Blizz Announces the Guild Mentoring Program

When the announcement of the Guild Mentoring Program for WoW came through the interwebs, I raised my eyes to heaven and said "Finally!"  Looks like someone took a page from EVE Online and decided to help noobs out by creating mentoring guilds out of a pool of volunteer guilds.

Here's the link for you to go read up the FAQ (such as it is):  Introducing the Guild Mentoring Program

At first glance, I love the idea.  It basically formalizes what some random individuals have been doing over the years, providing a destination for new players to be tutored in the ways of WoW and MMOs in general.

That said, I do have some questions/concerns how this will work out:

• The portion about identifying and inviting new players into the mentoring guild does make me wonder how that'll work in practice.  People can be prickly about such things, and if they feel like they're being given a hard sell, this could backfire.  Also, how the mentoring guild will determine that a player is new is going to be a challenge; people create new alts all the time, and if you don't have the funds/don't care about transferring heirlooms over, a new alt could seem a lot like a new player.  The same goes for an already experienced MMO player who just happens to be new to WoW.
• A three month tour of duty (or three months in the barrel if you prefer that slang) might not be enough time for new players.  I still wonder just how some people are able to power level their way through to max level, no matter what MMO I'm on, because it seems like they have to be spending almost every waking moment playing to do just that.
• Will the new players be encouraged to 'leave the nest' once they've got things down, or will this merely become a clever recruiting tool for guilds lucky enough to be chosen?  I can easily see that some guilds will look on this initiative as the latter and try to pad their raiding ranks this way.
• What happens to the mentoring guild if drama breaks out?  I don't think I need to say anything else, other than a big guild breakup while in the tour of duty would have the opposite of the intended effect.

Still, I think it's a decent first step.  I suspect that the smartest move in the long run is to create a permanent Mentoring Guild for each faction on each server and ask for volunteers to help staff it.  Blizz might be surprised at how many people would put in some volunteer time in a Mentoring Guild to help people along.  This might even counter Trade Chat and the scum and villany that pervade it.

One final thought:  while I think EVE Online's idea of EVE University is a great idea all MMOs should emulate, some need it more than others.  LOTRO and TOR have a friendly enough community that the needs of a Mentoring Program are served by Gen Chat.  AoC's F2P Gen Chat is pretty dead right now, with only gold spammers for the most part, so a mentoring program could be useful there.  But WoW, being the 900 lb gorilla and having the rep of being populated with "L2P NOOB!" denizens, definitely needs something to show that not everybody is an asshat in the game.

Now, if they could do something about the nerd ragers in BGs......

Ghost Towns

Things are pretty dead when Dalaran has just as many people in it on a Monday night as Stormwind.

I suppose you could argue that it was an 'up' day for Dalaran with 20 or so people in it on a Monday night, but Stormwind?  Of course, that other software product that Blizz dropped last week might have something to do with that, but the downward trend had been noticeable since the beginning of the year.

Ironically enough, the regular LFD random queue was the shortest it had been in well over a year for me, clocking in at around six minutes.  Maybe you'd expect a quick wait as a tank or healer, but DPS?  But on the flip side, getting into a random BG meant a 10 minute wait, a definite change from the typical 2-3 minutes.

I can't really make any sense of the weirdness surrounding the queues; while empty servers ought to translate into longer wait times for both sets of queues, it only impacted BGs.  Perhaps the people who are left playing WoW at this stage of the release are those who are the true 'hardcore' players:  leveling alts, crafting, transmogging, raiding, etc.*  If that's the case, leveling alts might be the reason for the short LFD queue times:  you get a bubble of people who began leveling alts at roughly the same time, and they all reached Cata instances at once.

Of these so-called hardcores, how many of these people are still blogging out there, working on beta, and figuring out their pathway to L90 on Mists?  Maybe we bloggers have a skewed sense of things, because we're passionate enough about the game to devote words to it in addition to any in-game activity.  But right now, I think we've long since entered the long lull before the lead up to the next expac, and the servers won't get busy again until the release date is imminent.

Which brings me to the Blizzard suggestion to merge servers in low population zones to give the illusion of more activity.

