We interrupt this important lull to bring you random!

So, I just recently got back from a week of hanging out in my guild leaders' living room playing WoW, visiting NERO events (live action rp: beating people with plumbing supplies and having pretend babies with people you don't so much hate as loathe and despise), and trying to convince them to play The Secret World.  You read that right: I spent seven days of vacation time to go halfway across the country for what I already do in the comfort of my own living room.  And it was totally worth it.

There's definitely something to be said for meeting your council face-to-face and being able to hash out your recruiting strategy and progression plans over a small mountain of Papa John's while playing pass the Dew.  (Cups and plates are for people that want to do dishes, and dishes are the devil.)  As many great tools as guild leaders have available for faceless management and organization, that extra bit of connection and (as much as I hate to say it) the ability to see someone wildly waving her hands about and all scrunch-faced while she screams at people makes the communication process go a lot more smoothly.

So (belated) thanks to my awesome GMs, and their kitty Luna, for having me last week.  I think I've got just enough time to recover from that visit before the Tactical Dysfunction meet-up extravaganza and its bizarre bleed-in to Mists of Pandaria release weekend back with the Reckless Embrace buys in the land of banjos and shine.  Whether or not my car will have gotten over the trauma of crossing the Appalachians, having a hawtt pancake threeway with some 18-wheelers on the PA turnpike, and getting stuck in both Philly AND Pittsburgh rush-hour traffic on the same day?  That's another thing entirely.

And because it wouldn't be TacDys if I didn't give some random tips or snark of randomness: Roxi's guild roadtrip guidelines!

• Always pack a cooler!  As I learned on the drive home, no matter how excellent the food on the highway looks, it's marked up by exactly way too flipping much.  You're spending enough just on gas and tolls.  Steal a cooler from some unsuspecting relative or foolish neighbor that left their garage open overnight.  Spend a week before your trip making ice in your freezer and filling dollar store ziploc baggies (or, you know, buy a couple bags of ice).  Go to your nearest bulk buying club (steal a card if you have to) and pick up the following (amounts will vary depending on number of passengers):
• One case of Monsters (or your energy drink of choice)
• Two bags of beef jerky (protien, low-mess)
• One box granola bars (breakfast)
• One value-pak string cheese (dairy)
• Two bags veggie chips/straws (vegetables)
• One case of soda or bottled water
• Take extra socks!  No really.  Wet feet suck, as I learned during the great torrential downpours I hit going through the Lancaster area.  This was reinforced by various horror stories from NERO.  Take extra socks.
• Label your CDs!  Don't take originals if you're afraid of losing them.  Take your totally legal copied CDs, and write what's on them in black sharpie.  Trust me, radio roulette is a lot less fun than it sounds.  You don't want to be hoping for Dee Snider Does Broadway and get Crown Thy 4nicatr.    Or however it's spelled.
• Don't check your auctions every time you stop!  Seriously.  Unless you've got a charger that can split to USB, you can't afford to have to charge your phone AND run your GPS unit at the same time.  (We'll ignore for the moment that my car has two standard outlets on top of the lighter thingy.)  WoW's auctionhouse app, Facebook, Twitter...  they all eat up battery.  The last thing you need is for your phone to be dead when you start hearing banjos playing Jeepers Creepers.
• If work calls, don't answer it!  Telling them that you're stuck in wherever isn't going to help the situation any.  They'll figure it out on their own.  If you answer it, you'll just feel guilty about taking vacation time, and no one should ever feel guilty about taking vacation time.
• If you don't like to go 80mph+, get the HELL out of the left lane!  In all the states I've driven in so far, the left lane seems to START at 75mph and ramp up from there.  Don't think you have to be over there just because you're exceeding the speed limit.  Following this, if your car can't make it up mountains and you're crossing the Appalachians, suck it up and limp your ass into the right hand lane.
• Gravity works on cars!  Know if you're going downhill and adjust your pedal-metaling accordingly.  Your car really CAN hit 110mph+ if it wants to, and gravity is like automotive jello shots.  It makes your car want to do all kinds of crazy things.
• Rotate your cards!  Swap between the credit card and the debit card, and keep a close eye on your balance on both.  If it's super duper omg important?  Use the credit card.  And don't carry cash.  Hobos can smell cash from a mile away, and they WILL jump through your window while you're stuck in traffic to get it.  >.<  Yes, I know this from personal experience.
• And finally, Always bring your towel!  Related to the socks thing, I know.  But seriously?  I refilled my ice on the way home, and exploded a couple of Monsters in my cooler, and GOD was that a mess.  ALWAYS have a towel.

Hopefully, I'll be done with silence and filler posts for the next few weeks.  Coming up tomorrow: 5 questions you should never ask a guild recruiter, and five you MUST.

I haz a lazy

Taking a couple of days off from textually stroking my epeen at you to hang out with my guild leaders.  Yes, I was too lazy to pre-write enough entries to get me through to midweek.

You're welcome.

End of the X-Pack Blues

The tail end of an expansion is always the worst time to be playing an MMORPG*.  (*Unless you're a new or returning player.)  Unless you got a late start or you're just progressing at the speed of backwards, you've got nothing new to do, not much in the way of content to build towards, and best of all- basically everyone is either working on alts or just flat out not playing.  Even the most active guilds go silent, capitol cities turn into ghost towns, and prices get flat out stupid.  So...what's a girl to do when she's still got two months before her expansion hits and none of the new shinies are tickling her in her special guild leader spot?

