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This week the thumb twiddling has started as news trickles out of the PTR, and the ICC farm drudges on. In the midst of recruitment challenges, Haf and Stomp are still dedicated to progressing through Normal Mode and onward into Heroic Mode ICC!

Also this week, an interesting listener e-mail poses the question: What is the most efficient way to start a guild in this period before Cataclysm? All of this, an much more is available for your listening pleasure via iTunes, RSS feed, direct download, or you can stream it from our website!

Links to topics discussed this week:

• ICC Buff Increased to 20%
• Remote AH Now LIVE on all Servers
• Operation Echo Isles and Gnomeregan Testing on PTR
• Guide to Mouseover Macros
• Elitist Group Gearscore Addon

EXCLUSIVE THIS WEEK

• Discover the amazing lore behind the most hated zone in Azeroth, The Barrens, in this week’s Lands of Lore with Eulxie
• Catch Stomp on The Incredible Podcast of Amazing Awesomeness with Mike Schramm and Turpster!
• Make sure to stop by THIS FRIDAY at 7PM CST for the Priest Round Table with Derevka and Ava from Tales of a Priest!

Special Thanks to our Sponsors
WootLoots.com, UGT-Servers.com,and J!NX.com use the code RAWRCAST for 10% off!
| facebook | twitter | call us: 559-949-RAWR | discussion forums | calender of events | support the rawr |
| DFW WoW Meet-up Squad | Austin WoW Meet-up Squad |

Music Provided by: The Erotics – Anything

Do you often experience:

• Unrealistic expectations of success?
• Feelings of grandeur and outrageous contempt for your fellow players?
• A feeling that you are THE BEST player on your server and other players are lucky to be in the same instance as you?

The symptoms you’re feeling are common to players with Nerd Rage and Entitlement Syndrome (NRES). Don’t worry, there is a cure for people with NRES. Follow the 3 Step Road to Recovery below that has benefited many players in their fight against NRES. Read more…

It’s official! Plans are underway for our next community round table Special Episode, featuring some of the World of Warcraft community’s most talented writers, players, and friends.

Come represent your class, bring your healing questions, interact engage, and completely derail Hafrot as often as possible!

hugesack@rawrcast.com | @Rawrcast on twitter | facebook | 559-949-RAWR

Make sure to catch up on this week’s happenings via iTunes, RSS feed, direct download, or you can stream it from our website!

Links to topics discussed this week:

• Blizzcon Tickets Go On Sale June 2nd and 5th
• Patchwerk Soloed by Rogue
• AVR Mod Deemed HAX; Will no longer work after 3.3.5
• New Quest Objective Interface Being Added
• Remote AH on iPhone Now Live
• Video Game World Sizes Compared

Special Thanks to our Sponsors
WootLoots.com, UGT-Servers.com,and J!NX.com use the code RAWRCAST for 10% off!
| facebook | twitter | call us: 559-949-RAWR | discussion forums | calender of events | support the rawr |
| DFW WoW Meet-up Squad | Austin WoW Meet-up Squad |

Music Provided by: Inner Surge – Light a Fire

Now that everyone has calmed down about the looming specter of micro-transactions coming to WoW to change the face of the game, let’s stir up the embers! There have been several arguments made against Blizzard’s move to sell the Celestial Steed and one in particular has always stood on shaky legs. The argument is that Blizzard has so much money already, they have no need for more profits.

This idea stands in contrast to the very foundations of western capitalism. Stop making money? In America? Never going to happen.  Guess what, Blizzard making more money is actually a good thing for us! Increased profits for Blizzard leads to more development opportunities for Blizzard as a company (and I can assure you that Blizzard didn’t distribute the funds throughout the office or buy everyone a new pool or give out a couple massive bonuses, that money was reinvested in the company in the hopes that it will generate further profits). More development opportunities for Blizzard means more great games from Blizzard. I don’t know about everyone else but that sounds pretty fucking good to me! Millions anxiously await new Blizzard titles for years and years. I for one, would love to see them come out more frequently.

The other argument that is particularly thin revolves around the amount of time that went into the creation of the Celestial Steed in relation to the amount of money the mount has generated. Consider this; Blizzard spent five years in development making WoW. Five years with no profits to show from the game at all. Now its easy for all of us to play Monday Morning Quarterback and say WoW was a going to be a mega hit so what’s the big deal? The big deal is that success was never ensured! There was no one who could have predicted the meteoric rise of WoW and the insane profits that it developed for Blizzard.

