Why not offer true faction changes?

"If only there were true faction changes!”

The exclamation came from a guildie of mine as we were discussing the upcoming possibility to transform your character into an equivalent one on the horde side.

His suggestion was that a forsaken who didn’t like what the apothecaries did at Wrathgate should be able to jump to the Alliance side, as well as an orc “sick and tired of Garrosh whining and nerd raging like a lil kid”. For his own part he wouldn’t mind joining the horde as a human, since he really hated Wrynn.

What I had expected
I’m not quite as dedicated to lore as my guild mate is, so it’s not a huge motivator for me to play either on the alliance or the horde side. But still I find his idea attractive.

As a matter of fact, I had actually expected the faction changes to work exactly this way when I first heard about the concept. In my world, I would be able to join the horde as Larísa, the gnome.

Soon enough I realized the truth. The faction change isn’t about changing faction of your toon at all. It’s about killing your character, letting it crumble in front of your eyes, and then bring over the leftovers – the gear, the reputations and the achievements to a newly created character which starts at the max level. If I did this, the new character wouldn’t have anything to do with Larísa (apart from the name, if I managed to keep it). I couldn’t possibly think of it as a Larísa in disguise, who had transformed from a larvae to a butterfly. I would rather imagine it to be similar to buying a character at e-bay. They’re geared well enough, but there’s something missing: a solid background history, a lifetime of experiences, all those things which bring a character into life.

What I would suggest
Without considering the possible problems in programming and game design conflicts that may occur, I would like to see another design of faction changes: the possibility to keep your character as it is when it comes to race and looks, and only switching faction.

This shouldn’t be available to anyone who randomly gets the idea that this would be a fun thing to do. There is a point in keeping a certain distinction between the Horde and Alliance factions; if it messes up too much it will end up everything looking about the same, which is not what I desire. Because of this I would like to see it restricted, making it something you definitely would think about twice before trying.

You shouldn’t be able to buy it, not for 30$, not for 300$. The only way to get it would be to put in an insane amount of effort in game, something that made “insane in the membrane” look like a piece of cake.

Think about how you could switch between Aldor and Scryer once upon a time. A pink pigtail gnome who died to join the ranks of the Horde for whatever reason should be able to do so, but of course she would have to proof her reliability to gain the trust of the former enemies. Preferably it would take more than just turning in items (if you mention basilisk eyes to someone who’s switched faction in Shattrath they get something wild in their eyes). No, ideally, the faction transfer would contain a ton of questing, equivalent of the effort you make when you bring up a character from 1 to 80. This would make sense from a RP perspective, and it would also make you acquainted to the areas and lore of the opposite faction.

Pros and cons
I'm pretty certain there are some problems that would follow with my suggested faction change mechanism. Apart from the risk that it would become too popular, erasing the character and atmosphere of Horde vs Alliance, I can imagine that it especially would cause some trouble in PvP.

If you're a horde player who is used to look out for those annoying little pigtailed gnomes bouncing around in the battleground, I imagine it will be somewhat hard to get used to the idea that this little rat actually is a friend that you should heal rather than tear into pieces and stomping into the ground.. And the other way around: if I see a tauren going my way, my first idea is to try to kill him, my second is to flee the field, if he seems to be too much to me to fight. I would have to look twice - at a minimum - to realize that we're on the same side.

But there's also much to win from it. As mentioned before, it would allow us to keep our beloved characters, who we have invested so much time and effort and emotions into, even if we'd like to see "the other side". It would also give an interesting addition to the role playing, storytelling side of WoW. The story of the "traitor" who dares to cross traditional borders out of passion or personal believes is an old one and it presents a lot of potential conflicts that could be interesting to explore. Think of Mr Worf in Star Trek TNG and his struggles to deal with his klingon heritage!

Another good thing about a true faction change that it would offer players who've "been everywhere and done everything" a new challenge, a worthy achievement with a really cool reward. Who wouldn't want to be the first pink pigtailed gnome to become a Horde soldier, making everyone turn their heads in Orgrimmar? It would certainly be worth a reputation grind in a scale we've never seen before.

