Guild Etiquette Part 1: Newbs.

Not to be confused with noobs. That’s part 2. This is with new people to your guild.

All guilds have some form of attrition. Real life, other games, other guilds all steal away your members and cut your numbers. If you have a good guild with good people, this isn’t a huge concern. You will get new recruits just from people being attracted to the awesomeness. Or the fact you raid in a time slot that is good for them, they like someone else in your guild, they heard you took down Yogg, or they had a good experience with one of your guys who said, oh you should check us out if your guild is the sux. This influx is the result of people just looking for a home, for whatever reason, and it is where a large number of your newbies will come from.

Now here is the really IMPORTANT part. Ready?
These newbs are the foundation of your guild in 3 months or less.

Remember that all guilds have attrition. This is approx. 25% every 3 months with a guild of 60 or so active unique members. Which means every 3 months you lose a 4th of your guild. You have to replace these losses somehow and that is with these newbs. Each new recruit has the hidden potential to bring other recruits, be the main tank, heals, dps chart topper, pvp arena master, raid leader and officer. This newb is going to be important in the future of your guild.

So how do you keep your newb and turn them into a core member of your guild?

1. Do not greet them with foul mouthed jokes and jibes. Your newb may love joking around and goofing off. They may cuss like a sailor. But they might not. You don’t know them yet and they don’t know you. You have to get to know them.

2. Do not treat them like a second class citizen. Everyone understands that you aren’t going to get bank access the first day, but make all the “limitations” clear. No bank access, no g or power leveling from members, no begging are all good limits to have. What isn’t good is no vent access, no standard forum access, no calendar viewing, no ability to have input on discussions. I am not saying you should listen to every word your newb says and give it the same weight as your raiders, but if newb makes a good point, or wants to be a part of a discussion, you need to welcome them, after all one hopes they will be a raider soon enough.

3. Do not boot them from their first raid. If someone joins a guild to raid and then gets bumped from the first raid, no matter your reasoning, you have just told them they are not going to be raiding with you. Think of it more like Fight Club. If this is your first night, you have to raid. Also this is a great point to induct them into what is expected of a raider. Vent, Mods, Flasks, Food, Glyphs, Enchants, Gems, Strats, if your newb gets even some of them right, and rolls with what they miss, you might have a solid raider on your hands. In fact I once found a guild that made it policy that if you wanted to join as a raider, you were required to be present for the first raid lockout and if you missed even one night, they booted you from the guild. It was your way of showing your dedication to their guild, be there or be gone.

4. Make sure they get *something* on their first raid. It is counter intuitive, I know, but hear me out. It falls in with #3. If someone comes to a raid and walks away with nothing, how long are they going to put up with that before finding somewhere new? I am not saying let them grab every purple, or even that they shouldn’t pay their dues, I am saying that people like Epics. If they get Epics, they will be back. They will jump through your hoops. They will get enchants, gems, food, etc, for Epics. They will bust their butt for you and the guild if it means Epics. My second raiding guild had a great DKP system that meant usually if more that a few items for a class dropped in a raid, the newb would get one of them. If the newb got it, they were stoked, and also pretty much guaranteed not to get anything else unless all the core raiders passed on it until they had been raiding for a month or so. (Note: This rule can have some shift if say for example nothing but bad gear for their class drops for the whole raid. I have been in Uld twice where nothing good for caster dps dropped.)

5. If you have *That Guy* in your guild, keep him away from the newbs. Every guild has one. For the most part they can be useful for identifying problems. These are the guys that wear the title of Elitist Jerk proudly. They know everything about most classes and they want to tell you what you are doing wrong. Have an officer or a GM pull this guy aside or in whispers and make sure he understands you value his services but if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut around the newb for at least a month, you will find another EJ who can do his job. The best example for this was in the guild that had a newb rank: Foundling. A foundling was someone who was new, might be raiding, and was working through their newbness. Our EJ was not allowed to even speak to the Foundlings until they became full fledged members, unless they spoke to him first or asked for advice.

6. Try to include the newb. Explain guild in-jokes. Explain relationships. Explain the goober that keeps dying in every fight. The more you make them feel included the more they feel like home. If the newb understands who Rapido is, they will understand why it is your “Fail” rank. If your newb knows that Bubbles is a 40 yr old Marine and is married to Ieatbabies, they know *not* to hit on the chick with the hot voice on vent.

