WOW Guild Site slowly nearing completion

Well, the Sunken Temple Pilots seem to be slowly making a name for themselves, I'm getting players actually saying 'hey, I was teamed with a couple of your guys, and they were were really good', which is excellent, and exactly what I wanted, it seems we're training up players to be decent citizens of this new world.

If I can get to the point where my guild members can say 'hey, can I team up with you guys?' and get the response ' well, I don't kno- oh, you're in Sunken Temple Pilots, sure!', then I know I've hit my target. I'm not saying we're famous on our server, but the name does seem to have been noticed at least, even players who don't know our plans have bothered to message me going 'hey, cool name'. I have to admit I smiled seeing a guild doing similar stuff called 'Ghouls Allowed', I guess music means something to everyone, you're going to get an emotional response from most people just mentioning it.

We also passed 100 members a few days ago, which is quite an achievement for a guild under a month old, and especially so on such an old server, as old servers have far fewer new players, and old players tend to add their new characters to their current guild. As well as updating the guild website I've been using the in game mail to send a few pages out roughly weekly, to keep all players in the know, as my experience in other guilds, is that its nearly impossible to make all your guildies read a website, never mind actually use online forums etc.

I have had a cunning plan tho, and I'm be having a prize draw soon, for a nice shiny in game item, and to enter, you'll need to find the passwords hidden on pages on the site. I haven't done it yet, but I figure people who won't normally read stuff might be convinced if there's shiny things in it for them.

I've also been pleasantly surprised by the sheer positive feedback of players, and of the generousity both in and out of game of players. I've already had offers of people building forums for me, and offering web hosting space, and in game, people mailing gold to supply the guild, mailing me blue items, which are damned rare at low levels, and well worth a few gold if they'd chosen to sell them instead of donating to guild.

I think it just goes to show, if you give people the chance to be part of something based around decent, fair play, they don't have to be a nasty lowbie killing loot stealing shower of bastards!

to put it in context, we've got over a hundred players, of which I think about 80-90 are fairly active, and about 60 are on at least every couple of days, and we've lost about 5 or so, due to them being complete tools and not fitting in. I think I'm probably going to trim another dozen or so soon for not having been online in the last few weeks, my next target being 100 members actually being active, which I rate as playing at least once a week. I'm not going to start punting people out for not playing weekly, but I think if you haven't played in a month, you're probably not rushing back any time soon.

Kruul invades, and the day before TBC.

So I was in WOW, grabbing some new recruits for my guild. I'd heard the chat going on, people yelling 'OMG KRUUL AT UC' which translates into 'Oh, I'm quite surprised, there appears to be a large demon just outside Undercity, the undead capital city.' I figured as usual, someone's just messing about, getting people to travel halfway across the world and there's nothing there.
So I step out of the main gates of Undercity to walk into this.

And for a sense of scale, you can see below he's about the height of a flagpole, and I as the largest race in the game, don't even come up to the low ring at the base of the pole.


Now the tricky part behind this new monster that just appears near the entrance to main cities, is that every time he kills ANYONE, and that includes pets, demons summoned by warlocks, people who dont even know what's going on and were just passing through, anyone, he gets a heal of 70,000 points. To put that in perspective for non players, my fully kitted out top level warrior, who's built for survival, has around 5000 health points. This guy, as well, as getting 70,000 heals for every kill he manages, is sending out around 40 homing missile things that hit for 2000 ish each, and has a clutch of demon hounds with him, helping people to die a bit quicker.

The real genius behind it though, I think, its the knowledge of human nature. Ok, you've been playing for a while, kinda seen it all, done it all, still enjoying it, but not much in the way of surprises, or you're a wide eyed newbie who's heard there's a giant demon smashing up your capital city. Either way, instinct says' HEY! I gotta go see this!'

So we're outside Undercity, and a group has formed of about 40 top level players, including my warrior, and we're trying and trying to take this guy down, and we'll get him to about 75% or 50% health, and some level 5 guy will wander over going 'hey, whats that big thi-' 'oh I'm dead', and on top of that, if you're within about 100 yards of this guy, you ARE gonna take 2000 damage from every set of missiles he hurls, he's got enough for everybody!

So, on top of the tactics required to take down a beast of this nature, and dealing with his pets and special attacks, we're also having to send people around especially to act as that police guy in the movies 'Please move along, there's nothing to see here, move BACK Sir, please retreat to a safe distance until the situation is under control..HEY! get back he-, oh too late, Kruul's on full health again.'

Now the outside of undercity looks like a real graveyard, skeletons of the fallen all over the place.


