Category Archives: Guides

MMO Gaming Security

Over the past couple of days we’ve started hearing about a lot of account hacks, phishing scams, and attempted password resets coming from Guild Wars 2 players. This kind of thing isn’t new – any time a new major (and sometimes not-so-major) MMO comes out, you’ll see the gold-sellers start trying to get into accounts to claim their piece of the pie. Of course, some MMOs like WoW and Rift have implemented authentication systems, (and that’s a very good thing!) but at the same time I think we’ve gotten a bit spoiled by the authenticators. You don’t want to be in a position where your only defense against a hacker is an authenticator.

How do gold sellers try to hack your account? Easy: they scrape fansites, guild websites, forums, social media, and in some cases have databases full of known MMO account emails and passwords. Fansites, guild websites, and forums don’t always have the best security – they’re not your bank or your workplace, so the likelihood that your email address and password is encrypted is usually fairly low. I’m not accusing those websites of being corrupted, but they can be easy targets. So if you’re using the same email and password for your game account as you use on game-related websites, Twitter, or Facebook, you’re setting yourself up to be compromised – in fact, you very possibly already are compromised.

Say your email address is gamer123@email.com and your password is 123456. You use that email account for your regular email, but you also have used it to sign up for your guild website and accounts on a few popular gaming sites. You also use this email for your WoW account, your Rift account, and your GW2 account.

It’s not difficult for a hacker to get your email address from one of the gaming websites, or a compromised game database, or from your blog. Then, all they have to do is start sending official-looking emails to your email account telling you that somebody is trying to change your password – and you need to click this link to verify your correct password! Needless to say, all this will do is give or verify your password to the hacker and they are in.

Don’t despair though! There are a few things you can do to strengthen the security on your accounts, courtesy of Mr. Moxie, a cyber-security engineer and ethical hacker:

1. Have a unique, fresh email address for every major game. Do not use these accounts anywhere else.

Quick anecdote: I have one email address I use for regular email, one email address I use for all gaming forums, guild websites, and other website junk, and then a unique email address for each major MMO that I’ve played. The passwords are all different (though I have a system so that I can easily remember them). I have never received a phishing email on the actual game email addresses. I have received plenty of phishing emails on the email address that I use for gaming sites and forums. Sneaky little bastards!

I can’t emphasize this enough – use different emails. Don’t use your game emails for anything else – ever.

2. Pick better passwords.

Some folks will tell you to pick a phrase like “Charlie Went To The Grocery Store For Pickled Herring 2 Go” and then use “CWTTGSFPH2G” for your password. That’s always confusing to me. The absolute best password you can have is at least 14 characters long, the longer the better. You can even use a combination of 4 or more words, such as “sunshinehairslowbrain”, which would take 4 trillion years for a desktop PC to crack. Adding numbers and symbols would be even better. If you want to test your password to see how secure it is, take a look at http://howsecureismypassword.net.
It’s a great resource that Mr. Moxie passed along to me a while back. Just make sure that you don’t pick words that would be easily guessed, like your kid’s names or your pet’s names!

3. If you get emails about your account status, never assume they are real.

Never click a link from an email to sign in to your game account. Always go straight to the game’s website and sign in that way. If you get emails saying that somebody is trying to change your password, don’t panic. Change the email address on the account.

4. Be careful about what gaming websites you visit and sign up for.

There’s a lot of sketchy gaming websites out there. Use Adblock Plus or other adblocking software in your browser. Don’t click advertisements, even if they seem innocuous. Don’t download mods or add-ons unless they come from a trusted and verified source.

5. Get an authenticator.

In the case of Guild Wars 2, we’re still waiting for the authenticator. While you can use the steps above to greatly minimize your chances of being hacked, authenticators ultimately are the best protection you can have. As soon as they are released, get one ASAP.

So You Want to Recruit, Eh? Part 2

It’s been a while since the last installment of this series, but I didn’t want to drop this part completely! Now that I’m sitting in a hotel room for a few hours killing time, it seems like a good time to finish it up. Today’s topic is: What every guild recruitment message should include.

I’m specifically going to target forum recruitment threads for today. Everything here is also applicable to in-game recruitment messages, although you’d obviously want to condense those down so that there’s not a HUGE WALL O’ TEXT hitting people’s chat walls. I’m also going to assume that you’ve read So You Want to Recruit, Eh? Part 1 already. If you haven’t, I really recommend it.

