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!

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.

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

kara started!

well over a month ahead of schedule, LR started Kara! Kazumaket did a phenom job raid leading and everyone did a great job of implementing the strategies. /kudos. Attumen down, Moroes down, Maiden 33% with a nine man incl shifting feral offtank Jacofox into off healing (to keep only 3 in melee range of the Maiden). with a full 10-man, Maiden would have gone down also.

reduce dependency on pugs in the current 60-70 push

during the current push of 60->70, we recommend reducing guild progression dependency on pugs. pug dependency can inject delays in group formation, can cause a revolving door on the group roster and have zero accountability to complete the instance or support our goals; as such, they are not the most efficient means to completing instances. where we have suitable guildies online, do what we can to fill the group seats with them instead of a pug – even if that means interrupting grinding or leveling if we can. in other words, we’d rather see a 70 or two fill out an AC group and get it done than see three of our guildies not be able to get it done due to pug fissure and failure. granted, the top priority groupings start at 70 and work down. i.e. it is more important for the 69s to hit 70 than to fill a Ramps group. and no one should feel obligated to help. of course, helping your guild can only bring a good return on investment!

calling all 68-70 toons!

thank you in advance for the personal individual progression sacrifices you are making in focusing on guild progression as a whole and helping us reach a critical mass of 70s.

calling all toons level 68-70: for the next 3 weeks, focus your energies into leveling the 60-67 toons to be 68-70 with you.

while it will temporarily slow you down, it will definitely pay back in dividends. you all know this already for the most part, and it was simply missing an ‘official’ post with direction. the main reason for the post is to reach the 70s that are offline or to reach those that have not been online at the time that we have been having the online discussions and came to this plan agreement.

to give you an example, there is a healer at 67 and a tank at 69 and leveling them both would help the current 70s with their Heroics!

i can tell you that just a couple of hours of support each day cuts days off the leveling timeline and will allow us to have the critical mass we need to complete the rep grinds and gear grinds so that we can start Kara raiding earlier. it is also giving us the chances to work together with the very same people we will be raiding with and the value of that cannot be overstated.

with the right support every day from the collective of 68-70 toons, it looks like we can start raiding in Kara as soon as early to mid April. we have enough tanks and healers to start – we just need to get everyone leveled, rep’d and geared!

again, thank you in advance.

what to do if not “60+ and in the push to Kara”

had a good conversation last night with someone in the mid-forties levels who joined our guild just after we launched the ‘big push to Kara’ effort and the conversation centered about life in our guild when all the toons 60+ are on strict focus to prep for Kara (incl get to 70, rep grind, gear grind, and complete Kara as a guild). obviously, with everyone 60+ focused upwards, there are significantly fewer times that they are looking backwards and helping the lower level toons. also, there are simply fewer lower level toons than before – when I log on now, I tend to see the bulk of the toons being at least 50+ and typically 60+.

understandably, it can feel like you are not getting legendary guild support if you are below level 60 right now. you aren’t. and that is a conscious decision we took. the good news is that it is a very short period of time that is affected. the sooner we are in Kara raiding, the sooner life returns to normal – so to speak – and lowbies get lots of offers of run throughs and help from higher level toons. if you look at things only with eyesight extending to the immediate, yes, there is a shortage of help. if you look further forwards, you can see that not only do you get help, but now, you can go to Kara, too (and beyond)!

the guild needs to progress as part of its transition to raiding and with it comes some sacrifices. the 70s have to sacrifice personal immediate individual progression to help the 60+ reach their levels. the under 60s sacrifice getting as much help in order for the 60+ toons to ‘do their thing’ and meet the progression goal. we are not an individual-focused me-me-me guild – thankfully – we are a collection of individuals that are guild-focused (for the most part and for most of the time!). this is one of those times where the lower levels need to band together to help each other rather than rely on the upper levels.

it is a good time to get to know other lower levels in the guild and forge those relationships. it is a good time to look backwards yourselves and seek out the toons that are moving up towards you and help them so that you now have several toons your level to level with. e.g. I pointed out 3 toons in the 30s that the mid-forties should help because then they would have a foursome with all the key roles in it already – they’d be able to do any group quest, quest or instance at level together instead of neither the 30s being able to without some pugs and neither the 40 be able to without 4 pugs.

for now – dig deep into our guild culture and help each other so that you have enough peers at level and progress in a similar wave upwards. it is after all part of the essence of our guild. i know it can be frustrating seeing all the 60+ toons online and none of them helping you with Duskwood or Tanaris. but for now, for just a short while, i have asked them to focus on getting to Kara – bear with them for a short while and you’ll find that you get all kinds of help again and instead of a VC run through right now, you get a seat in Kara with 9 other well-geared guildmates or you get help doing Heroics to get geared for Kara — and we cannot position ourselves to do that if we do not currently go through this growth pain.

as always, i do see higher level toons offering to help (they need breaks from hardcore leveling) and i do see run throughs and i do see counter-gank-assistance happening – it just is less prevalent than usual for right now.

