Following as a Skill

In a game where "skill" is often measured by putting in the most time and having the most hardcore net of accomplishments, I have always worried that I am on a lower skill bracket than others in my guild. After all, I spend the majority of my time obsessing over cute pets, pretty dresses, and holidays instead of pwning the hardest heroics for emblems and giggles.

Saturday, my family got a guild first: the Impossible Achievement that made a noob DK trash-talk a tank friend. After jubilant cheering (and a 10 minute afk where I baked a few celebratory cookies), we finished the other achievements for Azjol-Nerub and moved straight to Zombiefest.

I had never done Heroic AN and had never done Culling of Stratholme in any form. In fact, my shadow priest wore level 71 green boots and mostly 70 epics except for a holy tier 7 chest, 80 rings, and some Naxx 10 gloves.

Anyone with any sense will know that I couldn't have been carried through the Impossible Achievement (aka Watch Him Die). We had only two working dps, me and Jon's wife, while my husband tanked, his best friend off-tanked, and Jon healed.

I have always regretfully thought of myself on a lower skill bracket than certain others in my guild -- people who had grouped together to try that very same achievement and failed.

But the reason we got that achievement and they didn't isn't extra practice (those guys wiped for hours) or better gear (they regularly top the dps charts).

My theory is that we succeeded because my family group is a team.

We leveled to 70 together. We've met to do instances every Sunday since we started playing WoW. We know how to move together, how to coordinate, how each of us will react in a certain situation, how to give out assignments for each person's strengths and weaknesses.

Our family group has two officers and two former officers, and nobody steps on anyone else's toes. The theorycrafters in our group contribute to boss strategy, reading and tweaking and making suggestions. Whenever one person speaks, everyone listens. The non-theorycrafters tend to limit suggestions to our own roles, the occasional tweak, and just ask that someone tell us where to stand and what to kill; however, I also think we have one of the most important skills any player can possess -- the ability to follow.

A leader can communicate orders to a team with forethought and detail, but the entire effort is wasted if no one can execute those orders accurately. If everyone in a group wants to lead, nothing will ever get done. A good raid -- a good guild! -- must have people willing and able to follow to be successful, just as it must have those willing and able to lead.

Individual skill becomes pointless in a group effort if the individual cannot find synergy with everyone else. Like the worldwide arena tournament, where the US teams had been slapped together using excellent individual players, but the (Korean) winners had been playing together for years. It makes a difference.

And I think that while there are admirable players in my guild who could beat me in PVP and on the dps meters every single time, their 5-mans could never beat my family group for sheer teamliness.

Not that that's a word. But it makes me happy to finally know -- I'm not a scrub. :D And with the right environment, I might even be called . . . skilled.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer of In Vino Veritas.
She is a writer and avid blogger.
Beth plays WoW primarily for her Sunday Family Time.

Disconnects and Loot

I've blogged about pug raids before, about unexpected loot issues and the ethics of kicking people. This is a different scenario.

You're the leader (and Master Looter) of a 25-man Arch pick-up-group.

Someone disconnects right before the boss and comes back just before he goes down.

Do they get loot?

Your gut answer is probably no, but think about it in light of these questions:

Are they taking advantage?

Unless you know that they are, you don't have the right to say yes. It's definitely not the best way to pull one over on a raid, since people can see your character standing there doing nothing (or get dropped from the group).

I give everyone the benefit of the doubt for disconnects unless they're a known ninja. It's not fair to screw someone out of their 25-man id for the week because of something they can't control.

What have they done for the raid?

In my case, the disconnect guy had summoned everyone for two raids and helped on the trash. He'd apologized in our 10-man for being late because of bad lag when another player didn't apologize for being late because of AV (and got a summon from the guy who'd flown through major lag).

How well do you know them?

This is not about favoritism. It's, very simply, whether or not you know this person well enough to stand behind them when they say it was an accident.

My Situation

I led 10 guildies and 15 pick-ups into Arch. We pulled a little early, the rogue who pulled died, he apologized in a whisper, I told him "No big."

We downed the boss juuust after he enraged.

I immediately get two whispers and a few comments in raid chat: "Warlock didn't do anything, don't give him loot."

Warlock is a friend. He summoned everyone, he'd been having bad lag all day, and I'd noticed he'd been disconnected (gone grey) at one point.

I replied to the whispers, "He's a friend, he d/c'd, I'll talk to him." Whisperers remained adamant that he didn't do anything when he came back, either. I was sure this was just continued lag but didn't say so.

