Filed under: (Guild Leadership) Officers' Quarters

Officers' Quarters: More loot-rolling shenanigans

by Scott Andrews Nov 2nd 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Last week, I addressed a situation where a married couple who leads a guild were using the old double-rolling scam to get extra loot for each other. Normally I don't like to address the same topic two weeks in a row, but based on some of the comments from that post and the following e-mail that I received, some people still don't get why this is a problem.

So here we go again!

I read your article and while I understand it I disagree in principle. Myself (holy priest) and one of our other guild officers(Lock) routinely run in pugs for 25 Naxx, we have on several occasions rolled for gear that neither of us need. Why? Long story short, we do not need the gear but we also try to make sure than one of our less geared guildies in cloth is along for the ride, and now that we can trade the stuff to them we can use three rolls per item to help them gear up faster. We are not selling the stuff to them merely giving it to them so they can gear up faster. If I do not need gear from the raid and niether does the lock, there is a reason we are there, I don't have a problem with it and would not have any problem with anyone else doing the same thing, in fact I would commend them on the efforts on their behalf to help their guildmates.

The only time I have an issue with loot distribution is when it is a straight ninja job, player looses a roll and still gets an item or there is no roll at all and Lootmaster gives it to someone anyhow.

Officers' Quarters: Partners in crime

by Scott Andrews Oct 26th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Patch 3.2 brought a welcome change for both raid leaders and game masters: BOP loot no longer binds to a character immediately. We now have a convenient two-hour window to make sure the item goes to the right player. It's a change that saves both time and hassle, and I applaud it.

However, now that items aren't bound as soon as they're looted, I've noticed some shenanigans going on in my guild's partially pugged 25-player ToC runs. Sometimes, when a player wins an item with a roll, a few people who really want that item have been offering the winner gold in exchange for trading the still-unbound item to them.

I've made it clear that we're not running a GDKP raid and that I don't want to hear about any such transactions. It's a slippery slope. Pretty soon you'll have everyone who's eligible for an item rolling on it whether they want it or not, solely in hopes of banking a tidy profit.

It seems this two-hour window has also brought back a classic cheat. Click through to read about it in this week's e-mail!

Officers' Quarters: Cataclysm's guild revamp -- guild currency

by Scott Andrews Oct 19th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

After Blizzard's big announcement about how they plan to improve guilds in Cataclysm, I've been examining the changes in detail. First, I wrote about the lack of guild improvements over the years and how the expansion will, for better or worse, change WoW guilds forever. Then I speculated on possible leveling system options, guild talents, and guild achievements. This week, I'm going to finish up the series by talking a bit about guild currency and suggesting some products that Blizzard should let us buy with this new system.

Here's what we know so far. Guild currency will be earned by players in your guild who earn experience. It remains to be seen if experience (and thus currency) will still be earned by players once they reach the level cap, but I assume that it will.

So far, they've only mentioned a few items that we can buy:

Vanity items like mounts, tabards, and standards
Reagents like frost lotuses for flasks
Recipes
Heirloom items that scale with level

Officers' Quarters: The fall surge

by Scott Andrews Oct 12th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Back in June, I wrote about surviving the summer, when raider interest wanes and many players go AFK for weeks on end. Now that fall is back in full swing, all those players are back. Many guilds find themselves with a renewed roster of raiders clamoring for suddenly limited slots. This week, one reader asks how to handle all the extra bodies.

Scott,

I lead a casual raiding guild. We have 1 25-man a week and about 3 10-mans a week including ToC 10 and Ulduar 10. I don't force anyone to raid. I tell them that they can sign up for whatever they want but if they sign up and don't show up, then they are penalized.

My problem is that since I allow anyone to sign up and I don't have set groups, what do I do when I have more people signed up than I need?

Officers' Quarters: Ragequit fallout

by Scott Andrews Oct 5th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

If you've played WoW long enough, and if you've raided enough, odds are you've wanted to quit your guild right in the middle of a run at some point. Some people actually go through with it. I'll never forget the night many years ago when our raid's main tank quit the guild and zoned out of Onyxia's Lair while he was tanking the boss. Yeah, that guy had some anger issues . . .