Okay, so let’s get started!

Your Guild Name: Of course, it’s a no-brainer.

Your Guild Website URL: These days, it’s a given that unless you run a guild that consists only of people you know in real life, you need a website. If you’re wanting to recruit, you definitely need a website, if only to have a convenient way to facilitate communication with potential recruits. If you’re not a web guru or don’t want to spend money on hosting, never fear. There are fantastic guild hosting websites that will host your website for free and come with pre-installed templates to choose from. I’ve had extensive experience with GuildLaunch and I’ve had great experiences with their customer support, however there are lots of newer choices out there such as Enjin & Guildomatic.

My only other suggestion regarding guild websites is to please, please, please keep the design clean. Try to stay away from garish color combinations, busy backgrounds, and animated images since they can be difficult to read and tend to look like a amateur MySpace profile. Some folks will be viewing your website at work or school, so make it easy for them, okay?

Server, Faction, & Time Zone: Particularly if you’re going to be posting this in general gaming forums or on 3rd-party websites, people need to know where to find you. If you’re playing WoW or another MMO that has the same server names on both US and EU servers, be sure to indicate US or EU as well.

Type of Guild: Are you a raiding guild, a PvP guild, a social guild, a leveling guild? Are you hardcore? Semi-hardcore? Casual? Casual-Core? I don’t even know what that last one means, but whatever floats your boat.

Raid/PvP days & times: If you’re a raiding guild with set raiding times, those need to be listed. If you raid on Mondays, Tuesdays & Thursdays and an applicant has class on Tuesday & Thursday evenings, it’s not going to work.

Classes Recruiting: If you’re a raiding or PvP guild and are looking for level-capped players of specific classes or roles to round out your teams, by all means mention that. If you’re more casual and are accepting all classes, roles, and levels, mention that too.

Attendance Schedule: If you require members to have a minimum attendance or activity level, this also needs to be mentioned.

Officer Names: Please have a list of officers for potential recruits to contact. Include frequently played alts of those officers as well. As a new recruit it’s super frustrating to always look for one particular character of one particular officer. If the recruit goes several days without seeing that character online, they’ll likely write you off and continue their search.

Guild Flavor: Here’s what really makes or breaks guild recruitment posts. The above items are informational, objective, and needed, but by themselves they don’t really set your guild apart from other guilds out there in a significant way. There are thousands of hardcore Horde guilds that raid 3 days a week in the EST time zone. So why would a recruit want to join your guild in particular?

Think about what makes your guild unique, and what type of players you want to attract. You want to talk about your guild in a manner that would appeal to your ideal candidate. Show them, in a descriptive paragraph or three, exactly what your guild is about and why they should choose your guild. You could include:

  • your guild history
  • your guild philosophy
  • the fun/interesting things you’ve done as a guild
  • your top achievements as a guild
  • your current member demographics
  • the atmosphere in guild chat
  • guild rules/guidelines (top-level only, save the details for guild website)
  • guild logos/images (on forums where these are allowed)
  • guild videos (if applicable & allowed)

Basically, you want to present your guild in such a way that your ideal candidate realizes that this is the guild they’ve been waiting for. If you’re a family-type of casual guild with fun and silliness, show that in your recruitment post. Conversely, if you’re a serious hardcore PvP guild that participates primarily in battleground premades and arenas, present yourselves that way.

Whatever you do though, don’t be dishonest. Sooner or later your recruits will see what the atmosphere is like for themselves, and you don’t want them feeling like the guild was not as advertised. They’ll leave quickly and you’ll have wasted your time and theirs.

Now, if you used all of the components above, you’ll have a good start on a detailed & well-thought out recruitment post. Take your time and write the post in Word or Notepad first. Use spell-check and pay attention to punctuation. This is going to be your main guild marketing piece and in most cases will be the only chance you have to make a good first impression on recruits. Save your post, and then it’ll be easy to copy/paste it to whatever forums you desire.

So You Want to Recruit, Eh? Part 1

A while back I wrote an article about guild recruitment and the various methods that you can use to recruit for WoW guilds. As is usually the case, there was so much more that I wanted to say about guild recruitment, but I restrained myself for space and clarity. I’d like to re-visit that topic and discuss something that I touched upon…

How do you write a good guild recruitment message that will get responses?

