Raid Invite

Just Keep It Clean

Chris — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:47:49 +0000

Last week my guild put together an Icecrown Citadel (25) player raid. The raid consisted of about 10 normal raiders, 10 FNGs that had just joined the guild, and a few social guild members who were around to hang out with friends. The raid was able to push through to the gunship event despite a sloppy Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper kill.

Upon boarding the gunship to gather jet packs, a simple question is raised in Officer chat:

Heroic?

Without waiting for a response or discussion, we switch over to heroic mode. Jet packs are equipped, ready checks go out and we start the event. Bronzebeard rides up on the Alliance gunship and it begins spewing hate and discontent our way. Skybreaker Marines start spawning on our ship and we engage enemy sorcerers. After a minute or two it is easy to tell that we are slowly falling behind. The Marines on our side aren’t getting killed quickly enough, the sorcerer is up for too long and we are putting little damage into the enemy ship. Essentially we have wiped before anyone has died. Well…then we all die!

We begin the run back and “O” chat flares up again.

We cant do this! DPS was all over the place, people aren’t attacking the same target, its just a mess.

One of my fellow officers argues his point, that we are too handicapped to obtain a heroic gunship kill. Instead of spending time on something he felt we couldn’t do, he wanted us to push ahead and show the new people how we handle each wing of the raid.

What did I think? I have complete trust in my fellow Officers, I may not always agree with what they say but his argument was sound. We were low on DPS, missing a few people in the raid and half of what we did have was under geared and inexperienced. I voiced my agreement with him, lets kill it on normal and then move on.

“John! Whats the problem here?” Our guild leader began speaking to the Officer, trying to figure out if we could defeat the encounter or not.

“DPS isn’t attacking the same target.”

A simple question gives a simple and direct answer. We were able to figure out WHY we were falling behind on adds and not able to kill the sorcerers and get back over to our ship to throw our our own damage.

Our guild leader opens up in Vent, spouting orders to the ranged DPS and those in the cannons, asking a few questions and obtaining the necessary information.

We start the encounter again, still on heroic…

After a few minutes we defeat the Alliance Gunship encounter on heroic difficulty. It wasn’t a heroic Lich King kill, it wasn’t a world or server first, but it was OUR kill.

If nothing else, there are two lessons to take away from this story:

1: Keep a level head, analyze the issue and see what you can fix. Sometimes you just need to take a second to breathe to see whats going on.

2: Perseverance pays off. Sure, it was only our second attempt at Heroic Gunship but we looked at how we had failed and gave it another go and the result was success. I am never one to bang my head against a figurative wall for hours on the same boss, but sometimes it just takes one more try to win.

While we were watching the Alliance gunship fly away I began to type in “O” chat.

Hey G, (Short for Gorthad, the guild leaders character) Thanks for being an asshole!

Haha, anytime buddy…

No seriously, had you not been an asshole, we wouldn’t have done this, I think the next article I write on my blog will be about you!

Just keep it clean he tells me.

Tipping the Scales (To Extend Part 2)

Chris — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:34:48 +0000

At the end of March I posted an article detailing my opposition to extend a raid lockout of Icecrown Citadel 10 man with just the Lich King alive. My argument was that if we are having little to no problem getting TO the Lich King each week and still have plenty of time in our raid schedule to put attempts on the boss, I didnt see a reason why extending the lockout would help.

A commenter by the name of “LePeR” noted that maybe extending the lockout wasnt such a bad idea. After all, once you kill the Lich King you open up heroic mode, making a Lich king kill that much sweeter. The funny thing is that I think I agree with the guy!

I know…I just said that extending was bad, but not I am saying that it is good…whats going on here?

Well, let me clarify what I mean because I believe both of us are correct. Ultimtiely there needs to be a balance between clearing content and gearing your raiders.

Why Strike a Balance?

Honestly, its no fun to bang your head against the wall for hours on end while you wipe to a boss over and over again. Then again there is little fun in becoming so overpowered that a raid boss no longer becomes a challenge. Balance is the key to having fun when raiding and an often overlooked job of the raid leader.

Each side of the raid balance scale has its perks and consequences if the scale dips too low. Lets take a look at each side so we know what to look for when trying to strike that precious balance.

