Thought it was time to update the blog, so here I go…

Initially I wrote the blog to try and find enough like minded people to set up the guild charter without paying mercenaries by spamming trade chat.

This was achieved pretty much, had to draft a little bit of help from a couple of people and then it was good to go.

So from that what have we done at Casually Epic?

Matt and Jan became officers as they helped set the guild up with me and were both keen and able people bringing different things to the guild. I think Matt is more experienced in end game stuff which is ideal and is a bit of a social butterfly. Jan brings experience in many other facits of the game and in real life and I think will be able to reason with people very well. She is also a social butterfly! So I am happy with the “management” of the guild as it stands. I like to think I am a pretty down to earth and approachable guy so hopefully the three of us can sort all the stuff out in the guild. It’s fair to say that I don’t “suffer fools lightly” and I am not afraid to lay down the law where necessary but in a fair way. I am not a social butterfly.

If we expand member wise then maybe there will be need for another officer. At the moment we don’t have specific jobs as the guild is too new, shiney and small – again if we were to expand maybe we would have people being more specific e.g. recruiting or leading raids but for now I think it’s fine.

Guild Bank – often a contentious issue in guilds this one I have found. We currently have 3 tabs and another guildy (Becky) offered to pay for a 4^th. Thanks for the very kind offer Becky. I asked her not to as it is a lot of gold that can be spent on her consumables, mats, training and repairs and so on. I think the tab should be paid for by the community of Casually Epic and not just one kind person. I don’t see a rush for this tab so once we have somewhere near the 1k gold I can always put to and purchase it.

The GB - It’s getting a little messy so I would ask people to really think about what they are putting in. Please use the bank if you need the items that’s why they are there

Permissions in the GB at the moment are fairly restrictive as it is a new guild. Casual rank can deposit, view and nothing else. Members (Comrades) can view, deposit and withdraw limited sticks from the first two tabs. Epics will be able to withdraw from tab 3 and officers can withdraw from all as they will be dealing with requests and handing out gear if people ask that need stuff.

I’m using tab 3 to place cooking mats and flasks etc for hc’s and raids. I have decent cooks so can provide people with their buffing food but need mats I can’t farm all of the mats myself but what I do get will stick in there.

Facebook – this was a very early thing to be set up by Matt. So far just five of us have joined this which is a bit of a shame as there has been some useful discussions on there and I think there will continue to be. I’d like to see it built up a little and if people want to participate that’s great, if they don’t that is also great it’s not for everyone.

Anyway the group is called Casually Epic – SWC fire us a request to join if you want to join in.

Guild Ranks – after some discussion we managed to set them up without too much heartache and at the time of writing are as follows:

Casual – new to the guild, thanks for joining – a period where they can suss us out and us them. Hopefully they will join in wherever possible and appropriate and help others. Hopefully they will become valued guildies and gain promotion

Comrades – Matt suggested this name and I really like it as it makes me think of a really good solidarity between us. So once people have been in the guild for a while (no specified time, tried in the past it doesn’t seem to work) then they gain this status. No hard and fast rules it’s just about any of the 3 of us judging whether or not we are happy with their input either in guild chat, helping others or participating in one form or another. If we are ever not 100% sure about people we’ll just leave them and explain to them why if they are asking. I know for some people gaining promotions etc can be an issue so we’ll just try and be sensible about this and judge it on individual cases. I see guild rankings a little like normal jobs, some people get promoted quicker than others it’s a fact of life I just don’t want people to resent not being given an opportunity and feeling excluded.

Epic – hmmm, not sure about this yet – which is why there are no Epics! I was considering having a raider status which I think this might fulfil but have mixed feelings about that.

Officer alt – alts of officers. Jan is an altoholic, I have a few as does Matt so it seemed sensible to create this rank so that when we are not on our mains we can still invite people to the guild and sort out a range of other admin stuff, nothing worse than constantly relogging to have to sort out something.

Officer rank – always wanted to keep this to an absolute minimum as too many cooks, chiefs or whatever definitely messes stuff up. Sometimes people might want to stand down for various reasons or people might want promotion so this can be flexible in the future. I don’t want guildies making officers life a drag as this can happen and I don’t want to see officers abusing power. I’m happy to say I ahven’t seen much of this happening so far.

Head Honcho – I will change this title from time to time it’s kind of a joke title for Mushy, he set the guild up and that is the way Blizz have these things, respect the Mush!

Communication – I feel that a lack of communication is a guild killer which is why I set the blog up before we even started and had a lot of ideas about comms. Communication takes many different forms these days so what do we have.

Guild Chat – nothing really bad I have noticed so far and I will challenge any inappropriate stuff as I hope others will also.

Officer chat – we use this a little to try and sort out recruiting etc

Vent – had a bit of a false start with this but now I have my own server, after a few fails with my Mac I now have it running fine but need to organise the channels which I will do very shortly e.g. have a heroic group or two, have a raid one, officer one and a general one – currently we have 10 slots, priority always goes to the guild members and if there is space for friends and family that’s fine they can use it too e.g. in groups also obviously if there is a raid we will only be able to have all the raiders on Vent.

Facebook group – underused but used effectively for the people that do use it! Join up!

