Inside Higher Ed was pretty much the last place I ever expected to see a serious article on World of Warcraft. The study of MMORPG's isn't really part of mainstream academia (...yet), so imagine my surprise at finding an article comparing effective raid leading to teaching. Alex Golub, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii, contributed an article on his guild's attempts to kill Kael'thas pre-patch.

Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Or motivate 24 other people to do so!

For many guilds, raiding is in a bit of a lull at the moment, with far more focus on the future rather than the present. One of the things that can keep raiding life interesting is to try out different things; play an alt, try a weird setup, revisit old content...

How about a slightly different challenge? Something that will stretch your ability to multitask, to communicate, to deal with people; it'll try your patience but provide immeasurable rewards when that patience pays off.

No, I don't mean running for an election. I'm talking about raid leading.

All the World's a Stage returns today to shine a brutal but loving eye on the intricacies of roleplay. We do this by looking at the craft of roleplay itself, and the people who love it. We might not be ready for Jerry Springer, but we're pretty sure this week's column is going to have a little debate behind it. Michael Gray fills in this week for David Bowers, and talks about letting roleplay exclude some other forms of play in the World of Warcraft.

We're not a big Guild. All told, we probably have about twenty to twenty five people who come online at various times to talk, chat, and play together. We have some structure, but we're mostly a motley of friends who hang out. Our raiding effort takes place because our raid leaders woke up one day and said "By Wrath of the Lich King, we're going to be able to progress in ten man content."

We're also a roleplay-ish kind of Guild. I say "ish" because we're not full immersion players. We have some light story notions. For example, I have the vague idea that our raid's main healer is the son of our raid's main tank -- that's mostly because they're the same human model, but one has light blonde hair, and the other has old, graying hair.

So, when we come across folks into the roleplay and immersion a little more than we are, we're sometimes not quite sure what to make of it.

-Matticus

It was inevitable, it had to happen. Someday, the legendary bow, Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury would be handed over to a Rogue. It so happens this fantastic weapon dropped to the Vicarious guild of Area 52. Analogkid was awarded the bow in the company of two Hunters. Needless to say the Hunters are upset, and the post brought about an outcry from many posters along with a considerable amount of drama. Many believe that this bow belongs in the hands of Hunters, regardless of the situation.

Larisa over at The Pink Pigtail Inn mused on an interesting question the other day: Should you pay for the wipes you cause? Her feeling is not only that you shouldn't, but that the mere fact of offering to pay is offensive to her, like offering hush-money or a bribe. Instead, she says, apologize quickly and confess what you did so that others can learn from your mistakes.

I agree with the idea of the mistake-maker apologizing and confessing immediately. This technique also works in real life situations. (I wish it was heeded more often in politics, too.) Further, I vigorously disapprove of ham-fisted reactions from over-zealous raid leaders or guild leaders. Overreacting by /gkicking people (as one of the commenters related) in normal guilds is completely ridiculous. (If you joined a guild who wants to make world's firsts or server-firsts, then you know what you're getting into.) If you are the raid leader then you need to take responsibility for the team you put on the floor. In life, work, politics, and gaming, the buck stops with leadership. Leaders need to pick the right team and remind people who they know are not as experienced or strong in the particular raid situation about tactics, strategy, and common mistakes. Or else they need to chill the heck out. In fact, from a certain point of view, it's not the person who caused the wipe who should pay repair bills: it's the raid leader.

Other commenters on Larisa's post offered different payment plan ideas. One suggested a tax on all the loot acquired in the raid. Another suggested that before the raid even begins, raiders should pay an ante to participate, thereby socializing the costs of what might happen. Of course, there is the ever-popular solution of letting the guild pay for repairs afterwards, too. But as another commenter pointed out, repair bills and buff flasks for a 25-man raid can run a guild nearly 400G per run. My feeling is that as long as everyone goes into the raid knowing those taxes are being imposed, it sounds like a fine idea. Or, realizing that mistakes are going to be made, even by the most experienced and savvy players, we could all act like we realize that raising gold is as much a part of the game as raiding, questing, or grinding, and suck up our own repair bills, regardless of who caused the wipe.

[Via The Pink Pigtail Inn]

After the 20th Supremus kill the game can get a tad boring. There's no doubt about it. Raiders know well that you have to spice things up to keep it fun. One way to do that is to have a lively bunch of people you raid with. With them things can get "interesting" at times. The fellow officers and I in my guild have decided to make things interesting by betting on the number of people that will die during Supremus.

For some reason Supremus always manages to kill a few too many people. Not too many that we can't one-shot him, but enough that it makes you scratch your head. No one dies on Illidan, Council, etc... but Supremus? Run for the hills!

So to keep the fight interesting someone picks a number, say nine. That number is "the line." Myself and a couple others will take under the line, and a couple others will take over. If less then nine people die, each of us gets 20g. If more than nine die the other folks get 20g each.

Is betting against the raid like this a good thing?

Everyone reading this site knows that it's pretty important to read strategies for the various boss encounters in WoW. No matter if they're from Boss Killers, our own Ready Check, long threads over at Elitist Jerks, or home made modifications, studying boss fights outside of the game is essential to success.

However sometimes it's kind of hard to tell if everyone is actually spending the 15 minutes to read over and understand the strategies outside of the raid. This is particularly troublesome for the raid leaders and officers, since some of the fights can be very hard to explain without first having an understanding of where and what things look like.

We're having this problem in our guild right now. Not that big of a problem, granted, but it's still something we'd like to get better at. So last night our guild master made a map of the Kalecgos play field, detailing where everyone should stand (I know that some readers will comment that it's not necessary, but it's what works for us). In the bottom right hand corner there's a derogatory yet funny message about yours truly, something along the lines of a suggested act I can go do to/with myself. It's obvious, it's funny, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Tonight the GM will go around and ask each of the 35 or so raiders we have in the guild, "What was out of place on the strategy map I posted today?" If they can't answer correctly, they won't be raiding with us again anytime soon.

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

A few weeks ago, my first and most important suggestion for casual raiding guilds was to find a committed raid leader. These days, however, good raid leaders are even rarer than good tanks. The author of this week's e-mail asks, What do you do if your guild doesn't have anyone willing to be the RL?

Dear Scott,

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

OK, guys, here it is: the column you've all been begging me to write. If e-mail had weight, I'd have approximately 1.5 tons of it about how to take a casual guild into the raiding endgame. You want to know how to motivate people, which I've covered, how to keep it from getting too "hardcore," which I've also already covered, and how to succeed where so many others have failed. It's that last bit I'm going to focus on. Since so many have written in about this, I'm not going to quote any particular person's e-mail. So I'll just say this to all who wrote me: Thank you for reading the column and having faith in me that I can explain it. We'll see if that faith was well placed or not!

Very early in patch 2.4's progressive development on the PTR, the ability to send raid icons over chat was implemented. The syntax is pretty simple, you place the name of the icon in those funny looking brackets, like so: {circle}, {star}, etc.

Personally, I'm not too terribly excited, it's not something you'll be typing on the fly, probably. I can't really see a Mage or Warlock(or anybody) taking the extra time to type that out properly when something goes wrong(ie death), as simple as it seems to do so. However, this could be a good tool for raid leaders, not so much the raiders. A raid leader could include these in a tanking/crowd control assignment macro. "/ra Matthew, tank {skull}. Christian, sheep {square}." That sort of thing.

Regardless of how often this will actually be used, it's a nice little feature, and I'm sure post-2.4 mods and addons will make good use of them, even if the players themselves don't.