I whispered Warlock, one of my guild's sweetest kids, and said: "Some people will be upset if you roll since you d/c'd. I won't keep you from rolling, but it might be best if you pass." He agreed. Happily, the other warlock was also in our guild (an officer) and we were both glad to see him get the warlock piece.

The part I know a lot of people won't agree with is "I won't keep you from rolling." But think about it. Even if he was a pug, he blew his entire afternoon waiting on and summoning other people, he saved himself to 25-man Arch, and for what? To get passed over for loot?

This is a weird situation because it brings different philosophies firmly to a head. Many people do not see it as fair to give loot to someone who doesn't participate -- or even to keep someone in the group who doesn't do the best dps (see kicking link above). But I do not see it as fair to punish someone for technical difficulties. Forget how helpful he was with the summons -- it just isn't right to reject people for loot based on performance.

If someone is good enough to get in your raid, they're good enough to roll on loot. This has always been my philosophy. If I let someone in my raid, I have a duty to protect that person's interests, guildie or not. I was prepared to stand behind him and take crap if he wanted to roll, and I hope I would have done the same if he'd been a pug.

Because that's what good leaders do. Stand there and take crap for making controversial decisions in the name of fairness.

What preventative measures can you take?

Kick anyone who disconnects during a boss fight.

This is not a punishment. It's preventing them from getting saved to a raid they won't get loot from, and it allows them to try again later for loot, which is fair to everyone. If they come back and you haven't filled their spot and you're about to try the boss again, bring them back in. If the boss is dead, apologize for the necessity, give your reasoning, and hand out loot while you're talking.

This requires that you be aware of what's going on in your raid panel during the fight, so you might want to have a trusted Assist to kick disconnects (I was healing, it wouldn't have been possible). Sometimes people look disconnected when they're moving and doing their job, so it requires an attentive mind to pay attention to this sort of scenario.

It's harder than a simple "No loot for u!" But it's guaranteed to be fair.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer of In Vino Veritas.
She's a writer and hates leading pugs (but often has to).
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Cliques -- The Little Family in a Big Family Disconnect

Family Guilds are aptly but deceptively named. While it's true that a number of my actual blood-related family members are members of In Vino Veritas, it is also true that the guild itself has become a second family to me. The foundation of our guild was real-life family and friends but we have grown far beyond these restrictive borders to include those with little more than a common vision and a love for gaming. This subtle but definite shift from "family" as persons with whom a real-life bond or blood or friendship is shared to "family" as the guild itself, inclusive of all its members, has been occassionally problematic.

The conflict between these two understandings of the "family" in Family Guild has been more apparent to me in my role as an officer. There are those within the guild who, to some degree or another, still cling to their real-life connections within the guild and almost exclusively instance and PvP with that close-knit group of individuals. There are others who hold that such cliquish behavior is harmful to a view of the guild as one big "family" and therefore frown upon those who reserve their in-game time for their real-life friends or family. This is the tension I want to discuss with you.

People join family guilds because they are looking for family -- whether they're following joining their older brother's guild or looking for a community that provides a safe, family-friendly atmosphere for playing World of Warcraft. If they were looking for anything else, they'd join THAT type of guild. I've said it before, but it bears repeating -- raiders belong in raiding guilds, PvPers belong in PvP guilds, socialites belong in social guilds and family belongs in (you guessed it) a family guild. In fact, it's been commented upon by multiple persons on multiple occassions that a significant portion of my guild would not be playing World of Warcraft if it were not for In Vino Veritas. The commenters have ranged from our most dedicated raid leaders to folks that do little more than hang out in Dalaran chatting with people. They remain with us and with the game because we are family -- and that's what they desire most from this virtual environment.

People join family guilds to be part of a family, but that rarely means they view every member of the guild exactly the same way. It's impossible to have an intimate relationship with 3 to 4 dozen people. It just can't be done. Every member of IVV has some connecting point -- the person(s) through whom they were brought into the guild. That connecting point likely has their own connecting point(s) and that forms a social network that is in some way connected to the rest of the guild. The issue that many seem to neglect is that the further you branch away from that initial connecting point the less connected you feel. We all form cliques -- small groups within a larger group -- but to keep within the metaphor of the family, I would suggest that in a healthy family guild the "cliques" are not seperatist sects but members of nuclear families connected to one another in various ways to form "The Family."

