The Pug update: we had our first raid and got Halfus down to 35%. Released Scion and Storm at the start, burned Scion first. Slate was unreleased all time. Thursday we'll continue. With our gear (333/346) mix it felt harder than LK normal, and in par with several ICC heroics. Such raids make me forget all the bugs Blizzard made in PvP content. Also, this is the first expansion when I raid at the start. Wowprogress says 4267 guilds killed Halfus. If we approximate 20 raiders/guild, thats 85K people. About 4M bought Cataclysm, so we are in the race for the top 5%.
Achievements are completely useless stuff, unless they signal some great feat. If you have alone in the darkness, dated before 2009 July, I know you are a good raider. If you have What a long, strange trip it's been, I know that you have way too much play time on your hands and/or lack of ability to prioritize. I largely ignored achievements during my play, sporting with "lousy" 4800 achievement points, most of them appeared without expecting them.
However Achievements are there for a reason. Blizzard perfectly figured out that socials are attracted to them like moths to the light. Please note that if you view the roster of a guild in armory, the default sorting is by achievement points. Sorting by achievements is also possible in the guild interface and "compare achievement" action is performable on another character in game. The achievements arrive as flashy animations, giving mental stimulation to people. They are also spammed on the guild channel. Most people went out of their way to complete outdated/trivial content just to get more achievements.
How could these nonsenses become socially relevant? Like celebrities. They do nothing interesting per se, they are interesting because other people talk about them. The socials are sheep, they are interested in the stuff others interested in. If 2-3 of you stop on the street pointing to a high building and watching strongly that way, soon a crowd of morons will gather around you watching the same spot. So Blizzard made the impression that achievement points are relevant to people by placing there everywhere, so socials started to care, making other socials care even more.
So far so good, silly socials waste their time for stuff that are useless even in the game framework. If Azeroth would be real and under attack from Deathwing, would you really work on your Jenkins title?! But why should I care about this nonsense besides selling otherwise useless stuff for huge profit to those who use these items to get achievements?
There are guild achievements too. If something socials care more than their own "coolness" is the "coolness" of their in-group. "We are awesome!" - they must believe to feel good. While they can excuse themselves for having less achievement than X ("X has no life"), there is no excuse for the guild. After all, if the guild can't even get those damn achievement points for itself, how could it carry him?! The guild with "so many good peeps" must be able to do it!
If we descended deeply enough into this social madness, we can see how to exploit this nonsense for our own guilds: if we get more useless achievements than them, they will feel bad. OK, so we can grief socials. Great! That's really the goblin way to waste our time to grief socials. Completely useless post so far.
But here comes the point: the distinction between the M&S socials and the working socials. Both feel bad about not having enough achievements, but the M&S will do nothing about it but whine and litter the guild chat with "why don't we get moar achievs lol". In short they will demand the working socials to do these time-sinks too, to carry their useless butts even into fluff! The increased pressure can bring the working socials and the semi-socials to the breaking point, making them leave the "freindly social guld"! To clarify: I do not claim that anyone consciously say "The PuG has more achievement points than us, so I gquit". However it subconsciously make him feel bad about his guild and next time will be less tolerant about drama or someone being useless in a heroic.
Of course that's just a theory yet, but I'll put it to the test. I start paying again for guild achievements in The PuG, boosting our achievement count. Then I'll place the achievement number into the /trade ad macro that I use a few times a day, making sure that the socials will notice how "cool" we are. If I'm right, this will increase the player influx to the guild as we'll also get spoils from the "freindly social gulds" shattered by the whining M&S who demand others to farm more achievements. If I'm wrong, I just waste my own gold.
PS: to get It all adds up achievement fast, I placed 50K gold to the guildbank and elevated repair cap to 100G. It is not a gift, after the achievement I lock the repair ability and let the cash flow guild perk collect 50K gold and take it back, then reactivate repair.
Every day half dozen of M&S who would join any guild finds ours. They never read the rules and soon turned down by some less than friendly line. Not this one! "Piss off idiot" is just not enough to stop this really dedicated specimen. Don't miss the part when she praises my blog, nor the part when she tells she never read it!
Achievements are completely useless stuff, unless they signal some great feat. If you have alone in the darkness, dated before 2009 July, I know you are a good raider. If you have What a long, strange trip it's been, I know that you have way too much play time on your hands and/or lack of ability to prioritize. I largely ignored achievements during my play, sporting with "lousy" 4800 achievement points, most of them appeared without expecting them.
