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.

Pint-size Power!

Can you smell the fear?

… and so the story goes, that a group of trepidatious … wait – there is no such story! It boils down to freakin’ loot! Honeyrunny needs a decent 2-hander to go with the spec he wants on Wed and Carrignian needs a particular one from Ramps – we began the farming. End of story. Hrphm. Ok, before that Kazumaket insisted Cyanide go get the scimitar off the second boss in MT (which he did finally), and then we began clearing for Honeyrunny.

Regrettably, 2-H did not drop after three runs and we had to call it a night. There is always today, of course!

The *real* story is one of friends working together. Even when we want to be doing something else. We all know plenty of guilds that do not even help their healers or tanks gear up – let alone someone not playing a key role in a raid. Certainly not ‘just to respec’. Luckily, we’re not one of those guilds.

raiding page has been updated with our LK changes

highly recommend you read it. discuss it now with me. cuz it is going into effect *very* soon if there is no discussion on it (consider it in effect unless revised).

starting next week, we will kick off a casual raid group (since everyone is leveling and chillin) depending on whether we get enough raiders applying to be in the raid group (they really are chillin!).

So what are some of the changes that lie ahead in store for us?

We are moving quickly to align the mechanics of how our guild works with the goals of our guild – the vision of where we are going. As always, these can be discussed and changed as governed by common sense. Certainly, look to this website for any changes, if any.

It is a logical milestone now, with LK coming out, to pause, consider changes and strengths and make sure we are aligned accordingly. Our re-focusing effort surrounds some basic tenents:

• we use common sense as our overall rule of governance
• we play together to enjoy the game – fun and respect are essential balanced ingredients
• we level together, we pvp together, we raid cities together and we raid dungeons together
• we plan to raid through all of the LK content, and continue to raid (for fun) pre-BC and BC
• we are helpful of each other; however, we do expect people to quest and level – not just ask for run thru’s
• we play together; however, we do not all have the same amount of play time – some are more casual and some are more hard core
• we value reliability and although it is just a game, respecting other’s and their time requires us to do what we say we will do

For the most part, the means to achieving the results of those guiding tenents is the collective membership of the guild and how each member behaves in the social structure that is our guild. There are structural norms and mechanics that facilitate the guild’s operations. The changes started and ahead to those norms and mechanics, to support our tenents are:

• recruiting – we closed ‘open’ recruiting and returned to ‘closed’ recruiting requiring an officer to interview and extend the /ginvite; minimum-level requirement for recruiting upon LK release; focusing on mature recruits that understand our social structure, fun and respect;
• raiding - we will separate casual and hard core raiders into a casual raid group and a hard core raid group with common and specific rules – rather than lump them both into the same raid group; use of reliability as a factor in selecting who is on a dungeon raid;
• ranks – we changed ranks to test aligning better with actual roles and will complete changing them to line up and support the activities and roles within our guild;

Each of these changes will need its own post to detail the changes; however, this provided insight into what is changing and why.

An example of a tangible change is putting in place a minimum-level requirement for recruiting upon the LK release. It is not the goal of our guild to be used and abused as a leveling guild where people join, get us to help them level to end cap, then leave to raid somewhere else. It is the goal of our guild to recruit solid contributions to our culture and capabilities, play and level together, and raid together. The focus of our general membership, upon the release of LK, will be to level to 80, gear up and begin tearing through the raiding content – this is not accomplishable if the larger portion of our membership are new members in the low-levels (1-70) that are needing a lot of leveling help. After LK is released, brand new members to our guild will need to be level 70 at a minimum – unless they are personal friends, odd exceptions, etc. Everyone already in the guild will likely be grand-fathered in unless the account is inactive or incapable of leveling self-sufficiently. Which is not to say that we will not assist lower levels to rise up – just that they need to do the majority of the work themselves and that the focus members are charged with primarily is ‘get to 80 together, gear together, raid together’.