7. Not every newb works. This is vital for any guild. Newbs are important, but are also potential poison vials. Be ready to have to baby sit them for a few days and maybe even have some talks. At the end of their newb period it can even be good to let them go. You might need people, but they need you more than you need them. If they don’t play well with others, politely show them the door.

Good luck, and happy hunting.

Run away little girl!

Nothing makes me want to write blog posts more than a badly written blog post. Not to point fingers accusingly, but AJ Glasser at Kotaku wrote the most half-assed article on “scary video games” ever. Two games and a movie does not cover scary video games. And as such AJ doesn’t even cover the original topic of what makes video games scary.

What makes Video Games scary?
In horror movies, books, and stories the most frightening thing is not the evil monster, the blood, or the creepy music. These help of course, but the worst part is: the loss of control. Why are serial killers like the Saw guy so scary? They strip away your control. The translation between movies and video games doesn’t work here though. As a video game player, by definition, you ARE in control. So how does a designer strip away the feeling of control while allowing you the ability to control?

Example 1: Resident Evil
I know, shooting fish in a barrel here. Is it bad this game didn’t even get a *mention* in the Kotaku article? Resident Evil was all manner of a scary game. Ask anyone who has ever played it or just say two words : dogs – window. That’s no even a complete thought and yet everyone who played that game will *shudder* at those two words grouped together. Resident Evil was the huge survival horror game by which all other survival horror games since are measured. You play a group of SWAT equivalents that are sent to investigate this creepy old house with a serious zombie infestation that it turns out was caused by the super secret lab below the creepy house.
Way #1: Resident Evil limits the number of times you can save the game. You have to have a printer ribbon and there are only a few of them in the game. Talk about taking control away from the player. Suddenly every choice becomes critical, every death the possibility of having to re-play half an area. Those ugly pixelated zombies are far more scary already.
Way #2: Camera. Cameras and controls in games are the most re-worked and argued about part of the game design. RE does a great job of having a “user hostile” control scheme and camera. The fixed camera position makes it very hard to see around corners and target those slow lumbering zombies.
Way #3: Atmosphere. Okay this is kind of broad, but roll with it. The creepy music, the black crows flocking and making noise, the wind, the branches, the dark rooms, deep shadows, low drones… It all adds up to a very “hidden” environment. Light areas where you can see everything are far and few in between, so the fear of zombies rarely lets up. If you are afraid of dying, then you fear the places where your knowledge is imperfect.
Way#4: Throw away the rules. This is where those dogs come in. Zombies attack in dark hallways, move slow, and are proceeded by noise. As the player, you *learn* this. It is always true. Until it isn’t. I have a very vivid memory of watching my brother playing this game and entering said hallway. The creepy music fades, the lights are on and bright, you can see all the way to the end. He stopped dead in his tracks as if some second sense said, “It’s a trap!” in an Ackbar voice. He edged forward a step or two several times, reaching the point between the two windows on the right wall. “Huh.” He mumbled and shrugged, finally stepping forward at a normal pace to reach the door at the end of the hall. When two vicious fast moving zombie dogs come bursting in the window in a loud crash of glass and proceeded to turn my brother into kibble. I was suddenly joined by my brother, crouching behind the couch. Scary.

Example 2: Eternal Darkness
Eternal Darkness is a third person action game that places you in the role of different characters throughout history fighting some Lovecraftian Old Gods. Eternal Darkness deals with some pretty standard horror themes. But the game truly revolves around the Sanity Meter. Every time your character encounters something that falls outside the bounds of “real” they lose a bit of their mind. The more mind you lose, the crazier things get. The developers put a great deal of time and energy into creating a ton of “insane” effects. Bugs crawling on the screen, your character’s head exploding, the sound turning up and down. They made the game more about messing with the player than about killing the player. They also discovered the true terror button for gamers. Losing progress is bad, and drives the fear of death in games. But losing save games? One of the insanity effects included telling the player while they were saving that instead it was deleting all saved games on the memory card. I have to be completely honest, I launched myself across the room, over a coffee table and into a pile of games, movies, and controllers to rip all the memory cards out of the front of my Gamecube. Pure heart pounding, sweat drenched terror. And then the game is all like, “Just kidding. Progress saved.” It was the first time I ever had to walk away from a game and go calm down. I feel faint just thinking about it.

