Why Guild Applications are becoming a thing of the past

[Beebeey]

I really do not agree. If that was the Class Officer asking why a recruit uses a specific spell 10X less than she should be, thats what SHOULD be going on.

This is also one part of teh story. The application part is just the first filter in the process. Obviously, it was worth at least REPLYING, so they found amount of potential.

I like how he snipped it. Here is the whole thing in detail:

Barberry
Feel free to look at my wow heroes logs if you want to see prior to this week.

Person A
yea sorry, judging by everything that is going on here, im gonna pass, ty for your app.

Barberry o
No problem, thanks for taking the time.

Barberry
Wow, I just spent all this time answering your questions and the Enjin server went down.

Melebris
Additionally, looking again at your Garalon kill your Serpent Sting uptime is 63.3% in a 5:38 long fight, and mine is 93.8% (not great) in a 7:09 long fight. What do you use to track your SS on your target?

Barberry
I use ELVui and JSHB. We had a lot of on Heroic Garalon - Primarily, I was kiting pheromones and the person who was supposed to pick up pheromones off of me, well - wasn't. I was running around with 20-30 stacks and dropping dead then having to grab a brez in the process, even after calling it out on vent. The whole thing was kind of a mess tbh.
17 hours ago

Melebris
Looking at your logs, why dont you use Arcane Shot like at all? For example your Blade Lord Normal Kill you linked was 7:39 seconds long and you used Arcane Shot 7 times for a total of 278,433 damage, where our Heroic Blade Lord kill was 12 seconds shorter and I used Arcane Shot 94 times for a total of 4,433,714 damage. As I look at your other kills its the same story, you have sub 10 Arcane Shots across an entire fight when you should actually be doing 10 times that many in a fight. This tells me that you don't really understand shot priority, or the fact that focus capping is very very bad. What do you use to keep from focus capping?

Barberry
I do understand shot priority: Which is why I've been weaning myself off of ArS usage. Part of the reason for this, is because I was pumping out way too many ArS shots before and in turn losing out on KC's which in turn was hurting my set bonus.

Last week is really the first time I've gone cold turkey over the whole thing, and I did notice that I wasn't focus capping as much as I expected I would be. I do understand ArS's role in preventing focus capping, but from what I understand it's also filler priority. I find the loss of KC's due to overuse to be a much bigger problem, so I have worked on taking steps to fix said problem.

Also, we didn't do normal last week: These logs should be from Heroic Blade Lord. :/

Melebris
Meant Heroic, not Normal. Anyways, what are you using to stop from focus capping during CD usage? Also, here's a link to one of the top Hunters in the world doing Heroic Blade Lord. Click on the damage done by spell and you'll see Arcane Shot doing 21.6% of his personal damage and he used it 88 times in a 6:52 long fight. Arcane might be a "filler shot" but filler doesn't mean you just don't use it.

Barberry
Yea, I understand. It was probably a bad idea to begin with

[Deleted]

I really do not agree. If that was the Class Officer asking why a recruit uses a specific spell 10X less than she should be, thats what SHOULD be going on.

This is also one part of teh story. The application part is just the first filter in the process. Obviously, it was worth at least REPLYING, so they found amount of potential.

Possibly in this case it was merited, possibly now. I'm going to stick to general points on the application principle rather than actually take sides in the bitchfest going on. I was commentign more on the process displayed, rather than the actual content.

[Beebeey]

Possibly in this case it was merited, possibly now. I'm going to stick to general points on the application principle rather than actually take sides in the bitchfest going on. I was commentign more on the process displayed, rather than the actual content.

This post really had absolutely nothing to do with that particular guild: Which is why the post itself doesn't state anything about any specific guild. I'm sure everyone will say it's connected though either way.

I was so "mad" about it that I asked for a post on clarification:

So, what is the amount of ArS's that SHOULD theoretically go into priority: I do understand the watching out for focus caps, but I really haven't noticed it being an issue at all -- even when it's barely on my priority list.

Thoughts? Approximately how many ArS's do you blow through in a given fight.
Some clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Yea, I guess I really went ahead and nerd raged huh - asking for advice after being declined from a guild.

[Evolixe]

So, you're advocating the use of applications as a means of filtering applicants? We're not so different, you and I.

I do, but the application form only has to be very small to get a good idea who you want to interview. And who you don't.

[rowaasr13]

You can help them with rotations, or gear or stuff, but too many guilds just look at stats....stats can be fixed, personalities cant.

This, especially obsession with stat part.

