Monthly Archive for July, 2009

No Fuss Looting

Published
by
Yashima
on July 3, 2009
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More guild related stuff – since it’s all about the guild I guess there is not much else to expect from me wow-wise these days.

Karekare Beach

We really need to update our loot guidelines for our raiding activities. We have not adapted them for Wrath so far … what we want is a system

  • without DKP, which only remembers the current run
  • which favors or discriminates nobody (alts or non-members for example)
  • distributes loot evenly to people who can use it
  • is easy to remember and explain to newbies
  • easy and quick to implement
  • takes care of dual spec issues
  • handles tier pieces fairly and takes buying them for currency into account
  • avoids sharding pieces
  • makes participants happy :D

We have had very little loot related trouble in the past. I dare say, this is because our members are mature and nearly always remember “Looters First Rule”

Talk to each other!

Of course that is not enough because the talking can take quite long if there aren’t a few guidelines around to help you determine how good your standing is for a certain piece of loot. One has to remember we’re not a progression guild, so we go quite slow and don’t try to optimize the raid by loot distribution.

We also don’t discriminate based on equipment level who we take on a raid but it is considered common courtesy to ask if you can bring an undergeared alt to a raid instead of your main. The same goes for roles: People usually offer to bring that character or play that role in which completes the raid. People have been known to switch characters in the middle of a run because another healer/caster/one-less-melee was needed or a certain type of tank would improve chances to win an encounter.

Now how to distribute loot in a setting like this?

Quite easy … right?

Implicit Rules

Published
by
Yashima
on July 3, 2009
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Do you have rules in your guild that are there, but you don’t know about them? Implicit is not even the right word because we just never thought there was an issue …

We just found one.

Danger!

Our guild always said that we don’t want to be one of those guilds that would discriminate based on age. So we put an affirmation into our guild charter that there was no minimum age for becoming a member.

Our current ages range from 15 to 35 and I would place the average somewhere near 25. We have very few highschool students, a few are college students and most of us are working. Since the guild was founded we had only a handfull of members join us at age 15 or 16. So far there has not been any age related trouble in the guild – at least not that I am aware of. We felt age was not an issue.

We could have noticed though, how on previous applications when the applicants were younger than 16 people would always comment on the age even if it was not a reason for rejecting an application. The fact did not register and we still considered us a guild without age restrictions.

Until this week.

The applicant I wrote about in my last post was only 12 years old.

My first reaction was “OMG he’s so young, how can I possibly explain to him – without hurting him – that we are not a raiding guild and he might be applying to the wrong guild …”. So I wrote that guild description. His application was nice and well written – for a 12 year old. Do you want to cause this young kid a major disappointment when his only mistake was in being too young?

So on the internal application discussion forum I wrote that I would give him a chance. I have since revised my original vote which was in his favor. As the posts started coming in from various members one common sentiment prevailed “I am sorry, the application is nice but he is just too young!” People gave reasons for this and they were all right. In the end everyone was just way too uncomfortable with the responsibility of having such a young kid with us. Our guild chat can and often does contain mature “content”, our forums contain links to mature content, we have RL meetups which he could in no way attend, … people joke and talk in teamspeak and don’t want to always check if it is ok for a 12 year old to listen in.

We thought we did not have a minimum age and we did not, not in the rules. Now we know that we do have an age restriction in the minds of our members. It is actually the age of 16 with exceptions being made for 15 year olds. Why 16? Probably because that is the age where a young person does get a few rights and can take some responsibility for themselves. At 12: no way.

So now we are thinking about making this rule public in our guild charter. In my opinion it is much more fair to have it in there than not. What do you think?

It’s all about the guild

Published
by
Yashima
on July 2, 2009
.Tags: 1 Comment

While I have been busy sorting my honeymoon pictures and looking forward to uploading wedding pictures, thinking about the design of the “Thank you” cards and getting back to work … I have also played a little bit.

Picture from our post guild meeting Stranglethorn “Raid”

Now I have been playing for more than 4 years, longer than any other computer game (there is at least one game I have been playing far longer: I am talking about our Pen&Paper campaign).

The game appeal is long gone. Yet I still play – and nearly exclusively – this game. The exclusive part mostly comes from having switched to Linux and being too lazy to get other games to run.

I have no trouble at all filling my time with my other hobbies (reading, photography, cooking, gardening) and meeting friends. Still I make time for the game. Sometimes I think I should really quit playing completely because however little time I wish to spend it always ends up being more than I planned.

But … I still decide to not quit. To me the game is a colorful backdrop for meeting our lovely guildies. Our guild adventure took off nearly four years ago. The guild turns 4 in late August and we are hoping to have an in-game celebration and if everything works out we’ll meet up at a Reenactment Faire and celebrate iRL as well. There are still people left from the earliest days and many more who have been with us for years.

The other day we had someone apply to the guild. As often the application had a couple of points that didn’t quite sound like it was the right guild for the person. So I wrote up a short description what he could expect from us as a guild and closed the description by writing: “The basis that this guild is built on is friendship. It does’t happen overnight and it may take a new member a while to really really be part of the guild but once you get there you will probably stay.”

We do have our disagreements and people leave the guild because often friendship is not enough when people want more activity, more progression or just disagree with the direction the guild is taking on some issues.

During our absence two founding members of the guild left (not for the first time but this time it’s for good I am sure). This happens but in the end it changes nothing that our guild model can be summed up as “Circle of Friends”. It is as much or more work and emotional stress as the other models that exist but it is very rewarding and keeps me playing … (yeah and I still help run the guild after 4 years so one more argument for playing).

When writing the answer to that application it was for the first time that I realized that it really was so. We are not a Raiding or Progression Guild and always made that clear to everyone. We are not a Casual Guild either – we take the guild itself and often the game much too serious for that. While many of us do PvP we are not a PvP Guild. The missing element in all our attempts to describe ourselves has always been the fact that we place a lot of value on the dedication and commitment of our members despite not wanting to be a progression guild.

I was delighted when several members noted that they had enjoyed reading my description and found it fitting.

So the reason I am still playing are not achievements, content or gameplay, it’s just all about the people.