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

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!

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.

economics: rags to riches

having recently leveled a hunter to 70, i have had a chance to experiment methodically and objectively with some end game gold-making strategies. it is a nice round-out for my experience in gold-making at the lower levels – by lower I mean like at level 1.

say what?!

right. well, in response to inquiries from new guild members, and for the benefit of refreshing all of our memories for those that have been here a while, i decided to put up a reminder post about accumulating gold.

Og and i have put several trials in place and he did a great job of documenting his on his blog: Og’s Ledger. In addition to recommending that you read his rags to riches compilations, i recommend a couple of other finer points:

• by not buying anything (nothing is worthwhile at those levels) from level 1-10 and vendoring everything or auctioning off everything, you end up with a large slush fund to start out with.
• at level 5, learn mining and use it to earn mony on the auction house until level 10 (after that, drop it unless you want to keep it) – you are only learning it for the sole purpose of increasing your slush fund with copper ore sales on the auction house – and at that, only for level 5-10.
• use auctioneer (addon) and auctioneer advanced (addon) – and by use it, i mean scan the AH in the morning and the night with both auctioneer and auctioneer advanced (one scan start button is at the top of the auciton house window and one is at the bottom) – do one before the other, not at the same time. do this for 2 weeks (at the most).
• buy low, sell high – easy enough.

in no more than 10 days and 10 levels, you’ll have just about 140g. this is probably a good time to remind you to not spend any gold on gear! ok, so now you have absolutely no gold worries (at level 10) for a mount, all skills you need to buy and you have all 16-slot bags. at level 10.

do what you want on your way to 60, but somewhere before you get to 60, repeat and you will now have your epic mount funds before you ding 60.

outlands. you just got there and are a fresh level 60 (if you are there at 58, so be it). quests are good. gear up from quest rewards and instance drops. buy nothing on the auction house. everyday go to the southeast corner of Hellfire Penninsula and grind collapsing voidwalkers for an hour. they drop motes of shadow. gather a stack of ten and right-click to make it into a primal shadow. each primal sells for about 25g. you only need 36 of these to buy your flying mount at level 70 and you have 10 levels to gather them at a drop rate of 18%.

once you get to 70, there are varying options depending on what your professions are and what skill level they are at, as well as what you like to do. do dailies. without a question – they farm not only gold for you, but also faction rep (e.g. Shattered Sun Offensive rep by doing Isle of Quel’danas dailies) rep which allows you to get stuff (like gem patterns for example) that help you make more money. however, do not forget to look at the AH listings to see what mats sell well (high dollar value) per item (especially if they are listed in stacks of 1), look at the sites like wowhead.com to see where they drop from most often, and go fetch and auction off. epic flying mount in less than 2 weeks if you have the time. less than a month if you barely have time.

so, in short – go from rags to riches starting at level 1. have your mounts paid off starting at level 10. have your mount funds before you need them. plan ahead: there are some sha-weet mounts coming up in WotLK, sock some gold away for them, too.

having shared this with you all, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to need any loans anymore.  = )

ok, now go make some gold!

GroupCalendar issue identified and resolved

aha! turns out some guildies do not have a check in the check box for “Use server dates and times” on the calendar tab. open groupcalendar (/cal show) and make sure you are looking at the Calendar tab (preferably after the 2 min synch) and make sure you have checked the “Use server dates and times”. that should fix the issue.

all events are posted in server dates and times. for now, the start time will be repeated in the Description field of the event to add further confirmation and clarification.

GroupCalendar start time issues – temp fix with comments

it was brought to our attention last night that GroupCalendar is showing different times in the addon UI for the start time of raids depending on which player is looking at it (i.e. it showed an 8pm start time in my addon UI and a 7pm start time in Heinkel’s addon UI).

through this week, i will be looking into what causes that to find a fix; however, in the interim, i will use the Description/Comments field of the event to state the start time in server time. (e.g. START TIME: 7pm Server Time).

use GroupCalendar if you want to raid!

GroupCalendar is the addon that we are using to manage raid sign ups. if you are not running that addon (despite months of postings), then you are not signed up for the Sat and Mon raids. if you are not signed up, everyone that signed up before you (and that meets the quals and is geared) has a date/time stamp before you. that means they are going to Kara and you are not.

no whining, no crying, no kicking and definitely no feeding the drama llama.

e.g. for Maiden, we need 2 tanks, 3 healers, 2 melee dps and 3 ranged dps in the raid group. if i were melee dps, i’d be checking GroupCalendar at least daily for Kara raid events to make sure that my timestamp was one of the first two melee dps sign ups. granted – guild leader and raid leaders will make sure everyone gets to go fairly – so you don’t have to put your spouse on calendar sentry watch duty while you sleep – but fairly could still be a long wait for Maiden if there are a lot of melee dps that have yet to go and everyone else is signing up and you do not even have the addon installed.

the point, simply, is that the guild uses GroupCalendar to plan raids – including who gets to go that event. install the addon and use it *often*. all the officers can help you with any setup issues (it is rather simple to install).

point in case: we are only 1 day away from the Sat raid and only 7 people have signed up. 7 does not equal 10. it certainly is not 10 with extras for reserves or cancellations. less than 10 signed up opens the door to pugs taking seats. and i can see folks signing on once we are in Kara with pugs and then the drama llama comes to town to see if we feed it.

a lot of guilds run into the issue that folks do not sign up in advance, which limits their ability to plan the raids and do briefings beforehand or even start on time. we are not special and are likely going to have that problem, too (like now). we will handle it differently than i have seen most guilds handle it though – because we have a lot of organizational experience. and organizations – be they soccer clubs, companies, or wow guilds – all have some things in common. and one of them is the handling of folks not signing up for events. folks, if you do not sign up, and we fill the seats, “the class is full”. sign up for the next one.

once we fill the seats, we are not kicking them for someone that was too lazy to sign up. we will rotate seats per the raid plan for different bosses (if we are planning to rotate seats), but that may or may not open a chance for someone that did not bother to sign up to come. if others did sign up and they fill the same role/function – those get to go.

on behalf of the raid leaders who are all working very hard to make sure everyone gets to go to Kara each week, do not make it hard for them to get you into Kara by not bothering to indicate when you want to go.

signing up indicates you are available to go. NOT signing up indicates you are NOT available to go.

based on sign ups for Saturday, 7 people are available for Kara and the guild needs to pug three seats because no one else is available.

if you are available, sign up using GroupCalendar! the raid group invite is literally issued FROM the addon – i.e. you CANNOT get an invite if you are NOT signed up.

’nuff said.

install Omen (latest version)

it cannot be stressed enough that you have to have the latest version of Omen threat meter addon running when you are in Kara Saturday. if you are not running it, you will most likely be replaced by someone that is running it. forewarning issued!