Who should pay for Guild Vent and Website?

I’m angry about a guild issue, and venting on this blog seems appropriate. Normally I don’t publish guild stuff because it keeps the morale higher and most people don’t need to know. However this scenario is guild wide and I suspect something that other guilds face frequently too.

Basically who should pay for a Guild’s out-of-game services?

e.g. Ventrillo, or whatever voice chat, or the website, or hosting, or whatever.

For our guild the cost of these services has been paid for primarily by the guild officers, with a few donations from some players along the way. I took up the Vent costs a while back from another Officer who had been paying them for years. Another officer has paid for almost all our other web hosting services for many years. Recently I decided that paying for a service that I almost never used was pointless, so I asked for donations and/or other solutions.

I think there has been three donations since then. Not even close to enough to cover any one service, let alone Web and Vent.

A few players stepped up to discuss it, and a few made donations. I really appreciate the time, effort and donations of those people.

The other 12-15+ people in the guild who raid 3x nights a week and use Vent all the time have given nothing. They turn up, raid, and go.

The vent server will stop working any day now because I’ve stopped the account. We are discussing options, but without donations the costs just pass to another of the officers who is being too generous with his money. The silent majority of our raiders who use the service have not helped at all.

I’m angry that others have not donated.

I’m disappointed that other raiders don’t care enough to help.

It would take about a cup of coffee a month from each raider to pay for all our services easily. In fact we’d probably have huge amounts of cash left over. It could be one coffee every three months from each of them and we’d still be fine.

e.g. 20 raiders x $3.50 per quarter =  $280. Even if I exclude the few folk who have already donated or already paid up regularly we could still have just less than $200 to pay for this stuff.

So I have to ask – who should pay? I guess I expect raiders to contribute, but most do not.

Is that view unreasonable?

It is reasonable to be in a guild and never contribute to any of the out-of-game costs?

Should the officers or GM alone pay for all the extra services?

My advice to others is to think about what you are using, who is paying, and what you get out of it.I’m done paying for others to raid on my dime.

Kill everything and loot the corpses, TyphoonAndrew.

 

Paying for a turbo-wow-iphone app?

So the apps for playing wow away from wow will cost a little bit. Like using the AH from an iPhone, nice idea. What is your squeal price for this?

• the interface and features have to be freaky-high quality to be even worth pondering.
• the free version of the iphone app had better stay, because cheap wow’ers (like me) are not keen to miss a bit of functionality; particularly if it gets taken away for a paid version.
• If they start charging for the app and then remove the free one, does that mean that we can get back all the free versions that Blizzard shutdown a while back?

It rings false to me that this should be a paid app, unless of course the fee is so damn small that they’re basically giving it away. Then again that statement is interesting in itself.  That just means I’m not actually adverse to a purchase, just that my squeal price for an app is not the same as everyone else. $1 yep, $3 probably not, $10 piss off jerk.

So my cost is basically a coffee. If it gives value and costs a coffee, I’d get it. If it costs a lunch its out. If it costs a dinner I’ll get pleasure when I hear folks using it, because they’re making me feel that they’re that much more crazy about this wow offline-online thing than I am.

The way we as consumers purchase is well understood, and I think that one thing intelligent marketing and product types understand is how to figure the best squeal point to capture the most money by the end of the product life. More power to them, in fact I respect the math and theory that goes in to it.

Paid Faction Change

Faction change was announced a few days ago, and its been a heated and typically whine filled debate.

Good god wow community, quit your bitching. Folks seem determined to crap on any idea, change, or shift in the game. I like reading the constructive feedback, can stand the “but this might break…” posts, but there seems to be a solid contingent of players who are determined to find anything that is new and bitch.

Like I said in one of the threads on project lore:

There is no gear, achievement, etc issue that cannot be solved with a little logic.

The players who want this service will pay well for it, and it pretty obviously not aimed at players who are happy to re-roll. Its not aimed at hardcore “back in my day..” players either. The players who want it will also accept some fudging of results too. Its aimed at players who wish to play without re-playing the content. And they’ll have to pay – more power to ’em.

Just like paid toon transfer (or the barber shop, recruit a friend, easy modes, or frigging anything) you don’t have to use it and it does not hurt your game if somebody else does.

C’mon guys, there are great things to talk about.

• Players might to to play with their friends otherwise lost to other factions.
• It can be used with some rules to help realm balance.
• You can switch a toon over to see how the other side of the game without starting from scratch.

I’d like to see them allow the races to stay the same, but the toon make a permanent Faction change. There is no class unbalance anymore (shaman vs paladin); so having a Human traitor to the Alliance; or an Orc who was raised by elves but did not revolt like Thrall is a cool idea.

Give the player base one Traitor per server limit, and see what the RP realms do. They’ll go nuts with stories, movies, and all sorts of roleplay.

ps. yup, I know I bitch like the rest of them from time to time. Ohhh the irony.