WOW, Remote access

to your auctions, guild chat and more!
I recently talked about the potential for WOW to be played on a mobile device, I referenced the WOW remote auction house application which was available for both iPhone and Android devices.  Recently Blizzard have rebranded the application to WOW mobile and upgraded it’s functionality.  I’m quite surprised, and delighted, to say that it was made available to Android at the same time as iPhone.

The move towards a more generic ‘mobile’ name is well deserved, no longer is it just a method of viewing (or listing items for the premium version) on the auction house, you can now view your characters in a similar view to what you’ll be used to in the armoury, you can view your guild, and information on each of the members, but most impressively you can participate in guild chat and whispers with other online members.  For the moment, all of the features, barring the ability to list new auctions and collect money is free.  The Blizzard page seems to indicate that the chat functionality is only free for the moment.  I’m not sure I’d pay £2.49 for the pleasure of doing this, but for the moment while its free, it’s pretty good.

There are a few bugs, you’re required to select which of your characters you want to log in as, in order to view their auctions, the app sometimes gets a little confused as to who you are and whether you’re authorised to do things.  I’m currently getting errors trying to connect to guild chat, which would seem to be a server issue rather than an app fault, and occasionally I’ve had messages not send properly which has lead to a few ‘disjointed’ conversations as my comments arrive at the other end out of order.
On the up side, I’ve been happily abusing conversing with my fellow guildies for a couple of days using both wifi and 3G connections with pretty good success, and, in a stroke of genius, if you;re logged on playing the game, you can log in as an alt and have a conversation with yourself; finally I have an intellectual equal to talk to!…

All in all a good effort by Blizzard, a useful app for those of us who find themselves with time to spare while travelling or not sat in front of their gaming PC.  There are a few issues with the battery use, my HTC Desire lasted about 90 minutes with Spotify and WOW mobile running on the train yesterday, it would normally last me the full day with 3-4 hours of music listening and normal calls etc.
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, and I'll be able to perform rudimentary profession actions such as milling or crafting, perhaps even the odd daily quest; something like the jewel crafting quests which simply require you to craft and hand over three gems would be good.  I’d really like the ability to interact with some addons or other game features, like reforging, wardrobes and even loot lists from instances, all stuff that given 10 minutes to spare on the train you’d happily do, but sat in front of your PC you’d rather be playing the game.

I’d also love to see web access to the features of this app, I generally always have internet access, but am unable to play WOW itself (stupid work…) having IRC like access to guild chat would be brilliant, the API hooks are obviously there so adding a standard HTTP interface should be easy.  This would also enable players to link their WOW activities to more ‘internetty’ stuff, especially pushing the social aspects of the game, you could have a Facebook of sorts for trolls, linking profiles to social networking features.  Enabling this might further enable web apps to do other ‘stuff’ in a similar vein to what you see with the crappy games on Facebook.  Blizzard could develop whole mini games to support their main WOW application to further engage their subscribers.

This is clearly a move by Blizzard to further monetise their product, for my money the £2.50 a month on top of the WOW subscription is too much, that’s 30% on top of a monthly subscription cost.  This for me puts the premium app in a niche of people who have both money, are addicted to WOW and a life style which means they can’t play that much, I’m not sure the latter two go hand in hand in most cases.  If I were blizzard, I’d aim lower, sub £1 per month perhaps, or even as a subscription ‘sweetner’, i.e. subscribe for 6 months (rather than your usual 1 month) and get free premium access to the app – Blizzard wins because they get 6 months money up front, the subscriber wins because they get ‘free’ access to an app that they’d otherwise have to shell out for, everyone's a winner

Fostering Performance

I read a blog on Bossy Pally earlier in the week about constructive criticism, what it is, why it's a good thing, and specifically why it's not a bad thing. This post was spurred by another great blog post by Rhii on the novel approach her guild deals with criticism (incidentally another blog which mentions llamas and has no supporting pictures whatsoever). I've always been one to actively seek constructive criticism in work and sport – I'd far rather the person I'm asking tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to improve on it than highlight the good stuff, I can't improve if I don't know I'm doing it wrong – if I knew I was doing it wrong I'd be doing something about it. This approach often raises eyebrows in the person I'm asking, and they sometimes feel uncomfortable giving constructive criticism. These two blogs got me thinking about how people 'manage performance' in WOW (that sounds so corporate) and how anyone can aid the performance of themselves and others quite easily.

