Warning About Toxic Roleplayers is a Community Service

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A Toxic Roleplayer is a player that employs various methods of emotional abuse to get what they want out of their roleplay partner(s) at the expense of that person’s happiness, including but not limited to a hell of a lot of guilt-tripping, isolation of their victim from other roleplay, jealousy over other roleplay, and making the victim feel like they are imagining the toxic behaviour.  In order to get a better understanding of what I’m talking about here, I strongly suggest reading the Emotional Abuse in Roleplay compilation by Sahnin on Tumblr.  She’s far, far better at explaining this and just how easily it can make you feel like you’re the problem than I am — even though I have been a victim of emotional abuse, I just don’t have the capacity for a decent explanation.

I have dealt with and watched others deal with several Toxic Roleplayers over my time in various RP communities.  Every single one of them was an emotional abuser — that’s why they’re toxic — and resulted in my friends and myself dealing with a lot of stress.  In the case of one abuser, her victims are still dealing with the aftermath of her abuse.  Victims of emotional abuse can suffer from anxiety, depression, various physical ailments (including chronic headaches), low self-esteem, and even more serious issues, most of which require treatment — some of which, like medication and therapy, are expensive.

I bring this up because, this week, defenders of one of these Toxic Roleplayers accused those that warn about her of “being mean”.  They wanted this person’s victims to “get over it” and “grow up” — despite, you know, the fact that these people suffered abuse.  This was not a roleplay issue, it was a player issue.  These people wanted her victims to stay silent.

I would go so far as to say these defenders are guilty of abuse themselves, or at least are supportive of abusive behaviour.

There is absolutely no reason for victims of a Toxic Roleplayer to stay silent about what they went through and dealt with.  Warning others about this sort of roleplayer is a community service because it can and will save some people from stress, anxiety, depression, and other issues that most people just don’t like dealing with.  Telling people about what you went through with this person and what behaviours to watch out for can prepare other people so that they can decide whether or not to engage, and if they do decide to engage, they can be ready to get the hell out when things start to get bad.

If nobody had warned me how much trouble a particular roleplayer was, I may have gotten sucked into the same trap as everyone else.  I’m already suffering from depression and chronic headaches — further stress would make my already iffy physical health even iffier, and at least one or two people can attest to my inability to deal with me even imagining that I’ve hurt somebody I care about.

If you have dealt with a Toxic Roleplayer, or if you know of one, it is of the utmost importance that you pass on your knowledge.  By warning others of this sort of person you help protect your community from a force that can tear it apart by setting members against one another, victims against those that doubt them, friends against friends.  The Toxic Roleplayer often insists that they are not the problem, that everyone else is what’s wrong, they’re the real victim, but as you start asking questions and making mention of your own tale you’ll find that you aren’t the only one.

So, yes.  Warn people.  You’re doing everyone a favour — and if the defenders of a Toxic Roleplayer accuse you of being mean?  Forget them.  You, your mental health, and the mental health of those you come across in your time within your community are far, far more important than the feelings of an abuser.

Additional Information

Thanks to calleo for the heads-up.  I’ll be adding information as it’s brought to my attention.

Here are some other tips for reference when dealing with and reporting on Toxic Roleplayers:

  1. It is essential to just provide the facts.  That roleplayer will be doing more than enough exaggerating about your role, don’t do that yourself.  This is to protect you.
  2. To tie in with #1, be sure to screenshot posts, conversations, and other interactions.  Elephant is a wonderful add-on and I have used it myself for documenting issues I’ve had with my own problem players.  Even if you didn’t do it before, start doing it now, it’ll provide you with a record of what the other player is doing — proof.  These sorts are very, very quick with the delete button.
  3. Have a record of the Toxic RPer’s known alts available.  IM handles, blog addresses, and other information may be worthwhile just in case, if this is the sort of player to have out-of-game contact.  This is especially useful to catch them if and when they attempt to stalk their victims (this does happen).
  4. For those that are attempting to break away from a Toxic Roleplayer, when you block them and cut off contact, state plainly that you don’t want them trying to contact you in any way at all.  No e-mail, no IMs, no whispers, no snail mail, nothing. Screenshot this.  It’s another ass-covering technique to make sure they can’t pull the “I didn’t know you meant THAT” card.
  5. If and when they try to contact you again, don’t respond, just block and report.  If you ‘report spam’ that will temporarily block the entire account from contacting you.  Blizzard does — or is supposed to — take harrassment reports very seriously, and if you’re being harassed, read Apple Cider Mage’s guide on dealing with this sort of thing.