But what happens when a guild leader ragequits in the middle of a raid? Read on to find out!

Hi Scott,

A friend and I started a guild about 5 months back. I assumed the Co-Gm role, led the raids and recruited quite a bit. After a slow start we ended up making an impact on the server as a stand up crew and were moving into the top rankings for 10 and cracking the 25 man progression as well. The other Co-Gm was very good at handling issues and I admit that was not my strong point. Things worked really well until unfortunately I had an "EMO" moment.

Officers' Quarters: From the mail bag

by Scott Andrews Sep 28th 2009 at 3:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Hello, fellow officers! This week I'm going to try something a little bit different than usual. I tend to focus on one topic that requires a detailed analysis. However, I do receive many more questions that I never feature in the column because they have a more straightforward solution (or, at least, because I believe they have a straightforward solution). So I would write a private reply to the e-mail but never showcase the question here.

I've decided to try an experiment this week and feature several of these e-mails with shorter answers. Even though they may not be the most complex situations, I think the answers will be helpful to other officers. Let me know what you think! Here's the first question.

Too Many Cooks

I was wondering if you could do an article on having too many cooks in the kitchen during raids.

My guild is brand new, 3-4 weeks old, and we run Ulduar 10 and ToC 10 as well as Naxx 25 and Naxx 10 for the new 80s. As of right now, I am my guild's GM as well as raid leader. I have plans in the future to add an official "Raid Leader" to create events and lead some raids although I plan on still leading a few because I really enjoy it.

Right now though, I have a few natural born leaders that attend my raids and it causes some problems.

Officers' Quarters: An exclusive party

by Scott Andrews Sep 21st 2009 at 2:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

I get a lot of e-mails, many more than I could ever cover in this column. I hear about a lot of drama, drama of all different kinds, for all different reasons. So it always piques my interest when I read an e-mail like the one below, with an entirely new kind of guild drama. This one sounds more suited to a middle school class than a guild, but here it is: secret party drama. Read on for the details!

I am a member of a fairly progressed raiding guild. I am a member of the main raid. I am not an officer, but almost all the regular raiders are officers. In many ways the guild is good. Raiding rules and loot are fair.

However, it has become clear that the guild is dominated by a clique and that promotions to officer and most raid invites are largely based upon becoming part of the in group. Recently it was announced during raid that we would be taking a week off as many would be out of town. After the week off, during Vent chat, it became clear that the many out of town were all out of town together. That is, the guild officers were invited to an in person party (some traveled to go to it, others didn't but all were invited). I also learned that the officers intentionally tried to keep the party a secret beforehand.

Officers' Quarters: Cataclysm's guild revamp -- guild achievements

by Scott Andrews Sep 14th 2009 at 11:00AM

Working as a Team: Have a grand master in every profession
We Are Legendary: Complete a legendary weapon
United Nations: Become Exalted with all Northrend factions
Insider Trading: Trade 100,000 craftable items among guild members

Officers' Quarters: Guild leader loot rage

by Scott Andrews Sep 7th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

This week's e-mail describes a fairly typical loot drama situation. What makes it unique is that it involves the guild leader, who did not handle the issue very well at all, as you will see. As officers, we have to be very careful about how we handle loot for our own characters. We have to set the example for how we'd like our members to deal with loot issues. Let's look at the e-mail first. Then I'll talk about what this guild leader should have done differently.

Hello --

I have written to you before regarding an attendance issue in the guild I was in. Your response was very timely and incredibly helpful -- once 3.2 hit we made raids happen a lot quicker.

Recently, we made an adventure into Ulduar. We did very well for a small guild and got up to Thorim in one night. After a few wipes, one person had to leave and was replaced with a new person. We made the decision to have the new person switch to his DPS spec and had one of our existing DPS go to a tank spec. We downed him that attempt (which was awesome). I was the Master Looter, so I opened up the chest and a Tier token dropped, along with the epic mace Legacy of Thunder. The DPS who had switched to tank was a Warrior, and the mace was a huge upgrade for him. I said in raid, "Roll for Legacy". The Warrior rolled and a Paladin, the guild master, rolled against him. The Warrior won the roll, so I gave the item to him. The GM whispered me a message along the lines of "way to do loot". I didn't think too much of his comment, and logged off for the night.