Tickled Pink: Before the Cataclysm

Now that Cataclysm is official and the full extent of the sweeping changes are clear, many people are thinking about what they want to accomplish in the old world before it is radically changed. For some reason that remains mysterious to us these "to do" lists are known in the Warcraft community as bucket lists. So, what do you plan to before the moment of Cataclysm arrives. Is your bucket empty or full?

Elnia

Before it's too late has such awful connotations, as if the end of the world is tomorrow. The truth is that if prognostications are correct we have at least six months before the end of Azeroth as we know it. Personally, I feel fine.

There are indeed some activities I would like to get done before now and the next expansion but most of those things were on my to do list anyway. Unless Blizzard were to announce that Cataclysm were to come out at Christmas, I can't imagine there won't be enough time to fit it all in. The one aspect of this I do have mixed feelings about is the Horde.

Unlike Larisa, I do think there is value in seeing the game as story. As I have never played Horde, seeing the story and learning the lore from that aspect of the game does interest me. Yet I find it hard to justify learning all about the Horde and then seeing it wiped away so quickly. Since I know I'm interested in playing a Goblin, I think I'd rather wait until the expansion before going over to the opposition.

In general there are two aspects of the game that I am interested in right now: collecting titles and mounts. One achievement I probably will find time to do is Loremaster. I'm almost done with the quests in old Azeroth and have about 50% of the expansion quests done. Another title I will probably grind to get is Guardian of Cenarius. I've got most of it done and I've always felt a little guilty that as a Druid I don't have it.

The other aspect of the game I want to focus on is mounts. For example, I will probably go back to grinding the Barron Rivendare mount. I've tried about 40 times and never got it. In this regard, it would be nice to know what the exact changes are to the various zones so you would know what you needed to do ahead of time.

So yes, there are somethings I want to do before the next expansion. I just don't feel any pressure about it though. If I miss it I miss it. I've missed a lot of the game already.

Larisa

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. All over the Blogosphere I’ve seen people making up all those lists of “things I have to do before Cataclysm”. People who turned their backs to Azeroth long time ago are suddenly returning to the game. I would expect them to do that, but not until the final “bridge” patch, which I suppose we can expect before the launch of Cataclysm at some point 2010. I was completely taken by surprise to see all those bloggers declaring that they would roll brand new alts to see the old content one last time before it’s gone.

What’s up with you guys? There’s a good reason why they’ve decided to remake some of the old vanilla zones. They’re obsolete in every way you can think of. The quest distribution sucks, with quest chains that I thought we agreed long time ago was a pain in the ass because of the heavy travel duty they involved. The environment and artwork is mostly plain and boring, especially the endless plains of Kalimdor makes my skin itch.

And the quests in themselves… Oh, dear. The amount of “collect 10 boar parts” quests is much higher than in the modern WotLK WoW. Do you really have to be reminded of this? I don’t get it. The only reason for rerolling before Cataclysm I can come up with is pure nostalgia. And since I wasn’t around at the original launch, I’m not a part of it. When I started to play, the gravity centre of the game had already moved on to Outlands.

I think the basic problem with the “bucket lists” is that they’re created from the assumption that WoW has an end, that it resembles to a book, with a number of scenes and chapters that you work your way through, until you’ve seen and done all and then put it aside.

If you see the game this way, it’s no wonder you get worried if you get the information that some pages will be ripped out of the book and replaced with others, so if you want to “read the whole thing” you’d better hurry up.

But speaking for myself, WoW isn’t a book and it isn’t a game like any else which you play your way through and then put aside. It’s a huge pile of sand which I make sandcastles of and it hasn’t got any beginning or end. It’s more like an activity, a state of mind, an alternative existence to pull it to the extreme. And from that perspective, levelling a character on the horde side, for taking one example, could as well be done after the Cataclysm launch. The game is too big to see and do everything anyway. I have to accept that I wasn’t around to raid Molten Core “in the old good time”, and frankly it doesn’t bother me the slightest.

