In the cycle of expansions and patches, we are reaching the time when a lot of people feel "burned out" on World of Warcraft.  People have just stopped logging on and raiding guilds are opening up recruitment to re-fill their ranks (Lboc.wowstead.com BTW).  Fortunately, Blizzard is fully aware of this and has recently been building some hype by releasing details about class changes for the past week to get people excited about the upcoming expansion. 
For the uninitiated, classes in World of Warcraft are the types of characters you can play.  Warlocks, druids, mages, warriors and rogues are all examples of class types.  Blizzard is releasing details about new spells to get the player base excited about re-learning to play their class.

However, I want to mention something that will seem like jibberish to people who do not play, but bear with me.

If your goal is to build hype for the game, don't cut down a class of healer by giving us no new spells!  I know that it is petty, but I want a pretty new spell that will do something.  Priests are getting Life Grip, Shammies are getting an AoE heal, and Pallies are probably going to get Radiance Aura (I can't prove it, I just have a hunch).  I understand the argument that "Druids have a plethora of heals that we don't use, so why make new ones?"  But still, If I am faced with an entire expansion with my only new prospect being flowers sprouting under people I heal? Kill me now, I am rezzing my priest.

Secondly,  Tree of Life on cooldown is upsetting me.  I Don't especially like the Tauren model, but I do like the tree model.  I definitely like the idea of a cooldown that I can actually get excited about (Looking at you Nature's Swiftness)

Overall, I am glad blizzard is making it a game of resource management instead of Whack-a-mole. However, if you are building hype, give druids something to play with so we can get just as excited.  And we know that the ToL cooldown is merely a cosmetic change for something that could be fun, but can't you make us turn into a bad-ass tree for 30 seconds?  Like a palm tree.

hile Blizzard has many thousands of dollars to spend on advertising and pr, players of the game engage in pr-like activites every day without spending any money (usually). Today, I will cover how players practice advertising and pr in game, and tips on how not to suck at it.

Unlike the real world, the channels of communication are very restricted. The majority of communication on a mass scale is performed by means of a city-only channel called “trade chat” or “/2”.

As you can tell, it is cluttered at the best of times.  This activity is most likely related to advertising; however there are no pictures and a high rate of non-response.  Most often the people who are looking for a guild will not even read trade chat and you can expect one response for every 100 times you spam your message.

A more succesful means of advertising your guild for recruitment is a third party site such as wowprogress.com.  For players wanting to experience end-game raiding, they can easily see which guilds on their server have progressed and exactly how far they have progressed.  For example, my server of Akama shows the top 20 guilds on the first page.  You want to be in the top 20 guilds because most people never click more than they have to.  Once you click on my guild, we have provided more information on what we are about, how to contact us and how to apply to our guild.

Speaking of ways to contact us, a good guild web site is just as important as a good company web site.  If a web site looks terrible, you look terrible. This is the first impression anyone will have of you or your guild/ company. Do not make them squint and desperately search for the back button.




Blizzard recently announced Blizzcon, their large yearly event.  While it would be nice to be able to stage a large event like Blizzard, most of the players are happily insconced inside the game.  The solution by a few guilds is to hold events in-game.  PETA (yes, THAT PETA) even held an event in game to garner publicity in real life (though it didn't go as planned). Personally, my guild planned a night where we gave out raiding flasks (an item that increases your effectiveness in raids for those who do not play). If a player could recall a time they had an enjoyable interaction with one of our members.  However, if you are trying to establish a presence in the raiding community, plan your events before they are already inside the instances and therefore, unreachable.