Okay, so by starting off with “trolling” in the title, you’re probably expecting some kind of subtle guide to how to troll the official forums, or maybe how to avoid some of the worst drama. But when I use the term trolling, I’m speaking to the base root meaning: how to inspire a reaction. In our case, how do you inspire a roleplay reaction from the people around you?

The basic idea here is that in order to ferment roleplay, you have to start it yourself somehow. You can’t simply expect to walk into Mordor all in-character and hoss with your well-thought-out plans and storylines, expecting to find a town full of roleplayers. No, my friend, you’re usually going to have to get it started yourself. Let’s just assume that “if you RP it, they will come.” Once you get the roleplay started, you’ll find other roleplayers showing up around you.

There’s two main avenues for you to create roleplay around yourself. First, you can use emote spam. This can be annoying if you overdo it, but I will try and explain some ways that emotes can be inviting to other roleplayers, without turning into a passive-aggressive emo fest. Second, in-character speech in parties and raids will take you a long way. It functions like emotes, but speech has its own pitfalls to avoid.

Jump behind the cut and let’s chat about how you can be a successful roleplay troll.

The Emote

The first method I brought up was emote spam. The trick to this method is avoiding the annoying, self-aggrandizing kind of emote, but still publicizing the informative, roleplay based emote. I once referred to this subtle method of trolling as being similar to emitting “roleplay pheremones.” If you get the method right, your fellow RPers will recognize your inclinations, and respond in kind.

A traditional way of knowing whether you’re “emoting right” is to gauge whether you’re emoting information which anyone could easily tell by looking at you. For example, “Dudeguy walks with a slight limp, as if his right knee has trouble supporting his girth” is a solid, simple emote. Anyone watching Dudeguy stroll around Dalaran will see the limp, and there’s no secret information here.

Let’s compare that emote to “Dudeguy hides his broken, bleeding heart, his stoic visage masking the inutterable misery of his soul.” There’s a couple problems with this example. First, no one simply looking at Dudeguy would know he has a broken heart. If they know his heart is bleeding, the description should be restricted to “Dudeguy has a visible chest wound.” I would also warn against language like “stoic visage.” One man’s stoic is another man’s crying baby. Adjectives like “stoic” can lead to a lot of interpretation, and isn’t a demonstrable fact. The whole “inutterable misery of his soul” is so overwrought that I don’t think even Edward Cullen could pull that bit off.

Lastly, let’s evaluate “Dudeguy walks with a little swagger, shaking his hips as he rocks through Silvermoon.” The phrase “swagger” is interpretive, and falls prey to the same problems as “stoic” in the above example, But “swagger” is a fairly well-known phrase, and generally implies a sort of cocky bounce in someone’s attitude. I think the phrase would probably be okay in most circumstances. And “rocks through Silvermoon” is risky, since it’s definitely a poetic phrase. But I think an experienced roleplayer could do well with this emote.

Time your emotes so that your audiences sees you use them, but don’t emote so often that people get annoyed. In groups or raids, pop out an emote before or after each boss kill. Party members are probably paying attention to chat around this time, and there’s almost always someone bored while waiting for the pull to happen. This is a good time to advertise your roleplay predilections.

Another good emote tip, when you’re trying to encourage other people to play with you, is to use emotes which encourage interaction. For example, as you walk across a bit city street in Stormwind, trying something like “Dudeguy stumbles as he walks, dropping his package of groceries on the cobblestones.” This instantly encourages local players to respond to your emote. They could help you pick up the dropped items, or perhaps mock you for your clumsiness.

Ultimately, emotes are one of your best tools to advertise yourself as a roleplayer. This is not only because of its direct, roleplay nature, but also because it’s a great way to encourage others to get started as well.

In-game speech

In-game speech is actually very similar to emote spam, but it has slightly different perils. I really don’t often come across roleplayers who are into godmoding their in-character speech, because. . .well, it’s just speech. It’s hard to make that mistake with the spoken word. However, there are some nuances of speech that I see put off new roleplayers, and this is the stuff you want to avoid if you’re trying to drum up some in-character action.