• Level an alt
•  Of course, depending on how long you've been playing your game, you may not have room for any more alts.  Or you've got everything max level already.  Or maybe you're one of those weird people that only plays one character.  Ever.  For the whole history of the game.  Running an alt up so you have some options when the expansion hits in the very likely event that your class is changed in some gameplay-screwing, desirability-tanking way is usually a good plan, but it's not for everyone.  And anyway, alts are expensive little things, what with needing skills and mounts and gear and food and puppies...
• Work on your tradeskills
• Tradeskills suck.  In some games, they suck less than others, and in some games they're more necessary than others.  That said, it's an xp bar/skill bar, and if it's not maxed yet you may want to consider doing that before your xpack lands.  Early expansion is the best time for crafters to make money, because people aren't getting dungeon gear yet, and even drops are less-than-plentiful.  This goes doubly for harvesters, who can make enough money to support them through the entire rest of the expansion if they farm early and plentifully.  Right out of the gate, tradeskillers pay a massive premium for the new materials that come along with an expansion.  Wouldn't it be nice to be that guy making 100k Your Currency Here a day selling flowers and tattered demon buttwipes?
• Get achievements
• There are games that don't have achievements these days?  Sure, they might be badges, or perks, or whatever the hell, but there's Stuff you can Get for Doing Things.  Explore!  Run old quests!  Go solo that stuff you used to raid with twenty-four other people like five years ago.  See if you can solo that stuff you threatened to set your guild leader's boyfriend on fire over earlier this year.  You get another shiny number to show off, and sometimes you get cool stuff like mounts, costume armor, titles, tabards, cloaks, special powers...  Everyone loves having new and interesting ways to show off, right?  Right.  Trust me.  The random fluffy stuff makes you automatically better than everyone around you because you have them and they don't.  It's a rule of MMORPG society.
• Farm
• Face it.  When that expansion comes out you're going to have gear to upgrade, new skills to buy, tradeskills to level, stuff to do...  You're going to want to be able to focus on blasting through the new content and getting yourself sorted for your raids or ERP circle jerks or whatever it is you do as soon as possible.  Farming NOW means more time spent doing what you love later.  It also means that in the tumultuous early days of the new stuff being available on the auction house/broker/whatever you can dumpster dive and sell whatever you find that is new, different, and exciting for a hundreds of gobzillions of currency mark-up.  Wouldn't you rather be the guy destroying the economy than the one having to pay post-arbitrage prices?  The more capital you have at your disposal when the patch hits, the better.
• Take some time off
• No really.  You're allowed to take some time off, cut back your play time, and explore other interests and hobbies.  Hell.  Prepare for your expansion the way obsessive popular girls do for swimsuit season.  Work out, get yourself into shape, lose some weight...  Because you just know those long nights making love to a two liter of Dew and eating banana chips are coming.  Get all of your family obligations and visitations out of the way, pre-write/address/stamp your Christmas and Easter cards, buy your birthday presents and Hannukah gifts, do your research into likely political candidtates for upcoming elections...  Yes, I am saying that you may want to consider pre-living before your expansion comes.  You may also want to stockpile sleep, and bank sick time at work.  Just sayin'.
• Precruit
• Yes, I just invented a word.  Precruiting is going out and scouting recruits for the upcoming expansion rather than current content.  The trick to precruiting is that a lot of people opt to take time off at the end of an expansion, so guilds are slow.  You can scavenge players during these lean times that you wouldn't be able to get during the thick of progression: core players, junior officers, class leaders, and so-on.  Many of these fine folks will jump tags if they see that they can get their content fix with you here and now, and you plan to continue your activity into the next expansion.  Be careful what you promise your precruits, because many will still be baited back to their old tags once the expansion lands.  Also, don't push potential precruits too hard when you're feeling them out and getting to know them.  Their guilds have gone inactive, but they are still loyal to those old connections.  Nobody wants to feel pressured into jumping ship. I've found that if you're patient, and welcome potential precruits to join you for raids and groups while staying tagged with their old guild, eventually they'll decide that they want to join you anyway.
• Start a blog
• No really.  People are going to be looking for new sources of game news, commentary, and all that good stuff when the expansion hits.  Get yourself into the habit of writing blog posts, or streaming, or whatever well before that happens so you're ready to go when your audience opens up.  No, this is not at all in any way, shape, or form what I'm planning to do.  Nope.  Not this girl.  >.>  Watch my livestream.

It's a good idea to keep in mind that the generally lower prices and more active alt scene make the end of an expansion a good time for new and returning players to hit up a game.  If all else fails, adopt a newbie.  ^.^

WTF is a wendigo?

So I've been playing The Secret World.  Every time I turn around there's a zombie or a ghoul or SOMETHING needing dispatched.  Returned to the abyss.  Or jumping out and clawing me in the face.  I can figure out just about all of them, but...  Seriously.  What the hell is a wendigo?  In TSW they're these crunched-up muscular guys running around on all fours.

Yeah, I'm phoning in today's blogpost. I started ranting about casuals, realized that I sounded like a giant dildo, and scrapped it.  Eventually I'll get around to writing about casuals, but that's probably best saved for a night when I haven't tried to run a pickup group, ended up in the WORST dungeon finder ever, and been called a hardcore prick and had someone play the Life card on me.  (I have a life and a job, so I get to stand in fire and make you waste three hours of your night.  Counterintuitive much?  You'd think someone with such an important life would want to maximize the use of their time ingame.)

I'll also eventually get around to doing a proper writeup on the Secret World, and why it's a game worth at least buying and playing for a month.  Honestly, it's worth watching, too.  If Funcom handle the game well it'll be a really nice niche title.  It's a nice challenge, but there's definitely a lot of pressure to get everything done all at once.  A less obsessive-compulsive person would probably feel differently, but for me?  I can tank, and heal, and dps all on the same toon, and I'm having a hard time focusing.  Controlling my urge to cross-class.  It's going to be a long time before I find the plot over there, so to speak.  And rather than be That Guy who's whining that she doesn't have time (that guy is gender neutral, duh) to be good at the game...