My wife only got into raiding two months ago and cleared MSV and ToES normals by now with some attempts at heroics, while pulling respectable and often top damage as SP, which currently is ranked 2nd from bottom according to SimulationCraft. The ONLY reason she was able to raid regularly is that she was pugged by freshly transferred guild that didn't had all their members on new realm yet and liked how she played this first raid with them. Pretty much every her attempt to talk to people on /2 before that was like "Have 6/6? No? Fuck off." I wonder if her guild even know by now that she never raided before at all?

Additionally, example from this very same guild. There's a guy who poses as top-tier and generally raids with another group, but sometimes joins 10-man that my wife plays with. He pretty much always self-imposes himself as raid leader, starts barking orders and insults left and right, because well, he's 16/16N 3/16H champion! All that while ordering people to "stack behind Lei Shi, whoever moves - healer's just don't heal them at all", "beware, adds on Elegon don't have threat table and untauntable". But somehow even some generally reasonable raid members forget that he didn't get his kills all by himself, but as a part of group and listen and worship his every words, because he have KILL STATS!

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I like how he snipped it. Here is the whole thing in detail:

I figured there are many things we did not see, and still haven't seen.

This is the last thing I will say to you. Guilds do this save time and to protect themselves. Not because they are elitist douchebags. Someone post a great link to Tankspot regarding apps and you should read it. If you want into a serious raiding guild, it can't hurt to just suck it up, get as much great info as you can, and just jumping through those hoops. I had to do it, and I'm sure many people here have done the same. No one thinks its fun to fill out apps. But its understandable.

If you can just suck it up, I'm sure you can get through the vent interview, and whatever other hoops they want.

[Beebeey]

I figured there are many things we did not see, and still haven't seen.

This is the last thing I will say to you. Guilds do this save time and to protect themselves. Not because they are elitist douchebags. Someone post a great link to Tankspot regarding apps and you should read it. If you want into a serious raiding guild, it can't hurt to just suck it up, get as much great info as you can, and just jumping through those hoops. I had to do it, and I'm sure many people here have done the same. No one thinks its fun to fill out apps. But its understandable.

If you can just suck it up, I'm sure you can get through the vent interview, and whatever other hoops they want.

No, I posted the full exchange.

[klaps_05]

the fact is even mediocre, top300 guilds, and not top tier, want applications as they don't want to bother with "field-testing". and this is not a bad thing - on the opposite, it shows that they may not raid as much as top tier guilds, they still want a nice environment and dedicated raiders and members.

so no, applications are not a thing of the past, if anything, they are a vital part of today's PvE.

[Raiju]

the fact is even mediocre, top300 guilds, and not top tier, want applications as they don't want to bother with "field-testing". and this is not a bad thing - on the opposite, it shows that they may not raid as much as top tier guilds, they still want a nice environment and dedicated raiders and members.

so no, applications are not a thing of the past, if anything, they are a vital part of today's PvE.

Especially with more casual raiding guild GM's/officers having less time to go through applications. I think my old guild picked up around 5-6 different applications including a couple people who didn't feel like it in the last 2 weeks. That alone is a lot of work for casual play if you were to take them in, test them etc. A filter is practically a requirement at times.

[Deleted]

While this next part may sound discriminatory, I did notice the mention of gender. However, people seem to not value this question. I do. Being of the female gender can influence raiding environment and performance. In a masculine oriented game such as this (especially and more prominently when raiding), the influence a female which is not shy to wave her "evag" (as you so aptly named it) around, does give reason for concern. The mere drive throughout this thread to emphasize your gender, Barberry, is an undesirable quality. You might as well raise a flag saying "HEY GUISE, I'M A GIRL, I NEED ATTENTION AND RECOGNITION!". I can speak from personal experience in my current and previous guilds is that the hormonal drive of male members will activate and deviate energy away from performing into raids or lead to overconfidence and overperformance in favor of primal needs. Even if a female member is playing like a monster (we actually have a female player in our guild, playing warlock and generally topping meters), depending on the hormonal pressure she is emitting, other member's performance is affected. (either by sapping strength or making them overconfident, both undesirable traits.). This does not mean we decline people based on gender, it does give us an additional point to consider when trialing members.

really? I cant believe you wrote that drivel, I can barely believe you though it.... what is this? the 1920's attitude to gender relations.

[Beebeey]

I just finished reading through this whole thread and as a GM of a respectable 10 man guild (16/16 hc down as of yesterday), I am also a strong supporter of written applications. Of course there is the argument of having a pulse on an applicant's dedication. However, unlike the reasons mentioned in this threads, the reasoning behind requiring application is slightly different. Seeing that we're playing on EU servers, nationalities differ. As such, we use the application to also assess the mastery of the English language. This extends not only to in game communication, but also to communication on the forums. We use the forums actively to discuss encounters and hence we place high value in our applicant's ability to express themselves through writing.

