Monday, March 28, 2011
Contributing from Afar
For those of you who listen to our podcast POW W.O.W. we just finished recording our 5th episode so make sure that as soon as it is up on itunes download it and leave comments and reviews. Spoiler Alert from the podcast......I am going to be on vacation for about a week and a half. While this is great for me :) the podcast is going to be slightly different with 2 supplemental podcasts over the next week and a half. There will be one podcast about PVP and all the fun that intales and one about the game wow should or could be! Both of these shorter episodes will feature guest hosts and will be definitely worth tuning in to! I will also be contributing while I am away here in the blog and I will add here any and all random thoughts that I might have while I am out and about, and find my way to a computer to type them down. In the meantime keep up rocking the game and listening in to the podcast!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
4th Episode is a Go!!!
For all those faithfull fans out there of the POW W.O.W podcast the 4th episode has landed!!! Check it out at Nerdfireproductions.com leave feedback here or send us your questions and comments to powwow@nerdfireproductions.com
Listen and Enjoy!
Listen and Enjoy!
Friday, March 18, 2011
Coming up on POW W.O.W
This weekend we are going to be recording the 4th episode of the POW W.O.W podcast and hopefully if the tech gods are smiling upon us promoing a new intro and outro to the show written and recorded by our great friend Banehoof!!!!!!! If we get good listener feedback we might feature more audio/song from Banehoof on the show.
This week we will be discussing Failing at dailies and gearing up your toon to raid and Walsh's debut 120 unleashed which you will have to tune in to hear how a guy who has never played WoW can rant about it :). If I might give you some advice.....Tune in, it is going to be great!
The complete and polished episode should be on itunes by either Sunday night or Monday morning and I hope you hear your thoughts and critics about the episode here or on our email powwow@nerdfireproductions.com
This week we will be discussing Failing at dailies and gearing up your toon to raid and Walsh's debut 120 unleashed which you will have to tune in to hear how a guy who has never played WoW can rant about it :). If I might give you some advice.....Tune in, it is going to be great!
The complete and polished episode should be on itunes by either Sunday night or Monday morning and I hope you hear your thoughts and critics about the episode here or on our email powwow@nerdfireproductions.com
Monday, March 14, 2011
POW W.O.W Podcast #3
Episode 3 was recorded last night and is posted on our website at nerdfireproductions.com very shortly!!!!!!! Be sure to download the episode and leave reviews and rating for our itunes users.
Friday, March 11, 2011
For The Horde?
I have been a horde player since I started the game 5 years ago. Began as horde and even though I have rolled about 15-20 alliance characters on 5 different servers I have never gotten them higher then level 20. On the other hand I have 5 horde toons over the level of m 80 and 2 85 that are raid geared. And yet with all this time that I have spent with the Horde I have never gotten the "For the Horde" achievement on any of my toons. Why is it so bloody hard? I am on a server that has almost a 10:1 H/A server, it is an odd day when I even see an alliance character and yet whenever I join a group to go kill some Alliance leaders it all falls apart!!!! We will get one capitol city down and either in transit or before we can even leave the city 20 people drop group. On top of that you have the "Leet" players that don't wait for the group to enter the city together....NO!!!!! I AM LEET AND CAN SOLO ALL GAURDS AND KINGS WHILE TALKING CRAP ABOUT YOUR MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER, BOYFRIEND AND ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU MIGHT TAKE OFFENSE TO!!!!!!!!! This behavior of course causes 5 more people to leave because who wants to deal with an asshat like that, and the whole alliance city is tipped off that we are coming, the guards are all out of place so they aggro onto the wrong raid members and we wipe in a steaming pile of fail, which promptly inspires another 15 people to leave and that is the end of that raid. I have had the achievement on my to do list, ever since they invented the achievement and yet............
Any advice on how to get this thing done or similar experiences or is everyone on my server.........
Any advice on how to get this thing done or similar experiences or is everyone on my server.........
Monday, March 7, 2011
New Posts, Toon drama and podcasts
We just finished recording our second podcast for "POW W.O.W". If you haven't listened to the first episode stop what you are doing and go listen now!!!!!!
So a fun thing happened to my toon last night. While I have had my shaman at 85 since about a week after launch, I finally got my druid up to level. This process took a huge amount of time and I almost deleted the character all together along the way and let me reflect on why.
I love the idea of the druid. I love the shape shifting, the ability to play any role in a raid, the buffs that they bring and their mobility in the world..........I hate leveling one. I die...... a lot. In Twilight Highlands alone I died 20 times just getting from level 84 to 85. There must be a mental block when it comes to kitty DPS and survivability because I just don't get it. One on One, you are going down. 2 mob pull and it's a run back from the graveyard. End game I love the Druid, leveling however is the most frustrating experience I have had in Warcraft other then Shade of Aran in Kara.
So a fun thing happened to my toon last night. While I have had my shaman at 85 since about a week after launch, I finally got my druid up to level. This process took a huge amount of time and I almost deleted the character all together along the way and let me reflect on why.
I love the idea of the druid. I love the shape shifting, the ability to play any role in a raid, the buffs that they bring and their mobility in the world..........I hate leveling one. I die...... a lot. In Twilight Highlands alone I died 20 times just getting from level 84 to 85. There must be a mental block when it comes to kitty DPS and survivability because I just don't get it. One on One, you are going down. 2 mob pull and it's a run back from the graveyard. End game I love the Druid, leveling however is the most frustrating experience I have had in Warcraft other then Shade of Aran in Kara.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Nerdfire Productions goes PODCAST!
Divine and I are even more informative and cover a variety of topics in our new Warcraft podcast. Check it out and rate us if you like it!!!!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Guild Rep has spawned little Stalins and Hitlers in WoW....