I have a feeling that I'm going to be sidelining TSW entirely.  It's fun.  I love the flexibility of the system, the openness of the gameplay, and the overall challenge level of combat and the quests.  OMG the puzzle quests.  But right now I'm looking for some low key, low-maintainance fun, and...  TSW has the potential to be very bad for me.  Like discovering pineapple upside down cake martinis bad for me.  (I deleted the video from that night, because OMG was I obliterated.)  Self-control comes a lot more easily when I know I can walk away for a few days and not let my crew down.

Not the blog post I intended to write tonight, but there you go.  My quest to figure out what a wendigo is continues.  TO THE BATWIKI!

You are not hardcore

To quote my long-distance silent life partner and soul mate Jack Black, "You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore."  Yes, I just quoted School of Rock up in here.  But my darling makes an excellent point about something that's been bugging me in MMOs for the last...oh... forever.

Hardcore does not mean what you think it means.  This means you, mister my guild raids three times a week, and we're trying to down Hogger.  This ALSO means you, mister I've killed everything in this expansion and have all the best gear, but have never been on a progression kill because I conveniently take the first three months of an expansion off.  Hardcore means going out and killing things.  Big things.  On a regular basis.  It's not an indicator of time spent killing things, or uberosity of gear.  It's about being on the bleeding edge of content, and constantly pushing for more bigger mobs, more better skills, and more phatter lewts.  (Grammar means NOTHING to the truly hardcore, as they live on voice chat, and scoff at the idea of wasting precious GCDs typing things in chat.)

Back in ye olden dayes, when the original Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot were serious business, hardcore was more or less synonymous with raiding.  Face it.  The first EQ raids were zergfests where you got as many people as you could and threw them at dragons.  People were on dialup.  People were playing on computers with less under the hood than my Nintendo DSi.  Making parse meant turning on auto attack and MAYBE getting off a few casts.  Being an effective healer meant having a stopwatch next to your computer synched to whoever was before you in the complete heal chain.  If you wanted that mob, you had to sit and stare at where it spawned until it popped and killed you.  Then you threw up the guild batsignal (hai 2 u, call list managers) and hoped you were first in force.  If you weren't the first in force, you still probably stuck around on the offchance that you could pull while the other raid was doing their CR/drag/rez routine.  In short, raiding meant putting everything else on hold to make progression, spending days at a time building up to a raid and then hours upon hours clearing because raid zones were open-world and all bosses were contested.  Oh, and if you died you had to start at the beginning.

We've come a long way as raiders since then.  While World of Warcraft's all-instance approach to group and raid content was initially met with some hostility and trepidation by raiders (what do you mean, everyone can get a shot at Onyxia?!), instances have become more or less standard, and raiding has become a right rather than a privilege.  It's like purple pixels- designers discovered that epics (or fabled loot in the EQ games, or whatever the convention is for your game) make people happy, so they decided to give EVERYONE epics.  Back in the day, top-quality loot was RARE.  Like, you might see two or three a week if you were beasting all the content available.  (EQ2 Desert of Flames raids, I'm looking at you.  You bastards.)  Now it's not a question of "are you fully epic'd?" because you are.  Of course you are.  You have a pulse and you can avoid irritating people long enough to survive a pickup group.

Killing endgame bosses and having endgame loot doesn't make you hardcore any more.  Raiding multiple nights just means that you show up, not that you're committed to progress and challenges, or that you're willing to put everything on hold until you've found the solution to a bossfight or to lock down a contested spawn.  Modern hardcore is defined more by mindset and habits than content cleared or eliteness of gear.  Also, in this age of legacy guilds, multiple charter guilds, and all that good stuff, tag doesn't automatically confer hardcore status any more.  Sure, you're in a world first guild, but that doesn't make you a world first player.  Yet.

Signs that you are not hardcore:

• If you have not slogged through progression, gritted your teeth through wipe after wipe after wipe, and pored over combat logs and videos to figure out how to beat a boss, you are not hardcore.
• If you have not on more than one occasion extended your raid night well past its end time just to see that boss finally dead, you are not hardcore.
• If you cannot figure out your own strategies for new bosses, you are not hardcore.
• If you cannot figure out your own spec and gearing, you are not hardcore.
• Being hardcore does not require minmaxing.  Being hardcore DOES involve knowing enough, and pushing yourself to understand your game and your class well enough to figure out an approximation of your optimal setup without having some website or forum guru walk you through it in monosyllabic words.  With screenshots.
• If you are not willing to guildkick people, or at least bench them to further your raid progression, you are not hardcore.
• Face it.  Not everyone is a winner, and some people need to be carried.  You cannot always afford to carry them.  It's not any kind of reflection on you or them, it simply is.
• If you are not willing to be benched, put on stand-by, or sidelined to further progression, you are not hardcore.
• Being hardcore requires dedication to the guild and the raid team.  If you are not willing to set aside your goddamned ego so that the raid can progress, you are not hardcore.  You are a twat.
• If you downgrade your weapons because they aren't pretty enough, or your build because it doesn't fit concept, you are not hardcore.
• If you are not killing mobs before the nerfs hit, you are not hardcore.
• If you have to ask "am I hardcore?"  You are not hardcore.

Yes.  Things like call lists are part of being hardcore.  If there is something out there with potential upgrades or challenges, and she has not downed it yet, a hardcore will do everything in her power to make sure she is the next person to bury her sharp pointy things in that whatever it is's skull.  It may seem extreme, but it's the only way some people know how to play.  There's nothing wrong with being hardcore, and there's nothing wrong with NOT being hardcore.  Problems only arise when people misrepresent themselves and their play styles, and start crowing about things they have no right to crow about.  I don't care that you're not 100% dedicated to the game, going over strats in your sleep, and naming your kids after your faction leader.  I don't care that you're on a call list, have had Superbadman on lockdown since the expansion hit, and you can clear every EXTREME ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE OF PWNAGE mode dungeon in one night.  While drunk.  With your cat boxing his cleric on autofollow.  It's a game.  Play however you have the most fun.  Just don't slap me in the face with your playstyle and expect me to ask for another, or beg for your autograph.