Focus on Progression:

Pros:

Better Loot-This is an easy one. With every hard mode that you complete you gain improved loot. Better loot means an easier time killing more bosses and obtaining even better loot. An endless cycle but your raiders will love you for it.
Feeling of Accomplishment-Anyone who has stepped into a room with 9 or 24 (or even 39) of your friends and successfully defeated a boss knows the feeling. Doing all of this on a difficulty that some refer to as “hard mode” makes victory that much sweeter.
Overall Improvement to your guilds reputation on the server-When you are running around capital cities sporting the heroic tag on your gear, those inspecting you will be impressed. Word spreads quickly about guilds that are able to get the job done and which ones cannot. Defeating heroic content means word spreads that your guild is hot shit.

Cons:

Growing Frustration with every wipe-We have seen it. The first time you wipe someone may fess up and admit that they hit the wrong button or that they stood in fire too long. A few wipes later people start pointing fingers at everyone else, assuming that it was another case of “standing in fire” or “lag” or whatever other scapegoat they can come up with.
Possibility of never defeating the encounter-It is quite possible to spend an entire weeks worth of raiding on one encounter and never succeed. That feeling of frustration mentioned above will continue to grow and it may become difficult to talk raiders into joining a raid because they are worried about wasting time on an encounter that they may not defeat.

Focusing on Easy Content

Pros:

Improvement to team building-Less frustration and burden of performing perfectly on an encounter means more time enjoying guild members. Vent servers may liven up and jokes and casual conversations may be exchanged. People are having fun and this is a good thing.
Easy to gear up new people-Whether its the guy that just came back from an extended break, or the alt who is now the main and needs gear; clearing the easy content means people get geared out much easier. Essentially a large portion of the raid group is carrying a few people in order to get everyone up to the same level of gear.

Cons:

Guild members will cap out-It may not happen to every guild member but there are those that will get to the top with your guild and decide to move on. These players will realize that they may be stuck doing the same content without a chance to challenge themselves with heroic modes and decide that their best bet is to find the next guild that is pushing progression.

Like I said before, the key isnt to focus on one or the other. If you are a guild that is comfortable with the easy stuff, or is fine with banging your head against the wall for several hours, days or weeks to complete that heroic mode then good on you. The rest of us require a balance, lets clear the easy stuff until we know its the easy stuff and then start working on the harder modes for each encounter. Striking that balance between obtaining purple pixels and having fun will, when all is said and done, great a better guild.

Oh, and to LePeR and all the other commenters I have recieved. Thank you! While a wise man (BigRedKitty) once said “Blog for yourself” it is nice to know that someone reads the crap I put down.

Haxxors

Chris — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:41:39 +0000

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting when my cell phone started vibrating. Once we were done I pulled my phone out to see that I had a miss call from one of my fellow guild officers. I called my guild mate back and the conversation went a little something like this:

Uhh, hey man, whats up?

Why aren’t you responding to my tells in game?

Ummm…I’m at work, not playing right now. This is where I start to freak out in my mind. It had already hit me what was going on, I didn’t want to believe it but knew it was true.

Well, you are raping the guild bank, taking everything out…I think you are getting hacked.

Well shit! Let me see whats going on.

I hung up and went back to my desk. Sure enough I was unable to log into my battle.net account and I had a nice little warning when I logged into gmail saying that there was some suspicious activity on my account. Sure enough someone from China had logged into my gmail account, reset my battle.net account info and was doing whatever they wanted to MY stuff.

After 38 (I kid you not) calls to blizzard I was finally able to get my account back. It took another six days before my gear and gold were returned to me and a day or two more for the guild mats to be returned. I was out of commission for a week, totally useless to my guild. I couldn’t help with any of our 10 or 25 man runs, couldn’t run heroics with the new guys, couldn’t farm mats or do dailys. The best I could do was sit in guild chat and talk to people. The feeling of being totally helpless was awful.

Chris! This isn’t a blog about getting hacked. This is a blog about raiding and leading raids and all that jazz…right? Well…you know it is but like I said, I was totally out of commission. Useless to my guild, couldn’t do anything at all.

So with that, lets talk security. Blizzard has a great guide on account security but since I have been recently hacked, I figured I would reiterate what has already been stated and throw my two cents in.

