Round Up

One thing that I’ve always enjoyed about my blog is that it’s Kurn’s Corner. That’s to say that I feel free to talk about whatever it is I want to talk about. I usually try to relate it to gaming (generally World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games, because most of my audience knows me from WoW), but if I wanted to, I could branch out and talk about other things entirely. I really enjoy that freedom.

(Having said that, this particular blog post will still be about gaming. :) I just thought I’d share with you that I enjoy the freedom my blog allows me, which probably explains why, even 10 months after I stopped playing, I’m still writing at least occasionally.)

There are a couple of things going on in the Blizzard Entertainment world these days that are interesting to me. Tuesday brings us Patch 5.4 in the World of Warcraft and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is in closed beta.

First up, 5.4!

While the content of 5.4 is of less actual interest to me than it is to people who, you know, actually play the game, it’s still an interesting time for me because I’ve spent several months attempting to do my part to help solve (or at least alleviate) The Recruitment Problem. What IS The Recruitment Problem? It’s that guilds are constantly struggling to recruit. Recruitment has always been one of the most difficult things to handle in a guild. If you over-recruit, you may lose people who feel they’re not getting their fair time in guild events. If you under-recruit, you may not have guild events in the first place! It’s a difficult balance to strike. Plus there’s the turnover that causes you to almost always be searching for new players. So while I was writing my guide, Kurn’s Guide to Being a Kick-Ass Guild Master, I decided to start spotlighting guilds to help guilds get a bit more attention. While I had a ton of submissions up front, I’ve exhausted all of those and now need NEW submissions, so if your guild is recruiting, I will happily craft you a Guild Spotlight. Just go fill out the form. Did I mention it’s free?

Speaking of free, there’s also a brand-new addition to my guide site, over at Kurn.info! It’s called Kurn’s Recruitment Checklist and you can find it in the new Free Stuff section of the site. It’s a basic list of all the tasks you should be doing on a daily basis to maximize your chances as you attempt to recruit. They’re all tried-and-true methods — it’s what I did when I was recruiting for my own guild. (Speaking of Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas, they’re currently ranked #1 on the server at 11/13 HM – they’ve been frantically working on H Lei-Shen to down him before the patch and still have a raid night to do it! – and they’re seeking rogues, windwalkers, warriors and a talented resto druid, though they’re open to other melee classes. Raid nights are Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday from 9pm ET until 12am. Check them out for quality 25m heroic raiding!)

And in not-so-free-but-still-discounted news… In honour of 5.4’s imminent release, this past week has seen Module 2 (How to Recruit) of my aforementioned Guild Master guide at 25% off! The sale ends Monday night at 11:59pm ET, so make sure you’re prepped for the recruitment rush at the start of this new patch! Check out Module 2 here!

In other guide-related news, my next project is not going to be Kurn’s Guide to Being a Kick-Ass Raid Leader. It’s going to be Kurn’s Guide to Being a Kick-Ass Raider. (The Raid Leader one will come eventually.) I just started writing it and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all Soon(tm)! (Probably a couple of months, although it’s going to be much shorter than the Guild Master guide. I hope.)

And now… Hearthstone!

I was extremely fortunate and won a Hearthstone Beta Key from Sas148 at Wowhead! Again, my thanks to Sas!

I’ve really been enjoying it. Hilariously, it plays well on my laptop, too, although a bit laggier (unsurprising), but considering this laptop is the one that granted me a blazing 3-6fps in raids in WoW, that it plays this game pretty well is impressive. They’re really casting a wide net in terms of system requirements, it seems.

I’ve got a couple of videos up (Uther vs. Uther and then opening up 15 packs), which you can watch over at this YouTube playlist. I’ve also streamed a bit here and there over at Twitch and really need to go through the streams I’ve done to pull out some highlights.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying the hunter (I know, it’s a shocker) and the paladin (also shocking). I really enjoy how the different decks really “feel” like the classes they’re supposed to represent. Paladins feel like they’re in plate, with lots of defenses. I feel as though they play a long game with buffs to their many potential minions and defensive moves. I feel as though hunters are very dependent on their beasts — lots of hunter cards for buffs to beasts in particular. On the flipside, you have Jaina (the mage, obviously) and she feels like she can deal an insane amount of damage, but has very little to help her last terribly long. Playing the mage deck makes me actually feel like a fire mage/glass cannon.