Old readers of PPI may have some objections now. After all I’ve been guilty of making lists myself. A few months ago I listed “33 things I want to do before I quit WoW”. Out of curiosity I went back to check if any of those “things” would become impossible to do after the upcoming changes.

“Eat a delicious chocolate cake at a beautiful spot”. No problem with that one!

“Spend a silly night at the IF bridge with our realm clown Cacknoob.” Sure! I haven’t seen anything about changes of IF, but even if they’ll give it a facelift, I’m pretty sure he’ll find himself a spot. The show must go on.

“Play hide and seek in Stormwind”. Why not in Cataclysm? The worgen district they’ll add will only make it more fun.

As far as I know now, I can even tick off the questionable goal number 4 on my list: getting myself a Winterspring Frostsaber mount. There isn’t anything said about remaking Winterspring. (Although I’ll probably be wise to save that one until I’m ready to quit the game, since it will be so sickening boring that I’ll never want to see it again.)

To put it short: the only thing I want to do before Cataclysm hits is to keep enjoying WotLK at its full potential, not worrying too much about what is to come. I’ll throw my heart and soul into whatever challenge that is calling for my attention at the moment. Yes, there will be some content that will be erased from the game that I won’t have seen. So what? New content will arrive in its place, more than I’ll have time to see anyway.

WoW is most of all a state of mind. I refuse to transform it into nothing more than a tick list.

Darkmoon Faire should be more than a trinket shop

“Darkmoon Faire Cancelled”.

I stared at the headline at WoW.com in disbelief, until I realized I had gotten it wrong. It wasn’t the ingame faire, which was about to open in Elwynn Forest this week, that all of a sudden had shut the gates. The whole article was about some marketing event in Paris for the card game version of WoW. Nothing that concerned me.

Reasons to cancel
Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the consequences if the real Darkmoon Faire actually had been cancelled. My first thought was that they really would have good reasons to do it. After making the same route in Azeroth year after year, you could expect the poor crew to crave for a vacation, or maybe they just wanted to slip away to investigate new market opportunities. After all they have the whole Northrend continent to exploit! Another possibility was that the swine flue had started to spread in Azeroth. They could very well cancel it as a safety measure.

The most likely reason to shut down the business however would be lack of customers. This became apparent to me as decided to pay the faire a visit the other night. I don’t do this very often, once a year at the most, but I felt in a pensive mood after some wiping in Ulduar hardmodes, and thought that this could be a way to cheer me up a bit.

The sight I met was rather sad. The NPCs did their best to provide the right atmosphere – entertainment, wonders, amusing tricks that tickle your imagination. But how could they possibly succeed when the grounds were void of real people? Apart from some stray player who just rushed in to get over with their card-and-trinket-exchange-business, to instantly take off once it was done, I was on my own.

So what was a lonely gnome to do? For the first time ever, I spoke to every single character at the faire. And it became apparent to me how desperate this institution is for a facelift.

A huge part of the content of the market consists of the task to turn in obscure items in exchange for tickets, the Darkmoon Faire currency. Once you get enough of them, you can trade them for items. Some of those items were surely fine and useful in vanilla wow – I remember how I myself grinded harpies for hours and hours to get 50 vibrant feathers so I could trade them for a bag at the fair, strictly following the advice from Jame’s levelling guide. Today, with gold, gear and levelling xp overflowing Azeroth, it’s just a complete waste of time to do it. The only ones who bother about it are the crazy people who are heading for the “Insane in the Membrane” achievement. Ordinary players lack incentives to visit Darkmoon Faire. It's more or less a dead area; this content was deserted long time ago.

Fun things to do
In my investigations I managed to find a few fun things that you still can do at the faire. They didn't give me any huge laugh, bat at least some giggles, since I hadn't done those things before. Believe it or not, but it took me 2.5 years of playing before I let myself being launched by the cannon, taking the flight over Elwynn Forrest!

