Kree's Blog

It's time to move-it move-it...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:45:00 +0000

It's official, the unnamed podcast now has a name AND a new website. From now on all podcast releases as well as any blog posts that I or David Eagle may write will be on our new website at www.guild-chat.com.

You will find the podcast on live streams and RSS feeds and everything. It's still a work in progress, but it will prove to be quite a nice site in the long run.

This is the final post on this particular blog site, so a final farewell to everyone who took the time to read it. I have decided that I will blog from time to time on the podcasts website, so if you want to read me again feel free to come hang out over there.

See you there!

Unnamed Podcast: Episode #2 - "Tangental"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:45:00 +0000

This week we talk about "Starting a raiding guild from scratch", an extension of our conversation last week, and "How we run our guild banks". We also spend a good deal of time at the beginning of the podcast about ourselves so that you, the listener, can get to know us better.

After learning some things from episode #1 we've made some improvements to our recording. As always, we would love to hear from you any feedback, be it positive or negative. We will be moving to a new website as well as getting the podcast up on Itunes for the next episode. The new website will allow us to use an audio RSS feed as well. Be sure to enter the podcast naming contest for your chance to win a spectral prize (courtesy of Sweeties Sweeps.com).

Enjoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=00cf10fa5f6e70865a3d773badf21430e04e75f6e8ebb871

Show Links

None this week

E-mail your comments, suggestions, or snide remarks to Kreeoni(at)gmail(dot)cot or contact him on Twitter!

Unnamed Podcast: Episode #1 - PuG's, Heroes, and Imba's

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:46:00 +0000

In this inaugural episode of the Unnamed Podcast you meet our hosts, Kreeoni and David Eagle. This week our topics are "Dealing with PuG's within raids" and "What is our criteria for selecting raid members?".

Bear with us as we get things up and running. We are not on I-tunes yet, so you have to do the harder work of downloading and importing to your I-tunes library. Let us know what you think. We are happy to listen to any feedback that you can give us. Send your feedback to Kreeoni(at)gmail(dot)com or cdeagle(at)gmail(dot)com.

And without further Adieu, enjoy:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zwtjmznnmwu/Unnamed Podcast 001.mp3

Show Links

Suicide Kings Loot System - http://www.wowwiki.com/Suicide_Kings
Kree's DKP system - http://kreeoni.blogspot.com/2009/01/questions-can-be-answered.html

WoW Heroes - www.wow-heroes.com
Be Imba - be.imba.hu

Help us find a name and you could win a cool prize: Either an old juggling ball with some funky stuff on it or a yet to be named cooler item (more info on prize this week). E-mail your suggestions to Kreeoni(at)gmail(dot)cot or contact him on Twitter!

An Unnamed Restart

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:21:00 +0000

It has been almost 3 months since I officially announced my goodbye from blogging on this site. Since then I have had many adventures, both in game and in life. I have stayed pretty active on Twitter and over time I have come to realize that I really like blogging and missed it. However, I could never get myself up to write anything, just couldn't find that motivation needed.

However, a new opportunity arose for me recently which lets me do sort of the same thing, and that is podcasting. Starting this afternoon you will see on this site a new podcast created by David Eagle of Borked Podcast fame and myself. The podcast with be very similar to how this blog was and will touch on the same topics which I covered, Guild Leadership.

The start on this site is only temporary, and you will understand why after listening to the first episode. Within 3 weeks or so we will be moving the podcast to its own site.

I am really looking forward to a new beginnings with this venture and I hope that those of you who have followed me for so long join me and David in this new progression.

An End to an Era

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Almost 2 months ago was the last time I made any sort of post and it was about some drama. I came back today to look something up and noticed that I am still getting 30-40 hits a day and 110+ followers. Now I figure that most of these followers probably just haven't cleared out their readers of me yet and maybe a few actually were looking forward to hearing from me again. I asked my over 1,000 followers on Twitter if I should continue and I got one person responding telling me yes so I guess that really it's not something that is that sought after.

My original reason for starting up this blog was to give people pointers from my experiences. Over the time that I posted apparently there were some very popular posts which made me happy but in the long run I don't think I ever finished what I set out to do.

In the end what killed it for me was coming to the realization that no matter how good people may tell you you are or how much of a friend they pretend to be, in WoW it's all fake. I had felt like I made a ton of friendships in the wow community mainly via my guild but as my life went tumbling and made me take some time back I found out that it's all false. I realized that the only reason that people in the game pretend to be your friend is because you can offer them something that they think they need and when you can't do that anymore then they are gone. All of my closest "friends" in this game have turned around and been my biggest antagonists.

But I am ok with it now. Now I realize it, even though it took me 10 years or so between multiple games, and it is something that I can come to deal with. I have left behind a lot of "friends" on Drenden, none of which really had much good to say about me once I made the decision to leave (and ultimately the two that I trusted most were just in it to take my position anyways apparently). Of those who still stick around me I know will disown me if I chose to retire completely. I have already seen it amongst my guild mates, particularly the founding members.

I really enjoy blogging and I really enjoyed what I was able to give to people through this blog. Maybe one day I will start up a new one fresh (and with a less stupid title) as I still have many topics I would have loved to talk about. Before I go I want to thank people:

on the Drenden server - Thanks for giving me the topics for posting and the experience to be able to write those posts.