In Game

Don’t give your password out. Sure, it may be a proven fact that your friend down the street will never give up your password to someone else, and he would never mess around with your stuff but the fact remains that he could have a key logger on his computer that steals YOUR information.
Have a safe word. I know it might sound funny but when something suspicious is going on that quick second that it takes to find out if its you or some asshole with your information is the difference between 100 flasks being taken out and all of them being stolen.
Have your Guild Leader double check the permissions for each rank. As guilds expand and change things up guild permissions may get changed. Don’t let a simple change be that “in” where an account thief can take what isn’t his.

Out of Game

Your computer is constantly at risk for infection, whether it be from a virus, key logger, malware etc. You need to protect yourself against all of these threats. Some programs don’t protect against all different types of infections so it’s good to know what is needed for each type of infection. If you are looking for a anti virus program, I would suggest AVG. The free version has served me well for many years without any problems. For malware I would suggest MalwareBytes. If you are looking to protect yourself against adware I would suggest Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. All programs are free and easy to setup and run.
Regardless of what program you use to scan for a virus or a malicious file, ensure that it is updated. If you are trying to scan your computer with a program that hasn’t been updated in weeks or months, its the same as having no protection at all. Many programs have an auto update feature, ensure that it is configured correctly and is working.
Ensure that your computer has been updated. Microsoft and Apple put out a good chunk of updates for their operating systems. Don’t assume that because your computer is working fine that it doesn’t need to be updated. Schedule time to update your system, before you go to bed or before work is a great time, that way you are downloading and installing updates without having to lose precious WoW time.
Update your browser! I don’t care which one you are using, just make sure that it is updated.
Watch where you go and what you download. Sure, downloading all that tranny dog porn may sound like fun but when you open the file covered in viruses you will cry. If you frequent the ghetto section of the Internet (pornographic websites/unsecured and suspicious download sites etc) then you are increasing your risk of unknowingly downloading something bad. I’m certainly not here to tell you where or what on the Internet you should go, just be careful.
Buy an authenticator. For the love of all that is good in this world, spend the six dollars to get one. It it totally worth it. Sure, it sucks that you have to carry around a little hunk of plastic everywhere that you play WoW, but what sucks even more is when you get your account stolen and are helpless to do anything. Spend the cash and suck it up. In the end it is worth the trouble.
Learn what phishing is. You hear about it all the time, and I am sure that some of you guys reading this have had it happen to you; you check your email or in game mail and you have a message from someone claiming that they are giving away a free mount in game or some type of prize. Sounds too good to be true right? Well that is probably because it is. Remember that Blizzard doesn’t ask for your account information (it even says so on the loading screen) so any site that you go to that requires you to put it in to claim a prize is full of poop.

When it comes to account security, you need to understand a few things. The first thing to remember is that account thieves are tricky little bastards. They will try any way possible to gain access to your account. They will try to trick you in game, they will send you emails to trick you when you aren’t playing. They will use programs to gain access to your account without you ever knowing about it. They will use any means necessary to steal from you. Know what to look for and how to avoid becoming the next victim; if you think your account has been compromised call Blizzard as soon as possible. The key here is to avoid the traps set (the phishing scams) while keeping your computer free of malicious software.

Oh and for real…buy an authenticator. It’s worth it!

A few handy links:

Topping Out

Chris — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:43:27 +0000

I was talking to a buddy the other day at work and I made a comment to him that still holds true as I am writing this:

You know when you get to that point in Tetris where the little pieces are coming down so fast that you just don’t have enough time to think of where you should put them, you just keep stacking them in ways that will prolong the game.

That’s how I feel right now! I feel like there is so much piled on me and the other officers in my guild that we are just pushing stuff to the side so we can keep going.

Let me elaborate:

My guild found out Monday that Blizzard had decided to transform our server (Drak’Thul) from a PVP server to a PVE one. Good ol’ D’thul is a low population server and Blizzard figured by changing it to PVE and then turning on the “New Players” flag that people would flock to the server. For those that didn’t want to stay on Drak’Thul, Blizz gave the option to swap to one of three other servers.

Let’s just hink about that one for a second, in order to bring players to the server Blizzard wanted to change it and then give people the option to move off…genius!

Whatever. The WoW gods at Blizzard know a little about what they are doing, and it’s not like we can change it now anyways. For those that wished to stay on a PVP server, Blizzard offered free transfers to select realms:

Akama-Medium population server with several alliance and a few horde guilds that were in various stages of heroic 25 man Icecrown Citadel.

Dalvegyr-Medium population server with several alliance and horde guilds that were in the early stages of normal 25 man Icecrown Citadel.