And for the record, I am not hardcore.  I just like killing shit.  I tried to be hardcore for a good few years, but that just lost me a lot of friends and made me a LOT of enemies.  (I totally got myself blacklisted for a while after flying off the handle at someone during a contested call and posting a bunch of angry nervous breakdown crap on their forums.)  I have spent a good amount of time rubbing elbows with the hardest of the hardcore, because they're freaking goldmines of information for how to beat the system, make money in your sleep, and weird synergies that often get overlooked that make things like inquisitor tanks and ranger healers work.

Common myths about hardcore gamers:

• Hardcores have no lives
• Actually, most of the hardcores I've known have active social lives outside of the game.  They LARP, they go to concerts, they're on PTA, they play other games, they go to church, they dance and go clubbing, they knit...  Being dedicated to the game doesn't mean never taking time for the arr ell.
• Hardcores are unemployed bastards
• This is true in some cases.  A lot of cases.  Unemployment means total freedom to sit in front of the computer and drool on yourself until the zone boss pops.  Being unemployed makes you an ideal candidate for Keeper of the Call List and Recruiting Officer, because you are ALWAYS. AROUND.
• Hardcores live on cheetos and moutain dew
• Um.  No.  Duh?  That orange goo that gets all over your fingers when you eat cheetos gums up your keyboard, which increases latency between keypress and skill activation.  And with all the caffeine in Mountain Dew, you have to pee a LOT.  AFKs cut into valuable raiding time.  If you have to drink, drink water.  If you have to eat, pick something mess-free like rice cakes or celery or M&Ms.
• Hardcores have no girlfriends
• Hardcores usually game WITH their significant others.  It's the only way to keep a healthy relationship going when technically speaking you're a bigamist and your other spouse is your game.  The spouse is often not also a hardcore, but there are plenty of documented cases of hardcore husband/wife and boyfriend/girlfriend duos.  Be worried if they're your guild leaders.
• Hardcores are better than the rest of us
• Not better, just different.  It's a lifestyle choice, like being goth or driving a Prius.  Choosing a particular lifestyle does not make you better than anyone else.  Not even you, Mitt Romney.  (And no, Mitt Romney is not a hardcore.)
• Hardcores are assholes
• Some hardcores are assholes.  Some are totally amazing people that will bend over backwards to give a girl the hookup.  (Or a guy.  Or a genderless grey alien.)  It's like everything else- you've got your cool people and your cock sandwiches.
• Hardcores don't want you to have things
• If it will shut you up and keep their content from getting nerfed, hardcores will more than likely let you have whatever you want.  And honestly, after a certain point most hardcores will happily carry you through whatever (for a price) if you ask.  Some will even omg do it for free.
• Hardcores are better in bed
• I don't know where this one started, but dedication to progression and sexual performance have nothing in common.  This one goes out to the guys in Agnitionum, because I think I heard it on your vent server.  Being hardcore does not make you a better lover.  Sorry guys.  We are still <3 even though.

Tomorrow: Taking it easy, or Casual doesn't mean you have to be a complete and utter fucking waste of my time.

The branding of the noob

Or, hey guys, I moved my livestream.

The link on the side of the page ---> has been updated, but just in case you favorited or bookmarked me or whatever...  FIXEY!  I had a long heart-to-heart with myself last night while I was babysitting my sister's pocketbook at the club and contemplating turning Gaming In A Dance Club into my gimmick (decided it would be a bad idea after watching some guy get beer dumped all over his phone), and came to the conclusion that for the betterment of all mankind I should standardize my game namey stuff.  Rather than have to deal with renaming characters to match my I Named It After My Cat habit, I have appropriated the name of my bestest guild evers.  Sorry guys.  I now own you.  <3

Now all I need to do is figure out a standard colorscheme and imageset to use, and I'll be something approximating one of the cool kids!  The cool kids have audiences and I don't so much, but we'll get there!  Frodo didn't get to Mordor in a day (though he probably could have, if he'd just asked a friendly eagle for a hookup), so I figure if my Hobbit brothers by other mothers can be patient, I can too.

What I have to work with so far:

Tactical Dysfunction - (n) A disorder characterized by a complete and utter lack of adherence to standard ideas of "the best" and "most efficient" practices.  Generally, the tactically dysfunctional will prefer what is "fun" to what is "uber" and will go out of their way to make the supposedly impossible possible by employing nonstandard methods.  Most commonly, tactical dysfunction is evinced by combining otherwise unworkable class or ability combinations in video games to achieve substantial goals with fewer than the intended participants.  Tactical dysfunction often leads to enhanced performance in standard environments, increased flexibility, greater crisis management skills, and an acute lack of patience with typical MMO players.

Yes, that was my original description for the guild when we changed from Fallen Tide to Tactical Dysfunction.  I think I ended up listing us as a small, tight-knit group of progression-oriented gamers that value fun over optimization.  Oh, and that we preferred the challenge of making things work with what we have, rather than what high profile minmaxers said we should have.  Later it became "face it, we hate you because you suck" or something, but that proved to be the opposite of helpful for recruiting.  Which was good in the long run, because by that point we didn't want to recruit any more.  Too much chaff.

Our colors have usually been red and black, red and grey, or on rare occasions pink, white, and sparkly.  (Yes, sparkly is a color.  If you don't believe me, ask our princess patrol.)  TacDys's heraldry in WoW is a white bull's eye on a red field, so I may run with that.  Clean, simple, effective...  Now I just have to re-download  Gimp and try to not make my pages look like an afflicted two year old revenant did my web design.  This is harder than it sounds.

Streaming this weekend: The Secret World 36hr Marathon, or "Playing and chugging NOS until I throw a temper tantrum at some investigation quest or other, break another headset, and go to bed."  Tomorrow's blog post: Hardcores don't eat cheetos (and here's why).