I'm not going to talk massively about constructive criticism, Ophelie has already covered this, but I'll frame it briefly for the purpose of this post. Constructive Criticism is giving feedback on areas that can be improved (which need not be bad, but could be better) in a manner which indicates what the issues are, and a 'framework' to go about improving them. It is most certainly not "you suck" type comments, that comes under the abuse category. Football fans will probably agree that Lionel Messi is, if not one of the best, the best footballers in the world at the moment; is he perfect? No, could he improve? Most definitely – he's not the best header of the ball, there's one area he might work on in training. At this point, this post is in danger of becoming a whitepaper on how corporate performance management does and doesn't work, I'll try and keep away from that little can of worms, really I will, but there's a lot of similarities between (good) corporate practice and good gaming.

I'll ignore self-improvement for the moment and concentrate on helping other people, as much of the lessons apply when you turn the focus on yourself. Firstly, who can you help? The answer is anyone; I've helped people who I met 5 minutes precious in a PUG, through to experienced raiders who know their class inside out. Giving advice and having it taken on board are two different things, it's all about the relationship you have with the individual and the way you frame your advice. You have a relationship, of sorts, with anyone you've ever interacted with, it may be a very superficial relationship as in my PUG example, but it's still a relationship. If the person has reason to respect what you say, they are more likely to take heed of your words. Imagine for a moment that on the first pull you've shouted in party chat "GOGOGO" and OMG "WTF IS GOING ON WITH YOUR DPS" and then whisper the other shadow priest in the party and say "excuse me, but do you realise that the Mind Spike you're using is removing the three DoTs you've just cast from your target? You'd be better off…." The recipient of this advice is likely to completely ignore it or worse, tell you to stick it. If however you started off with a pleasant "hi guys" or similar you've already framed your words in an (admittedly thin) veil of respect. By starting off with "I hope you don't mind me saying…." Or similar you further open the person up to accepting you're not just trying to call them a noob.

In recent months, I've seen numerous examples of heroics that were heading south being turned around because someone has helped out one or more of the party (quite often be being one of those on the receiving end). So it's clear that something can be done in the very short term to improve performance, I've seen equally as many, if not more instances of members simple leaving or vote-kicking without a word as soon as problems are encountered.

Taking this to the raiding and guild environment, where improvement is more likely to be sought, or even demanded, it's a bit easier, but also a lot harder in some respects. On the relationship front, it's a lot easier, you've had a long time to establish trust, but they recipient has also had a lot more time to observe your actions, if they see that you're not practicing what you preach or lack respect for your words, for whatever reason then you've hit problems. You will also be more likely to encounter the suborn types, you know the ones, the pretty decent players who aren't the best, but are better than average who assume they are the finished article, they're not! See my comments about the certain diminutive football player above.

Once you have established a trusting relationship, how do you go about improvement? Firstly look for the low hanging fruit, pick the easiest things which give the biggest boost first. Take saving money on energy bills for instance, if you want to save money on your electricity bill, what do you do? Spend £10,000 on a solar panel for your roof? No, you pay £100 to replace the insulation in your loft; it's cheaper, easier and quicker, and gives a far better payback on the investment. In the same vein, if someone's DPS is 15k and the best achievable is 18k, but they keep dying, it's probably more profitable to look at why they're dying and focussing on positioning rather than DPS rotation (incidentally DPS may reduce in the short term as a result, but total damage output will drastically improve). On the same token, concentrate on one area at a time, try rubbing your tummy in a circular motion and patting your head at the same time, unless you've practiced for hours (saddo) you almost certainly can't do it – peoples brains best deal with things in a serial nature, tackle one thing, 'fix' it, move on to the next.

If you're a raid leader and you need to help someone improve, you need to make sure your message doesn't come out of the blue – if someone's DPS has been substandard for three months, telling them you've been watching them for some time and they have a week to sort it out or be benched is silly, tackle issues openly and early to avoid drama (llamas?). On the same token, it's not just about negatives, focus on positives, which sounds best "you're DPS is good, but I think we can improve it by…." Or "you're not doing enough DPS, you need to improve by…." Notice also the subtle difference between we and you! We are a team and we are working together to jointly improve our performance. As opposed to you aren't good enough and you need to do something about it.