Example 3: Silent Hill 2
The Silent Hill series took a good idea RE had and then went nuts with it. Isolation, hidden information, bad camera angles… take all this and add:
Way #1: WTF was THAT? This pretty much defines the enemy development in Silent Hill. If you aren’t asking what that thing was you just fought, they re-worked the enemy until you did.
Way #2: Fog. It seems so simple and logical. Hidden information takes away control, so they take away your ability to cognitively connect a space. Even with the map I would have a hard time finding my way around. The fear the spawns from running into Pyramid Head or one of the mannequins at every disoriented turn.
Way #3: I did what now? As you play the game, you have a radio that gives bursts of static every time an enemy is near. Which is creepy enough. Until you hear over the radio that there is a person on the loose killing people. As you play through the game and hear more bursts you begin to realize that the murder is YOU. All those mannequins… yeah those were people. You were just too effected by Silent Hill to notice.
Way #4: Little Girls are creepy. Enough said.

So what other games have done it too?
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Two words. Shadow Temple. Let’s throw you in a super creepy dungeon and then take away your ability to see. Unless you use this little lens. Which takes away your ability to fight. Well played Mr. Miyamoto, well played. The loss of information along with the loss of defense makes this level exceptionally tense. Not only are there hidden enemies and hidden paths but also somethings that appear to be real aren’t.

Bioshock: Ask anyone who ever accidentally hit a big daddy while fighting a splicer. Big daddy fights are things you plan. You pick a location carefully. You set traps. Then you engage a big daddy. When you don’t plan ahead, you learn you are not in control. Bioshock also loves spawning monster’s behind you, but this really only works because they don’t attack until you turn around. One minute you are playing with a vending machine, the next minute, you got a face full of splicer who was formerly a ninja. Sander Cohen’s insanity with the paper mache splicers is pretty creepy too, because you see them as a part of the scenery then they become a part of the danger. Also note the Creepy Little Girl truth.

Persona 4: Taking control away from the player can be as easy as having the game not make sense. As far as gameplay goes, Persona 4 is a solid rpg/collector/social game but the true quality comes from the story. You finish the game because of the story. The scary thing is though, even in the end, it doesn’t make sense. All those people died, your character went through all that pain, agony, and flaming hoops for what? Some deity’s amusement.

World of Warcraft: Stop nerd raging and lets think about this logically. WoW can be a scary scary game. Creepy Little Girl Truth happens here too, her name is Pamela Redpath and she “lives” in Eastern Plaguelands. Ever been to Karazhan’s hidden crypts? You Tube it. It is an unfinished area of the game hidden under Kara. The sense of creepy is amped by the knowledge you aren’t supposed to be down there, the emptiness, and the names of the locations. If you don’t want to go out of bounds, go to Duskwood, and hang out in the Catacombs under the cemetery. Turn the music down, and the ambient up. Can you hear it? There used to be a great quest in Theramore where this guy asked for a knife to cut up meat. If you went into his yard, there were bloody bits of what *might* have been human. For those like me, who run on auto pilot, falling off a bridge in Thunder Bluff can be a frightful experience. (I managed to get my husband to sprint into the room thinking something bad had happened to me.) Add in a good healthy dose of fear when it comes to dying and every pull can become an exercise in raising goosebumps.

The common way of making someone experience fear revolves around this idea of taking away their control of the situation. Whether that is actual control through user hostile controls and camera or simply hidden information, add this to a creepy atmosphere and you have the beginnings of a video game fright fest.

Horde –> Alliance

For the HORDE!

Such was the battle cry of many a character of mine on the WoW server Uther. When I began my WoW addiction, I started as Alliance and at a later date was convinced to re-roll Horde. I was reluctant, but eventually convinced.

After 18 months on Uther I had almost reached the point I had previously earned on my Alliance server. A 60+ of every class, tons of achievements and special items, and so on. At which point someone asked me to come play on their Alliance server. /facepalm.

I resisted. But the promise of a regular 5 man group made up of real life friends was too much for me. Luckily for me, Blizzard saw fit to add the ability to pay for a Faction change to their game. I could pony up $30 and have my level 80 Horde toon become a level 80 Alliance toon. So I did. (I also paid the $25 for a server transfer, but that service is relatively straightforward.)

I turned my level 80 Blood Elf Death Knight into a Night Elf Death Knight. When Pandara woke from her shocking transformation she found herself in Darnassus, quite a long distance from the dun streets of Orgrimmar. Her mounts had changed, her progress with the Argent Tournament gone. Several of her weapons and armor had new names, the old useless links cluttering her action bars.