This post will be further edited as required.  If you have other information to provide, please contact me!

Resources:

Sahnin @ Tumblr’s articles:

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Coming Back and Keeping it Fun

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Creeperella gets her groove thang on at the Shrine of Two Moons.

I went and took a break from WoW for a while, opting to hop among my free games and SW:TOR (which doesn’t run very well on my computer) and found that there was something missing — namely the familiarity, the setting I enjoyed, and the friends I had made.  This isn’t to say that WoW is perfect or that I’m going to be here forever, but that I never actually intended to permanently leave and that it was nice to get out into something else.

The problem that I find that I have with any game is this whole “keeping it fun” thing.  The good thing about games of WoW’s nature is that they tend to have a lot of other, little things for you to do beyond the main game — like pursuing achievements, gathering pretty gear sets, experimenting with different alts, or trying occasional challenges.  Roleplay, too, is near and dear to my heart.  Previous to taking a break from World of Warcraft, though, I had found it really difficult to step into RP — although I don’t find it an easy thing to do, I’ve been doing it more often and I’ve been enjoying myself.  That part, the feeling that I get after a round of roleplay, after having some fun?  That’s what keeps me going back to it.

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Ta-Kei and Mei-Tan.

When it comes to keeping WoW fun, I find that it comes down to the people that I’m surrounding myself with.  If not for the people I’ve met through the game, I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly so much — even if I’m not playing with them, they’re still about.  I still chat with them.  Some of my most meaningful relationships are because of “that damn game” — I wouldn’t have met my boy if it wasn’t for World of Warcraft, even, and I wouldn’t keep coming back if it wasn’t for adventures.

Most recently, him and I have been occasionally playing a TankMonk/HealyShaman pair and a TankMonk/TankMonk pair (with me healing in both occasions, shock and horror).  It’s been fun.  Being on Skype at the same time means that communication is faster and easier (though I feel I know him well enough to have an idea of what sort of crap he’s going to pull), plus, if people are being bad we can vent about it and plan our rebellion.

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Alanada shows Creeperella some of the sights of Pandaria.

Along with that, Telystra and I have been running dungeons on our 70s druids, with her healing and me tanking.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love druid tanking?  No?  I love druid tanking.  To say that she puts up with a lot from me as a tank is an understatement, though she also knows her shit and is pretty damned good at making up for my “oh whoops that other group joined in LOLOL OKAY FACEROLL TIME” shenanigans.  Once I latch onto something it doesn’t go away — that’s pretty amazing for me.

Between that, roleplay with people I know and people I don’t, plus pursuing achievements and alts — while taking occasional breaks with other games — I think I’ve been managing to keep it fresh for myself.

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Pet-hunting has helped, too.

 

 

Excel and the Gold Game

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I’m a big fan of Microsoft Excel and spreadsheets in general.

Spreadsheets are my bread and butter.  If I’m in doubt about something which can have its data examined, I plug it into a spreadsheet and away I go.  I’m in charge of the spreadsheets for my mom’s business (inventory, money out, money in) and I’m quite at home building formulas and formatting things to be just right.

I’m not the only one that’s like this in the gold blogging community — far from it!  There are spreadsheets for everything from crafting supplies to ore shuffles.

How can I benefit from spreadsheets, Matojo?

Easy:  plot your gold-making statistics, learn how you’re doing, profit.

This is a principle that’s in use in other areas, such as poker players keeping track of their win/loss ratios and statistics, or fire service organizations figuring out how many departments are using outdated equipment based upon survey data.  Spreadsheets are incredibly useful.

If you want to track your gold-making progress, you’ll want to pay attention to the following statistics:

  • Expenditures — How much gold are you spending every day on crafting materials, shuffling, snatching, etc.
  • Money In — How much gold are you collecting per day, and from what items?
  • Profit/Loss — Are you making money or losing money?

Those are the Big Three.  You can also choose to track specifics, like which items are moving, which aren’t, who your competitors are, who’s buying your items, and more.

I haven’t been plotting my information!  What do?

That’s okay!

If you aren’t currently tracking your auction information, you can pull the data from TSM’s Accounting feature or BeanCounter in Auctioneer (I think) and arrange it as you wish — you can see how I’ve arranged my data for this sample below (75.525 is equal to 75 gold, 52 silver, 50 copper).  If you’re lacking either one, you can always start now and learn a little something as you go along.