However Achievements are there for a reason. Blizzard perfectly figured out that socials are attracted to them like moths to the light. Please note that if you view the roster of a guild in armory, the default sorting is by achievement points. Sorting by achievements is also possible in the guild interface and "compare achievement" action is performable on another character in game. The achievements arrive as flashy animations, giving mental stimulation to people. They are also spammed on the guild channel. Most people went out of their way to complete outdated/trivial content just to get more achievements.
How could these nonsenses become socially relevant? Like celebrities. They do nothing interesting per se, they are interesting because other people talk about them. The socials are sheep, they are interested in the stuff others interested in. If 2-3 of you stop on the street pointing to a high building and watching strongly that way, soon a crowd of morons will gather around you watching the same spot. So Blizzard made the impression that achievement points are relevant to people by placing there everywhere, so socials started to care, making other socials care even more.
So far so good, silly socials waste their time for stuff that are useless even in the game framework. If Azeroth would be real and under attack from Deathwing, would you really work on your Jenkins title?! But why should I care about this nonsense besides selling otherwise useless stuff for huge profit to those who use these items to get achievements?
There are guild achievements too. If something socials care more than their own "coolness" is the "coolness" of their in-group. "We are awesome!" - they must believe to feel good. While they can excuse themselves for having less achievement than X ("X has no life"), there is no excuse for the guild. After all, if the guild can't even get those damn achievement points for itself, how could it carry him?! The guild with "so many good peeps" must be able to do it!
If we descended deeply enough into this social madness, we can see how to exploit this nonsense for our own guilds: if we get more useless achievements than them, they will feel bad. OK, so we can grief socials. Great! That's really the goblin way to waste our time to grief socials. Completely useless post so far.
But here comes the point: the distinction between the M&S socials and the working socials. Both feel bad about not having enough achievements, but the M&S will do nothing about it but whine and litter the guild chat with "why don't we get moar achievs lol". In short they will demand the working socials to do these time-sinks too, to carry their useless butts even into fluff! The increased pressure can bring the working socials and the semi-socials to the breaking point, making them leave the "freindly social guld"! To clarify: I do not claim that anyone consciously say "The PuG has more achievement points than us, so I gquit". However it subconsciously make him feel bad about his guild and next time will be less tolerant about drama or someone being useless in a heroic.
Of course that's just a theory yet, but I'll put it to the test. I start paying again for guild achievements in The PuG, boosting our achievement count. Then I'll place the achievement number into the /trade ad macro that I use a few times a day, making sure that the socials will notice how "cool" we are. If I'm right, this will increase the player influx to the guild as we'll also get spoils from the "freindly social gulds" shattered by the whining M&S who demand others to farm more achievements. If I'm wrong, I just waste my own gold.
PS: to get It all adds up achievement fast, I placed 50K gold to the guildbank and elevated repair cap to 100G. It is not a gift, after the achievement I lock the repair ability and let the cash flow guild perk collect 50K gold and take it back, then reactivate repair.
Every day half dozen of M&S who would join any guild finds ours. They never read the rules and soon turned down by some less than friendly line. Not this one! "Piss off idiot" is just not enough to stop this really dedicated specimen. Don't miss the part when she praises my blog, nor the part when she tells she never read it!
49 comments:
So let me get this straight: you're going to pay guildies gold to waste their time getting useless achievements so that you can attract socials to the guild who care about such useless achivements ...
What am I missing here?
@Thenoisyrogue: I'm not attracting the M&S. The point is not that they quit their guild and come to us for "cewl achies" but to make drama in their own guild "rofl those PuG jerks haz moar achievs than us why do we sukk". If their guild breaks, we can get their best players.
And you believe their best players would go to your guild instead of a proper one because of those achievements?
Gevlon says:
"I'm not attracting the M&S."
This remains to be seen.
If anything, I think advertising your achievement score will attract achievement-oriented players. Consider: if you advertise your pvp success you get pvper applicants.
The "moron" didn't admit to not reading it; she was asking "how would I know there was a blog if I didn't read the rules?" She was pointing out a flaw in your logic -- she knew there was a blog, so she probably read the rules on it.
She seemed like she skimmed one part of some of the rules, or one post on the blog, or something. Possibly a moron/slacker, but not one that was lying.
