Here's an interesting idea from Shaela over on the EU forums: group duels. Right now, duels aren't a huge part of the game for anyone but lowbies and immature folks looking to pick a fight -- they're very rarely done right, and there's no reward except for a zone-wide shoutout given in the event they're won. But the system could probably use an update, and group or guild duels are a great idea -- all that guild drama could be worked out ingame as whole raids or guilds could clash against each other.
Slorkuz weasels his way out of a real answer by saying that this is already possible in game: places like the Gurubashi Arena do let whole groups of people fight each other however they like. He also says that Blizzard has no plans to add any features like this, but he's slightly wrong -- we did get told at Blizzcon that they were going to do more along the lines of Guild vs. Guild combat, if only in the existing BGs. This idea, along with guild housing, is still in the works somewhere, at least.
Of course, with any player interaction feature like this, there is always the opportunity for exploitation -- some players have probably refused enough duel invites in their day without having to worry about any more, and whenever you have someone "speaking" (as in, accepting or rejecting a duel) for a group in terms of PvP, you can run into trouble. But for those who really would like to know whether their guild could beat another guild, or just which raid is better than another one, a feature like this would definitely be welcomed.
Each week or so, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.
This week, I finally get around to answering an email from Mattilda:
Hey Robin,
I really enjoyed your article on WoW Insider. I recently got married and that basically killed my play time in WoW which probably isn't that bad of a thing, but I still like to play and it is normally only for a couple of hours in the evening. One of the biggest problems I have is getting a group for an instance. I have a decent guild but they are all normally busy in Kara or ZA when I'm on, and since I only play one or 2 nights a week I'm not high on the importance list to help.
I like to do dailies and busy my self with solo stuff, but in order to get neutral with the Ogrila, there are some group quests. Looking for group is not always reliable and it seems that it basically puts you with 5 year olds most of the time. So my question is you can either put in in an article or just answer via e-mail, do you have any good ideas on how to get a reliable group in a short amount of time. There may not be a way, but just wanted to get your thoughts.
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
We've all come across those mediocre players. They are the hunters that can DPS but don't know how to trap a mob; the shamans that never break crowd control but windfury their way to the top of the aggro list every single pull; the warriors who excel at single-target tanking but can't hold more than one mob at a time. Where do these players come from, and how do they stay so mediocre after 70 levels? The author of this week's e-mail thinks he has the answer: The road to mediocrity is built by your own guild.
Scott,
I enjoy your Officers' Quarters articles on WoWInsider.com, so maybe you can tackle this subject for me in your next piece:
I am now a casual player (played since beta and used to be hardcore) and I'm in this nice and friendly social guild.I'm not an officer, nor do I have the desire to be one.I just want to log on and do whatever I feel like with my limited play time.This guild puts no pressure on me and I appreciate that.
The guild leaders' philosophy is to be helpful to one another – helping on whatever is needed by other members.Guild members get rank up by how much they help others.This was a noble idea . . . but there's a huge caveat.
One of the things that lower level members often ask higher members for help on is to run them through instances. However, there's a very bad side effect to this: mediocrity.
I like Nikol's writeup of her experiences marking targets in instances. There really is an art to laying down those icons in a group, and it requires quite a bit of knowledge to do right. You need to keep group makeup in mind, know the abilities of all the classes involved, pay attention to what individual members want to do and even how they're specced, and have a basic knowledge of the instance and how it works. There's so much that goes into it that it's basically an art in itself -- do you sheep the caster and take out the minions, or focus on the big bad first and then move on to trash? Do you have the group to interrupt and pull a caster to a trap, or do you need to get the mobs out of the way before the patrol comes through?
It's complicated and fascinating stuff, and this kind of group coordination is why some players choose to play PvE rather than PvP -- because while yes, the mobs are predictable (and players aren't; as much, anyway), the fun is in the planning. And when you get a good group to go with a good planner, then things really get interesting. There is an art to laying down marks, but once you study what a good marker does, and get the hang of it, you're that much more helpful to any groups you're in.
I've met some really cool people playing World of Warcraft.With the exception of a small handful of my RL friends, most of them are just friendly voices on Ventrilo. I had the opportunity to hang out with a guildie last spring.It was an awesome time.