Matticus from World of Matticus - For the PTR runs and the idea which spawned my most popular post (How to be an Ensidia player) among other things.

WoWInsider - For picking up some of my posts without me asking.

All my readers - If I never got beyond the handful of guildy readers I may have stopped writing a long time ago.

To my Twitter Followers - I love to chat with you guys and to read your conversations and on multiple occasions those conversations have spawned topic ideas. (PS - I'm still on Twitter)

To everyone else - Because you are just as important even if I forgot about you.

Peace be with you!

Note: Seems there was some confusion on Twitter. I am only retiring this blog. I may in the future start another venue to blog on. I am not quitting WoW currently and I am sure not quitting Twitter (heck I just hit 1k followers and growing).

TL;DR

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:11:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey you! Looking for some info!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:38:00 +0000

I've seen a lot of people on today thanks to WoWInsider. I thought this was a good opportunity to try to catch some people to get some information from them for some research I am doing. If you are from one of the following servers I would love to chat with you. You can contact me via e-mail at Kreeoni (at) gmail (dot) com or on AIM under Kreeoni or on Twitter on Kreeoni.

Servers I am looking for information are:

Aggramar
Alexstrasza
Alleria
Azjol-Nerub
Duskwood
Exodar
Khadgar
Korialstrasz
Llane
Lothar
Perenolde
Rexxar
Runetotem
Sen'jin
Silvermoon
Skywall
Thunderhorn
Uldaman
Uther
Whisperwind
Windrunner
Winterhoof

I am primarily looking for Alliance side information but if your Horde I'd love to chat as well.

Be an Ensidia Player.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:34:00 +0000

This weekend I was hanging out on Twitter and saw Ensidia post that they are recruiting. So I retweeted for them with the comment "too bad I'm not EU and a better player".

So what does it take to be an Ensidia quality player?

Let's take a look at their recruitment post.

A couple of pointers and requirements that you need to read before you apply:
We expect nothing but the highest performance from our players.
Be prepared to play long hours in an environment that does not suffer poor players for very long.
You need to be able to handle criticism and improve on any mistakes you make.
A high standard of English is expected since it is the main language within the guild. If you cannot understand and communicate well, both in written and spoken English, then please do not apply. This includes using Ventrilo and a microphone.

You only get the chance to make a good first impression once, don't screw it up! Your previous raiding experience is a huge part of your application. Having done most high level instances is a huge bonus, especially having cleared Sunwell before 3.0. Mention all this in detail in your application. We do not like to tell people specifically what to write in applications so what you write is up to you. Make sure, however, that you include links to your armory,WWS and a screenshot of your UI.

So they aren't asking specific questions and only mention a few basic requirements. Easy right?

Well the difference between what you read and what you really need to be is the knowledge of the guild. Ensidia is #1 in the world, no questions asked. They got world first Yogg-Saron kill well before anyone else AND since they are EU they started 24 hours later than any US guild. The quality of their players are supreme. Take the best players you have played with and chances are most of them wouldn't cut it. Ensidia (and guilds like them) are super competitive too. Chances are that if you screw up even once you get sat out and if you do it again your done.

But this post isn't about how amazing they are and how you aren't. Instead it's about how you can be more like one of these players. Since I don't actually have contact with specific players from these top guilds I more or less have to guesstimate so forgive me if my assumptions aren't exactly true.

1) Be the best player at your class that you know - I'm not talking a mindset of oh look I am better than so and so. I am talking a mindset of "Am I doing everything correct?" If you are the former then more than likely you aren't very good at your class. Working with others of your class will help improve your play. You will find both ways to play better and way to not play by working with others like you.

2) Be the best at your role that you know - Exactly the same as the first but this time for your role. You may play a class that is considered inferior than others. Show everyone that it's not necessarily true.

3) Research, research, research - Know the fights inside and out. Know your class inside and out. Follow every helpful blog that you can think of that will help you out in improving your playing.

4) Show up to ever raid prepared to wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe until it's done. Ensidia may have gotten these bosses down first before anyone else but they spent tons of time on the PTR wiping and wiping and wiping to try new strategies until they knew how it was going to go. Not only did they try their own they also researched how everyone was doing it. And it wasn't just the officers of the guild, it was EVERYONE. Once they got to live they spend long days making sure those strategies worked and if they didn't then they tried something different.

5) Pretend your the raid leader even if you aren't - I don't mean try to take over leading the raids. What I mean is put yourself in the raid leaders shoes. Think about what has to be done for EVERYONE. Do you know what the healers should be doing? Do you see something wrong that maybe the leader can't because he's across the room? Be his eyes and let him know that you see something. Don't be a jerk about it. Remember, it's not your raid to lead. Help but don't take over.

6) Don't complain, ever - Constructive criticism is one thing. Complaining is another. People who complain or give up after even a 3 hour night of constant wipes don't help moral. Not only that, they don't get anything accomplished. It brings focus from progression to failure and that is not good for a raid team because it spreads. Don't be the person who started it. Yes progression is costly and you're going to pay for it. A lot! If I had to guess Ensidia's repair cost to be world first was probably about 5,000g per person over the course of the progression (including the PTR learning sessions).