--
As to the main post -- interesting idea. Best part is you get the non-M&S socials, who care about guild achievements (for some reason) but can pull their weight in raids.
To be honest, that one moron hadn't told you she never read the blog (though there are that impression throughout the conversation).
@Aljabra, anonymous: the recruitment ad says "READ RULES at http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/p/thepug.html". It doesn't take much intellect to figure out that .blogspot.com refers to a blog.
@Anonymous: their best players come to us due to lack of options. "Proper" guilds have spots and attendance requirement. If you are not a caster DD who can raid on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 19:00-23:00, you can be the best player in the World, you won't get an invite. These players are in a casual guild for a reason.
Yeah, but *actually* good players aren't gonna buy into that. A good guild isn't gonna get broken up cause some M&S wants achieves, only bad guilds will.
Look, if I'm in a guild and it disbands due to idiots, I'm going to join a good guild--and I'll take my skill and experience into a guild with at least some social element, not the whole "NOBODY CAN BE FRIENDS, ALL MUST BE GOBLINS" thing that you're trying to foster.
Also, your concept of "people not in the guild" or "people in social guilds" or "people who care about achievements" reminds me of this:
http://xkcd.com/610/
You better be careful,all the time you'll waste distinguishing good players atracted by guild achievements from M&S also atracted by them will be so much that it will not be worth of it.
Silly question: why do you have the "bad words ban" activated? (Sorry, don't know how to say it in english)
What you say is interessting, Grevlon, and probably correct, but achievments have an other use you didn't mention: Reward.
If I remember well, you already wrote about "rewards" in a MMO, or was it Tobold? Or maybe just in this TED video, I'm not sure. (http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_the_brain.html)
Anyways, not only achievments are like "the progressing way to virtual VIP" that all socials seek to reach, but they also function like little rewards, that keep them in the game, doing things, farming, spending hours killing Defias or fishing in Orgrimmar.
When you are engaged in something, it's hard to stop it if you know there's gonna be an achievment in the end. And if you can show them to others, it adds this " Virtual VIP" dimension that all socials love so much.
So, yes, well done here Blizzard.
(Sorry for the poor english, I'm french actually.)
@Gevlon
"It doesn't take much intellect to figure out that .blogspot.com refers to a blog."
Sure, it's obvious, but still, she never say anything along the lines "I didn't read your blog", despite it is pretty obvious, that she didn't.
As you must understand, I've seen your ad plenty of times and probably can write it down from memory, so I know there are that link in it.
"These players are in a casual guild for a reason."
Unfortunately, there are also the reason for them to be there, and not here, while it's pretty obvious, that any sane person on the server with attendance difficulties must immediately leave any casual "friendly" moron-boosting guild they are in and join The PuG, where his attendance don't bother anyone and he can raid without the anchor of M&S attached. By now the only ones, who may had missed your ads must be on the Horde side.
I don't share your point of view on achievements. Sure they are random targets that have no purpose other than "to collect them all", but is your drive to achieve the gold cap so different? Achievements are just a way of formalizing targets that many players would have set out for themselves anyway. And yes, I do have What a Strange Trip it has been, "because it is there". It saved me 5k for 310% flying, so it wasn't even entirely pointless.
I suffered from proxy embarrasment reading how you dealt with the MotD. Although you had every right to turn the applicant down according to the rules of your guild, your unprovoked rudeness was absolutely unneccesary. Using rude language to get rid of undesired people seems like such an anti-social way, rather than the a-social ways you're always preaching.
@Zazkadin: she lied to me explicitly in the first line she sent me "I re(a)d the rules". So it's not unprovoked. Also if she would just disappear after I told her to piss off, there would be no post.
@Aljabra: many socials make themselves believe that they are among friends in that suckguild. With this achievement action I make their "friends" show their true colors.
All actions and achievements have no meaning outside of the ones that our brains impose on them.
Do you have Alone in the Darkness dated before July 2009? All that it means is that you have been wasting time on a silly video game instead of enjoying the spring time that year. Do you have thousands of people reading your blog every day? It's a sign that you're popular with the same kind of Farmville-playing crowd that has nothing better to do with its office hours. Have you won a Nobel Prize? Congratulations on acquiring a pointless ego-boosting thing, but you will still be eaten by worms and utterly forgotten in less than a century.
That way lies nihilism. And madness.
I hope you have all the time in the world to get that repair gold back, I did some quick maths on the 5% Cash Flow perk.
