It’s February 2009 and World of Warcraft now has 11.5 million players worldwide. It has more players than any other MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) in history by a considerable margin; it’s simply blown the competition of the water. The growth of WoW is quite literally unprecedented.

From mmogchart.com. See that pretty green line?

And that’s just up to some time in 2008. WoW has taken huge bites out of other gaming segments; when you are the third biggest selling PC game of all time (behind Sims 1 and 2 — damn those female gamers!), other genres tend to take a hit. Blizzard didn’t just conjure 11.5 million people out of thin air! People dumped their FPSes and RTSes and came to see what all the fuss was about. I remember when I started playing, the majority of people that I met were CS kiddies, or StarCraft/Warcraft 3 players. You can see from the graph that there just weren’t that many subscribers from other games to play WoW — Blizzard had done what every other games developer can only dream of: they cracked the MMO subscription market wide-open.

Blizzard made fantastic use of their experience from StarCraft and Warcraft, and made a game that’s easy to learn and enjoyable to play. A lot of the ‘old school treadmills’ and ‘grinds’ that players had grown to be accustomed to (and often loathe) in other MMOs all but disappeared in WoW. If you’re one of the million-or-so gamers that came from EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot or Final Fantasy XI, the first thing that strikes you about WoW is just how easy it is. Never has it been so easy to be ‘successful’ in an online game.

You might’ve heard the phrase ‘welfare epics’, or ‘casual friendly’. Both of these terms have been coined to describe Blizzard’s ideology of massively-multiplayer online gaming: It should not necessarily be about how much you play, it’s about taking part. WoW is about making everyone feel special. And boy it works!

In other games, before WoW, you could only dream of one day being in anyway equal to the best players. MMORPGs really weren’t for casual gamers, they were for gamers that thought they had a chance of being #1. They had the time, the dedication and a certain lack of RL obligations — that’s what it took to be competitive pre-WoW.

Then along came the casual-friendly welfare-epic gloriously lore-rich realm of Azeroth. A world where you could attain the max level is about 15 days, and be adequately well-geared within 20. Such an easy game had never been heard of! All those newbies were subscribing after their free month. An awful lot of people never play past the first month of MMOs — WoW’s player retention is truly awesome compared to other MMOs; people pick up the game, and never put it down. Finally we had a game where the reward is directly related to the effort, and not some sick-and-twisted system where the higher levels require exponential time investments and dedication.

And that’s the key to WoW: a linear curve of progression. There is very little justifying reason to play those extra 25 hours a week to get that small one-up on the opposition. (There’s a very good business reason for this too, as Blizzard make more money if you play less!)

Anyway, you can probably see where this is going. I’m not one of those casuals; I’m the total opposite. I’m a guild leader. I’m in that tiny percentile of players that goes a little bit further than the rest. Not only do I play those extra 25 hours a week, I also manage a guild at the same time.

The purpose of this blog is to educate and inform people about massively multiplayer games in general, and leading a successful WoW guild in particular. If you’re a struggling guild leader, or you’re thinking about starting your own guild, hopefully you’ll be able to find some tips here. Perhaps you’re just a raider, with no involvement with the leadership of your guild, you might find some interesting things about inter-guild politics, or how to be a better raider.

There’s actually very little out there on the Internet about actually leading a successful WoW guild. That’s probably because we’re overshadowed by our hyper-competitive PVP brethren, like Serennia and Ming. Hopefully this blog will give you an insight into the other, more social side of online gaming: guilds and PVE.

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So far I’ve discussed in quite general terms the kinds of guilds you can see running around in World of Warcraft, why they exist, and their drives and purposes. Next, I covered in quite grizzly and unpleasant detail who the most common characters in a hardcore guild are.

Now that you know the why, and the who, it’s time to talk about how you progress as a guild. I’ve missed out a few steps here (and I will go back to them in future articles), but the question that most often plagues me as a guild leader is: What do I do now? You have a choice to make, and you have to make the right choice in a timely fashion.

This could be something as simple as ‘Do we go to A or B instance?’ but in the grand scale of things, as the leader of the guild (and the raid) you’re going to be the sole decision maker during your (hopefully long) reign. The number of times I’ve wished someone was there to help me make a decision is uncomfortably large; and we’re not talking 1 or 2 decisions a day, we’re talking 50, 100 or 200 little decisions each and every raid. Let me give you a brief example:

Do you wipe another time on that boss encounter, or do you give up for the night? If you stop now, have you spared some guild morale? Maybe you would’ve killed him on the next attempt? Are you going to lose to another guild if you don’t stay an extra hour? Will that extra hour cause unrest amongst the workers in your guild that must be up early in the morning? If you give up, maybe you’ll upset The Killers that are only there for the kill, the fresh taste of blood.

And that’s just one decision! By the end of this article, if you’re a guild or raid leader, you’ll have a much better idea of the _best_ choices to make for the ongoing survival and progress of your guild. If you’re not a raid leader, perhaps by the end of this article you’ll appreciate why us raid leaders always look like we’ve only got 3 blood vessels left – it’s because we do only have 3 blood vessels left — the others were lost in Tempest Keep and Naxxramas…

I’m going to assume, for the sake of brevity and simplicity that the guild leader is a tyrant. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that you are the sole leader of a guild and that there is little or no bureaucracy in the decision making process. Being able to make snap decisions can be vital to the continuing success of your guild, and ultimately… progress!

Types of Decision

Before I get into the ‘decision making process’, it’s good to understand what kind of decisions there are. Some have immediate impact and some are much longer-range ‘for the future’, but both will have a long-lasting effect on the guild if you get it wrong. The decisions you make in a guild (and raid) generally boil down into just a few types:

Administrative decisions

These are decisions that affect the long-term survivability of the guild, from expansion to expansion. Get one of these wrong and you likely won’t see any problems for a while, but when they do finally rear their ugly heads, it’ll be rough going. These will make or break your guild in the long-run.

• What DKP system should you use?
• Should you recruit more players before the next dungeon is released?
• Is a particular class officer pulling his or her weight?

Day to day decisions

These are decisions that have more immediate implications. Often these are to do with raiding, as that’s what your guild will often be doing on any given day.

• What kind of raiding schedule should you use?
• What dungeon should you raid?
• How do you decide on who gets invited to raids?

Immediate decisions

Finally we have the hardest decisions – the ones that you’ll often have to make on your own. These are snap decisions that need to be made within a few seconds. You don’t have the safety of a forum to hide behind for these – you have to decide now, and it better be a good decision! (The example I gave above illustrates a chain of immediate decisions)

• Do you kick a player from the raid?
• Do you deduct DKP from a player when they make a mistake?
• Do you change a boss encounter strategy after using the same one for a few nights?

What decisions are important?

Depending on the type of guild you belong to (hardcore or ‘normal raiding’), various decisions will have a different weighting: A normal raiding guild is unlikely to care quite so much about the raiding schedule, but for a hardcore progressive guild the correct schedule can mean the difference between world 1st kill or being 10th.