There’s a habit of many experienced, knowledgeable roleplayers to “overlore it.” Overloring is much different from knowing the lore of WoW. This is kind of a tricky subject, so let me step through it. Web sites like Wowwiki have a wonderful guide to some basic Thalassian. (Thalassian is the language of the high elves and blood elves.) Veteran roleplayers will reach for these guides to add further depth to their roleplay — instead of saying “Hello!” to each other in the streets of Silvermoon, they’ll say “Anaria shola.” (That means “Speak your business.” Thalassian isn’t really a cute and cuddly language.)

That’s an awesome touch of depth for people steeped in the lore of WoW. But if you’re trying to drum up some roleplay by greeting your fellow party members in a raid, then I’d stick to easily recognizable language. Heck, I’d even consider avoiding the time-tested “Well met” until you’ve gotten to know people. “Good day, I’m looking forward to our adventure” is a good example for getting started.

I know that probably seems like fairly pedestrian language, but remember that our goal is to troll up new roleplayers. You don’t want to start out alienating people by latching on to a particular interpretation of the game. Invitations to discussion should be simple and easily answered. Another good example might be, “I’ve never cared much for the blood elves. They smell of wine and lies.” (It should be a no-brainer when I say not to insult the races of your fellow party members, as that’s likely to be a turn off.)

Questions are usually a good way to get started, also. “Why have you come to kill Sartharion?” could be a good question in a server PUG, since there’s a lot of good ways to answer that. You might see someone answering “I hate dragons, they killed my dog/brother/family/sister/dreams.” Or, you might someone simply saying “I hear he has gold, which should be in my pocket.” Of course, if your fellow raiders simply answer your request with an item link, then you can probably rest assured they’re not here to roleplay.

Summary

At the end of the day, trolling up roleplay using in-game speech and emotes will net you at least a few new contacts to get started. You should be consistent and regular with these techniques. If at first someone is uncertain that you are actually trying to find roleplay, they’ll quickly be convinced after seeing you perform emotes several times.

Good luck out there. Me, and my character Dudeguy, wish you the very best of luck.

When I was growing up, I was a total Final Fantasy geek. I can still remember the thrill I got when I first started playing Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV to you purists).

I never paid much attention to stats aside from the basics back then — there was no reason to. When I did take a look under the hood, though, what I found was easy to understand. Cecil beat stuff down with a sword, so he had a high amount of strength. Rosa was better at healing things than Cecil, because she had more will than he did. Rydia blew things away with black magic and summons, so she was loaded up with wisdom.

When I eventually got around to playing World of Warcraft, I went into it with a lot of preconceptions from my Final Fantasy days. This healing priest? Spirit. Makes total sense, that’s a healer stat. When it was time to use the darker side of the priestly art, it was time to look for gear with intellect. It made logical sense from a Final Fantasy standpoint. And just like in Final Fantasy, the most important thing to pay attention to was how well a piece of armor protects you from attack. Right? RIGHT?!

Wrong, of course.

Not that these stats really mattered much back then. Your choice of weapons and armor were limited. Each town you found as the game went on sold conveniently better gear. There was little guessing involved. Was the shiny new weapon I found in the chest better than the one I already had? (Hint: The answer was always yes.)

In Warcraft, though, you have over 19,000 armor choices alone, and the stats associated with them get plugged into incredibly complex equations that differ from class to class, from spec to spec, straight on down to the talent level. There’s spell power, sometimes presented as bonus damage or bonus healing — that bit is easy enough to understand in a “more is good” way. But Blizzard introduces new players to spirit as a “mana regen” stat (never mind that there’s also an MP5 stat) and intellect as a “max mana” stat (and marginally higher crit), not really clarifying the way it all affects your damage. They even throw in special PvP stats like spell penetration that don’t do anything for the PvE player to muddy the water.

Making matters worse, all stats affect different classes and specs to different degrees. Blizzard is perpetually tinkering with the formulae, causing wild variations in effect from patch to patch. For newer players, the whole thing is a confusing mess. Developers seem to realize that things are getting a little too complex, and they’re doing something about it in Cataclysm. For now, though, let’s see what we can do to untangle the mess and explain how things work for shadow priests.