7) Handle criticism well - Your guild may not be the type of guild that even gives criticism but when someone actually does say something to you about how you play or something you did or whatever don't retorte with, "Well you are the most stupid tank I've ever seen." People may not word things perfectly (/raises hand) but most of the time they are just trying to help out in their own way.

8) Don't sell yourself short - Are you in a place where you can be great? No matter how good you are do you always get set aside for an older member that just performs not as good? As a GM I hate to see people leave but I understand completely when someone outgrows a guild. Personally I stick with it because for me just my personal performance isn't good enough, it's the whole guild. If my guild can consist of players who are playing the best they can then as a team we can progress.

Ok so a list post probably didn't make sense necessarily but it did in my head. The common denominator here is of course is to be the best that you can be and do it with humility. Your best way of improving yourself is to do exactly what you are doing now, reading up blogs and websites that help. Follow those bloggers that make sense to your topic, get on twitter and chat with the WoW Twitter community, read all those statistic sites that say such and such spell does this because of this and so forth. Know why you are speccing into the most popular spec, don't just do it because it's the most popular.

A Bad Judgement Call

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:17:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting a Guild: The Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:38:00 +0000

A little while ago I asked for some motivation and I got a good response from Ravenandrose who wanted to know:

How about how to expand a guild? My guildie/significant other is leaving the game, leaving me with a guild bank full of mats and nothing to do with them.

How to properly start a guild, or at least your ideas on it, would be good too.

First, I apologize for the delayed response to your suggestion. With 3.1 coming out things got a little bit busy and I kept finding other things to write about so this kept getting pushed up on my list until today when I said ok, too much, need to write it.

I know I have written on this subject before but it is still good to revisit it as time goes on.

My first suggestion would be to come up with a plan. What do you want the guild to be? Raiding? Casual? PvP? Starting off with a good plan lets you make some tough decisions up front instead of having to deal with them later once they come up.

Once you come up with a basic goal for the guild then you build upon it. Appoint officers and create policies.

Policies can be done a few ways and can be very detailed or very vague, depending on the group you are working with. You mentioned you had a guild bank full of mats. Your first policy should be how the guild bank is handled. If you don't make the decision then people with access to the guild bank are just going to use it as they see fit and it will never have much of a purpose. Some policies can of course be made by yourself before you start, but sometimes others may be best to make with the help of your officers and/or general members. Not setting policies at all will make your guild just fall into the casual guild that people are in because they have nothing else better to be in. That's not much of a direction, but if that is your choice then there you go but generally those guilds don't end up with many members and don't last very long.

Remember, guilds are volunteer organizations and people are with you for a plethora of reasons. You want to maintain their loyalty or your guild will falter. Also keep in mind that 95% of the people that play the game play it to have fun and being in your guild is part of that fun. Find out what that fun is and try to build your guild off of it. It is of course just as true in-game as out that you can never please everyone all the time, but you can please most of the people most of the time and that is your goal.

Good luck on starting the guild. If you need any other help feel free to e-mail me at Kreeoni (at) gmail (dot) com or get me on twitter.

Worth Our Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:22:00 +0000

Last week I had that interview for the Massively.com article and one thing I said which seemed to have a bit of a negative response was:

Our first question is, "What is your overall raid-experience?" In some cases, it's also fine if you haven't completed all end-game content, we care more about if you experienced it. We can then gauge where they are in relation to the rest of the guild - It lets me figure out how much to the guild will need to teach them and if that is worth our time.

The flak coming from my last words in the sentence ("Worth our time"). Now I don't feel like I need to defend myself, but it really does make a good point as to what we as guild leaders face. As leaders we need to fulfill the needs of the guild, and in doing so we must think of everyone who is involved, especially the current members.

My comment comes from the simple fact that both I and the person applying are not the only ones in the world. It's as simple as that, but people take it as me meaning a holier than thou meaning. In fact, when you are recruiting for your guild, regardless of what type of guild you may be you are constantly thinking whether or not this person is someone who is "worth the guilds time."

Let me put it this way. Let's say you have a guild of all level 40's who are enjoying their time leveling together and doing the quests and dungeons applicable to your level so you can progress to the next level and so forth. Now let's say you have a level 15 apply to your guild. Sure, you may not have any requirements for the guild but you realize that no one else in your guild is at that low level. At that point you realize that there is no real reason for that person to be in the guild.

My example is pretty basic and there are many different factors that could be involved such as it being a friend of someone or an alt of a highly experienced fast leveler or whatever. But think about this. Possibly you are a person who only gets a few hours a week to play. Is it worth your time to help that person catch up to you or is your time better spent working with your already close leveled guildies in which your time not only helps them but is reciprocated.

Now put this into a larger context where I come from. In end-game raiding you have different levels. Tier 4 leads into Tier 5 and so forth. Having someone who has little experience raiding in general along with no gear from the earlier tiers is like having that lower level person join up while the rest of the guild is at your level.

Sure many guilds have a general member rank in which a person is in your guild but is working themselves into meeting your raiding requirements but in reality these people are better off in a guild which mirrors their own experiences and needs. So when I say "worth our time" I really am talking about both the guilds needs as well as the applicants. It would be selfish of me to accept an applicant who doesn't meet our requirements and either 1) require them to get up to par on their own or 2)always put them on standby when they could be running full time with another guild. And it would be equally selfish of them to require the guild to gear them up to meet the guilds needs or suffer by putting in a lower geared person and essentially dragging them through the instances so that they could finally help the guild progress.