Unfortunately, there’s no one good formula for guild recruitment messages. If your guild message looks like this:

Knights of The Azerothian Hamster are recruiting all classes, all races, all levels! We are a fun, friendly, mature guild with 5 bank tabs, a tabard, and a website! PST for more info!

… then you’re doing it wrong. Most all guilds would need to be “fun” and “friendly” to even exist, and having 5 bank tabs, a tabard, and a website are all pretty standard these days.

So! Before you even start making that macro to spam Trade Chat or start writing that recruitment post on the realm forums, you need to plan a bit first. Ask yourself three questions, and answer them honestly:

What kind of guild are you? Are you a raiding guild? A PvP guild? A Role-Play guild? A leveling guild? A social guild? A little-bit-of-everything guild? An achievement guild? A friends-and-family guild? The best guilds are those that have a clear goal, direction or purpose. It’s impossible to be all things to all people, and if you try you’ll likely be setting yourself up for failure. But it’s very possible to be very good at one or two things. If you want to be a guild that raids on a casual schedule, that’s fine! If you’re a leveling guild that focuses on running dungeons at level and group questing, excellent! If you’re a hardcore PvP guild that runs rated battlegrounds and arenas, that works too!

But whatever you are, you need to have a purpose in mind, and you need to be able to communicate that clearly in your guild recruitment message.

What kind of members do you want to recruit? I’ll say this up front: As a GM/Recruitment Officer, there’s a certain amount of pickiness that you certainly want to have, whatever your goal. You want to recruit players that will:

  • help the guild further it’s goals, AND
  • will blend with the existing guild culture.

This is key when you’re building a guild to be stable, healthy, and have low turnover. I think we’ve all been in guilds where things were rolling along just fine and suddenly a new member comes along and starts causing issues. It usually boils down to one of two things: either they have different goals/expectations, or their personality is clashing with other guild members.

Look at your current members first. Are they a laid-back bunch? Then recruiting driven, aggressive players will likely not go over well. Do you have hardcore players that love the numbers game and scoff at fluff items? Then recruiting pet collectors might be a bad idea. Are they a rowdy crew with R-rated guild chat? Then you may want to warn people about that up front so that you don’t get new recruits that are offended and leaving in a huff 5 minutes after they’ve been invited. Are most of your members in high school and college? Or maybe they’re all older adults? Always remember that every guild has a culture of it’s own, and you need to recruit with that in mind.

You don’t want to attract just any people. You want to attract the right people.

What is unique about your guild? If you say “tabard”, “website”, or “bank tabs”… Wrong Answer! Think about this one for a bit, because the correct answer could be just about anything else. Have you been around for years? Are you the only guild on your server with an insane amount of female dwarf rogues? Do you have a guild culture of squirrel-worship? Do you have a YouTube channel? Is your guild role-play centered around a specific faction, race, or class? Do you have weekly silly game nights? Are you known for server-firsts? Do you have more than 10 guildies with the Insane title? Are you lore and story geeks? Are you all members of the Armed Forces? Are most of your members from Albuquerque?

Give people a reason to be interested in your guild. Be unique! Most everybody has something silly and/or interesting about their guild. Take advantage of it.

Once you have those three questions answered, you should start to see a pretty clear picture of who and what your guild is, and it’ll make writing that recruitment message much easier.

Next time: What every guild recruitment message should include!

Guilds! Guilds! Get Yer Fresh Guilds!


I have the privilege of being the recruitment officer for my guild. It’s something that I enjoy doing overall, since I do like meeting and talking with new people and I really do believe in what our guild is and what we represent. But sometimes I get slightly frustrated with the state of guild recruitment in WoW. It seems like players don’t have one specific, easy-to-use place to look for a new guild, so players up to this point have come up with all sorts of ways to do it.

What are the normal ways to advertise your guild?

You could advertise in your realm forums: This seems to work the best, particularly since it’s primarily seen by people who are already playing on your realm and it’s the first place most people look when they decide it’s time for a change. The bad thing about the realm forums is that they only reach a limited number of people. There might be a slew of people out there that would be a great fit for your guild, but they just haven’t found your server yet. You also open your guild up to possibly being trolled, although most of the time the trolls will leave you alone as long as you don’t have a bad reputation.