My final point, is don't forget to look in the mirror; lead by example (even if you're not a GM or a raid leader, you can still lead), actively seek feedback, it's almost impossible to spot your own failings without help; if you've ever tried to proof read an assignment at school or college thinking it was perfect, only to have the teacher hand it back scrawled in red ink you'll know what I mean. Don't shy away from people offering advice, be thick skinned and take it, whether you like what you're hearing or not. Above all, nobody is perfect, everyone can improve in some respect or other, so don't think it doesn't apply to you.



And finally, finally, I've mentioned llama's twice, so I'm going to lead by example, practice what I preach and all that, and include a nice picture!

You can never have too many Llamas

My regular follower will have realised by now that I initially had thoughts of remaining semi-anonymous in the blogosphere, not naming my characters or my guild, I suppose you'd have been able to guess it was me from my early posts if you knew me, but the chances of one of my guildies randomly wandering along here are pretty remote. Since I started rambling blogging 3 months ago, I've decided, well kind of stumbled into the decision actually, that this is pretty much unworkable as I've posted screen shots and the like and I can't be bothered to blur things in pictures.

Since I've been outed I thought I'd say a word or 600 on my naming convention and the reasons behind it. I've talked to a few people over my time in WOW about the names they choose, some people have a naming convention which they stick to, others just chose whatever takes their fancy at the time, others need to be beaten to death with the inspiration stick; I've seen some people take inspiration from names from their favourite characters in books or myth, others chose names that are vaguely amusing, Ezzagood the shaman is one that stands out in my mind (don't make me explain why) and Akdov, when asked about his name, the reply came back "because it spells Vodka backwards". Genius. Others, struggled for inspiration upon first logging into the game, and clearly looked around the room they were sat in for inspiration; I give you Bookshelf, Lampshade and Window, some didn't even make it past where they were sitting, Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Computer and CPU! Dear god people!?!?!! And then there's the worst of the lot, the type of people who log on and think I'm a mage, I'm I gnome, I KNOW! MAGEGNOME!! Idiots. Anyways, last week Leafshine made a post titled "Oh! Noes! Drama Llama Loose in Blogosphere!" which prompted a flurry of tweets between us which can basically be summarised as me accusing him of false advertising and demanding the inclusion of more llama's in his post. At this point you're probably thinking "he's lost the plot, this has nothing to do with naming conventions" but this was actually the inspiration for this post, in a round-about sort of way. Here's why:

I have a bit of an admiration for llamas. Actually it's not just llama's, it's any kind of camelid, be it camels (one hump or two), llamas, alpaca, vicunas or guanacos, probably more than healthy admiration, possibly more of a fixation. This fixation with camelids came, I think, from a drink fuelled conversation after a particularly messy jaunt to the local while I was on a year's placement from uni, I can't remember exactly what the conversation was about (I was quite drunk, that happens…) but the end result was we (me and my then-housemate) decided that we liked alpacas. A lot. This quickly turned into the fixation with all things camelid, I don't know why, the reason is not important, it just did.

So it all first started on some online game or other, probably Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament or some such, where you have to choose a name for yourself. A simple 'Alpaca' seemed a little dull, it doesn't quite breed the amount of fear and awe I was looking for in the opposition reading my name at the bottom of the kills board. A bit of thinking, and with an obvious constraints which these games tend to impose on the length of your name, and Mightyalapca is born! Mighty stayed with me through a whole host of games on PC and xbox, until I came to WOW, my first mage was created and tradition was maintained, he was called Mightyalpaca. Now again my regular reader will notice, if you've been paying attention, that I no longer play a mage as my main; I quickly migrated to a priest. So what do I do? I can't use Mightyalpaca again. It's got to be something camelid related, do I go for a different camelid, or stick with alpacas? Choices choices. I eventually decided on llama as the one, not an easy choice let me tell you. And then it came to the decision of what to put before (or indeed after) the llama whilst staying within WOWs name length limit. After literally minutes of soul searching, I fixed on mystic, it was a good looking name, and given I was rolling a priest, mystic seemed to fit. Since then my naming convention has stuck with this convention (with one or two exceptions). Chose a camelid, choose a suitable adjunct, the sillier the better, job done. I've had Eminentcamel, my warrior, Divinellama my new druid, Dramallama the DK, Greatguanacco the rogue, Holyhumps, the paladin (a slight move away from the naming rulebook I grant you, but a subtle reference to Camelids, I like subtle), Camelkazi my shaman, Cameltoes the hunter and Splendid the warlock. That's right Splendid, my one slip up, this guy was named thus back in my GM days when I couldn't go 5 minutes without being whispered by some muppet demanding a guild invite who thought he was too good to read the application rules on the forum or one of the raiders asking what their DKP score was etc. etc. I used him as an anonymous way of still playing the game as my normal names tended to give the game away, I should really get round to renaming him to something suitably silly sometime.