Heinkel Promoted to Rank of Senior Officer

Please join me in congratulating Heinkel on his promotion to the rank of Senior Officer. Heinkel has been a dedicated member of the guild for over a year dating back to the beginning of the guild. Over the past year, he has taken on increasing levels of responsibility and has proven his reliable track record in supporting our guild objectives. His attitude towards commitment to our guild rather than as an individual and his limitless capacity to stop whatever he is doing to assist our membership is an example to us all. I look forward to working with Heinkel to achieve our guild objectives.

Guild Objectives for 2008

the guild objectives for the first half of 2008 have been decided and posted in the ‘About Legends Reborn’ page.

about the 2007 objectives. all of our objectives set during 2007 were met. we did grow to 250+ toons. we did go to Kara. we did have +20x level 70s. we did re-grow the guild to 100+ toons. today, we stand at 125 toons across 83 accounts. most of those toons are 20+ level (unlike back when we were 250+ and we had a lot of -20 level toons). we learned a lot in 2007 – including about setting objectives. we learned we can set aggressive objectives and meet them – with work. we learned that we need to align them carefully with long term strategic goals (e.g. growing to 250+ in short term without a goal to retain them meant we did not spend enough time working on retaining them, so we saw a strong revolving door and not enough discussion on what we needed to do to keep the 70s from tearing each other apart and leaving for other guilds).

the 2008 objectives. strategically, we need to look to the expansion expected out in December 2008 – which means that as a guild we should be thinking about being well-positioned to enjoy that content by being level 70. level 70 in 12 months is very achievable. we suspect a fair amount of 10-man raids in the upcoming content requiring a variety of classes and specs. in order to be best positioned for that content, our guild needs to look to have a larger inventory of level 70 toons with depth into and breadth across all the classes. this means we need to have all classes represented at level 70 and we need to have more than just one of them! our current guild roster has a good ratio of toons to accounts: 125/83. this suggests that we can staff raid positions easily (compared to guilds that have a lot of toons and few accounts and therefore cannot easily staff raid roles without sacrificing other raid roles). our roster has a nice grouping of 50+ level toons and a healthy succession group leveling up from 20+ level. at mid-year (end of June 2008), in order to be comfortably ready for the content expansion in December, we need to have moved our current 50+ toons through Kara and have moved our 50- toons up towards Kara.

our June 2008 guild objectives are:

• 50% of the guild at level 50+
• have Kara on farm status

how this affects you is rather simple in implementation.

if you are higher than level 50, focus on building the camaraderie amongst the other 50+ level toons so that you know each other well enough to operate like a well-oiled machine in instances and raids together. if you do that, you will all get to 70, get geared, get keyed and will have the tight-knit weave to clear Kara consistently. this does mean, for example, that as a guild epic flying mounts are secondary (it may well still be primary to you – just don’t sacrifice the guild objectives for a 5,000 gold flying mount). it means that arena standings are great if they are helping you gear up to help clear Kara. *after* June 2008, you can epic flying mount grind and arena team till you are blue in the face (or purple) – by then you will have met the “kara on farm status” goal. (of course you can grind and arena team all you want anyways – but don’t forget to help the other 50+ toons get to 70, gear, key, and clear.) getting kara on farm status by end of June gears you up nicely for the second half of 2008 and pre-positions our guild to then take those toons that are currently 50- thru Kara in the second half of the year. all of which sets us up nicely for expanding into the new content post release in December.

if you are lower than level 50, focus on getting to level 50 or higher by the end of June 2008. plain and simple. with the recent 2.3 patch changes, you need less experience to get from 20-60 than before and you get more xp per quest/grind. everyone has their own favorite way of leveling up. from what i know and have read, all numerical evidence suggests that questing is the fastest way to level. James’ Alliance Leveling guides are listed as a link on this blog site and they are both free and very, very good. plan to do most instances at level with your peers as the higher level toons have a lot of work on their hands getting Kara to be on farm status. learn to play your roles in instances. not just average. learn to play them well. it will pay dividends come level 70.

everyone should be on the look out for good players as potential recruits to our guild. avoid blanket invites. it creates a lot of  ‘noise’ and ‘revolving door’ if folks are coming and going. with the goal of 50% of our guild above level 50 by the 50% mark of they year, let’s focus on recruiting 50+ toons as much as possible.

retention will be king. keeping who we have trumps. sure anyone can be replaced. but then they have to learn our culture, our way of clearing instances, and we have to re-build that well-oiled machine all over again. that means we have to shift from trigger happy gquiting and instead resolve problems. outright disrespect can still earn a quick kick. but it is time to try to hold on to our valuable assets: long term guild members. we are going to try to keep at the level of 100+ toons and 80+ accounts.

so level, recruit and retain – for 6 months.

if you have any comments or questions at any time regarding the guild objectives, contact me without hesitation. if you have an eye for ranking up in guild, remember that supporting guild objectives is key promotion criteria.

Ironhelm