Officers' Quarters: Cataclysm's guild revamp -- leveling and talents

by Scott Andrews Aug 31st 2009 at 2:00PM

Last week I talked about the massive guild overhaul unveiled at BlizzCon, and the impact these changes would have on guilds, for better or worse. This week I'd like to delve into the leveling system and guild talents. (I'll cover achievements and guild currency in a separate column later.)

Currently we know that guilds will level up as players participate in the following:

Boss kills
Rated battlegrounds and arenas
Leveling professions
Increasing faction reputations

Blizzard has stated that only the top 20 experience producers per day will count toward leveling. This is a smart idea. Without this limitation, I could easily see guilds recruiting every player possible just to level up quickly, and then discarding the players they don't really want once they hit level 20. Guild size should help in a small way, but it shouldn't be the determining factor of leveling progress.

One other factor I'd like see contribute to guild leveling is player achievements. Many of them, particularly for Heroic dungeons and raiding, are very difficult to get without a solid guild. Aside from a few vanity items along the way, there's no great reward for racking up a ton of achievement points. Yet, well-designed achievements (i.e., not the exploring or holiday achievements) demonstrate mastery of various aspects of the game. Shouldn't your guild be rewarded for having such players? Besides, it never hurts to give players more incentive to go out and /love some squirrels.

Officers' Quarters: Cataclysm will reshape guilds

by Scott Andrews Aug 24th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

If you're a regular reader of this column, you know that my biggest pet peeve with WoW is how little support guilds have received from Blizzard over the years. As I've said before, guilds are the backbone of any MMO. They facilitate all the group content that developers spend millions to produce -- the content that keeps people interested in the game and separates an MMO from your average single-player experience.

Without officers who sacrifice time and energy to organize and lead their guilds, no MMO can succeed. I am, of course, biased, but I believe that officers deserve more support than they typically get from MMO developers, especially in WoW. Finally, Blizzard has unveiled plans to deliver not just an improved guild interface, but an entire leveling and achievement system for guilds, complete with talents.

In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth is not the only thing that will be reshaped. Guilds will be completely different entities compared to what they are now, with much greater depth and interactivity. To fully understand how monumental these changes are for officers everywhere, let's first look at the history of WoW's guild improvements.

Officers' Quarters: The standby experience

by Scott Andrews Aug 17th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

"You're on standby tonight." No one wants to hear these words when a raid is forming. It's aggravating, frustrating, and downright depressing sometimes. This week's e-mail comes from a player who's had it with being on standby. I will talk about what she can do to help herself, why raid leaders do this to you, and how the standby system can work better for everyone involved.

Hey Scott!

I've been reading your column for a few months now and I particularly enjoy it. However, I thought I'd never find myself writing to it.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum.

You see, my guild of which I was a member of for quite a few months and enjoyed hanging out with and raiding with broke up. Those of us who were still around joined a good raiding guild on the server. I've seen the leaders and the officers in action and I'm impressed. The guild is fairly large and compared to my last guild, foreign. My previous guild was very friendly and explained things to me. I'm fairly new to this game and especially raiding (I raided Karazhan only a few times as compared to some people's many, many, many times.), but I pick up on things quickly and try to be as useful and helpful as I can. At the moment, there are more than 25 people signed up to raid and the leaders pick who gets to go and who sits on standby. They also use a DKP system, which I am fine with.

My problem is with the standby system.

Officers' Quarters: The raid leader retirement plan

by Scott Andrews Aug 10th 2009 at 1:00PM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Every raid leader has this moment. You're trying to get the raid ready for a boss attempt, but you just can't get people to focus. Someone's taking a quick bio. Two people are still arguing over the loot from three bosses ago. Another person is whispering you ill-conceived advice for changing your strategy. People seem to be more interested in listening to your healing lead talk in Vent about a movie she just saw than they are in buffing or putting on resist gear. Then someone that you can't replace DC's for the eighth time that night and you just snap.