Most importantly her hearthstone had been re-bound to Darnassus. A situation that needed immediate attention. So I started to run out of the city and immediately thought, Wait. I don’t know where the Zeppelin is to get to Northrend. So I asked my friend.
“Zeppelin? What?”
“The flying airship thing I take to Northrend.”
“Oh. You mean the boat. In Stormwind.”
So I, having not played Alliance since a few months after BC, immediately flew to Auberdine in Darkshore and went down the left hand part of the Dock, intending to get on the boat to Menethil and then fly to Stormwind. Imagine my shock when the boat took me directly to Stormwind. Apparently they realized poor little Night Elves had quite the run to Ironforge.

After a boat ride and a few flights, I land in Dalaran. I immediately run to down to the right headed towards the inn. Suddenly I am stunned, hear a teleport noise and find myself outside the entrance to the part of the city with the Inn, BG portals, and Badge Vendors.

Oh, right, that’s the *Horde* side. I can’t go in there anymore. It then takes me 10 minutes to find the Alliance innkeeper.

Even now, two weeks later, I forget, and run into Horde cities, the Horde side of Dalaran, and try to take flights to Horde places.

For the Ho… Alliance. 🙂

Horde –> Alliance

For the HORDE!

Such was the battle cry of many a character of mine on the WoW server Uther. When I began my WoW addiction, I started as Alliance and at a later date was convinced to re-roll Horde. I was reluctant, but eventually convinced.

After 18 months on Uther I had almost reached the point I had previously earned on my Alliance server. A 60+ of every class, tons of achievements and special items, and so on. At which point someone asked me to come play on their Alliance server. /facepalm.

I resisted. But the promise of a regular 5 man group made up of real life friends was too much for me. Luckily for me, Blizzard saw fit to add the ability to pay for a Faction change to their game. I could pony up $30 and have my level 80 Horde toon become a level 80 Alliance toon. So I did. (I also paid the $25 for a server transfer, but that service is relatively straightforward.)

I turned my level 80 Blood Elf Death Knight into a Night Elf Death Knight. When Pandara woke from her shocking transformation she found herself in Darnassus, quite a long distance from the dun streets of Orgrimmar. Her mounts had changed, her progress with the Argent Tournament gone. Several of her weapons and armor had new names, the old useless links cluttering her action bars.

Most importantly her hearthstone had been re-bound to Darnassus. A situation that needed immediate attention. So I started to run out of the city and immediately thought, Wait. I don’t know where the Zeppelin is to get to Northrend. So I asked my friend.
“Zeppelin? What?”
“The flying airship thing I take to Northrend.”
“Oh. You mean the boat. In Stormwind.”
So I, having not played Alliance since a few months after BC, immediately flew to Auberdine in Darkshore and went down the left hand part of the Dock, intending to get on the boat to Menethil and then fly to Stormwind. Imagine my shock when the boat took me directly to Stormwind. Apparently they realized poor little Night Elves had quite the run to Ironforge.

After a boat ride and a few flights, I land in Dalaran. I immediately run to down to the right headed towards the inn. Suddenly I am stunned, hear a teleport noise and find myself outside the entrance to the part of the city with the Inn, BG portals, and Badge Vendors.

Oh, right, that’s the *Horde* side. I can’t go in there anymore. It then takes me 10 minutes to find the Alliance innkeeper.

Even now, two weeks later, I forget, and run into Horde cities, the Horde side of Dalaran, and try to take flights to Horde places.

For the Ho… Alliance. 🙂

How to DESTROY an Ingenious Game Idea.

Name the games you are looking most forward to that are coming out in the next few years.

Bioshock 2, Assasin’s Creed 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, WoW Expansion 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Super Mario Brothers #, Valkyria Chronicles 2,… a few I am watching closely. Do you note a trend? Not that being a sequel means any of these games will be any less awesome than their predecessors, but in the game industry, if your game is good and sells well, expect a sequel or a long string of sequels.

This reinforces the general population’s love for something familiar. Which reinforces the sales of said familiar games. Which drives publishers to want more of them since they sell well. Sonic the Hedgehog shows where this can go way beyond reason and logic. In the end, all it does is cut down on the number of studios working on original ideas. Original Ideas are expensive. There is every chance they might not be fun, and even further, they might not be liked by the populous at large. There are dozens of exceptional games that bombed at retail and have ensured that not only were sequels not made, but the studios likely closed as well. It costs a great deal of money that might be wasted to get an Original Idea off the group.

