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 Future of the Guild

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Zadozex




Posts : 7
Join date : 2009-06-12

Future of the Guild Empty
PostSubject: Future of the Guild   Future of the Guild EmptyMon Jun 22, 2009 4:41 pm

Hey guys, we've had a lot of guild fluctuation in the past few weeks. We've added a lot of new members. We've had a few bad apples leave. We've even had some regulars go inactive. In any guild, when the guild fluctuates, you increase the risk of drama and conflict. I've been hearing rumblings lately of discontent and frustration for some of our members, so I just wanted to get a discussion going now so that hopefully we can work these issues out before they cause any real problems.

First off, I just want to discuss how I view this guild and where I think we are going. I see us as a semi casual, semi hardcore guild, if that makes any sense. We're casual in the sense that we don't make demands of our players to donate mats, we don't have minimum playing time requirements, we don't exclude people based on their gear if at all possible. We're hardcore in the sense that we want to be at the cutting edge of the game. We want to tackle new instances as they come out and we want our members to get all the gear they want. I survey the guild landcape on our server and I put us at a solid 3rd place behind Oblivion and Pwnography in terms of overall guild capability. Both of those guilds, however, are far more hardcore than us. I've heard they even charge their lower geared members for the "privilege" of going on an instance run with the main people.

This guild has grown the right way. We've never spammed world chat to recruit members. All of our members have joined us through just playing with us outright or by being friends of one of the members already in the guild. There's a friendship and trust factor that our guild has developed and I'm proud to be a part of it. The way people loan others mods, money, mana stones, etc. so others can finish a piece of gear a little quicker and the person loaning it knowing full well that person will pay them back when they can.

As far as the future goes, there's an expansion coming and with it, new levels, new gear and new instances. I don't know about the rest of you, but it would be awesome to be among the first guilds to complete these new challenges. I don't know if all of you know, but we were one of the first 3-4 guilds on the server to run Kalin. We're one of the few guilds that can run the new Ice Dwarf instance effectively. I'd like us to be there from day 1 when the new expansion comes out farming new instances and getting the newest gear. The question is...How do we get there from where we are now? What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses?

Our most glaring fault right now is the lack of a well geared tank. Balian quit the game. Illuminata and Wigles have things going on outside of the game that limit their playing time. The main tank in our guild is now Deo and he's able to tank most things, but not the high end stuff like the Bin Pikes, the ant queen or TT. Our 2nd best geared tank is Rukariz. Unfortunately for Rukariz, ungeared knights are pretty much a tack on in instance runs, so he's not getting much playing time in the higher instances because we can't afford a "dead" slot and he can't solo MA for mods to get the health he needs. Cern selflessly sacrificed his R/W and rerolled to R/K so he could tank for us as a rogue. I can't thank him enough for doing that. Thanks to him, we've been able to do countless Iceburst/Cyclops boss runs and all those Ice Dwarf runs.

Technically speaking, I'm our best geared tank and I don't mind doing so, but I'm usually required to be a priest. So then we look at our priest situation and you have me and Ixoye. Unfortunately Ix isn't quite geared enough to solo heal the harder stuff like Ice Dwarf, Bin Pikes, and TT. We have a couple up and coming priests in Phaeton and Karma who could solve these troubles by allowing us to go the 2 priest route, but then we get into the issue of "Are all of us on at the same time?".

The way around the "Are all of us on at the same time?" issue is to have more of that class in the guild. Well that leads us to the mages in the guild. We have a ton of mages. This is very nice because we need 1-2 mages for pretty much every instance, but our mages have crazy schedules, so rarely do we have more than 2-3 on at one time. It's good that we have so many mages because it gives us coverage, but it's bad for them because they are always competing for gear. It's been a long, hard road getting a staff for every mage in the guild (Diablita, we're trying!!)

