Yesterday my guild was getting ready for our nightly foray into the Black Temple (we downed the first five bosses in 3 ½ hours, not too bad). Out of the blue, a member who has been having some "issues" as of late decided it was high time to leave the guild. And he didn't just stealth gquit, he went out in style.
Instead of being adult about it, which everyone in my guild is, he posted a long winded and rambling message to the guild and then left. His tantrum was quite good, one of the most epic I've seen. But the epicness of his lack of class wasn't the best part. The best part was that he had enough foresight to do it all with a macro. So after a bunch of us got done laughing about him leaving on ventrilo I thought to myself, "Self, I should post this on WoW Insider tomorrow. After all, a gquit macro sounds like a good idea!"
Take a look after the break to see some screenshots of this ex-guildie's gquit macro, and how you too can make your own gquit macro!
LFG Armory is a new site that's aiming to beat the official Armory at its own game. Blizzard's site, as complete as it is, is still occasionally buggy and slow, and LFG Armory is looking to give players an alternative. And it works fairly well -- while the FAQ claims that data may be a little behind (due to caching of Blizzard's information), both the guild and player profile pages look pretty good and load quickly (and if the site can stay up after we link to them here, that'll be a real sign that it's a stable server).
But the real feature that makes LFG Armory something more than Blizzard's official site is that it has a guild and arena team matching system built in. Once you register your name and your characters, you can do a search for guilds and arena teams and try to find one that matches what you want -- percentage of level 70s, class makeup, and number of members. On the guild side, you can set your guild as looking, and then when you hit a match, LFG will match you up.
It's an interesting system, but like all social networks, it all depends on participation -- when I looked for a guild for my Hunter on Cenarius (who could use a guild, by the way), nothing came up, because likely no one on the server was looking (for a Hunter at least). But as an alternative to the Armory, LFG is looking pretty good. If they can get people to the site and stay up, they might give Blizzard's official site a run for its money.
We've all done it. You're sitting there, grinding away, minding your own business. Or (more likely) you're in a city, leveling up a profession or selling some things at the AH. And then, over the world chat it comes: "Can anyone help me sign my charter?"
The guild charter is a game mechanic that's never really been questioned -- to start up a guild, you have to grab a charter from an NPC, and then get nine other people (not characters, people, as alts on the same account can only sign once) to sign it. But in many cases, a guild isn't even planning to have nine other people. And so, they come, the charter signers, asking and sometimes even paying to get nine signatures on their guild charter.
The mechanic is a good one -- it keeps people from starting guilds lightly (or exploiting the guild interface too much) without actually being a big barrier to entrance. Some people are happy to sign charters, others not so much. I like St. Andrews Girl's approach over on WoW LJ -- she's actually started up a community of people willing to sign on and sign charters to get guilds started. Do you happily sign charters or would you rather people leave you alone? Sign My Charter is pretty empty right now, but you never know -- maybe there's a whole world of people out there willing to help guilds get off the ground.
Episode 9 of The Guild is up, and it's confrontation time. The guildies meet each other in RL again to take down the bank ninja Bladezz, but yet another boss battle looms deep on the horizon. Y'know, not that we don't love this series (we do), but has there ever been any actual gameplay footage here? Am I the only one that would kind of like to see them in their characters, maybe raiding into Karazhan or wherever else they're raiding?
Maybe there's legal issues or something involved (but surely Blizzard wouldn't mind, right?). At any rate, another fun episode for The Guild (Tink needs to get some new DS games, I beat Mario like years ago), and it seems like things are coming to a boil on this storyline. Episode 10 should be a big one.
While randomly browsing my realm forums last night I came across a guild that (surprise!) was looking for more members. I'm not really looking for a new guild (happy with the ones I'm in now), so I looked into this just to see what other guilds on the server were up to. They've started with 25 man content, have cleared Karazhan, and have done some of Zul'Aman. What caught my eye however was the guild recruitment video they had.
This got me thinking. Do other guilds have recruitment videos? I've heard of plenty of guilds putting together videos of each other running around and having a good time or downing a raid boss. I've been in a few of those myself. But an above average recruitment video? That I don't know.
The guild that started this thought process was Epic, on the realm Eldre'Thalas. I've done a pug or two with a few of their members before, and they're nice folks (although they don't know who I am, I'm sure). The video is very professionally done, has a noticeable 'plot' to it, and is of high quality. Props to Phytrion, a member of their guild, who put it together for them. One thing that I find is a little funny is that the character in the end has a complete Tier 4 protection Warrior armor set and is carrying the Bulwark of Azzinoth that drops off of Illidan. It's a cool shield, so I know why they used it, but the combination is a funny choice.
Do you have a guild recruitment video? Post a comment with a link and show off your stuff!
