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

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

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

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.

more suggestions to pick from…

hmm…

changing tabbard up – taking suggestions

It is not final – yet. Bounced options off a couple of guildies, and have looked at the black background that so many people asked for.

If you have design ideas you like better, take a screenshot and share it with me at ironfather A T gmail D O T com. I’ll take a look at what you come up with.

Don’t wait too long to send those in!

wait – what changed?

We have a whole new set of ranks with different permissions. The rules and regs have not yet been updated (but they will be this weekend); however, the summary is below:

• Guild Leader – no change.
• Knight-Captain – able to /ginvite, /gkick, promote, demote, change MOTD
• Captain – able to /ginvite, promote, demote
• Raid Boss – able to /ginvite, promote, demote
• Core Raider
• Veteran
• Sergeant – able to /ginvite, promote, demote
• Member
• Stockades – *cannot* speak in guildchat
• Recruit

Only the five officer ranks (Guild Leader, Knight-Captain, Captain, Raid Boss and Sergeant) can invite people into the guild.

Only the Guild Leader and Knight-Captain ranks can remove someone from the guild.

All officers can promote (not higher than their own rank) and demote (cannot demote ranks higher than yours).

Knight-Captain can change the message of the day.

Stockades rank is to be used by officers to relegate people that need to go into a ‘penalty box’ until a Knight-Captain or the Guild Leader can address the situation. Do not use this lightly nor over use it. It is there to give the officers a tool to address problem children instantly. From that rank, they can be reinstated back into guild or removed.

Raid Boss is a raid leader. (That was simple.)

Core Raider is a rank we may not fill for a lil bit. It will be based on reliability in regards to guild raiding and raiding readiness. (So for example, Veterans can raid and so can Members or Recruits; however, if you have distinguished yourself by demonstrated commitment to raiding, you will be promoted to Core Raider – exact benefits to be announced as we get closer to it, but don’t be surprised if the Core Raiders are in the first pick drafts for progression raids!)

Ranks re-assigned. In the mechanic that Blizz gives us or ranks and adding ranks, it includes the ‘gift’ of messing up where everyone is in the rank structure, so there were a lot of changes I made (the log is full of them).

Finally, I looked at our roster and removed a lot of deadwood. You know, level 5 druid recruits that have not logged on in 2 months.