Achievement Addendum: Lance a Lot

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:18:00 +0000

By now you have settled into patch 3.1 and have discovered the Argent Tournament. If you haven't then there is a guy at the Dalaran flight path that will give you a free one-time flight to the Tournament in Northeast Icecrown.

Once you are there you will start getting daily quests to both open up the arena area (this will take a long time and is much like the Isle of Quel'Danas event) as well as daily quests to improve your ranking in the Argent Tournament.

It takes 3 days of the rank improving dailies to become a Valiant for your race. At this point you can do the Lance a Lot achievement.

How To:

Once you are able to start supporting your home city faction you will get a quest called The Grand Melee. The key to completing this achievement in one shot is to NOT turn in this quest when you complete it.

Once you have this quest you can go and challenge all of the Valiants in the arena. Now the quest says to go to the ones for your faction but you can also challenge the ones from the other faction as well. If you turn in the quest you cease to be able to challenge the Valiants and have to wait until the next day.

You do not need to worry about the amount of Marks you get. They are unique (3) so you will not get anymore after the first three wins, but you will still be able to challenge the other races regardless if you have them in your bags or not.

Hints:

Some people have a hard time with the battles. I have found a pretty decent rotation is:

Melee until the Valiant runs away. Spam your charge until i goes off and once it down immediately hit your melee button.. as you turn around to come back to the Valiant hit your ranged shield attack. You should be able to get all of these off without the Valiant breaking your shield. If they do manage to get a shield down then just refresh it as you are in melee range.

It may take some practice runs before you get a rotation that works for you down but once you get it then all of the races become easy to kill. Go joust to your achievement hearts desire!

Patch 3.1 - The Guild Leader's Boon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:57:00 +0000

Large Patch eh? Yeah I agree. So what is in it for us? No, I'm not talking about our classes (every class blogger is going to be all over that anyways), I'm talking guild leaders.

Typically us guild leader types don't get a whole lot to be excited about come patch day. I think the last major thing we got was the in-game calendar back in 3.0. So what about this time? Did we get something awesome?

In a sense I would say we got more this time than we have in quite a while. Here's the changes that I personally, as GM, am excited about:

- Talent respecs. Now that everyone gets all these changes and now that people have had some time to refine their specs this gives a fresh restart on peoples specs. Now there is no excuse for people to complain about the 50g respec costs to get their spec done. And to boot the new interface option which lets you set your spec then double check that it's correct before it goes into effect. This means you can actually put all your talent points in before you waste that precious gold.

- Dual Spec - Ok if you haven't heard of this then you've been on vacation.. For about 3 months. This will let you pay a one time fee (1 thousand goldaroos) so you can learn another talent spec. Then, you can switch between these specs at any time you want (barring your not in combat, a BG, or an arena) for free with just a push of the button. Not only does it switch your talents, it also switches your glyphs AND your action bars. This is by far the most anticipated and most welcomed changes to WoW in a very long time. My guild is personally looking forward to this changing our raids real soon. We can carry less people while still getting things done.

- The Love Fool - Now my endless logging in to get my final candy and thus the achievement but getting hosed in the end has finally righted itself. Since I had 7 candies and I only now need 6 I will get that hard earned achievement done!

- 30 Minute Hearthstones - While they took out both forms of ghetto hearthing (group mate queuing for BG then leaving once you get into it and leaving a group after zoning into an instance and it porting you to your hearth) at least they backed it up with a faster hearth stone. Of course all those Shammy's are a little pissed, but they are still the only class in the game with a highly needed buff unlike every other class which got their buffs shared with other classes.

- In-game Calendar updates - New we can invite our guild as a whole. While it's still no replacement for the far superior Group Calendar it is an improvement.

- Mini-map changes - Now instead of one single colored dot o the mini-map you can see your guild in full color. That means all your druids will show up as orange on the mini-map and all your priests as white. Important maybe only to pvpers and raiders but still a nice addition.

- Class roles added to the LFG window - again, minor but it can help when you are trying to fill a group. Sure beats being asked to heal a million times when my comment says tank.

- New buffs, new debuffs, new talents, new glyphs, and new nerfs - While my class is getting a nerf at least I have comfort in the fact that other, less broken classes are also getting nerfs. Some of them are getting some fairly extensive ones (*cough*DK*cough*).

- New Noblegarden - Because there's nothing like celebrating a holiday which means so much to so many different people around the world two weeks late.

as a raider:

- Ulduar - Of course! This looks to be the largest, most advanced raiding instance we have seen yet. I have had a few chances to see some of the content in this raid instance and it was fun. And the instance is so huge that it has ports and a tram all to itself. We will be in this instance for a while now and it it so going to be fun for most of it. 14 bosses, 11 hard modes, a new legendary, beautiful backgrounds, and tons of achievements will keep the challenge in the game for many months.

- 5 minute recast on Heroism/Bloddlust - Recently we have had an issue where only one Shaman has made it to raid a few times. This really hampered our time spent on new content which ultimately led to the fact that we didn't get the final content (S3D) down before the patch. Since they aren't giving any other class an ability as strong as Heroism to themselves at least they are making it so that if we are short Shammys again and we wipe we don't have to wait 10 minutes in between attempts.