Now, I’ve made use of conditional formatting here — you can use this article to learn how to use conditional formatting – and I highly recommend it, especially if you only use one sheet to track expenses and earnings.  Conditional formatting simply removes the step of having to edit how each cell looks by hand, based upon certain parameters, which makes it easier for you to tell how you’re doing at a glance.  In my example, I’ve set two conditional formats — one to change the cell and text red if the contents of the cell are below 0, one to change the cell and text green if the contents of the cell are above 0 (because negative numbers represent expenses in my sheet).

Excel is expensive!  Can I use something else?

Of course!

The only reason I have Excel and use it so frequently is because I purchased Microsoft Office when I was a college student (the second time) from September 2011 until April 2012 — the software only cost me $80 when it otherwise would have cost me triple that, and I needed to have the package in order to do my homework without having to hang out on-campus all the time.  Another option is OpenOffice.org Calc, which is free to download (part of the OpenOffice.org package) and easy to use.

OpenOffice is also able to open Excel files, so if you decide to use other peoples’ spreadsheets, you can with few issues — you may have to re-format some aspects of the sheet.

I don’t know how to use Excel/OpenOffice!

That’s okay.  GCFLearnFree.org has free Microsoft Excel lessons, and free OpenOffice.org Calc lessons that you can follow while working in the programs.  If videos are more your style, countless YouTube tutorials exist for both programs.

Do you have an example I can work from?

Not yet, but it’s in my plan to develop a blank sheet that you can populate with your own data.

There you have it.  Get cracking, everyone, and let me know what your spreadsheets teach you!

The First Rule About Gold-Making: We Don’t Talk About Gold-Making

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Good Gods, I feel like such a twit for drawing upon an old Fight Club meme (a movie I never even watched, even), but it’s very appropriate for this particular topic.

Talk about gold-making?  I don’t know what you mean.

I love the gold blogging community — this is a fact that has been re-hashed over and over again in things I have said, or things I think I have said — because it is so supportive and willing to share.  It is full of amazing people like Alyzande of The Gold Queen and Nev of Auction House Addict; each has their own great ideas, interesting viewpoints, and spectacular brands of gold theorycrafting.  As a consequence, I love reading gold blogs and conspiring with other readers to figure out different ideas for making gold.

I occasionally talk about how I’m the Community Manager at TheGoldQueen.com and that I enjoy when I get to chat with people about their gold-making, that I like helping them figure out new things to do, and that I especially love how excited they are to share their latest victory.

All of this is why I was surprised to hear someone in one of my server communities say: “The first rule of gold-making is: we don’t talk about gold-making.”

What?

That goes against all of my instincts as a blogger.  As a blogger, when I hear something new and interesting I want to share it — I want more people to know about it, see it, talk about it, tell me what they think about it … and to share it with others and pass it around.  When I find out something that will help somebody solve a problem, I want them to know about it.  Gold-making isn’t any different.  When I hear of someone that’s having problems making gold, I want to help them and I sincerely believe that there is no harm in sharing the information that we find while we’re on our own gold-making journeys.

Not talking about gold-making does not make any sense.

People of that frame of mind are worried about competition.  Instead of seeing the potential for competition as a challenge to be overcome, or part of the auction house game, they’d rather not deal with it — who can blame them?  It can suck, not making as much money as you’d otherwise make because you have competition that you didn’t have before.  This assumes that everyone is interested in the same markets and the same methods when, in fact, this isn’t the case; some people like to flip items, others prefer grinding and farming, some prefer to buy materials and craft their money-making objects.

Without posts that tell people where the best places to farm Exotic Leather are, for example (like Alyzande’s post about killing turtles in Valley of the Four Winds or her post about killing Yetis in Kun-Lai Summit), I would not have cheap leather to flip for killer profits, nor would I have the leather for my blue cloaks and my other crafts.  I’d have to farm!  I like farming, so this isn’t an issue for me, but not everybody enjoys farming.  Without posts suggesting that people stockpile old Azeroth trade materials for the brand new monks that would be leveling once Mists of Pandaria hit, getting some of my trade skills leveled may have been a lot harder — and more expensive — than I would have liked.  There are guides to marketing and business concepts that are written in plain English so the average person can understand them, and these concepts are obviously extremely valuable in real life.