I'll need these requisition forms back. In triplicate.

Or: Where the hell did I leave off yesterday?

My last post glossed over a whole lot of "things to think about" when you're trying to set up your guild bank, and figure out how to manage your guild's shared resources.  Today, I'm going to try to dig in deeper, and outline my idea of a simple, functional bank management system.

It all starts with guild permissions.


I was just getting to this point in yesterday's post when I realized I might want to possibly consider maybe doing a second part, or taking a few hours to write up a proper guide instead of a blogrant.  Exactly how well you are able to tailor your materials use depends on how your guild's ranks are set up.  If ranks are arbitrary, and awarded based on who has the same favorite color as the guild leader or something, you're going to have to micromanage a lot more outside of ingame bank permissions utilities.  Odds are, you'll have to either open your bank up to everyone, or make them ask you for something every single time they've got a hankerin'.  And let me tell you, that gets old fast.  If that's the case, punch your worthless jerkface guild leader in the wobbly bits and get him to implement a more investment/rewards-oriented hierarchy.

• Recruit - The new guy.  Nobody likes him.  Nobody trusts him.  He's lucky you've even deigned to let him display the guild tag.  He gets nothing without asking, because he's put nothing in.  He has to earn his place in the guild like everyone else.
• Member -  These guys have put in at least enough time that we can trust them not to list stuff from the guild bank on the auction house.  Maybe.  Okay, so I'm paranoid and I check these guys religiously just to be sure.  Your mileage may vary, but these guys are entitled to a slice of the pie.  They get access to your FFA tab at least.  Depending on guild structure and dynamic you may also want to allow them restricted access to crafting materials and cash.
• Raider - Whiny entitled bitches!  It seems like they need a lot, and constantly.  Give them their own tab, and allow them restricted access to money and items from that tab.  Tweak your caps so that they can take out what they need for your raid on any given night.  Most bank utilities limit to stacks or items per day for the whole tab, so if someone needs three flasks, a stack of potions, and a stack of food you'll want to adjust accordingly.
• Guild Crafter - Not everyone uses this rank, and I've never been sure why.  I've always had dedicated crafters in my guilds that were our go-to guys for armor, bags, enchants, or whatever.  When possible, I give these guys their own rank so I can give them unlimited access to FFA, tradeskill materials, and the guild coffers.  The assumption is that your guild crafters are longtime members in good standing with the guild.  They're usually also the guys pumping all of the materials and goodies into the bank, so it's a good idea to keep them happy.  If they're not also raiders, I DO suggest restricting their access to that tab.
• Officers - Officers should have as much access to the bank as you and your guild leader, which is to say unrestricted.  If someone with restricted access needs things from the bank, they should be able to cover for you and go "Sure bro" or "no way, man".  A lot of guilds extend bank access to officer and GM alts, but I've found in the past that stuff like that just invites officers and leaders to abuse the guild bank for their own purposes.  I'd rather have to switch to my main to fetch something for someone than have to deal with whining about how so-and-so is taking everything out of the guild bank.
• That Guy - You know, the one that keeps taking more than he puts in?  There's been a trend in MMOs recently to give guild leaders a godzillion ranks to work with, largely because of how crazy resource management, rewarding loyalty, and contribution tracking can get.  I like to have a That Guy or Time Out Chair rank (I think in Fallen Tide we called it Shortbus or Windowlickers or something) for people who have for whatever reason lost their privileges.  You're not kicking them out of the guild.  You're just letting them know that you don't appreciate the way they've been behaving and they need to take a week to learn their lesson.  If their contributions start to go on the upswing, they can have their bank access back.

Like I said, it's something you'll have to iron out with your guildleader.  Possibly with said iron pressed to his face until he relents and gives you his way.

Once you've got the system up and running, the hardest part is making people understand how things work and getting them to contribute.  The best advice I can give you here is to start folks off slow and gradually give them more, so it feels like you're being generous and opening up to them rather than clenching tight and screwing your eyes shut at them.  If you do have problems with people taking more than they give, be calm, be reasonable, and don't be a douche.  Most people don't realize that they're overstepping when they do, or they're honestly not used to keeping track of how much goes in and comes out.

So!  You have my condolences if you've been appointed bank officer.  For what it's worth, I feel your pain, and I am here for you if you need me.  Except you, Kr0.  Fuck you.  <3

I am the quartermaster! Mistress! THINGY!

It seems like in every guild I fall into, at some point I end up the guild bank officer.  Maybe it's because people trust me with their resources, or they think I'm highly organized, or they assume that because I'm a librarian I can keep track of their crap...  In all fairness, it's probably because it's a seriously shitty but important job, and I spend so much time farming for guild resources I get cranky when I suspect things are being mishandled.  Looking at it that way, the most likely answer is that I've been appointed guild bank officer because people were tired of hearing me bitch about withdrawal limits, deposit quotas, and rank permissions.

Bank officer's a thankless, messy job, like being on loot council, or the DKP officer, or god help you the keeper of the call list.  Most of the time people don't notice you, until they hear that dreaded little word: "No."  Then you become the worst human being on the planet, a loot whore, a killer of kittens, and an eater of babies.  The meltdowns that follow someone being told they no can haz are the stuff of legend.  The trick is to establish early-on that you can and will say no, and then find ways to minimize how much you actually have to deny people what they want.

I've run a few different in/out systems.  In Tactical Dysfunction, the going rule is basically "if it's there, it's up for grabs."  We're a small guild, we all farm obsessively, and we've been playing together so long that we know the folks we're hanging with aren't greedy twatwaffles.  In Reckless Embrace it's more amorphous, though we're approaching that small, tight dynamic at least in our raiding core.  In general, though, I look at how much a person is contributing, how often they make requests, the kinds of things they ask for...  And yes, I stalk my guildmates on the auction house.  Daily.  This isn't always a problem, but when you've got a lot of blanket recruiting, blind inviting, or just random people wanting to join you it's always a good habit to maintain- at least until you know you can trust that person not to be a douche.