There was a third server listed but it was flagged as PVE. No point in considering that server so I will keep it off the list.

Now the kicker was this: We learned about this on Monday, Blizzard started to let people transfer off Tuesday.

One of our Officers posted in our super secret Officer forum that we needed to make a decision RIGHT NOW! We didn’t have time to wait; we needed to make a decision Monday night at the latest. All but one Officer chimed in and it was decided that we would move to Dalvegyr. We felt that being around guilds that were close to us in progression would give us a much better chance of recruiting players rather than fighting with a guild that is far more progressed for talented players.

Our raid members did not agree. They believed that if we moved to a server where the rest of the guilds were knocking down heroic bosses that we would have a flock of talent that wanted to join us. Most of our guild decided to not follow us over and instead went to Akama. When all was said and done I would say that my guild lost almost 75% of our players.

What I am truly amazed at are the specific people that we lost. My guild was originally an Everquest guild and once World of Warcraft came out they switched over. We had a player who had joined the original Everquest guild and had stayed with us until the server move. He had been with us for 10+ years. He never had an issue with the guild, was a great raider and was an integral part of our team. He left us Wednesday and went to Akama.

I could go on and on about the people that we lost. I could say how much it hurt when one of our mages and a good friend of mine jumped into Ventrilo with me on Tuesday and cried to me as she informed me that she was going to transfer to Akama. I could tell you about the sick feeling I get everytime I log onto our forums and see that another person, another guild mate and friend has decided that they would like to go to a different server but I think that anyone who reads this already understands how I feel.

So what does the future hold for my guild? I honestly cannot tell you. The only option we have right now is to put in some work on 10 mans until we can build up enough for a 25 man raid. Several of us are still trying to move characters over with little success and our guild leader had his account flagged and banned for trading a large quantity of gold to other players. I guess Blizzard missed the fact that all of the people he traded it to were guild members that were transferring over. When you have a guild bank with over 400k gold sitting in it, there isnt an easy option for moving it around. Just another kick while we are down though.

As I said before, I am not sure what the future holds for my guild. I think that we can pull through and come across stronger than ever but only time will tell.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about the raiding changes in Cataclysm.

Image

Chris — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:47:20 +0000

Last week one of our new guild members decided to form a raid group for the weekly raid boss. Shortly after forming and starting the raid whispers went out to our guild leader. Players in the PUG raid complained that the new guy wasn’t handling loot in a fair manner, was kicking players without warning or reason and in general acting like a douchecock.

My GM kicked the guy out of the guild.

It wasn’t the first time that we had heard of the guy running a PUG raid improperly. We had warned the kid to run a raid the right way or not at all but obviously it didn’t sink in. There were also other issues with the guy, he showed up to raids high, performed poorly and in general had a bad attitude.

Leadership in my guild is fairly relaxed. Kicking someone out is a big deal because we are a “family guild”. I tried working with the guy to improve his performance, even went so far as to purchase epic gems for the guy to bump up his numbers. His attitude was an issue, but we attributed it to the fact that he was high ALL THE TIME. We didn’t like the drug issue, but we cannot control our members and let it slide.

So was my GM right in dropping the guy? Why did he even do it?

I think the boss man was totally correct in his actions. This wasn’t a rage kick, nor was it some type of immature decision to prove a point. The guy was a cancer to the guild and needed to be cut out before he ruined us. Like I said before, there were many things we simply let slide, but as nice as the leadership is, there is only so much shit we take before we start pushing back.

The biggest reason that he was kicked was because of our image. My guild is the oldest guild on the server and is known as a stable, low profile raiding guild that clears content. We aren’t the best in the world but we do push our selves. Having someone in the guild that projects the image of a baby throwing a tantrum because he or she didn’t get their way reflects negatively on us. When a player groups with “Douchecock guild member” and sees how they lead raids and how they work with others, they are going to think that the whole guild in turn will lead raids and act in that fashion.

The player was a cancer to the guild and portrayed a bad image to the rest of the server. On a LOW population server where every potential recruit is important, having a poor image can destroy a guild.

To Extend or Not to Extend?

Chris — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:04:01 +0000

Imagine this scenario: You work your way up to the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel 10 and you have 45 minutes left before you normally call the raid to an end. It’s the last day that you do 10 mans and you won’t come back until next week. No one has done the fight before and the clock is ticking.