Further, after five years in development, Blizzard then went on to spend another five years adding content to the game, a large portion of which was free (meaning you didn’t have to buy an expansion but you did have to pay your monthly bill…which you were paying anyway for access to old content!). During all of that time, Blizzard was erecting the infrastructure to be able to sell the Celestial Mount. So in response to the original point, no, it didn’t take five minutes to make the mount. It took a decade, millions of dollars and the collective will and focus of one of the greatest game developers of all time to make the Celestial Steed.

One parting message to anyone interested in responding: lets try to keep a level head and not descend into some anti-corporate diatribe about the profit motive and how evil it is. This post was not intended to defend capitalism. It was intended to try and provide a different point of view to a controversial topic.

Helllo Rawrcast readers, Cornelious here bringing you another installment of Under the Hood.

Today I wanted to spend some time covering one of the most common issues people face when building or upgrading a computer, balance. There is more than one way that balance plays into all gaming computers but everything boils down to the same goal. Some hardware components are dependent on other parts of your system to send and/or receive information and if these pieces of hardware are not properly matched you could potentially be losing out on a lot of performance. Read more…

As I mentioned in Episode 71, we will be guests on the Wednesday, May 19th broadcast of Barrel Suit on Fishbowl Radio Network. My good friend, Matt (aka. Pig) has asked to join his crew for the morning from 9-11 AM CST, and we couldn’t be more excited. So, if you happen to be near a PC, dial us up over on Ustream for the video feed, or the Fishbowl in the Green Bowl for the audio stream.

I’ll post a link to the recording later on…. but here’s the Ustream feed!

Thanks again to all of our listeners for your continued support!

We are at just the beginning of what I like to call the Great Funk of 2010. Summer is upon us, which is always a big transition for raiding guilds as some people can raid more while others either stop raiding entirely or ease up, but summer is a minor worry for raid leaders compared to the glut of content and the daily news coming out of the Cataclysm Alpha then Beta. Keeping people interested in Wrath content will be a growing challenge over the next few months. Raid leaders know that if they are not prepared to survive the summer and early fall with a stable group of raiders, they will be behind when Cataclysm comes out.

So how do you recruit?

The short answer is.. well, it depends on your guild and focus.

Many guilds are lax on recruitment. Most famously, AIE on the Earthen Ring server recruits new members at the beginning of each month and there are no requirements other than filling out a basic form. They are able to recruit so many people this way, their needs are always taken care of. Ensidia and Premonition, although they do actively recruit, have such high regard that they will always have enough people willing to join them that they can be extremely selective and still survive the funk.

These guilds have very different recruitment models and both can be successful. But for the vast majority of raiding guilds, it is not so simple. Open recruiting waters your talent and personality base down and can cause your better players to defect, while super selective recruiting can result in a negative growth. In many ways, as the pressure to recruit builds, you can feel like you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Remember that recruiting the right people is more important than just recruiting people. A guild comprised of many casual raiders, if you are not a casual raiding guild, will cause your committed raiders to leave and vice-versa.

It doesn’t have to be like that

Recruitment is time consuming, it requires the help of everyone in your guild, and it can be humbling. Everyone focuses on the easiest, but essential, recruiting method:  Guild recruitment threads on the Blizzard forums. That is a given, you should always do that,  but it is only the start and it is the least effective way to recruit.

Shotgun thread method

Instead of just posting on the blizzard forums, make sure you post on every available forum including: mmo-champion, tankspot, wow.com, curse forums, and any other WoW-related forums you can think of. Keep your wowprogress.com guild recruitment profile updated. Raiders who might be looking for new servers or even new guilds on their current servers tend to look at wow-progress  at each guild to see what they are recruiting, their raid schedule, and a link to their forums/website.

Using the WoW Guild Recruitment Forums to Actively Recruit

One of the absolute best ways to recruit is to use the Guild Recruitment forums on the official WoW forums. You would be amazed to see the number of people who post threads there looking for guilds. In fact, so many posts occur in that forum in a single day that it is worth digging several pages in. Need a Shadow Priest to fill a core raid spot? Chances are you will have 2 or 3 candidates in a single day.

Recruiting is work. It is one of the most important functions of guild leadership in a raiding guild. Do it well and your guild will prosper!