it was not fun and even being in After Midnight for the time they were tried to cause dissention from within and usurpation. I am a big advocate of recruiting married couples, other women and players who have great respect for the females who play this game. Not because I want every player to respect me but because I find those players who have no problem with interacting with both sexes tend to be better guildies all around. Even in real life when I have met people who objectify women they tend to not have the same respect for everyone around them including men. If you want to build your guild around a group of players that work well with each other you need to continue to recruit respectful people. That axiom that your girlfriends tell you time and time again is true – find a man that treats his mother well, and he will most likely treat you well too.

Don’t tolerate being called names (or any of your other guildies being called names)

I loathe the B word. I have been called it at least once a month since I started playing the game either to my face or hearing it through the grape vine. As I said above I don’t do things that differently from other guild leaders out there, in fact I think sometimes I might be nicer than most; yet I still once in awhile get called nasty things for putting my foot down. If someone in your guild makes nasty comments relating to gender, race, financial status, sexuality etc, it’s time to cut to cord quick with a swift guild kick.

Finally the best piece of advice that was ever given to me was mind your own business; what you think of you and your work is what matters most. Ignore the nay sayers and be true to yourself and your goals and you can never go wrong.

Emptying the raid bottle...

2009-07-14T07:47:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note to say, after a few burst bladders and horse voices from saying group 1, group 2, group 3, or group 2 heal, group 1 go get mana... After Midnight downed Vezax last night. I think it was the first time we went so long attempting a boss without a bio break but no one wanted to redo that trash!

Everyone was super focused and into it last night it really makes a guild leader proud. (As a single tear rolls down my cheek... that was for you Dovi.)

I promise I have another useful post coming shortly.

After Midnight the After Math

2009-07-10T13:31:00.001-04:00

So I haven't written in a few days, that is mainly because I haven't had much time. Work has been crazy and the "behind the scenes" work Forth, the officers and I have been putting into the guild has been a long arduous but rewarding task.

When I last wrote we were trying to find ways to rebuild/revamp the guild while staying on our server, Uldaman. I have to say so far so good.

After much soul searching and discussions with the officers, we felt it was unfair not to outline what we expected of our raiders in specific during-raid rules. One day (usually farm days) we would let loose on vent and on progression days we would command silence. Those that have been raiding with us for a long time might have known the reasons but newer players might view that as bi-polar.

So we implemented much regimented and very straightforward rules and expectations, in writing and published on our website so all could see. Our goal is to make sure our players feel comfortable knowing the limits they have within our raiding environment and never have to be paranoid with not knowing what is expected of them.

We fully expected some players to not be happy with the new implementation and style of leading we were setting forth; in fact we had a couple of players leave outright the next night. Two with minimal drama, one with a slightly over the top post on our forums due to sitting for one night, only due to min/max reasons of setting up out raid and not agreeing with how we wanted to go about the changes in the guild.

It's hard for me to accept that you cannot please everyone, so the over the top posting was hard for me to objectively handle; mainly due to my personality and I'm sure something a lot of women struggle with in society in general. Gender issues within the game though will be something I will touch on in a later post.

In order to properly ease the guild into the new way of doing things, we held our regular monthly guild meeting on Wednesday but rather than having a complete open forum with any topic that came to mind at the time we asked for 15-20 minutes silence on vent while we went through the changes to be implemented. Then instead of a complete open forum, we had each class leader (and one officer for those classes that we do not have class leads for) take their teams into separate vent channels to discuss concerns without the GMs present. One by one Forth and myself "visited" each group, elaborating for anyone who had questions, asking players to voice their concerns and giving them a task of coming up with evaluation benchmarks (on specific boss fight and on training dummies) for their class for any future newcomers to the guild.

All in all it was a very positive experience. Forth and I were very aware there were people hesitant or unhappy after the meeting but were not willing to say so; but we also knew there were lots of people who felt more at ease and actually appreciated the direction. We also knew that some were waiting to see the outcome of our labour within the raid environment.

We ended the night with pulling everyone back into the ventrilo lobby and handed out promotions to initiates and instated our new raid leader we were looking for.