Besides, if we all kept our ideas about gold-making to ourselves, we wouldn’t have the massive gold blogging community that’s roaming the internet today.  It would be disappointing to be without it, and to be lacking all of the voices that make this whole thing so worthwhile.

Discuss!  What do you think the pros and cons of staying silent are versus talking about gold-making?  Why do you do what you do?  Why not?

“Fight Club” photo from Ezra’s Blog of Cool.

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Mists of Pandaria: Much Love (and Some Tears)

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The day that many of us were waiting for finally arrived not too long ago — Mists of Pandaria was released with a relatively pain-free launch, something that’s rather new for Blizzard. It was rather nice to not have to deal with a throng of angry posts on dear_gnome asking about why we can’t log in (you know, the question that, after nearly ten years, you would think people would tire of asking after an expansion launch or major content patch).

This expansion introduced the Pandaren as a playable race, brought Chen Stormstout back into the picture, gave us access to the new Monk class, and even opened up a new continent for the 85-90 run.  Pet Battles have given us yet another distraction — in-game Pokémon! — along with farms to tend and more fishing to do than ever before.

It has also introduced a few moments of misty eyes for this lady, I tell you what.

First off, as a wee Pandaren wandering the aptly-named Wandering Isle (which is a giant turtle named Shen-zin Su), I found myself sniffling during the chat with the massive creature whose very life the Panda-people rely upon.  Damn it, Mat, you are not supposed to want to cry over a virtual turtle, no matter how cool he is.

Okay, fine, with the sniffles aside I continued the zone to completion and then the decision on whether to go Horde or Alliance snuck up on me.  Naturally I went Horde, because this is all on Thorium Brotherhood (I haven’t even bothered with Wyrmrest Accord) and I’m slowly re-building the mass of 85s I had there.  I thought, “Oh wow, this’ gonna be cool — but how exactly are they going to work this bit?  Teleportation?  SUDDENLY!HORDE?”

Nope, the cinematic showed my character flying off in a balloon in yet another tear-jerking farewell to that massive turtle — oh cripes I’m doing it again — and it faded to black, then caught back up to my character standing in front of Orgrimmar.  The Pandaren introduction to the Horde really demonstrates the rather dangerous atmosphere that this faction has at the moment, but Garrosh’s dickheadedness will be covered in another post. ;)

I haven’t had the time to delve too deeply into Pandaria itself.  My warrior is still in The Jade Forest, as is my rogue, but I’m enjoying the quests when I do get a chance to prod at them.  Pandaria is fun, it’s gorgeous, and I look forward to playing there when I get a chance.  I haven’t played Guild Wars 2 in a few weeks (then again, it’ll wait because it’s not subscription-based).  I’m looking forward to progressing in the story and eventually doing the whole thing on my Alliance paladin, too, if I manage to keep him on that faction.

Also?  I really, really like the Pandaren.

Pandaren are essentially fuzzy, balanced Dwarves.  They love good food, good brew, and helping others; they are just generally good people and are such a refreshing change from how things generally are in World of Warcraft.  The women use a body type that is similar to mine and I am quite happy to play that.  Their emotes are adorable… and I already have a handful of the little fuzzballs: my 85 rogue, a hunter, and a mage.

Krensythe Manashaper is now Lin-Si Wyrmclaw, purveyor of magical artifacts and knowledge. Sssssh.

I will be rolling a Pandaren Shaman eventually.  :P

Don’t get me started on Pet Battles.  That may wind up being a post of its own.

In summary, though:  so far, so good.  Mists of Pandaria is shaping up to be a decent expansion, better than what I was expecting, and I’m quite happy to have the chance to prod at it.

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Gold, Games, and Guhwha.

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In May, I started helping Alyzande of TheGoldQueen.com with e-mails — then, as now, she was having difficulty keeping up with the volume of e-mail she was getting and hired me on to help.  Since then, I’ve been sporadically working on helping people out with their gold-making woes.  It’s been a nice enough run that I’ve said that her being a business reference is more than enough payment for me and her friendship is an even better bonus.  ;)

If you do not read The Gold Queen, you should.  I enjoy her writing style and the fact that she combines making gold with ethics — and is even ethical about making gold — is something that’s fairly unusual to me, after spending so long reading The-Goblin-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (and who I no longer read).  Although kind folk among the WoW community are not as rare as we like to think, they are still a breath of fresh air since they’re so quiet that we sometime forget that they exist — so go visit her.

