Upgrade to GroupCalendar version 4.1

We have officially upgraded to version 4.1 of Group Calendar - upgrade now!

While you are at it, run wowaceupdater or macaceupdater and update your add ons!

Comcast DNS servers issues all up the East Coast

Apparently, Comcast is having all kinds of issues on the East Coast with either storms or [apparently] people driving trucks into Comcast DNS servers. Either way, it has caused massive disruptions to people being online.

Hope everyone is doing well and lets hope this next week fares better!

enjoy the calm, the storm is about to hit - oh goody!

Behind the scenes, there has been a lot of things going on. Online, it has been relatively quiet the past couple of weeks. change is coming. There are a lot of things that change at the end of August and the beginning of September - not the least of which is the number of guild members that come online. Each year, there has been a marked increase in new members joining in September as people return to online and decide to join a new guild. We should be expecting an even larger growth rate given our progression over the summer now squarely into raiding and pushing past Kara.

Our guild has a reputation on the guild as one of the best to level in. Hopefully it is now also earning similar rep about gearing and raiding T4/ZA as we continue to push raiding past Kara.

There will be some hurdles ahead. Not enough people have tanks or healers that are geared to take on main roles. Warhammer Online is coming out in September and we can expect that to be a minor distraction for a month or two. It may even permanently pull some members out of WoW; however, it is a minor blip on the radar for the guild. With many well-geared T6-content raiders ceasing to raid until LK comes out, their guilds are poaching T5 healers/tanks and gearing them to continue raiding - which in turn makes T5 guilds poach T4 geared toons. There are the hurdles of getting people into a habit of being online to raid or to sign up in advance and show up.

Regardless of the list of hurdles or strengths, change is coming.

All of the officers are charged with the responsibility of keeping the train on the tracks and moving forward. The guild objectives for December 31, 2008 include 50% of the guild accounts (players) having at least a level 70 in the guild.

With the upcoming expansion, there is a lot of debate on whether it makes any sense to gear and raid or just wait until the expansion. The officers support whichever side of that argument you want to take. However, we expect you to constantly and consistently work towards having at least one 70 in the guild by Dec 31 and preferably pushing hard to end game level - whichever level that is on Dec 31.

Blinded and Jacofox are tasked with evaluating different reward/looting systems and to make a recommendation based on what they have researched including what they think will work best for our guild based on feedback from the guild. I have already done my research and am awaiting their recommendation. This is both an exercise for them to truly step into their roles as decisive leaders in our guild as well as an opportunity for all members in our guild to build the habit of working with your officers to make changes and improvements to our guild. Take advantage of this time and give them your support.

Currently, our guild website is a domain forwarding to a wordpress blog. We have had other solutions in the past that were under utilized by the larger membership and did not have the convenience of a blog. However, we are currently evaluating some newer options with consideration of features such as forums and tie-ins to looting systems as well as raid management. If you have suggestions to this effect, post a comment to this blogpost and be sure to leave your in game toon’s name so that we can find you in game if we have more questions.

Finally, somewhere in the upcoming two months, based on use, we will upgrade the vent server to enable more connections (it is set to 25 concurrent connections right now) in order to facilitate other groups and raids while we concurrently raid 25-man content.

As you can see, overall we stay ahead of the upcoming changes and needs of the guild based on size and demands. As always, the officers openly welcome comments and suggestions and one of the best ways to get promoted to officer is to take an active role over time in working on the plumbing and wiring that is ever present in the background and keeps the guild on the tracks and moving forward.

Hope you have all had a good summer, welcome back!

storms, tornadoes, power outages and work

hoping everyone made it through the storms, tornadoes, power outages and extended work hours without too much disruption. looking forward to seeing everyone back online safely and with power!

PLAN AHEAD!! Gearing is easier if you Group Up! Use Group Calendar!

No, really. PLAN AHEAD. If you know what instances you need, or what rep faction you need to grind, put events in Group Calendar (everyone can) so that others can sign up to do them with you. Knowing you need something and when you are on, helps everyone plan to be there to help you. Before you add an event to the calendar, check to see if there is another one just like yours where you could sign up and help each other.

If you do not know where to even begin or what to get to gear up, please ask a senior officer. Or just ask anyone in that class. Or just ask in guild chat. Keep asking until you get the answers you need. It is also easy to use Armory and Wowhead to look up someone, see what they are wearing, then go see how you get it.

Use Group Calendar! You need to get into the habit of it anyways as you need to use it to sign up for raids, and to post heroics.