And there you have it, my naming convention, but that's not quite it… back in the day when we first created the guild, some idiot left me in charge of collecting signatures for the charter, as no one voiced an opinion on the guild name, and there was no one online to ask at the time, the Marauding Camelids were created, and are still going strong six years later! Incidentally I like to think the Ramkahen camel mounts were created solely in recognition of my naming convention, clearly they weren't, but I like to think they were…

Altoholics anonymous

I'd never really considered myself an altoholic, yes I played alts, but I'd never really got into multiple toons in a big way. Throughout WOW I've generally had 3 characters at the top level, be it 60, 70, 80 or 85, generally one as a gatherer primarily and the others two as my main play-things, one which was my primary raider the other as my alt runner.

I've tended to have a play with other classes in the past, but nothing too serious, I levelled a warrior to level 60 to have a go at tanking, but didn't really like it, then Death Knights came along and he became my tank and gatherer, so the warrior got neglected, stuck in the outlands at level 63. Anyway, I was doing a little house keeping over the weekend, clearing crap out of bags and seeing if I had any spare bank space when I realised I had a character in every class but Shaman! Most were in the 40's or there abouts, those of you who've been reading regularly will know I've been levelling a druid which is now getting on for 65, I remember playing around on a Paladin about the time of TBC getting to 50 odd, and then I spotted my hunter, I didn't even know I had a hunter!?! Its level 63 SIXTY THREE!!! How can I forget levelling a toon through 63 levels?

Quite bizarre really; so it seems I am an altoholic, I even created a level 1 Shammy just to complete the set… there we go, I've admitted it, the first step on the road to recovery is admitting there's a problem after all…

I wonder how many alts the average is and how many of those are 85 or regularly active, I suppose only Blizzard knows the answer. I've found my alts incredibly useful for a number of reasons, primarily, for trade skills, I use one alt to collect stuff, one to enchant and inscribe and my main for alchemy and gem crafting which works well for me. In the past when I've been raiding, and didn't need the gear on my main the primary alt of the moment was my 'fun' player who'd do the 5 mans and alt-raids etc. I've also previously used an alt as a sanity character back when I was actively raiding and a GM, sticking it in the guild so I could keep an eye on guild chat and log over if there was a run I was interested in happening but just kick back and relax a bit more.  As far as most of the guild were aware this was just a casual member so I didn't get the constant questions about DKP, when the next raid was, randoms whispering asking for a guild invite etc. etc. More recently my alts have been my go-to characters when I'm time constrained, you need at least an hour for a random heroic these days, probably more like two if you get one of the longer instances or encounter 'issues' with the PUG… plus the wait time in LFD. So if I can't guarantee I've got at least 90 minutes I tend to either log over and level something or jump into a normal.

I've found alts have been both an important boost to my performance on my main, in terms of positional play and understanding the new dynamics of other classes and other roles (particularly tanking). I've also found they can sometimes be a bit of a hindrance; healing on the druid, especially early instances is about as simple as it gets, little heal, mid-heal, rinse, repeat. With the addition of an occasional panic heal when you've been caught staring out of the window, on a number of occasions I've dropped straight out of a lower level normal into a five man and found myself forgetting about Chakra, refreshing Renews, Prayer of Mending and a whole heap of other stuff. I've also noticed my DPS mashing rotation is similar on my Death Knight to that of the order of mash for my shadow spec, similar, but not quite the same, which has led to me firing off Mind Blasts without Orbs up and refreshing SW:P when there's been no need.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, more an observational post I suppose, whatever, the sandwiches have been devoured and I've shed loads to do, if I plough through it I might be able to get home early and start levelling the Shammy…


 

Just what makes you tick?

