A GM asked in Guild chat over the weekend pre patch “How do I get people to read Boss Strats?” just after asking the question ” What do you mean that Talent points are getting reset next week?
My point is: He was trying to encourage people to do some non compulsory – non enforcable homework on a game. Yet had not been keeping up todate with the information that there was a total game mechanic alteration to occur in days.
I’m an information Junkie. I love my Rss. It lets me read, and flick through information which may or may not be , Entertaining, Informatative, thoughful, In my google reader I can Star things, and that lets me go back over them. I check my Realm forums, Guild relations, as well as Peek at Blog Azeroth, and if My guild has an active forum I am also a Lurker there, some of that takes time, Sometimes its information overload. There are only so many entries I want to read about Blizzcon, or Beta, or how to do an instance,
But thats me, and I would say alot of bloggers would have a Rss set up of some type – we write because we communicate, and communicate means reading as well as writing, its also Knowledge, and searching for knowlede and I believe ” Knowledge is as the quote goes.. Power.” Its control, its the ability to judge, and decide, and be aware of things rather then being blindsided, and even Googling good for geriatrics: study The Article quotes Garry Small
“Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.” *
Google is Omnipotent
What got most of us into blogging was either a history of blogging about something.. or we read other Wow blogs. Hence searching for information and or entertainment. I googled something about Macros I think, and found one blog, and that lead me to other blogs, and then to a community, and so on.
When you play a game of solitaire – or chess, the rules don’t change, you can customise the board colours, or the peices, but you don’t need to read patch notes to learn new rules. A MMORPG is fluid, and evolving, new features, rules, classes, storylines. To get the most out of WOW you need to do more then click buttons. You need to understand a great many things. You need to learn, collect knowledge, or at least know where to get that from, even as basic as a city Guard for directions
If not for bloggers, and Wow Insider or other of the various Wow gossip sites ( with varying degrees of authenticity, and reliable, non gold smamming content) , would someone who only checked their update screen when they log in, or the news on the screen when your application loads up information be keep up todate enough?
No. Obviously not.
I checked the Warcraft news listings, which the average joe or jane are exposed to and they include, in no particular order – Arena, Screenshots, Blizzcon, Contests, Manga art, Wotlk Comics, Halloween contests, and there on October 15th the day of the Patch is links to 3.0.2 Patch information – Bit late for that,..
I think most of Blizzards sucessful communication about changes is done mainly through social networking – Forums( eg bloggers)The social Networking aspect reaches more people, and more people effectively. So how does the average Joe and Jane find out about these things? If not for someone telling them The information is out there. Google is your friend. The Wow main site, is an excellent number to have, an RSS feed to everything is like having your own personal cranial uplink to an information net. ( Can you tell I read Sci Fic?)
When I brought up my excitement in guild chat, about alot of the changes comming soon, I was greeted with a HUH? – I gave them a brief rundown, and those interested went looking for information.. ( they don’t know about my blog. Shhhhh)
I think there would be alot of players who don’t have the patchnotes bookmarked on their browser , or an RSS feed, or read any regular publication or notice as to the changes in game.
but the flipside is, are we who know insane? or have too much time? Does there need to be the discussion and speculation on the information those in the know do? Is there too much information – reliable and not. I’m not always reliable. I’m not a blue.
Would logging into to find massive changes with no prior knowledge to the changes make your gaming experience better or worse?
For me – I would get upset that I wasn’t informed
What would improve communication to the average player? – What would make them want to learn more? – I don’t know. If I knew that you wouldnt need to poke them to read boss strats.
I propose a notice board outside each major cities Bank – with clickable notes, and reminders to check out the wow website, and upcomming things like patches and shutdowns. Its like clicking on the wanted adds for quests. Its fun! – and interactive, and most importantly its in your face. I have a RSS Habit, which at worse case prompts me to look for more information elsewhere. I have a online new reading habit. ect ect ect.
Keeping informed is a habit – and depending on the degree you do it, ( and the hours you have) the easier it is to keep that habit, the better informed players will be.
* I tried looking at the Pych Journals orginal source, and there is only a abstract available online.
Provided by 
Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
That’s a good idea with the notice boards. I find that I am in the same position as you are, most of the guildies have been psting, emailling and even sms’ing me asking ‘how many herbs do I need to level inscription?’ and ‘how to I open the achievement window? What are they lol!’. I try and point the majority of them in the direction of blogs, etc (and sometimes I can direct people to really good class blogs that actually have made a difference to our raids) but the same people seem to always ask the same questions.
If it only cut down on the trade chat panic by 1%, that’s still one hell of a lot 🙂
The notice board is a great idea.
There are a ton of people on my server asking very basic questions – what’s spellpower? Where did my mount go? Why are my talent points refunded?
You’re right – Blizz doesn’t do a very good job of informing everyone. I get 97% of my information from other blogs, and the other 3% from stalking blue posts on the forums, which the average player isn’t doing.
information is a tricky thing. You can build as many external resources outside of any given game and notice clearly that only a fraction of the actual game population goes out to consult these sources heavily.
In the end the only thing that I have found to be effective when I was still doing some work on an ultima online emulator was to provide information resources in-game.
This can be like you said a notice board but also can be developed as an extensive help feature. A little question mark on the right screens with a simplified explanation of things listed on that screen.
A maintainable guild notice board where your GL can post boss strategies. A calender that informs people when the raid is and where the related boss strategy can be found.
The amount of people reading ‘additional’ information about anything in-game is directly related to ‘how easy’ this information is to access.
The first question is always: Why would I have to leave wow to learn about wow?
There will always be people that don’t read the extra information so the ‘necessary’ information should be easily accessible preferably from an in-game source.
“Why would I have to leave wow to learn about wow?”
very true.. Its not often I use the knowledge base which is an information resource available in wow, and its probably underutilised – and they seem to have alot of ” OMG Help me’s as their top issues abouty the major changes,
but they don’t – and can’t cover the intricies – but I guess thats not the idea.. they are basic information sheets..