On my main with about 75 days playtime I have looted a total of 5000 gold since achievments came out. That means I would have added 250 gold to the guild bank so far. I do realise the perk has more than one rank, but my 30 members guild still earns less gold from this perk than I earn from selling Dust of Disappearence on the Auction House.
tbh I suspect the main reason to work on guild achievements is to give the more hardcore players something to do between raids.
As a guildie, if I were to see people getting rewarded by the GM for working on useless achievements, it sends a message that the guild values the useless achievements more than .. (I dunno ... running guild heroics or doing something more useful.)
@Spinks: Why would I reward useful things?! People do it on their own as they are ... useful. You only have to reward things that are useless to the one who does it.
@Tobbelob: there is a guild achievement "profit sharing", loot 100K from creatures. The guild in only two weeks looted 33K. After we reach the second rank of income, we will get 6.6K gold/month assuming we won't get more players. So I get the money back before the end of the year.
Yeesh I'd forgotten how boring and frankly badly written this blog is. I suppose that's why I only stop by and read one post in a blue moon.
Anyway, just thought I'd point out that your logic seems flawed - if terrible players leave guilds because other people won't do the work for them, no-one will care. If guilds break down because of guild achievements, the guild wasn't worth being in anyway and the decent players will gravitate towards other good guilds.
The only people you are likely to attract to your guild through the breaking down of others, are those you deem to be 'morons and slackers' who are looking for a guild purely based on the number of achievements or guild level.
I also doubt that this is a good idea, as getting paid for achievements would tell me that the GL cares a great deal about them, ergo I would not want to join such a guild, because to me, achievements equal M&S losers.
And what a flabbergasting idiot in the moron of the week. I mean, seriously, telling someone "you are bad at recruiting" after not getting recruited because one sucks? So the best HR guys hire everybody? I'm sure that's going to work out fabulous!
I got that point right that Guild achievements ´don´t give bonus-guild-xp anymore?
So they´re only representing the "pride" of a guild, or we say social medals.
Of course some of them give you interesting a bonus as cauldrons or feast. But as you can see they are the minority:
http://www.wowpedia.org/Guild_achievements
(the repair av leads for nothing)
It leeds to the "What a long, strange trip it's been" just pointing on the guild and not a player.
"rofl those PuG jerks haz moar achievs than us why do we sukk"
Little question here: What is our benefit as an asocial to make M&S or Socials feel bad about that we have more social crap-medals than them. That´s not the way to prove them that the social- or M&S-run is pure crap.
(Is it possible that the pride of the project "the PuG" caught you up?)
On the Moron of the day: It didn´t read the rules nor the blog. It did pretent to be femals, because it often gets you into social guilds (aaaaw a female). Never seen something lieing that hard and stupit/ignorant.
@Len: you mix "social" and "useless player". Several good players hoard achievements. While being social helps being useless it is not a 1-1 relation. Having more achievements make all socials disgruntled.
@Desolate: I've been trying to prove that being social is bad but they just dismiss my ideas based on "social values": "im cool and u r live in a basement so u dont matter". In more sophisticatedly: "I have social values, you don't, so while you may have more gold/money, I am still more rich as I have love and respect and you don't" Now I'm trying to prove that being asocial helps being "cool". I recognize that "being cool" is completely pointless, but this is the only way to get behind their skin.
Also, as a personal note: you are very close to the 1 month inactivity limit!
Doubt that will work as you are expecting, since the PuG is only one guild, and I guess you would need a more representative percentage of the guilds with way more achievs than the average social trash guild.
However, it's perfectly valid from a researching stand point. Which seems to be your main interest in this game anyway.
This post is so far-fetched that if you were aiming for Andromeda, I couldn't tell the difference.
People in social guilds are used to M&S demanding stuff. The socials who don't want to give it to them, gang up and bully the M&S. They generally don't leave guilds just like that.
If someone feels so much pressure from anyone and everyone that he leaves the guild because someone was crying on gchat, he can be:
a) Asocial and just wants everyone to get off his case. He is probably in the PuG already. Or if he is not in the PuG yet, he doesn't want a guild with a lot of achievements, he just wants a guild who doesn't care about them (and hence, probably doesn't have a lot).
b) Extremely social and sensitive. In that case he really wants every single guildy to agree with his opinion of Megan Fox's boobs.