The wonkiest system I've ever run was when Rift first came out, because there was no guild bank utility at all.  I had a MASSIVE google docs spreadsheet that I embedded right on our guild website (with only officers flagged with edit privileges) to track deposits, withdrawals, inventory... all that good stuff.  Behind the scenes it was a royal clusterfuck, because bank and inventory were so limited initially over there.  We had a network of officer bank alts, circulating the guild inventory by mail.  Potions and pot ingredients were stored with our consumable officer's alt, I had tailoring materials and coin, someone else had metals and wood...  All of THAT was tracked on a second googledocs spreadsheet, which we kept hidden from the masses.  It was clunky as hell, but it worked.  As long as someone remembered to update the spreadsheet each time there was a transaction.

It took a lot of getting used to.

Anyway, when I'm setting up my bank management systems (assuming I'm not walking into someone else's shitstain when I get promoted) I usually look at the following:

• How big is the guild?  Simple, important first question.  If you've got a small guild, and everyone knows everyone else, odds are you don't have to put a lot of time into tracking ins and outs.  The larger the guild, the more moving parts you've got to track, and the more time it will take.  Also, larger guilds are more likely to have random riffraff that are just there to try to take advantage.  You get more random people with no attachment to the guild, and those guys are a bank officer's worst nightmare.
• How active is the guild?  If you've only got two or three people on outside of raid nights, you're going to have to be more heavy-handed with your restrictions on the guild bank.  Basically, if your demand exceeds your supply, there will be problems.  And as much as your dedicated core say they're cool with supplying the guild, keeping those people active and happy means going "Yeah, I appreciate that, but people need to not abuse your awesomeness."  
• How big is your bank?  What you hold onto and how much of it you keep around is going to depend heavily on how big your bank is.  If you only have a hundred slots, you can't keep a stack of every crafting material for every tradeskill at every level.  It's not feasible.  Once you know how much space you have to work with, you can move on to prioritizing your stockpile.
• What do we NEED?  The hardest question in the lot.  If you're raiding, you need consumables.  How much do you need per week?  How important is it to have extras available?  If you're in a large guild, you might have a raid leader, or a consumables officer to help you with this.  If the whole mess has been dumped in your lap by your teary-eyed guild leader who's begging you to fix things...  You're probably on your own.  My usual rule of thumb is "a pair, a spare, and one to wear."  That is to say: what I need for tonight's raid, what I need for the next raid, and mats enough to make more if something comes up.  In WoW, this equated to an entire bank tab full of herbs, and ten of each flask/stat potion (until we got the cauldrons).  Managing our feasts was easier, because it takes fewer raws.  Consider things like rare raid drops, tradeable gear, and quality of life items.
• How much money do we need?  Guild repairs, guild hall rent, filling in the gaps on consumables, subsidizing guild crafter costs...  It all adds up.  The more services your guild wants to provide for its members, the more money they need to cough up.  In some games, you can collect a tax automatically every time a guild member loots a body.  In other games, you're reliant on donations, or on "guild runs" where all drops go to the guild bank and the guild merchant.  Each method is going to require different kinds of tracking, but it's important to make it clear to members that if the money's not there, the guild can't do what they want it to do.
• What to do with gear?  Gear drops are always problematic.  From a simple space-saving standpoint, they don't stack, so every item you hold onto is anywhere from 5-1000 things you can't keep set by instead.  Also, these pieces are often the most valuable things in your bank.  It's usually a good idea to discuss with your fellow officers early-on whether the guild will be holding onto any loot at all, or selling them to other players for guild money.  Most of my banks have had at least half a tab dedicated to current-tier, high-end tradeable weapons and armor.  
• How do I handle permissions?  Most guild bank systems set permissions by tab and member rank.  When you're getting your bank sorted and your inventory managed you'll want to at least have a rough idea of what things you want to make easily accessible and which you want to restrict more.  Until you've got your policies ironed out with your GM/Officers' Council, it's a good idea to be the tyrannical overmistress of the bank.  Because most game bank setups are tied into rank, a nice long sitdown with your GM is unfortunately unavoidable.

Okay!  So I've covered my usual, dithery starting points for working out the bank.  Tomorrow I'll go into the gory details, including what your guild leader needs to hook you up with, how to select the best cattle prod for your raiders, and how not to be a douchebag.

Live from Solomon Island!

And Azeroth, and occasionally from...whatever the world is called in the Oblivion games.  Thingy.  Live from a whole bunch of places that don't exist outside my glowy thigh-mounted recreation device (god that sounds dirty): The Kleptokitty 100% Tactically Dysfunctional Livestream of Randomness and Ladylike Outgassings!

I caved.  I started streaming.  As soon as I figure out how, I'll probably embed the stream right here on the blog so that one poor, lost person from Germany who keeps popping in here can be all "OMG.  She's not streaming anything most of the day!"  I've yet to really flesh out what sort of a broadcast I want to run.  So far it's mostly been a stalker feed of whatever I happen to be doing at the time, when I decide I want to make it possible for people to stalk me.  The most interesting parts are probably while I'm streaming The Secret World, which usually happens from about midnight to two or three Eastern.  Screaming "NO NO GET BACK HERE!" and whining about the Crimson Theater nerf... True newbie experience.

Eventually I'll get a schedule put together for broadcasts.  Wednesday nights from 9-12 are pretty much always going to be WoW raids, until I either quit the game or our raid night changes.  Once Mists of Pandaria hits there'll be an almost 24/7 non-stop stream of me powergrinding to 90 and gearing out.  I'll also eventually standardize my graphics and naming across the stream, Steam, and the blog so I can better "brand" myself.

So...Random dude from Germany!  If you happen to have any suggestions for themes and layouts I might want to try...give me a comment, yo.