I can't be the only one who, when I first heard about the idea, said "I guess the first zones they'll do are Exodar and Silvermoon City.  After all, nothing says 'activity' quite like seeing a hundred or so bank alts in one location."

From an activity standpoint, this proposal sounds absolutely great.  It will give newbies the impression that there are a lot of things going on in WoW, and might convince them to stick with the game past L20.  It will also make some historically dead zones more lifelike, and will help players in The Ghostlands and Bloodmyst Isle find groups for questing.

However, WoW being WoW, I have some concerns about the proposal.  Not from a technical standpoint, but from a social standpoint.

What's the worst part about the social experience in WoW, particularly from the standpoint of a new player?

It isn't a lack of people to interact with, but an excess of antisocial people ruining the initial play experience:

• People who go kill opposing factions' quest givers in the intro zone.  (These are intro zones, so unless a newbie decides to set the PvP flag there isn't any direct ganking going on.)
• People with names such as "Isukballz" or "Killitnow" challenging people to duels, killing the mobs you were supposed to work on, and spamming guild invites to any and all comers.
• The toon who decides to zero in on a player for some ERP.
• The "Yr doin it wrong!" or "L2P noob!" toon who spews trash into Gen Chat just because they think it's funny.

And that's even before what a new player will see if they make it through the intro zone and into a city for the first time:  Trade Chat.

Based on an initial experience like that, it's a wonder that WoW gets new subs at all.

If Blizz is serious about bringing in and keeping new blood, then they have to address the social issues in WoW.  This isn't Polyanna country, and it ain't EVE, either.  People like to be welcomed and respected and tolerated.  If they feel the environment is toxic, they'll move on.  You can't expect a new player to blindly stumble through all of the social pitfalls and land in a good guild without guidance, and likewise you can't expect someone to blithely ignore all of the social issues that some players bring to WoW.

This is something that Blizz will need to tackle now, before Mists, when their system will strain under the weight of hordes of leveling Pandaren named Pandaspanx or Hotnfurry.




*Well, aside from the gold farmers, that is.  When I left Icecrown a couple of days ago there were more people there (15) than in Dal (10).  And as for me, I don't consider myself hardcore at all.  I just get on and play when I can.

Just D... Wait, what do you mean that line's taken?

This is written for the Newbie Blogger Initiative, which is going on throughout May 2012.  You can find more info at http://nbihq.freeforums.org.



Trademarks aside, that's the best advice I can give a new blogger.

Just go ahead and write.  Don't be afraid.

Well, be smart.  Don't write things that'll get you in trouble at work, or with your family, or with your friends.  If you want guild drama, the easiest thing to do is start posting about the scuttlebutt in your guild and what you think of it all.  If you wonder whether something you're writing is going to cause trouble, skip it and come back to it later.

If, however, you really don't care what people think and you've got the intestinal fortitude to back it up, then damn the torpedoes!

I realize that people will say to write what you know, and yes, that does let a new blogger start out on familiar ground.  But for my money, the act of writing itself is more important.  You're only going to get better as a blogger and a writer if you challenge yourself, by pushing what you can do.  When I look back at my initial columns when writing PC, I cringe.  I had no idea how little I knew about WoW, and what I thought then was decent writing now seems really klunky and pretentious.  Do I wish I'd been a better writer back then?  Sure.  But the thing is, the only way I really did improve was to work at it:  I played more, learned more about the game, and I wrote.

When you write, a funny thing happens.  You gain perspective.  You analyze yourself and what you believe.  You realize that not everyone will agree with you.  Hell, you also realize that what you thought was pretty good might be utter crap to another person.  Or worse, boring as sin.

Don't go into this because you want to be an awesome! cool! popular! blogger, because that's lightning in a bottle.  You can't chase fame without sacrificing yourself in the process.  Instead, blog because you want to, and because you have words that want to come out.  When you blog like that, you're exposing more of yourself than if you were chasing fame, but in that risk lies the reward.

A blog is a strange thing.  It's composed of your writing, and it can live indefinitely if you want it to.  It doesn't need readers to survive.  What it does need is a blogger.

Don't worry about readers.  Don't worry if it seems you're shouting into the wind.  Concern yourself with what you can control, and that's the content.

Write.