Like any healthy family tree, it branches. I'm understandably closer to my sister than to my mother's cousins. No one looks upon that as odd... or offensive... they see it as normal. Proximity breeds familiarity. There is nothing wrong with being part of a smaller, more intimate group of friends. Being a part of such a group does not exclude you from the larger group. In terms of the family metaphor, getting married and moving out of my parents' house doesn't make me any less their son. It only means that I've branched out. I'm still part of The Family (big "F") even though I've started my own family (little "f"). Don't let anyone make you feel guilty for being a part of your family. It's natural, good and right for you to spend more time with your immediate family than you do with your extended Family. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone complain to the effect of "You only spend time with your wife and sister and brothers-in-law!" Well... DUH! While the claim isn't patently true, I do spend more time with those people... and I think it appropriate that I do so. In fact, it would be unhealthy if I didn't.

That said, I want to extend a warning to those who have become so comfortable in their immediate families (the cliques) that they are neglecting their extended family (the guild). Not everyone has strong, unbreakable ties to your guild. This is particularly true of those who have weak real-life connections to the guild. The adopted cousin might not feel as at home as the natural-born son. While I would urge you not to let others make you feel guilty for being part of a group within the group, I would also encourage you to continue to draw others into your group, particularly the disenfranchised. They may become a part of your inner-circle or your outreach may serve as a catalyst for introducing them to a different group that they fit in better with.

We are family -- both in the most intimate sense and in the broadest possible sense.

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Jon Blevins is an officer of In Vino Veritas.
He's a pastor, husband, gamer and hopeless romantic.
He lives in Minnesota, birthplace of flapjacks.

Needs vs Wants

A while back, there was a bit of hooplah in IVV about people asking for or not giving help. The base problem was availability but also interpretation -- people are less likely to help with a Want than a Need.

• Instances while leveling are a Want. You do not need instances to level. If you are lucky enough to have someone willing to run you through something, that's awesome. Otherwise, suck it up.
• Heroics are a little different. Need depends on gear drops in light of raid requirements and whether or not you can find a comparable piece elsewhere (craft/rep) that is soloable. Everything else, even emblem farming, is Want. If all you need is emblems, be available for other people's runs, but you don't have the right to badger 4 other people to go somewhere specific.
• Achievements are Wants. Sorry, folks. I like achievements as much as anyone, but nobody is going to feel pressured to stop doing dailies to help kill turkeys or even, as one (now former) IVV member expected, form a fresh raid to kill the faction leaders.
• Mount, pet, and rep farming are Wants. I like cosmetic items and nice high reps too, but they are a luxury, not a right.
• PVP is a Need when you're camped and have no options but to sit there. If you have a choice in the matter, it's a Want. You aren't entitled to backup if you can get away.
  
• Activities suggested out of boredom are not and will never be Needs. They are Wants. Period.
• Class skills are a Need. It's pretty hard to do anything if you're working with level 44 spells in Outland.
  
• Riding skill is a Want. I'm in Outlands on a 60% speed mount on Moon Guard for my mage. If I can handle that, you can handle the slow flyer.

Managing Wants

Your guild gets more use out of the guy doing his Hodir dailies for the shoulder enchant than your Wants. Therefore, it's actually more beneficial to the guild when people ignore Want requests.

Family guilds inevitably try to help each other within reason. But Wants are luxuries. If you get help for them, you are lucky and should be very happy for all the nice helpful people around you. But it is unreasonable to think that you are entitled to help for your Wants. You are not.

The best method is to find other people with Wants and team up. Even if your Wants don't mesh, agree to help each other anyway. This gives you the numbers you need, even if you have to do some things you have no interest in.

Managing Needs

If you Need something, make that clear to the people around you. Don't just say "I need this," either. That's sloppy, lazy, and not at all persuasive.

If you have a Need, first tell people why you need it. "I want to run X" will get you ignored while "X has the bow I've been farming to raise my dps by Y points for Z raid boss" will get some interested people going "Well, I can't help now, but if you can wait until ___..." and others ready to jump on the bandwagon immediately (often those with Wants in the same area). The first request implies that it is a Want request, while the second assures everyone that your request is a Need because you've done your homework on it.

A good guild will go out of its way to fulfill your Needs if you let everyone know about them. A method my guildmates use sometimes is putting their current Need in their forum signature. Another good way is to whisper someone who has connections (for example, whispering me or Jon would be a good way to get a group for a Need, since we have family connections we can pull in).