I haven’t spent a lot of time playing the other decks as of yet (although I’ve unlocked them all), but rogues seem very direct-damagey, while shaman seem interesting in the sense that you can kind of borrow against mana from the next turn (certain abilities will “overload” you and remove some mana crystals from use in the next turn). Warlocks are, typically, self-destructive, which cracks me up, but they’re very potent, from what I’ve seen. They seem almost OP the way the class was in Burning Crusade. Ah, memories! ;)

Something I really enjoy about Hearthstone is that so many things are familiar. There’s a card that’ll play a minion, the Acidic Swamp Ooze, which has a battlecry effect of breaking your opponent’s weapon (if they have one). I laughed out loud at that because there’s a mob by the same name in WoW, who drops a grey junk item called… Broken Weapon! Plus there are legendary cards like Gruul, whose special ability is that he gains one attack and one health after each turn, which basically mimics his actual, in-game mechanics. (Although gaining health in WoW would have been kind of counter-intuituve, it’s a great addition to his Growth ability in Hearthstone!)

So I’m enjoying it. It’s reminiscent of WoW without actually BEING WoW. I enjoy the ranked play (Platinum 2-star at this point) as well as the arena. (I am SO BAD AT ARENA, ahahahaha!) Overall, I can’t wait ’till the game actually comes out. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, especially with more players.

Okay, I guess that’s it for this post. Remember, Module 2’s sale ends Monday at 11:59pm ET and that there’s a new, free recruitment tool for you to download at my site. Not to mention that I’m still seeking submissions for my free guild spotlights!

Enjoy Patch 5.4 and good luck getting into the Hearthstone beta if it’s something that interests you!

Recruitment Woes

Well hello there, all you fine people! How are you doing? I hope you’re doing well. :)

As for myself, since I have yet to get a Hearthstone beta key, I’ve been busying myself with more content for my guide site over at Kurn.info! One of the most-asked questions I get is “Kurn, how do I recruit people?!”

While I do give a ton of great information over in Module 2 of Kurn’s Guide to Being a Kick-Ass Guild Master, that module is between 60 and 71 pages long. It dawned on me that, in addition to all the information in that module, I can give out something that’s more basic, more bare-bones and, thankfully for you, much shorter.

For the last few days, I’ve been working on Kurn’s Recruitment Checklist. It’s a simple list detailing all the tasks that one should do to recruit for their World of Warcraft guild (particularly raiding guilds, but others will find value in it). It’s everything you need to do to maximize your chances of snagging that ever-elusive warlock or resto shaman, all in a simple checklist format. This is everything that I have done in the past, particularly when I was feeling desperate to bolster our roster to try to get anyone who was even remotely qualified to apply.

Back when I was recruiting, I would often wonder why the “simple” task of recruitment felt so overwhelming. Now I know. In writing down everything I would do on a daily basis, I realized… holy crap, that’s a lot of stuff to do! I’m not finished yet and it’s already three pages long. And those are daily tasks. Eesh.

Anyhow, with various schools starting their semesters and as we stand on the cusp of Patch 5.4, I thought I’d release this free checklist for you all so that you can maximize your chances of helping out your guild with a couple of solid additions to your team. It comes out on Tuesday, September 3 over at Kurn.info. :)

In the meantime, if you’d like a recruitment bump, check out the Guild Spotlight page and submit your guild info so that I can craft you a magnificent guild spotlight of your very own. :)

Guide Update, New Sneak Peek & Guild Spotlights

Ladies and gentlemen, happy Friday to you!

I’m getting ready to head on up to my parents’ cottage for a weekend of reading, taking in some sun, canoeing, kayaking and, doubtlessly, writing.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve been slacking while I’ve been in town this week. Since my last update, I have very nearly finished Module 4: Community Management and even started in on Module 5: Expansion Planning. (By the way, my best guess for the launch of the new expansion is June 10th, 2014, give or take two weeks.) I’ve written almost 14,000 words in the last week! Things seem to be going pretty well on that front, so I’m hoping to tentatively launch my guide on Tuesday, August 6th. There’s still a lot of writing (and editing!) to do, plus website stuff, but hey, August 6th is not totally out of the realm of possibility!

