Greedy Goblin

Monday, March 21, 2011

Don't be shy!

Short addon info first: Stolenlegacy wrote another very useful addon: setmynote. Officers of the guilds shall have it, and if a member whispers "!note xyz" then the addon changes their public note to xyz.

Why don't they change them themselves? Because you can't allow the members to set notes, because (thanks to crappy programming by Blizzard) if you can set your own note, you can set anyone's which allow trolls to have fun.


One of the largest differences between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former believes that failure is better than not even trying, while the latter prefers inactivity over failure. Success is never guaranteed. While "gaining experience" is a politically correct term for failure, there is also truth in it, you get better with every try, you learn something new if you do something while inactivity gives you nothing.

These (pretty unoriginal) ideas came up when I was making the charts for the "myth of the elitists"post. While I can't be sure what's happening in other guilds, I can positively say that we never-ever turned anyone permanently down from raiding. Even if you failed terribly, even if you shown up ungemmed-unenchanted, you got another chance next day. If you weren't a lolling, cursing, begging moron who was kicked from the guild, you'll get your chance in raiding. If your timetable was awkward and shown up in silly times, you still could get an inv after the break.

Still, we have 46% nothingdoer in the guild. OK, some of them are notorious raidinv-refusers who are active in PvP only but I simply haven't encountered the majority of them. Their name tells nothing to me, they are total strangers. They never tried to get a raid inv. I'm afraid, the reason is shyness, fear of failure.

Failure costs exactly 300G here or a replacement if we can't fix it fast. Nothing more. You can also leave the raid any time if you think you can't do it. No consequences (besides losing the pot). If you have enough gear to get in the LFD, if all of the pieces are in-spec and belong to the proper armor class and all of them are enchanted and gemmed, you have all the gear you need. Read up the strategies, watch the video, prepare some cash for fail money and come! More likely than not, you'll get a bosskill, rather than failure. But even if you fail, you just lost some time and a little gold. The prize is much larger than the risk! Come raiding!

I'm determined to elevate the raider count to 90%+ in the guild, because the low raiding activity in every guilds shown a huge empty market: there are lot of people in raider guilds who don't raid. So "here everyone raids" is a really unique selling point. I will update you how this project goes. Will people raid? Will they turn out to be self-choosen non-raiders? We'll see!

30 comments:

Squishalot said...

Have you considered that part of the reason people may choose not to raid is because they're not willing to set aside a fixed block of 90 minutes to raid in, in the specific times that you've imposed? I can say 'imposed', because you're not allowing them to organise guild raids outside of these times. (Insert comment here about fixed times and mandatory attendance for the whole time being similar to raiding guilds.)

Not everyone considers raiding as the be-all and end-all of WoW. Otherwise, you'd have enough people playing to run a couple of raids each week, and said people would be raiding at the moment.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: If my time is not good for them (that they knew before joining the guild), why don't they quit and find a guild with better time?

arkraven - saurfang EU said...

or set up there own raid at a time to suit them, which is what i thought the PUG was all about?

can't do the hardcore raid noon till night 8 days a week, come hither?

or is gevlon the only RL in the entire guild?

Anonymous said...

With these "1 mistake by 1 player= wipe" raid mechanics, players don't want the emotional downer of being known as the guy that just can't interrupt that 0.9 sec cast each and every time, and incur the hate and intolerance of everyone else.

Time was, you wouldn't be wasting your time with them anyway.

Anonymous said...

Squishalot: If my time is not good for them (that they knew before joining the guild), why don't they quit and find a guild with better time?
you do realize that they are probably the people that came and stayed for the 'atmosphere' and perks?
- you get guild boni (exp etc)
- you have a guild tag -> no g-invite spam
- civilized discussions / information
- you can do your own thing but at the same time not be ''completely alone''
...

chewy said...

You've brought up your child with strict rules about the way they have to live whilst telling them it's for their own benefit. Like a lot of new fathers you don't appreciate that their lives may not work out the way you planned.

Obviously I'm talking about the guild but if you really want to know why not all of your members want to raid - ask them - but don't be disappointed if it isn't what you planned.

Riptor said...

I guess I have missed that Part about fixed Raid times. Is it actually the Rule that noone may organise a Raid outside your fixed Times?

Kring said...