We had been running lowbies on a new server.We had a Warrior, a Rogue, a Warlock and a Shaman that we were leveling together.All but the Warlock player live in Las Vegas.decided to spend part of his spring break with us.I went to pick him up at the airport holding a sign with his character name on it- probably not the strangest thing you'll ever see at McCarranInternationalAirport. With the exception of a couple dinners out, we spent the entire weekend playing WoW.No casinos, no strip, no shows, no clubs- just WoW.I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Dungeons, known as instances, are special zones where players group together to fight tougher monsters than the outside environment. They are called instances because each group who enters them is given a separate copy of the dungeon and will not interact with other players of either faction when inside. Higher quality loot is available in instances than the environment, in addition to excellent quest experience and rewards. Today's WoW Rookie gives you a guide to the dungeons may enter in your first forty levels or so.
Instances are known in most cases by their initials.Notable exceptions will be listed below.This guide also gives suggested levels for completing the dungeons.Entering at a lower level will usually prove difficult and, at times, painful. If you do an instance at a higher level than recommended will garner little experience and rewards that do not benefit your current level.
Recently you've asked me to group with you. This is cool, and I appreciate being wanted. It gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The same warm and fuzzy feeling you get after you've killed a million boars and are holding the Sword of a Thousand Truths. However, if you don't mind, could we go over a few dos and don'ts?
Here's what you should do:
Do ask nicely if I have time to join your group.
Do look to see if I'm using the LFG tool. If I'm not, I probably don't want to group.
Do offer me at least 100 gold to run you through the Stockades. The two gold you're putting forth does not make up for the time it's going to take me to run you through.
Do talk in English or some other real language. I'll even accept Klingon. Leet speak is not a language.
Do ask if everyone is ready before MDing the boss to me.
Fraid is a young player who says that people show discrimination towards teenagers in WoW. He plays maturely and responsibly, so well that most of the time other players are surprised to find out how young he is. Yet he often encounters guild requirements that say one's age must be 21 or higher to join. Is this fair?
In my own experience I've certainly met kids like Fraid who can behave just as well as (if not better than) most of the adults I've encountered in WoW. I've also met players who came across as bragging and became very difficult for me to deal with until a friend said "They're only 12," and I understood. After that, I found it much easier to tolerate the things they were saying as just part of being a teenager rather than some plot to make me feel inadequate. Another time, I went through several 2-vs-2 arena matches in which my friend was strangely quiet, and yet playing very well. Afterwards, my friend explained that it wasn't her at the keyboard, it was her 10-year old friend. This friend isn't very good at typing and talking, but he certainly knows how to play!
Kids can be fantastic players, or lousy ones, just like anyone else you might encounter -- it isn't right to judge them based on age alone. The fair way to deal with kids in WoW is to give them a chance to show their skill, and even to help them improve however you can. If they prove unreasonable, then kick them out the same way you would an unreasonable adult. For those adults who just exclude young people from their activities altogether without giving them a chance, there's no denying it is prejudice -- judging before knowing -- and it often means depriving yourself of some quality talent for your group. Of course, if your guild does some sort of ERP, or other "adult" activities, then by all means, exclude away! But in normal gaming, especially in a casual guild or a PuG, there's really no reason a kid shouldn't be allowed to join unless they've already shown themselves unable to do what's required of them. Anyone who says, "some of these people are not fun to be around, so I'll just exclude the whole lot of them," has some growing up of their own to do.
Krystal is a guild leader over on Skywall, and she's got a cool idea for how to get all of her guildies geared up and knowledgeable about Karazhan-- a "Karazhan exchange program," where Team A (the veterans) trades a person with Team B (the newbies) every week, which gives both teams a chance to learn and show more about what they know with each other.
It's an interesting thought, and I'm curious-- do a lot of guilds do this already? To tell the truth, I've been kind of absent from my guild's Karazhan runs lately, but from what I've heard, we pretty much keep things separate-- Team A has their progression, and Team B has theirs. But regularly mixing up the teams seems like a good plan. Sure, with one newb on Team A, their progression might slow a little bit (and there might be a little drama coming out of forcing a certain veteran onto Team B), but by switching things up, it seems that overall both teams will benefit, and especially when you're headed for a 25 man instance (where you'll need both teams and then some), that's an ideal situation.
What's your guild like? If you have two Karazhan teams, do you mix them up periodically, or does Team A stick to themselves, and make Team B learn the bosses on their own?
Marilyn has an interesting point over at WoW Ladies: if you see her grinding Consortium rep and taking on three mobs at a time in Netherstorm, leave her alone-- it's all under control. I sometimes have this same problem as a resto Shaman-- onlookers don't always realize that even though my health is low and I'm almost out of mana, redemption for me is just a huge heal and a Mana Tide totem away. Things may look bad, but really, don't worry about it-- my Earth Shield just got refreshed, and I'm good to go for two more mobs, so no, I don't need saving.