What do you do?

That was the exact scene of my 10 man group on Sunday. We knew we weren’t going to down the Lich King, we just didn’t have enough time. That’s when my guild leader and member of the 10 man team asked the following question:

“Whatcha think Chris? Should we extend the raid ID?”

NO! As much as I would love to kill the Lich King, and I have no doubt that we soon will, I cannot justify extending the raid ID to do it.

Why?

A full clear of ICC up to the Lich King nets you 23 Emblems of Frost, plus 5 for the weekly raid. Add a Lich King kill in there and you have plenty of extra emblems rolling in. Players are still using those Emblems to buy goodies which include tier 10, offset items and primordial saronite.

Stepping into a raid instance where every boss is up means more loot that is going to get passed out. There may be a piece of loot that has yet to drop and one of your raiders has been waiting on it, taking that chance away for a week is going to sting.

You would be doing more damage than good by extending the raid lockout. Sure, you may kill the Lich King that week, but then what? You just ruined any chance a member had of obtaining loot from the other bosses, prevented them from obtaining emblems of frost, and pushed the previous boss encounter out of their memory.

It’s just not worth it.

What do you do?

“Whatcha think Chris? Should we extend the raid ID?”

NO! As much as I would love to kill the Lich King, and I have no doubt that we soon will, I cannot justify extending the raid ID to do it.

Why?

It’s just not worth it.

world-of-warcraft-wrath-of-the-lich-king-screenshot-big

What do you do?

“Whatcha think Chris? Should we extend the raid ID?”

NO! As much as I would love to kill the Lich King, and I have no doubt that we soon will, I cannot justify extending the raid ID to do it.

Why?

It’s just not worth it.

Set the Example

Chris — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:11:42 +0000

One of my primary concerns in our 25 player raids is performance, because of this I am known as the Officer with the annoying tattle tale mods. I run Big Brother, RaidBuffStatus, and Recount.

I love them!

All of these mods make it easy for me to see who in the raid is slacking with consumables, who doesn’t have the buffs they need and what a person is doing in a fight.

Monday night we were battling Professor Putricide. We had about 30 minutes left before we normally call a raid and leave the zone when I noticed that one of our Paladin healers (The class leader by the way) wasn’t flasked. I immediately called him out on it.

Now before I continue, I just want to inform anyone reading this that all flasks that are pulled out of the guild bank are sold to raiders for 12 gold a pop. Regardless of what the price on the auction house it. On my server a single flask sells for around 50 gold. Just let that deal sink in for a sec.

So this class leader hasn’t been flasked and I called him out on it, just as an Officer should. I wait a few seconds and run my Big Brother report again, now the same player shows up as having only ONE elixir on him. Curious to see what he is using, I click on his raid frame and find find that he has drank an expertise elixir.

The next day I log onto our guild forums and head straight for the Class Leader section. I create a new topic in the forums:

@Paladins Name

I then type out a little message:

I am a firm believer in leading by example. That’s the way I was taught and that’s how I try to lead. To make a long story short, stop being a douchecock. When we are doing 25 man raids, flask u and eat up.

I then made a few comments about doing dailies instead of sexual favors with his boyfriend and how flasks are so cheap.

I topped it off with a simple reminder…

We can’t ask evals and raid members to have consumables when a class leader thinks it’s funny to pop an expertise elixir during a raid.

The Marine Corps teachs 11 leadership principles, one of them being “Set the Example”. An article on leadership principles and how they work with leading a guild is on my list of things to write about, it’s not something that I want to do RIGHT now. Instead I will just throw down a few words:

Setting the example is often overlooked when leading. A leader cannot have a “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude. Set an example that the general population can follow.

Putting Out Fires

Chris — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:31:37 +0000

When it comes to leading people, whether it is on the battlefield or through the next big instance, a huge thing to remember is how your actions affect the other leaders around you. Your decisions as a squad leader or class leader, battalion commander or guild officer can easily cause problems. As a leader, here are five thoughts to keep in mind before problems arise.

1: Unified Front

When Ice Crown Citadel came out, my guild had an influx of new recruits. One of those was a Death Knight who badly needed to work on his gear. He simply wasn’t ready to raid yet, but I was willing to give him a chance once he had gotten his gear in order. One raid night I log in late due to work and find that the new recruit was in the raid group. Surprised to see him in the raid so quickly, I check over his gear. He was missing gems and enchants, those that he did have were of low quality or totally wrong.

