Month: September 2012

Invisible Mode: Too Little, Too Late (for me)

Kurn / / ramblings, real id

It was announced today that Blizzard will be implementing an “Appear Offline” mode (aka Invisible Mode) to BattleNet “in the coming months”.

Let me be clear, this is a great thing and is long overdue.

However…

The RealID/BattleTag chat system is still clunky, clumsy and inelegant and “Appear Offline” is going to add to the clunkiness of it all, not remove the clunkiness.

It is a great thing that people will be able to go invisible, don’t get me wrong. I’ve very excited for everyone who will make use of it. However, rather than look at the system in a critical way, I feel as though Blizzard is using “Appear Offline” as a band-aid to the underlying problems inherent in the system.

With the information we’ve been given (which is, to be blunt, not a lot), it can be understood that people will be able to be seen as “offline” with this option, to RealID/BattleNet/character friends.

To begin, here are some of the immediate questions that came to mind concerning how this will work in World of Warcraft:

1) Will you have this option before logging in to a character? As it stands, you have to log in to WoW first (thus becoming “visible”) before you can edit your BattleNet settings.

2) Will the Appear Offline mode persist through different logins? Say I log in to Kurn and I set myself as offline. If I log out as Kurn and log back in (on Kurn or any other character, for that matter), will the mode persist in the same way announcements do?

3) What implications are there for guild listings? I presume I’ll still show up as online in my guild, which I think is fine — that’s part of the deal when you join a guild, really. But what if someone on my realm (with whom I am character friends) does /who Apotheosis and sees Kurnmogh online? Would they see me? Would they not see me? How would that work? Could they still whisper me?

Now, while you’re all chewing on that, let me re-iterate a point I’ve made in my previous RealID-related posts:

– Social interaction between people is complex. The ongoing lack of any kind of personalized contact system for one’s RealID/BattleTag friends is antiquated. We are firmly in the era of social media and social networks. If Blizzard is intent on creating/using their own social networking system, they need to recognize that social interactions and relationships are extremely complex in nature and one-size-fits-all does not, in fact, fit the needs of most communities. Is it better than nothing? Maybe. But it can be a LOT better.

So how is it clunky? How is it antiquated? Aside from the points I’ve brought up (versus other solutions) in my other posts, let’s look at BattleTags. BattleTags are also “always on”, just the way RealID is and, worse, you have to have one if you want to play Diablo III. So I have a BattleTag, because I played D3 for approximately eight minutes. (Okay, level 50 or something.) And it’s always on, despite the fact that I have RealID turned off. I don’t share that information with anyone, but the fact remains that BattleTags are something we are forced to use (as in we are automatically logged in) in other games if we’ve played Diablo III. Really? How is that okay? And there’s no off switch, either. There’s an enable Real ID option, but nothing about enabling or disabling BattleTags. Why not? Let me turn off being able to communicate with me via BattleTag in a game that doesn’t currently require BattleTag use. Especially if I’ve already turned off RealID. (Follow-up question, why require BattleTags for D3 in the first place?) What if I wanted to chat with people in D3 but not in WoW? Why not be able to have an option to turn on BattleTags for each individual Blizzard game, rather than just opt us in without a choice?

Do you see how it’s inelegant? It could be so much better. It should have been so much better. And I would have been its staunchest supporter.

As it stands, the RealID/BattleTag system is, in my opinion, deeply flawed in a variety of ways. The “Appear Offline” option is definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s not the panacea for the system. At best, it’s a quick-fix solution for a system that is invasive, persistent and not even as smart as a system that was built in 1996, namely ICQ.

16 years after ICQ, this is the best Blizzard has to offer?

Too little, Blizzard. Far too little for your customers and way too late for me.

An End and a Beginning

Kurn / / apotheosis, mists of pandaria, ramblings

Months ago, I came to the conclusion I would not be raiding in Mists of Pandaria. In fact, I may not even be playing after my Annual Pass paid subscription runs out. As such, it was important to me to make sure to give my officers the heads up and ensure replacements would be found for the vacant positions. Once replacements were found for me, it also became important to have a timeline of the changeover of power.

