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!

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

fyi: moved rank of GL *back* to Iron

Iron was one of the very first toons to join this guild – back then the default name the character creation screen had given it was ‘Daelia’. The more time I spent on Ironhelm, and the less I spent on Iron, the more difficult it became to do all the guild admin – so I switched it to Ironhelm.

It was convenient for a while. However, I started getting way too many tells in the middle of a raid from people wanting to know about our guild to see if they could join it, or general guild admin queries.

Now that I am spending far more time on Iron, and in hopes of keeping raiding uninterrupted, I have moved the rank back to Iron. Now I just need to get Iron up to 70, too!

congratulations Blinded

please join me in congratulating Blinded on his recent promotion to the rank of Senior Officer! Blinded joined our guild back during our push to 70 and his immeasurable contributions to the guild every single day are countless. throughout, he has been committed to the guild’s members and our overall ability to accomplish objectives. he has an unblemished record of reliability. his humor, thoughtfulness and friendship are valued by all of us. i look forward to seeing how he will shape and improve the future of our guild.

congratulations Jacofox!

please join me in congratulating Jacofox on his recent promotion to the rank of Senior Officer! Jacofox joined our guild while we were still pushing up to 70 and has been an immeasurable contribution to the guild, it’s members and our overall ability to accomplish objectives. steadfast and an unblemished record of reliability are his personal and tanking traits. his leadership and friendship are valued by all of us. i look forward to seeing how he will shape and improve the future of our guild.

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.

Announcing Name Changes on Occifers

Improving recognition through consistency, Ironhelm’s alts: Daelia and Beartracker are renamed Ironcast and Ironlongbow respectively. Daelia has become Ironcast and brings lvl 61 heals to the guild. Beartracker has become Ironlongbow and continues to bring withering hails of arrows supporting the big red kitty.

Hopefully, that will help with confusions over which toon online is the GL.

Senior Officers Now Have GuildBank Item Withdraw Ability

effective today, all Senior Officers have the ability to withdraw items from the guild bank. this should make requests move faster. the following guidelines must be observed:

• items can only be withdrawn if the toon can equip/use the item immediately (not “down the road”). i.e. recipes can only be withdrawn for a toon if they have the skill to learn the recipe right away and gear can only be withdrawn for a toon if it can be equipped by that toon right away
• items for level 50+ can only be withdrawn for a Veteran rank or higher that is level 50+ (i.e. a level 20 officer cannot request a level 65 item to keep for later on when they can equip it)
• toons that have not made any donations to the guild coffers or significant donations to the guild bank cannot have withdrawn any items for them – this is an effort to make sure we are putting in more than we are taking out. similarly, toons cannot have withdrawn items that are of a higher level than the items they have deposited – this is an effort to prevent a bunch of level 13 items getting donated and a level 65 item being withdrawn
• keep basic track of whom you give what – in case guild leader wants to know.

in short, this should prevent abuse and waste while encouraging growth.

officer’s ALTs to be promoted to Officer rank

in reviewing the trend over the last two months, it is clear that the ALTs belonging to the officers and senior officers need to be at the same rank as their mains so that they do not need to interrupt an instance in order to execute their responsibilities. their ALTs will continue to carry the ‘ALT’ designation in the officer’s notes field to distinguish them from their mains. note to officers: if any of your ALTs do not get Officer rank, send Ironhelm a note, it is very likely that it is an ALT that is not marked as such!