The reason for it puts me in a rather bad light, but I’ll share the story with you anyway:

The thing is that I was scared by the faire as a very young gnome. I remember how I hesitatingly approached the market, so long ago. At this point I was still clueless about most things in the game, I was obsessively afraid of clicking on unknown things, since thought they would have some permanent damaging effect on me. In spite of this, my curiosity took over and I managed to start one of the tonk controls. But at that point I didn’t know what it was about. What I saw on the screen was that my character got stuck and knocked unconscious. I couldn’t control her anymore and I was convinced that it was an evil trap, which was put there to teach gnomes who put their nose into things that didn’t concern them a lesson. I had no idea about how to get out of it, so I waited for it to wear off, which took 5 minutes. I swore never to try such a thing again and always kept a safety distance to the faire after that, never interacting more than necessary with it.

It wasn’t until this night that I realized that the trap I imagined actually was a tonk controller. How strange that I never even noticed the toy car before! But I guess it says something about the horror I felt, being “stuck”. Considering this, it's no wonder that I never dared to try the cannon launcher or talk a bit with the fortune teller about my future. Who knew what evil deeds they were planning to me?

A waste of a great idea
Last night I finally did all those things. They were pretty funk but they didn't last for long. I coudn't even prolonge the entertainment doing the quest for the Jubling pet, since I already had it.

I couldn’t help feeling a bit unfulfilled when I left the premises. Was this all there was? In the glorious age of phasing, of holiday events, of thrilling vehicle rides, of dailies and currency grinds for all sorts of vanity items, couldn’t they come up with something more than this?

The truth is that Darkmoon Faire has turned into a godforsaken place, a shadow of its former glory, which just is an annoying extra journey and waiting time to obtain epic trinkets. It’s probably only a matter of time before they open a filial store in Dalaran.

I think it’s sad since it's a waste of a great idea, which would fit nicely into the fantasy theme of Azeroth. Darkmoon Faire could be one of those changing, temporal events, which keep the game fun and makes the world come alive. It could increase our apetite for adventures.

But in it's current shape it's in desparate need for some attention and love from the developers. Yeah, they’ve added a few Northrend items to the assortment of the vendors of exotic goods, but that isn’t enough. Where is the entertainment for the modern inhabitants of Azeroth?

The question is: will they bother to rewamp together with everything else in Cataclysm? Or will the faire succumb in a natural disaster, never ever to be heard of again? Cancelled for good? I wouldn’t be surprised to be honest.

A Tickling Ghost

My niece and I have a special relationship. Truth be told, she fell in love with me when she was six and we have been going steady ever since. I've always tried to set a good example for her because I know that the first cut is the deepest. I live a couple of hundred miles away but whenever she finds out I'm coming she goes, as my sister-in-law puts it, ga ga. I payed a surprise visit one time and she ran down the steps, flew into my arms and almost knocked me over so intense was her excitement. As she put it in her sweet childish voice, "Others are important but you're the most important."

My nickname for her is Mac-a-doodle-doo because whenever anything positive happens she crows like a rooster. When she was seven I discovered her happily jumping on her bed her arms wrapped around her chest; when I asked her why she said with disarming candor, "because I am in love with me." Even now in her tween years she loves me to tickle her and after an intense session she will brag in a breathless voice to anyone who will listen, "I almost got tickled to death."

Cataclysm

Since the official Blizzard announcement of the next expansion I've been thinking about memories and mementos. While each expansion has changed the game in some form there has been a core consistency, a basis for shared experience. Almost everyone that has played the game has quested in Barrens at some point, defeated Hogger. All druids felt the pain of 20 minutes runs to turn in quests in Darkshore. If they haven't, they still can. After Cataclysm we'll just have to shrug our shoulders and say "you had to be there" when we reminisce about the pain of leveling a Druid or what Barren's Chat meant to us.

This concept of the shared experience of the community is a central theme of the work of the Christian theologian St. Augustine. In his vision a marriage isn't required to be public, with witness, because people need an opportunity to gawk. Marriages are public because first and foremost they are a community artifact; marriage finds its social power precisely because it is an event that takes places within a community of believers. A marriage isn't valid because the priest pronounces it to be so, or because the two individuals pronounce it to be so, but because the whole community itself pronounces it to be so because everyone shared in its creation. A marriage is a story the community tells itself about the way life is and ought to be.