Anyhow, I released a new Sneak Peek yesterday evening. It’s Starting Up, Sneak Peek 2 and even includes a small portion of a bonus section of the guide. You should definitely head over to my guide site over at http://kurn.info and download it! Plus, you should sign up so you always stay up to date with the happenings over at Kurn.info.

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In other news, due to the rather unfortunate fact that I will be housesitting for a chunk of next week, I’m taking the upcoming week off of doing Guild Spotlights every weekday. They’ll return on Monday, July 22nd. Having said that, you should still submit your guild details to be spotlighted! I’m enjoying learning about so many different guilds and servers. Like, I had no idea that Sargeras (US) was a PVP server where there are 141,000 Alliance characters compared to, oh, 25,000 Horde, and where there’s 270+ raiding guilds, but only ONE of them are Horde. (Similarly, I never thought I could feel BADLY for the Horde, but then I came across Sargeras and was like “Wow. That really sucks. Poor Horde!”) If you’re seeking a new guild, check out my YouTube channel and take a look at some of the guilds I’ve been spotlighting!

Okay, I need to go pack. Have an excellent weekend, everyone!

PS: About damn time Divine Plea scales with spirit!

Community Management: Part 2

Well, it’s Thursday.

Thursday means that I write another blog post and let you know that my Community Management module is still unfinished. I’m writing up the bonus sections now, though, so next week, I really ought to have the Expansion Planning sneak peek out. Or perhaps I’ll just throw in another Starting Up sneak peek. Either way, there will be more new content next Thursday.

And hey, there’s new content TODAY, too! Today, over at kurn.info, I put up Sneak Peek 2 for Community Management. It’s a lot longer than most of the previous Sneak Peeks, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting. The section I included was all about Community Moderation which is distinctly different from Community Management. Moderation deals with problems: whether it’s problematic language during a raid or forum posts that blast others or something else entirely, moderation is how you deal with it. I even wrote up a mock social media policy! So definitely check out Sneak Peek 2 of Community Management, focusing on Community Moderation, over at kurn.info!

What else… Oh, yeah, if your guild is currently recruiting, head on over to this form to submit your guild information so that I can do a guild spotlight on you! Here’s my latest spotlight, on the guild Ruined (A) on the Proudmoore (US) server.

Okay, back to writing. Hope everyone had an awesome Canada Day and a good July 4th!

Sneak Peek 3 — Community Management

I’m still working on this module, but hey, I told you guys I’d have another sneak peek for you today, so here it is!

Building Community, In and Out of Game
http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/communitymanagement-sneakpeek.pdf

Other topics to be covered include: guild community setup, setting the tone, generating discussion and, the big ones, discipline and community moderation.

If you still haven’t read my other two sneak peeks, do check them out!

Rebuking Officers
http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/officers-sneakpeek.pdf

Posting your Recruitment Post
http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/howtorecruit-sneakpeek.pdf

And don’t forget to tune in to YouTube every weekday for another edition of Kurn’s Guild Spotlight!

Kurn's Guild Spotlight!

While writing my guide on how to be a kick-ass guild master, I spent a lot of time writing about recruitment. I mean, a lot of time. My “How to Recruit” module of the guide is over 15,000 words long as of right now. So while writing those 15,000 words, I was consistently reminded of how much I hated recruitment and how crappy it is. And it is. It really is. It’s tireless, thankless, boring, repetitive work that needs to be done constantly and consistently.

So I thought about spotlighting a guild on a daily basis and talking about what their recruitment needs are.

Naturally, I started with my own Apotheosis. I don’t even have an active account anymore, but that guild will always be my home.

Here’s the video I made, talking a bit about what my guild spotlight is and, obviously, shining the spotlight on Apotheosis.

I plan to do this each weekday, so if your guild is in need of recruits, please post here in the comments or send me an email at kurn (at) apotheosis-now (dot) com. :) Be sure to leave me the guild name, faction, server, purpose (PVP, PVE, etc) and website. That last is super-important. :)

Hopefully, this will go a little way in helping out guild masters and recruitment officers, because it is a terrible job. Remember to thank your GM or recruitment officer (or both!) today. ;)

(PS: Don’t forget to download your Sneak Peeks 1 and 2 of my guide. Sneak Peek 3 will be coming out this Thursday!)