- Flasks now stack to 20 and only last an hour. - More bag space and for a guild that raids 3 hours this is great news. Now people are more likely to flask up for the whole night rather than to try to time it to start later on in the night.

- New instance maps. - While not all raid instance will have new maps Ulduar and Naxxramas will. This will greatly aid in figuring out where someone is and where they should be. It's a minor upgrade but still something that I think will be used more then people expect.

- Saved Instance Confirmations - A new window will come up asking a player if they want to be saved to an instance. This will greatly aid in people not getting saved when some asshat decided to run an Archavon group even though he cleared the instance 3 hours ago.

and as a Bear Druid:

360 Degree Swipe!! Suck it Pallys!

In Comes 3.1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:05:00 +0000

If you haven't already heard, Patch 3.1 has been confirmed to be coming out today. In fact, you are probably reading this while downloading your patch files and waiting to jump right into the goodies that we are getting. This is the patch that we have been waiting for for a while. Dual Specs, a true fresh new content raid dungeon, more achievements, more mounts, more pets, a longer (yet delayed) Noblegarden, and a whole new event in the Argent Tournament.

While you're downloading the files and waiting for servers back up now is a great time to refresh your memory on exactly what to look forward to in this patch. Here is a few links to help you on your way. Good luck in there, I look forward to hearing about your experiences with this patch.

MMO Champions plethora of goodies found in Ulduar collection. This has every single item, change, etc all in one spot. No comentary, just raw data.

Wow Insiders guide to 3.1 - Everything they have posted on 3.1 for everything. Lots of class information here. Going through all this will take you all day for sure.

Kree's live-blogs on the bosses Kologarn and Mimiron (Ok well these aren't exactly the first bosses in the instance but I don't think I'll remember to post them up again later).

WoW Bashes posts which make you laugh until you pee. Beause you have nothing else to do.

Kree on Massively

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Recently I have been working with My Game Mug on their development of a recruitment site called WoW Headhunter. I haven't really talked much about it as of yet as it is still in Beta and not quite up to a standard that I think is ready for me to delve into yet.

Well last week their Director of Community Relations interviewed me for a post which appeared yesterday on Massively.com. He interviewed both myself and Matt from World of Matticus about what we look for when people apply to our guilds. The whole article is an obvious plug for their site but there are some great points that both Matt and I came up with that are worth looking at.

Looking at the posts current comments there is a lot of negative feedback, but keep in mind the only two people interviewed were people from end-game raiding guilds so there is limited feedback there. This site does cater to all different styles of guilds, whether endgame or beginner.

The folks over at My Game Mug are making a big push to get their site out and known to everyone and I do suggest looking into it, but keep in mind it is just not fully ready yet. It's like when Lich King came out 3 months too early and we spent all our time hoping we could get a boss down before log disconnected half the raid and then getting bored with the overly easy content after it was finally fixed. In other words, take it with a grain of salt. Once this site is up and running with its final patch in place it will be a pretty decent recruiting tool. However, currently a guild leader can't even recruit from it. Only people looking for a guild can search for one.

Achievement Addendum: Consumption Junction

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:26:00 +0000

This achievement is found in Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep. It requires you to defeat Trollgore before he gets 10 stacks of consume.

When you first attempt him he's at the top of the stairs beating on some guys and it makes sense to just stand there and beat him down. However, to get this achievement you need to bring him pretty far away from where he is.

Understanding the Consume buff:

Simply put, when he uses consume it counts everyone within line of sight of him and adds that many to his buff. This includes players and NPC's. Ideally you want him to only get one stack of consume every time he does it (from the tank).

How to Do it:

There are two pillars in the back of the room that you enter that you can use to your advantage. What you do is drag him so that he is behind those pillars and out of line of site of the mobs that come down the stairs. Then everyone but the tank makes sure they are out of LoS of him until he does his first consume. You can check this by trying to cast something on him. If it won't let you then you are ok.

Have your tank use this macro (thanks to magekill):

/sw 10
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/rw === Cast consume, safe for 10 secs! ===
/in 10 /rw === Back out now! ===

Make sure that one of your dps is on the stairs and solely taking care of the adds. They are pretty weak, so one dps shouldn't have any issue.

It may take a few tries to get the positioning down but once you do it's a really easy achievement. Good Luck!

Motivate Me!!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:09:00 +0000

It's been a week since I've posted. Part of it is writers block, part of it is the fact that I have all these idea's for Achievement Addendum (but I don't want to become an achievement blog), but most of it is lack of motivation. I really need someone to keep me motivated and on task.

So here's some idea's I came up with yesterday while listening to some blogs (as well as because of some recent guild events):

- Respect
- Outfitter/Group Calendar Alternatives
- Dual Spec Gear Rules
- Recruitment
- Bad reasons why some people left the guild recently
- Your idea here

You decide what I write on and I'll write on it. Give me a deadline by when you want me to post and there we go. You can either post a comment here, get me on Twitter, or email me (Kreeoni at gmail dot com).

Ok, gogogo, and in the meantime I'm going to write an achievement post for tomorrow.

Achievement Addendum: Blade's Edge Bomberman

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:04:00 +0000

This sounds like a simple achievement but in practice this can actually be a challenge. Bombing all those Fel Cannonballs while getting shot at within 2 minutes and 15 seconds including travel time to and from the quest giver. Ahh but good ole Kree found some little cheats to help out with this that makes this achievement a piece of cake.