Did you have trolling with comments? Or do you just assume that your guild members will behave like small childrens when left unattended?

Camiel said...

@ first Anonymous:

The rules and the way of working of the Pug should be familiar to those who chose to join.
If their "social" fears stop them from raiding, why did they join the Pug to begin with?

@Gevlon:

the difference between successfull and insuccessfull people is that the successfull ones do try? What about all the /2 raids. Those people try all the time, still you don't consider them successfull. It is still possible to try and fail, so why do you expect the inactive Pug members to be able to be successfull?

Gevlon said...

@Zazkadin: I'm sure that the /2 raiders will sooner or later join a raiding guild. Or at least the organizers of those raids. Trying /2 is a first step. Everyone started that way, unless an IRL raiding friend carried him at the start.

Anonymous said...

you should not assume that everyone is in The PUG to raid, I am guessing many are just in there to have a safe haven from M&S or just to have the guild perks without any responsibility (besides being online once in a while)

Antivyris said...

Perhaps the fear is not of failure per say, maybe it's the fear of losing gold. Maybe try a single week of fail-fee-free raids? Maybe after they see it's not going to 'eat all their money' they'll raid normally.

Gevlon said...

@Fizzle: and how to convince the others to carry them?

Kelindria said...

The reasons people don't raid are:

1) They can't because they are to low level
2) They believe that they will be being carried if they have below heroic level gear
3) They are scared of wiping the raid and the associated consequences
4) They have interest in non raiding activities instead
5) They are not available in the time slot allocated for raiding

So according to your stats 46% of the lvl 85 players in you guild have raided at all. Lets say 30% are interested in raiding that aren't yet. If you want them in you have to make room for what they believe they need. Although you hate hand holding people into your raids there is a reason Arthasdklol can still get 30 people to raid even though he accomplishes nothing.

Campitor said...

One of the largest differences between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former believes that failure is better than not even trying, while the latter prefers inactivity over failure.

This is so true but yet people are so severely punished when experimenting towards excellence in real life. One cannot make an omelette without first breaking some eggs.

Caramael said...

I don't join your raids because most of the time they're too early for me. And paying 300g for mistakes scares me away from them, because I know I'm going to make mistakes, since I've got no experience in the Cataclysm raids.
Also, flasks are insanely expensive. I cannot afford them.

I've tried setting up a late night raid twice since The PuG was founded, but I never managed to get enough people interested.

I'm currently thinking about starting up a late-night, no-fines newb-practice raid or something, but that's only assuming there's more players such as myself who want to raid at a different time and want to practice without paying fines. I'm also pretty sure you'll be able to give me plenty of reasons why it won't work.

Anonymous said...

The difference between successful and unsuccessful is not only trying, but also the final outcome of each try. Did they learn their mistakes, or are they MORONS that cannot learn their mistakes. MORONS cannot learn their mistakes, so their trying does not count. Without thinking, there is no trying. "Do or do not there is no try" --Yoda is a good quote to remember. The MORONS
try
, the successful "do," that's the difference.
The unsuccessful people do not even try because they want to stay unsuccessful so that they will not be judge by other people when they use the "lack of opportunity" excuse.

Michael said...

Hi Gevlon!

You might try letting people organize raids how they want with whatever loot rules they prefer to use.

Probably the biggest reason I'm not interested in joining a guild like yours is that it sounds like I'd be forced to carry people all the time. That's no good! In my guild, I think the only time where I've felt like I was explicitly carrying a player was when a guy rerolled warlock because we didn't have one of those in our raiding group. Otherwise, people either work their hardest or they just never get invited and quit. I work as hard as I can in raids, as I don't want to let my friends down!

Your whole gold dkp loot system seems kind of bizarre to me. As you've ably demonstrated in the earlier focus of this blog, it's very easy to get a lot of gold from relatively little time. Most of the raiders in my group sit around 100k gold already. But that doesn't matter because selling epic boe's from our runs lets us all have guild-paid flasks, enchants, and repairs. We mostly spend our money on vanity pets. :P

Basically, the value of gold in an established, successful guild trends towards zero. There's no amount of gold you could pay me to raid with half the group as newcomers, because there's nothing I can buy with gold that would have more enjoyment than I would lose from not raiding with my regular group. o.O

Riptor said...

