What Do Raiders Do When They’re Not Raiding?

Man – or woman – cannot live on raids alone. But what do raiders do when they’re not raiding?

A hell of a lot, as it turns out. Jasyla of Cannot Be Tamed wrote a fascinating post this week looking at what her guild, Apothesis, does to help the guild bond and have fun when they’re not raiding. It’s an interesting, varied list, and might be quite inspirational for any guild leaders struggling to keep things fresh:

“Sunday afternoons a bunch of us meet up in the Deeprun Tram for some Brawler’s Guild. We all get on Mumble to chat, share strategies and cheer each other on as we try to beat everything Gizmo can throw at us. I know Brawler’s Guild was sold as a solo PVE activity, but being grouped for matches is a great bonus since we can get fully buffed up and have the spectators act as coaches.

Sure, having ~10 people from our guild alone makes for longer queues, but having people to chat with makes it much more fun. These have been temporarily put off as most people have completed all ranks or have hit a brick wall but they’ll start up again soon, once people get a bit more gear. For now, people are doing old raids on Sunday instead.”

Read “Anatomy Of A Raid: Extracurriculars” here

Tagged as: guild leadership, raiding

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Is Valor Point Upgrading Stressing Raiders Out?

Theck’s back today with another really interesting, in-depth column – this time, looking at the effects of the new Valor Point mechanics on raiders, alts, and the game as a whole.

He starts out talking about alts in Mists – but there’s more to this discussion than that, as he takes in an overview of raiding vs time in this entire WoW expansion:

“In previous expansions, there was a distinct cycle to a player’s involvement throughout an expansion. When a new raid tier or patch arrived, it generally added new stuff to do, and most importantly new reasons to care about valor points. Generally, those reasons were valor point gear rewards, and for a long stretch of time that included tier items. A patch might also introduce new reputations to grind, or new dailies to do (or both), or other new “stuff” like quest lines, pets, or what have you.

And the response of a raider was predictable: you’d log in and do a bunch of that stuff on your main character for a few weeks. Valor accrual was the most important part of those activities – if you considered yourself a serious raider, you were making sure to cap your valor point income each week during that period to make sure you got your hands on that new gear as soon as possible. If you weren’t already clearing enough raid bosses to cap each week, you were out there running heroics to make up the difference.

However, a month or two into the tier, the situation became totally different. ”

Read the rest of the article here

Tagged as: mists of pandaria, valor points

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WoW Moviewatch: Ninja Raiders

Once upon a time, we played a video so often that even BLIND felt rare in comparison. Now, though, it's been nearly a year since we last revisited Ninja Raiders. And while the song's inspiration -- Single Ladies -- has faded from popularity, Ninja Raiders is still primed for glory.

As a fun bit of trivia... Ninja Raiders was one of the very few songs people dance to at the BlizzCon WoW Insider party. That's a feat that deserves a shout out every time I run the video.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, ninja-raiders, ow-machinima, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

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