In this way there are in fact two Warcraft stories. There is the story in the game itself, the story of the Horde vs Alliance, the story of the Titans, the story of the fate of the world of Azeroth. Then there is the story the players tell themselves about that story; a story told in podcasts, in blog posts, in forums, in machinima. This second story is our marriage ceremony, our shared creation.

Gloves of Token Respect

In my family I'm the historian, the genealogist. I know who is married to whom; I can tell you who my third cousin is twice removed. One thing that you learn quickly in genealogy is the paucity of tangible evidence from the past. Often the only record of a past life is a tombstone or a record in the basement of a dusty church. My maternal grandfather loved to walk and one of my cherished mementos is antique pedometer that he wore, given to me by my grandmother shortly before she died of brain cancer when I was twelve. I still remember her head all wrapped up in a white turban to hide the affects of the radiation. It seems odd sometimes that I cherish the memory of that painful time but the fact of the matter is that I met my maternal grandmother just that one time and was grateful for it; all my other grandparents died before I was old enough to remember.

It's a sobering thought to realize that the only shared experience your grandchildren may have with you will center around a small memento. I have an original version of my 3rd great grandfather's birth certificate written in German that has been handed down in each generation. I have an antique clock made in 1880 owned by his second daughter. And that's it. My parents and their siblings had no interest in family history whatsoever and much of the lore and history was simply lost. I considered myself lucky indeed when I came across a tattered photo stuck in dilapidated trunk in the attic. One of the hardest emotional aspects to being a genealogist is admitting that you just don't know; the data just isn't there; the cataclysm that is decay came and wiped out the writing on the tombstone, the paper is too weathered to read. You learn to be thankful for the smallest token, a pair of gloves even, to which you can pay your respects.

The other difficult part about looking at the past is to see it realistically. As I talked more with my extended family I learned more about my grandfather and the news wasn't always positive. I see that pedometer in a different way now as an adult: it's was only a tool of man, a husband, a father and not the symbol of a god. I doubt that he ever dreamed in his life that the one thing a grandchild would cherish about his life was a set of rusted gears and levers bound to a rotting leather strap. If he could spring back to life as a ghost he might be angry or bemused about his intentions going so astray. In a similar vein, I doubt that the original developers of Warcraft had any intention of making the early levels of a druid such a pain; they probably cringed inside every time someone mentioned it; they are most likely delighted that the memories of such events will now fade away in time after the Cataclysm.

Spiritual Unrest

The difficult thing about the story is that we are always telling different stories about it; the shared experience of the community changes as the community changes. As old timers drop out there are few people to even remember what Barren's chat really felt like to participate in. The stories we tell ourselves about the story change even within our lifetime; what we think life is all about as teens is not always the same thing we think life is about at 40 or at 80.

Once, after a lengthy visit of about week, it was time for me to leave. Mac was distraught. As I was pulling away in my car she rushed out to the curb and stood their waving and waving goodbye as I disappeared down the road. I kept looking in my rear-view mirror and still she stood their waving until her mother came out and took her hand; then they both began to wave. They were still waving as I turned the first bend in the road.

As I drove down the road tears flooded my eyes. She cannot know, I think to myself, that it's just a ghost that's tickling her. That one day in a time beyond my time, a life beyond my life, a world beyond my world all I will be is a ghost. A tattered picture, a faded memory, a part of history. What token of myself, I wonder, will she hand to her own children as she tries to share with them her experience of my life. I cry so hard I have to pull off the interstate. As I blow my nose I think of the Highborne Lichlings of Azshara. I don't want to be that type of ghost. I don't want her hating me in her head when she's 40; I don't want to be a terror roaming the landscape of her heart. Dear God, I say between gasps, let me be a happy phantom, let me be a tickling ghost.