Thursday night was "show-time" so to speak. It was our first raid night after the guild meeting, with a new raid leader and new raid rules. After the whole gquit drama at the beginning of the raid, everyone seemed to fall into a comfortable rhythm; players were able to focus when needed, knew the limits of speaking in vent and joking around and were able to keep a comfortable medium doing so. Trash went faster, we one shotted bosses, people laughed, joked and had fun. It was nice to see the guild turning into a happy family again, albeit even for this one night and hoping for repeats. By buckling down, keeping a positive attitude, applying the new rules right away which corrected any (minor) problems last night evenly and without bias we were able to set ourselves up for a complete weekend of progression attempts on General Vezax with only spending 2 raid nights on farm content. This is something we have not been able to do since Ulduar came out.

I'm hoping for a repeat again tonight on the progression attempts. Our new raid-leader seems to have the calming "Aura of Command" (I love this term which is stolen from Matt of http://www.worldofmatticus.com/) and I hope the guildies continue to respect him as under his delegation and organization we seemed to thrive last night.

So through the storm the guild seems to be finding their light, I guess change is not a bad thing after all.

Pruning the bad apples… How to go about it?

2009-07-05T19:05:00.001-04:00

We’ve come at a quasi roadblock for After Midnight. Due to the way some of our core is used to raiding with a “laissez-faire” attitude we’re about to lose a handful of people. Because of the lack of “focus” of some of our raiders those that need the focus in order to play, lose it as well.

This raiding week has been horrendous. Not only because I think I caught the swine flu (there were 4 cases in my office alone over the past month), but because even though last week we were working on Mimiron (downed him) and had attempts on General Vezax by this time. We have wiped too many time this week on Hodir and I blame part of the reason to dps not reading strategies (again) and players who underperformed I’m sure because they were watching tv at the same time.

So what do we do? Uldaman is considered a medium pop server but in my and several other eyes it may as well be a low pop considering how everyone knows each other. Depending on what we do choose we can pull off a “pruning” in one of two ways, either it goes off without a hitch slowly and behind the scenes or we cut ties fast with those causing problems and suffer a month of drama like any other guild who seems to try to go back to basics to rebuild on this server.

There are a good handful of us who feel we won’t be able to recoup on this server and we’re thinking of a possible re-roll on a higher population server. After this week’s raids and the applicants that we have been getting from the server I’m starting to think having a guild transfer may be the best bet. However, this is our home. And people are asking us to get rid of the players who are not pulling their weight and rebuild on the server itself before we all jump ship.

Here’s what I am thinking of doing below.

Mama’s Clean Slate Ideas:

Reread and redo our raid rules.

I was looking over our raiding rules and although the requirements to raid are very clear I noticed our “during raid” rules are almost non-existent. I’m going to go back with a handful of players and set up reasonable raid rules to guide our raids by. For example, we have 3 players who disconnect constantly on fights which have sometimes wiped us since one is a tank and 2 are healers. We’ll be implementing the 3 disconnect rule. Disconnect 3 times on any boss fight and you will be replaced since being disconnected doesn’t help the raid much at all.

Enforce raid attendance

We have always been relaxed with our attendance rules which I think has come back and bitten us in the virtual ass. We’re now facing players having more time in the summer than anticipated. Usually players stop playing or reduce play time during the summer; we seem to have people coming back to the game and now have many players sitting on the sidelines.

Implement a 3 strike rule during raids

In reference to my first idea, 3 strikes for anything that detriments the raid, you’re out. No consumables? Haven’t read the strategy? Do that more than 3 times you’ll need to sit. I’m sure if players sit enough they will get the point and start coming prepared or focus up. If not, they’ll probably leave or we will ask them to leave.

Weed out the players causing distraction or problems

Unfortunately, we have some players who do distract other members while raiding. Although they might be able to focus and still talk, joke, watch tv etc., others can’t when they pay more attention to these people than the raid. If players can’t accept that they need to focus and keep silent just as much as everyone else, I think it’s time to remove them.

Also, After Midnight has a low tolerance for bad attitudes, or usually does. I think its time we confront players who are on the cusp of hitting that guild kick for attitude level and find out if they are truly happy here or just here cause they have no other place to go.

It’s going to be a long hard road but I think we’re going to be headed on the right path again soon to getting our guild be where we had originally intended it to be.