Since I was a class leader at the time, I sent a quick whisper to one of the officers, asking what was going on with the guy.

“He said he was ready to go and I didn’t have time to look over his gear so I took his word”

I then sent a whisper to the new guy asking him to zone out, that he just wasn’t ready to raid.

We start clearing trash and get up to Lord Marrowgar. I notice that the new Death Knight was still in the raid and standing beside me in the raid zone.

“Dude, did you not get my whisper? I need you to zone out, your gear still needs a ton of work” By now I am getting whispers from others in the guild asking why a guy covered in green quality items and cheap gems is sitting in the raid.

“What do you mean? I was told to leave after this boss”

Fan-freaking-tastic. Come to find out, the same officer that I had questioned about an unprepared recruit in the raid was the same guy that told that very recruit to zone out AFTER the boss. Now the new guy is getting conflicting orders from two different people in his chain of command. Not acceptable.

What was needed was a unified front between the officers and class leaders of the guild. If one group gave an order, the other group needed to support it.

What could have saved much headache and pain was proper communication. Had either of us spoken to the other about what we wanted the new guy to do, mixing up orders wouldn’t have been an issue.

2: Be Upfront and Honest

If someone messes up, tell them. If someone needs to improve or is hurting the guild or raid, tell them! People are not mind readers and will not be able to improve on something if they don’t know it’s an issue. This is a two way street though. If you screw up, wipe the raid, make a mistake, you need to be honest about it. We are all human and make mistakes, just make sure you are fixing the ones you can. Address the problem head on, find out why there is an issue and come up with a solution.

3: Praise in Public, Scorn in Private

Imagine you are in a raid, fighting a boss. Tanks are doing what they need to do, healers are…healing, DPS is going crazy stabbing stuff, shooting fireballs, pulling off all kinds of fancy moves. Suddenly the boss throws down a patch of fire and one of your DPS sits in it and dies.

How do you handle the situation?

Yell at the player? Send him a whisper after the fight? Kick him from the guild?

Embarrassment and shame are powerful motivators, but not very productive. Getting called out for a first time mistake can quickly make your players bitter and resentful. When dealing with mistakes it’s best to handle them in private. In game whispers and private vent/teamspeak chats often will produce more results than yelling at a player.

Did a guild member pull off an amazing feat during a raid? Did someone donate a much needed resource to the guild bank? Is someone simply doing a good job? Praise your people in public. Those doing well will get recognition from everyone around and those that aren’t doing so well will be more inclined to improve!

4:Don’t Criticize Peers

One of the worst things a leader can do is criticize his or her peers. There is a perception that the officers and class leaders are better than your average player and don’t fall victim to stupid mistakes. While this is usually true, we all screw up. Having one Officer comment about how another Officer failed at a raid mechanic looks bad for both parties. The one doing the bad mouthing looks like a douche who is trying to bring others down to boost himself up while the one that failed has confidence in his leadership shaken. Anything that damages morale and trust in Officers is bad for the whole guild.

I’m not trying to say that if someone of higher rank in a guild screws up and stands in fire or gets cleaved by the boss that they should get away with it. I am just trying to get across the fact that there is a proper way to address the situation where the perception of perfection (or close to it) is left intact.

5: Value Input

A few years ago I was a raiding member of a semi successful guild. The guild leader ruled with an iron fist and while he wasn’t liked by all, he was well respected on the server. I was promoted to Officer in that guild and helped lead raids, coordinated the healing and handed out loot, all of the Officer duties one would expect. Many of the raiding members came to me rather than the other officers because of my “easy to talk to “attitude. The biggest complaint I received was the guild leader didn’t value input. Guild members had a difficult time talking to the guild master, they felt that any suggestions they made were ignored and were frustrated with failures that would have been prevented had the guild leader listened to guild members.

It doesn’t matter if your guild leadership runs on a democracy or dictatorship complete with iron fist and secret police, failing to listen to your guild members is failure. There are many players that are not in a leadership role but know what they are talking about and have the ability to seriously help a situation by giving their input. Don’t think that because the new guy just joined the guild that he doesn’t know what he is talk about or that the best healer ever doesn’t know a thing or two about DPS; listen to them and allow them to voice their thoughts and opinions. It is the job of a leader to listen to his or her people and then make decisions based on all of the information he is given.

