Meet the guild PvP eh. It has 970 members, so it's near the cap. I know this guild well, since my horde banker is in it. /guildinfo shows 760 accounts, so it's not an altoholic guild. So I know that none of the 970 members is inactive beyond 8 days. 249 of the members are lvl 85, yet the guild only did 3 guild raids, and guild dungeoning is also sporadic, 3 old dungeons have not been completed once by a guild group.
What makes this guild interesting: it's a mass-invited, "everyone is welcome" guild. No quality checks of any kind (my banker is lvl 80, does nothing and still not kicked). Contrary what one would expect, the guild chat is not obnoxious. Of course there are sporadic boost begging, achievement-gz-ing and such, but mostly silence. Nothing of what you would expect from a "freindly social guld".
PvP eh is not a friendly social guild where lolkids are boosting each other. It's a guild perk provider to its members and gold provider to its owner. Its sounding success shows that most of the players are not annoying "boost me plox" leeches or even "i wanna b with freinds lol" socials. They are casual players who do not want to regularly raid or rated BG, as just a moron would pick a random-inviter guild for that purpose. Most of the players are just want to be in this fantasy world and do something here. Before the guild perks they were guildless or members of non-functioning guilds. Now they are in PvP eh type conglomerates, playing in the same place, but not together.
Of course I have no reliable data about how many such guilds are on the servers. But even one such guild is enough proof that many people don't want either organized progress (they would be in guilds that at least promise raids), nor friendly guilds (they would be in smaller guilds or try to socialize on /g). For them casual content and not "casualized" raid content is needed.
What makes this guild interesting: it's a mass-invited, "everyone is welcome" guild. No quality checks of any kind (my banker is lvl 80, does nothing and still not kicked). Contrary what one would expect, the guild chat is not obnoxious. Of course there are sporadic boost begging, achievement-gz-ing and such, but mostly silence. Nothing of what you would expect from a "freindly social guld".
PvP eh is not a friendly social guild where lolkids are boosting each other. It's a guild perk provider to its members and gold provider to its owner. Its sounding success shows that most of the players are not annoying "boost me plox" leeches or even "i wanna b with freinds lol" socials. They are casual players who do not want to regularly raid or rated BG, as just a moron would pick a random-inviter guild for that purpose. Most of the players are just want to be in this fantasy world and do something here. Before the guild perks they were guildless or members of non-functioning guilds. Now they are in PvP eh type conglomerates, playing in the same place, but not together.
Of course I have no reliable data about how many such guilds are on the servers. But even one such guild is enough proof that many people don't want either organized progress (they would be in guilds that at least promise raids), nor friendly guilds (they would be in smaller guilds or try to socialize on /g). For them casual content and not "casualized" raid content is needed.
16 comments:
Doesn't this conclusion go against what you've suggested in the past, that the casual gamer doesn't really exist?
I've noticed a trend in your recent blog posts moving away from your old view point.
There are at least 2 more on Horde side of Agamaggan, and 2 on the Alliance side (easy to discover, as they regularly spam guild invites to any character not yet in the guild. "PvP eh" is the most active one, though, penetrating even ignore by using multiple active inviters, others spam invites from one character only.
@Squishalot: I've never said casuals don't exist. I said that those who call themselves casuals are liars and leeching M&S.
Casuals don't call themselves anything. They play the game and ignore the "community".
I have seen similar guilds as well. Only very occasionally you see anything in guild chat, so little that I actually decided not to hide guild chat because it did not bother me.
You might find that these such guilds are run by a goblin. How is actively /gkicking people that cause drama. May it be overseeing the behaviour from an apt and then booting once they are offline. Many of my alts are in a similar guild once they reach 85 and have found one that suits their needs they move on. I recently chatted to the GM and he was quite adamant that once he heard of the cash flow perk he was quick to make a guild before cataclysm and fill it with active people, if you check the logs he makes easily between 4-7k gold a week from doing nothing but pressing a mass invite button whilst playing regularly.