Anyway, you actually wrote that yourself - that you are now trying to attract socials... why? Sure there are a lot of socials who can pull their weight in raids (and pull a lot of dead weight as well), but they will not want/be able to obey the chat rules. They also don't want people who they help gear up by being in the same raid to leave the group afterwards. And so on and so forth...
I'm a bit confused. I am a social player so should I be disgruntled that about 90% of guilds have higher level and more achievements than my guild? Can't socials just not care what random people are doing? Somebody enlighten me please.
Best thing is when Blizz realized that some Guilds would skyrocket and at first reset all Guild xp every night and later on remove guild xp from Achievments. The Guild I’m in was lvl 5 Tuesday Night (Dec. 8th) then put back, level 2 again on Wednesday, and reset.
Its almost ridiculous that, even before the whining started, they redid the xp System so that a hc Raiding Guild would not stand out from a “If you are looking for friendly helpful Bunch that enjoys leveling, PvP and PvE, blab la blab la” Mass Guild that has formed just before Cata.
Now we will get to level 25 along with very other Guild regardless of it being a Cesspool of drooling M&S and Socials or a Guild dedicated to competitive Gameplay.
@ Ephemeron: Indeed a lot of People wasted their time in WoW during Spring 2009 (and 2010). However, those that did “Alone in the Darkness” in 2009 or “The Light of Dawn” in 2010 showed that, instead of idling round with friends online instead of outside, they perused a competitive Hobby in which they are among the Top 0.02% Players Worldwide. Certain Achievments (like the two mentioned above or Gladiator Titles) not only indicate a huge amount of time “wasted” in a Video Game but also that most of that time was spent achieving something very few other players are capable of.
If you accept a friendly helpfull advice: don't do this! Don't start paying for achievements to your guildies, if the only reason for this is to annoy mindless peers and to blow up their precious realm of friendly atmosphere. It won't work. M&S and socials don't work the way you want and hope.
You say, the lolkidz will complain on their gchat about your guild having more achievement points, then theirs. This won't happen in any guild, where you want the good players, simply because the set of social, but still good players and such M&S guilds never cross each other.
Socials are not only concerned about their own and their "friends"/guilds coolness, but they don't want to hurt others (like you wrote in the 'There is no "opinion crime"!' post). Complaining about too few achievement point says 'We suck. We suck as a group, but we are friends, and friends can't suck if they work together!' Okay, you can say, M&S won't work together as they only want their butt carried. This is true, but working together for them means anything from the point they logged in until the point they log out - meaning even killing 50k critters in a year means them, they worked for the whole group and even if they only fly around on the 7th alt while chatting with 'friends', because they get shiny exploration achievements then.
What you will get by this action, is that some M&S will leave their guild and join some other friendly helpful guild of their own desire. You will get again what you pay for - don't be surprised about that. The player influx to The PuG will go up, but not as much as you would expect. You will have more time wasted fighting off stupid lolkidz.
And a sidenote: regurarly you have some good or bad ideas to spend your hard earned gold. When the idea is bad, you are not ashamed to tell this in public - which is positive for the most. But almost every time, you admit your idea was bad, you mention, that noone ever said, it's bad and those who read you blog and/or play with SHOULD have had the nuts to tell you, you are wrong. Now, reading the comments here: pretty many commenters say, this idea is bad, yet you will do it.
I'd like to pick up the question from Zazkadin:
...but is your drive to achieve the gold cap so different?
As far as I can recall (please correct me if I'm wrong), it was some sort of competition in first place. Now, "earning gold" is a legit way to "take something away" from the "dumb ones".
Achievements themselves are a very clever idea to put into any game. They keep you playing even after you "finished" the game. Different players have different reasons to get these Achievements. I think Gevlon finally found his reason (After the Achievements don't reward Guild Exp anymore).
---
As of now I think the answer to my question from the last blog entry:
It's often mentioned here, that The PuG is "asocial". I personally agree with quiet some things written here, however I'd consider myself to be simply "not social", as I do not have any intentions to hurt the socials. Does The PuG have this intention?
is simply "Yes" with the goal to change some of the socials/M&S to be not this "useless". (again, please correct me if I'm wrong)
"but this is the only way to get behind their skin."
So proving by beeing in an asocial Guild you can get more social medals if it is linked to any "personal profit".
I see the point at proving that asocials can be better at doing "social things" than socials. (taking their last agument) I just think some wouldn´t even be able to get this point.