I’ve been poking at non-WoW games in what little spare time I have, too, and broke down to purchase Guild Wars 2 several days ago.  I enjoy it so far, even if I don’t really understand the combat system, and I am enjoying my Charr thief.  I’m waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic to go F2P before I try playing it again, though I seriously prefer Star Trek Online.  I hop into Champions Online and Lord of the Rings Online sometimes, too, and I’ve even started completely from scratch in LOTRO because I… forgot how to play my hunter, so.

The Harbingers of War has their first major event in months last night.  We arched from Hillsbrad to Arathi Highlands, and at the end of the road the entire unit was stuck with a terribly nasty surprise — a trio of goons from the Undercity that arrested Matojo and declared the Harbingers to be dissolved.  With Teaghue now in the driver’s seat, what will happen?  Are the Harbingers doomed, or will they come back stronger than ever?  What will happen to Matojo?

“We’ve got company.”

(Special thanks to Sebrawyn and Pook for volunteering to play a pair of cronies for Kekoa.)

Once we get going a bit more, the Harbingers of War Brag ‘n Brawl will be starting up again, and we’ll be working on becoming stronger than ever as a guild and a group of friends.  I don’t know when we’ll be able to hold a proper meet-and-greet in real life again, but one day!

Thorium Brotherhood has also yielded several surprises for me, with a player asking for grudges to be dropped and another one being far friendlier than expected.  I am certainly not complaining and I enjoy the banter with people I couldn’t banter with before, I just hope it lasts!

If you’re interested in checking out the Harbingers, visit us on Enjin.  There may be a Wyrmrest Accord branch of us opening up sooner or later, with cross-realm events taking place, so keep your eyes peeled for that.  ;)

Real life, however, has been exceptionally busy.  I am not going back to school this year, and even if I could the first year of my program has changed so dramatically that I would almost want to just start over again.  I have been living with my parents and working at the grocery store that I worked at as a teenager!  It’s amazing how things never really change all that much.  One day I will be able to go back to living in my own home, or maybe just on my own in general, but that day is not today.

I hope you are all doing well and looking as forward to Mists as I am.  I cannot wait to have a lady Pandaren rogue, that’s for sure.  ;)

Drama Llama-Spotting in World of Warcraft Roleplay

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drama llama In World of Warcraft roleplay, there’s a lot of drama.  Tons of drama.  It’s just like any other roleplay medium, whether we roleplayers want to admit it or not (it seems non-WoW roleplayers want to think that this style is worse for drama than any others – wrong!).  It can be hard to separate fact from fiction, especially when friends and people we generally think are a-okay and cool are involved.  Especially when people we’ve never had issues with are involved.  At what point do you begin to accept that maybe, just maybe, that roleplayer that you like, or that has the occasional twinge of Something You Just Can’t Put Your Finger On, really is a Drama Llama?

Complaint Volume as a Measure of Drama

A serial Drama Llama or problem player will usually leave a swath of destruction in their wake.  Chances are, they’ve been involved in issues between themselves and other players, raised a ruckus on other sites, or done something, somewhere, to cause discomfort and terribleness.  The more complaints about a player or group of players that exist, the more likely that this person is a Problem.

However.

You knew there was a “but”.

This is not always reliable.  Some may find that a player’s reputation among one specific social group is actually the fault of that group, and doesn’t reflect the way that player actually is — say, one member of a social group gets a bug up their arse about a person, then suddenly the entire group hates them.  Yes, this happens.  Yes, we all thought we abandoned that line of thinking after leaving school.  No, we didn’t.  It does happen, even and especially in World of Warcraft roleplay, and it’s just as irritating there as it is in the outside world.

If, however, you have multiple complaints from different social groups, people unrelated to these social groups and, hell, maybe even different forums, chat channels, and/or game servers … then you could be dealing with a serial Llama.

Screenshots and Chat Logs

elephant wow add-on

Elephant records your chats for you.

In World of Warcraft, there are add-ons like Elephant that record chat channels and let you save or keep logs of what’s said in various channels.  This sort of add-on is great for keeping track of stuff that happens in roleplay, whispers, and chat channels — though WoW Instant Messenger is probably better for the whispers portion.  Some folks choose to take screenshots of everything, from conversations to Twitter DMs, to LJ PMs, and any form of communication with people that they think they might wind up having issues with.