Can you imagine trying to be the ones wanting to stop people seeing a huge world event, but having to do so in order to deal with it? There just seemed to be a never ending supply of people willing to wander straight up to a 100ft tall demon and go 'hello!'

Having said that, eventually things settled down, and it was great to have 40 people all playing together to beat a common goal, and we DID take him down, despite him getting a few heals mid fight.
He did have a couple of very nice things on him, too, all caster items, but I was there more for the fun of being part of it than for looting, you've gotta be pretty optimistic to join a 40 player, one off event in the hope for shiny things.

Tomorrow, the big day, the portals open to a whole new continent, the Burning Crusade begins, and I will let you know what I think as soon as I get to try it. I'm thinking every server is going to fall over under the combined weight of 8 million players all making a level 1 Blood Elf or Draenei, (the new races available), and the ones that do stay up, are going to be laggy as hell, and the starting areas, well...

Normally, you create your character, and you'll be placed somewhere like, for instance, the orc's Valley of Trials, a safe-ish place with low level enemies to build yourself up a bit before you go out into the big wide world. Now, normally there'd be maybe 5 new players in that area at once, and around 30 boars and scorpions and assorted beasts to slay, no problem. tomorrow however, I can see there being hundreds of Blood Elves ALL appearing in the same place at the same time at the same level, all waiting for giant spiders to respawn in the forest so they can kill 8 of them for their first quest.

Still we shall see, and I'll know more tomorrow.

Domain name for WOW Guild site

Ok, it's not ideal, it has an intro ad that you need to click through, but as I've had pretty much solid negative feedback at the length of the url for the Sunken Temple Pilots site, I've got with the .tk thing, and now it's a more compact http://www.sunkentemplepilots.tk/

If its a case of one Orange advert that can be clicked past and a slender banner for .tk themselves, I can live with that for now. I'll see how people react to this in game, and make changes if needed.

Guild site up

Got a start on the guild site, link over on the sidebar.

WOW (World of Warcraft) - The Burning Crusade launch on 16th.

So, I've been on the game regularly, and I've been keeping an eye on the forums...

Damn, you lot need to quit whining!

Sure, I know I'm not short of the occasional complaint about all sorts of issues, ok, I'm a professional moaner of the highest order, but damn, for something that hasn't even happened yet, it seems there is a vast amount of bad feeling about this, so I guess I need to tackle a few of the main topics of debate.

1. 'Oh no, it's going to be really busy on the first day!' Yes it is, shut your face. Take a day or two off and come back and get on with enjoying the game.
2. 'Oh no, We're getting Blood Elves, we're the horde and we don't want elves.' It's a new skin and that's about all, so unless you're the 0.1% who actually play on a roleplay server AND actually roleplay, then you don't get to say what other people choose to look like.
3. 'Oh no, the other faction is getting Paladins/Shamans.' So, both sides have a balanced choice of classes now? that's bad..how?
4. 'Oh no, there's going to be a tidal wave of noobs!' Firstly, there actually was a day when YOU didnt know where the auction house or the mailboxes were. Secondly, 90% of the level 1 Blood Elf Paladins and Draenei Shamans are going to be 2 year veterans of the game. Thirdly, how are new players bad? I'm running a newbie based guild and most of the new players I've met have been a far better class of players than half of the 60's wandering around thinking they're king of the world. Try HELPING occasionally, and maybe you'll get something back, huh?
5. 'The in game economy is gonna be shot to hell.' Great, means I can finally make a profit, and so can my guildies on the shedloads of new players in need of lower grade stuff while all you end game daily raiders can sell your epics at reduced prices to my level 60 alts.

Sure there's probably more, but that covers it for now. I'll see you there on the 16th, for 2 and a half minutes before the whole thing crashes to hell for the whole day, and then I'll see you all on the 17th.

World of Warcraft Update

Well, as of Xmas Eve, the Sunken Temple Pilots were born.

I'm trying my hand at actually running a guild in World of Warcraft, as I felt there was a real lack of anywhere for newcomers to be, what are we going to get after Xmas and all the gifts have been opened? Yes, loads of new players!

So, a week later, and we have 64 players, some with multiple characters in the guild, we've only had to kick one out for being a tool, and in the main, the guild members are embracing the spirit I am trying to instill in them. To help because you can, not for rewards, to be patient with new players, and if you're being helped, you don't owe us, you owe the ones to come later seeking help.

What has surprised me is the number of really decent individuals willing to invest time in helping us, showing newbies around, getting them geared up and donating items to the cause!

Its actually close to the point where I can't give the stuff away fast enough, heh.

Most of all, only a week in, I've already got about a dozen players taking on responsibily for smaller groups of the players.