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

a word about raiding, gear and the expansion

without kicking off a firestorm or panic-fest, a reliable source in the beta has confirmed that his Tier4 & full ZA gear was replaced by level 71. does this mean Tier 5 and Tier 6 are going away at level 71? no. only have T4 and ZA confirmed as replaced by level 71 – for one individual.

however, it should answer without any doubt that raiding ‘to get gear right now’ will lead to prompt disappointment. on the other hand, raiding ‘to see content’ or ‘to have fun with your friends’ is just as valuable to us as it was before.

there have been some people that have expressed a ’stressed’ or ‘urgent’ need to raid content ‘to see it before the expansion’. it has lead to some folks leaving the guild in search of better chances to do T5/T6 content before it is ‘obsolete’. unfortunately, this is a rather mis-guided response.

the content will not be ‘obsolete’ until you gear *past* it. if level 72 greens turn out to be equal to T5 gear (as an example) and T5 gear is needed in order to clear T5 content, then by correlation, a group of us at level 72 with level 72 gear will be able to clear T5 with the same level of challenge as doing it with T5 gear – except that we will not need to spend week after week attempting T5 content and praying for drops to gear an entire 25-man. instead, we will be able to level up and gear up in greens in a matter of a week (?) and then have fun working on the T5 strats.

we’ll continue questing and leveling (and hence getting gear increases) and when we are at par with T6 content, we will do T6 content.

sure, we can go back when we are ‘over-geared’ and it is far more forgiving to do the T5 and T6 content; however, we will still do the content when it is challenging (except we will be wearing greens that are higher than level 70 gear).

semantically, it is exactly the same as doing the T5 and T6 content now, except without the *long* “getting geared” period. it will be just as challenging as trying to do it now with purples – except it won’t take weeks and weeks to get all the purples that all the tanks and all the healers and all the DPS need. if you think about it, if a group of five do a quest and get a T5-equivalent quest reward, that is like a T5 boss dropping a token for everyone at the same time – except that it takes far less time to do the quest, and no T5 boss drops all the loots that exactly that group of five needs.

so really, the recent rash of ‘must go to a guild that can get me into the T5 content before it becomes obsolete’ is just a demonstration of short-sightedness and or impatience. what it *did* do was create such a large amount of drama and dissatisfaction, that several members left and returned to their old guilds to get away from it with the hope that it will blow over and that we will hook up with them again in the future after the expansion comes out. there are a very few that have moved over to one guild; however they do not represent the larger population that found the entire poach and subsequent interruption in raiding distasteful (while i do not believe it was his intent to interrupt our raiding, it was the obvious result of his short-sighted so-called ‘attempt to help’).

most all of the departees have expressed a concern that those that remain ‘in house’ will have unfavorable sentiments to those that departed – please don’t.

whether they left because they were mislead, or made a decision and changed their mind, or just wanted to get away from the situation – live and let live. i know several of you have come to me and expressed a solid loyalty to the guild and disdain for those that have left – i appreciate the loyalty to the guild as i am sure many do; however, let’s not cast stones to those that would return or to those that do not, for that matter.

long before this whole poaching and ‘critical mass’ mess occured, i had lots of friends in other guilds. now, i have some more friends that are in other guilds. i invite you to adopt that view rather than send me whispers about ‘the traitors’. i am not telling you to not talk to me about things that are disturbing you; just understand that i can listen without having to subscribe to your viewpoint.

granted, there are some people that i would not want back in this guild – and most of the people on that list got on it *long* before the recent events.

i suggest we focus on what we do well – contribute to a guild culture and atmosphere that is top notch. recruit new members. the officers and i will be putting in place slightly more guidances or restrictions to prevent other guilds from using our resources (*cough* use your own guild vent server! *cough*); however, our focus is on our goals and not on restricting others.

a note of caution when recruiting: set expectations

if you blanket macro invite folks into the guild, and do not take the time to explain to them that we split Kara raids over two days and that most folks are gearing up for Kara, or that we are trying to get a 25 man together for the Gruul’s and Mags content, and that we have a solid 2-boss fighting team for ZA but no T5 gear, they might arrive thinking we are geared and ready.

which leads to their departure as soon as they see we do not meet what they thought we were. and that sucks for everyone involved.

so far we have a net gain from the recruiting so i won’t say it is not working. however, we see a lot join and a lot leave and that can be disruptive unto itself.