Twitter – excellent and easy form of comms e.g. can’t make a raid but want to tell me then just twot me!! My twitter handle is bluemoono so follow me by all means

Raids – will be posted on the calendar and as we have relatively few members at the moment I will mass invite and at the moment I am including some friends and family of Jan to help fill the raids, clearly we have to have enough of relevant roles but I am hoping that we can recruit enough soon to fulfil these roles. We are aided by two things 1. duel spec 2. alts

Hopefully in a few weeks this will be more stable and we will have a recognised team e.g. a way better tank then myself I would prefer to heal on pally or heal or dps on mushy not tank on pally but for now I will “take one for the guild”

Expectations of people in raids

1. if you accept the invite please turn up or let people know that you can’t (clearly not always possible but if you can try it would be really appreciated)
2. be on time as sometimes there are delays summoning and explaining things etc and the longer we have to wait on people the less time we have to raid
3. know the tactics – even a basic knowledge (read or watch vids)
4. bring the relevant flasks/pots for your class
5. bring any other consumables you need
6. know your class – do a bit of research and take the time to know which buttons to press! Sounds obvious but it is amazing how many people don’t do this, it really doesn’t have to be a painful exercise
7. have enough gold to repair, sadly we will wipe whilst learning stuff and improving our team effort, it’s just a part of the process “wipe with a smile” as the guild name of another guild says, reflect on it and don’t blame others
8. let me or who ever the raid leader is explain the set up and loot etc and don’t talk over and then obviously have input yourself e.g “Scott get these bloody adds off me!” or “heal me for the love of god heal me!”
9. get gemmed/chanted etc up appropriately – I can help with gemming, not so much on chanting as my 450 chanter is on another server unplayed ;(. So ask if you need this kind of thing it will help your performance and the raid
10. get on to vent – you don’t have to speak but listening is key – I hate typing and it’s impossible for me to fight bosses and type so by the time I have tried to type move out of the fire you are probably dead as am I so I’m just not going to do it.
11. Add ons – as a minimum install Deadly Boss Mods DBM
12. be patient and helpful to others

Things I don’t ever want to see in raids

1. blaming people particularly tanks and healers – healers I feel your pain and remember you can’t heal through stupid – if someone is stood in poison and doesn’t move and they die it is not the fault of the healer, if a dps constantly pulls threat but carries on casting or runs from the tank and doesn’t do other things they can do to lose threat (pally bubble, priest fade, mage ice block etc) and I hear them blaming the tank or healer well they will be told. We are all human and all capable of making mistakes.
2. constantly going afk without any explanation – it slows the raid down, raids can take time so if something in rl comes up or you need a break then just say so – we had a guy in FF that used to go “brb guys” every raid he slowed the raid down every time and used to drive us all up the wall – his brb was often 50 minutes long – this will not be tolerated in Casually Epic it’s not fair on others.
3. spamming the raid channel with the damage meters., To be honest this is a pain in the arse and shows a complete lack of understanding in the game. It does several things, 1. messes up the chat window particularly in loot rolls when people often do it 2. makes people that have done not so great on that fight feel crap 3. makes people look better than they really are – some classes will do massive damage on one fight and way less on another it is normal also the utility that any given class can not be overlooked (e.g. mages are vending machines! Locks SS/Summons, HS and imp buff, priest stam, spirit, shad protect etc)

Loot

Omg huge issue this for guilds and an old guild I was a member of was torn apart by the introduction of a ridiculously convoluted looting system and one faction of the guild bullying others into using it (people like me that didn’t like this attitude left the guild and then the ones that created the trouble left and started their own guild after systematically robbing the GB, sigh…).

I want to instil a sense of we are raiding to kill things and it is the “glory of the raider” rather than “me like shiney” and “what’s in it for me”

I want to keep it simple so bear these things in mind

1. It is about progress for the guild so if someone is getting an item gz to them as they are getting better so therefore so is the raid
2. MS roll first, OS second, then sharded at the moment I have a feeling we lack chanters so we may have to vend stuff
3. Please consider other players when rolling on stuff and think of the bigger picture and try not to be too greedy – will that tiny upgrade really be of best benefit to you or more so to another player where it is a massive upgrade?

Web site/forum

No progress on this. A member said he would do us one and then hasn’t been on since, well barely.

I will look into it this week and maybe we can ask Cheryl nicely to do us one ‘cos she is kind of good with them! I have seen some very good ones e.g. Bound/Ensidia and some that are horrible. I don’t want a horrible one I am of the opinion that a decent one would get used and they can be a valuable way of communicating remotely eg when not in game and also allows guildies to put forth their ideas and thoughts so they are all included.

Recruitment

Probably need some better guidelines on recruitment now that we are up and running

1. I’m going to concentrate on recruiting specific classes for raid progression e.g. tanks but accept any decent person is always worthy of an invite
2. possibly need to work out what people actually want to raid with e.g. does Chi want to use her shammy to melee dps or her Drood to heal? At the moment I am as I said above filling in gaps but come ToC/ICC I’ll be better doing something I’m actually better at
3. we don’t want to over recruit for the raid team as people get bored/frustrated having to sit out
4. we don’t want to under recruit and not have enough players – it’s a hard balance
5. we need to look at a few things when recruiting which are:

1. age
2. what they want from a guild
3. class
4. their attitude to the game
5. why do they want to join the guild
6. why did they leave their previous one

I know that Bound (the guild from the Rawrcast podcast) use the following methods on recruitment but I’m not sure how feasible this is – they have an application process and then have a chat with potential members on Vent before accepting them – the chatting is interesting as in my former guild I had an app on the forum but people often lied about things – this would not be the case on vent but honestly for a guild as young and small as ours I don’t think it’s feasible and would be a bit of a pain

We will make mistakes in recruiting – it happens we will just have to deal with any issues arising sensibly

25 man – do we want to become a 25 man raid guild?

My simple answer is yes but I am also happy for a 10 man guild – what do you think? Need a poll…

I think it is possible to build up 2 ten man teams in time and eventually do some 25 man raids…we’ll see

Alts in other guilds

Short answer is – I am not keen but if it isn’t interfering with our raids and other guild stuff then I don’t mind but really what’s up with our guild guys?! Come on!