Responsible Guild Leadership

Government is a human institution that exists to exact order on an otherwise chaotic society. Its citizens willingly surrender some amount of freedom to be able to take some solace in a sense of security.

Because government is conceived by the people, it must uphold the interests of the people, lest its purpose be defeated. Responsible government is a principle that attempts to achieve this by giving the people a direct say, or at least allow them to elect representatives. Under this framework, the government becomes directly responsible or accountable to the citizens it governs.

This widely accepted (by many democratic countries) principle can readily be applied to guild leadership in World of Warcraft. The guild's officers simply need to act in the best interests of the membership.

Succeeding at not being trampled

FailBot has been retired, but EnsidiaFails has taken over! What remains the same is the humiliation that arises if a boss ability, if avoidable, is not handled properly.

In the Trial of the Crusader, the Northrend Beast Icehowl casts Massive Crash, which can send players scattered throughout the instance. If players do not move out in time to avoid the following Trample, the situation can become very messy (in both senses of the word!).

Dilemmas in Guild Matchmaking and Promotion

In the ideal world, prospective guild members would quickly find the guild of their dreams, and the guild would swiftly recruit them. However, in reality, asymmetric information exists, and this hampers the guild matchmaking process.

Asymmetric information occurs when one party (in this case, the person or guild) knows something that the other does not, and such knowledge cannot easily transfer from one to the other. This may be because of significant distance between the two, or one does not quite believe what the other claims.

WoW Mathematics: My Large Brown Sack

To help find items easily, players often organise them in their bags in a certain way. It might be interesting to know just how many ways those items can be arranged, and what happens of those arrangements are restricted in some way.

Permutations are very useful in this process. It is a special case of the fundamental counting technique where an object, once picked, cannot be picked again, and so the available pool of objects decreases by one each time. Consider a certain 10-slot bag, the Large Brown Sack...

Making Sense of Financial Statement Ratios

Many basic features of a business' business can be gleaned from their set of financial statements. However, the more intricate details can be found through ratio analysis.

The financial statement's figures are measured in currency units, which have little value in themselves because they do not consider the scale of business operations. By comparing relative sizes of these figures, this problem with units of measurement are eliminated by removing the units entirely. The resulting ratios are scale-free and can be used in comparing:

• Two businesses of different sizes
• The same business as it grows (or collapses) over time.

Analysts have devised myriad ratios to use in this type of analysis. What do they mean in real-world terms?

Five reasons to like Bears

World of Warcraft's portrayals of things are noticeably cartoony when compared to real life equivalents. Bears and druids in Bear Form are no different, being any combination of cute, adorable, cuddly, pitiable and likeable.

This regular will dissect the art of various characters to identify some features that appeal to the inner child.

1. Wide abdomen
A wide figure appeals to the touch when hugging, especially if it is soft and plushy. There is little question to why bear hugs, in particular, feel so nice!

Ulduar Protocol

I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames. Their denizens fading without so much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and raised in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once... A million, million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?

Algalon's dying breath

Considering the tremendous amount of history contained in the Storm Peaks, it might be worth finding out how Ulduar got there. A history of Azeroth's defense mechanisms follows. It all started during the Ordering...

Parasitic, necrophotic symbiotes
Azeroth was not as peaceful and beautifully formed as it currently is. Before the Titans' arrival, the elements would rage across the world in endless conflict, and the Old Gods would exact chaos upon it.