The dust has settled on most of the servers, and the Fury of the Sunwell has been a success across the board. One of the lingering issues however is attunement. It has been noted before that Onyxia is now the hardest attunement in the game. This has occurred with the removal of the Karazhan, Black Temple, and Mount Hyjal attunements. However this creates a false impression that these instances are no longer worthy of attunements, and thus these quests are no longer worthy of the care and time that's necessary to push forward into them.
You want to get your Vashj and Kael vials, you want to complete your Mount Hyjal attunement, and you want to complete your Black Temple attunement. If you're in a guild that isn't running those instances anymore and is focusing squarely on the Tier 6 content, then you still want to go back and get the attunements.
Lileah over on WoW LJ has an interesting idea that I've never thought of before. Well, her guild does -- she has a question about Illusion Dust, which yes, is hard to find. Usually your best bet is to run through the old level 55-60 instances, so Scholomance, Stratholme, and so on, but your best bet is probably the AH -- lots of people who can craft greens DE those and put the Dust up for sale there. Pricy but probably worth the time you'd spend grinding for them.
But the reason she's looking for Illusion Dust is because her guild is paying out a 1,000g bounty to anyone who has two leveled professions by next week. That's a super interesting idea. I'm the kind of player who never seems to find time to level my professions -- I'm too busy killing stuff and leveling and gaining reputation to run around picking up herbs or mining nodes. But 1,000 is a nice prize, and definitely helps pay for not only my time running around, but also the extra costs associated with leveling a profession -- crafting mats and so on.
And considering how useful a 375 profession is to the guild, any guild that's raiding at a fairly high level should see benefits come out of having most of the guild crafting endgame items. Very cool idea -- if you have a guild that could use a few more crafters and some gold to spread around, subsidizing profession leveling might be just the ticket.
We all have pieces of gear that we don't want to do away with. For me, it's mainly my Quel'Serrar sword – thousands of gold spent on it pre-bc makes it (adjusted for inflation) the most expensive item I've ever purchased. I'm never going to be getting rid of it.
I know that others have the same sentiments. For instance pictured above is the hat of one of my good friends in game. She's had those moose antlers for about 2 ½ years from Onyxia. I know that she'll never get rid of them, and if she did... well, our guild would probably have to gdisband.
There's something nostalgic about keeping around old gear. It provides a memory of "the good old days" when hitting 60 actually meant something. Those old pieces of gear meant that you had accomplished something epic when epics weren't free. Our old epic pieces of gear are a testament to a time when the game was still new and the wilds of Azeroth were really wild.
The days are getting longer and the nights a tad warmer. Now is a good time to go through and clean your house in the typical spring cleaning exercise. It's a good time to do that in Azeroth, too.
For me this entitles a few things with my mounds of inventory items. First, I organize my bank alts. They each are assigned certain categories of items. For instance my first bank alt gets all my gems, raw ore, processed ore, and leather. My second bank alt gets all my enchanting mats, my herbs, reputation items, food, and other tidbits. Now both these alts have been around for about 3 years. In fact, my first bank has a /played time of 10 days at level one.
As a side note having a level one bank alt at ten days really makes me question my sanity...but oh well, on with the article.
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index. About Guild Launch
Guild Launch is a popular site that hosts guild's websites. It's popular because it has advanced forums, integrated wiki's for each guild, easy administration, and lots of space for file storage. It's also not to hard to use, and the free version is pretty good.
How to syndicate WoW Insider on your Guild Launch website
1. Log in as an administrator. 2. In the Site Admin area of your sidebar on the left of the webpage, click "Sidebar Widgets". For me, it's the last option.
3. Choose a widget, in this case an "RSS Feed" widget. You can also specify where you want the widget to go. 4. Click the "Add Widget" button.
5. You'll now see that you've added an RSS Feed to your site's layout. Click the little pencil in the RSS Feed box.
6. Fill in the settings as you see above. 7. Click the "Submit" button.
8. You'll see now that the settings reflect the changes you've made, and you're ready to go! You've just added WoW Insider to your Guild Launch site!
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.
About GuildPortal
GuildPortal is a very popular WoW guild website, and has been around for a long time. Because of that, it's a very mature piece of software, and has lots of ins and outs. It's not the easiest thing to use, and has some notoriety as being difficult at times. It also costs money to use anything but the most basic free features. In fact, RSS syndication, and thus the ability to get WoW Insider syndicated on a GuildPortal site, is part of the pay only package. Because of this, we can only take you half way – right up to where I get an error saying I need to pay.
How to syndicate WoW Insider on your GuildPortal website
1. Login as an administrator. 2. Click on the Control Panel link located at the top of the webpage.
3. Click on the "Site Pages" link located on the left hand side of the webpage.
4. Click on a page, such a "Home".
5. Click on the link named "Add Content" which is located near the top of the webpage, just above all your pages content items.
