Category Archives: communication

Officers’ Quarters: Private channels

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press.

We've all been there: Someone makes a dumb mistake in a raid -- let's call that person Murbu -- and another player says, "Everyone /join ihatemurbu." A few people do exactly that, a few jokes are exchanged, Murbu shows up in the channel to joke around, too, and then people unjoin or simply forget that channel exists. Private channels like that can be fun for some good-natured ribbing. Other private channels can help two allied guilds communicate or allow a group of friends to stay in touch when they splinter off to different guilds. However, private channels can also have a more sinister purpose. This week, one guild leader is concerned about a channel some of his members are using.

Hello Scott,

I'd like to think I'm relatively new to leading a guild, but as my guild has recently passed our one-year anniversary I'm beginning to question that logic. Despite this, I have an issue that completely stumps me and the only reason I can think of why is inexperience. My question is, when does venting your frustration about issues cross the line from harmless venting to serious problems?

Several months back shortly after the holiday break it came to my attention that a few of the more veteran members of the guild were using a private channel to discuss primarily their dissatisfaction with how I ran things. At the time I also led a majority of our raids, and one major point of contention for the group was the way that I lead the raids and their frustration at our overall progression. This might not have been a huge issue, but several of the people who talked about me in the channel were people I considered close friends, people I've known for years throughout many different guilds.

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Officers' Quarters: Private channels originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 24 May 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breakfast Topic: Push to talk

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Ventrilo. WoW's second communication backbone has been and can be the source of comedy, drama and everything in between. From loot freakouts and epic guild removals to Onyxia wipes and pranks-a-plenty, Ventrilo is ubiquitous with the massively multiplayer genre and experience. We all have our legendary stories, but what does Ventrilo mean to the games we play? In fact, what role does communication play in our virtual worlds?

The first communication backbone of World of Warcraft is the chat itself. The fully realized interaction we have with the people inhabiting the world with us boils down to what appears inside that chat box. Communication with chat is limited, however, by typing speed, range of communication, lack of vocal inflection, tone, and volume. Key components of human communication are missing from the very basic communication apparatus we use to interact in WoW.

Communication has a long and varied history in the MMO genre. Before Ventrilo and Teamspeak, my friends and I had a complex system of phone conference calls to make communication in Ultima Online easier. Before Paypal and other cash services, people would send checks, money orders and cash to other countries to purchase items in MUDs, the proto-MMO. These forms of communication paved the way for the pieces of software we take for granted today.

Humans are social creatures. Ventrilo was an inevitability. But there has to be more, something that will become as ubiquitous as voice. So here's the question -- where is communication in games headed? What is the next or new Ventrilo?

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Breakfast Topic: Push to talk originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 23 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: Essential WoW terminology in other languages

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

Együtt szaladjunk vissza a temetötöl hogy ne vesszünk el. In the sprawling, global environment that is the World of Warcraft today, there's really no telling who you'll end up grouped with. Even on a white-bread American realm, I've met players whose primary language was not English. Gamers are everywhere now! In the spirit of international cooperation, WoW Rookie has crowdsourced a list of basic WoW terminology for PUGging. The next time you run into a situation where you need to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your language, reach for our translations in the Newbie Guide, linked under Guides in the drop-down menu at the top of the site.

Kudos to the hundreds of readers who responded to our call for translations. Merci, gracias, tack, hvala! Let's crowdsource corrections, too -- if you spot anything incorrect, drop me a line at lisa (at) wow (dot) com. Oh, and "Együtt szaladjunk vissza a temetötöl hogy ne vesszünk el?" That's "Let's run back from the graveyard together so we don't get lost" ... in Hungarian.

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WoW Rookie: Essential WoW terminology in other languages originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: What’s “move out of the fire” in your language?

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

If you use the Dungeon Finder with any regularity, you're likely to eventually find yourself grouped with a player who speaks a different language. World of Warcraft is localized (translated) to nearly a dozen different languages, including two versions of English (USA and EU), French, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean and two versions of Chinese. While U.S. and Oceanic players can generally count on groupmates to speak English, things can be quite different elsewhere in the world. Individual Latin American and EU realms tend to attract groups of players from particular areas -- Brazilians on one server, Hungarians gathered on another, Italians dominating still another.

Many players welcome the language barrier as an opportunity to polish their language skills. Still, how do you coordinate your way through a tricky pull with someone who doesn't speak a word of your language?