Some thoughts about Champagne marketing and my irrational bidding for a trinket

If you read Gevlon, you would think that undercutting is the normal way to make business and be successful on the market. It does make sense, doesn't it? It's the classic balance between demand and supply and the invisible hand that makes it work out to the best for everyone.

However this isn't the whole truth. There are actually brands that make a point out of exactly the opposite: they don't outbid each other by making things cheaper. They outbid each other on making them more expensive.

The Champagne example
I admit that the thought seems a bit strange at a first look, but the professor who presented it to me in a marketing course at the university was pretty convincing.

He gave us an example of a champagne brand, which had made "expensive" into their "unique selling point", the thing that would distinguish them from their competitors and make their offer attractive. Their strategy was to make sure that their brand always had the highest price on the market. Whenever someone else appeared, making a more expensive champagne, they raised the price of their own, to make sure they were on top. This worked remarkably well.

The price they set had absolutely nothing to do with the costs they had in producing the champagne or the quality of it. It was only, I tell you, ONLY about positioning. Their target group was people who were obsessed with the social ladder and wanted to connect to the people on top. They wanted to live and experience the dream by drinking the same champagne. The manufacturer actually didn't have to invest much in media costs, according to my teacher. Too much of advertising could have the opposite effect to what they wanted: an air of exclusivity.

Vanity shopping
It's easy to laugh at such a story, at the stupidity and the complete lack of rational thinking that some people display. How can they be so easily fooled?

But at the same time, if I look long and honest at myself, I can display tendencies to the impulses.

Before I make any confessions I want to make clear that I've never ever considered buying a chopper or any other kind of extremely expensive vanity item in WoW. I do buy some useless stuff just for the laugh of it, but it's limited to rather harmless costs, like a 40 g vanity pet at a vendor. It hasn't got mammoth proportions but on the other hand, it hasn't got the "most exclusive champagne" impact either. It's just for my own amusement.

However I'm not completely free from the influence of those "Ape subroutines", as Gevlon would label them.

I came to think about it the other night, after I just had won the dkp bidding for a new little toy, Reign of the Unliving, which dropped from Anub'arak in Trial of the Crusader as we killed him for the first time.

Considering how much dkp I paid for it, The Lost Jewel would have been a more appropriate name. I end up paying 151, which is on the top 10 list in the guild history and left me with a hole in my pocket. It will take me three or four weeks of raiding, maybe more if I can't attend every raid, before I can earn it back.

Was it worth it? Definitely: yes. But this statement isn't only based on reason. If I'm completely honest with myself it's also based on completely irrational psychological mechanisms, connected to the ones that the champagne company so shamelessly benefit from. I can almost hear Gevlon grumbling from his corner: "Shame on you Larisa, shame on you".

Reasons for bidding
Now, this item is far from useless. As a matter of fact it's quite the opposite. I had done some research and I knew it was a good thing for my class, possibly a best-in-slot-one, although Rawr told me something else, but I had my doubts about it. It seemed as if the theorycrafters weren't completely done with their thinking and calculations.

If my bidding on this item had been driven entirely by logic, I would have calculated on beforehand exactly how much dps increase it would give me, I would have given a certain dkp value for every extra dps unit, and would have adjusted my bidding according to this. Nothing more, nothing less. With the tier token prices falling, I could probably have gotten two pieces of those for the same price as I got this trinket within a couple of weeks. Maybe that would have kept me from going so high in my bidding.

But my decision to bid all the dkp I had wasn't just about rationality, it was as much about emotions and desires. I was under influence of the rush of a guild first kill and the fact that it was a RNG item (as opposed to the tier tokens which guaranteed will drop over and over). No one could say how long it would be before I saw it again. And as if that wasn't enough, the description of the effects of the item was intriguing: "You gain a Mote of Flame each time you cause a damaging spell critical strike. When you reach 3 Motes, they will release, firing a Pillar of Flame for 1741 to 2023 damage."