Sex sells a little too well… My thoughts on recruiting

2009-07-03T18:34:00.003-04:00

I used to be one of the best recruiters on our server. I say used to be because I have recently started to doubt that claim. I used to spend hours on end scouring recruitment threads, cross realm transfer requests, researching unguilded toons, promoting, etc. I love to recruit, so much so I think I should have gone into head hunting rather than marketing. Although I suppose my marketing background helped some.

After Midnight has been no exception to fuel my love; however this time around recruiting has been somewhat of a different beast.

We started off the guild as a focused raiding guild that has fun but still gets things done. I have been raiding with some of the players in this guild for almost as long as I have been playing the game. We are extremely comfortable with each other and due to this fact I believe this has made us into extremely crass individuals in game. Don’t get me wrong, we have our limits, however several of us are comfortable to have discussions out in guild chat that most would only have with your best friend over a bottle of wine. This is where recruiting for the guild became interesting.

I’m still coming across moments where I slap my hand against my forehead and say why didn’t we recruit this way in the first place for After Midnight’s “special” situation. Let me share with you what I learned.

Mama’s 5 rules to recruiting:

Know your focus and define it clearly

One of the biggest issues I have had deal with is changing how the guild is to appease everyone. After Midnight’s goal was in fact a semi-hardcore one. We wanted to down bosses and have our proverbial cake too while still being allowed to mess around. Unfortunately selling yourself as a focused raiding guild doesn’t go over well when recruits understand this to mean that during raids everyone brings their “A” game, mutes their mic and gets the job done.

After Midnight has become a special case as our members have become slightly bipolar in their wants for the guild and we have twisted and turned the guild to try to accommodate every change whether it be monthly, weekly or even daily. We have gone to complete horsing around during raids which tend to make them much longer in length, to complete silence on vent when members complained we’re not focused enough, back to a medium of minimal horsing around when those same members complained it wasn’t fun anymore which in turn lengthened the raid week once again. (Not to mention added to the number of wipes)

Ideally, what should have happened is we should have defined the guild clearly, recruited as such as a focused raiding guild and upheld the standards rather than bending and twisting to every member’s whim. In doing so, we would have entered a clear contract with everyone in our guild by keeping the promise of focused raiding with them complying or else face unfortunate consequences to keep the guild integrity.

Set reasonable standards then stick to them

If your goals are to only recruit players who are completely geared in Tier 8.5 to see the content you are currently doing stick to it and don’t deviate. That said you wouldn’t make such a demand of players if you were only starting out Naxxramas with your guild. Set your player demands early on and stick to them.

If you raid schedule requires your players to meet 50% raid attendance, enforce it. If players must be gemmed and enchanted properly to be considered for recruitment, require it 100% of the time.

If you set reasonable standards for your guild based on your guild’s status (casual, hardcore, pvp etc.) and server demand (low pop servers tend to have a more competitive player market than high pop) and you stay with them throughout your recruiting career you will be respected by your guildies and potential recruits alike. Deviate and you run the risk of seeming wishy washy or desperate depending on your situation.

Research your applicants

Never heard of the player you are about to recruit? Investigate. How many times have I run across a situation where I didn’t look into the guild background or server background of a potential recruit only to find out once recruited they were either a) a guild hopper, b) disliked by several members of the guild, c) trade chat spammer or d) drama queen.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/ although not used that much anymore can sometimes give you a fair idea of where the toon you are thinking of recruiting has been.

Has the player applied to several guilds at once? Your server’s realm forums may have a “guild list” with their websites so you can check it out.

Are they coming from another guild? Talk to the guildies of that guild or better yet the Guild Master to get the 411. (This obviously might not be an option if the player is trying to be discreet but I’ve always felt sometimes it’s best to have the discussion with their GM to uphold better guild relations.)

In any case, a little digging and you might find yourself with a diamond in the rough or avoiding serious drama.

Don’t over recruit

One of the worse things to do to fresh applicants unless it’s outlined and expected from the outset is to sit on the sidelines night after night waiting for a chance at a raiding spot. I’ve been in situations where I have over recruited and had about 15 people sitting on the sidelines. People started dropping like flies because they felt they weren’t needed and applied to guilds that had a full time raiding spot for them. Unless you have detailed the fact that players need to work for their raid spot and the spot is not guaranteed, do not over recruit.