Leadership is all about putting out the small fires before they get too large and burn your house down. Knowing what to look for and what problems can arise will make taking care of them much easier. Just remember that problems will arise. No matter what you do, there will be issues. Learn from your mistakes and fix what you can.

Something Different

Chris — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:57:10 +0000

The biggest thing to remember about World of Warcraft is that it is a game. I bought and play the game to have fun. Something I have been wanting to share are screenshot of me doing just that. So here we go:

Trying to form a 10 man on an off night.

Too much info in Priest chat.

Which tank gets the bones?

Joe comes out of the closet!

I’m the Abom for 25 Man Putricide

Too much info!

Best friends forever

Again, too much info!

My nickname in guild is Pickle, Tickle, or Tankle (Among other names)

Pfft, and Death Knights are the noobs?

Breakfast time!

Time for a new keyboard

Dalaran elixir time

When the Guild Leader gives an officer the ultimatum: Get rid of the wasp or get gkicked, something is wrong

Flight Form? Am I doing it right?

Gobble Gobble

In The Shit

Chris — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:24:20 +0000

When I was in high school, I joined the ROTC program. I spent four years in the program learning Marine Corps customs, courtesies, map reading skills, and most importantly how to lead. The course was taught by two retired Marines, a Major and a Master Sergeant. Both were outstanding Marines and had put in 20+ years serving their country. While I respected both of them, the Master Sergeant is who I looked up to and thought of as my hero. This man was part of Operation Frequent Wind, had taught new Marines as a Drill Instructor, taught new Marine officers at Quantico, and was all around a bad ass salty devil dog. I spent four years with that Marine learning everything I could and advancing until I was put in command of the unit.

After graduating from high school, I joined the Marine Corps. I went through not one but two MOS schools. I joined a unit and soon deployed to Iraq. Because of my status as a young and at the time unmarried Marine, I was afforded great opportunities to “get in the shit”. While my fellow Marines did their part setting up communication at Camp Fallujah, In support of Operation Phantom Fury, I was attached to 3/5 and then again to 3rd AABn as part of the biometrics team sent in to ID known baddies and clear the good guys. For months I lived at a large road checkpoint, everyday waking up to sort through contraband, deal with irate Iraqis, and capturing known or suspected terrorists. Life sucked! I went weeks without a shower, a hot meal or a place to sleep that wasn’t covered in dirt. When I wasn’t working or sleeping, I was out patrolling, or checking on the guard posts, or even standing behind a 50cal or Mk19 myself.

When I got back home after my first deployment to Iraq, I went to see my ROTC instructors. I knocked on the closed door and heard the familiar sound of the Majors voice as he told me to come in. We talked for a few minutes, I shared with him a few stories of war and he shared with me his experiences. We both knew that I was waiting on the Master Sergeant, so after one last story he told me that “Top” was PTing the cadets, or in other words they were out on a run and would be back shortly.

When “Top” got back from PT, he saw me and introduced me to the recruits. Most of the guys nodded with approval and the ladies eyed me and swooned. As the cadets went to shower and change cloths, I spoke with my enlisted brother. The following words I don’t think I will ever forget:

“I am glad you made it back home, some of your fellow classmates came back to see me a few months ago when they got back home. Now those guys were real heroes.”

That man didn’t know what I had done. He didn’t know what my MOS was, or that I had been attached to other companies, that I had done the job of an infantryman as well as my own. He assumed that I didn’t do a damn thing.

When I left and went back home, I thought about what he had said, and lost all respect for him.

So what can we learn about this story?

-What you say DOES matter. It might not seem like a big deal but others take what you say and it affects them differently. I know that what he said wasn’t meant to be hurtful, but the fact is that his words cut deep and I wont forget them. Remember this when you are talking to a person in game. Your comment may seem OK, but you don’t know how it will affect others.

-There is a saying about assuming makes something something you are an asshole if you do it. The guy ASSUMED that he knew what I did when I was deployed. He didn’t know my MOS, he didn’t know what unit I was in, or who I was attached to, he assumed all of these things. His assumptions lead him to believe that I had done less than others. I am not saying that I was a hero or that I pulled off some death defying stunt that saved people or that I fought off 200 insurgents with my bare hands. I also am not saying that I sat on my ass all day. Don’t assume.