WoW-Pro Favorites

Until WoW-Pro has something like this, I'll maintain a list here for myself (and for anyone interested)

My Contribs:

• Jiyambi's Guide to Leatherworking
• Jiyambi's Guide to a Successful Guild
• Loot Distribution Systems
• Loot System Example: Complex Auction
• Jiyambi's Guide to Tree Healing (forthcoming)

WoW-Pro Wish List

As you may know, I am an active user and contributor on Jame's website, WoW-Pro. I have, for some time, been throwing around ideas in my head of things that I think would make the website better. I thought I ought to write those down somewhere, so I'm going to do it here.

• Contribs - On the user's page, show the guides they have authored or co-authored.
• Watchlist - In addition to the current "Recent Changes", let us choose guides we would like to watch for updates.
• Favorites - Could be combined with watchlist. Can add guides to favorites, shows when a favorite guide has been updated or commented on.
• Friends list - let me know when my favorite contributors are online!
• Improved Front Page - I'd prefer to see a little less clutter on the Home page. Maybe one or two less news posts, so we can more easily see the new guides. I think the old news post from Snowflake summarizing leveling guides is sort of old, maybe it could be linked to from Jame's LINKS news post.
• Guide Rating - I know Jame is working on this one, I just can't wait for it to come out. Some guides really need to go away, and some need more recognition! Can be tied into the Karma system
• Comment Rating - I think Jame mentioned this, possibly as another automatic way to do his Karma system. Not as vital as guide rating, though.
• Improved Categorization - Some of the organization of guides can be improved. There are some issues that Jame has mentioned - atm, guides can't be in two categories at once, so things like class-specific leveling guides make for confusion.
• Featured Guide - it would be cool to have a special "Featured Guide" that changes periodically, that could be based on the guide's ratings. This could appear on the main page or on a sidebar.
• More Newsletters! - I really liked the October one, keep it up! I'm sure you can think of even more fun/useful stuff to put in the newsletter too :)
• Live Karma Data - I know this is coming eventually, once the system gets automated. Just putting it on here for completeness.
• View Count - Check out how many unique users/IP views a guide has gotten. I always am curious if people actually ever read my guides.
• General Guides - A silly pet peeve of mine, these guides are not general, they are quite specific - general would be something like "WoW tips" or whatever. Maybe change title to "More Guides" or something.
• Comment Notification - a simple notification, similar to the message one already in place, for when someone comments on your guide or responds to a comment of yours. Optionally, it could also inform for comments on your favorite guides.
  

I'll add to this as I think of things.

The Leveling Interlude

As a raiding guild, AEAE has had to make some changes while our members level in Northrend. We want to keep folks active and interested in the guild while they level, but our normal activity - raiding - is obviously not available yet. I've been brainstorming some other fun stuff that we can do:

• Have a leveling contest, with cheers and recognition for the first to each level.
• Organize LOTS of instance runs, to keep group skills up.
• Continue our screenshot contest - there are lots of great scenes in Northrend.
• Level in groups - it's both fun and more efficient.

Despite the urge to rush to 80 and raid, there are a lot of folks (myself included) who want to enjoy the content while it's new - too soon we will be burnt out on it. AEAE has always been a guild that played to have fun, not just to be the best - enjoying leveling to 80 is part of that.

In other news, leveling my resto druid is very very slow. I tried going boomkin but was sadly bad at it (like really bad). I am debating whether to continue with my druid right now or bring up my rogue to 80, or even start my death knight.

The beginning...

Hi folks, and welcome to my blog! As the description says, I co-manage a Horde raiding guild on the Uther US server of World of Warcraft. My guild is the Angry Elf Ale Empire, hence the title of my blog. In this blog, I plan to record some of my thoughts on guild and raid management, and also WoW in general.

Some background on me: I am currently a student studying chemical engineering. I have loved gaming, the fantasy genre, and writing since a very young age. Writing about WoW combines all of these loves into one. Consequently, I write about WoW a lot. I used to be a very active editor for WoWWiki, but faded into the background once I took a leadership role in my guild. Now I write guides for WoW-Pro, the home of Jame's famous leveling guides.

I hope this blog is useful to other active or aspiring guild leaders out there, or at least amusing ;) Look forward to some useful posts this week, as the guild works through leveling in the new expansion, the Wrath of the Lich King!