Starting up raiding again next week… sign up in the forums

Long-awaited, oft spoken of, LR raiding has returned! Use the forums to get into a raid next week – sign ups also help us have a good grasp on what roles we need to invite friends to come fill. If you have not yet created your login for the forums, do it now!

We are starting up nice and casual: one evening of 10m easy lewt content (OS and VoA) to help folks gear and 10m Naxx over two nights. We will be using the next few weeks to get into the habit of raiding again and to help gear up raid group members to be at similar gear levels. Once we have a consistent bunch of raiders in sufficient numbers and gear, we will take the plunge into running 25m raids.

A note on recruiting: All Sergeants, Veterans, Officers and Senior Officers can do guild invites – if you know someone you want brought into the guild, hook them up!

We are currently most interested in adding 1-2 lvl 80 healers ready for 10m Naxx to our guild roster, however we are currently recruiting all raid roles.

Bringing you Forums

We are reviewing different forums options and will select one this week so that you have a place when not online. We are currently using http://legendsreborn.freeforums.org/index.php and you can post recommendations in the ‘Off Topic’ guild forum for other recommended forum-hosts options if you feel they are better than freeforums. Discuss and recommend now, as without discussions, we’ll just go with what we have.

fiddling with the tabard…

Just fiddling a bit with the tabard… = )

Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a safe and peaceful holiday season! wb!

Several of us finally rolled on Horde side instead of making a new alt Alliance side. And what we did is working very well for us: recruit a group to work with, work with them. We are on right about the same hours and we hence do a lot of questing or instances together.

So first off, if you want to join us, bring your A-game to Kilrogg, Horde-side. Look up /who ReHorde for “Legends ReHorde”. We are currently tiny in size, but having absolutely no problems getting any groups or quests done. We are leveling at phenom pace, skilling up our professions and making a hoard of gold – he he. It is necessary to caveat the following: we absolutely expect your A-game over there. There is a strong culture over there of ‘how much gold are you at’ and ‘how close to the next 10th-20th-30th-40th level are you at?’ The time we are putting in there, necessarily is very very efficient. ding 20 but don’t have all your secondary professions maxed out? what were you doing with your time?! ding 20 and have less than a 100g on you right now? c’mon slacker, pull your weight! By level 20, you should have all the gold you will need to cover leveling up and buying your first mount, be wearing mostly blues and have enchants or armor kits on everything that can be at that level. It is only getting even more tougher as we level higher – it is all about being the absolute best you can be with the time you do play.

And the result? Is it stressful? Far from it. We have never been more relaxed or laughed as much. In setting the bar and expectations high up front, we have simply just been meeting them together. It helps keep us working together too – we all are available to help each other out no matter what is going on.

We also set in stone that no matter who levels how fast (some have more time than others), everyone is expected to be in the groups when needed. And it has made short work of any tough quest or instance.

Secondly, then, is that we here on Alliance should take note of that which is working so well and do it here also – very akin to what was posted here in Nov and in preceding months.

Find people that you are online with at similar times and recruit them into the guild. Then, no matter what is going on, help each other and work together. Expect A-game from each other and you will get A+ game from everyone. If you recruit the people you like leveling with and that are online when you are online, you simply will not have a problem finding anyone to do group quests with or to do instances with. And as we are finding, if you have 4 people incl a healer and a tank, you can always do instances with zero wait time. Even with just 3 of you as long as you have that tank and healer.

If you think about it – the easiest way to start raiding at level 80, or getting geared for it, will be if we simply have two 5-man groups that are really familiar with working together and that each have a tank and a healer in them! Done!

Where things have gone screwball before is where you have a collection of individuals and not ‘teams’. Where people worked together only when they were going to get something out of it for themselves, too. As soon as it was not helping them, they left – leaving the rest behind and to pug that role in. Invariably, frustrations led to departures.

The guild’s New Year’s resolution is to form a collection of 5-man GROUPS that can and do raid together.

Not individuals – groups. The officers are less concerned with how well individuals are leveling and how well an individual is geared for a raid and far more interested in how well a group is leveling together and how well a group is geared for raiding.

Try that thought on for size. You’ll see it makes pretty much everything easier and more efficient.

We’re back – and we’re leveling to 80!

update: the big changes

So as to not waste your leveling time, in short bursts here are the major changes:

• Promoted to Knight-Captain (senior officer): Dorkonus, Catix – congrats to both and thank you for your service to the guild.
• The senior officers (Knight-Captains) are now the ‘governing body’ responsible for the guild. We have shifted the day-to-day capabilities from the sole Guild Master rank to the Knight-Captain rank (thankfully, finally!). Knight-Captains can withdraw gold from the bank and have all but the guild structure (e.g. ranks, permission settings for ranks, buying guild bank tabs) within their domain.
• Open Recruiting has been re-established. This means anyone in the guild can invite someone to join our guild. Only invite players that are friends and good players. Do NOT run around blanket inviting strangers into the guild – that is the best way to give us many, many headaches and far too many asshat parades. Again, this is reinstated so that you, the membership, can make the guild the place you game with friends.

What is the long of it all?

We made a long history of being a great place to level with your friends and get groups with your friends to see the content. We are leveling again. We had some successes in raiding and some failures – the successes were largely tied to the same things that made leveling and 5-mans successful — playing with friends and enjoying it. The failures stemmed largely from either asshats making it unenjoyable, or there being a gear gear gear frenzy that drove the raiders to have a sufficient gear gap due to play time that raiding became ineffective and stressful. Obviously, after the dust settled, we position ourselves to again re-build focusing on the strengths and successes and do our best to steer clear of the known failure points.

