Well Thursday night we decided it was in everyone’s best interest to disband the guild WORK. While it was limping along, we could only get people to show up when they knew we were running 25-man Naxx. A large majority of them had no interest in putting in the time or effort to do 3 Drake OS or even 25-man Malygos.
Personally the final straw was having to police one of our Death Knights for the lack of a better term. While I got two sides of the story, the basic jist of it was he was invited to tank 10-man Naxxramas. After a number of wipes on Heigan (the actual number and actual cause of the wipes varies between tales) the raid attempted to replace him, at which point he decided to “squat” the instance, preventing the raid from bringing in a 10th person.
The raid blamed him for tanking to close to the stage every time, which he admitted happened once or twice, and he blames the raid for being unable to dance. In a lot of scenarios I wold take the word of my guildie. But I won’t pretend I knew this person for more than 5 minutes. And his general attitude when confronted about it didn’t sit well. All I know is that instance squatting is a pretty big jerk move that is rarely justified.
After much coaxing I got him to leave the instance so the raid could finish their run. I won’t ever know who was truly right in that situation. But I do know that it was just another person completely content crapping on their guild name for their personal vendetta.
So on to a new guild hunt. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Second on the list is the topic of advertising. QQ has been ad-free since the creation. At the beginning everything was free so it was no biggie. Moving to self-hosted WordPress was great and I am really enjoying the platform but web hosting costs. Not a lot, but you know, some. I’ve been approached multiple times from a couple sites/companies interested in advertising here. However none of them were products/services that I would support.
Some were gold selling sites I ignored without a second thought, others were guide services or gold-making systems. And while some of them are very well put together and I applaud the time put into them, advertising for them when I would never use them myself seems silly. Let’s face it. WoW probably has no secret that the community hasn’t discovered. Well except for that dang Ice Stone.
Every gathering node, quest item, loot location, etc. All discovered, data-mined, etc. And all available for free online one place or another. So all those guides promising to make you a million gold, come on, we all know the gold cap for one character is 214,748 Gold 2 Silver and 89 Copper. Yeeesh. ;)
I remember an interview with Penny-Arcade where they said they got to the point that they were able to turn down ads and would only run ads to games or services that they would support or play. It let them keep a level of quality on their site. And while I may not be rolling around in the Benzes (Benzii?) like they do, it doesn’t mean I can’t hold my site to the same standard.
So whatever I decide to do, you can be sure that I won’t be plastering them all over the site. Maybe one in the sidebar and one in the footer. And I will always publish a full RSS feed. No worries about having to click through to the site to read a full article.
Well that’s my ramblings for Friday. Have a great weekend and a great Valentine’s Day or Single’s Awareness Day, whatever particular version you choose to celebrate. Thoughts, comments, etc. Post ‘em!
I think you should put ads on the site. This is something that you probably wouldn’t hear, but writing a blog takes a lot time and, in your situation now, money to host it. The articles you have written have been useful and had quite a bit of leg work put into them. This is something that most blogs don’t have or do when writing posts. From your previous site layouts and the current design, I think the ads would be minimal and not obstructive. I am all for the ads if it allows you to continue posting and contributing to the wow community.
My guild “The Foot Clan” of Anvilmar is seeking one exceptional ranged DPS if server transfers are a possibility. :)
I always figured ads are kind of a personal choice for the blogger. As for me, I’ve been approached by various people as well and I’ve always turned them down; I will never have ads on my site regardless of how broke I am (and I am broke! =P) but that is a very personal choice for me. It goes hand-in-hand with my Linux-geekness and my Creative Commons that lets people take whatever the heck they want from my site. Ads would kind of go against that spirit for me.
However, I don’t look down on people for making that choice to put ads on their site. You do what you have to do, you know? It’s a case-by-case and personal thing. Besides, I imagine most people have Firefox + Adblock anyway ;P
Pike’s last blog post..I Swear I Am Not Scrooge
If your up for seeing the light side of WoW and re-rolling alliance I got a few class needs atm bud, sadly none are hunters :(
@Tyrae I think it’s safe to say my Alliance days are done.Aratar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Deathwing&n=Aratar) will probably stay geared like that forever. Plus he is dirt poor!
“While it was limping along, we could only get people to show up when they knew we we’re running 25-man Naxx. A large majority of them had no interest in putting in the time or effort to do 3 Drake OS or even 25-man Malygos.”
That reads almost exactly the same as the guild I gm. We been together for 3 years but can’t recruit to save ourselves since LK. We mostly clear naxx with 20 people max, we’ve got top raiders in what does show up but can not field a 25 lineup ever. It’s hard to believe we used to run 40 mans and now barely do 20 raiders on a good day. Lately i’ve been feeling that disbanding might be our best options to.
Don’t even ask me about the few players we do manage to recruit! *shudder*
Sorry about the guild brother, I’ve been there a few times. It’s not as fast paced by any means or as a large but if you need a home I could use a ranged DPS of your quality in The Wall (Horde side of course)
As for the ads I really applaud you. I would KILL to not have the advertising on my site that I do but it’s pretty much out of my hands as I’m partnered with somebody else to keep the site running (and food on the table for my kids, thanks Bush economy…)
Good luck with the guild hunt and my offer pretty much stands indefinitely to come join the Spooncraft crew :)
Spooner’s last blog post..Official Dual-Spec Q/A With Ghostcrawler
Drot, as I said in tells, let me know if there is anything I can do to help with the guild location process. I can put in a good word at Angry if we’re not looking for a hunter or if Faster wants to go a different direction. i GOT YO BACK!
Sorry guys, but if Drotara does happen to xfer, it will be to Bloodhoof-US to play with yours truly.
megan’s last blog post..Listen Up, Scrubs
sry to here bout your guild, kinda in the same development right now…guild seem to fade away :/
oh i hate to search for a new guild, gl on that matter to find a good guild with mannered people.
good thing that u dont support gold selling and stuff
keep it up
Hey sorry bout your guild bud!
If putting ads up is what you need to do for the cash im for it as long as you keep blogging its all good :)
It’s actually Benz’. While we prefer to call them by the first name Mercedes’.
Glad to help out. Raufe
It’s great that he finally left the raid so the group could continue.
Sorry to hear about the guild.
I have a ten websites some of them have advertisements (business and a few personal websites.) They are mainly from monthly advertisers. I won’t promote a product that I don’t personally recommend. Gaming Diva is my newest website, a little under a year old. Although Gaming Diva has been approached by advertisers but I have turned them down. I have nor my readers would have an interest in their products.
Gaming Diva’s last blog post..Adventures of a Noob raiding priest: No time for Naxx
Concerning adds, do what you have to do, and don’t let anyone knock it. If somone really gets cruddy about it, set up a pay pal acct, and tell them they can donate to get rid of an advert :)
And sorry about your guild dude. Good luck finding some people that actually enjoy the game!
sry to hear about the guild. that DK sounds a bit childish doing in a cream puff like that.
Eresin’s last blog post..I May Be A Fool But I’m Back!
I wouldn’t mind seeing ads here, no big deal.
You don’t even have to restrict your choices to WoW. It could be anything you personally like.
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this website. I really hope to see the same high-grade blog posts from you in the future as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has motivated me to get my very own website now ;)