Another change is to set up casual and hard core raid groups (at least one of each) so that the available play times of the two type of raiders do not affect each other negatively. Note: raiding is not required. pvp or even social toons exist. Raiders, however, will be assigned to either a casual or hard core raid group and that is their ‘raid home group’. Raiders will commit to their specific raid group for a period of four weeks – which is to say that raid group rosters can change to accomodate members’ RL needs. At this time (still under discussion), casual raiders are signing up to raid twice a week for four weeks with one planned absence (i.e. raiding seven times in four weeks); hard core raiders are signing up to raid four times a week with one planned absence (i.e. raiding 15 times in four weeks). Before you jump out of our seats with FOUR times a week (?!), keep it in context: raiding three times a week is not ‘hard core’ by any measure in WoW; working with the raid group four times a week may not mean working for three hours a night, four nights a week on a specific raid dungeon – it can also mean two nights a week doing 1.5 hour raid dungeon badge clears depending on where we are in progression and what the raid group needs to best apply its time to. It *does* however mean that you are available and working with the raid group four times a week. Also, each raid group will be larger than ten people (most likely about 16 people) and not all of them will fit into a 10-man raid; however, they need to be online and available to the raid group – leaving them able to do other things or level an alt (as long as they can drop everything and come immediately upon need). Who will be in a specific 10-man (or 25-man) will depend on the raid needs for the specific dungeon, and who has the top reliability scores in the raid group. i.e. if you have three healers in the raid group, need two for the raid, and two have great reliability scores and one has a poor reliability score – it makes sense that the two reliable healers are going to fill those seats. Reliabilty scores will be published and updated as they change (daily?). If someone does not sign up for a raid, or does not show up, or shows up late/unpreprared, leaves early – they should not be surprised to see that their reliability is lower than someone that signs up for the raids, shows up on time, prepared and stays for the entire raid. Most “dkp” systems try to reward reliability within the system – we will track reliability separately and publicly so that there are no surprises about the scores anyone has. As with all things we do, we will use common sense to guide us.

It is safe to say that in the hard core raiding group, there will be a lot of raiding going on and all the supporting activities – we should expect those hard core raiders whom are raiding twice as much as the casual raiders to clear content much quicker than we did when we had a mixed raid group, and they will gear much faster. It also means that the players will most likely be focusing more on one toon rather than a huge host of them just as a matter of available play time (unless all you do is play WoW!). Conversely, the casual raiders will progress slower through the content, gear slower, and hence can focus on many toons all at once because the raid group is not going to leave them behind. We do not forsee the hard core raiders being able to gear three or more toons at the same rate as the raid group – skilled players with a lot of playtime would likely be able to pull off two toons; however, most will have one toon that can keep pace with the raid group and keep a second “close to” alt.

Having said all that, plan accordingly! And if you are currently not in the guild and are planning on returning, I HIGHLY recommend returning quickly now and sorting out which raid group you are in (I expect we will have multiples of them). Once we “lock and load” a raid group, the only way to get into it until the next raid group selection (four weeks later) will be if we have attrition (loss of toons) or unacceptable reliability scores.

These mechanisms support bringing winning teams together, that play together and stay together enjoying the full content of the game.

Welcome to the new era!

-Ironhelm

Nagrand, then Undercity… sort of, until a crackhead condom ran off with our heals and died!

It is particularly interestting to read the comments on the bottoms left and the bottom right kill roster listings.

Look carefully, we kill a shammy and TWO seconds later he is killed again! = )

We dids a lots of dhamage. Nicely done boyz!

Seeking Professions Info from Beta folks

If you are in the Beta, contact Beartooth or Iron. We are interested in knowing how professions are depending on (using) current mats or whether leveling up from 350 in the expansion is based solely on new mats. In other words, do we expect the expansion to increase or decrease the value of the ‘old’ mats.

Not looking for guesses, looking for well-based information preferably having been checked with some AH data. Granted, the AH is likely not the focus of the larger part of the Beta group hence it is not entirely representative. However, if items such as primals are not even present on the AH, it is a good indicator of the road ahead.

Guidance on the road ahead, and on Recruiting

Everyone knows we are in a transition period – both as a game overall with the expansion coming out and within our guild as we re-tool. The same questions are starting to come up and rather than risk giving slightly different answers each time, we will continue to use the website as ‘the place to get the authoritative answer.’ However, that is complicated by the website being about 3 weeks behind current changes – so bear with it and you will see it updated in the coming 14 days (most likely almost daily).

During the road ahead, the best guidance was provided a long time ago by Douglas Adams:

“Don’t Panic.”

No, really. You are encouraged to talk with the officers and guild leader anytime you have concerns or worries – whether about the upcoming expansion or about our guild. Ask away. You are going to get some honest answers.