It is your job, then, as a guild (and raid leader) to make the right decisions for your guild in a timely fashion. I’m going to break down the decision making process for my 2 raiding guild types (go and read it if you haven’t already, as this won’t make too much sense otherwise), defining what constitutes an important decision and, by exclusion, what doesn’t.

(I have left ‘casual guilds’ out of the equation, as raiding is something they so rarely do.)

Hardcore Progressive Guild

In a hardcore progressive guild (HPG) your decisions are going to revolve around making good, instantaneous calls of judgement. Because players in HPGs are wound so incredibly tight (and really, anything could make them snap – especially The Killers or The Dramatics), the tiniest of decisions that you make today could avalanche way out of control, costing you a handful of players at a later date.

You are leading passionate players, players that play to win. That’s not to say that fun isn’t important to these players, but winning is more so – either the worldwide race, or at least the server race for a glorious ‘first kill’. Therefore, decisions that impact a player’s ability to ‘win’ are by far the most dangerous in a HPG. Here are some common stumbling blocks that you might’ve encountered, or you should avoid:

• An unfair loot distribution system — This is probably the number 1 cause of disbanded guilds. This deserves its own article, so be sure to read it when I write it!
• Cancelling raids – The single best way to get Killers to leave your guild: cancelling raids. This is why having active class leaders and a good recruitment system is very important. It also makes sense to design the raid schedule around the days with best attendance.
• Unfair persecution — This is likely to cause a lot of pain, especially if you persecute a Dramatic. You might find that the unfairly persecuted Dramatic will play the role of the politician and breed anger and distrust behind your back.

The Raiding Guild

A raiding guild is a lot slower moving but also tends to be a breeding pit of agitation and discontent. You are likely to have a lot more factions in a raiding guild – nationalities, real life friends, etc. It is not uncommon for such a guild to be ‘cliquey’ and split into the ‘hardcore crew’ that always get invited to raids, and the ‘casual raiders’ that fill the gaps. Raiding guilds are much more about the interaction of players, rather than focusing on conquering the content of the game. This isn’t to say they don’t want to clear the content; it’s more that they don’t raid enough to keep themselves occupied, so their attention inevitably turns towards… drama.

You are far more likely to have a player walk out of a raid in a ‘normal’ raiding guild. Perhaps even more so than in the HPG, you need to be very, very fair. A raiding guild is all about the structure you build, rather than the individual player skill. As such, you the common problems you’ll bump into when making decisions are:

• Unfair loot distribution — The leaders of raiding guilds tend to be slightly less ‘serious’, and see less of a problem assigning loot in the way they deem best, or ‘most fair’. You can be assured that giving loot to your real life friends before everyone else is a very quick way to destroy your guild.
• Acting above your station — In a normal raiding guild you are more of a lieutenant than a major. You are certainly leading the raid, but don’t even begin to think that you know other classes better than your own. Telling someone ‘how to play’ is a pretty bad idea. Stick to peripheral decisions, like ‘this is the boss strategy should we use’.
• Choosing the wrong dungeon – A common mistake made by raiding guild leaders is choosing the wrong dungeon to progress in. Either the raid leader isn’t clued up enough, or they are trying to close the gap between them and more hardcore guild. Skipping content and thus making life unnecessarily hard is a bad idea; unless you are trying to become a hardcore progressive guild!

How do I push the guild forward then?

By now, if you’ve read everything I’ve written, you should be quite intimate with the kinds of players in your particular kind of guild. You should know what pleases them the most (boss kills!), and what is likely to upset them quickly (unfairness!). The plan must surely be to build a guild that cultivates member happiness and eliminates any cause for unrest, or distrust in you as a leader.

The best way to quell any kind of discontent or uprising is, as you guessed from the title of this entry, progress. The best way to destroy a guild’s attempts at progress is the opposite: stagnation. It’s your job as the leader to keep things moving — it doesn’t matter where particularly, as long as it’s somewhere – to the side or hopefully forward — from where you are right now.

How do you choose where to go? How do you stop your raids stagnating?

You try to reduce the blunt trauma of raiding. Raiding is repetitive. Humans are very good at repetition, until they master it, and then it very quickly becomes boring. This is in fact why we, as humans, like to mix things up. It’s why those Dramatics like to stir the guild with a big stick and see what happens. It’s why the Killers want to try a new way of killing a boss each week. It’s why the Silent But Deadly players enjoy nothing more than theory crafting a new ‘better’ strategy.

Let’s face it: WoW is about having fun. You can try to convince yourself otherwise — ‘Raiding 10 hours a day means we’re the best!!’ — but at the end of the day, if you want to avoid massive churn and the joy of recruiting new raiders every week, the guild has to have fun. The only real questions you have to ask are: what constitutes fun for the members of my guild? What makes it a game?

Your decisions therefore must create fun. As I said in the example earlier, it’s entirely your decision: Do you go home, or do you stay for one more try? Ask yourself ‘which is more fun for the guild?’ It is sadly a question I can’t answer in definite terms; it’s about your personal leadership experience, and knowing who you play with. It’s about judging the mood of the raid, or even the guild – do you need that kill for guild morale? Or do you need to go and lick your wounds?

In my guild, there have been times when I’ve gone home, and there are those few fateful times where staying for that last try has resulted in us obtaining a server first kill. You can’t always make the right decision; you can only try and learn from experience! The only real difference today I can make the right decision 90% of the time, instead of 50%.

Endnote

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve written this article from a much more personal, empirical perspective. That’s because what I’ve written here is the ‘secret’ of how I have led my guild (with many helping hands) from a server 15th (!!) kill of Ragnaros 3 years ago, to 30th in the world (as of Patch 3.0.9). I’m actually an incredibly soft leader, nearly always choosing the ‘easy’ way out  — going home, or cancelling the raid, instead of wiping mindlessly — but as I have tried to explain: what makes a guild happy varies wildly from guild to guild. What I’ve given you here is a basic set of ground rules that can help you keep a raiding guild happy and moving forward!

Furthermore, while this article was written from the perspective of a tyrannical leader, there are perhaps better alternatives – our guild runs a ‘[dual leader]’ system, for example – but at the end of the day, the key is to be a fair and just leader. This certainly isn’t as easy as it sounds and it’s no wonder we have very few dictatorships in real life. If tyranny isn’t for you, I will explore different leadership styles in the future: tyrannies, multi-leader councils and of course… communism!

I understand this entry actually raises more questions than it answers, and for that I apologise. I will hopefully fix that with the next few articles that I write. The next one will focus on the most evil of all MMORPG beasties: the mighty destroyer of guilds… fair loot distribution!

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

So you want to game, but you don’t know how?

Or perhaps you’re a disaffected gamer that developed ‘Space Invader Thumbs’ and you’re still nursing RSI.

Perhaps you’re the girlfriend (or boyfriend!) of a gamer, but you don’t really ‘get it’.

If you fit any of the above categories, this guide will hopefully be everything that you need to pick up a game, play it, and even enjoy it! I will be writing in fairly simple terms, with little ‘geek speak’. If you don’t understand something, type it into Google, or ask in a comment!