On the other hand, I'm not sure I really want to discourage people to help in this game-- I'd much rather have them help me fight than really be in trouble and have them /laugh as I die. So I'm not sure I'd tell everyone to lay off.
Rather, the problem here is that when I pull a group of mobs, I don't want someone else stepping in and tagging them away from me in the name of help. So there are plenty of ways to help that don't include stealing my XP-- drop a DoT on something that's been tagged (I do this all the time on my Shadow Priest), or throw me a heal (always appreciated, even if my Mana Tide totem is off cooldown). And just paying attention is nice, too-- nothing burns me more as a Rogue than taking the time to sneak up on a mob, only to have them charged by an overzealous warrior who claims afterwards that they didn't see my Distract go off.
If it's legitimate kill-stealing, the best option is just to ignore and move on to a less populated area-- there's no dealing with those people. But if you do see someone fighting a bunch of mobs solo, there are better ways to help than grabbing one of their kills, and chances are they'll be more than happy to help you the next time around.
The pulling one is an especially good tip-- decide at the beginning of the run who's going to pull, and then only have that person pull. Can't tell you how many times, someone decided to just pull with an instant spell because they felt like it, and not realizing that another pull was already incoming. And I think the "not wear thy gear in vain" tip is an interesting one, too-- you should putting gems and enchantments on your gear already, just to make your character the best it can be. Seeing it as a way of benefiting the group is a new way of looking at it, but it's true as well.
If everyone followed these tips all the time (and even the best tanks I know sometimes forget to wait for mana), we'd all have better groups, whether they be PuGs, good friends, or raids.
Last weekend, my guild was heroically wiping our way through Gruul's Lair, when a friend called to go see Transformers. I did want to go, but I didn't want to leave my guild without a healer. So I did exactly what you should do when leaving a group-- I dropped a /tell to a priest in the battlegrounds and asked him if he could replace me. He could, I told the raidleader I had to go, helped him summon the priest, and I was off to see Optimus Prime fighting Megatron. Horrible story and acting, by the way, but amazing action with awesome robots.
So that's exactly what you should do when leaving a group unexpectedly (find a replacement), but unfortunately, it's not always what everyone does. Sometimes it's a matter of availability-- just last night, our tank in Shattered Halls said he had to log out, and we just weren't able to find any warriors to replace him-- but the point is that the responsibility for filling the evacuated role should be that of the person leaving, not the group. Saying "bye" and logging is definitely one way to do it, but it's not the best way-- what you should be doing is finding a replacement.
And how's that done? First, check your guild to see if there are others of your own class around to join up. Even if not, keep in mind that you can change things around if necessary (as a Shaman, I can switch prettty easily between DPS and healing, so if our priest leaves, we're fine adding either another priest or a replacement DPS). If no one in the guild is available, then it's time to go for your own Friends list-- I've met quite a few other players in PUGs that I usually hit up for group members when necessary, and sometimes I'll even ask them to check their own guilds for replacements. And if you have to, it is possible to simply do a "/who 70 priest" query-- you run the risk of getting someone who doesn't know what they're doing, but as my grandmother always said, beggars can't be choosers.
Of course, throughout all of it, you've got to be patient-- it's fine to send someone a /tell asking if they want to join up, but if they say no or don't answer, leave them alone after that. And if a replacement can't be found, both the group and the person leaving should understand (although for Transformers, I might have delayed the movie rather than letting the 25 man raid go without). But most people play this game to actually run the instances-- with a little effort, switching out a replacement can keep an instance run rolling right along.
Distraction on the WoW LJ posts about something I've noticed while sitting in the LFG channel over the last few days on my server as well: Alliance are having a nice big party in the LFG channel, while Horde seem kind of lonely in it.
Why does it seem like Alliance run more PUGs than Horde do? It seems to happen on every server that I've been on, and it can't just be a population thing-- even Horde heavy servers (of which there aren't many) seem to have more PUGs rolling on the Alliance side. Could it be that Alliance players are more social, or just more likely to be unguilded?
And another thing I've noticed (and while Distraction doesn't mention it obviously, you can see it in his script) is that Horde seem to be less responsive to pleas for help in terms of LFG as well. Not only is it less common for a group to be LFG on Horde side, it seems, but it's less common for anyone LFG to find the help they need. I watched one guy Hordeside look for a Botanica group member for about 2 hours over the weekend, and when I finally joined up, the group frll apart anyway. Has that been your experience? And if so, why could that possibly be?