To build on Adams’ advice, with all the changes ahead, simply communicate, stay informed (*cough* read the website often *cough*) and know that there always seems to be a plan behind the scenes that works out for you (you didn’t think the Primals market, or Mageweave, or leather markets just coincedentally are where we want them to be when we are either selling or buying, did you?).

We are slowly recruiting and we have indeed closed the ‘open recruitment’. You’ll find that I am spending about 30 mins – 1 hour talking to potential candidates before I extend them a guild invite. I suggest you do the same. We experienced tremendous turmoil and people coming and going when it was an open door recruitment approach. Returning to the prior closed recruitment where only officers could invite into the guild, we are not attempting to stymy your recruitment - simply encourage you to genuinely confirm that the person you are recommending is genuinely someone we have a reason to believe will be a good addition to the guild. In order to have a reason, by default we need to have a conversation.

Very quickly, we will have new ranks (yes – I know! the first were both a test of a potential rank structure and a test to see how we all react to it) and one of them is ’social’. The social rank has no pressures to raid although they can certainly step in if needed. There will also be a ‘casual raider’ and a ‘hardcore raider’ rank to keep the two mostly apart. This will help limit the hardcore putting too much pressure on casual raiders to be online more often or gear more quickly and will prevent the casual raiders from holding the hardcore raiders back.

Sounds like we need to add a lot of people back - why did we close the open recruitment?

Because the people we are inviting now, are people we actually want to raid with or socialize with. And it’s not everyone on the server. There is going to be a strong push to level 80 in the expansion and some of our guild will be there amongst the first ones to ding 80 – others will lag behind them. In that crowd of level 80s that got there first, there are going to be some great friends and players, and there are going to be some asshats — ok, there are likely going to be a lot of asshats!

We do not have the slightest interest in recruiting the asshats. By all means, as you are leveling and once you get to 80 and start doing level 80 groups/raids, recruit the ‘worthy’ ones that fit our guild well. But do not just blanket recruit 80s hoping to ‘get enough to have a large pool of raiders’. It has once again proven to not work. They cause more dysfunction than good and the raid group starts to cycle too many people which actually holds the raid groups back.

Are we going to have problems with progression if we don’t have everyone on the server in our guild? No. LK is all about enabling smaller guilds to raid all the way to the end without needing to put together a 25-man. Are we going to do 25-mans, though? Yes. Hells, we are still wanting to do BC content we left unfinished and even original WoW instances.

When will there be more people online like there used to be? Never again. Huh? ‘Like there used to be’. We do not aim to have a collection of awesome people AND asshats all online in our guild. We are hopefully avoiding most of the asshats and just having a lot of awesome people online every night. Casual players will not be on every night, however with enough re-recruiting of awesome people, we will have plenty of people online to quest, instance, pvp or raid with. Give it a few weeks.

Speaking of what to do with all your time… (not that we were, but we were), do you really want to get to NE (Northrend) and have to go back somewhere to level your fishing or cooking? I recommend you go do that now. Level your professions up at least to 350 which is where LK picks up (so no, you do not need to get Blacksmithing to 375, you can start up in LK at 350). Gather up some gold. If there is anything you need to do in the Outlands, start telling us so that we can plan a day or two ahead to help you. Think about it – if your hearth is in NE and you zone back to SW (I am predicting SW will get a new influx of bank alts from IF) in Old World, are you really going to want to go back to Nethergarde Keep to get to Portal to fly to wherever to do whatever? Forget it! Do it now!

Btw – all that talk about gear not being worth anything later on in LK – sure, but it will sure as hell help in the first few levels of questing – so don’t stop gathering! And if you have been really thinking ahead, you have been looking through the beta info and wowhead’s info and found that Badges of Justice just became obsolete: replaced with Emblems. So don’t be banking those either!

So in short: “Don’t Panic!” Stay in touch, communicate with everyone in our guild. Help find and recruit solid additions to our guild – which is to say people we want to be friends with and want to raid with.

Then just let the rest unfold.

I’m looking forward to getting back to a guild _full_ of people (yes lots of them online every night) that actually like helping each other and respond to calls for help instead of a lot of what we had over the past 9 months.

Btw, some folks need Arcatraz tomorrow night (Wed Oct 1) – log on and see if you can help.