The pre-80 basics

In my early days, I had no idea what did what, so I figured I’d take a little bit of everything. “Oh neat, this Enchanted Pearl boosts all my stats! I’ll take that one!”

Ah, youth.

If you’re just beginning a shadow priest and are still in the leveling process, don’t worry too much about stats. Equipment is just too disposable, readily replaced every few levels. When given the choice, however, give favor to gear that carries with it bonus spell power. Stamina is great for leveling, of course, because it boosts your max health. Focus on spirit and intellect for their basic abilities to increase your mana regen rate and max mana, since it’ll reduce the time you need to spend sitting on the floor of the Barrens drinking milk.

Since priests can only wear cloth, you presumably won’t be able to find a whole lot you can wear with other stats on it. To state the obvious though, you should generally avoid gear that has attack power, strength, or agility. Other classes get a heck of a boost from those stats, but as you can imagine, priests don’t. Even armor numbers barely matter, since you’ll be mainly relying on abilities like Inner Fire and Power Word: Shield to keep you safe from harm while soloing.

As a priest, you should never really be using physical attacks, even when you’re out of mana. Default to using a wand instead. Leveling priests should make it a point to pick up a Lesser Magic Wand from the auction house or a leveling enchanter the moment they ding level 5. As you level, the stats attached to the wand will start to matter more than the damage from the wand itself, but you’ll still need something for those rare situations where you’re otherwise helpless to do anything.

After level 80: The simple version

If your post-80 goal is to mostly run heroics and raids as a shadow priest, then your number one concern will clearly be maximizing your damage output. The poster izolight over at shadowpriest.com (an amazing resource, by the way) was kind enough to put together a quick and dirty way of calculating what pieces of gear are better than others. It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent enough estimation for everyday use so you’re not just guessing blindly:

Hit (up to the 263 ally/289 horde cap) = 1.88 Spell power
Spell power = 1.00
Haste = 0.98 Spell power
Critical Strike = 0.76 Spell Power
Spirit = 0.59 Spell power
Intellect = 0.22 Spell power

What does that all mean? It puts some math to what we already know — Hordies should get their hit rating as close to 289 as possible (263 for Alliance if you’ll be raiding with a Draenei) because it’s such a valuable stat. The numbers also lend us the general notion that haste is better than crit, which is better than spirit, which is better than intellect.

On a more useful level, it allows us to convert all the stats on a piece of gear and boil down its effectiveness to a single number, pseduopower. As an example, consider the Frozen Bone Spike. It has 741 spell power on it, 59 points of crit, 67 intellect, and 59 spirit. (We really don’t consider armor or stamina, since neither attribute to our DPS.) To make it comparable to other pieces of gear with different stats attached, we find the pseudopower through a bit of basic math:

741 + 59 (0.76) + 67 (0) + 67 (0.22) + 59 (0.59) = 835.39

The calculation shows that the Frozen Bone Spike acts like a weapon with 835.39 spell power with no other stats attached. Since everything’s been converted to a single number, you can compare between weapons. The link above to shadowpriest.com has a lot of these “pseudopower” ratings already calculated for you, telling you what gems to use where for maximum DPS.

After level 80: The slightly-more-complex version

The actual way stats affect you is a challenge to explain. The pseudopower numbers above are a snapshot in time, reflecting how stats affect a player entirely outfitted with their best-in-slot gear (like the drool-worthy Phylactery of the Nameless Lich trinket) and only when a player is wearing that gear. The full best-in-slot set is presumably what raiding priests are supposed to aspire to, but a lot of it is obtained in wings of Icecrown Citadel that aren’t even available to play yet. And even once they do go online, the odds of you ever having one specific build are, frankly, pretty poor.