70s joining the guild now either should be focusing on gearing for the raids we do, or if geared, focus on helping us gear. otherwise, they are just part of a revolving door.

begin telling me how you feel about…

… making it required to have an active end-cap-level toon in the guild. we want to know how you feel about this as we take it into consideration as a potential shift in /ginvites.

in other words, reaching a point somewhere in the near-not-too-distant-future where you would need to have a level 70 (currently) toon that is in the guild and is active (i.e. not offline for a month). in order to join the guild, you would need to have a 70 to bring in, or have to get to 70 within a short period (perhaps from 60). at ‘implementation of the reg’, all characters at or above level 50 would have x amount of time to get to 70, gear and begin raiding and all others (under 50) would have y amount of time to do same — to accommodate all of our valued members now that are not currently in possession of a 70 in our guild.

we have grown a fair amount in the past several months and are rapidly reaching the point where we need more 70s that are active in the guild in order to meet expanding raiding needs (we need more raiders). requiring that newcomers join with a 70 or that they reach 70 shortly thereafter fosters a larger pool of 70s from which to draw on to fill raids. and it means we can do more of the same raids as well as more raids instances.

it also increases the number of 70s online and available to work together in non-raid instances, craft items, pvp and do dailies.

it reduces the situation (reduces to zero) where people use our guild to level to 70 and gear up, then leave to go to another guild “where their main is” (that would not level them up and gear them up) and leave behind yet another alt they want us to help level and gear (which then leaves also). we are not a farm team for other guilds to level their alts in.

it reduces the number of players that would request lowbie (e.g. VC) run throughs repetitively from higher level toons without being in a position to return the favor (to anyone).

there are downsides to the concept: what if you have a friend that wants to move to this server and start a new toon and play with us (you)? they would not have a level 70 on the server nor would a short leveling period necessarily be fair. if we make an exception for them, why aren’t we making exceptions for other friends you have on the server that just started out? or that have 70s in tier 6 raiding guild but would level a new toon in ours and keep it there?

putting in place a reg that keeps us from /ginviting unless they have a raid-level toon crimps growth of the guild size; however, not necessarily crimping where most of us are focused.

the number one reason for attrition (departures) from our guild over the past 12 months has been that they are leaving to help/play with a brother/friend/whatever and the number two reason is that they did not find enough 70s online to group with to get XYZ done.

not much we can do about reason #1 and we wish them all well. reason #2 gets resolved with more 70s online which is a factor of how many 70s we have and how many are online at similar times. increasing the number of 70s is conducive to more 70s online, which is conducive to more 70s grouping to get XYZ done.

while we are indeed enjoying a growth in our guildie numbers, reducing attrition is always healthy. on the other hand, restricting recruiting has the potential to reduce our growth which could lead to a reduction in guild roster if attrition exceeds growth.

no decisions have been made yet, and we are seeking your thoughts and feelings on this matter. you all have the opportunity to affect this decision. of course, nothing is set in stone and all can be reversed; however, we tend to like getting it right the first time around.

please talk to a senior officer or your guild leader and share your opinions candidly. we are eager to hear your arguments in favor and against.

Ironforge, Friday, 7pm server time – bring your tabbard!

*everyone* come to Ironforge Friday, 7pm server time and bring your tabbard! meet on the bridge in front of the AH and Bank.