Shameless plug for my WoW guild!

Reckless Embrace

are now recruiting ALL CLASSES

for ten man raiding

in Mists of Pandaria and beyond

Who we are:
    Reckless Embrace was formed in spring 2012 to collect the remnants of multiple guilds across several servers.  Our goal is to create a fun, relaxed, but progression-driven environment where dedicated, skilled adults can come together to push the most challenging content the game has to offer.  We are grownups with school, careers, and families outside the game that want to make the most of our time.  We are a Horde guild based on [US]Thrall.

What we do:
    We kill dragons!  And giants.  And elementals.  And basically anything that’s not flagged as unattackable, on the off-chance that it will drop something we can use to kill more things.  Our primary focus is PvE, in particular raiding, and amassing large piles of purple pixels.  And orange pixels.  All the pixels, ideally.  This isn’t to say we require all members raid hardcore, or raid at all.  We always welcome social members to hang out, join us in dungeons and transmog runs, and being generally fabulous.  Our current raid night is Wednesday, with an extra night or two added to the calendar each week for achievement and transmog runs.

How we do it:
    The sharp end goes into the bad mans.  Just sayin’.
    Seriously though, we strive to maintain a relaxed and fun raiding environment.  We keep it light, and prefer figuring out WHY things are going wrong to slinging blame and calling people out.  We require all raiders to download and use Ventrilo, at least during raids.  Attendance is important to us, and we expect at the very least 80% attendance during progression pushes.  Loot is handled primarily by an officers’ council, and awarded to whoever in the raid would get the biggest upgrade from the drop.  Raiding every week, eventually we will see everything more than a few times, and we expect our raiders to understand that sometimes the raid benefits more from someone else getting geared.

Interested?
    Contact Lilcookies, Roxena, or Zartash for more information about the guild, our policies, or if you’re interested in joining us.  We welcome potential recruits, especially those interested in joining our raiding core, to join us for trial runs in heroic dungeons or raids.  
 
Disclaimer!
    We’re grownups, with grownup attitudes, humor, and vocabularies.  Profanity, random acts of drunkenness, and impromptu explicit comedy routines happen both in vent and in guildchat.  Children and those with delicate sensibilities will likely not find Reckless Embrace a good fit.  Do not drink and text.  Consume Reckless Embrace responsibly.

Ten Things I Hate About Your Guild

Totally an original post, right?  Everyone loves lists, and I'm sure plenty of people have already written this list.  If I stop myself every time one of my totally awesome ideas has already been done though, I'll never do anything.  This is the internet, and nothing anyone does is original.  Ever.  Even when it is.  (Figure that one out.)

So!  I have been in a lot of guilds in my day, and while I do not consider myself a serial guild hopper, my raiding resume says otherwise.  These are the top ten things I've hated about pretty much every guild I've ever been in*.


*that I didn't run myself

10. You're cliquey - We are a friendly, helpful guild that loves to do quests and raids as a group!  As long as you're already in our established circle of friends.  If not, good luck have fun getting in on a run.  We might loop you in if someone gets sick, is going through a messy break-up, or gets hacked.  Unless you're a tank.  Are you a tank?  Please tank for us until we no longer need you!

9. You're never around - We're seeking active, dedicated members!  Especially ones that don't mind that there are basically only ever two people online, and you're one of them.  We have better, more important things to do than contribute to our guild bank, guild xp, achievements, or progression.  Like alt guilds, and Pinterest.

8. You're lazy - We maintain a well-stocked guild bank that's accessible to all members!  Just keep in mind that not a damn person in this guild replaces what they take, so odds are if you need it, it won't be there.  Unless you put it there yourself.  And even if you do, someone will probably take it before you can manage to switch to your alt and pull it out again.

7. You're the opposite of helpful - Our members are veteran players, and always happy to answer questions and help new recruits.  Just don't expect anything more than a "read the forums" or "go to this guide site" from them.  Their time is important, and they've already put in your dues.  Shut up and read the guide.  If you're still having problems, find a different guide.  Any issues after that are just because you're a failure as a human being, and not worth the investment it would take to make you a productive member of society.  Keep asking questions, and we'll either ninja-ignore you or guild kick you.  On the rare occasions that we do offer help- it's completely and utterly fucking wrong, because ->

6. You're noobs - We expect the absolute best from our members, and hold our raiders to a high standard. Because let's face it; we need someone with two brain cells that can carry us.  We stand in fire, we fail to click buttons, we don't move in combat, and under no circumstances do we ever use cooldowns or consumables.  If there aren't YouTube videos, monosyllabic instructions, and crayon diagrams of the fight, we can't even figure out which end of our weapons to point at the mobs.

5. You're trolls - Members are expected to always represent the guild in a positive light, and be respectful in guild chat as well as public channels.  Except, you know, on days ending in -y, when political or religious discussions crop up, and when loot is involved.  Then please, agitate, agitate, agitate.  Because it's all in good fun, right?  People only ask you to stop because they want you to keep going.

4. Your guild leader's a twat - He's a guild leader, so he's important, right?  He is your daddy, your husband, your generalissimo, your president, and your benevolent dictator.  In all honesty, he sees himself as your owner, and the whole guild is just here to gear his toons and keep their tradeskills fed.  He takes things from the guild bank at will, never replaces them, and pockets the proceeds from everything he crafts or loots from guild materials/on guild time.  And it's okay, because he's the guild leader.  When he opens his mouth, all the world stops to listen.  Oh, and he never hesitates to remind you who exactly is in charge.

3. You wouldn't know hardcore if it bit you in the ass- Raiding twice a week is not hardcore, no matter how serious you think you are.  Your raid leader screaming like he's warming up for a metalcore concert?  Does not make you hardcore.  A DKP system?  Also does not make you hardcore.  If the debuffs have hit, and you're not at least partway into progression?  You are not hardcore.  And at this point, I think I need to just write another list for things that are not hardcore, because this could go on for a while.