I have a theory and let me know if you think this is accurate or not! I firmly believe that Guild Reputation is a very negative force in WoW. Never before have people been so dependent on Guilds for support than now, which could have been a good thing, but the way Blizzard went with the notion ended up being a strong negative element.
Let me start by saying that we all know there is no qualifying factor in becoming a Guild Master. You can be 12 years old or the CEO of major corporation, you may never had a job in your life or a second of experience managing other people or a system as intricate as Guild politics and still become a GM. That being said, the WoW community did a very good job of regulating Guilds. Guilds that had unstable leadership almost always fell apart, and if you had a misunderstanding or got a better offer from another Guild you could leave with no qualms.
As a GM under the old system of controls, I constantly was checking myself again the happiness and satisfaction my guild members. Being a trained leader in the private sector, I still found it difficult to please everyone, and many people left for things could have been resolved. This aspect was frustrating, when the news was released that they would be making changes to game so that Guilds represented more value than just a place to hang out and make friends, I was very excited. It had the promise of making it a choice and a choice that represents value. I envisioned the system being such that if you had a beef you would try to voice that opinion instead of leaving in order to work things out and preserve your status in the guild.
The current system works that way, however, Blizzard went so overboard with this concept that many Guild Masters including my own have turned into mini Stalins. Stalin (really all bloody dictators) was notorious for making dissidence and protestors disappear, when the news got out someone had disappeared in the community the shock wave of fear silenced everyone into compliance. My hypothesis is that a lot of GMs, including my own, have become little autocratic dictators...why? Simply because they can.
Blizzard has made it extremely difficult to gain Guild reputation, to the extent where you are looking at between 2 and 4 months to earn the higher levels of reputation. The choice of leaving a guild right now isn't a choice at all. You leave you lose months of work. You leave, you lose all perks that the guild had "earned", you leave you are setback almost irrevocably. If you dissent you are removed, and the rest of us are silenced...it could happen to me next.
Guild Masters have become wise to this fact and, I believe, many have given into the temptation of absolute power. No longer do you have to be flexible and adjust your leadership style based on the morale or guild performance. You no longer have to worry about negative feedback or dissidence. The false choice of leaving a guild forces members who aren't willing to lose a monumental amount of work into compliance. I have also noticed in my personal experience is that these leaders who turn a deaf ear to their members and become autocrats begin to believe they are doing well as leaders because of the membership stability of the rank and file. These members, however unhappy, continue to do the dailies and build other forms of reputation which go to bolster the guild, regardless of the members willingness to do this. The guild continues to earn achievements and greater perks, even though the majority of the members would just as soon break their GMs computer as give them credit for the Guild's success.
So what we have in Warcraft now are massive amounts of people under the thumbs of dictatorial Guild Masters who are unresponsive to their needs and absolutely nothing they can do about it. Well today, I did something about it, I left my guild and lost 2 months of work (11000 reputation points). I will post later on with what I find as far as how difficult it is to earn that reputation back with a guild deserving of my support.
Let me start by saying that we all know there is no qualifying factor in becoming a Guild Master. You can be 12 years old or the CEO of major corporation, you may never had a job in your life or a second of experience managing other people or a system as intricate as Guild politics and still become a GM. That being said, the WoW community did a very good job of regulating Guilds. Guilds that had unstable leadership almost always fell apart, and if you had a misunderstanding or got a better offer from another Guild you could leave with no qualms.
As a GM under the old system of controls, I constantly was checking myself again the happiness and satisfaction my guild members. Being a trained leader in the private sector, I still found it difficult to please everyone, and many people left for things could have been resolved. This aspect was frustrating, when the news was released that they would be making changes to game so that Guilds represented more value than just a place to hang out and make friends, I was very excited. It had the promise of making it a choice and a choice that represents value. I envisioned the system being such that if you had a beef you would try to voice that opinion instead of leaving in order to work things out and preserve your status in the guild.
The current system works that way, however, Blizzard went so overboard with this concept that many Guild Masters including my own have turned into mini Stalins. Stalin (really all bloody dictators) was notorious for making dissidence and protestors disappear, when the news got out someone had disappeared in the community the shock wave of fear silenced everyone into compliance. My hypothesis is that a lot of GMs, including my own, have become little autocratic dictators...why? Simply because they can.
Blizzard has made it extremely difficult to gain Guild reputation, to the extent where you are looking at between 2 and 4 months to earn the higher levels of reputation. The choice of leaving a guild right now isn't a choice at all. You leave you lose months of work. You leave, you lose all perks that the guild had "earned", you leave you are setback almost irrevocably. If you dissent you are removed, and the rest of us are silenced...it could happen to me next.
Guild Masters have become wise to this fact and, I believe, many have given into the temptation of absolute power. No longer do you have to be flexible and adjust your leadership style based on the morale or guild performance. You no longer have to worry about negative feedback or dissidence. The false choice of leaving a guild forces members who aren't willing to lose a monumental amount of work into compliance. I have also noticed in my personal experience is that these leaders who turn a deaf ear to their members and become autocrats begin to believe they are doing well as leaders because of the membership stability of the rank and file. These members, however unhappy, continue to do the dailies and build other forms of reputation which go to bolster the guild, regardless of the members willingness to do this. The guild continues to earn achievements and greater perks, even though the majority of the members would just as soon break their GMs computer as give them credit for the Guild's success.
So what we have in Warcraft now are massive amounts of people under the thumbs of dictatorial Guild Masters who are unresponsive to their needs and absolutely nothing they can do about it. Well today, I did something about it, I left my guild and lost 2 months of work (11000 reputation points). I will post later on with what I find as far as how difficult it is to earn that reputation back with a guild deserving of my support.
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