First, you have to make sure you have an epic flyer. Not having one makes your attempts on this pointless. You do not need any special speed increases like a Pally aura or a Death Knight. You also need to be able to get the quest from Ogri'la.

Second, grab the quest then put the bombs on a hotkey and then drop the quest. This makes this much easier to do (and you can do it with the UI off so you don't misclick things).

Third, go to the achievement and click on track. It's found under Quests/Burning Crusade. This way you can tell whether or not you will make it in time and don't have to guess. The achievement is per attempt so if you drop it and pick up the quest again the timer will reset.

Ok here is the trick(s):

In Forge Camp Wrath there are two spots where you can hit two of the bomb stacks with one bomb. This is really tricky and to tell you the truth I only ever got it successful once. The spots are at 37,40 (Furthest Northeast) and 32,40 (Furthest Southwest).

The second and much easier trick is that you can sort of double pump the bomb so that you can get two shots off at once. What you do is get in range of two bomb stacks and throw your first bomb. As the first bomb is casting quickly throw a second bomb at the second stack. It takes a few tries to get but once you get it you can shave a significant amount of time off of the bombing run.

With these two tricks, if you can master them, the question is not if you can do the achievement in time but rather how fast can you actually do it.

You have 2:15 to do the whole quest from start to finish. This includes the travel time to and from the bombing area's which is approximately 25 seconds. You spend 1:15 waiting on your cooldowns assuming you get a bomb off every time the cooldown is up. Without the tricks I mentioned you can make zero mistakes if you want this achievement.

Have an achievement you want me to post about? E-mail me at Kreeoni(at)gmail(dot)com. Mundane or hard, I don't mind.

Being Serious About Account Security

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Blizzard has come out and announced that there has been a great influx of phishing scams lately. In fact, I actually got one under my gmail account (none of my accounts are tied to this email address).

I know a lot of other sites and blogs have addressed this lately but I think it is a pretty important topic. Account security is something that every player should care about. It sucks to lose all that hard work to a careless mistake and if you are in a guild it could effect more than just yourself (we had an officer hacked and lost the whole guild bank last year).

This is the contents of the phishing e-mail that I received recently:

Greetings,

An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with Blizzard's EULA under section 4 Paragraph B which can be found here: WoW -> Legal -> End User License Agreement
and Section 8 of the Terms of Use found here:
WoW -> Legal -> Terms of Use

The investigation will be continued by Blizzard administration to determine the action to be taken against your account. If your account is found violating the EULA and Terms of Use, your account can, and will be suspended/closed/or terminated.
In order to keep this from occurring, you should immediately verify that you are the original owner of the account.

To verify your identity please visit the following webpage: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/login/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldofwarcraft.com%2Faccount%2Findex.html
Only Account Administration will be able to assist with account retrieval issues. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter, and your continued interest in World of Warcraft.

Sincerely,

Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment

This was a scam. How did I know?

Well aside from the aforementioned fact that I have no accounts tied to my gmail account the e-mail came from noreply@blizzard.com. A legit e-mail in this nature would come from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com (noreply IS a legit Blizzard e-mail address but they do not use it for important personal contact).

The biggest tip-off is that although the link shows it will bring you to www.worldofwarcraft.com it actually points to http://battlenetlogiin.110mb.com/. Notice that there is an extra i in the login. Also notice that there is no blizzard.com or worldofwarcraft.com in the address.

It looks legit, how do I check?

First, don't click through on the e-mail. Open a new browser and go to worldofwarcraft.com and log into your account that way and check your account that way. You can also try logging into the game and see if it is truly being reported (petition a GM if you need to).

DO NOT fill out any of the form that you get posted to. Blizzard has all your information already, they do not need you to give it to them again (especially your password).

Ok it's fake, now what?

Forward the e-mail to hacks@blizzard.com. I know this is what they say to do, although I never got a confirmation or a reply as to my forward but at least they have it to investigate.

How to protect yourself:

Do yourself a favor and get an authenticator. I toted the wonders of it before but now there is an even easier way (especially since the fob is nearly always sold out). Blizzard just released an iPhone/IPod application that works as an authenticator. They plan on making it for other mobile phones in the future as well. I already have the authenticator fob so I haven't downloaded the new authenticator app but I hear that it works just the same and is very good. Best of all, it is free (as opposed to the bank breaking $6 of the fob).

Achievement Addendum: Czar of Sporeggar

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:41:00 +0000

This is one of the easiest reps in the game to get. When I really started focusing on it I was already just into revered so I didn't have much to go but it's fast either way. This is a reputation which is part of the meta achievement "The Diplomat."

To start with, Sporeggar is a small town on the Western edge of Zangarmarsh which consists of a bunch of mushroom men called Sporelings. You won't really be able to do anything with rep until your early 60's. You start out unfriendly towards this group no matter what race you are.

All Bog Lord mobs in the zone give 15 reputation all the way up to revered (with a few that give it past that), but more importantly bog lords drop tendrils that you can turn in for 750 rep up until friendly (visit Fahssn in the Spawning Glen for this). You can pick up tendril's without having the quest in your log and they are tradeable so you can grab em from the AH if you really want to speed things up).