Just going by the raw numbers above, you might get the idea that you should stack haste to the exclusion of critical strike rating. But no — as you stack more and more of any given stat like haste, you actually increase and decrease the value you’ll get from your next point of another stat. Statistics are synergistic. You have to hold a whole lot of variables constant to figure out how changing one stat is going to affect anything. And variables aren’t so good at staying constant, on account of them being variables and all.

Think of it this way: If you had infinite haste but no spell power, you’d be rapidly firing off spells that barely make a dent in what you’re attacking. If you have high critical strike but no haste, you’ll be doing big numbers of damage, but those numbers would be coming along painfully slow. We have to strike some kind of balance.

So, what’s an obsessive-compulsive shadow priest to do? The good news is that there are a couple of resources available for you to plug in your own gear and get some very personalized stat values so you can precisely plan your next move, gear wise. Of these, Simulationcraft tends to get the most respect. Some other shadow priests have gotten good use out of Rawr.

Or you can just swallow your pride and use the estimations above, accepting that you’ll never really be able to tell the difference between the damage you get from wearing the 385.7 pseudopower Kilt of Untreated Wounds versus the 385.3 pseduopower Leggings of the Soothing Touch.

Perhaps someday in the future when the majesty (horror?) of Cataclysm is released upon the world of Azeroth, statistics will once again begin to make sense to the point that you won’t need separate computer simulations to calculate what pair of pants to wear. Until then, though, at least we have a number of decent options to make some sense out of it all.

It came from the Blog is holding its second Battleground Bonanza today:

• When: Saturday, January 16th, 4:30pm EST (1:30pm PST, 2:30pm Server time)
• Where: The Hall of the Brave (where the Battlemasters are), Orgrimmar, Zangarmarsh U.S.
• Who: Any level 10 or above Horde character.
• How: Ask any It came from the Blog Lurker or Robinator for a guild invite.
• What: Battleground premades

We will be forming groups and hitting as many level/group-size appropriate BGs as we can for an hour or so. If you can’t make it to the Hall of the Brave in time for the event, you will miss out on the first screenshot, but will still be able to participate. We will also be doing some BG related quests, so there will be some traveling for certain level ranges.

If you are unfamiliar with Battleground play, please do some homework so that it will be more fun for both you and your teammates. Also, if you have any questions about the WoW.com guild, please read our FAQ.

Come join the fun!

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

The community of WoW is not best known for its courtesy. The bar for what constitutes civil behavior has been set pretty low. We as officers don’t expect much from random people, but we’d like to think our members and counterparts are better than the average player. That’s why it’s always so disappointing when we discover we are wrong.

Dear Scott,

I have been an officer in my guild for quite a while but one thing I am noticing more and more is the lack of courtesy between members. I along with several of the other officers and members think of our guild as a family and it kind of cuts us when we have members leave without any word, explanation, or a simple “goodbye”. Just today we had a member (we will call him Bob for simplicity) just up and leave without any word and one of the officers made a hasty remark in the trade channel. Probably 4 hours later Bob gets on an alt still in the guild and starts smarting off which gets others responding likewise (including officers) so much so that I have to step in and stop it.

Unfortunately our GM logs on at that moment and sees the drama going on in gchat and promptly kicks Bob and his other alt. Bob then whispers me and asks why everyone was acting the way they were. I tried to explain the lack of courtesy employed by Bob but he just didn’t quite understand. How can I as an officer and member of my guild help to promote courtesy and how do I explain to members/officers they are not being courteous?

Man of the Peace

Hi, MotP. First, let’s take a moment to lament how the dungeon finder system has affected guilds. As if guilds weren’t disposable enough in WoW, it is now entirely possible for a player to gear up to Tier 9 — and prep themselves for the Wrath equivalent of Sunwell — in random Heroics alone.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s great that we are no longer required to run earlier dungeon tiers to gear members up (though it can still be helpful to do so). And I have nothing against making raiding more accessible. However, it’s just one less incentive, from a list that’s startlingly short, for staying loyal to a guild.

Fortunately, Cataclysm’s guild overhaul seems like it could change that. But for now, officers across the board should expect more guild-hopping now than ever before.