Exploring for Fun and Profit

If there's one thing that's gotten an update in the BC starting areas, it's the level of the guards.  Sure, that happened everywhere, but when you can fly over Northshire Abbey or Deathknell, you just don't notice.

Until you want that Explorer achievement, that is.

I was doing just that on Neve while I was waiting for a BG to pop, cruising through Darnassus (gotta love flying up the trunk of Teldrassil), and then I hit Azuremyst Isle.  Typically, it's not a big deal.  The guards throughout most of the Isle are the traditional level, so I got lulled to sleep thinking that all I had to do was pop into Ammen Vale and then scoot over to Bloodmist Isle to finish up the achieve.

Neve approached, forded the river, and rode her strider up the cleft and into the guards patrolling the entrance to the Vale.  She got smacked at, but I didn't think anything of it until I turned her around to head back.  She was immediately pulled off her mount and pummeled.

Did you know that the L90 guards hit for damage that range into the six figures?

And that using Invisibility to sneak past the guards won't work either?

I haven't had as much an exciting time getting that Explorer achievement since I got my original award on Quintalan on the Stormscale PvP server.

***

While I play battlegrounds, I typically don't engage in PvP play these days.  That's a far cry from my time on Stormscale, where I made a habit of looking over my shoulder and I developed a healthy distaste for the Alliance gankers in Hillsbrad.  Even then, I wasn't the sort to go out of my way to go after low level toons on the other side.  (Now, if I caught an Alliance player going after some Hordies, that was another story.)

Being on a PvE server means that you don't notice the faction territory quite so much as when you're on a PvP server.  That first time when I ventured into Loch Modan and I saw that big red "Loch Modan - Alliance Territory" flash overhead, I gulped.  I was sure that tons of Alliance would just pour out from behind every boulder and I'd be a smudge on the ground.  After all, when you get ganked in Tarren Mill 3-4 times a night, you learn to expect that stuff.  Much to my surprise, however, I kept moving and nobody seemed to really care that I was in the area.

If I thought it was terrifying on a PvP server to cross into enemy territory, I was extremely underwhelmed when I did it on a PvE server.  There isn't a big red "hey dummy!" alert, so you really don't get that sense of "things could go really really bad" that you get on a PvP server.

Unless you're a lowbie who encounters a max level toon from a rival faction, that is.

Her adventure with the Ammen Vale guards aside, Neve was cruising right along through Bloodmist Isle when she rode up toward the Vector Coil.  There, toiling among Kael's traitorous Sunhawks, was a lone Draenei.  I pulled Neve up to watch as he dispatched a nest of them, and then he turned and saw her.

If a toon could have a deer-in-the-headlights look, it was this guy.

Neve paused a moment longer, nodded and waved at the Draenei, and sped on her way.  Happy hunting!

Quintalan the Veteran

I've been running instances on an almost daily basis for a couple of months now, and the long road of questing to get to 80 seems a distant memory. Yes, I'm still doing quests for the Loremaster achievement, but it's not the same. The imminent threat of character death lent a different feel to that questing, and since I did my trip to 80 on a PvP server, there was always the "look over your shoulder, someone might be waiting to gank you" aspect to it.

Even the time I've spent running instances and doing heroics has changed my perception a bit. While I'm not a wily veteran like the long time players or the raiders are, I know my way around enough to know what I need to do to survive the instance and not look like an idiot. Although it may sure seem otherwise at times, I'm not a noob anymore. I was reminded of that last night during a run in The Nexus, and the day before in the Pit of Saron.

When I ported into The Nexus and began blessing people with Kings and Wisdom, the first thing one of the characters said after introductions was "does anyone need food?" Then the healer said that he needed to drink after buffing everybody. It had been ages since anyone had even mentioned those two in a heroic instance that I paused and checked out everyone's gear scores. In a bizarre case of turnabout, I had by far the highest gear score of the group.

I made a few mental adjustments and made a point of dialing back my attacks to keep from pulling threat on the first few trash pulls. The pulls went well, if a bit slower than what I'm now used to. Then the tank posted that he had to split; he'd just gotten paged and had to go into work.