Once you reach friendly you can pick up a quest called "Bring me a Shrubbery" which requires 5 Sanguine Hibiscus per turnin and is repeatable until max exalted. These Hibiscus only drop in the Underbog 5 man instance but drop in both regular and heroic versions (they are also tradeable just like the tendrils). This instance is a level 62 instance so if you are doing this at a lower level you'll need a group. At 80 (even I'm sure somewhere in the low 70's) this is an easily soloable instance. The mobs prior and after the naga have a chance to drop these and they spawn throughout the zone.

If you are farming these wonderful red flowers, clear every mob up until the naga but stop there and go back towards the instance and reset it. I did a full run of the instance clearing everything and got a total of 35 hibiscus. 26 of those dropped prior to the naga and the only remaining ones drop at the very end. There are only 4 mobs (2nd boss, last boss, and the two fungal giants before the last boss) which can drop these after you are finished with the naga so it is much faster to just reset the zone.

The spawn points throughout the zone are fixed and they pop up in a wierd pattern but do NOT respawn (although it looks like it). What you need to do it pluck all of the spawns from the beginning to your stopping point and then retrace your steps all over again. When you pick the last one a new spawn near your first flower pops up and there is another whole group of spawns from beginning until your stop point.

All in all, at level 80 killing from the beginning and stopping at the naga plus retracing your steps to get respawns it takes about 20 minutes per run. At 750 rep per 5 Sanguine Hibiscus it will take you only about 10-12 runs of underbog to get from beginning of friendly to exalted making the whole grind take about 4 hours total.

And, bonus, you get a tabard and a non-combat pet for completing your easy rep grind. Remember to save any Glowcaps that you loot because that is the currency needed to buy anything from these guys. Hint: Glowcap spawns EVERYWHERE on the western half of Zangarmarsh on the ground (normally at the base of the giant mushroom trees).

To Re-roll Or Not To Re-roll?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:02:00 +0000

I was listening to The Instance (best WoW podcast currently out there IMO) today and they were talking about how a lot of people are not playing mages anymore. They had people respond from a previous episode as to why that may be the case and a lot of the responses were that mages weren't competitive DPS anymore and they have been been dumbed down to being a portal/table slave. While my mage is still 70 (he's been an alt since day 1) so I can't say much I have to disagree with that assessment. Our mages are consistently in the top 5 almost every fight (ok maybe that's the other classes faults but still) but this isn't actually the argument that I am getting at (I'm not a mage blog nor do have enough knowledge about them to converse about it). What I am interested in is the fact that all these people rerolled from their mages to other classes to the point that mages are now in shortage.

A while back my guild, No Vacancy, was in dire need of priests and our server had a huge lack of healers in general. I have heard that many servers have the same issues with tanks. It seems that this epidemic has a very circular pattern. Back in BC on Drenden Shammy's were so rare that people would recruit a fresh 70 in all greens to raid just so they had one for their guild (not to mention that Sunwell pretty much needed them so it was almost forced on us). But now in NV we have a plethora of healers (including priests) with at least one healer app (and one more interested). In fact our issue now is that we have a need for a tank (sorta) where before we had too many.

How does a guild maintain what they need, while not over-recruiting and having people on standby all the time?

I can't say that I have a 100% foolproof solution for that. People leave guilds for various reasons but particularly they leave because either 1) they don't get into enough raids or 2) they want better progression that isn't happening. Not every guild can be the top successful progression guild on the server that achieves everything. Even those guilds have people leave over time to other guilds on other servers that are just that much more progressive (albeit probably slightly less often than the "mid-level" guilds). Our attempt at solution is to sub more often if we have more than 25 in one night. In Naxxramas we ask who needs anything from a given wing and ask who does not. Those who do get in, those who don't sub out. For the bosses (such as Malygos) where virtually everyone needs an item the higher ranking people get in while the initiates and general members sub out. While this doesn't work all the time to keep people, it keeps our turnover rate not too terribly high. Very few people leave because of not being able to raid.

My point is that for those who enjoy playing their class/spec but find it under-appreciated or for those having a hard time recruiting a specific class/spec because it's ill played, hold on because everything comes full circle sooner or later. It usually doesn't take very long before Blizzard changes a class to be really wanted or for players to re-roll because they didn't like their previous class. Also, server transfers are always an option. There are always guilds looking for every class/spec and vice versa.

The Achievement Addendum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:15:00 +0000

Why didn't I think of this in the first place?

So you saw my whole squirrels post last week and aside from one nay-sayer it got a great reaction.

I recently started a competition with a guildy of mine who was around the same achievement level (around 5k). We decided to see who could get to 5500 first and the first person to do so won a Dark Whelpling. We started it about two weeks ago and last night I did my final turn in to win. This competition was actually pretty intense in the hours and dedication we put in to try to win it.

Along the run of this I ran across a multitude of achievements across a wide array of topics. Towards the end I worked primarily on reputations but I did everything from Squirrels to PvP to Dungeons to get it done. I thought it would be a great idea to share all the hints I found out along the way. Incidentally, we've decided to rematch with the first to 6k (reward undecided atm).