We also decided to make all our recruitment public (although we do of course allow private applications). For one, it allows applicants to see how we handle applicants and can take lessons out of this. On top of this, it allows applicants to look at other applications and see how other applicants tried to get a trial in our guild. In this way, we see public applications as an opportunity to have people think out of the box and using resources available to them. This property of looking for information to better oneself is a much desirable property and we place high value therein.

While this next part may sound discriminatory, I did notice the mention of gender. However, people seem to not value this question. I do. Being of the female gender can influence raiding environment and performance. In a masculine oriented game such as this (especially and more prominently when raiding), the influence a female which is not shy to wave her "evag" (as you so aptly named it) around, does give reason for concern. The mere drive throughout this thread to emphasize your gender, Barberry, is an undesirable quality. You might as well raise a flag saying "HEY GUISE, I'M A GIRL, I NEED ATTENTION AND RECOGNITION!". I can speak from personal experience in my current and previous guilds is that the hormonal drive of male members will activate and deviate energy away from performing into raids or lead to overconfidence and overperformance in favor of primal needs. Even if a female member is playing like a monster (we actually have a female player in our guild, playing warlock and generally topping meters), depending on the hormonal pressure she is emitting, other member's performance is affected. (either by sapping strength or making them overconfident, both undesirable traits.). This does not mean we decline people based on gender, it does give us an additional point to consider when trialing members.

Lastly and more regarding the topic, is regarding the big question posed in this forum. Are guild applications becoming a thing of the past? I think not. If we consider trials, as a guild, we would first like to assess what new members can offer us and then once we have gone past the application process, we may opt for an oral interview. After this, we do a two week trial period. However, from this point we will start to give stuff to our applicant. We do a preliminary assessment halfway this trial period with our member and discuss last week. We ask about performance, environment and the social aspect of this game and then end up with a final "judgmental" chat at the end of the trial period. As a 10 man guild, we are a very tight group and need to properly analyze if we think a person would fit in and hence we have a lot of communication and we need a proper frame of analysis. For this last reason, we may extend the trial period if we could not fit a trial in our roster for about 80%-100% of our raids.

It does not stop here. We also have personal evaluation every tier, combined with a content patch survey in which we once again check how content our raiders are over the past tier before moving into the new tier. This will give us ground to improve upon and see discontent coming from far away.

All this together are arguments for having a written application as it is. Just like one would make an application for a job, so should one do so for a guild. We do tend to see this game as a job, however. Not a job for money, but a job for fun. WoW is a game in essence, as such, the general currency we should try to distribute among our members is not the one of coin, but the one of fun.

I have corrected people who were mistaken about my gender in the post. That in no way means I am 'flashing' myself.

I find this analysis to be full of horse poop. Over 40% of women in the industry are in fact gamers - the ratio is even higher on WoW and various MMO's. The reason people fail to acknowledge this is because of bad advertising, really poorly written female character roles (I can think of Portal and Samus from Metroid as being the two non-shi* female characters in a game - and perhaps Lightning from FFXIII) and stereotypical crap like some of the things you just mentioned.

We do not emit some sort of magical vag*nal vibe in raid: Drama can be equally attributed to either gender. We game for the same reasons you do - because we enjoy it. There really is no difference.

When my K/D ratio on Halo is awesome and you get no-scoped in the face repeatedly: I'm not worried about whether you actually have a problem with who killed you. I'm worried about when the next set of rockets are going to spawn and whether my count is off so my team can grab 4 more kills.

I don't even let this sort of thing bother me, so why do you insist on even bringing it up.

Would you like to be called a woman repeatedly? No. You would probably clarify. I am simply doing the same lady.

[Raiju]

really? I cant believe you wrote that drivel, I can barely believe you though it.... what is this? the 1920's attitude to gender relations.

While the guild I was leading frequently had 2-3 girls in the raid team (10man) at least at any time, he has a point. It's been tiring throughout this thread to see the she corrections throughout. Surely you should be happy that people don't care about your gender and are looking at your performance and not the other way around.

edit: At times I have been called a woman repeatedly, I tend to just clarify at the end of the discussion when all things are said and done - and not every single opportunity.

[Beebeey]

While the guild I was leading frequently had 2-3 girls in the raid team (10man) at least at any time, he has a point. It's been tiring throughout this thread to see the she corrections throughout. Surely you should be happy that people don't care about your gender and are looking at your performance and not the other way around.

edit: At times I have been called a woman repeatedly, I tend to just clarify at the end of the discussion when all things are said and done - and not every single opportunity.