I hope it helps to get them into some revaluing the "fun" argument and thinking about that a coalition
of "assholes" can achieve more that their "friendly homeland".
(if it doesn´t work it would prove pointless, what could be imaginable if you think about the high level of ignorance you usually encounter)
@personal note: I´m aware of that and working on a fix (some technical issues between me an blizzard) and thanks for the reminder.
I think your missing the point of achievments for players who aren't M&S; its one way to keep score. Gold? you can get that by playing the ah/farming dailies on 7 alts for 8 hours a day. Honour kills? "of the horde" and "bloodthirsty" are nice titles that show you live in battlegrounds I guess. Achievment points? It means you have explored the world, done alot of quests and done various in game events/overcome various obstacles.
The loremaster with 8k achievment points and arena master with his 50k hon kills is just as entitled to feel proud of his character as I was with my kingslayer hunter is his sanctified T10 and heroic stat stick and heroic ICC boss kills. After all we worked to gain something that gives us pleasure/fun. If your not having fun, I seriously question why anyone would pay to play.
7th line down to Giovanne
'Piss of idiot'.
Why so aggressive its seems you taunted to get the post?
Also the loot distribution was it a trick question as there is no loot rules for normal and heroics?
Piss off idiot??
@bobbins
I make similar comments when people ask random stuff of me and it normally accomplishes a great goal: getting me on their ignore list. Only on the rare occasion do people try to salvage their pride do they continue on as this person did. This method keeps my ignore list manageable.
@moron: "in a guild with good intentions"
I laughed. "She" clearly doesn't read your blog.
@post: I share the point of view that getting the fluff just for messing with the socials seems unfitting for your guild.
@Ardoric: completely true, it does not fit into the guild. But it's not a guild rule that "you must farm achievements". I offer MY money (not guild money or such) for doing this. Anyone who finds it high G/hour enough, will take it. Others are not affected at all.
The moron of the day was almost too good to be true!
An applicant lying (Paraphrase: I've read your blog, you seem like a friendly guildmaster) and then trying to use social methods to change your opinion (claiming to be a mature female, trying to create guilt for not living up to her expectations)!
Brilliant stuff!
I have to agree with Bernard. The blatant lies and attempted manipulation using the completely irrelevant comment of "I'm a 35 year old female" was hilarious.
It'll be interesting to see how your experiment works Gevlon, though it would probably be hard to quantify. The Cataclysm content being harder will also likely cause stress on such guilds.
Time to offer my opinion on achievements.
I'm not sure if anyone else who regularily comments has that many, but I'm sitting on about 10135 or thereabouts.
So I care about my achievements. A lot.
You would think that I care about guild achievements too, right? You couldn't be wronger.
I have no idea how many my guild has. You know why? They are not mine. Ok, I can contribute. But they are not *mine*. That is why I don't even try and make the guild have more. It's a waste of my time, since I'd pour time in getting something I don't own.
I don't get a thrill from seeing the things pop up for the guild. I feel awkward seeing is. It's like the game saying: "Look, you and your guild mates earned this medal. Be happy!" and my brain refusing to believe it since well, I didn't do anything.
I, actually, am not very social either.
So, I don't really know who you're targetting with this scheme. It's interesting from a social and experimental point of view, but I'm absolutely unconvinced you're going to draw in good players.
I am currently in a social guild, which has gotten more and more "social" over time. Not tooting my horn, but I am a very good player - among the best in my guild. I stopped raiding because I got sick of carrying people. Especially noting the people who are least capable were often pushing for achievement BS. Wipe after wipe trying at Heartbreaker in Ulduar, which is mainly lots of dps and don't stand in the void zone. Couldn't do it. I don't give a damn about achievements so having the people who are least capable of working towards them pushing them really does alienate me more and more from my guild. I do enjoy some achievements that are an interesting challenge - Firefighter in Uduar for instance. I assure you this isn't an uncommon thing in this game.
I think what many people are missing is the fact that Gevlon can offer to pay you as much gold as you could possibly imagine, but you don't have to do it. There is no obligation to him or anyone to do ANYTHING in the game. He can only offer incentives and it's up to you to take him up on it. If you don't understand that, you're missing the point of the guild.
The scheme can work, because you do not have to get *every* good player out there. The idea is to filter out the ones who would jump to a guild with the rules of the PUG and agree to abide those rules.