*everyone* – that is ALL levels

the Kara raid will leave from there to start at 7:30 pm server time; however, before that, let’s draw some attention (good attention) to our guild by amassing in a very visible spot. make a good impression – ie don’t act like asshats and /yell stupidities! the point is to be visible and attract interest in our guild.

while the first time may not result in ‘droves’ of new recruits, repeating this will eventually translate into some good long-term recruits.

looking forward to seeing you there, i’ll be wearing our tabbard.

recruiting: 1x holy priest and 1x prot warrior

LR is currently recruiting one holy-spec priest and one protection-spec warrior – both level 70s and both at or close to our Kara gear requirements. Contact Ironhelm, Heinkel, Nightwind, or Kazumaket in game.

recruiting Mages!

we have a shortage of mages and their crowd control! room for 2x 67-70 mages that can level up and join our 70s to gear up for Kara. if you see a mage played well, talk to them about our guild culture. currently, Turlock is our only semi-active 70 mage and we are going to need more to flesh out the number of Heroics and our Kara raiding. specifically, looking for mages who understand that crowd control and staying under the threat threshold are more important than big numbers. they do not need to be at 8,000 mana and +600 spell damage with a sustained ~650 dps – but they should be on their way to it.

honey, pick up a healer on the way home!

as you are leveling to 70, or rep grinding, or doing heroics, or… keep an eye out for good healers. they are the players that are just plain good players and know their class well – especially their class’ role in a group. it’s not about gear – although if they know how to gear up, that is a good starting indicator. it’s about those spells landing like they knew they needed to be cast even before they were needed.

i encourage you all to look for those rare individuals and recruit them to our guild if they are level 60 or higher. we already are ramping up to begin raiding and are at most two months away from actively raiding Kara on a weekly schedule – that is a short time to find and help good players level, rep, key, and gear for Kara. right now, we are mostly short on healers – like everyone else.

also, if you see one of our healers online, ask them if they need help – the sooner they get to your content, the sooner they can heal for you!

Be *Selective* When Recruiting – Your Recruits Are Your Care And Responsibility

It should go without saying that when you offer someone an invitation to join our guild you have taken a few moments to ‘interview’ them as to ‘why us’ and ‘why them’. Find out what their definition of ‘a good guild’ is. Everyone has different expectations and definitions of what a good guild is and just because ours is ‘according to our expectations’ it does not mean that it is according to theirs. Find out what they expect. If you do not have the time to find out, do not invite them into the guild. If they do not have the time to explain or answer, do not invite them into the guild.

When they leave the guild, either if I see it when I am online or by checking the log that I see as guildmaster, I follow up with them to find out why they left.  What I am finding more times than not, is that they have left because we did not meet their expectation of giving them run through after run through and leveling them up, giving them all the gold they need and giving them withdrawal privileges from our guildbank. These departures are entirely avoidable by simply not inviting them into the guild in the first place. Most recently, I watched Heinkel (70) spend an hour helping someone (23) in Duskwood only to watch them quit the guild once he helped them finish their quests and he logged off.

Do not be too shy to ask them if they expect to be leveled, run through instances non-stop, funded, and given our guild bank keys. If they say ‘yes’ to any of those, there are perfectly good guild matches for them and we are not one of them – so do not invite them to join us. It just means that our folks waste time and resources on them which could easily have been used to help you instead. i.e. When Heinkel was helping that person in Duskwood, he was not helping someone else, who is likely a good match for our guild, simply because he cannot be in two places at the same time. Let’s use our resources and time wisely by not wasting them on poor recruiting choices.

Be *selective* when recruiting. Take responsibility for the people you recruit into the guild. Ensure that they are introduced to the membership and officers, that you tell them to read our website and the guild message of the day (and guild information). Find out if they need anything and ask an officer to help them with it – in case they are shy or do not want to ask themselves having just joined. Certainly if they are significantly below you in level, consider yourself on “run through” duty if they ask for one and you were their recruiter.

We are not trying to curb your recruiting drives! We are trying to reduce the revolving door syndrome and the waste of resources that can go along with that.

Finally, this is a social ‘club’ just like any other in RL and I would expect you to take responsibility for anyone you bring into the guild in no less a manner than you would in any RL social club. I expect you to help them and support them to the best of your capacity for their first several weeks until they become full rank Members. While they are Initiates, you are the first and most familiar person to them – do not just “drop them off” into the guild with an invite and then leave them to find their way in our culture or on the doorstep of officers to take care. It *is* one of the duties of Officers to assist Initiates as needed and reasonable; however, it is first and foremost the responsibility of the person who extended to them the offer to join our guild.

This will foster a stronger guild community and by extension a stronger guild.