Cold Comfort

Guild Management and Leadership in WoW

Archive for May, 2009

It’s Raining EP

May 28

Posted by Karatheya in Guild Management | No Comments

If you’ve read my article about EP/GP, you know that one of the benefits of the EP/GP system is that you can award EP pretty freely without corrupting the system.  While the same can be said of merit based (but not zero-sum) DKP systems, the amounts you can award are limited because they represent direct purchasing power within the system.  If you award 10 DKP for a raid, then every 1 DKP you award for a bonus is 10% of the purchasing power that a member gains from a raid.

EP/GP is different because while awarding EP does increase your PR, it doesn’t increase your purchasing power by the same amount.  The actual increase in your purchasing power depends on your GP value as well as the size of the bonus compared to the EP you get in a normal raid.  Because EP/GP allows you to easily use large numbers for EP rewards, this gives you a lot of flexibility in how you award EP bonuses.

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/ignore Guildie

May 25

Posted by Karatheya in Guild Management | No Comments

ignore /ignore Guildie

A long time ago, I was fed up with the verbal diarrhoea that constantly spewed out from the husband of a friend in my guild.  It wasn’t crass, it was just idiotic drivel, and it.never.stopped.

In the end, I had to /ignore him to keep my sanity on that particular raid.  That worked just fine until a few days later, when I wanted to talk to said friend but couldn’t find her online.  I whispered her husband, whose response was promptly blocked by “… is ignoring you”.

Oops

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No, it’s *not* the tank’s fault

May 24

Posted by Karatheya in Ranting | 1 Comment

aggro i has it No, its *not* the tanks faultI’m looking at you, Mr. 4k dps ret paladin.

There’s a difference between being DPS in a group with an undergeared tank and an unskilled tank. Read the rest of this entry »

Clarity of Purpose

May 21

Posted by Karatheya in Cold Comfort, Guild Management | No Comments

It is important for a guild to know what it’s purpose is.

Are you a casual guild, who only seeks to raid when people happen to be online?  Are you a hardcore raiding guild, with strict attendance requirements?  Are you something in between?

Whatever you choose: know what it is, be able to articulate it, and stick with it.

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The Myth of Consensus

May 11

Posted by Karatheya in Guild Management | No Comments

Wonder Guild Powers, Activate!

Wonder Guild Powers, Activate!

One of the mistakes I’ve fallen into in the past is assuming that consensus among the members is a vital part of leading a guild.

The question is this: on the whole, do guild members want to be involved in the decision making process?  I want to say the answer is yes, but experience says that I’ve got it wrong.

This is not to say that people don’t care about change, or that they don’t want to be told about changes.  It just seems that people don’t get as invested in the hows of guild leadership as I wish they would.

This started me thinking about whether consensus building is a good idea in a guild or not. Read the rest of this entry »

All About EP/GP

May 7

Posted by Karatheya in Best Practices, Guild Management | 11 Comments

This is a slightly edited version of a post about EP/GP that I did for my guild’s forums.  Since I seem to have done this several times in the last few months, I figured I’d post it here so I can point people to it in the future.

EP/GP is a loot distribution system that tries to do the same thing as most DKP systems (fair loot based on effort put out and gear already received), but without all the horrible mucking about with out-of-game DKP websites.

But What If I Hate Reading?

TLDR people: go download this addon: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/epgp-dkp-reloaded.aspx so you can see the standings and how much GP items are worth.

TLDR people who can’t be assed to install an addon: do nothing, but don’t whinge if you don’t understand what’s going on come raid time.

For those who want the full scoop, read the rest of this post as well as the EP/GP wiki

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The Noble Wendigo

May 4

Posted by Karatheya in Off-Topic | No Comments

creature9shot0 The Noble Wendigo

When I first saw the Wendigo (or Ice Yeti as they tend to be called in game), I really thought there’d be more of them in the quest lines of Northrend.

So far though, I’ve killed them for their manes, beat one of them up while he was chained to a post, pretended to be another’s mate so I could kill him, and woken another up with the promise of food, just to kill him as well.  Read the rest of this entry »