Shattering a stereotype

Before I even get into the actual gaming side of things, I should talk about the adverse effect the ‘gamer stereotype’ has on newbie and disaffected gamers. There is a lingering image of gamers being pale, and socially inept. As I’ve said in a couple of previous articles, these stereotypes are almost entirely false. Sure, a few stragglers remain — there are definitely a few milky-complexioned kids that play from their parents’ basement –  but much of the modern and online gaming community is much more mature. The 18-34 demographic dominates the gaming market. Especially in the console sector (Xbox, PlayStation, Wii) it’s not uncommon to be playing online with a bunch of people that are 25 years old.

Gaming has changed from that-weird-boy-nextdoor pastime to the fastest-growing leisure activity in the world. No one’s going to snub you for being a gamer. In fact, you might even increase your coolness by playing video games!

Obviously, if you have a deeply-ingrained belief that all gamers are dorky and unpleasant people, this guide isn’t going to be very useful to you. Before continuing YOU MUST BELIEVE THAT GAMES CAN BE COOL AND FUN!

Choosing a platform

As a gaming beginner you probably don’t have the benefit of owning multiple consoles and a PC. You’re going to have to pick a platform to start with, and go from there!

Almost without reservation I can say: buy a Nintendo Wii.

Why? It is the most user-friendly and ergonomic gaming experience available today. There’s a reason it’s by far the best-selling console. It has unique, innovative games (like WiiFit — good for girls, and boyfriends of girls!) and some of the best versions of the most popular franchises in history: Mario World, Mario Kart and Zelda. It also plays all of the old GameCube games, and has a huge catalogue of old NES, SNES and N64 games available for download. If you want to begin gaming, the Wii is almost certainly the best choice.

There are exceptions of course! If you want to play a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG or MMORPG) like World of Warcraft, Runescape, Toontown or Dofus you are going to need a PC; a desktop computer. This isn’t a guide on how to buy a good gaming PC — you probably can’t go too far wrong buying something cheap from Dell, as long as it has a good graphics card (or ‘video card’). The other exception is if you want to play a ‘PC exclusive’ title — luckily almost everything makes it to consoles nowadays (some things don’t make it to the PC however — be sure to check at a local games store if a specific game will be released for a particular format!). The Sims and Spore are the only two games which are probably best played on a PC (even if they are playable on the console, or will be soon). Some ‘mature’ games are only available on the Xbox and PlayStation also, like Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear Solid.

In general, each console, or the PC, specialises in a certain ‘genre’ of game:

• Wii — Wii games tend to be almost entirely ‘family friendly’. You can find some mature titles on the Wii, but in general they will be cartoony and easy-going. You will find more ‘quirky’ games on the Wii than the other consoles too. Don’t expect graphical wonders from a Wii; expect top-notch exclusive franchises that are polished until they shine.
• Xbox — The Xbox is a great ‘middleground’ console. You will find a wide variety of games, and some ‘exclusives’ that only come to the Xbox. Xboxes are slightly more ‘clunky’ than a Wii, and their controllers are more complex. You will find more mature titles on the Xbox, like Grand Theft Auto.
• PlayStation — The current iteration, the PS3, is supposedly the technological master of the current generation of consoles. PS3 games will be beautiful, and sound fantastic. Unfortunately the library of games is smaller than the Xbox, and it lacks ease-of-use and quirkiness of the Wii. The only real reason to buy a PS3 would be for an exclusive title like Little Big Planet. Being the most expensive console of the lot, that’d be a very costly investment indeed.
• PC — The jack of all trades! If you really can’t decide, or if you already have access to one, a PC is a fine choice for beginner gamers too! It might be a little more complex to actually start gaming though — you have to install things, and make sure your computer meets the required specifications. The PC is a good choice if you want to play real-time strategy (RTS) or first-person shooter (FPS) games. Using a mouse and keyboard are the only real choice for these two genres. The other rather big bonus to PC gaming is that almost every ‘exclusive’ title finally ends up on the PC, within a year or two.

At the end of the day, you will be able to find plenty of games for both the PC and console market. If you already have access to a console, or a PC, just use it! The plan here is to get you into gaming, not to make you spend a fortune!

Choosing a game

By choosing a platform — Wii, Xbox, PlayStation or PC — you have partially defined what kind of games you’ll be playing. Ultimately, almost every game is released for every console, so you don’t need to worry about a lack of games. But what game should you start with?

I’m going to assume, if you’re a console gamer, that you’ve decided to play on a Nintendo Wii. The Xbox and PlayStation are both great consoles, but they’re twice the price of the Wii and don’t really have features that warrant their extra expense — especially for a newbie gamer like you!

The Wii specialises in two areas: its exclusive franchises, and quirky gameplay. The Wii is the console you have seen on countless TV shows, with people ducking and diving, and swinging their Wiimotes. It’s also the console with WiiFit (boys will want to click this link). But most importantly, it has Super Mario Galaxy. I’m not going to write a flowery review of the greatest console game ever made (Metacritic has already done that for me) but let’s just say that Nintendo have outdone themselves, again. This latest installment in the most popular console franchise of all time is easily playable by gamers of every skill level, and immensely enjoyable for everyone. It’s almost unputdownable – the one trait that almost every game is aiming for. I honestly didn’t stop grinning while playing through the entire game; it really is such a joy! If you’re new to gaming, get a Wii and Super Mario Galaxy. I can almost guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

What if you don’t want to play platform games? Perhaps you want to shoot people, or build bases and control massive armies? Or maybe you want to interact with thousands of other people in an online game, where the socialising is more important than the game itself? If that’s the case, you’ve probably bought a PC. What game should you start with?

If you’re a social gamer it should come as no surprise that I’m going to recommend World of Warcraft. 12 million people play this game world-wide, from every culture and social background. If you want to get to know people from other countries, hang out with other gamers/geeks AND play a very good adventure/fantasy game at the same time, WoW is the game to play. It’s very easy to pick up, and even quite easy to master. WoW is mostly about having fun and playing in a beautiful world that’s been lovingly crafted by its developers. There are lots of online resources to help you if you get stuck too!

If you’re more into frenetic action and running around, killing and ‘owning’ other players you want a shooter game. Most of these games excel on a multiplayer level, but a few have excellent story modes too.  The game I’m going to recommend is Half Life 2, the successor to what some consider the best first-person shooter (FPS) game ever made. Half Life 2 has a compelling story and a gentle difficulty curve. By the end of HL2 you should be ready for a more challenging FPS, or multiplayer mode!

I’ve skipped real-time strategy games, as they’re really not for beginners — sorry!

So… what now?

You have your console or PC, and one of the 3 best games ever made — what now? It’s time to PLAY! If you’ve picked the Wii, you can just slide that Mario disc in, sit back down on your sofa and enjoy one of the finest gaming experiences ever made. If you chose a PC game, you’ll have to do some installing (WoW is a complete pig to setup and install, which is a shame!)