As an ex guild leader, recruitment officer, raid leader, website admin, raider, and now just plain old run of the mill casual I've seen what goes on in a guild at pretty much every level, both publically and behind the scenes. Over the past three years or so I've been studying an MBA which looks at all aspects of business. This has been sponsored by my employer and has an obvious tie in with my day to day work but I've often considered that a typical guild structure mimics that of a corporation, not only that but the types of character, and more specifically leader match the people you meet in industry and the types of characteristics you find in people which makes companies or teams more likely to succeed, or fail, are almost identical to those you find in WOW.

I'm going to talk a little here about leadership characteristics (I don't necessarily mean an appointed leader, anyone can 'lead' something in a given situation) which make for success in any organisation (including guilds). It's important first to understand what the objectives are of an organisation; you may assume all commercial organisations exist solely for profit, and that may be true, to an extent, for some. But profit for who? The owners? The shareholders? What about the workers? They make a 'profit' of sorts in their pay packet every month. Even customers make a 'profit', when looked at in these terms, they are gaining some sort of benefit from being a customer there is value in this benefit to them (the reason they derive value doesn't matter, it just matters that they do). Charitable organisations aren't really interested in profit in normal terms; they are mainly focussed on helping their target area. Even culturally company's outlooks differ, Japanese corporations, for example often regard future growth as highly, if not higher, as current profit, whereas western organisations tend to focus heavily on the short term here and now, often to the detriment of longer term stability (incidentally one of the contributing factors of the current global recession). So actually when you look under the hood of what makes an organisation tick, it differs wildly. Being very generalistic about the objectives, you could say that any objective of an organisation is to give value to its respective stakeholders. Stakeholders are anyone who has a vested interest in that organisation, no matter what it is; value is whatever benefit they derive from being a stakeholder. For a shareholder in a big company it might be the yearly dividend they receive, it may however be the opportunity they get to turn up each year at the AGM and shout at the CEO, my point is it's down do the individual; as a WOW player, in a raiding guild, it might be the shiny purples, it might be the experience of raiding, it might be the social scene, it might be the fear of not playing (addiction) or a whole range of other reasons unique to the individual. As a leader, it is important to understand what makes the stakeholders tick (and it may change from minute to minute or year to year).

Once you understand what makes people tick (or at the very least what makes others tick is not necessarily the same as you), a leader can set about trying to lead. I'm going to draw heavily from a text book which I read cover to cover for my first ever MBA module, "Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership" by Bolman and Deal, it's a great read (if you make it through the first two chapters which are truly awful), if you're actually interested I'll link this and any other reference material at the end.

So, you know what makes people in your guild tick, you understand people have different outlooks on life, and you know these differing views will inevitably cause friction at some point, how do you go about setting up your organisation (guild, raid or even 5-man party) to succeed? Firstly ask yourself what does success look like, if it's a heroic party, it might be clearing the instance; it may however be simply completing the daily heroic requirement, skipping everything that isn't necessary, it may simply be the first boss because the party's been set up to get a particular piece of loot. It may be a combination of all three (and any number of other) reasons for each of the members, already you have a possible 15 permutations (from 3 'success' criteria and 5 members) for a simple 5-man, it's a wonder any part s ever successful! For a guild it's much, much, more complicated! Hopefully you're starting to see there is no one correct answer which suits everyone, and even if it did, it would change so frequently you'd tear your hair out. All you can hope to do is abstract a set of principles or goals which mean success and apply a general framework to achieving that. By abstraction I mean Bob wants epics, lots of epixxxes; Fred wants to be the highest DPS in the guild; Clare whose sole aim in life is to wear the Mantle of Nefarius can all be abstracted to complete Blackwing Decent 25-man by x date. The framework is the tricky part, how do you as a leader best lead? This is where I'm going to reference Messer's Bolman and Deal, they refer to "four frames" of which a leader can use to lead; structural, human resource, political and symbolic. Each of the four frames is better suited to some leaders personalities than other, each has its place and depending on the situation will become more important than others.