You could advertise in the official WoW recruitment forums: Honestly, these forums are a mess. They have them split into two boards, one for Alliance and one for Horde. If you actually peruse those forums they have hundreds of posts, all with a slightly varying but generally similar subject line: 11/12 25H – 12/12 10H Pro Core LFM Heal/DPS/Tank. First off… that is soulless and reads like a line in an IT hardware catalog. Second, all of these posts have been bumped hundreds of times, probably several times a day, and those boards move FAST. Wait an hour and you’re on the third or fourth page already.  So you’re left furiously bumping your recruitment post so that you might possibly get seen among all the eye-bleeding pandemonium.

The other side of this method is that the guild representative can peruse those forums for players who are advertising looking for a new guild. Again, this is hard on the eyes and involves scanning through about 20 pages of posts, searching for a needle that might not even be in the haystack. But, it can also be very rewarding if you do find some promising players.

You could advertise in trade chat: Oh yes, we’ve all seen it…

Knights of The Azerothian Hamster are recruiting all classes, all races, all levels! We are a fun, friendly, mature guild with 5 bank tabs, a tabard, and a website! PST for more info!

Granted, the KotAH might be a really fantastic group of people. But that advertisement really doesn’t tell anybody what the guild is about. Most guilds would need to be “fun” and “friendly” in order to retain members, and “mature” could mean several different things. Most guilds also have bank tabs, a tabard, and a website, so that’s not necessarily something to brag about. Even worse, if you’re advertising in trade chat there’s no telling what kind of folks will see it and want to join. The few times that I’ve tried it, I’ve generally gotten whispers like “invte now plz” or “i join ur guild”. Responses like that get put on /ignore.

What are some alternate methods?

Alternate guild recruitment websites: Sites like lookingforguild.net are a good option if you are looking for a quieter and much more user-friendly place to post. I really like their layout and it’s much easier to search for recruitment posts by faction, battlegroup, server, server type, playstyle, raid times, progression… just about any possible criteria you might have can be filtered. Plus, you don’t have to deal with trolling. The bad thing is that of course it’s a third party website, so you likely won’t be seen by as many people.

If I could shoot for the moon, I’d love it if Blizzard implemented a similar system on their website. Then instead of maintaining server guild lists and individual recruitment posts, a guild could set themselves up once and be done. Entries could be easily changed and maintained at any time to reflect guild needs.

Mentions on fansites: Probably one of the more difficult things to do. This includes getting mentioned on WoW.com or in podcasts. First, you have to do (or plan) something really nifty and unusual. Then you have to notify those outlets about what you did, and hope and pray that it’s a slow enough news day for them to take notice. If they do mention you, what kind of recruitment that’ll generate is a bit iffy. I’ve seen some guilds grow by leaps and bounds after a WoW.com announcement, and I’ve seen others that didn’t see any new recruits at all.

Multi-media: Of course, if you’re so inclined you can always start your own WoW fansite, podcast,or YouTube channel and make your own splash. Look no further than the Instance podcast or the MooingDruid’s Crimson Blood Clan videos for great examples of this. This isn’t an option for everybody but if you have the resources and the creative and technical talent to do it, go for it!

What kind of results can be expected?

A few months back, I went on a recruiting spree for my guild. I tried all of the above methods for two months, except for the trade chat (of course) and the multi-media option… my skills aren’t quite up to that point yet! But here’s the results we got with a fairly detailed post describing our guild:

Server Forums : 13 recruits
Guild Recruitment Forums: 11 recruits
LookingForGuild.net: 2 recruits
WoW.com: 2 recruits

28 recruits over a two month period… not bad! However, don’t get too excited yet.

15% of the applications were rejected outright.
30% of the recruits were invited but didn’t make it through our associate period.

So really, we ended up with a little more than half of the recruits actually becoming full members. We’re still quite happy with those numbers, as we got some really excellent players that fit with the overall group dynamics and atmosphere. It’s important to not get discouraged when recruits don’t work out. If it isn’t a good fit for both the guild and the player, it’s much better to acknowledge that and give each other a friendly “Best of Luck!” before moving on.

What about you folks? Have any of you discovered any other unusual methods of recruiting that have worked pretty well for you?