And then… you need to play. You need to play for a few hours! You need to sit down, focus, and try to become immersed. An awful lot of pleasure in gaming comes from the escapism involved; you can lose yourself in a magical world, or become a mighty general throwing around his vast, sci-fi forces. You can slay mighty dragons, or play a silent, stealthy assassin saving the world from an oppressive tyrant. Unlike passive entertainment, games are interactive. The more you put in, the more you can get out. Don’t give up quickly — give the game a chance to tell its story and let its defining features shine.

Most of all, don’t be ashamed or hesitant to play for 2, 3, 4 hours or more. Imagine how many hours you’ve spent watching TV or movies! Everyone’s doing it; why not come join us?

As always, if you have a question about getting started with gaming, or you didn’t understand a part of the article, just leave a comment, or contact me directly.

If you are more interested in the players found in hardcore guilds, you might find this article more interesting.

Following on from my article on who plays in hardcore guilds, I’m now going to discuss the kinds of players you will find in a normal, World of Warcraft raiding guild. I’ve discussed tips and tricks for pushing a raiding guild’s progress, and I’ve also touched on what it’s like being a guild leader of a raiding guild, but now I’m going to try and get inside the heads of raiders. Not the hardcore, very-little-going-on-in-real-life raiders — the normal raiders. The raiders with jobs, or lots of school work to do, or even kids to care for.

Normal raiders make up about 40% of WoW’s subscription base, so obviously it’s going to be quite hard to boil down just a few player types — but I’ll try my best. Hopefully you’ll be able to spot yourself, but don’t worry if you can’t — there are always exceptions!

As with my my other article on hardcore raiders, I’ll be utilising Bartle’s player type system to give more abstract classifications of each type. I’ll also be using David Kolb’s research (further studied by Peter Honey and Alfred Mumford) into ‘Learning Style‘ — the way in which certain people learn in different ways — either through theorycrafting, wiping, or a mix of the two! Due to the less specific nature of raiding guilds (almost anyone can be in a raiding guild) some of the classifications might be a little lacking.

Enough preamble — let’s get right into the kinds of players in raiding guilds!

The 4 player types found in raiding guilds

Raiding guilds, being made  up a much larger percentage of the player base, tend to contain a huge variety of gamers. Unlike hardcore guilds, raiding guilds can contain any kind of player. The actual playing of WoW raiding content is very easy — the hard bit is the logistics and continued, 5-raids-a-week effort.  Raiding guilds consist of what’s left after you remove everyone capable of raiding in a hardcore capacity, which means you’re not generally left with very good gamers! Luckily, you don’t need to excel to progress; you just need a loyal bunch of players, and some perseverance!

What are the 4 player types? Let’s start with the most despised:

The Visitor

I thought I would leap right in there with the most hated and reviled of all raiding player types: the player that’s only hanging around for a while. The player that thinks he’s way too good to be in your pokey, up-and-coming raiding guild — you’re merely a stepping stone for the Visitor, he’s on his way to the top baby!

• Bartle Player Type: Opportunists, with a few Planners thrown in (the more intelligent ones). Maybe one or two Networkers (but they are rare, and would probably already be in a hardcore guild).
• Kolb Learning Style: Being such a variety of types, it’s hard to pigeon-hole The Visitor into a learning style. In theory, they could be any of the hardcore raiding types, just waiting for their moment to come!

The Visitor is an odd ball. They are likely to be your best gamers, as they are looking to be ‘spotted’ by top guilds; but at the same time, any investment you make into a Visitor is most likely going to be a waste (in the long run!) It’s not uncommon for a Visitor to constantly remind you that he’s only in the guild while he looks for a ‘better guild’ more suited to his awesome abilities. Visitors will sometimes be complete underachievers, knowing that their efforts feel wasted on a normal raiding guild.They are probably of the opinion that they can do more damage than the next player with one hand behind their back.

What To Avoid

Visitors are likely to be prima donnas — they want special treatment for being a cut above the rest of your guild. Sadly, you probably should give them special treatment. It really depends on how keen on progress you are — Visitors could provide a quick boost in progress, but then a drop in progress and morale when they ultimately leave. Visitors are likely to be the best damage dealers in your raid (much like the Killer in a hardcore raid) — but in the vast majority of cases, there’s a reason they’re still not in a hardcore guild. If you treat a Visitor with respect, and make sure they get the loot that’s rightfully theirs, they might just hang around! They might leave and rejoin a few times, but that’s just part of the ‘experience’ in a normal raiding guild.

The Loyal Soldier

These are the raiding guild’s equivalent of the Silent But Deadly hardcore guild member — your stalwart members that have been in the guild since the start, and won’t depart until the guild disbands. If you need someone to boost you through a low-level instance on an alt, the Loyal Soldier is the player most likely to help you;  if you need some kind of old reagent, they most likely have a stockpile on one of their many, many alts.

• Bartle Player Type: Again, a large split between Scientists, Friends and Networkers — the implicit types. These are generally quiet, reclusive types that you will rarely notice causing a fuss in general chat.
• Kolb Learning Style: Likely to be Divergers. They might not raid a lot, so they spend more time thinking about their raiding experience. Reading strategies might be very dull to them, though.

We are talking here about players that joined a guild back when they were low-level and running around The Barrens. Perhaps they are real life friends of the guild leader, or they have some other emotional tie to the guild — either way, they are likely only playing the game because of the guild. Raiding is probably a relatively new thing for them — they are likely to be incredibly experienced with ‘old world’ content and dungeoneering.

What To Avoid

While loyal, don’t expect Loyal Soldiers to be the best raiders. They are likely to be ‘slow and steady’, preferring to try things a few times, and then digest what just happened. They don’t want to wipe and wipe for 4 hours — they would rather crack open a beer, have a laugh with their old friends, and try to kill something by the end of the raid.

The only real risk is that their gradual accumlation of gear and experience make these quite prized by hardcore guilds. If a Loyal Soldier suddenly has the plan to join a hardcore guild, there could be trouble. They will very rarely leave, but if they do it could be very bad for guild morale — and the huge loss of experience and gear is obviously detrimental too.

The Troll

First of all, apologies to our blue-and-green skinned friends the trolls (did they have a run-in with nuclear waste or something?) I am talking here about Trolls; internet trolls. These are the equivalent of the hardcore ‘Dramatic’ player type… but unfortunately they don’t have hardcore raiding to focus their attention on. Their excess energy inevitably leaks out as trolling. Forum trolling, general chat trolling, guild chat trolling — you name it, the Troll probably spends more time talking crap than anythinig else.

• Bartle Player Type: Griefers and Politicians. Their time is probably equally spent between ganking lowbies and holding court in a major city, or gneeral chat.
• Kolb Learning Style: Raiding is a bit of a joke for a Troll — the learning style is thus a bit hard to pin down.

Sadly (or happily, if you can keep them in check!) every guild has a few of these, with raiding guilds likely to have more than their fare share. Trolling is normally a sure sign of chronic underachieving. Chances are they were once a  failed hardcore raider and had to give up, perhaps due to not having time, or simply not being good enough. Some trolls are ‘home bred’ though — they are just the cocky, social types that treat WoW more as a big, shiny soap box than a video game.