Most Needs can be handled solo, but at some point you'll require the help of others. And when that time comes, you must convince them that your Need is really a Need. And then they'll pay attention to you.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer of In Vino Veritas.
She's a writer and likes to help with mount farming.
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Think Well of Me

Everyone has someone whose good opinion they desire. You probably want a positive relationship with your parents, children, friends, or coworkers, but every now and then you care about the opinions of people you shouldn't -- like a girl from my high school who tried to hang out with the popular kids in choir, but the popular kids just made fun of her; women who stay with abusive men; or players who choose to idolize others, regardless of personality, just for having the best gear.

It is almost impossible to stop caring what others think once you start, and it makes you try harder to be what you think they want. The only way to be completely out from under your own feelings is to stop caring altogether -- shut down and even get angry and convince yourself they're not worth it. Go on defense.

Except that it is normal and natural to care what others think. To not care about anyone is sociopathy. So the key, to me, isn't some hard emotional shell but learning to respect the opinions of people who will treat you with respect, who will build you up instead of tear you down.

A player should not stay with a guild, no matter how badly he or she wants its good opinion, if the guild does not offer (and defend) a healthy and respectful atmosphere.

Recognize destructive patterns. If you find yourself always craving the good opinions of people who hurt you, reroute your energy to getting to know different people. As you should very well know, appearances can be deceiving -- I saw a guy in the elevator who looked like he played Warcraft and thought "I'm dressed so normal, he probably thinks I'm one of those boring people who doesn't even know what DPS means."

Acknowledge your appearance. My mother is an image consultant, so I grew up knowing the perfect colors for my skin and hair. I had a distant affection for the kids who wore big boots, wallet chains, and black clothing to school, but as a preacher's kid I had little leeway to indulge in edgy fashion.

Growing up in a church-saturated environment with a beauty expert mom and a sort of quiet oddness, I've always known that appearances, whether it's green hair or green starter gear, force people to make assumptions about you. You can hate this all you wish, but it is a fact of life.

Now, most of you would never consider changing your RL style just to be "more accepted," yet we do change for people whose opinions matter to us. We let them talk us into getting better gear, farming mats, and we work harder because they encourage us to and improve our gear because we don't want to be the last one in greens when a Tier 8 walks by. We get self-conscious despite ourselves.

Give others a chance. A defensive nature may protect you from harm, but it also prevents real relationships from forming. Yes, if you're different people will pigeon-hole you the first chance they get, but a warm smile goes a long way toward saying "I might not look normal but I'm still a nice person."

Like Jon's post about saying hi -- sometimes it's those of us who are different who need to take the first friendly step. Differences can be intimidating, and there's nothing more reassuring than finding out that the orc in all epics is willing to sit and chat for a while about class mechanics, or the huge guy in homeroom with the tattoos is just a big teddy bear. Or even that the mom blaring heavy metal when she drops her girls off at school just wants to see them grow up happy, self-confident, and free.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.
She's a writer and cares too much what others think.
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.

Greetings! The Importance of Saying Hi

Greeting your guildmates is one small step toward founding, fostering and maintaining good relationships. Saying "Hello" or "Good Morning" makes people feel personally welcomed and acknowledged. The word "personally" is the operative word there. A relationship-building greeting needs to be more than just a recognition of the person's presence, it ought to be sincere and personal rather than general.

Often it's only those who say "Hi" who get a greeting in response. These guildies tend to be well-known and well-liked because they are seen as friendly. Why? Merely because they take the time to greet their fellow guildmates. You can start new friendships and build upon existing ones simply by taking the time to say hello. It's a simple concept, but you might be surprised how effective it is in practice.

"The Greeting" is an excellent time to use (and learn) a person's real name. Saying "Good morning, George" conveys a significantly more intimate greeting than simply "Good morning". This can be difficult if your guild does not actively support the use of given names over character names. IVV uses a simple method that ensures you never have to slight someone by misremembering their name (see suggestions below), but even if your guild isn't prepared to take that step you can utilize tools already in Warcraft to achieve the same result.

If you don't already have it active, turn on your Guild Member Alert, located in your Interface options under Social. This may create some mild chat spam, but it means you'll be able to keep tabs on your guildies and interact with them in more meaningful ways than you would if you only noticed them when they happened to talk in Guild Chat.


Talk to your officers about adding a person's real-life name in the Public Note section of their character profile (accessible via Guild in the Social tab).