Every so often and idea comes along that makes you stop and think, “My God, not only is this BRILLIANT, but is also obviously a superb idea and is going to be a blast to play.” This is the point where a developer finds a great publisher, gets a ton of money, works really hard, and makes an amazing game. Apparently unless you are the developer of Monopoly City Streets.

The concept is blindingly simple, which is part of it’s genius. Take Google Maps and overlay the game of Monopoly. Throw in a few more buildings, some ability to protect and sabotage streets, and watch the hilarity ensue. In fact, looking at it, it is so obvious, and so simple, I am astonished it has not been thought of before. Everyone starts with 3 million, streets vary in cost according to length. You collect rent each day. You build buildings which increase rent. Bigger buildings, bigger rent.

Where could you possibly go wrong with this gem of an idea?

For starters, hire a team who has obviously never worked on a web based massively multiplayer game before. One of the initial problems included being able to “take over” someone’s account by simply registering an account with the same name.

Second, grossly underestimate your possible audience. It is understandable to be modest in your player base estimations. But when throwing marketing weight behind a name like Monopoly, expect massive numbers. The resulting lag, server issues, and inability to play will drive players away.

Third, change the game rules mid-stride without informing the players. This is such an obvious common sense design thing, it really goes to show that a publisher gets what it pays for. Changing the rules is not only a stepping away point for players, but exceptionally jarring, unfair, and a way of showing your player you care nothing about them.

Fourth, if it is a basic function of your game, don’t worry if it works, as long as it appears to, it’s fine. There are Bonus Buildings that protect your streets, and Hazard Buildings that stop rent for that street. A nice gameplay addition to encourage PVP. Except they didn’t. Bonus buildings didn’t protect. Hazards, despite appearing to stop rent, if you calculate the amount you get in a day, you actually get it.

Fifth, set a win goal, then make it completely counter to what the game supports. What is the point of Monopoly? Own it all, make tons of money. Simple. Initially, the game was like this. You bought dozens, even hundreds of streets, and built thousands of buildings. The players with the highest score had the longest streets, the most streets, and the most buildings. But then, when they changed the rules, they added a tax. Not a bad idea, except it scales based on the number of streets you own. All the way up to 100%. That’s right, you can receive a 100% tax on your rent.

Sixth, ignore the cheaters, assume all your players are going to play fairly. Seriously? Even ignoring cheating like multiple accounts, they didn’t consider their game would be the target of players who would hack the game and make themselves winners. Of course, this goes away if you don’t care about your players, as per way #3.

I could go on… wild bugs, poor ui design, poor community communication… But these six things so effectively killed this game before it ever got a chance. The saddest thing is, it was genuinely fun and enjoyable. And they didn’t even charge! What a gold mine they had! There are dozens of ways to easily add micro-transactions and have this game PRINT money.

Hasbro needs to rip this game away from it’s current developers, pour some funds into it, and hand it to a legitimate developer and make a real game. I would play it.

RRoD Part 2

Here, now, almost a month after the dreaded RRoD, our beloved family member is set to return home.

It has taken this long to get used to *not* having the Xbox 360 around. When you get used to doing things a certain why, you develop the habit, then breaking it is shockingly hard to do. We have all done it at some point of other. I can remember being a kid, the power would go out occasionally, and my mother, now unable to play on her computer would say, well I guess I could watch tv.

I did the same thing. Well I don’t feel like playing WoW, I guess I should go play xbox and get a few gamer points. Oh wait.

Now we get our baby back and I am sure the resulting flood of gameplaying will make it feel more than loved.

RRoD Part 2

Here, now, almost a month after the dreaded RRoD, our beloved family member is set to return home.

It has taken this long to get used to *not* having the Xbox 360 around. When you get used to doing things a certain why, you develop the habit, then breaking it is shockingly hard to do. We have all done it at some point of other. I can remember being a kid, the power would go out occasionally, and my mother, now unable to play on her computer would say, well I guess I could watch tv.

I did the same thing. Well I don’t feel like playing WoW, I guess I should go play xbox and get a few gamer points. Oh wait.

Now we get our baby back and I am sure the resulting flood of gameplaying will make it feel more than loved.