Images can be tampered and edited, however, spotting such edits is fairly simple.  Does something look wonky and not uniform?  Does it look pixelated in places that it probably shouldn’t?  Is the communication style of any of the involved people different than what you’re familiar with?

Again, if different unrelated people have screenshots and chat logs, it’s safe to bet that they’re not lying.  The more thorough the record of Llama behaviour, the better, and it’s often better to be safe than sorry.

That Feeling in Your Gut

If you’re familiar with Llama behaviour (assuming you aren’t one yourself, oho), then you’re probably familiar with that little feeling that starts to creep in when you find yourself facing the potential of more Drama.  It’s that slight dread, where you think that the behaviour you’re witnessing isn’t entirely good, but you don’t want to say anything or cause any trouble, so you don’t speak up.  It might just be you, right?  You might just be misinterpreting something~!

You might not be misinterpreting, either, and if you aren’t sure — ask.  Ask me, ask someone that you know, ask for clarification on whatever’s happened with your roleplay partner, ask a community like bad_rpers_suck on livejournal.  Get an outside opinion.  Maybe someone else has seen the behaviour and can tell you whether or not it’s time to pack up your toys and go home.

The Llama Revealed!

How do you deal if a player has proven to be a Llama, but hasn’t actually reared their head as such to you — yet?  How do you pry yourself from a Llama’s grasp?

That’s a set of posts for another day.  ;)

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The Diablo 3 Witch Doctor: A Disconcerting Playthrough

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This post may contain spoilers, so if you haven’t beaten Diablo 3 on Normal yet, feel free to skip this post.

 

My first character in Diablo 3was the Witch Doctor, and I defeated Diablo on Normal with her.  The class uses a mixture of crowd control abilities, odd damage spells, pets, and escape tricks in order to confuse and astound foes before killing them off.  I’ve found it fairly slow to get through stuff (til I started using the Rain of Toads rune), but the just plain interesting nature of the class’ spells has kept me clinging to it (I’m level 50 at the time of this post).

Let me preface this by saying that I am a woman that passes as white — white people saying to me, all my life, “You look [like a First Nations person]!” doesn’t count for anything, sorry — and, as such, my observations and opinion will not count for much.  I do not experience racism.  I cannot experience racism — except, maybe, from people that think I’m Not White (because apparently some people look at me and think that?) — and so I do not fully understand and will never understand what a person of colour actually goes through.  My concerns regarding the Witch Doctor should not be taken above those of a person of colour.  If anyone has any links on the subject, please leave them here in comments and I’ll add them to the entry.

As much as I love the Witch Doctor, I can’t help but feel intensely uncomfortable with the way she’s presented.  She is this mysterious, mistrusted, primal woman that the people she initially runs into aren’t quite certain about.  Her ways are alien to them.  Her stance, even when she’s just standing around and waiting for the action to happen, is almost beast-like.  She is tribal.  Her appearance checks off a lot of the “stereotypical person of colour” boxes on that checklist, you know the one, and it’s really troubling.

Her attacks include primal yells, she is a major wise-woman, she does not snark, she takes everything in stride.  She is one of two (maybe three) very obvious (playable) women of colour in the game (I consider the wizard to be Asian, though I could be wrong), and the huge differences between her and every other character in the game are mind-blowingly obvious.

And yet, and yet, and yet…

I find myself calmed by her calm when we rush into battle against impossible odds; she is certain that we will win, even if we couldn’t possibly make it.  I find myself grinning when she counters an ally’s panic with a remark that forces them to shut up and think.  Her philosophy makes sense and is a bright spot in an otherwise dark world.  The Witch Doctor is patient, disciplined, and the perfect individual to stand up against the darkness that threatens to overtake the world of Sanctuary.

I wish that Blizzard had not othered her so much.  I wish that Blizzard had brought her into the world as someone who garnered a hell of a lot of respect (she is from a land that the people of Tristram could never survive in, even), whose magics were feared because of their potency but who was not treated with suspicion at the outset.  I wish that Blizzard had not had her idle stance looking so … the way it is now.  Everyone else can stand upright, why can’t she?

In short:  I love her, I love what the game attempts to do with her, but there are so many uncomfortable bits that I’ve struggled to get her as far as I did.  It’s unfortunate.  She’s a pretty awesome character, but she could be more awesome if she didn’t have such racist bits and bobs attached to her.