You can create your own notes by means of your Friends List. Click the small "note" icon to the left of each Friend's name and add his or her real name and any other pertinent information in the space provided. This will give you a quick-check reference for remembering the names of your guildmates. The only downsides compared with #2 are that you have to fill up your Friends list with guildmates (not such a bad thing, really) and you have to be willing to ask the player his or her name before you can add it to the note.

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Jon Blevins is an officer of In Vino Veritas.

He's a pastor, husband, gamer and gourmet coffee lover.

He lives in Minnesota, the state that elected a pro-wrestler governor.

Playing for Yourself

Last Sunday, I found myself caught in a spiral of trying to make everyone happy but myself.

Before Wrath's release I chose to go Inscription for the cosmetic druid form glyphs and for the extra glyph slot, both of which never arrived. I also chose it to be an asset to my guild -- as did 5 young men, each more enterprising than myself. Sunday, I realized that even the one positive about Inscription, the shoulder enchant, didn't matter -- the rep grind it would save me is Sons of Hodir, who have a tailoring pattern at Exalted I'm determined to get.

When I was an officer, I served with several men who felt passionately about raiding, and I got it into my head that by not helping 25 man raiding, I was not helping my guild (unpatriotic). So when Wrath arrived and Teo asked for more holy priests, I volunteered to go holy at 80. Sunday, I realized I'm unable to do 25-mans because they're late at night and I just got my schedule fixed (from getting up at 1pm with late night raiding to getting up at 8am with no raiding). Not doing 25's, from my experience with IVV's more hardcore members, means I felt massive amounts of guilt and failure, even though I personally prefer 10's.

It's easy to pressure me into doing things I don't want to, which is why I hate when others beg and badger in guild chat -- it makes me frazzled, guilty, and frustrated. Sunday, with Alliance swarming over the daily areas so I couldn't do the quest chains to open up useful rep (and, in the process, ding 80), I gave in to doing things other people wanted but that I had little interest in.

The entire day filled with disappointment, failure, and the realization that I push myself to give to others and neglect my own needs.

You read this and you think "Well, that's dumb. It's a game, you should have fun."

This line of thinking is wrong.

It is fun to me to be useful. The pain came when I realized how much I'm not useful. No, I don't want to be useful doing menial tasks for others or being harassed to heal heroics all the time, but I do enjoy filling needs when I'm available (i.e. not doing my own thing) and in the mood to do heroics; or signing heals for a raid in a spec the raid needs; or offering my skills in a helpful profession.

The problem that I realized was I can't fill the guild's need as a healer in 25-mans, and my profession is . . . well, useless. I don't even enjoy it, and I've wasted hundreds of herbs (i.e. gold) leveling it.

And I'm so busy helping others and trying to hit 80, I haven't had time to farm any of the 1 in 1000 droprate pets I'm dying to collect (or, omgitssopretty, the 1 in 5000 purple parrot). I want a phoenix so badly, I don't dare raise my roll against anyone for any other mount, though I'm not sure we'd even have enough dedicated people to farm it if we tried.

Sunday was a pile of horribleness, compounded by people saying cynical or discouraging things, my brother getting camped, and the experience bar that kept shouting "You can get me to 80 in 3 hours, what are you waiting for?" while Alliance scurried below like ants (six of them, and if you're not on a PVP server, I'll explain -- even if only one of the six attacked, it is PVP code that if I fought back the others would be forced to help whether they agreed with him for starting it or not).

I spent the rest of Sunday out of the game, regaining my equilibrium, and came to the following conclusions:

Do what you love. There was really no way I could have known how disappointing Inscription would be, and I still don't mind being holy, even if it's just for 10's.

Find a way to help that makes you happy. I love mount farming runs, and I'm secretly trying to work up karma points with the people around me so they'll all pass the phoenix to me if we ever get around to farming it. I also enjoy fishing and cooking, so I take pleasure in preparing raid buffs for guildmates, even if I can't see those buffs in 25-man action.

Don't overhelp. I care about mount farming, and I do want to heal heroics for people, but I draw the line at "I'm bored" activities as well as attunement runs. I have other things I'd rather do, and I can't even participate in everything that is important and urgent. My sister-in-law advised me to do what she does and ignore every "Want to do something" request that doesn't involve a whisper directly to her. I'm not sure if I can swing it, but I'll definitely try.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.
She's a writer and way too easy to talk into things.
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.