I'll describe the four frames briefly, but if you're interested go read the book referenced at the end (it's available to view, in part, on Google Scholar)

• Structural: the most obvious, it's about the organisational boundaries, chain of command and process, there being a set list or blueprint for getting things done. A good example of where this works is an army, in the heat of battle soldiers, no matter the rank, fall back on their highly structured, highly disciplined training.
  
• Human Resource: sounds a bit corporate dunnit? Not really, the HR frame focuses on how characteristics of organisations and people shape what they do. It's the 'most important asset are our people' mentality, whereas a structural organisation will have people doing things because "that's how it's done" a HR focused organisation will more likely have people doing things "for the love of the organisation" (i.e. their derived value is more than just the pay check at the end of the month).
  
• Political: it's not a dirty word, don't assume it's the negative aspects of spin and self-interest you see in the media. Viewing an organisation from the political frame simply means you're making decisions to achieve set goals whilst taking account of scarce resources and diverged interests. It's a balancing act of trying to satisfy the most people possible in pursuit of achieving your goals.
  
• Symbolic: this is often one of the most powerful (and possibly destructive) a symbolic leader can be extremely powerful in terms of motivating people, think Ghandi or Martin Luther King, people we willing to die for their cause. Symbolic gestures too are extremely powerful, I remember a story of a Chief Executive and Chairman (possibly Ikea, I can't remember the exact details) who would share a hotel room whenever they were away on business "to save money" now in the context of a multi-billion pound company, a £100 a night saving isn't great, but the symbolism of the gesture is immense. Similarly adverse symbolic gestures can be hugely detrimental, think about the bad press city bankers have been getting lately for taking huge bonuses when the tax payers across the world have paid Billions to bail them out.
  

No do something for me, try and think of one example of each of these frames have been applied in your guild, by design, or by accident – is it the structure of officers and raid leaders, the selfless help offered in gearing a member up to raid who's taken some time off or the GM benching himself for a raid because there are more people wanting to raid than there is space? Actually, I've only given positive examples, try and think of one positive, and one negative, and then try and decide whether the person(s) involved acted without knowing the consequences, or whether (in your opinion) they'd weighed up the pro's and con's and taken the course of action with full awareness of the consequences (probably best to keep your findings private, you might upset people if you post your examples on the guild forum – political frame and all that… :-)

If you're an experienced GM, raid leader, manager, or have had any other reason to 'lead' a group of people you've almost certainly recognised yourself in what I've said, perhaps more by accident than design you'll have done things which could be construed as fitting into one of the four frames. Whether you're a GM, raid leader, or just a standard player, take some time to think about what you and your 'colleagues' want from the game in any given circumstance, and try to work out the best way to achieve 'success' whatever success may be.

WOW is a strange animal, it thrusts people into situations, which in the real world they'd never dream of, yet they survive, and not only that, excel! How many people have managed a team of 40+ people? Not many, I've had a reasonably long career in industry, managing a variety of teams, and approached that number in a couple of occasions, but think back to Vanilla WOW I was regularly organising and running 40 man raids, as were thousands of others across WOW. Leadership, more importantly good leadership isn't about being the boss, or necessarily the one who gets all the credit, it's about getting more out of others than they thought they were capable of in pursuit of achieving the organisational goals.

Even as an individual raider in a group of 25 you can have a positive impact on the group as a whole, think about the symbolic gesture of passing on a bit of loot, even though you're top of the DKP tree, for a newer raider who's gear is far worse – the total improvement to the organisation is far larger, but the symbolism of you looking after the interest of the whole guild or raid won't be lost, others will take the example and act in a similar way.



Now the reference – the link to Google Scholar http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsFj7wgczvYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=reframing+organisations&hl=en&ei=C9NbTdePMJKShAfJ7OXuDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA

Or the proper Harvard style reference for you more studious types:

Bolman L.G. and T.E. Deal (2003). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass

No "i" in team

I've read a few blog posts recently about the changes to the social scene in WOW and MMO's in general, some of them were pretty damning, some of them going so far as to herald the death of MMO's. I can't actually remember a positive post on the state of the social aspect of WOW so, as I'd planned for a while to pen a few words about the way the social aspect of the game had developed over the years I thought I'd high-time I did just that.