If it is your goal to rush to 80 and get the end content down and geared up at all costs, this is not the guild for you. We will raid with our friends, not a stressed out bunch of gear-mongering strangers. Granted, some of us friends will get stressed out. Some will gear-monger from time to time. But we aren’t strangers. And that fundamentally is the LR difference to leveling, grouping and raiding.

In the past, there was a very strong drive that if you were not in the guild, you could not raid with us. hogwash. If we do not have a guildy that needs that raid seat, and you are a friend of ours, we don’t care what guild you are in – come have some fun!

For too long now, almost all decisions were having to be made by the guild master. This meant we had to count on me logging on a lot. And when I did log on – I could spend HOURS just standing in the bank doing admin for the guild. Heavily resolving a lot of the results of asshat parades. We have changed that. There are some very distinguished players that we are very lucky to have in our guild and they have all been given the senior officer rank of Knight-Captain and are immediately invested with the full power of the guild. Collectively, they run the guild.

Let me say that again: collectively, the Knights-Captains run the guild.

The Guild Master rank will exist to provide the game-enforced one person responsible for naming ranks, setting rank permissions, buying the tabard, and buying guildbank tabs. Everything else is under the control of the collective Knights-Captain. I, as the Guild Master will keep one toon in that rank for admin reasons and will perform its admin duties *as directed by the senior officers*. For now, I will also retain one toon at the rank of Knight-Captain; however, based on guild desire and appropriateness, I can be replaced.

There are six senior officers right now, and we will look to promote one more so that ‘there were seven’ to make sure there is always a tie-breaker.

BTW – each Knight-Captain can withdraw up to 500g a day from the bank for guild-specific needs (not personal!); however, lets try to build up the bank account, not deplete it!

Open recruiting has worked in the past based on respect. It is respectful to trust everyone with that power. By derivative, it is respectful to not blanket /ginvite anyone in a zone. Keep in mind that we are not trying to be the largest guild on the server nor are we trying to have the largest collection of misfits and asshats. We have a very strong distaste for drama llamas and bullsh!t. You have that power to invite people into the guild so that you can continue to make the guild that place where you play with your friends. We had a few bad apples abuse it and turn it into a huge admin nightmare – let’s not repeat that. It will remain open unless the senior officers decide differently.

As we level up to 80 and begin to enjoy that content, invite your friends to join us, either as part of the guild or otherwise. Use vent! We have found that vent is one of the most cornerstone pieces for forming new friendships rather than the impersonal text chat. Many of the oldtimers log first into vent then into the game! It’s there, we pay for it – use it! It specifically does not have a password on it so that you can bring your friends into it when grouping up – or just to hang out.

Consider this guild your favorite hang out pub or coffeeshop with your friends. See you in the game!

bhwuhaha… my /afk time is over… installing!

… hope you are all enjoying leveling again! I’m sure many of you braved the midnight openings and are likely *very* sleep-deprived… how long straight ARE you going to level without stopping?!

See you in the North, soon…

- Iron

casual “pick up” raiding has begun again!

we’re raiding casually again! mostly doing pick up raiding where we grab together whoever is on and fill the empty seats with friends outside of guild and knock out a small raid or heroic. we’ve been doing 2-3 heroics a day in the past few days.

hoping to see us keep that trend up for the next short while until the release comes out and then pick up again once the 5-mans start.

overall, the game plan is to start raiding again as soon as it makes sense in the expansion first by filling empty seats with non-guildy friends, and then as we recruit to fill those seats, move to all-guildy raid groups.

if you’re feeling like easy heroics to get badges/gear, logon and come have some fun!

Get Your Crafting Professions to 350 and Gathering to 375

If you are looking for something to do for the next few weeks, level your professions. You’ll need your gathering professions up to 375 anyways and they are relatively inexpensive to level. Your crafting professions only need to hit 350 to be able to pick up in Lich King (the trainers there will teach you starting at 350) and the recipes at 350 in LK are far less expensive to make to level up with.

If you make something useful, toss it in the guild bank if you don’t sell it or disenchant it – we have lots of disenchanters!

Last but not least, take a good solid look at your ‘professions portfolio’: do you have repeated professions? Why? A while back, I had skinning on four characters, three of them had it up to 375. It’s a waste. You realistically only need skinning on one of the characters to support leatherworking on one of the characters (could be same one). Heck, you only need skinning on one character to support leatherworking on all of your characters if you really wanted the BoP LW items for them all.

So take a look at what professions you have on which toons and think about whether it makes sense and is the most efficient/profitable. Now is a great time to shuffle those around if you need to.

you know patch 3. yatta . yatta is here when…

You really cannot get anything downloaded! Patience.

Every time we have a major patch released, first you have a gargantuan patch to download (all the while you can’t wait to get into the new goodness) and then you have to basically start over building all your addons – and if you are like me, with literally tens and tens of addons, many now unsupported, you are going to be spending a few days ’setting up shop’ again.

For now, until I see the MazzleUI get some traction with updates – and we will completely side-step that cesspool of a debate – I’m going to plan to narrow down to a barebones skeleton crew of addons and work with the base default game UI.

Right away, on my bank toon (it’s ok to totally hose up your UI on your bank toon ya know!), I have already begun looking at the new calendar object to see if that means we can retire GroupCalendar. As with all things, probably not. However, we’ll look into it.

If, as a result of folks testing stuff out, we see a reason to modify the list of required addons for the guild, we will certainly change the list and publish the announcement.

In the mean time, while I have not yet logged on to a main, I hope everyone that has is enjoying the new talent trees!

- Ironhelm

having fun in Kara again…

… you can have fun in an old haunt once again. especially when you bring people that have never seen it before or have simply not done it with a guild run.