No sweat. Real Life comes ahead of a game, and since I'm on a pager rotation I know what that's like. We put in a request for a new tank, and while we waited we chatted about the Stoutbeard encounter just up ahead. At least one party member hadn't heard of him, so I mentioned he's only in the Heroic mode and has a nasty whirlwind attack. A new tank popped in, we took out Stoutbeard after a couple of minutes, and the mage and priest had to drink. We loitered for a minute, let them get back their mana, and we went on to the next trash pull.

Then the second tank dropped out of the party without a word.

"What did I do wrong?" the healer asked. "I did everything I was supposed to, and nobody died."

"You did fine," I told him, and the others agreed. "He was just being a jerk."

"Well, this is my second Heroic instance. Ever."

"You're doing great; I've only been playing since August myself. Believe me, compared to my experience trying to heal Trial of the Champion at the same gear level you are, you're doing fine." I then explained my disaster trying to heal that instance, when we couldn't even get past Palestra; Souldat as the tank was taking so much damage at a pop that even while spamming Holy Light I couldn't keep up.

The story engendered a bunch of laughs. "That's a helluva place to heal for your first 80 instance," the hunter said.

"Yeah, and believe me, you're doing much better than that, Heals."

A third tank ported in, and we resumed the run. We finished with only one character death -due to the spike damage the boss gives in the elemental area- and before I left I complimented the group on the job. Compared to the times I've been in runs where the entire point is to "gogogo!", this was a pleasant experience.

The Pit of Saron also featured a healer new to the instance, and he had severe misgivings about it. "You'll do fine," the tank assured him.

"This instance is built with AoE heals in mind," I added. "I couldn't do it well as a Holy Spec Pally, but you as a shaman should be okay."

We did well, up until after Ick and Crick, when we started having problems staying alive in the vyrkul trash pulls heading up to Tyrannus. A couple of people in the instance had to go repair their gear, and the warlock dropped and was replaced by a mage. "This is getting to be too much for me to heal," the Shaman said.

"Don't worry about it," I replied. "We'll get through this and you'll see it's not a big deal."

We had one more wipe where we pulled too much trash at once, but once we reached the end of the tunnel things went much better with Tyrannus.

"Good job," I told the healer before I left. "Now that you've gotten this under your belt, you'll be that much better at it."

Perhaps I'm seeing myself in these characters, realizing that not very long ago it was me who was in their shoes. I'm taking the encouragement that Soul, Millalyn, and others have given me and am paying it forward. That's one of the best things that I like about the game: the support and camraderie you get from people you may not even know, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.*

Sure, people can be real jerks -or worse- just like in real life, but that doesn't mean that you have to be. I've seen terrible behavior on numerous occasions, but I take that as a "how not to act" and run with it. It might not help the signal to noise ratio in the long run, but it will have an impact on those you interact with.



*One time, when Quint was questing in Desolace, an 80 Pally came riding by. He stopped, a trade window opened, and he started dumping stuff in it. "What do want for this?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"Nothing," he replied. "I'm going to be suspending my account soon, and I'm giving all my stuff away. Do you have any other characters?"

"I priest," I said.

A few more items appeared in the trade window.

"Are you sure about this?"

"Quite sure. Have fun!"

On Being 'Tarren Milled'

Murtaugh, his wife, and I play Horde on the Stormscale PvP server. (If you see Quintalan or Gdaan poking around somewhere, that's me.) When you reach your upper-teens/low-20s as a Blood Elf and you venture out to the Undercity, you're given the "Report to Tarren Mill" quest from the Sindorei representative to the Forsaken. Being a noob, my first thought was to take it easy and work my way through Silverpine Forest first, and then make my way to Tarren Mill once I'd gone up a few more levels.

(Now, in the sake of honesty, I do use Quest Tracker, and the arrows to Tarren Mill from the Undercity go through the Western Plaguelands. I did venture into there as a 25th level Paladin, and promptly found out why it was NOT a good idea to go that way. Like I said, I'm a noob.)

I finally ventured to Hillsbrad Foothills and Tarren Mill somewhere around 27-28th level, which was my first exposure to the Contested areas. Naturally, if you're traveling on foot/horseback from Silverpine Forest, you have to pass several Alliance controlled areas. I kept expecting Alliance players to see me and come streaming out from their base to lay some serious smackdown, but I arrived in Tarren Mill without incident.