Elizabeth put a good post up the other day about lazy folks who don't take the time to run back into an instance after a wipe, and this forum post by Eleutheria on EU Earthen Ring points out the other side of instance group laziness: Meeting stone standoffs.
Here's how it should work: if there aren't yet two people in your group standing by the meeting stone, everyone in the group should be running, riding, or flying to get there. But of course that's not what really happens-- what happens is that the leader of the group makes it there first, and everyone else continues grinding, or goes to check the AH one more time, or has to run repair, or finish a BG, or any number of things that don't involve getting to the meeting stone and summoning. Worst case scenario is that people start trying to convince others to go for them, and one guy is left at the meeting stone shaking his head.
Now, some people say that whoever made the group should be summoning, and in most cases, that seems like a good idea. But there are always exceptions. Even if I'm the last to enter a group, I usually start making my way towards the instance anyway-- the trip is never that long, no matter which instance you're going to, and it's better to be nice and use the flight to get another beer/soda then to sit around demanding a summon.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to fix this except to call out people for just plain being lazy. I guess it would be cool if Blizzard gave a nice timed buff to the first two people in a group to use a meeting stone summon, except then you'd probably have tons of people hanging around the RFC meeting stone in Org before they queued up for the battleground. As a few people point out in the thread, probably the best way to deal with it is just to give up on the group. Maybe next time they'll be ready to work together outside the portal as well as inside.
Most players by now that started rolling to 70 when the expansion hit are probably either just starting or in the middle of running their first few Heroic dungeons. I fall into that group-- my guild has had a few folks running Heroics for a while, but the majority of us are just now starting to pick up the Revered rep needed in the different factions to make running Heroics a regular possibility. So here's a few tips I've picked up just in the past few weeks or so about how to get started running the most challenging 5mans in the game. Please feel free to add your own below.
-Easiest Heroic: in general, you're going to want to start in the Slave Pens. I've heard good things about Underbog and Old Hillsbrad (Ramparts is comparably easy as well, especially if you've got your FR gear on), but really I've found that Slave Pens is a good indicator of whether your group is ready for Heroics or not, and it seems like Cenarion rep is pretty easy to come by, so you've got lots of keyed folks to choose from.
-Best place to get badges: Heroic Mechanar. Even the Gatekeeper minibosses, who don't give good loot in the normal instance, will drop Badges for you in Heroic, which means that if you skate through this place in under an hour, you're earning five badges in that time.
-In Heroics, it's not the bosses you have to worry about, it's the trash. Trash hits hard (really hard), so there's no room for error (read: letting the mobs go after clothies). If you don't have the standard CC you need (and you should-- heroic groups are best when every class type is well-represented), then fear is your friend, because in most heroics two hits are enough to cause a wipe.
Here's an interesting idea from Shaela over on the EU forums: group duels. Right now, duels aren't a huge part of the game for anyone but lowbies and immature folks looking to pick a fight -- they're very rarely done right, and there's no reward except for a zone-wide shoutout given in the event they're won. But the system could probably use an update, and group or guild duels are a great idea -- all that guild drama could be worked out ingame as whole raids or guilds could clash against each other.
Dear 
Krystal is a guild leader over on Skywall, and 
Marilyn has 
Reader Poga dropped us a line to this article he wrote for his guild about 
Last weekend, my guild was heroically wiping our way through Gruul's Lair, when a friend called to go see Transformers. I did want to go, but I didn't want to leave my guild without a healer. So I did exactly what you should do when leaving a group-- I dropped a /tell to a priest in the battlegrounds and asked him if he could replace me. He could, I told the raidleader I had to go, helped him summon the priest, and I was off to see 
Distraction on the WoW LJ posts about something I've noticed while sitting in the LFG channel over the last few days on my server as well: Alliance are having a nice big party in the LFG channel, while 
Elizabeth put 
Most players by now that started rolling to 70 when the expansion hit are probably either just starting or in the middle of running their first few Heroic dungeons. I fall into that group-- my guild has had a few folks running Heroics for a while, but the majority of us are just now starting to pick up the Revered rep needed in the different factions to make running Heroics a regular possibility. So here's a few tips I've picked up just in the past few weeks or so about how to get started running the most challenging 5mans in the game. Please feel free to add your own below.
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