September 18th, two weeks after our last raid, one week ahead of Mists of Pandaria, seemed like a good date to give GM to Jasyla, who was the chosen replacement for me as GM. It also seemed like a good date to demote Majik to Member from Officer.

So as of this writing, I am no longer the guild master of Apotheosis.

It’s a weird thing.

When we started Apotheosis in 2007, Majik was the GM to begin, but that was quickly given to Toga after a vote. It was in January of 2008 that Toga had to step down from raiding and so I became the GM.

In March of 2009, I gave GM to Majik. We had lost too many raiders in late BC/early Wrath to continue, so Maj held on to GM for a while and I headed to Bronzebeard on my pally and to Proudmoore on my hunter.

It wasn’t long before Majik chose to let his subscription lapse so my level five hunter, whom I was using primarily to save the name Kurnmogh on Eldre’Thalas, became GM of Apotheosis again. The guild still existed and people were still in it, but most had stopped playing or had moved on. There was very little GMing to do, really.

In September of 2010, I brought Kurn back from Proudmoore and regained GM on that character. And Apotheosis 2.0 was born.

Two years later, for the first time since Majik briefly was GM in 2009, someone else is the GM of Apotheosis.

It’s weird, in a way, how people choose to identify themselves. For 14 months, I was Kurn, GM of Apotheosis. Then, I was Kurn of Kurn’s Corner, while I was simultaneously Madrana of Bronzebeard, Proudmoore and Skywall. Then back to Kurn, GM of Apotheosis.

Now what?

Being Kurn has been a huge part of my identity for over three years of my life. I have ALWAYS been an officer of the guild, since June 1, 2007.

That is a long time.

Soon, not only will I no longer be the GM, but I won’t be an officer. I won’t be raiding. I might not even be playing.

It’s a very odd thing to be saying goodbye to these identities I’ve constructed over the years. Officer. GM. Raid leader. Healing lead. Raider. Player.

It’s happening at a time in my life when I’ve finally finished university, too, so at the same time, I’m also shedding the identity of student, which is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Change abounds. Adventures await. And while my adventures in the World of Warcraft have been unforgettable and awesome, occasionally annoying and disappointing, but ultimately rewarding, it’ll be good to explore the new adventures that await me without being tied to my email, the forums, the game, the raid times.

It’s a good change. The guild is in good hands.

None of that makes things any easier, though. How do you stop a seven year habit? How do you stop identifying yourself as what you’ve been for the last several years? How do you say goodbye to those who followed you on your various adventures?

For me, I guess the answer is to find something else about which I’m passionate and create a new identity, perhaps one relating to finding a full-time job or actually finding the time to have a relationship.

As to saying goodbye, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say something as final as “goodbye” to my guildies. I will always keep up to date with Apotheosis happenings, boss kills, server firsts and the like. But as time goes by, it will certainly be from the sidelines and it will definitely be from the perspective of having helped to create the guild that is now kicking ass, kind of like how I imagine a parent looks at their child as the child grows into a fine, upstanding young adult.

Once again, I am honoured and humbled to have played any kind of role in the history of Apotheosis. The guild has been my baby for the last two years and though it’s difficult to give it up, I know they will be in good hands and I know they will kick some serious ass going forward. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is really what any GM wants their guild to be able to do without them at the helm. Mission accomplished. :)

How to Prepare a Raiding Guild for Mists of Pandaria: Steps 5 & 6

Kurn / / apotheosis, guide, guild, mists of pandaria, raiding

I know, I’ve been slack with these posts, for which I truly apologize. Hopefully we’re not too late with this final post. Please do read Steps 1 & 2 and Steps 3 & 4 before you move on. :)

STEP 5: Roster Confirmation

My last post shared this spreadsheet with you. Here’s an updated version.

As you can see, we’ve lost a couple of other people from the current roster. Cinder, Majik and myself, but also Innerbite (which is a whole other story on its own) and Miurne, along with confirmation from Hitoku that he will not be raiding in Mists. We never did hear from Delandruss (and we hope he’s okay!). Walks decided to go monk, while Dayden elected to remain an enhancement shaman, not wanting to add to the glut of tanks. Kripptic went from being a hunter to being a DPS warrior in our raids and that’s what he’ll be playing in Mists.