I can’t say why “Bob” decided to quit, but keep in mind that you can now jump from fresh 80 to endgame raider in a matter of weeks. If your guild doesn’t raid or isn’t very successful with raiding, you are going to lose players who want to see Icecrown, because they are fully capable of gearing up for it with or without you.

However, I wouldn’t say Bob is the most at fault in this situation. Yes, he quit without notice or reason, which is certainly dispiriting to the officers. Even so, making a snarky comment in the Trade channel is only going to make the situation worse.

Passive-aggressive Trade channel remarks (or openly hostile ones) are useful for one thing: starting a fight. If that’s what your officer wanted, he or she sure got it. I doubt Bob would have gone on that tirade without provocation, since he seemed to want to slip away quietly.

Officers who want their players to be courteous need to lead by example. That is the most effective way to encourage civil behavior. If your officers have a problem with Bob, the best way to handle the situation would be to speak with him privately about why he left. They shouldn’t be confrontational about it. They should talk to him as a human being and try to assess the decision from his point of view.

From the perspective of guild survival, your top priority should be finding out why Bob quit so that you can prevent people, if possible, from leaving for similar reasons.

To address the question you asked, it’s difficult when officers are put into the role of the “courtesy police.” No one wants to be that person. Sometimes, situations will arise when you must step in. Only you can decide when to do so. When you do, don’t respond by insulting or talking down to the players who are involved. Rather, attempt to defuse the situation by mediating the argument. Try to get each person to see the situation from the other person’s point of view.

They may not ever agree, but at least you can bring the argument into a civil context and allow for some meaningful dialogue.

We can’t teach our members to be courteous. How a person behaves develops from the moment they can interact with other people. If parents, family, and friends haven’t succeeded in encouraging someone to be courteous, what chance do we have?

The best we can do is to remind our members that behind every character in the game is a person that deserves respect and consideration. That begins with all of our officers acting accordingly.

Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, Allison Robert has been at the cough syrup again, without the editors realizing in enough time to shut down her access to the blogging software. No good can come of this.

Lines composed more than 3,000 miles from Tintern Abbey, by someone who hated Wordsworth and thought he was a self-obsessed little prick, but managed to conceal this from her professor long enough to book it from the class with an A, and this is a run-on sentence just like the title of the original poem, which is what we call Irony.

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again. Allie is sick, druids are thriving, and 2010 is upon us like the rear axel of a pickup truck on an icy road with a “Guns don’t kill people, I do” bumper sticker. It’s time to revisit the Year That Was, keeping in mind that the author of this article is so blitzed on cold medication that an entertaining afternoon was spent delightedly watching the screensaver.

Balance

Balance had a promising beginning as Wrath revved up, helped in no small part by a talented stun from Starfall via Celestial Focus that was utterly amazing in PvP. For once in our miserable little lives, we could actually keep something away from us. This had all the joy of playing a Frost mage without the bothersome rigmarole of actually leveling one and having to devote a portion of one’s day to complaining about being a Frost mage. It was Very Fun, and as such, it was nerfed.

You learn to expect these things. Anything too enjoyable should be looked upon sorrowfully, because we know it will not last. Druids in World of Warcraft have an inherently better grasp of the fleeting nature of life and human happiness — that transitory glimpse, the distant, flickering corner of one’s brain possessed by the terrible comprehension that we are as leaves upon the wind. Sic transit gloria m– f^&# me, is this all the cough syrup we have in the house?

Where was I? Like it matters. At any rate, Balance had a good start out of the gate, so much so that I was surprised at the end of 2008 to think it had the best prospects of any druid spec. Feral was getting yanked around like a kid in the middle of divorce proceedings, and Restos were rerolling paladins en masse after getting fed up with being two-shot by death knights, so perhaps we could all be forgiven for thinking that the world had gone a little crazy.

But then there was Eclipse. Nobody knew quite what to make of it, apart from the fact that it blew the old Burning Crusade rotation to bits — or at least, it was supposed to. Cool animation? Check. Made the rotation more interesting? Check. A pain in the ass on movement-dependent fights, half of its proc not really worth using at the time, too much of Balance DPS ultimately dependent on something with a looming +haste cap issue? Check, check, check, and check.