We are on a strong drive to see folks gear up and join the raiding group. We are not asking you to do it alone, however we are asking to have more than a few minutes notice for something that lasts a while. If you leave it to chance that enough people will be on that can help you, well, then you are really just taking your chances and it will likely take a very long time to gear up. Plan it ahead of time and you will be amazed how quickly you get geared up.

a note of caution when recruiting: set expectations

if you blanket macro invite folks into the guild, and do not take the time to explain to them that we split Kara raids over two days and that most folks are gearing up for Kara, or that we are trying to get a 25 man together for the Gruul’s and Mags content, and that we have a solid 2-boss fighting team for ZA but no T5 gear, they might arrive thinking we are geared and ready.

which leads to their departure as soon as they see we do not meet what they thought we were. and that sucks for everyone involved.

so far we have a net gain from the recruiting so i won’t say it is not working. however, we see a lot join and a lot leave and that can be disruptive unto itself.

70s joining the guild now either should be focusing on gearing for the raids we do, or if geared, focus on helping us gear. otherwise, they are just part of a revolving door.

evaluating looting systems - tell me if you have an opinion about it

we are evaluating applicability of looting systems to our guild raiding needs. if you have suggestions or opinions you would like us to take into account, leave comments to this post. this is not to state outright that we are implementing one of the looting systems, or a custom one; however, we are always working to stay ahead of the curve and our needs. hence, we are again reviewing looting systems and at this time evaluating them for applicability to our needs.

share your thoughts with us.

healers add on recommended

Psycosiis has recommended the following add on for healers

http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/12837/

try it out and see if it works for you! i have not used it so cannot vouch one way or the other.

USE groupCalendar if you want to get into a raid!

sure, we have a culture in our guild of making sure everyone gets to go in the raids. we are not one of those guilds where there is a raiding group that you cannot break into and where if you want to raid, you have to raid with pugs or other guilds. no. you raid with us.

now, you might need to gear up first (and there are plenty of us that can give advice, craft, or help you get geared). and we often bring under-geared toons in with us to Kara in order to get them more gear.

however if there is one thing that will keep you from raiding with us consistently, it would be not using GroupCalendar.

use GroupCalendar - the addon - if you want to raid with us.

check to see what events are posted ( /cal show ) and sign up for those that you know you can be online for. today we are not tracking points; however, only sign up when you know you can be online because it won’t be long before we are tracking and signing up and not showing can cost you loot or even raid seats. sign up well in advance if you can.

when we put the raid together, we start with the subset of tanks and healers that are signed up and geared (unless we are gearing one of them with some OP toons in there to help compensate). then we fill the rest of the seats according to what we will need again from the subset of signed up and geared.

there are usually more signed up in the DPS role than there are seats in a single raid, and that is where the time stamp of your sign up comes into play. if you signed up before someone else, and you are online when we start sending out raid invites, you have first priority for a raid seat. if the someone else cannot get into the raid, we give them first priority for the next same raid (or other raid as necessary). typically, we immediately create the ‘next raid’ event in the calendar and ask the folks that did not get into this raid, to sign up for that next raid right away - reserving their priority.

not being online in time to get a raid invite, usually will mean someone else will get it. so do take note of when it starts when you sign up, and also look to see if it changes over time.

we will work very hard to be as fair as we can and make sure everyone gets to raid. using GroupCalendar makes ‘being fair’ pretty simple as it takes guesswork out of the equation.

should someone need to leave the raid group, we begin picking replacements in order of role needed and time stamp (presuming they are geared) and currently online. so even if you do not get in immediately, stay online doing something else.

it seems like a bit of a catch-22. raid groups sometimes have a huge reserve pool from which to pull should they need it - except that the reserve pull would rather recruit a couple more roles into the guild and run a second raid group. however, two raid groups where neither one has a deep enough reserves pool run dry fast when one person has to leave the raid. there is a healthy balance of reserve and raid groups.

finally, use GroupCalendar to schedule any 5-mans you need to get done - yes! instead of waiting for that perfect set of people to be all online at the same time and available to do that instance you need, just add an event a day or two ahead and let folks sign up for it.

“zee-a” hey hey

A rather happy bunch after one-shotting first boss in ZA during first attempt.

First guild attempt on first boss in ZA was a one-shot! w00t! gratz to all! I do believe Narooq picked up some new shoulders from the fight. Everyone did their job exactingly and it was awesome to be a part of the first down for the guild in such a clean first attempt. Awesome-sauce.

Second boss was a two-shot on the first time as a guild.

Blinded summarized it rather well on the second boss when the tank went down, “ooh, that’s not good. nope. that wasn’t good at all.” LOL. We laughed it up and re-grouped. Psycosiis got to test just how close he could get to the boss to rez us without aggro’ing the birdman.

On the second attempt, you’d think it was easy. Blinded called it a done deal when the boss still had over 160K health! Yeah, by then, it is over. Kazumaket walked away with a sweet sword. Nicely done!

We had plenty of 70s online and it would seem we are about to be able to run two concurrent 10 mans - which will make the 25 man content easy to ramp into. That being Saturday!

Next ZA no later than Thursday!