2. You are about as casual as a fucking tuxedo- If you expect me to be on more than six hours a day, five days out of the week, you are not a casual guild.  If you are hounding me constantly about whether I've completed this achievement or that, or what my item level is, or how much progress I've made towards my weekly contributed XP goal, or how close I am to capping out my tradeskills...  you are the opposite of laid-back.  Nagging is not stress free.  It's not attractive in a woman, and it's sure as shit not attractive in a guild.  Also, stop texting me, motherfuckers.

1. You're so sensitive! - No really.  It's not personal.  Seriously, guys.  I say things because I want to help fix them, not because I think you're all a bunch of t-  Okay.  I DO think you're all a bunch of twats, but the reason I'm pointing it out is that I want to help.  See the difference?  I'm not trying to be offensive here, I'm just stating a fact.  Believe it or not, I'm here to get something done, just like you.  It's in my best interests to help you progress as much as I'd like for you to help me progress.  It's a give and take.  Symbio-  No, you know what?  Fuck you.  You're never around, you don't fucking do anything when you are around, and god forbid someone suggests you like...actually play smart for a change.  Or take responsibility for your mistakes.    I'm done.  Good fucking luck with your "hardcore progression" dumbass.  Have you EVER raided without your hand being held or a spoon in your mouth?  I hope you get syphilis.

Livestream, bling bling?

So I heard you like livestreaming.  I mean, everyone else does, right?  It's a pretty safe ice breaker these days, when you're interviewing with a potential guild, or you meet someone in a pickup or whatever.  My guild leader in Reckless Embrace streamed through most of the Mists of Pandaria beta (and I REFUSE to link to his stream, because his li'l man ego doesn't need to get any bigger- HI ZILENT!), my cabal leader in TSW is talking about streaming, I found out not too long ago that I popped up in a couple of PvP streams in other games...

Clearly this means there is a band wagon, and I am not on it, but I should be.  I crave the internet fame!  Problem is...  If everyone and their brother is streaming now, who's actually WATCHING the streams?  And how do you court those precious few nobodies that prefers to watch rather than broadcast?  We'll ignore for a moment the curious and confusing recursive stream, where a guy is playing a game, watching a stream, and streaming all at the same time.  What will make my stream stand out from the pack, and attract viewers?

I need a gimmick.  Unfortunately, it seems like all the good ones are already taken.  Plenty of girls stream.  It's not the old days where people actually went "Oh my god, a girl on the internet, and she's playing games!"  Roleplayers stream.  Apparently, it's like watching reality TV.  Farmers stream.  People talk about cooking, politics, literature, music.  They take requests from their viewers and do the whole...DJ thing.  Fashionistas talk transmog/appearance gear, housing decorators talk feng shui...

Identity!  Branding!  Definition!  Who am I and what is my place in the vlogosphere?  That whole "naked newbie" thing didn't work out.  I thought about billing myself as a scrubtacular scrubanzee or something.  (Say it out loud.  It's a lot like chimpanzee.)

Eh.  I'm always saying my various guilds need to have their own reality series.  Maybe THAT can be the defining characteristic of my stream.  Watch as the amazing Roxina struggles to balance her progression guild in WoW, her relentlessly hardcore friends in TSW, her roleplaying habit, that pesky job thing, and her utter failures at maintaining adult relationships!  The drama!  The frustration!  The complete and total frigging random!  And also comic books.

It'll come to me.  Eventually.  Maybe.  Or it won't, and I'll just throw my usual stream of consciousness charm at it.

OMG FIRST!

Because, you know...being the first poster matters so far on your own blog, right?  It's just, I've never been able to do a legitimate omg first post.  I'm always at least second or third, so...

OMG!  SO TOTALLY FIRST!  ^_^

Now that THAT is out of the way...

I think my daily gaming to-do list has finally exceeded my daily RL to-do list.  My day off schedule's looking something like:

1. Wake up - hardest part of the day - appx 11:55 AM so I can honestly say I wasn't sleeping until noon
2. Log into WoW, do dailies, destroy economy on auction house: 45min-1hr
3. Find something worth watching on TV while doing dailies, settle on whatever's on Cartoon Network: 10min
4. AFK Break - 10 min
1. Brief huddle with roommate regarding State of the Fridge
2. Bathroom break
3. Crunches
4. Sing My United States of Whatever when asked about meals for the day
5.  Sort laundry.  In my head.  While waiting for dungeon pops.  Decide I can go another week before doing it.
6. Get ass off couch, get dressed, follow through on State of the Fridge huddle.  2-3hrs
1.  Check facebook/text messages at all red lights for guild alerts and Very Important Cat Pictures
2. Try to remember to take earbuds out before getting in the driver's seat
3. Avoid GameStop at all costs.
4. Cheat, buy happy meal, play shamelessly with toy.  Unless it sucks, the bitch about it and find a trash can
7. Come home, do more crunches, log into The Secret World.  Be sure to turn ringer on phone off.  
1. Level!
2. Quest!
3. Kill things!
4. Whine on vent about synergies!
5. Finish off deck, then flesh out actual build
6. Decide if tanking or healing
7. Look for UI addons
8. AFK break!  Rinse, repeat
9. Check texts, sigh, go be responsible officer in WoW. 
1. Guild challenge
2. Transmog run
3. Put time into recruiting
10. Pack lunch for work
11. Back to TSW!
12. Try to be in bed before four

Yeah...

Seriously, though.  I don't know how I'm going to juggle both The Secret World and being a proper officer in WoW.  It would be one thing if I were on my day off schedule every day, but I'm not a trust fund baby.  Eventually I'm going to have to decide which game I want to focus on.  Somehow I'm going to end up alienating one group of asshole friends or the other.  -.-  Picking between them sucks.

TL;DR: WOO!  FIRST POST!  OF RANDOM SHIT!