What To Avoid

Raiding guilds don’t tend to have as stringent recruiting policies as hardcore raiding guilds, so inevitably a few Trolls will sneak into your ranks. In some cases though, they are disaffected Visitors or Loyal Soldiers — bored with the game, or upset with Blizzard for some reason. Trolls are likely to be return customers — coming and going, quitting and resubscribing. Trolls aren’t a happy bunch — you probably want to avoid keeping Trolls in your raid group, incase  their sadness spreads. They might be funny for a while, but eventually they’ll get on the nerves of the other members!

The Newbie

Making up the rest of a raiding guild’s ranks are the newbies. Undergeared and inexperienced, the Newbie is a lovely blank slate, tabula rasa, just ready to be scrawled all over by the guild leader, and anyone else in the guild that likes creating an impression.

• Bartle Player Type: Let’s say their player type is as-yet undefined. They might have some tendencies, but Newbies, nowadays, are probably first-time MMORPG players, still discovering their likes and dislikes.
• Kolb Learning Style: Could be any of the four… you’ll find out in time!

A Newbie is very much what you make of him or her. WoW is an incredibly easy game, so a Newbie could easily flourish into a beautiful young raider and almost certainly into a Loyal Soldier, given time.

What To Avoid

Newbies need guidance — lots of it! Obviously it’s very much a mixed bag; you might be nuturing a Troll or Visitor, but there’s no real way to tell at this early stage. You want to avoid bringing them into contact with Trolls or Visitors, lest the early seeds of destruction are planted. Encourage the guild to communicate well with Newbies — answer their questions, help them gear up. There’s a chance they will fly the nest when they grow up, but that’s a risk you’ll always have to take in raiding guilds.

The fate of the raiding guild

Unfortunately, as the intermediate step between casual and hardcore guilds, a raiding guild is likely to be treated as a stepping stone. It’s a sad fate for the guild leader and his Loyal Soldiers, but it’s something, as time goes by, that you will come to terms with. A new instance is released; you’ll lose players. Have a large argument with a player? He’ll leave. Other than Loyal Soldiers, raiding guilds do not have great player retention — the grass is always greener on the other side, remember?

So the key, then, to surviving as a raiding guild is to convert your players into Loyal Soldiers. I have seen some raiding guilds survive successfully since WoW’s release by keeping an active core of Loyal Soldiers and steadily subverting Newbies into the loyal and adoring fold.

How best then to go about making the most of your guild and its players?

• Visitors will make up a sizable portion of your guild and must be looked after. If you are a new guild, there’s a chance your entire guild will be made of Visitors — if that’s the case, it’s the guild leader’s sole responsibility to convert these to Loyal Soldiers. In older guilds you should have a strong enough feeling of comraderie and loyalty that Visitors are either converted automatically, or they ultimately flee. Sadly, they are likely to be your best raiders — so if you wish to progress quickly, you are going to have to gear them up, and pray.
• Loyal Soldiers might be either rare, or make up almost your entire guild. When the other 3 types have quit, this is what you’re left with — a slow and plodding core of loyal members. Loyal Soldiers don’t make the greatest raiders, but they do make good officers. They are ideal at converting Newbies into future Loyal Soldiers, and as such are perfectly suited to being class leaders, or recruitment officers.
• Trolls are thankfully quite rare (because you’ve kicked them all, right?!) and merely serve as comic relief. While they’re on your side (and trolling other guilds/players) it can be great to keep 1 or 2 in the guild or raid. They are often quite smart, and won’t be awful at the game (they are quite experienced, don’t forget!) — they just find trolling more interesting than doing lots of damage, or healing properly. The moment they turn inwards and start trolling guild chat or festering discontent and spreading FUD… it’s time to cut your losses and remove them.
• Ah, Newbies… Fresh like the morning, dewy grass. Unsullied and pure, a blank slate, just waiting for a charismatic leader or Loyal Soldier to come along and teach them some tricks. Newbies are the lifeblood of your raiding guild; they must be recruited regularly! Meet a nice, new player while in a 5-man dungeon? Recruit! As I said earlier, WoW is very easy, and almost anyone with half a brain can raid successfully — they just need to be taught how to raid and what their role is. An easy-going and understanding nature will help nuture these Newbies into loyal, life-long members of your guild. The risk with Newbies is that if you don’t get to them first, someone else might — a Troll, or a rival guild. There needs to be lots of hand-holding, like with a child!

Notes

Raiding guilds have an awful lot of caveats attached to them. Raiding guilds can be groups of real life friends, or they can be formed by a lot of spam in general chat. This wide gamut of roots means that your raiding guild might be made up of completely different types to the ones listed here. What I’ve tried to do is illustrate what a standard raiding guild might contain. A guild that’s levelled together, and started raiding, or perhaps a group of friends that have recruited a few more players to do some raiding content.

Raiding guilds, due to their wildly varying roots and nature, tend to be quite a ‘hands on’ experience to lead. While a hardcore guild is generally self-governed by players that all have the same purpose — to be number one! — a raiding guild isn’t quite so lucky. Raiding guilds will lose players to other raiding guilds, and they will lose a lot of experienced and geared Visitors to hardcore guilds.

The good news is — and really, it’s good news — in a raiding guild it’s the spirit and fun of the game that keeps people playing and not the progress! Your Loyal Soldiers aren’t going to leave you if you fail to kill a boss. Your Newbies won’t be any the wiser. Your Trolls will continue to laugh and bicker, no matter how far you progress.

If you lose a player, that’s generally a good thing. It means they didn’t want to be a part of your guild and community. Do you really want a player like that in your guild? Remember, WoW is easy — in a raiding guild, everyone is replaceable! Go and find someone nicer to replace them with!

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

If you liked reading this, there is more to read about WoW, guilds and raiding in the archive!

The MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) market is an interesting one. Unlike most other forms of media, MMOGs are a service rather than a consumable product.

A normal game has a very predictable life-cycle: development, launch, patching, possible expansions and finally product retirement. Most software follows the same pattern. You buy a game, or piece of software, you expect to get some use out of it, and ultimately expect to buy the next latest-and-greatest version of it in a few years.

In fact, it’s the life-cycle for almost everything on this planet that’s consumed… except for the service industry.

The service industry is the ‘golden egg’ of modern civilisation. It’s the defining trait that splits a secondary industry from a tertiary industry. It’s the difference between selling someone the materials to make a house, and being the person that maintains the house, keeping it shiny and new, and adding new features as they become available.

Now, the service industry isn’t new. It popped up sometime after the industrial revolution when someone realised that there’s an awful lot of money to be made in monthly retainers. Rather than giving a man fish, rent him a fishing pole at a reasonable price — there’s a lot more money to be made in the long run.