On a thread with 25 pages: I have clarified it only a few times. I have also gone ahead and clarified other various statements that I have not said. What is your point? So having an evag, because I like to double pot in LFR/flask/food buff -- that's an attitude? Why on earth should I call it an epeen?

[Brakthir]

The issue of female gamers is only an issue if you make it an issue. Yes, there are certain people that cause drama. My guild has a pretty strict policy when it comes to that. Any drama going on? Person is usually told once, and then gkicked. We've had issues in the past with female trials trying to rely on their womanly wiles to curry favor with members and they don't realize that most, if not all of us core members recognize what they're doing and have nothing but contempt for it.

During Cata, more specifically Firelands, we had about 6-7 female raiders in our core team. Most, if not all of them were valuable members of our raiding team and were not considered anything other than excellent players. It all depends on the maturity of your guild and whether they're willing to deal with drama caused by both genders or not.

[Beebeey]

The issue of female gamers is only an issue if you make it an issue. Yes, there are certain people that cause drama. My guild has a pretty strict policy when it comes to that. Any drama going on? Person is usually told once, and then gkicked. We've had issues in the past with female trials trying to rely on their womanly wiles to curry favor with members and they don't realize that most, if not all of us core members recognize what they're doing and have nothing but contempt for it.

During Cata, more specifically Firelands, we had about 6-7 female raiders in our core team. Most, if not all of them were valuable members of our raiding team and were not considered anything other than excellent players. It all depends on the maturity of your guild and whether they're willing to deal with drama caused by both genders or not.

You are pretty damn awesome.

[PetersenIII]

You're taking it too far to the extreme. Its alright if they are interested in your computer specs. They're not judging you for your 2 year old computer, its OK. You should have the confidence they'll be alright with it.

If they're not judging me for it why the fuck is it on their application form?!

So, what you are saying is you don't see the similarity that applications have with raiding.

Following instructions, attention to detail, attitude, being thorough...I guess NONE of those things apply to raiding.

Hope the sarcasm is thick enough.

Right, because doing that in text, and doing that in-game are totally the same exact thing. Totally.

[Beebeey]

As far as applications go:

What I do see is a change in shift in the game itself. While, in previous expansions you have had players who had to be more patient in-game and actually work towards obtaining even just dungeon gear, Blizzard has a habit of feeding everyone gear in various ways now.

This is something that is apparent in American society as a whole and in turn I feel that developers do look towards this type of immediate gratification response and act accordingly. After all, this is what is going to pull in the most bang for your buck - servicing the majority of people who are paying for your product or service.

Now because the game itself has shifted, so have the attitudes of the players in turn. The immediate gratification received from effortless work pays off, so why bother to put in more work than is needed in the process? Players find less patience with the process, because the game itself is less patient as well.

I do not see a shift in attitude that guilds may have towards players: What I mean by this, is that I don't see people trying to embrace new techniques into finding ways to obtain quality applicants. I am not saying to abandon the application system, but if players and the game itself has shifted, wouldn't it be logical to market to your audience in new and various ways?

Perhaps using some of the many new technologies/resources now available in order to screen others and looking for new outlets to gauge the general public in. Just because one thing works, does not mean it is the ONLY thing that can and will work. If you want to market your application to an audience, why not offer more outlets for them as well in the process: making applications accessible to smart phones, offering a free pug spot here or there and really just - stepping out of the comfort zone in order to try something in addition to the norm.

There seems to be a real lack of a social component for many players as well, from what I have seen. The easier it is to obtain something, the less one wants to interact with it in turn. By offering something, fresh, new and different, you also appease to others' interests in the process. Even something silly and fun like random old expansion drake runs, xmog runs, challenge modes on off nights.

I don't know - just a thought, since I wanted to actually reply to the topic of the thread itself.

[Peng]

It´s a question of supply and demand. Times have changed. There are more raid slots to fill than people willing to apply. All guilds with an incomplete roster will need to rethink.

[luccadeo]

I haven't filled out a guild application since TBC.

[judgementofantonidas]

There are not many successful raiding guilds that just blindly accept every player that whispers for an invite.

A well written app provides information for the recruiting officer to base an initial opinion as to whether the player is even fit for freinds and family in the guild. Applications remove some of the dama and work involved in weeding out obvious bad players before you have to waste any resources or time on discovering they are bad. No, you will learn nothing about the personality of the player with a simple application. That is why you follow up the application with a well thought out interview over voic chat.