No, Mr. Barkeeper, I was not signaling for mine. You leave that there.

Eclipse was undeniably a significant improvement to Balance DPS, but its status as a proc-within-a-proc made it difficult, if not impossible, to get the most out of it when you really needed, except by chance alone. Was it going to be up during Bloodlust/Heroism? Would it proc right before Thaddius switched your charges or you had to run to avoid a Flame Wall? There wasn’t an answer to either of these questions, and frustrated Balance players everywhere watched a huge portion of their potential damage vanish down the gullet of something completely beyond their control. Wildly inconsistent performance (as Gray Matter noted at the time) is not something that raid leaders are terribly overfond of accommodating, and players had limited means of regaining lost damage in other ways.

So Eclipse — the proc, the cooldown, and tier bonuses reliant on it — has been tinkered with pretty much the length of the year, and Balance is still in an iffy spot. Any dispassionate observer would admit the issues affecting the spec are pretty much immune to a quick fix, more particularly with how +haste interacts with Wrath/Nature’s Grace, and the looming +crit cap on Starfire in Tier 10 content. The easiest way to deal with both would be to nerf Balance talents to the point where gear doesn’t add a set of increasingly problematic stats to the moonkin arsenal, but I think we can all agree that deliberately making things worse in order to let existing gear solve the problem is an uninspiring solution. Beyond that, the two primary nukes — Wrath and Starfire — don’t really do different things, as Ghostcrawler himself observed. The former is faster but travels to the target; the latter is slower but hits immediately. They also have different colors. That’s it. There is no ancillary benefit to the use of either beyond switching them up for different Eclipse procs now that that the individual cooldowns have been decoupled.

So what does 2010 hold in store for the laserchicken contingent? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Balance mechanics get an overhaul in the run-up to Cataclysm, because as things stand now, we will always be among the first victims of stat inflation, and Eclipse — while more “reliable” in the sense that you can better predict when it’s likely to be triggered — still isn’t a controllable damage boost along the lines of Icy Veins or Metamorphosis.

I have grown dangerously coherent. There may have been actual analysis in this portion.

This will not stand.

Neither can I, but that’s why I’m writing this from bed with a cold compress now.

This morning we were given a pleasantly early notice regarding tomorrow’s maintenance downtime for North American and Oceanic realms. Realms will be going down at 3:00 AM PST, and are expected to be down until 11:00 AM PST at the earliest.

Though we haven’t seen official word on the topic yet, it’s expected that the next wing of Icecrown Citadel, the Plagueworks, will open tomorrow once realms come back online. This wing will include the bosses Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we also saw a minor bug fix patch tomorrow, but only time will tell.

If we hear anymore regarding either of those things throughout the day, we’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Edit: I know how to use a calendar. Really. I do.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment in this post by Sunday, January 3, 2010, 11:59pm ET. Limit one entry per person and make sure you’re registered with a valid email address. We’ll be choosing one winner randomly from the entrants and contact them via email after the close of the contest.

Sometimes you’d like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Preview of character creation in Final Fantasy XIV The start of the beta signups for Final Fantasy XIV was certainly good news for the many people anticipating the game next year, but it didn’t exactly pierce the fog surrounding the game. Square-Enix, of course, has always played their cards close to their chest when handing out previews, but there’s still so much more to learn about the game and a number of curious people.
	Hands-on with Klingons and PvP in Star Trek Online If there’s one thing that’s almost more synonymous with Star Trek than classic catch phrases, it’s the Klingons. They are the Captain Hook to the Federation’s Peter Pan and thus it’s important to several potential players that Star Trek Online do them justice.
	Metaplace announces January 1st shutdown The Metaplace development team made the announcement today that no fan of a game likes to hear: “Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59pm Pacific.” The bottom line to the reasoning behind the decision is that Metaplace simply is not making enough headway to be a viable (read: profitable) product.
	Vanguard paints a rocky road to come in the year ahead In a recent announcement to the Vanguard community, the team has decided to be as frank as possible and outline the road map for the game in the year ahead. Due to limited resources and a new focus on bug elimination over ambitious content releases, some of the game’s anticipated updates are being shelved indefinitely. Those features include the Halls of Shattered Souls, Pankhor Zhi, Nexus, and the anticipated “alternate advancement” system.