Class Balance; know what you need ahead of time

When we started After Midnight we looked at the amount of raiding toons we had and the amount we had for each spec and set our recruitment needs clearly on our website. Although Blizzard has been quoted as saying “bring the player not the class” it’s hard to have a successful raid with 10 paladins and 15 DKs. Ok maybe DKs are slightly over powered but hey even they have their raiding limits!

Knowing what classes bring which buffs to the table and building your raiding team accordingly is essential in a raiding guild pining for success. If your guild is more casual then Blizz’s cliché might be more up your ally but even then players don’t like having to compete with 10 others of their own class for gear especially if it’s done through /roll as some guilds do. The best way to build your guild is to have a good mix of all classes and specs. This way your raiding guild can min/max properly or your casual players won’t feel faceless in a sea of players with the same class.

For those of you building your raid roster by min/maxing buffs one of the best raid building tools I have seen comes from MMO champion: http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/

This tool allows you to play around with the different classes/spec to build an optimal raid based on the buffs you need to maximize your raid’s potential. Don’t have that Shadow Priest in your guild for the + to hit? Your Boomkin friend can do the same thing.

And Mama’s unwritten (until now) sixth rule of recruiting don’t use the promise of hot dirty priests as a selling point to your guild. Even though they tell you they come for the focused raiding you’ll find very quickly your guild is full horny old perverted men who think they can get into your pants, for real.

Happy Hunting!

First to post in epic thread...

2009-07-03T12:20:00.001-04:00

So I decided to do it. I figured hey, everyone has been why not me? So here I go, about to embarked on my "epic journey" through blogging by taking you through my journey of being a "chick" GM in the World of Warcraft.

So I figured I better start off by giving you a little background behind myself to start this thread out right.

My name is Rachel, also known as Napaeae to everyone in my guild and on my server of Uldaman. I have been playing for just shy of 4 years and have been GMing just a couple months shy of that. I have been holy since I started playing way back when and only recently have dabbled in the shadow specs since dual-specifications have come out with patch 3.1.

I originally GMed one of the largest casual guilds on Uldaman called the Elder Ones along with my husband for over 2 years during vanilla wow and part of the burning crusade. Around approximately that time my husband and I had a little surprise and found out I was pregnant. I had morning sickness to the extreme and the game made me too nauseous to play so my husband took over GM duties for awhile. We had two types of players in the Elder Ones, the casual players who just liked to level, quest and play alts, and the raiders. Sometime shortly after TBC started, we passed the Elder Ones off to a trusted friend and created a guild called Sufferance and took a semi-backseat role to leading the guild. Unfortunately Sufferance did not survive past much of Tier 5 content and fell apart while I was in the hospital giving birth on July 1st 2008 to my wonderful daughter named Caitlin.

After my return to the game and sitting in a guild with no one in it, (and feeling much better with baby outside of me!) I decided to start a casual PUG guild called Badges R US since there was really not much time left to TBC until the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Badges R US catered to players who didn't have a guild and wanted a community of players who just wanted to run anything from regular instances to T6 content. We hosted a community where players could sign up for completely PUGged raids. Week after week we had guilded, non-guilded, very experienced and not so experienced players come together and learn as a group through the content right up to Illidan.

By PUGging and networking, Badges R US had invited a lot of great players who, as a guild, wanted to pursue guild only raiding come the expansion. Badges R US closed its doors and reopened under the new name of After Midnight at the start of WotLK.

And that where we are now; We have cleared all 3.1 content except for OS with 3 drakes up, we’re working on General Vezax and have completed 1 hardmode by changing the order of Iron Council killings. I along with my assistant GM Forth (my husband has since taken a backseat to leading himself) deal with the day to day workings of After Midnight and work through any issues, lead raids, and generally act as information specialists for the guild.

My goal through this blog is to document how we lead, my experience with being a woman GM and the stigmas and issues that have been associated with it as well as showing my readers the female perspective to being a leader. I’m hoping to be able to let you into my world with my posts and possibly get some interviews going with other GMs to cover topics of interests to all guild leaders whether woman or man.

Happy hunting!