Not only is there more money to be made but loyalty is also instilled. If it comes to the stage where you finally have to upgrade your house, you’re almost certainly going to stick with the guys that have looked after your house for all those years. Heck, your house might have weird, proprietary additions — like a custom waste disposal, or a funky-shaped swimming pool –  that only these guys know how to maintain. They might not be cheap; but at least they get the job done… ish!

This brings me neatly onto Microsoft and Windows. Originally Windows was just another consumable software package. There were other competing operating systems, but in 1981 Microsoft secured a deal for its PC-DOS to be bundled with the new IBM PC. You know the rest of the story — the IBM PC shook the world, and Microsoft was along for the ride.

The sheer scale of the success of the IBM PC was unprecedented, and to capitalise on it, Windows was released in 1985 as a graphical addition to the already-predominant MS DOS. By 1990, Windows 3.1 was released, and Microsoft’s monopoly of the PC industry had begun. Windows 95 saw the release of Internet Explorer, and the beginning of a monopoly on the Internet browser market.

Scroll forward a few years to 2006 and Microsoft Windows is being used by 97% of all Internet users. That, if you weren’t quite sure yet, is a monopoly. That’s a 97% market share after 20 years of Windows releases. Every release confirmed its stranglehold on the industry. Every release tied its users further and further into the sweet embrace of Microsoft Windows. That’s the service industry — the soft, comfortable pair of shoes that you just can’t get rid of. It’s not a great pair, but damnit, they fit nicely and keep your feet kinda warm.

The problem is, monopolies are outlawed because they are ultimately very bad news for the consumer. A monopoly without suitable competition,can rest on its laurels and practically eliminate all technological progress. Occasionally a competitor  will emerge, bringing a new, exciting development to the table — the incumbent simply buys them out, or copies the functionality. Innovation all but dries up; there’s no risk from outside to spur the market tyrants onwards. Your subscribers aren’t going anywhere. They have no where to go.

Which brings me neatly onto World of Warcraft. Will it ever lose its crown? Can it ever lose its crown?

As of April 2008, WoW had a 62% market share. Not quite as immense as Windows’ 97%, but remmeber that Blizzard have only been on the MMOG scene for 4 years. All of the original MMORPG developers — SOE, Turbine, Mythic and NCSoft — have had years of experience and can still only scrape a tiny, few-percent share of the market from Blizzard.

At 12 million subscribers, Blizzard have obviously done something right. They would have to do something monumentously wrong to lose the grip they now have on the MMOG industry. Their subscriber base positively salivates for each and every content patch that they unveil. WoW is the most played, and probably the most universally-adored (or hated!) game in the world.

It’s this kind of blind-faith in Blizzard and their total monopoly that has me very worried indeed for the future of the Massively Multiplayer market. WoW was hardly an innovation over the existing MMOG titles; it did not bring anything new to the table, but what it did bring to the table it did well. It is polished, and well-cared for. It has a fantastic community of devout, zealous followers and fans.

I am worried, then, that with Blizzard’s next-gen MMO they will fail to innovate the market sufficiently. I’m worried that they’ll play it safe and bring out another game which is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Surely they will look at Microsoft — a company that has learnt that revolutionary leaps in technology are notoriously hard to support — and take the boring route out.

Blizzard now have the resources — both money, and the developers — to create something that’s truly awesome. If they slam the brakes on and squeeze out the gaming equivalent of Windows ME I will be stupendously disappointed.

But being a WoW player myself, a woefully addicted and dedicated player, I’ll be hanging around until World of Warcraft XP is released anyway.

If you are interested in more MMORPG-related articles, you might like to read my ‘Life as a guild leader‘ blog.

There is one common trait among all guilds, of every size and all descriptions: players quit. They can suffer burnout, or perhaps start a new job that prevents them from playing, but at the end of the day the result is the same: you’ve lost a member of the community, and perhaps the raid team too. In this article, I’ll try to explain the main cause of players quitting, and how to prevent it from happening in the first place!

Obviously, you can’t prevent players from ever quitting (though that would be nice!). The only way to counteract such losses is through recruitment (at least until we can have virtual children…) The method of recruitment will vary from guild to guild and server to server, but I hope to cover most of the basics in this article; I’ll even try to throw in a few ‘veteran tips’ that might give your guild a slight advantage over the rest!

Quitters

Eventually, everyone quits. Awfully philosophical, I know. At some stage, whether it’s tomorrow, or 50 years from now, the game ceases to be a game, and you quit. Humans aren’t very good at playing ‘non games’ for long: there has to be some kind of tangible improvement, some kind of fun. Without a game, what’s the point? Without some kind of competition, or some end goal to strive towards, why bother?

The real life equivalent would probably be suicide, which thankfully isn’t as prevalent as people quitting an online game: Interpersonal ties, those ties that keep you going and striving for success, are much stronger when you see and talk to someone face-to-face. There are also a much larger abundance of games to play in real life; a much vaster range of challenges and aspirations that you might one day achieve.

This is where MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, suffer: they have a finite number of games; a limited number of possibilities. In the case of WoW, the world might be very large indeed, with a lot of possible developer- and player-created games, but at the end of the day you are still bound to the world created by Blizzard. In real life, there are almost no limitations — if you see the top of a mountain, you can almost certainly go there, even if it takes years of training. In a game, you can only go there if the designer hasn’t placed an invisible wall in the way. Ultimately, you have to play the game they want you to play.

Inevitably, when all of the content is exhausted (or you have exhausted everything that is fun), you quit.

You’re not going to stop everyone from quitting, but there are certainly some steps you can take to lessen the chances of it happening.

You must have fun

This is to both the players, and the guild leaders. You, as a player, must find the game fun. You, you grumpy, tyrannical guild leader, must make the game fun for the members of your guild! When the game stops being fun, you can guarantee that people will start quitting. It might be a slow trickle at first, but without any significant changes, that trickle will fast become a torrent of quitters.

MMOs in general, and WoW in specific tend to be fun — they are games after all! The problems normally arise when you’ve cleared all of the content and you’re eagerly awaiting the next patch from the developer. Sometimes, though, fun can be destroyed simply by wiping too much on a boss, or being demoted too many times by a power mad guild leader. I’ll break down the most common ways of destroying fun:

• Wiping is bad — I’m sure this comes as no surprise to any of you. Wiping is awfully testing on morale. As humans, we don’t mind repetitive actions, but there has to be observable progress over a span of a few wipes, or in the case of harder bosses, a few raids. Depending on the kind of guild or raid group, the average player tolerance to wipes will vary a lot, but in general wiping is very, very bad.
• Stagnation is bad – In the same vein as wiping repetitively without progress, stagnation is another huge cause of discontent. When the guild or raid is so static, so devoid of progress or simply without communication, it stagnates. People stop logging in, guild chat becomes quiet, and raids become just ‘yet another farm run’. Stagnation in itself isn’t entirely crippling, but it just happens to be the breeding ground of the next fun-destroying element:
• Drama – One of the most-used phrases thrown around in MMORPGs today is ‘drama’. Drama, in online games, is usually defined as the ‘aggravation of a situation’ and it’s often pointless, baseless aggravation too. As I was saying, stagnation is normally the cause of drama: dramatic players thrive in a stagnated (or simply stressed) guild environment. If you imagine a dark, lifeless pond, and then stir it around with a stick… that’s what drama often feels like in a guild. Smelly and nasty — and you can’t help but feel it was better to leave the pond unstirred.