Let's crowdsource this issue. We've compiled a list of common terms you might use in a PUG. We'd like you to list your translations in the comments, if you are fluent in another language. We're not going to cover Russian, Korean or Chinese, since those players generally do not cross paths with Western players. Please keep your suggestions brief; simplicity trumps elegance. If you'd like to see phrases we didn't include, feel free to suggest them, but keep in mind we're sticking with the basics. We'll compile the list and create a starter guide in next week's Rookie column.

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WoW Rookie: What's "move out of the fire" in your language? originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spiritual Guidance: Ghostcrawler on priests

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Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

There was a great priest thread on the official World of Warcraft healing forums late last week. The thread caps at 30 pages, then spills into another thread for further discussion. The original post is from a priest who also heals as a druid, and is currently unhappy with the state of priests in Icecrown Citadel. The poster asks for in-depth feedback from other priests with healing alts who are happy with the priest class in ICC.

The thread remains on topic and doesn't get too trolly before Ghostcrawler steps in on page 7 and gives a simple breakdown of how he plays priest. He remains in the thread for quite some time and provides readers with a good insight on how he and Blizzard feel about various aspects of priests at this time. If you missed this thread, I will be summarizing the highlights of what Ghostcrawler said and providing some of my own thoughts and analysis.

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Spiritual Guidance: Ghostcrawler on priests originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More options for party communication

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Our buddy Rufus from the WoW LJ brings word of a sneaky change in the recent patch: raid warnings (those warnings that pop up in the middle of your screen, created by typing "/rw" while leading a raid) no longer work in parties. Apparently you have to be in a raid to actually toss off a warning. Of course, that could have happened before this patch, but at any rate, it's in the game now. No more /rw in party chat.

Not only is it a bummer because some people used to use it constantly to keep party members in line, but this also means that there's one less means of communication between all of these random parties forming out there on the realms. Sure, in a perfect world, everyone would know the fights and chat would be enough to make sure everyone was on the same page (or depending of your vision of a perfect world, everyone actually uses the in-game voice chat -- a quick survey of our staff here presumes that it works in cross-realm PuGs, but given that I've never actually seen it used on the live realms by anyone, who knows?), but we're hardly running instances in a perfect world. Sometimes chat is not the best way to get a complicated boss fight organized and ready.

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More options for party communication originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ready Check: Communication for raid leaders

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Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

One of the most difficult tasks any raid leader is going to face will be one of communication. Communication is a complex, ugly issue. It can be one of your strongest assets, but it can equally be your biggest downfall. This is because communication operates on two levels.

First, there's the obvious data-based communication. Things like "The next boss is named Anub'arak" are data-based. It's fact, unassailable, and fairly meaningful. Almost everyone's going to agree with quantifiable information. You're not going to round the corner of the instance, and find something that's not Anub'arak.

Second, however, is "shadow" communication. This is a level of communication that can be a great deal more complicated. In the absence of quantifiable information, the recipient will "read into" your words a whole series of meanings and concepts that you may not have intended. For example, "This next boss is Anub'arak, so you should get ready" can be interpreted as "Get ready because we're going right now" or "get ready by reading up on the boss strategies." Now, that's a fairly hyperbolized example, but it's a true one none-the-less. We've all had experience with "I didn't mean it like that" in our lives.

One of the oldest business cliches is that "Workers don't leave companies, they leave supervisors." While a raid leader isn't a supervisor in the same way as a business manager, some of the viable tips from the corporate world can still apply to raiding life. Let's take a look after the jump at some simple tips to enhance communication.

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Ready Check: Communication for raid leaders originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Officers’ Quarters: From the mail bag

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Hello, fellow officers! This week I'm going to try something a little bit different than usual. I tend to focus on one topic that requires a detailed analysis. However, I do receive many more questions that I never feature in the column because they have a more straightforward solution (or, at least, because I believe they have a straightforward solution). So I would write a private reply to the e-mail but never showcase the question here.

I've decided to try an experiment this week and feature several of these e-mails with shorter answers. Even though they may not be the most complex situations, I think the answers will be helpful to other officers. Let me know what you think! Here's the first question.

Too Many Cooks

I was wondering if you could do an article on having too many cooks in the kitchen during raids.

My guild is brand new, 3-4 weeks old, and we run Ulduar 10 and ToC 10 as well as Naxx 25 and Naxx 10 for the new 80s. As of right now, I am my guild's GM as well as raid leader. I have plans in the future to add an official "Raid Leader" to create events and lead some raids although I plan on still leading a few because I really enjoy it.

Right now though, I have a few natural born leaders that attend my raids and it causes some problems.

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Officers' Quarters: From the mail bag originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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