6. A window will open, asking you to choose what type of content you want to add. Fill it in as pictured above. 7. Click the "Save" button. 8. This is where you'll need to pay for the site for things to work. What you'll want to do next is click the "Edit Content" link of the content you just added. Another window will open up. There, you want to type in the RSS feed URL for WoW Insider, which is http://www.wowinsider.com/rss.xml . After that, you'll be done, and see a WoW Insider feed on your guild's website!
How much would you pay to be guaranteed a Zul'Aman bear mount? Five thousand gold? Ten thousand? If you're Kharmen from the European realm of Talnivarr, you reportedly paid twice that -- according to the forum thread, Kharmen paid 20,000 gold to the guild Torment to take her into Zul'Aman and get her a bear mount from the timed event rewards.
As some players in the thread are saying, the mount isn't actually that hard to get, and in fact, many guilds who can raid fast enough to get it will sell it off for much less. But the more interesting story here is just the sheer amount of money involved. Kharmen says that she farmed the money herself, which may be true, but it seems surprising that players can pass that much money around without raising some eyebrows at Blizzard. Just what does it take to become a suspected gold farmer?
At any rate, Kharmen is thrilled that she got her mount, and supposedly Torment is thrilled that they're funded at least until the expansion (unless I'm completely miscalculating the amount it takes to keep a guild raiding -- just how much money do you need for elixirs and buffs these days?). Spending 20,000 on a mount doesn't sound like anything I'll be doing anytime soon, but then raising all of that money doesn't sound that appetizing either.
Corrosiveaffy on WoW LJ wants to know if there are any good ideas out there for guild ranks, and I can tell her that there are tons. There's the standard "rookie," "officer," "raider," and "veteran," but it seems like some guild ranks are even more creative than the guilds they're named after. I've seen all kinds of stuff, from "larva," "pupae" and "queen," to the old "padawan," "jedi" and "master" mentioned in the comments. One guild I was in way back just had two ranks: most people were "peons," and the GM was the only "king."
Usually it's funniest when they tie into the guild's name somehow -- I like the example of "The Nouns of Adjective" from the LJ comments, where the GM is called the "Pope of Punctuation." I know there are some more excellent ones out there, but whenever people fish around for them, they seem a little hard to come by. What are some of the best guild rank names you've seen?
As scheduled, our good friend Duncor (and his co-host Cadwallion) on WoW Radio's WoW Things Considered podcast sat down for an interview with three guildies from Vis Maior, the guild that's been rolling through the PTR so far. It's a good interview -- Duncor and Cadwallion go through Vis Maior's (not Vis Major) history, how they've moved on to the PTR and begun raiding there, and what they think of the new content.
It's interesting to hear not only from a guild that has been around for a while, but is just now coming into the spotlight. And it's also cool to hear what the GMs are doing for the guilds testing the new content on the PTR -- they've deathtouched trash a few times, and even spawned "flaskators," which are NPCs which will give out consumables and other raiding standbys.
They also tackle the debate of whether "world firsts" actually count on the PTRs. Vis Maior does agree that PTR kills don't necessarily count if they're just being tested, but a world first kill of a "final" version of a boss should count. Duncor and Cad don't press them on this, unfortunately, but I'd disagree -- the only way you know a boss is final is if it is on the live realms, so only live realms should count. Still, Vis Maior sound like a great bunch of people (they sound like they really love to raid, which is always good for a high-end guild), and what they've done so far on the PTRs is definitely impressive. Kudos to them, and nice job to WoW Radio on the interview.
We all deal with them. Their annoying spam, their flooding of the general channels. Those gold sellers deserve the kiss of death. Wouldn't it be nice if their industry just went and slept with the fishes?
In a tactic that even Don Corleone himself would be angry at, gold sellers have sunken to a new low. John M. wrote in to tell us the tale of a fellow guild mate who fell under the gaze of a gold seller who took his account hostage, demanding payment from his guild. Sit back, open up a new window with this Godfather music, and read on after the break.
Yesterday my guild was getting ready for our nightly foray into the Black Temple (we downed the first five bosses in 3 ½ hours, not too bad). Out of the blue, a member who has been having some "issues" as of late decided it was high time to leave the guild. And he didn't just stealth gquit, he went out in style.
LFG Armory
We've all done it. You're sitting there, grinding away, minding your own business. Or (more likely) you're in a city, leveling up a profession or selling some things at the AH. And then, over the world chat it comes: "Can anyone 
Like 
The dust has settled on most of the servers, and the 
Lileah over on WoW LJ has an interesting idea that I've never thought of before. Well, her guild does -- she 
The days are getting longer and the nights a tad warmer. Now is a good time to go through and clean your house in the typical spring cleaning exercise. It's a good time to do that in 
How much would you pay to be guaranteed 
Corrosiveaffy on WoW LJ wants to know if there are 
We all deal with them. Their annoying spam, their flooding of the general channels. Those 
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