	BioWare on developing the Dark Side of SWTOR Would you like to know more about BioWare’s lengthy effort of creating the dark side classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Well, of course you would! We mean, who wouldn’t really? Well, probably Jedi, but nobody really listens to those guys anyhow. Except maybe for angst-ridden youth who’ve just recently discovered their father is a dark lord of the Sith. Oh, wait, nevermind.
	What happened to Stargate Worlds? Fans have been waiting for the Stargate:Worlds MMO for what feels like forever, and a few weeks ago got a surprise in the form of a Stargate shooter instead of any more news on the MMO. We got a brief explanation on the reasoning behind this, but Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment covered things in a bit more detail yesterday. The CME team took some time to discuss Stargate:Resistance with fansite GateWorld, and also talked quite a bit about the decision to shelf Stargate:Worlds for the time being.
	EverQuest II reveals The Sundered Frontier Who likes sexy screenshots? We all do! It’s lucky for us that the The Sundered Frontier, one of the two new zones in EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate is so darn beautiful. Who doesn’t like floating islands, awesome armors, and pandas? How can you turn down pandas?! Easy answer: You can’t turn down pandas. You just can’t.
	Mr. Freeze joins DC Universe Online cast We’ve been hearing more from Sony Online Entertainment this year about the upcoming MMO DC Universe Online, and while news of a beta or even an alpha would thrill us, we’re more than happy with what we’ve been receiving this fall. The folks at Sony Online Entertainment have been treating us to a parade of new characters as the months progressed, and they’re getting the fans in on the creation process with an animation contest.
	Aion’s December community address looks to the future NCsoft had a big year on the Aion front: the months leading up to launch are just as crazy as the months immediately following launch, so the community team is more than ready for a little vacation. Not without one final community address, however. The Aion community team is leaving us until January fourth, taking a well-earned rest while we enjoy the Solorius festival. Good things are promised when they return in 2010, and this final address for the year gave us a hint of things to come.
	Making the most of the free trial period The whole point of a free trial is to get you to buy the game. This is a fact of the genre, and we all know it. Correspondingly, we don’t usually sign up for the free trial unless we’re relatively certain we’d like to try the game in the first place. But all too often, we try the game for one session, and then we miss the rest of the free trial period and never really form a cohesive opinion about the game. So the company doesn’t get your money, you don’t get to try the game, and your characters languish forever in the waiting room.

Even during Winter Veil, Azeroth is still a war zone, as warlock Hated of Mok’Nathal found out when attempting to deliver presents to the children of Draenor. A well-aimed Burning Legion fireball over Blade’s Edge took out his sleigh and most of his reindeer. Rudolph should have turned off his glowing nose — it only attracts the surface-to-air heat-seeking spells.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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

Erro thar.

When the Australian DST changes kicked over our raiding teams were pretty much split. This has meant that raiding stopped for around 6 weeks causing quite a few of our main raiding team to leave. During that time I took over main guild leadership to try and kick people back into gear. Things were working well enough until I realised that I had over committed myself both IRL and in game. I was fast heading to “SCREW THIS GAME AND YOUR STUPID BLOODY ATTITUDES” before I realised that something needed to be done.
That brings me to where we are at now. None of our officers are really in a position to take up GL due to availability, health concerns and, truthfully, maturity/ability to handle the responsibility. The idea that we are discussing at the moment is the possibility of recruiting someone to fill the position but we are not sure how to go about that. Obviously it would begin with a trial period to see how they fit in and then we would go from there. Leadership would not be handed over for quite some time so that we can figure out whether we trust them to not ninja the guild bank and what not.

