Greedy Goblin

Monday, December 3, 2012

About the WoW guild "The PuG"

For two years I ran a WoW guild "The PuG" to operate on a casual, yet non-boosting way. We clearly outperformed the social guilds, but failed to outperform the HC guilds, mostly because WoW slowly but surely changed from MMO to a jumping arcade game. Many old players left for other games, including me for EVE Online and I planned to close the WoW guild down, leave WoW completely.

Well, my girlfirend disagreed. She shares my resentment towards social people, without my curiosity and will to fix them. She just wants them out of her life. So she didn't follow me to EVE Online. Technically she did, she has a character, minds her skill queue and plays now and then for the game itself. But my "understand nullsec/win EVE" projects are out of her scope. She likes the single-player aspect of WoW, a game full of nice content, replaced often. She will keep on playing and carry on The PuG.

Her guild isn't a project trying to prove anything, merely an online escapism from the social people. There aren't goals to reach, points to prove, just a place to forget the social people who surround us with their nonsense, lolling, ape-grooming.

Therefore the permanent page of The PuG is back on my blog header and updated to the new situation.


I did some PvP in WoW, Silvershard mines weekend BG. The idiocy of the players was shocking. Not like idiocy is common in EVE too. But at least here they die:
79B freighter.
11B JF Nairja
5B freighter in lowsec
5B shield tanked Moros
3B Pod in a standard Drake in nullsec


Tomorrow comes a post that seriously has the chance of having revolutionary effect on MMO design and significant help to MMO groups to optimize their structure.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I actually miss your posts about WoW. I disagreed with many things you said, but your posts were interesting to read. Ah, well.

On a side note, it is interesting that a lot of the 25 level social guilds I am on with my alts (I am not joining any serious guilds on alts on purpose) are almost exactly like "The PUG" on the inside.

No kiddie-speak, slang or emotionally loaded synonyms! - check, don't remember when I saw this last time.
No primitive, abusive language (fukk, #%$#%@$ and such)! - check, same.
Emoticons of any kind are forbidden - fail #1, but smilies don't bother me, haven't seen anything excessive.
No IRL things on gchat - check, I think I heard one IRL thing about a month ago, but that's it and it was short.
No gz! - check.
No hi/bye! - check.
The guild chat is not the trade chat! - check.
We have an official chit-chat channel - mostly check, the chat is simply silent most of the time.
After one month of inactivity, you will be kicked - fail #2, noone kicks anyone, but that's fine by me.
Finally, the kick rule: - fail #3, which really is same as fail #2, never saw anybody kicked, people just behave.
Your name cannot contain kiddie-speak, - not sure about this, I think this is mostly check, too.
No communist collective! - check.
No guild bank, use the AH! - check.

So, there. Even without any mission statement, some guilds nowadays seem to start the way you like and be the way you like. :-)

IO said...

"25 frigate in nullsec"

Heh.

This is PVP Tournament New Eden Open loss. It's not dumb, players throw the most they can afford to win. The fight happened in Jove space, not accessable to players.

Sometimes I think you are just a giant troll, but then I realize you are just not smart enough for that.

Gevlon said...

And wasting $750 on a tournament where the winner team gets $10K is somehow not stupid? The average payout simply doesn't worth the investment.

Gevlon said...

But right, while it probably was a wrong decision, it wasn't simply "being an idiot". Removed.

IO said...

"And wasting $750 on a tournament where the winner team gets $10K is somehow not stupid? The average payout simply doesn't worth the investment."

ISK is not equal to real cash! Simply because it's not possible (at least legally) to convert ISK for cash.

Ragelle said...

The interesting thing on that pod loss is the Drake not being T2, which tells me that the expensive implants are largely being wasted since clearly his skills are lacking to even be spending that ISK at this point in his training. Combining your +5's with combat implants is only doubling your loss for the convenience of not having to change clones.

Florestan Bronstein said...

The teams did of course not know it beforehand (and as such it didn't affect their decision making) but Somer Blink sponsored all teams with 10b each and CCP refunded any PLEX in excess of the 10 PLEX minimum bid.

No idea where that $750 number is coming from.

Gevlon said...

You can sell that ship for 25B ISK and save yourself $750 worth of PLEX on your accounts.

Sugar Kyle said...

Not everyone plexes their accounts.

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous,

"The guild chat is not the trade chat! - check.
We have an official chit-chat channel - mostly check, the chat is simply silent most of the time."

Wrong, that may seem the same but it is (and your compare goes moot elsewhere too). In The PuG you had a social/casual chatroom where anyone could join (even non-guildies) and anyone could leave (even guildies).

Guild chat was purely guild related business. This allows you to join or leave the chit-chat channel at any time, talk to non-guildies, and also give the chit-chat a different window (say, with less priority). While the guild chat was mostly silent when it wasn't what was discussed was of interest for all guild members.

As for what Gevlon asserted:

"We clearly outperformed the social guilds, but failed to outperform the HC guilds, mostly because WoW slowly but surely changed from MMO to a jumping arcade game."

I don't see anywhere being proven the major reason The PuG failed to outperform "the HC guilds, mostly because WoW slowly but surely changed from MMO to a jumping arcade game."

There's also a lot between a social guild and a HC guild. Semi HC guild, for example.

People in a HC raiding guild do a few things different from The PuG:

1) Raid spots are earned based on class/spec/quality demand. The PuG raided with whatever they had. A top guild can easily replace a raider (barring gear).
2) They're using voice chat for communication, coordination.
3) Officer team and class leaders know everyone's capabilities and limits (although raiders are pushed to their limits). In The PuG the GM/raid leader was sometimes clueless or ignorant about other classes abilities or limits.
4) They do the dance better. The PuG couldn't even kill Alysrazor normal pre-nerf and once they downed it, they did not have it on farm.
5) They have better output and performance. Did anyone in The PuG ever ranked on anything?
6) They raid more which boils down to more practice. There are however very casual top guilds. Group Therapy, for example, is world 347 right now (and cleared all 25m HC content from Ulduar and onward), but raid only 2x 4 hrs a week. That time is strict (unlike some other guilds who claim they "raid only 3 x 3,5 hrs but have over 600 wipes on Spirit Kings HC).

PS: With Livia as GM I'm considering to put an alt on Agamaggan again.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, are you going to do challenge modes before your time runs out. Would've thought this was right up your alley with permanent leader boards, and out of the box thinking to kill bosses quick?