The point I'm trying to make is every instance requires a certain group set up. Some require a good tank. Others, through good gear on non tanks, can be run tankless. Some require a certain number of mages. All require a priest and sometimes 2 if the priest isn't geared well enough. Given these group constraints there will be times some people will need to be excluded from a run and it's not to fault anyone. There's just only so much we can do.

So as more and more members become "instance ready", how do we continue to help members develop and not exclude anyone? The key is separate groups. It has been my goal for a long time now to get our guild running 2 or even 3 instance groups simultaneously. I may be wrong, but I don't think we ran 2 simultaneous instance groups until just this last week or so! With as many fairly well geared members as we have, I find this odd. It seems to me sometimes that unless one of our core members says "Hey, want to do this?", nothing gets started. Or if one group is already in an instance, people not in that group don't form up a group for another instance run. I encourage everyone in the guild to actively try to do things with one another.

I realize that instance running isn't the end all and be all of RoM. A lot of stuff just requires you do it alone or with one other person. Things like MA, farming charges to tier a weapon, or leveling alts for mods. Most members pretty much have their own people they run MA with. I see Karma and IX doing MA a lot. Incinerate and Sphynx. Teaming up like this is a great way to improve. That's how me, Cern and Had did it. If anyone can't solo MA yet and they need some help, say something in guild chat. Going to single out Rukariz here, but I know he's a little frustrated with his class right now. He can't solo MA to get mods and he's dead weight on instance runs for the time being. Just be a little more vocal on guild chat man and people will do MA with you. We're a helpful bunch, you just need to say something. That goes for anyone else.

This seems to promote another issue I have heard mentioned and that is the guild becomes "cliqueish". Everyone playing with their own little groups and if you're not with the "in" crowd, you get left out. The main way to avoid that is guild communication, which brings up....Ventrilo! People need to start using ventrilo more. A lot of times we form up entire groups for instance runs on vent and it never even goes to guild chat. I'd say maybe 25% of the guild communication actually takes place in guild chat. The rest is on vent. We only use guild chat when we have open slots and people on vent don't want to go. Even if you can only log in to ventrilo to listen and not talk, it'll get you way more involved in the guild. Some people seem to only log in to vent when they are doing an instance run with us. Most of us are on there no matter what we are doing.

There's also the issue of the Black Codex set. Far and away the best armor set for pretty much every class. Some people want full sets, some people want just a few pieces to mix and match with other sets. Some people have been asking that we make a list and I've been hesitant to do so for a few reasons I've discussed a few times on vent and that I'll discuss openly in a parallel thread.

So after that huge wall of text, I'll sum up by saying I think we are headed in the right direction. I think we are as fair as we can be to all of our members. If you want to take on a larger role in the guild, please talk with us in guild chat or on ventrilo. Also, just be patient if you don't get to do something you want to do. I want to hear from all of you. What issues do you have with the guild? What can be improved upon?
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Cern
Admin



Posts : 15
Join date : 2009-06-12

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PostSubject: Re: Future of the Guild   Future of the Guild EmptyTue Jun 23, 2009 9:51 am

Too many words...my head hurts...

But in all seriousness, Had, Zad, and myself have been discussing this stuff in the past few weeks.

In regards to the Black Codex set, we realize that there is a lot of competition and that if you can't play during the day (Bigwig mostly comes to mind), you're more or less SOL except on the weekends. This should be changing soon as I will hopefully have the resources (a la my own priest-in-pocket) to begin running stuff late-night for those of you who can't be on during the day (no promises yet on when this will happen, but its in the works).

There's a lot of crap to fix and implement; if we can get forum activity up we can actually have meaningful discussions that everyone can participate in. instead of having fleeting comments via private chat in game on how to go about doing all these things.

Basically speak up or don't complain when the ball starts rolling.

Edit:
Stickied it
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bigwig

bigwig


Posts : 19
Join date : 2009-06-11

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PostSubject: Re: Future of the Guild   Future of the Guild EmptyTue Jun 23, 2009 10:19 am

i'm in no hurry
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