You miss the point. With your guild rules you do not let an option for people to be even silly at gchat. When people HAVE the option to do it, they might do it whenever they feel like it. Not everyday, not every minute, just when they FEEL like it. I think your conclusion is wrong and it is a bit weird since I respect your arguments most of the time as well thought. :)
Maybe Blizzard could implement world events like the rifts on...Rift, just to give this extreme casual people, extreme content. Something you have to do in a raid but without any kind of normal organization ("Wild elementals appeared in -somewhere- for X minutes, go help our friends!) with the possibility of strange rewards (i'm not thinking in epic loot because it would drive in also raiders, it could be, per example, an epic tabard, or some kind of epic "trash" like the IWIN botton but in purples)
@ Gevlon: Close enough.
The criticism I have of that is that 90% of forum users of websites such as Wowhead, Thottbot and MMO-Champion are precisely that - casuals. The casuals are part of the community.
Certainly, they're not all hardcore. Neither are they M&S (since the M&S won't seek out knowledge on such websites, or they are driven out due to their poor English/grammar/stupid ideas).
Casuals do call themselves casuals when they interact with the community. The difference is that they don't use it as an excuse, which is what I know you're getting at, but ignoring in your attempt to stereotype. Not everyone fits into the stereotypes that you want to paint, Gevlon.
Further illustration of the point I was making the other day that for a great many people WoW provides no more than Brain Candy.
If you're going to be pedantic in response to Squish's point then I'll rephrase it because I too have noticed that you seem to be altering your perspective of late.
Tempering your view point rather than fundamentally changing it allows for more insight.
The "PVP eh" guild sounds really good to me. There is nothing wrong if the leader makes a lot of money, because he created something that gives a lot of the benefits to the people who join(guild perks). Also these are players who don't want to be bothered all the time to go to raid or pvp events, so it's good they are together in a guild instead of with others who do not understand. I do not join a casual guild because I am afraid they aren't really a casual guild, they just say they are. I guess I do not trust people very much. Plus they tend to have tabards of bunnies, kittens, or crying baby bears(I think that's a crying baby bear anyways). It would be interesting to know how much gold the leader of "PVP eh" has made from the guild. Hopefully a lot.
I have bought such a guild on my server. I joined it when I migrated to the server, noticed there was very little guild chat, but people were just happily levelling, doing some dungeons, some pvp, sometimes a little together, and so forth. It also had an invite everyone policy.
It's not as good as you describe with PVP Eh, as there are quite some low level members, and some of them are inactive, but on any given time there are 30-60 people online and playing.
Cash flow income was ~2k a week, and sometimes they hit some dungeons together, adding 1750 gold from the guild challenges.
Didn't have much else to do with the gold, so decided to buy it as a long term investment for little trouble - after the guild topic you had a few weeks back. It also gives me something to mess with in Wow that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.
Now, the question would be, for such an investment, what would be an acceptable time before you break even with the investment?
One thing that I never got: what are those people doing? What is there to do besides raiding and pvp?
You can't spend that much time leveling, there are only 10 classes. You can try to beat dungeons underlvld and such stuff, but I doubt so many people are doing such rare stuff.
Are they the /2 pug material? Are they just playing 2h/week?
Why do you think those people don't need casualized raid content?
That they do not function as a guild does not mean that they do not tradepug.
I checked a few random 85s and each had several heroics and Argaloth down. When tradepugs can do BoT and BWD, I expect them to start killing those bosses as well.
@Anonymous: " With your guild rules you do not let an option for people to be even silly at gchat"
You must have missed our recent argument regarding guild chat. Our rules clearly allow people to be silly in chat: it is just called /casual instead of /guild.
Arkonos, leveling 10 characters doesn't take all that long compared to being in a serious raid guild, but it still takes quite a few total hours /played compared to a standard single player game. Beyond that there is professions, money making, and gearing characters through heroics, rep and BG. Plus, who says you must stop at 10 characters. there are 2 factions too!
@squishalot
90% of forum users of websites such as Wowhead, Thottbot and MMO-Champion are precisely that - casuals.
where do you get that data from?
Post a Comment