The Offseason
Friday, August 15th, 2008
Is being a sports fan similar to playing World of Warcraft? No. But having seasonal duration hobbies is!
Some GM Advice
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
I read a great article over at the excellent Chick GM about officer leadership styles and what makes a good officer. It made me think about what I valued in GMs and officers, and what I learned as GM.
It took me a long time to come up with my online leadership style, and longer still to identify pieces of what I was actually trying to accomplish. I’ve been a leader in multiple non-game places, but the MMORPG space is different. My guild suffered a bit while I learned, but eventually I got the hang of it. When it was time for me to hand the reins over, I came up with a list of directives and shared it with the subsequent GMs of my guild.
Guilds are not Businesses
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Guilds in these online games are completely voluntary, at-will organizations of people. This creates a strange dynamic when it comes to leading.
When I was GM, a good friend of mine in the guild–we’ll call him Angus–was excellent at leading groups and raids. He wasn’t shy about grabbing a couple of our more passive guildmates and making good things happen like attunement requirements, gear upgrades, and all the rest. In real life, Angus is a confident leader who runs his own business, with employees. His company is successful! I thought, “Wow, he’d be a great officer, maybe even GM!” So he got the nod as officer, and while he was gruff at times, he proved a great asset to the guild.
Over time, I learned that Angus had really been eager to take a shot at leading the guild. We frequently had open conversations among the officers regarding whose turn to lead was coming. So eventually, Angus got the nod.
The problem–and it took months for us to learn this–is that his ability to lead a successful for-profit business involves a completely different skill set than leading a successful voluntary, at-will organization. Angus turned out to be a good boss, but not a great leader.
Maximum Performance Isn’t Always Maximum Fun
Friday, July 11th, 2008
This is a thought in progress. A little rambling.
My wife is a combat rogue. Always has been. When she joined the game she fell in love with being a rogue, and she asked what the highest damage version of rogue was. I went off to the internets, and came back with the answer: Combat Sword build. So that’s what she chose. When we got to the endgame, she did the most damage in our 40-person raids, virtually every raid. She gave the other dps people fits. (although she never spammed damagemeters) She flourished in that role.
When TBC was released, the raiding game was suspended and everyone is back to the beautiful leveling game for a while. In TBC leveling, there are quest daggers given throughout the leveling process, with rogues in mind. She thought, “why not experiment?” and then rebuilt as Combat Daggers.
Guess what? Combat Daggers is simply more fun to play than combat swords. Managing position and Backstab is more fun than mashing Sinister Strike x1000. To non-rogues, I’m sure this sounds like a minor distinction. It sounded that way to me, and I told her so.
Max level does not mean Skilled
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
(Related post: Raiding does not mean Skilled)
World of Warcraft, and every game like it, is really two different games. I first read this thought at Penny Arcade (can’t find where because their search function is weak). Basically, you have the levelling game where you start at L1 and then play until max level (currently L70), and then the game that happens after the levelling game, which is filled with group activities of all sorts as you improve your max level character.
Not Pushing the Button
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
I’m a healer. I have other toons: a raid-ready tank that I love to play, a couple of decent dps toons. But in my heart, I love being a healer.
I’ve recently realized that people who are annoying tend to die more often in raids where I’m healing.
For example, my guild’s current offtank is as annoying as hell. He’s the living example of the Dunning-Kruger effect… I could go into great depth, and I very well might in a future piece, but suffice to say that there is often an undercurrent of private tells deriding him during every raid he participates in. However, our guild is like a family, and he’s the weird cousin who makes it to every cookout. His availability is decent, he’s not completely terrible at his class/role, and he tries to be friendly even if he lacks the social skills to pull it off. But there are all-too-frequent occasions where I wish I had a button I could push that gives him an anonymous electrical jolt in his real-life chair.
Actually, as it turns out, there’s a little button that I don’t push that does the same thing. It’s actually a series of buttons, each of them bound to healing spells. He dies more than average.