We also added:

Ghostlore, Ilumi, Mabriam, Reax, Smmoke and Sturm (of which, Mabs and Sturm had previously raided with us)

We also went recruiting specifically for Mists! So we have the following who will be starting (mostly) their trials in MoP:

Grumdy and Zazii (zomg warlocks!), Leenewton (moonkin), Jacii (holy paladin), Poz (will be a windwalker monk) and Stariian (rogue who had maybe two raids with us before we stopped raiding for the expansion).

Current count:

23 DPS (10 melee, 13 ranged)
3 tanks (brewmaster, guardian, prot pally)
8 healers (2 resto druids, 2 mistweaver monks, 2 healing priests, 1 resto shaman, 1 holy paladin)

Honestly, I’m pretty happy with that. 34 people confirmed, although one must always prepare for the unexpected. The officers anticipate somewhere in the realm of 20% attrition, but some of that has already happened, so we were at 37 people before Inner bailed and Miurne and Hitoku wouldn’t be continuing. and 20% of 37 is 7.4. That means I estimate another 4 people will either bail, won’t be ready for raiding on October 9th or won’t pass their trials.

So Apotheosis is pretty set moving into Mists, although we could still use a shadow priest to keep Srsbusiness company, would consider another elemental shaman, another hunter and even another moonkin.

At this point in time, your roster should be more or less set. You should have confirmed everyone’s role with everyone and given them a bit of time to change their minds or even make up their minds. You should have a good idea of what you need to recruit and you should be exploring those options.

What’s left?

STEP 6: Paperwork & Policies

If you follow me on Twitter, you have doubtlessly seen tweets of mine wherein I complain about “paperwork”. Welcome to running a guild. Even if it’s virtual paperwork, you still have a crapton of it to do if you want to be organized about stuff.

Apotheosis is a guild where 100% of our information that is important to the running of the guild is found on our guild forums. There are two major reasons for this.

1) To share the information with our players. As a raider in Apotheosis, you are expected to check the forums regularly. All policies, strategies and announcements are posted on the forums, all feedback is done back and forth on the forums via private message and all guild bank requests are done on the forums. It means there is a central place for information and if the officers have posted the appropriate information, the onus is then on the players to make sure they’ve done their reading. This is also important for the sake of transparency. If it’s on the forums, we stick to it. There are no surprises.

2) So we don’t have to remember it all. Human memory is a funny thing in that sometimes, we don’t remember things. Or we remember them wrong. Having it all written down in a centralized location means not only that I don’t need to remember that, for example, normal-version shoulders cost 750 GP, but the person in charge of loot isn’t completely irreplaceable in case of emergency. Having all our EPGP values posted on the forums means that any officer can do loot (in theory). It means that anyone can read or re-read our various policies or strats. I know I referred to our H DS strats even going into our last couple of raids. It’s just not viable to expect everyone to remember everything with perfect clarity. Writing it down saves you the trouble.

Of course, the downside here is that we need to keep these various posts and documents updated.

Jasyla, who is the incoming GM of Apotheosis, spent several hours updating and re-writing and re-organizing several of our policy posts, many of which hadn’t been updated since, oh, the start of Cataclysm… Oops. ;) With feedback from the officers, Jasyla meticulously updated these posts and started posting them to our new guild forums. We elected to move to a new set of forums to have a fresh start without thousands of posts already. We took the opportunity to change how permissions worked on the new forums so it’s a lot easier to keep track of who can see what on the forums, plus it’s easier to know which permissions to give to which members. We also asked people to register for the forums using their new names, so Kaleri (our disc priest who’s going to be a guardian druid for us) changed her name to Kalbeari, which is her druid’s name. This makes things a million times easier for people to know who is who and avoid the dreaded “user not found” error when you try to write to someone only to remember, belatedly, that their toon name is not their forum name.