Caasi

It sounds like you were in a bad situation, Caasi. Time zones can really mess with your guild, especially when the government can’t make up its mind about Daylight Savings Time. I’m glad you had the self-awareness to recognize what the stress was doing to you before you lost it for real!

Recruiting a new guild leader from outside the guild, I’m sorry say, is an extremely unlikely scenario. Think about how people normally become guild leaders.

Some GLs create a guild with specific principles and policies in mind. Maybe they think they can do better than their previous GL. Maybe they want to try a new way to run things or emphasize different aspects of gameplay. Or maybe they’re just fed up with authority and want to be the one making the calls this time around.

All of these scenarios have one thing in common: The guild leaders want to put their own stamp on the guilds they lead. They don’t want to follow someone else’s lead or assume responsibility for someone else’s policies. So that’s one strike against your plan, unless you’re willing to let them lead the guild as they see fit. That could lead to major changes and friction among your members.

But that doesn’t take into account the social aspect. To be an effective guild leader, you need to understand the people you’re leading — their strengths and weaknesses, their motivations, and their fears. No outsider could hope to get to know your players the way you or your officers do. It would take them a long time to catch up, longer than you can afford.

And to be perfectly blunt, who would want to take over an existing guild in this situation? Leading a guild involves personal sacrifice. Time and effort can bleed away very quickly in a leadership role. If you don’t have any connection to your members, would you be willing to do what they need you to, week in and week out?

If you’re going to look outside your guild for an answer, you could try to find a raid leader. I’m assuming you were handling this as well. Raid leading is probably the most difficult part of what officers typically do. Although not all raid leaders are officers, many are, and I find that it often works out better for everyone when that is the case.

However, you could bring someone in on a provisional basis. Some players really enjoy raid leading or want to give it a try, and for one reason or another they aren’t able to with their current guild. I wrote a column about recruiting a raid leader back in the spring of ‘08.

Fortunately, there’s also an in-guild solution to your problem. Take an inventory of all the tasks you were carrying out. Decide which ones you could still do with your limited time (and patience) and which ones you couldn’t possibly carry out. Post the ones you can’t take care of on your guild’s Web site or list them out at a meeting. Then ask for volunteers to take over those tasks.

In other words, delegate. Spread the responsibilities around so they aren’t resting too heavily on anyone’s shoulders. You may have your doubts that some of your volunteers can actually do what they say they will. You cite some maturity issues, and that is a legitimate concern. (And if you feel that way about those members, I have to wonder, why are they officers to begin with?)

Don’t limit volunteers to the officers alone. Let anyone who legitimately wants to help do so. Your members may surprise you. They might even surprise themselves by what they are able to do and what they are good at. If members are motivated to keep the guild going, then you will find players to help you with these tasks.

Check up with your volunteer’s progress from time to time for a few weeks while you remain the GL. With any luck, someone will emerge as a highly motivated and mature individual. Make them an officer if they aren’t one already. Be sure they can handle it without abusing their authority. Then, assuming all goes well, approach them about taking over the guild.

This is obviously the best-case scenario, but it’s not that far-fetched. You never know what your members are capable of until you ask them!

The other scenario is that no one steps up, or not nearly enough people. If that happens, make sure that your members understand the severity of the situation — that the guild cannot continue in this way, that you might have to disband it. And if, upon hearing that, you’re still greeted with silence, then the truth of the matter is that your members don’t care about the guild as much as you thought. In that case, disbanding the guild is probably your best choice.

Some people might say, Why disband when you can just stop logging in? Guild leaders who abandon their communities don’t do anyone any favors. The people who remain don’t have access to all the guild control features, which could include promotions and bank withdrawals. If there’s truly no one you can hand the guild over to, it’s better to distribute the guild loot in a fair way and then make an end of the guild.

This way you can also protect your own reputation. If someone takes over the guild, recruits a bunch of jerks, and starts ticking off the whole server, people may still connect you with that guild.

Either way the situation winds up, Caasi, you’ll be able to stop worrying about it and focus on your family. I hope you don’t have to resort to a disband, but I urge you to do so if there’s no other way out!

/salute