Filters (as is their purpose) will reduce the number of people you can attract to your guild. I think the interesting question is not "will it work?" but "how many people can you get to join and stay after a certain period of time?"
I hate achievements with all of my heart. It is my profound belief that a person should never let other people decide for them what their goals or worth are. Or at least, that they should resist that as much as they can, and decide for themselves what their goals are and what their worth is. The achievement system tries to tell players when they have achieved something. But didn't they already achieve it before Wow decided they had done so? Can't a person decide for themselves what their goals and achievements are? The achievement system is insulting to me. For those of you who love it, that is great. Keep on loving it. I don't want anybody telling me the worth of what I have achieved; I will decide it for myself. In my opinion, the achievement system is contrary to the principles of freedom and liberty. Just as I do not want my government telling me what I should be doing. or pushing me along in the direction they see best in RL, I don't want a company doing it either, when I am playing their game. They should keep their noses out of what I am achieving. The guild achievement system is even worse because it not only says what your achievements are, but offers actual rewards, thus leaving players who decide for themselves what they should be achieving with less compared to them. However, at least they are able to carry themselves with more dignity and know that they are their own person.
@Andru
I think there are two kinds of people who are drawn to guild achievements. First those epeen whores who I'm sure Gevlon would label M & S. They are drawn to it, because they think it makes their guild look awsum. Secondly the people in such a tight guild where they wouldn't even dream about leaving and strongly identify with the guild. For the rest it's probably just ooh flashy.
I'd like to point out that I'd have ignored her/him by the time I read a sentence with lower-case "i" and "red" instead of read. The "lol"s didn't help the case.
I don't know if I should admire your patience, Gev, or if you just give trolls (which that guy clearly was) way too much credit.
And I've been seriously thinking lately if I should create a new char to join in on The PuG. I'm definitely not going to pay 45€ again to move my horde main character.
Then again, creating a new one involves losing all the sweet little perks I get from having a character with high cooking/fishing and JC/Engi. Not having heirlooms nor any gold and starting from scratch also hurts.
I'll just have to conform myself with that fact that until Blizzard decides to lower the price on those server/faction changes, I won't be playing in your guild.
I think its worth noting that "what a long strange trip it's been" is the only achievement that rewards you with something valuable, 310 flying, which is worth 5000g before faction discounts.
Personally I don't understand why you wouldn't try and earn personal achievements. In my experiences earning these achievements in a lot of cases are not pointless as they offer challenge. Not to say something stupid like equiping a tabard is a challenge and quite frankly feels pathetic everytime you get earn it on a toon.
You would be amazed where something like trying to fish up Old Ironjaw in Ironforge when you're horde poses as a challenge and things you learn along the way as you try and complete them. In the Ironforge case I learned i could use Aspect of the beast to avoid detection from other hunters while trying for it. This translated soon after into using aspect of the beast to hide the flag in wsg to allow the sides to even out in numbers before they put in the we only start when both sides are full method.
Personally learned how to kite trying to solo some of the BC instances before I was geared and could faceroll them by bouncing mobs between my pet and myself allowing mend pet to continue to heal my pet as I ran. I can't count the number of wipes I've prevented because of that practise. Tank goes down and I enter kite mode as the healers get a brez and the tanks health back up. Baltharus the Warborn comes to mind in Ruby Sanctum.
Pretty much what I'm saying is experiencing as much of the game as possible makes you a better player whether it's a raid boss, a battleground, arena or questing.
The other reasons for doing personal achievements are competition with someone you know straight up rewards. If you have Battlemaster or 100k, Kingslayer or Light of the Dawn when you voice your opinion on how something should be done often times people listen simply because they believe you must know what you are talking about. The last reason would be completion. For some people beating the guy at the end is finishing the game but for others beating everything in the game is "winning". For example there is no real social gratification for getting all the achievements say in Elder Scrolls 4 but I still did it because I liked the game and this was entertaining to try and do. Trying to get them all in NHL 2010 though wasn't enetertaining at all for me and thus I only have 2/49 or something along those lines.
I see all this as a personal experiement from Gevlon. HE wants to test with HIS money to see if having guild achievement will have an impact on the amount of application to the guild.
If it does increase the amount of application, it means we have a wider selection of players to choose and select. We might get extra people who doesnt want to follow rules and end up kicked, but if the ratio stay the same, we will get more people that fit the guild needs.