You wonder if it's worth it. You wonder what it would be like to be a grunt rather than a general. Someone who just follows orders and doesn't have to worry about anyone but themselves. Sprinkle in some real-life stress in your life and retiring from raid leading suddenly seems very appealing. This week, one officer wonders how to give up his general's stripes without causing too much fuss.

'Lo there,

I've been a huge fan of your column for quite some time, and it's one of the few that I read immediately rather than saving for downtime during the game. I first got hooked during the 4-part casual raiding columns, which came at the time my guild was first venturing into Kara.

Anyway, I'm the executive officer in charge of raiding (supreme raid leader) for a successful casual/social guild on a server infamous for its lack of progression. It's a position that I've held since we started into Kara in Feb of '08, and since we first started raiding I've gained a couple of assistants that do an excellent job helping coordinate things.

The issue, in part, is that RL has started rearing its ugly head, and my work hours have been slowly increasing. [. . .]

Officers' Quarters: Crushed by the banhammer

by Scott Andrews Aug 3rd 2009 at 9:00AM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

I enjoy the process of leveling as much as anyone else. I like the feeling of accomplishment in leveling, and the gradual growth of power that comes with it. Blizzard has given us a variety of tools to speed up the leveling process, including heirloom items and the Recruit-a-Friend service. Even so, I can understand why some players just want to skip to the endgame. To some people, questing on a low-level character is a lot less interesting than raiding or PvPing at the level cap.

In order to skip the leveling process, your options are both limited and dangerous. You could pay a leveling service. However, some of these services are actually scam artists who will use your account info to sell everything you have and take all your stuff. You could ask a friend to log in and level for you. However, sharing your account information can get your account banned. Finally, you could just buy an account. Let's see how that turned out for one particular guild leader.

Hello Scott,

My guild is going through an incredibly rough time right now. Our situation is this: We are one of the best guilds on our server. We have cleared Ulduar in both 10 and 25 man, working on hard modes right now. Our team is rock solid. We have about 35 dedicated, geared, and skilled raiders. We all get along great and have an awesome time raiding. But recently a problem has come up that will undoubtedly destroy our guild and send some of the best players on our server without a home. Our GM had unknowingly violated Blizzard's ToS/ToU and now his account has been banned.

Officers' Quarters: Critical mass

by Scott Andrews Jul 27th 2009 at 11:00AM

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

How many members should your raiding guild have? It's a simple question with a complex answer. This week, one reader wonders whether his guild simply has too many people.

Hi, Scott.

I'd like to first mention that I'm a big fan of your column, Officers' Quarters. Rock on! And today, I'd like to ask you for advice on the problem that my guild is facing.

I'm a member of a raiding guild, one that hovers just below the best guilds of our realm. We have cleared 10man Ulduar, and I was lucky enough be there as I'm a member of our 10man progression team, which is now doing hard modes. Our 25man . . . well, thats where the problem comes in. Back in May, we didn't have enough strong players to really progress past antechamber. Then things started coming up for our raiders -- we couldn't do a 25man guild run for whole 3 weeks in May-June due to lack of people!

So our officers aggressively recruited people, some of them geared members of a reputable guild that recently went down and some of them friends transferred in from other servers, and our new recruits recommended us with their friends who were also exceptional players. After 3 weeks of no 25man progression, we found ourselves with just under 40 people online for our raid night.

Hot Topics

Put WoW.com headlines on your site
Follow WoW.com on Twitter
Find us on Facebook

Upcoming Events

Event	Date
Darkmoon Faire (Terokkar)	11/1 - 11/7
Call to Arms: Arathi Basin	11/6 - 11/9
Call to Arms: Eye of the Storm	11/13-11/16
Call to Arms: Alterac Valley	11/20-11/23
Pilgrim's Bounty	11/22-11/28
Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch	11/27-11/30