These are the common causes of a drop in morale, the following discontent, and ultimately quitters. As with most things, it falls to the guild leader (or officers) to try and avoid such situations. The solutions are fairly simple:

• Reduce the impact of wipe-fests – Probably the best way to prevent player burnout is by making the hours spent wiping slightly less painful. You could introduce breaks every two hours, or you could promise only one wipe raid a week. Most guilds now provide repair funds and consumables for their raiders which reduces the strain of raiding by a huge amount. The only real cause of burnout today is ‘hard’ bosses — but if you play WoW, it sure seems Blizzard are trying to prevent the effect C’thun and Kael’thas had on hardcore raiding guilds. This article of mine has more detailed information on the topic of raiding, wiping and progressing.
• Stir things up before the drama queens can — In my previous example of a stagnated, dead pond being stirred, it was a dramatic player doing the stirring. They were adding their own bias to situations, and perhaps catching you, the guild leader, off-balance. The key here is to stir things up before the guild stagnates. Change the raiding schedule, or remove some of the raiders that have been holding you back! Perhaps organise a raid as level 1 gnomes on another server, or arrange a foot-race from Undercity to Booty Bay? It is nearly always the job of the guild leader to keep things fresh and interesting, so do it!
• Control the drama – Drama isn’t always bad! The wrong drama, at the wrong time, is bad. A bit of good drama never did a strong guild any harm, though! Depending on the ‘community level‘ of your guild, it might vary from guild to guild what you can actually get away with, but inspiring the members of your guild to discuss interesting topics can do a lot to develop the community, and at the same time is fun! Be careful with censorship too; obviously heavy anti-guild sentiment might need to be controlled, but also you might find that the rest of the guild gangs up on the drama queen — and there’s almost nothing more fun than coming together as a community to play ‘defeat the anti-guild forum troll’!Worth noting is that drama involving other guilds is always a good thing. If you heard about another guild having problems with a particular encounter, or with a troublesome raider, tell your guild! It’ll be great for morale, especially if you’ve been wiping on a boss for hours.

If you take these steps to make the game fun again — or even prevent the game from becoming boring in the first place! — you should have a lot less problems with quitters, which means you won’t need the next section quite so much!

Recruitment

Whether you’re a casual, raiding or hardcore guild, the bread and butter of your survival is recruitment. Recruitment is the only way you will continue to have fun and progress, and as such it is vital you understand how to control the ‘newbie hose’ of recruitment. You need to know which direction to spray it in, and when turn it on, or off.

It isn’t purely the role of the guild leader or officers to manage recruitment: it is something for every member to keep in mind. When your guild needs a replacement, before next week, chances are someone in the guild knows a suitable replacement. Of course, it’s ideal if each class leader knows every possible recruit, but that rarely happens (if you have a class leader that does know every possible recruit, look after them!)

Let’s start with the basics of recruitment.

When should you recruit?

Most guilds make the big mistake of waiting until too late to recruit; waiting one more day might make the difference between the life and death of your guild! Whether you’re a casual or raiding guild, it’s important to recruit before you lose the ‘critical mass’ of players — whatever that number of players might be!

A casual guild is probably even more fickle than their raiding or hardcore counterparts. If shit hits the fan in a casual guild, there’s usually very little to prevent players from just jumping ship and heading to another guild. In raiding-oriented guilds there is usually the soft, velvet-gloved, addictive allure of epics that keeps players hanging on for a little longer — but rest assured, people will pack their bags and run away; they’ll run very fast indeed if they think the guild has begun its dying throes.

When is it best to recruit then? Early.Very, very early. I’ve already written a bit on the size and attendance of raiding groups, and the best way to manage recruitment is to keep a very close eye on attendance. As soon as a player starts dipping below the desired percentage (80%) you should be looking for possible replacements. You should be incredibly cautious of ‘repeat offenders’ — those players that, seemingly by magic, skip raids over and over (usually due to real life commitments). These players will likely never be reliable, and in serious raiding guilds should be replaced!

In general, recruitment is a lot about gut instinct. After a while, you should be able to predict the ebb and flow of players: the inevitable loss of a few players after you finish an instance; the handful of players that you will always lose after the summer holiday. The start of the school year is another common event which will force you to recruit — but no matter the occasion, do it sooner, rather than later! If you’ve had to cancel a few raids, you were too slow!

Who should you recruit?

If we’re being WoW-specific, this question is quite easy to answer: you can recruit almost anyone. Other games might be harder (in fact, they’re probably all harder than WoW), so the recruitment criteria might be a little more stringent. With WoW though,  you should almost always recruit first and consider their actual abilities afterward.

The following is the order of importance for desirable traits in new recruits:

1. Not a dick
2. Can attend your guild’s raiding schedule (or whatever kind of schedule your guild has)
3. Relevant experience
4. Gear (or whether they have the right tools for the task)

Top guilds will obviously be a lot more choosy in who they pick up, but they also have a huge pool of possible recruits available to them. Most guilds can not pick and choose; they just have to take what they’re given. Most guilds should stick to recruiting friends of other members, which is often a sure-fire way to find non-dicky players and also work on the feeling of community and inclusion the same time. It’s not uncommon for top guilds to be made up entirely of groups of real life friends for this reason! Personal recommendation goes a long way; not having to rely on relatively-unknown forum applicants is highly desirable.

As I’ve said quite a few times now, WoW is an easy game. The number one reason for not succeeding, progressing or surviving is: not having enough players. Don’t fall into the same trap that so many other guilds have tried to work around in vain. You really can recruit just about anyone — as long as they’re not a dick!

Finally, how do you recruit?

This is the step that most guilds stumble on. You know you’re struggling and you can feel progress and morale slipping away. You know what kind of player would fit into your guild, but… there are no applications! Why aren’t people APPLYING? Don’t people know that we need a new mage? Don’t people know that we could be the best guild on the server if we just picked up the right tank?

Fortunately, all of these questions are probably caused by the same, easily-fixed problem: you are unknown. Yep, that’s why no one has applied to your awesome guild — no one knows that you’re recruiting. Rectifying this rather sizable issue is thankfully very simple: spam.

I know, I know, everyone hates trade-channel spam, but it really is your best tool to get the word out there that you need recruits. Make some macros and use them regularly (a few times an hour is enough!) For extra potency, send the macros to other people in your guild too! Assuming you have a good reputation, you should quickly notice a burst of fresh applications. (The exception to this rule is congested or dead servers, but I won’t go into that here.)

If the idea of spamming trade chat doesn’t appeal (and some guilds might fancy themselves slightly more ‘upper class’), you could also encourage all of your guild members to talk to their friends and poke them to join. If talking and poking isn’t enough, get them to start emotionally blackmailing those same friends — eventually they’ll crack and apply, trust me!