I started playing this game just under 6 years ago, it was my first ever experience of an MMO, back then the social aspect of the game involved chatting to the one or two real people I actually knew who also played on the same server, and asking other better players who had the misfortune to party with me some really dumb questions about the game. As I described in my first post it wasn't long before I met a few likeminded folk and formed a guild. The guild grew and grew and we got to raiding and set up a Teamspeak server, this was the first step in my opinion to forming some lasting friendships, which have spilled over past the boundaries of WOW. We never managed to set up a guild meet, although there's one in the offing for next month, but on my travels I've had chance to meet 5-6 of the guys I've met through WOW. Back in the vanilla days, there was no dungeon finder, the onus was very much on the player to be proactive and find parties. This was frustrating in one respect, because it took longer to get a party together. The two main advantages to this were you relied on your guild heavily for players, either directly, or recommendation of their friends who fancied a chop, and when you met someone who you had a pleasurable experience with you quickly added them to your friends list and kept in touch for whenever you were looking for a party. People thought nothing of sitting on Teamspeak (or Vent) waiting for someone else to log on and just have a chat, I'd even sometimes log on to vent when I was working from home.

Now since then, the focus of WOW has changed, Blizzard are clever people and have realised that there's more money to be made in the mass market (i.e. casual gamers) than with niche players (i.e. hardcore raiders, pvp'ers etc.). Blizzard , in my view, have been very clever in what they've done, they've realised that the people with the most disposable income, young professionals, don't have time to grind endlessly to prepare for raids, they also realise that the high end content, the pinnacle of what you can do, is the thing almost everyone aspires to. So they've cunningly introduced patches which offer new harder content, with less people requirements (10 man and 25 man as opposed to 40 man) which the hardcore's see first, and then slowly nerf it so that jo public also gets to enjoy it. This has attracted more people to WOW (or back to WOW) but it has had on (possibly unintended) consequence; guilds aren't that important anymore! Not unless you're a hardcore raider anyways, back in the days of Molten Core we had a core of 35-45 players who raided 75%+ of instances and another 20-30 players who were more casual, and another 15-20 who would help out if they were about and we were desperate. Looking through the guild list now, I reckon there's 50 unique accounts tops. When I first came back to WOW, just out of habit, I'd click the Vent icon on the desktop before loading WOW, most of the time I was sat listening to my own feedback.

Now I'm not saying the changes are a bad thing, they've achieved Blizzards objectives of repeat subscriptions (i.e. revenue) and they've opened up the game to more people. It just means that people have to work harder at being sociable, but it's a catch 22 situation; you can't foce people to be sociable, they play WOW for one reason, enjoyment (or is it addiction?) the aspects of the game which people enjoy differes, and they'll focus on those areas, for me it's (these days anyway) the social aspects of the game, the team challenge of achieving something together. I couldn't care less about shiny purple pixels – gear is nothing more than a means to an ends; to allow me to play with other people I enjoy playing with.

The other reason I believe the social scene has dropped off, which I touched on earlier, is the dungeon finder. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent tool, I just think it could do with some improvements. Firstly I'd like to see it favour other people from the same server who are in the queue when constructing parties, I can count on one finger the number of times I've randomly been grouped with someone from my server. By meeting people from the same server, you're more likely to form lasting friendships with them and do something together in the future. Secondly I'd like to see the Real ID system overhauled a bit so you don't have to give out your email address to befriend someone, and could actually use that friendship to form a cross server party prior to queuing for an instance.

For me, those are the two main issues which could be improved on, the game has obviously been refocused toward the type of player who only has an hour or so to log on in an evening, I probably fall under this category myself most evenings. There will come a day, and it's not as far as you might think away, where artificial Intelligence is advanced enough to be able to operate 24 other members of a raid, talk like people, act like people, and I suppose even throw hissy fits like people. This will allow the true casual to play single player MMO's, and may satisfy some, but not me, I like the social interaction, I actively pursue it in WOW it's not enough for me to stand triumphant over a bleeding pool of dead pixels, I need people to talk to, and in my view Blizzard need to encourage the community wherever and whenever they can or face the prospect of people falling out of love with WOW. More please Blizzard, much more.