A Pillar of Flame! It would be coming out of the sky with regular intervals and it was "on equip", so I didn't have to do a thing to make it happen, just staying on my normal rotations. Isn't that anything a fire mage could wish for, in combination with the +150 spell damage that also came with it? I bid what I had, and so did the other casters, but it ended up in my pocket.

You bet I was happy! And this is where the Ape Subroutine Confession comes in: I actually think that the fact that I had spent such an insane amount of dkp on it made me appreciate this item even more. "Everyone else wanted it, people bid like insane, therefore I was lucky to get it!" It wouldn't have been the same thing if everyone else already had it and the price had been 15 dkp instead of 151, even though this clearly would have been a much better deal for me.

Our desire to be a winner
I can't but laugh at myself. I'm like a living example from the course literature of consumer behavior. Our need to feel that we've made a good deal is so strong that we'll do everything in our power to come out as "winners". No matter what the reality tells us, we'll tell ourselves that we took the right decision.

My final action to prove this to myself was to put on my new trinket and head straight to the dummies in IF. I was pleased when I looked at the following Recount report - its share of the total damage seemed to be considerable. The graphics was on the other hand a disappointing surprise. Or I should rather say: the lack of graphics. I stared and stared at the dummies but if failed to see any Pillar of Flame, except for in my imagination.

But I didn't dwell on this for long. After all I had become the owner of the probably most expensive trinket ever auctioned in our guild. I paid more for it than I did for the Skull of Gul'Dan I got from Illidan last autumn.

Rational or not, I sipped on my trinket and I enjoyed it, just as I would a glass of exclusive champagne. Being irrational sometimes isn't only a bad thing. It's a part of being human.

We make traces

More than once I have pondered upon the nature of blogging and of our online relationships. What kind of friendship do we have with our readers? Is the affection I feel and the warmth I experience while solving the if not world, at least Azerothian riddles over a pint for real, or is it just wishful thinking, a result of my imagination?

Once I asked myself if anyone will notice if I suddenly disappear from the game, if I die for real. The show must go on. We don't make any traces in the game (at least if we're not BRK or Phaelia). That's a fact. Or is it?

Yesterday I was reminded of that the words that we write, the thoughts we express and the feelings we share, maybe somehow sticks. I was browsing Warcraftbloggers (which works as a sort of feed reader to me, since I don't keep one of those myself) to check if there were any new interesting blogs incoming. And then I suddenly saw a familiar name: Chick GM was posting again. I couldn't believe my eyes!

For new members of the WoW blogosphere, who never have heard of Chick GM, I can tell you that Auzura, who runs it, was one of the brightest shining stars on the blogging sky until she suddenly, without any explanation, turned silent in October 2008. Until then she used to write about her experiences as a guild leader in a passionate, insightful, intelligent and very eloquent manner. She was a star, everyone could tell, from the very start of her blog. She only needed to write a few posts before she appeared on literally EVERY link list.

But one day she disappeared from the scene. And I had a dreadful feeling that it had to do with her health problems, which she had mentioned briefly, almost ashamed of sharing anything such private on this blog dedicated to leadership issues.

Now she has written a post. She's alive. She's playing WoW again, if only casual. And it seems that she may consider starting blogging again, although she hesitates since she doesn't run her own guild anymore and therefore doesn't think she hasn't authority to talk about those topics the way she did before.

Well, my message to Auzura is that she should stop worrying about that aspect. Seriously. If you have stories to tell, thoughts to share and if you have a passion and talent for writing, it doesn't matter if you're a raid leader of Ensidia or if you're levelling your first toon and just dinged 14 in the fields of Westfall. You can always reach out and find an audience. Trust yourself.

And my message to myself and other bloggers who from time to time wonder about if all those text walls we crit the readers with really matter, since they will be erased by the tide of time anyway is: yes it matters. I still remembered Chick GM after almost a year, I've been worrying about her - even if I doubt that she's ever heard about, even less visited this little inn. And I was glad to hear that she's been let out of hospital, it sounded hopeful.

We make traces. More than we dare to believe.

Is your guild healthy? Check your forums!