Posting on your realm’s forum is also a good idea (but I’m sure you’ve already done that, right?) Make sure to include all of the perks that members of your guild get, such as repair funds, raiding consumables, a forum, voice communications… and whether you have a tabard or not!

Tips & Tricks

Consider this section as ‘extra reading’, or a ‘bonus feature’. Either way, what you’ve read so far is more than enough to keep a casual or raiding guild alive and healthy. What follows is a few tips that might be of use to hardcore guilds, or for guild leaders that enjoy the politics of the game as much as, or more, than the actual raiding. These are also almost entirely for guild leaders, and probably won’t be very useful to the members of a guild.

• Maintain friends in other guilds – Being inherently social games, most MMORPG players like to make friends: buddies they can talk to when the going gets rough, or ask for advice on particular encounters. There’s no reason for your friends to all be from your own guild! Make friends with the officers and raiders of other guilds — or even other guild leaders!
• Similarly, keep communication channels open – Always keep your ear to the ground. Listen to what your guild members have to say, no matter how mundane it might seem to be. The web of player interconnections in MMOs like WoW  is so vast that most players are only ever 2 degrees of separation apart. This means that there is a strong chance that even if you are not friends with a possible recruit, someone in your guild probably is. Utilise and leverage those relationships to get the right players into your guild.
• Politics, and the knife in the back – I’m starting to get into territory that will no doubt cause a little uneasiness, which is no surprise as I am now talking about the wholesale slaughter of other guilds! Turning one guild’s misfortune into your own fortuitous windfall! I am of course talking about poaching important players from other guilds.Poaching itself is nothing special — almost everyone you recruit will be from another guild! — but I’m talking here about poaching a key player in another guild: their main tank, or perhaps an important social figure.  This requires a combination of having good friends, keeping an eye on ‘current affairs’, and being charismatic enough to lure someone into your guild; someone that is likely very loyal to their current guild.I’m not going to go into the details of poaching as it’s a topic best-suited to an article on the sociological and psychological stresses on the denizens of virtual worlds, and how to manipulate them.

At the end of the day, you must remember that as a guild leader, you are in a unique position. You are at the top of a pyramid: the end-point of all activity and communication below you. It is your job as guild leader to sift through the thousands of pieces of data available to you and find the important bits; it’s your job to differentiate between the pimples of harmless whining, and those little blackheads that will eventually develop into nasty, pussy spots that’ll make your life hell.

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

I’m going to tell you a story that, a few years ago, would read like an urban legend. While it certainly isn’t a common occurrence today, three years ago this simply wouldn’t have happened. Unless you’re me. Three years ago this made me a God amongst my gamer friends.

Three years ago, almost to the day, I made love to a beautiful woman while playing World of Warcraft. If you don’t want a basic intro on what World of Warcraft is, skip down the page a bit.

For this story to make sense I need to explain a little about what World of Warcraft (WoW) is: it’s a Massively-Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Massively-multiplayer means hundreds and thousands of players share the same virtual world as you: while you run around killing monsters, there are other people also running around killing the same monsters! Sometimes they get in the way — in which case you kill them! — and sometimes you group up to kill bigger monsters that you can’t kill on your own.

WoW is in essence, a team game. You can play it on your own, and a lot of people do, but it is the allure of playing with — and competing against! — other people that is the main unique selling point. Because it’s a team game, it is also highly social (this is where most of the the ‘cool’ reality-TV-watching people (girls?) snort derisively and say ‘How can a video game be SOCIAL?!’)  It is not uncommon for WoW players to spend hours talking to their friends and enemies every night! Yes, these are real people, even though it’s a video game! Do you know how little people communicate nowadays? How many minutes on average we spend talking every day? For men, it’s about half an hour. Women, an hour or two. So playing WoW or other online games is social. Let’s get that straight. (I’ll write more on this topic another day.)

Anyway… now for the story. For more TMI stories, visit Lilu’s blog!

It was dark outside and I was playing WoW. Behind me on my bed lay a naked, blushed-pink girl. My girlfriends tend to be the understanding type; they might not all be gamers, but they at least understand my love for games — and bless them, they give the games a go! But there’s definitely something to be said for the lack of female hand-eye coordination… More on that another day.

She was restlessly ‘making waves’ on my water bed — and whining. Whining in that piteous way that only horny girls have truly mastered.

‘Seeeeebbbby.’

Perhaps ‘yearning’ is a better word. But I wasn’t going to be so easily won over. Only a few nights before, I’d tried the same routine, bouncing dangerously on my bed and begging. She’d resolutely stayed at my desk, finishing some email she had to write. I can only assume she thought I liked her a whole lot more than I actually did. In fact, girls seem to think that the moment you start going out with them, they are catapulted to the top of your priority list. So not true!

Call me a utilitarian, or just plain sensible, but if 25 people are relying on me to lead them to greater glory in WoW, it is wrong to just abandon them to screw a girl, right? Their needs are greater than my carnal desires. The writhing, whining, naked girl can wait! Those 25 people, those 25 friends, connected from all over Europe, cannot. I guess its real-world analogy is ‘abandoning your mates at the club to go home with a girl’ — you just don’t do it, unless it’s a pre-arranged go-out-and-get-laid thing!

And so, clicking frantically with my mouse and focusing intently on my screen, I tried my luck.

‘Get your ass over here, bitch.’

Yeah, I actually said that. There was the most disturbing, pregnant pause ever. It could go either way, I knew. We’d been together for a while, so I didn’t think she’d dump me. But there was the risk that there might be days or even weeks of no nookie for Sebby. She was silent and I was busy staring at my monitor, focusing on WoW. The fact that I couldn’t see her was driving me insane, with nerves, with curiousity. And then I heard her giggle. And then she slithered off the bed.

I could hear footsteps behind me.

Ahead of me, the dragon was only half dead.

Was I really about to live out the greatest geek fantasy of all time?

‘Your… bitch… is here.’ The words coming from her mouth sounded understandably foreign. She was no one’s bitch, but you have to give the girl credit for going with the flow. ‘Do you need my help to kill the dragon?’

A mumbling, murmuring grunt escaped my lips. It was all I could do to keep my focus on the computer. I could smell her as she kissed the side of my neck. Focus… focus Sebastian… focus! The dragon was almost dead! Just two more minutes…!

Then she straddled me. She reached down, unzipped, deftly extracted and plunged.

But I didn’t lose my cool. I kept my focus. We killed the dragon and I threw that bitch from my lap and onto the bed. I proceeded to screw her brains out until she whined piteously for entirely different reasons.

* * *

I know what you’re thinking: A happy ending to a Too Much Information story?! Well, I’m going to go one step further…

Gentlemen: Do you want to know the secret? Do you want to know how to bone beautiful, big-breasted women and play video games at  the same time? If so… come a little closer.

The trick… the key… the secret…

Get a big wide-screen monitor or TV. That way you can still see around her when she’s sitting on your lap. They think they have your full attention but they don’t. Works every time.