@ Gevlon: The Pot is only split among the Carriers

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: Noone is carried if everyone is a newbie. (i.e. everyone pays fee = cancels out). The market will determine who will be willing to raid for no carrying fee / how many newbies want to raid.

In answer to why don't they quit, it's because their goal isn't to raid, their goal is to do their own thing in an asocial environment. If raiding is an option, they'll raid, but it's currently not an option. If I were a part of your guild, that would be my current position. I'd be happy to swap in for a single attempt at a boss in exchange for a chance to bid / share of pot reward for that boss, but I neither have, nor am willing to devote, time in 1.5hr blocks for raiding.

To quote from your original post:

"The guild is named "The PuG" for a reason: it wants to simulate PuG-ing from a competent base. Practically being in the guild is like being guildless on a server where everyone are competent."

There is nothing about The PuG being a raiding guild, and therefore, it should be anticipated that not all members joined in order to raid.

Tuzvihar said...

@Gevlon: You don't have to convince. Pay the failure fee yourself, so you can get the information you require.

Anonymous said...

Having read your blog for a while now, I got the impression that the was not a raiding guild. Instead it was a guild that raids, pvps and is a safe haven from the some of the social deviants of the Wow population.


With that in mind your numbers don't surprise me especially since you have recruited many players through pvp events. The fact is, many people just may not care for raiding and there is nothing that you can do to convince them that they should.

Unknown said...

So I just had this long comment that blogger couldn't post. So here's the TL:DR anyways

Allow for pickup raids: Theres 10 people on who aren't locked/have an alt and we have the min amount of heals/tanks. Just have put it on the guild calander with all of the people that came.

allow for a scheduled raid that your not apart of. Maybe with no or reduced fees, run by someone you think could pull it off and allow it to be scheduled differently everyweek.

Anonymous said...

There's a trivially easy way to get 90%+ raiders in your guild: kick anybody who doesn't raid. Except you have a rule that reads: "You are also not required to raid when online. If you don't want to raid, you don't."

Your rules promote freedom of choice so you must assume either that the non-raiders don't know about the raids (maybe they have gchat turned off) or simply don't want to raid.


Unless you're going to kick them for choosing not to raid, your new goal entails persuading half the guild that they *do* want to raid with you despite all evidence to the contrary. Good luck with that.

You may succeed by pressuring people to /gquit with your social demands. You've created an environment that appeals to asocial people like me. Why should I care whether you want me to raid? Why should I, as a non-raider, care that your raids have attendance problems? That's like asking me to care that your auction didn't sell or that your arena team sucks. 46% of PUG members don't raid? QQ. Not my problem.

Bristal said...

Here's a thought.

Remember your rants about top-guild fanboys on that Horde-heavy server that you started the Ganking Project on?

Could it possibly be that players have joined your guild because of you?

How ironic would it be if your fame and notoriety has generated your own flock of e-peening M&S that hang around SW sporting their Greedy Goblin guild tags?

Anonymous said...

I think the method of global bidding will be better for The PUG. With global bidding, then players who don't want to raid still have the opportunity to get gears. You just have to add 300 gold upon their bid as a tax for not raiding. Wait, or is it not possible to do this global bidding by the game mechanics?
Also, PUG refers not only to raiding, but also 5-man runs, battle grounds, and group areas, so you cannot say that they are not following the definition of PUG.

chewy said...

A quick "tip of the hat" to Stolenlegacy for his addon. Not because the coding is particularly difficult but the brilliant lateral thinking to solve the problem is worth a note of respect.

Rohan said...

Is everyone in your guild a raider?

I thought a lot of people joined just for the "no grats" guild chat and less silliness.

I don't really see how you know that 40% wants to raid, but is too shy to step forward. It seems equally viable that 40% of the guild doesn't want to raid, but prefers the adult, sensible atmosphere that I understand your guild provides.

Anonymous said...

Fizzle, it is not "per say" but "per se" (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se)
drives me crazy when people wanna use a freaking latin phrase, but do it incorrectly... L2Latin.

Azuriel said...

@Fizzle: and how to convince the others to carry them?

Why would you need to "convince" them of anything? Put the fail-free raid up on the schedule, and if people don't want to carry others then they won't sign up. It is the ultimate free market solution.