I have to echo many of the sentiments here in this - it's not going to make a difference. I don't see any evidence that social guilds will fall apart as a result of any other guild having more achievement points. Many, many small guilds that contain a minority of good players and a majority of M&S do not care about the activities of other guilds. Many of them live in a little 'bubble' social construct that pretends like other guilds don't exist. They rationalize how awesome they are many ways, but they can't rely on achievements since there is always going to be a list of guilds with more points above them on the list. It's much like a social guild deciding that they really really care about what rank they are in server progression, when there are at least 30 guilds in front of them - it only makes them feel bad to look at it, so they won't look (much like when you tell a bad player what they're doing wrong and they accuse you of being a basement dweller instead of deciding if you're right).
But hey, try it and see. Data will prove one way or the other. What data you can use to objectively prove the theory is a bit dark to me. Correlation is all you'll get, at best (and there is no control, so I don't see how that will help).
Looks like I missed out on a lot of Gevlon bashing.
Just a couple of points:
@ Pug update - top 5% of all players is nothing special, and quite possibly misleading, when you consider that most raiding guilds rank themselves relative to other raiding guilds. The percentages next to the figures on Wowprogress, I believe, relate to the number of guilds which have attempted the raids. Given that 68.57% of raids have defeated Halfus, currently The PuG would fall in the bottomm 31.43% of raiding guilds.
@ Achievements - Good players who aren't in the PuG are in other guilds for a reason. They're either achieving their goals there, or they're socials, and thus have no incentive to join you, because successful lolling raiders won't stop lolling just to join you for shiny achievements.
@ MotD - I agree with the others about the level of aggression you displayed. Personally, I'm more amused that you wasted any part of half an hour talking to her.
So playing a game for achievements is a waste of time but playing a game for gaining fake gold or raid progression is not?
It's a game. You and the socials play it for the same basic reasons.
Gevlon, I don't know if you've ever addressed this; but I don't understand how you can label socials earning "useless" achievements, while you consistently attempt to play WoW the "correct" way. If Arthasdklol logged off from a night earning "silly" things like non-combat pets and you called it a night downing raid bosses, assuming you and Arthasdklol both had fun doing so, what's the difference? How can anyone play a video game incorrectly?
Some thoughts after reading this blog entry:
¤ Is "cba" ok, but not 'idd' and whatever other abbreviations you said wasn't ok?
Or are they ok to use when writing to lol-kids?
¤ Why did you keep on arguing instead of just dropping it? Feels like any anti-social/goblin/whatever you call it, would drop it - possibly ignore if the person kept whispering.
¤ Do you judge EVERYONE that goes for achievements this way? You raid for some reason... maybe because it's challenging? But to raid you need to play with other people, be dependent on how well they are doing.
You also have to endure useless conversations or other problems within the guild that take time(like people that wants to join the guild or that player that left when someone told him he had too low gearscore). Though, now that I see screenshots as this one it seems like you enjoy it...? Weird.
I hunt achievements. Why? Because I think it is fun. It is not to impress anyone else. I have all my ten characters in my own guild, and I'm the only one in it. I don't socialize with any other player(unless I "have to" - like being 'nice' and 'friendly' with some herb/ore farmer to get discounts, but this is something I can write in a Word Pad-document in five seconds while crafting and then copy-paste in an in-game mail). I try to get as many achievements as I can on them all, leveling all their main and secondary professions to max.
All this is 'useless', but so is raiding. What they have in common is that we both think atleast some of it is _fun_.
If you don't play this game to have fun - why are you playing? Is it to have content for your blog to explain your visions? Isn't there other, better ways to explain those visions than through a game where everything is 'useless'?
If I would ask to be invited to your guild, and pass the "test", and later you find out I have 13 000 achievement points(I dont know the max number of achievement points you can have since the new expansion, but 13k should be seen as 'very high above average').
Would I be seen as a social moron to you? Would I get kicked? Would nothing happen, why not?
Even if you would keep me in the guild as it would gain the guild as you described in this blog entry, would I still be seen as a social moron?
Would you consider "hire" someone like me to gain the guild achievements(I don't know if personal achievements gain the guild in any way)?
I just don't understand you. You sometimes have awesome ideas and you seem like an anti-social, just to then seem to be part of some social things yourself or fall for things you, yourself, mention as "social fluff".
Or am I the one not understanding what being anti-social is?
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