Essentially, assuming your roster is set, you’ll want to update your policies and expectations, start getting raid strats out there and then you’ll want to tackle something else that can be pretty overwhelming: the guild bank.

Tikari, in addition to being our melee lead again, will be handling the guild bank stuff. By “stuff”, I mean, he’s basically in charge of cleaning out the bank of stuff that won’t be useful and managing our 678,000 gold. This is not the time to be a packrat. This is the time to get rid of 90% of the crap in your guild bank and save your gold.

Right now, Apotheosis has 8 bank tabs and we require anyone who is a Raider or above to have an authenticator on their account. Here’s how we used the tabs in Cata and I expect they’ll be used similarly going forward.

1) Guild Trade: Anyone can deposit/withdraw junk here. We get a lot of AQ idols and scarabs, a lot of DMF quest items and other junk.

2) Glyphs/Enchants: Anyone can deposit/withdraw some glyphs here (as well as some enchants on scrolls).

3) Enchanting/Tailoring/LW/Vol: This was a tab for all our enchanting mats as well as cloth, raid drops (Essences of Destruction), leatherworking stuff and volatile storage. Anyone could deposit, only officers could withdraw.

4) Gems/Ore: This was where, not surprisingly, we kept all our gems and ore during the expansion. Anyone could deposit, only officers could withdraw.

5) Food: This was where we stored fish for the fish feasts. Anyone could deposit, only officers could withdraw.

6) Flasks: Also unsurprisingly, this was where we stored all our flasks that we used for raids. Anyone could deposit, only officers could withdraw.

7) Herbs: We had a small store of herbs once we moved to a system where people would donate flasks for cauldrons, but kept using it for various potions and elixirs and the like. Anyone could deposit, only officers could withdraw.

8) Secured: Patterns and BOEs made their way here. No one but officers could deposit and only the bank admin or GM could withdraw.

So what you need to do is clean out your bank and organize your tabs for efficient use.

Yet another thing to check out is guild ranks.

Apotheosis currently makes use of all 10 guild ranks.

Guild Leader is the rank for the GM, obviously. Bank Officer is the rank for the main character of the bank administrator as well as our “Apothbank” toon. Officer is for the other officers, Officer Alt is for the alts of officers, so they don’t have to swap over to throw out invites to the guild and such. Veteran is a new rank we brought in as a test (which has worked very nicely) that currently is for any non-officer who joined us before Cata dropped without pausing in their raiding with us. Going forward, this will be anyone who has raided with us for a full year without a break. Officers and Veterans are considered “Raiders” for loot purposes, but get slightly more repair ability and can invite people to the guild. Raiders are those who raid with the guild and have passed their trials. We’ll come back to Member in a minute, but Initiates are for our trialists, which typically lasts 3 weeks (9 full raids), or if content’s on farm and we’re doing 1 night a week clears, 4 weeks is the duration. Friends are friends of raiding-ranked people (or Members) and Alt is for everyone’s alt, except the officers.

Members are a little strange — they’re basically retired raiders from any point in time in Apotheosis’ history and, yes, I’ll be there soon enough. But a lot of our members who raided with us in BC are in this spot. You only ever get DEMOTED to Member after you’ve stopped raiding. They are important people to us who made it possible for us to get to where we are today and we like to recognize that by giving them their own rank and privileges that are more than what Initiates get but not quite what Raiders get. We are, after all, a raiding guild.

Speaking of being a raiding guild, one other thing our officers have hammered out is a good feedback system. Time and again, the biggest complaint we had as an officer group was a lack of feedback for the raiders, but to be honest, we didn’t have a group that had the time to give a lot of feedback. Our unofficial policy was “no news is good news”. We worked to change that in the last few months of Dragon Soul and the officers will be doing much more extensive feedback going forward. That was a major problem area for us and we worked to fix it, so raiders (and initiates) in Apotheosis will have a better idea of various expectations and will have more communication with their officers. We’ve added that to their roles as officers and, due to the fact that there are four people doing my jobs (GM, RL, recruitment, guild bank), we’ve had to specify what each role is responsible for.

Finally, THE LEGENDARY. Or legendaries.

