Joe's World... of Warcraft - Guilding
Today, Joe Iuliani focuses his WoW spotlight on using guilds in WoW.
The general media has a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of the gaming community. Games have been blamed for acts of violence as well as the newly diagnosed “Gamer’s Addiction”. Yet the general media seldom, if ever, focus on the positive social aspects of MMOs. To that end, I would like to chat briefly about guilds in World of Warcraft.
Last week Blizzard “unveiled” their Guild Nexus as part of their Guild Relations Program. By “unveiled”, I mean it was a bullet point while logging on to WOW.
All guilds accepted into in this program will receive special recognition and benefits, including:
- A dedicated page linked to on the WorldofWarcraft.com community website listing the name of the guilds in the program, details about each guild, and links to their websites.
- Eligibility to participate in upcoming beta tests.
- Invitations to live online chat sessions with Blizzard game designers.
- Q&A updates to be posted in the Guild Relations forum based on feedback received directly from members of the program.
- Additional features and benefits to come.
Guilds are a great place for like-minded people to band together to enhance their gaming experience. Most often your guild is where you turn for gaming advice, information, instance groups, and resources. To many, their guild is one of the most important aspects of gaming. Finding the right guild can make or break your Warcraft experience. It can be a lonely World….of Warcraft without folks to bond with while gaming. Grinding faction as well as all those other time sinks move much quicker when sharing the burden with some friends. In addition to all the in-game benefits of guilds, more and more people are forming lasting friendships that transcend the gaming world.
By the way, if you consider yourself to be in a successful guild, give your officers some credit. They are responsible for guild advancement while trying to make sure everybody is treated fairly. There is only so much room for the top players, and sometimes folks don’t get to play as much. It’s a crappy job, not only do they need to do what’s best for their guild and henceforth the members. They often need to stroke egos and coddle other members. This is a volunteer job; the only reward is guild advancement and bragging rights. Hey, it’s pretty damn cool to be a top ranked guild, but getting there has taken its metal toll on more than one player. Of course there is the occasional rampaging ego maniacal guild out there as well. I like to call them Alliance guilds. Back me up here Horde. (and yes this is meant to stir up comments)
An extreme example of what some guilds are capable of, but it is an amazing accomplishment for what bunch of like mind folks were capable of doing is: Legend of the Syndicate. This was recently reviewed by MMORPG’s own Jon Wood. Read the article here.
Let’s hear some of your guild experiences.
As a side note it is Halloween, so in edition to WOW seasonal event, home of some of the quickest epics out there, check out Blizzard pumpkin carving contest, sure it may have zero to do with gaming, but some of those designs are pretty damn cool. Next time I will discuss the winners at length.