How healthy is your guild? One way to find out is to check your guild forum.

Is there a lively conversation going on, covering a wide array of topics? Do a majority of the guild members actively participate in those discussions? Can you rely on that people visit the forums if not daily, at least several times a week and that they'll keep themselves updated on essential information, such as guild policies and tactics for upcoming encounters?

In that case you've got a solid fundament for your internal communication. And that goes a long way if you want to maintain a strongly knitted and well functional guild, with a shared mindset and a common vision about where to go next.

On the other hand: if you have a guild forum where the posts are few and far between, if there are just a few voices that are ever heard, and some people don't even bother to visit it anymore, since they won't miss anything important anyway - well, then you could have a potential problem.

There are exceptions of course. Some guilds do fine without forums - for instance a very small guild of real life friends who have more or less the same gaming hour and will meet online anyway - or a huge and extremely casual/social guild, which basically isn't much of a guild, but rather an extra chat channel in game. But for an average raiding guild I think a well working guild forum is a must.

10 000 posts
The other day my own guild passed 10 000 posts on our internal forum. That's quite impressive after 15 months of existence. It will give an average of over 20 posts per day. And then I still know for sure that there are quite a few outdated posts that have been erased over time.

The posts of our current forum cover every thinkable aspect of the game. There are dead serious posts - deep going, detailed theory crafting discussions that would qualify for EJ, overviews of the tactics for the current bosses we're facing, combining the strategies we've picked up from others with our own experiences and special forums where tanks, healers, ranged and melee dps can discuss their special issues in depth.

Recently we started to not only post the WWS from the most recent raids, but also do an evaluation of it, boss by boss, not fearing to mention individuals, if they have problems they need to work on, as well as if they've excelled and deserve some recognition. It's actually exactly the kind of "rare" constructive discussion that Gevlon says hardly exists anywhere. Well if that is the case' we're the exception.

But we're not only dead serious. We have all sorts of silly threads as well, which is just as essential as the evaluations. They help to keep up the spirit and the fun in the guild. Those threads are like glue - it builds friendship, trust and a sense of belonging.

An example of this is the thread where people publish screenshots with highlights from the guild chat. I don't spy in the healing channel (following the discussions in the mage, ranged, raid and guild channel is enough). But this way I don't miss the sometimes pretty bizarre exchanges that take place there.

Another thread that currently is highly popular, although completely un-wow-related, is a guess-the-movie-thread, where we take turns publishing a photo from an unknown movie, letting people try to find out where it's from. The one who nails it will publish next. If nothing else we can have a laugh at the pretty bizarre taste for movies that some of us have.

Real life pictures
Of course we have a thread where we post pictures of how we look in real life. (NO, I won't post a picture of myself here at the inn. That secret remains within the guild. Join us and you'll get the chance to see it! We still have some dps spots open!)

But most of our topics are about WoW, not unexpectedly. There's a constant exchange of information and ideas about everything from UI:s to macros and the latest patchnotes. We also do a lot of administration and arrangements this way, such as announcing longer absences, organizing runs and other events outside of our ordinary 25 man raids, (which are handled by a special tool) and exchanging trade skill services with each other.

And whenever someone's computer messes up, you can be sure they'll get a ton of good advice if they post about their problems.

Apart from the public guild forum, our officers also have their own protected forums and I don't know what they're discussing there. But they always make sure to involve the guild in the development of the guild. We've had a system where guild applications are posted for everyone to comment on for a while now, and it works remarkably well.

The guild brain
To summarize it: if the raids are the beating heart of the guild, which pumps around the oxygen, the guild forum is the brain that keeps the whole organism running. Without the brain the other parts would soon malfunction, maybe even fall apart.

Adrenaline has hit 10 000 posts and as long as I see people keeping posting those posts of all kinds - useful, crazy, humorous, insightful, provoking, straight-forward, interesting, annoying, cleaver and teambuilding posts, I rest assured that we're at good health, steadily on our way to bravely explore new, unknown territories.

How about you? Does your guild forum display signs of health? And how do you keep it that way?