Chances are, the moment you kill a boss in a raid instance in T14, something associated with the various legendaries out there will drop. What you need to do WELL before you walk into a raid instance is figure out who’s getting a legendary and in which order. Apotheosis is not prepared for this (yet), but I’m sure the officers will get that organized soon enough. (That said, I am selfishly REALLY GLAD I don’t have to make decisions about this.) Still, this is something any raiding guild will need to deal with and so you need to be clear about it before you start raiding.

CONCLUSION

Obviously, the most challenging thing is making sure your roster is settled, but once that’s done, it’s time to deal with the administrative side of things.

– policy updating/rewriting
– website/forum cleanup
– guild bank cleanup
– ranks/roster cleanup
– role duties for officers
– legendary

Once you’ve taken care of that stuff, you are pretty much good to go and ready to embark upon a new adventure in Pandaria! Don’t forget to keep your policies and such updated; review your policies every couple of months and make sure you’re still adhering to them or that they’re still reflective of what you’re actually doing.

Best of luck to you all in Pandaria! And feel free to let me know what other things you’ve done to help prepare your guild!

It’s Tuesday night, let’s do this raid!

Kurn / / ramblings

It’s Tuesday night, let’s do this raid!

Or not.

It took me a long time to realize that Tuesdays were the “Mondays” of the World of Warcraft week. Everything reset on Tuesdays (barring raids with a 3-day reset, like old-school ZG and AQ20). Thus, it was when a lot of people went in to do their raids. Once it sunk in, though, it really sunk in. I spent all of BC raiding on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays and, later, we added Mondays. I spent chunks of Wrath raiding on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, then my schedules shifted, but I’m pretty sure I kept raiding on Tuesdays for the majority of that expansion, with just Choice not raiding on Tuesdays.

And then, back to Apotheosis and our Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday grind. Although we haven’t needed to raid on Thursday or Sunday in months (the Thursday after 5.0.4 excepted), we’ve continued to raid on Tuesdays, doing full 8/8 HM clears in Dragon Soul.

So, here it is. Tuesday night. 8:17pm.

And I don’t have a raid.

In the last 21 months, I have missed two scheduled Tuesday night raids, both due to exams. We have rarely cancelled Tuesday raids, maybe just a couple over the Christmas holidays.

Basically, I don’t even know what to do with myself.

The guild has ceased raiding for now, but will go right back to the grind on October 9th. And I won’t be part of it. I’m not even going to be in town for the launch of Mists of Pandaria, I’m going to be in Italy with one of my best friends. It’s a sort of graduation present from my parents for having, finally, finished my university degree.

But it’s Tuesday.

And I’m not raiding.

I think that, more than anything else, has really hammered home to me that my time as a serious raider, as a serious player, is over. Last night, I almost sent Serrath a PM, asking him if he was going to do tonight’s roster or if I should do it. I stopped myself midway through my first sentence.

Today, I feel as though I’m forgetting something. All day long, my brain has been nagging me to do SOMETHING. Like, to look over our logs or prep for tonight. Anything.

While there are a couple of final tasks I do have to do, that’s not the buzzing in my brain.

Nope. The buzzing in my brain is like, “Kurn, it’s Tuesday. You’re supposed to RAID on Tuesday.” It’s this thing I have done for so long, so regularly, for so many years, that my brain actually cannot grasp the idea that “no, you don’t raid tonight”. Perhaps more accurately, it cannot grasp the idea that “no, you don’t raid tonight… or again.”

Going to Italy will be great for me. It’ll be a wonderful trip. And because it’ll happen right during the launch of Mists of Pandaria, I will be completely distracted and unavailable to deal with WoW. Hopefully, that’ll do a lot to break the habits that are entirely ingrained in me at this point. Hell, last time I was in Italy, in 2006, I WENT TO A ZG RAID. I am not even kidding. And we got Mar’li down (guild first!), too.

So it’ll be good for me to get away, particularly on the dates I’m going, to help me not get all caught up in expansion fever. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll remind me that there are so many other things to enjoy on Tuesday nights.