So I'm going to dedicate a section to my blog posts to what will be called the Achievement Addendum. I will make posts that give little helps on all the achievements I've been working on. My first post for it will be on Tuesday so you have something to look forward to. If you have any idea's or questions or want me to talk about a specific achievement (or group of them) feel free to send me an e-mail at Kreeoni at gmail dot com.

Using the Achievements System to Your Advantage

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:26:00 +0000

Since I've gotten on the topic of achievements the last week or so lets tie it into guild leadership. How can you make the achievement system work for your advantage as a guild leader?

The one thing I have talked about the least when it comes to guild leadership is recruitment. That is because previously our recruitment standards were pretty low and loosely based and I really wasn't very good at recruitment because of it. However we have revamped our whole system (I'll post on that later) and we now use more tools for recruiting. The best thing that the achievement system has given us is the fact that we can look up everyones achievements on their armory profile, which has great uses for recruiting.

For instance, when I am looking at a new recruits application I pull up their armory profile and check on their achievements. Here is a list of the things I personally find important to look at for our guilds needs:

- When did they hit 80? Are they new to the level or have they been at it for a while?
- How many achievement points do they have? If they have a low amount for the level it means they are probably a reroll character or even a newer 80. Having a lot of achievement points doesn't necessarily disprove this but it does show how much the person cares about their specific character (any character under 1k would definitely be a warning flag).
- Has the person earned the Superior Achievement? Epic? Or are they wanting to join so you can gear them up without them putting any time into their own character before raiding?
- What rank of Emblems of Heroism has the person got to? The more the better. It means they actually took the time to run heroics and 10 mans to at least go for what they thought they needed for their character. Someone with a low amount of this rank probably doesn't have the right intentions.
- Do they have any Emblems of Valor? How many? This shows they at least pugged VoA a few times and have been in a 25 man situation. This leads to the more important things for my recruiting.
- What 5 man heroic, 10 man, and 25 man achievements have they completed? Have they completed all of Naxxramas in at least 10 man mode? Safety Dance? etc? No Vacancy is at the point now that we aren't going to teach people how to raid these fights. Knowing even the basics of these fights is a good sign. But why the 5 mans? It goes with some of the above. How much a person has put into their character.

These are, of course, the way I look at things and only part of what I use for recruitment. A PvP guild has their own sections to look at as does any other type of guild. Previously our only way to look at a recruit was via their reputations and their gear. The achievement system lets us see a little more information about a person and how they feel about their character. It gives you that extra tool to recruit someone who is going to fit with your guild a little better.

Why we play.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:24:00 +0000

While a majority of the responses to my squirrels post last week were positive one person had this to say:

"achievement hunters" are so annoying. Who cares about your stupid achievements? Noone will ever look at you and say "that's impresive, he completed every achievement". At most they'll say that it's sad that you've lost that much time on those pointless little things.

Why else do people play this game? We do it for the achievements and we do it to have fun. Sure not all achievements are recorded within the game, although most are. We play it to either level up, raid, PvP, etc..

For those of us that play this game a lot there comes a point where we have finished most things but we wish to continue playing. The achievement system gives us more playability for our characters without having to focus on other characters.

Everything in life can be considered pointless to any one person. I personally think sitting at a desk 9 hours a day just to make money is pointless but others see it as a necessity and overzealous workers see it as an enjoyment. They want to achieve such a high level of respect from a few people just so they feel good about themselves. There is no difference from the WoW achievement system, sports numbers (IE - ERA in baseball), or the awards you get in an office.

So yes you may not look at any one of us who got an achievement and say wow that's impressive you; did a large chunk of quests in the game, got a million reps, killed the hardest content in full, PvPed to the top; but a large portion of people will have respect for the others that do care. In fact, I don't know one person that can't say a specific achievement is more important to others. I dare anyone who plays this game to find something in the game that is important to them that is NOT covered by an achievement.

The Final Tickbird

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:32:00 +0000

I stopped off yesterday with me going through the Dark Portal. Today we'll finish up the trek through these achievements.

- After you've made it through the Dark Portal you find yourself in Hellfire Penninsula. Breathe in the air that you haven't had a wiff of in 5 months and proceed to kill an Adder and a Scorpion.
- Head over to Zangarmarsh for Snake and Frog
- Then to Terokkar Forest for Skunk
- Finally Shattrah City for Ewe (he's in Lower City).
- You're done once again with visiting Outlands, back to Azeroth and Ironforge where you will find 6 Books (All in the Hall of Explorers). This is where you will get your Well Read achievement finished.
- Now fly over to Loch Moda for the Ram.
- Then to Searing Gorge for Lava Crab and Fire Beetle. This is where you complete Pest Control.
- Back to our favorite city, Stormwind so you can take the boat to Borean Tundra.
- Remember those ponds with Gurlocs in them to the East in Borean? Yeah that's where you find the Steam Frog and Borean Frog.
- Venture into the Rhino herds for Borean Marmot.
- Go into the Nexus for Crystal Spider.
- Near the Murlocs for Crab and Tundra Penguin. This is where you finish up the first Squirrel's Achievement.
- Finally, head on up to Nessingwary's Camp in Sholazar Basin for the Sholazar Tickbird and your final achievement. Fitting place to end the /love quests eh?

The last section was indeed short but the first part took so much time that I just wasn't able to make it in time. Hope that you enjoyed this foray into achievements, as unrelated as it may be.