Add-On Spotlight: MySales

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I have been reading The Gold Queen for quite a while now, and because of Alyzande’s Must-Have Add-ons post (which I recommend a lot), I staggered upon MySales, an add-on that tracks what you’ve sold, how many, and how much gold you’ve managed to make from it.

The MySales window.

Ta-da! In no particular order.

I love this add-on.

MySales allows you to look at the following statistics:

  • Sales
  • Buyers
  • Items

The Sales window shows the item name, how much money was made from the sale, who bought it, and when it sold. At the bottom of the window, your total number of sales and the amount of money you’ve made are displayed.

The Buyers window lists all the players that have purchased items from you and how much they’ve spent, as well as how many items they have bought from you.  The bottom of this window displays the number of buyers that you’ve had — and if a character has been deleted, the name is blank.

Lastly, the Items window lists each item you’ve ever sold, how many of each item you’ve sold, and how much money you’ve made from the item as well as how much you’ve earned per sale.  If the prices were different, I think that what it does is just divides the total by how many you’ve sold.

This add-ons options can be found by typing /ms, with /ms window bringing up the previously mentioned windows.  In the configuration window (/ms config), you can set “people of interest” so that certain player names stand out (if, for example, you’re monitoring that well-known glyph seller who keeps buying out all the cheap glyphs and flipping them).  The core configuration tab is made up of very basic options, and even allows you to only show certain types of buyer — guildmates, friends, and people of interest.

If you want to track what’s selling and what your profits are like from different items, I suggest this add-on.  It’s excellent for that, and it’s helping me figure out what I need to buy when I do my rounds — items that sell regularly are what I keep in stock, while items that aren’t selling, or that sell at lower prices, I don’t worry about so much.  I use this add-on alongside Accountant Classic, which I use because it shows non-auction data.  I can track incoming and outgoing gold that’s completely unrelated to my markets, like from quest rewards, loot, repairs, trading, merchants, etc.

Anyway, I highly recommend checking out MySales and giving it a try.  It’s a wonderful tool that should be part of every gold-making toolkit.

 

Dear Guild Leaders: Don’t Ignore Your Members’ Concerns

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A new individual joined a roleplaying guild.  Existing members of said guild, who knew this roleplayer and had a history with them, expressed concern and offered proof of the individual’s ill fit with the guild to the leader.  Instead of taking and considering this information, the guild leader refused it, so the concerned individuals then said, “Alright, but we are not going to RP with this person, we are going to have to ignore them, but we will be polite.”

What did the guild leader do?

a. Change their tune and ask to see the information that made the concerned react this way.
b. Accept this, with the understanding that they would have to quietly deal with whatever fall-out would occur.
c. Chide the concerned individuals for causing drama and give them the boot.

If you answered anything but ‘c’, you are wrong.

This is not nearly the correct way to deal with this situation.

Once the potential problem member is accepted, you have two options:  You can take a look at the evidence, then wait and see what happens and if the person actually does show their ass … or you can take a look at the evidence and if it does worry you, you can tell them they are not a good fit and it’s time to go.  That is what the Harbingers wound up doing with the Ranger who gave a friend and, eventually, myself, some problems last year — the leadership took the evidence of their final blow-up in channel and decided it was time for them to go.  You absolutely do not ignore your members’ concerns because that is a douche move.

When anybody essentially says “I cannot deal with this person and will have to stay away from them”, the correct response is not the one that makes that person into the bad guy.  If one of your members, or several, have to ignore or stay away from another person within the guild, chances are there is an issue that needs to somehow be addressed.

There is no easy way to do this.  If you accept the need to ignore the problem individual and that individual then turns around and throws a fit upon finding out that they are being ignored, you will need to step in.  You will need to be firm.  You will need to express the importance of keeping such personal issues between those involved and keeping the drama away from everyone else, and you will need to state, quite plainly, that they are to leave those people alone.

Or, you can avoid the problem entirely by admitting that a mistake was made in admitting the individual into the guild, that you have found that they are not a good fit, and then send them packing.  Can this create other problems?  Of course.  If the problem player has a reputation in the outside world, however, the chances of this coming back to bite you are extremely low.

Punishing people for trying to protect themselves from shit hitting the fan, however, is not cool.

I definitely will not be involving myself with the guild in question when I am able to get back onto my account because I simply cannot support a leader that can’t see the danger in what they are doing.