Ah, I thought. That worked out well.

I got the flight point for Tarren Mill squared away and logged off, confident that I'd be ready the next night to handle some initial quests in the area.

Things started out well enough, but when I was turning in one of the first quests you get (basically killing some bears in the area), all of a sudden I heard a "zap" and the release spirit window popped up.

"What the..."

Then I saw them. There were several of them -at least 5- and they were all well above my character's level into the "??" range. All Alliance guys. (I say guys because the characters were all male- your guess is as good as mine as to what their real gender was.) They were all having a grand time zapping everyone in sight, jumping around, and in general looking like a bunch of punks who deserved a visit from Mr. T and his Night Elf Mohawk. Considering I'd seen the results of such destruction in The Ghostlands when everyone in Tranquillien was zapped by a couple of '??' Level Alliance guys, I knew what to expect.

Okay, I just need to wait and they'll split, then I can respawn and that'll be that.

Only it didn't work like that. I waited five minutes, thinking they were gone -well, I couldn't see them anymore- and respawned. Ten seconds later I was chewing on my lip, staring at the release spirit window again.

I'd been Tarren Milled.

Murtaugh, when he heard about my misadventure, laughed and informed me that was why he didn't typically go to Tarren Mill when he was leveling. "That happens all the time," he more-or-less said.

"Yeah," I said. "I noticed. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel."

Obviously I wasn't worth it from an honor standpoint -I was way too low level for them to get any honor from it- it was pure maliciousness.

I came from that experience having learned two things: always watch your back, and Alliance people can be real dicks.

Since then, I've had some run-ins with Alliance people outside of Warsong Gulch -in Stranglethorn and Feralas, most notably- but in those cases the fights began with comparably leveled opponents. Sure, Murtaugh tagged along in Stranglethorn for protection in case a higher level "friend" of the Alliance opponent made an appearance (he did), but the fight was comparably even. It was remarkably 'jerk free', compared to Tarren Mill.

There was one time in Alterac where I was fighting some Syndicate personnel, and all of a sudden the dreaded '??' Level Alliance person suddenly entered my field of vision, circled me on his mount three times, paused, and then continued on. I got the distinct impression of "I'm going to let you live, buddy, but I could have had your ass whenever I wanted."

Gee, thanks for making my heart beat a little faster.

The uber-level Alliance person I encountered in Harathi while I was trying to complete a Strombrad quest wasn't so nice, however. He simply butchered me twice while he was apparently hunting for something. I grumbled, respawned, and got the hell out of dodge while I could.

Then there was the encounter I had today.

I was taking a late lunch and logged on to complete a few side quests. (Hey, 6000 XP is 6000 XP to a 50th Level Paladin.) Riding through the Hinterlands, I stopped at one of the troll areas (the one with the big Mayanesque pyramids) to go kill some spiders for an Apothecary in Tarren Mill. While I was there, I noticed a quest marker, so I ran up a pyramid and killed the three or four trolls at the top to find the quest hovering over another troll. Jumping down to where the troll was, I was about to talk to him when a flash of another monster caught my eye, popping up directly behind the quest NPC.

Great, I grumbled, another troll I missed.

I didn't need this; I only had about 20 minutes left to play and I wanted to be in and out quickly. Without much thought, I clicked and sent Quintalan to go slice and dice.

Then I noticed the '??' Level marker.

Oh crap. I am so dead. I actually got in a hit or two before I yanked Quintalan off of the female Night Elf (either Night Elf or Human, I can't remember) and waited for the end. I was about to get Tarren Milled again.

A piece of action popped up in my screen. "XXX says we are NOT going there."

I swallowed, pushing my heart back into my chest from where it had been lodged in my throat. I quickly typed out "mistake" and pressed Enter.

A further piece of action popped up. "XXX smiles."

And that was that.

There really isn't any moral to the story, outside of the obvious: don't let your initial impressions color your perceptions for the rest of the game. Not all of the people on your side are fantastic people, like the Horde person who decided to start a fight with some Alliance people in Booty Bay when I was wandering through (you're making the rest of us look bad, buddy; take it outside of those neutral cities), but neither is the other side composed of Grade A jerkoffs, either.