Rebuilding the Core
Last night I tackled one of the harder aspects of getting a guild back on its feet, at least as far as infrastructure is concerned. Stalwart of course had been trucking along without much of a formal structure, but there were signs of stress as many fractures had formed over the years I had been gone. One of my first steps in trying to right the ship was trying to build a coalition of officers representing different parts of the guild and pulling them together into one team. Essentially I was looking for the players that were already reaching out and engaging other guild members. At the same time I was looking for individuals with keen insight and a level head.
After much consternation about my choices, I finally developed a strategy. Essentially in House Stalwart there are two major raid groups that represent the thrust of where the guild is going. Unfortunately many times these two teams are going in completely opposite directions. My hope was to find a way to represent both forces equally on this officers council of sort that I was building. From Team “Nothing Can Go Wrong” I have tagged Athelia and Arria, both of which are extremely positive forces in the guild. Additionally both have shown a level head and extremely excellent judgment skills. They are constantly engaging other players and the wealth of their game experience is something we can always use.
Then from Team “Leftovers” I brought in Gamad and Shorty. Shorty and I have a long history together, and he has always been one of those players that is willing to give the shirt off his own back to help someone out. Additionally he is a whizkid with the auction house and will be helping liquidate some of our overstuffed guild bank to help buffer our repair money. Gamad is relatively new to the guild, in the grand scheme of things, but in that time I have seen her continued to grow and reach out to new players. She has always been willing to step in and help when help is needed. Additionally I have seen that she is a peacemaker and mediator, and will help out greatly in smoothing over the rough spots.
Finally you have myself and Rylacus the person who so valiantly “kept the lights on” over the last year or so. Together we represent the legacy player, the folks who have been around since vanilla and most of them in House Stalwart since that time or at least Burning Crusade. We are the ones who remember the way things used to be, and have the roadmap to return us to glory. This mix of newer voices and older voices should mesh together to create something greater than the individual parts. There is still a lot more work to be done, but I feel more confident in moving forward now that I have the key pieces in place. There is another one of these “legacy” officers that I still need to talk to, to gauge if they still want to fill that role or not. But last night made me quite a bit more confident about the total outcome of these changes.
Viva La Artisan
Another big change that I am wanting to implement in the next few days is the Artisan rank. At one point I had one of these, but it never really worked out quite like I had wanted it to. Essentially back then I would choose a single crafter for each profession, but that process ended up ignoring a lot of people who want to contribute to the guild. My plan is to make the entire process much more transparent and open this time around. My goal is to create an application process through our forums that allows individuals to sign up to fill the duty of “crafting for the guild”. What I mean by this is that they would have expanded access to the guild crafting coffers, but have the responsibility of filling in the gaps when someone needs gear. The artisan rank would make it clear to identify just who could craft gear for players.
The other major responsibility that comes with the rank is to create a “shop” of sorts on the forums. It will be the responsibility of guild crafters to create a post outlining the major things they can create with their professions. Additionally I expect these Artisans to watch the forums for any item requests and then respond back in a timely fashion as to whether or not they can provide the service. I am going to have to figure out the logistics of this whole program, but over the years I have had more guild members wanting to know how they can help out. Buffering the leveling process by providing new gear, especially as someone reaches the level cap is a massively valuable service. I know Shorty for example already provides new players “care packages” of things like bags… and this has been entirely of his own initiative. I can only imagine what could come of a more organized system.
Bring on the Warband
Finally I am wanting to work out the details of organizing the raid groups within the guild. I am staunchly against a “raider” rank, because singling someone out just because they raid as somehow better just feels morally wrong. What I do want to create however is transparency in who is actually organizing and leading the raids. As a result one of the various guild ranks will be turned into a “Raid Leader” designation. This serves two very simple purposes. Firstly it will control access to the raid materials tab in the guild bank. However more importantly this will clearly identify who a guild member can approach about joining in the raid. Additionally I would like to get someone from each raid to maintain a thread on the forums outlining what the raid does, when they raid, who exactly someone can talk to about joining.
Additionally I want there to be a clear “you must be this tall” line drawn for each group. Item level is a double edged razor, but with it you can size up some basic requirements as to how well geared someone needs to be to be able to compete in the content. I am by no means saying that there needs to be an automatic system of entry. I do not want to get into the business of determining who can raid and who can not. I do however want the raid groups within House Stalwart to be much more transparent on how one gains entry. Additionally I feel as though if you enter one of the raid groups in good faith that you should remain loyal to that team.
There has been some bad blood in the past as various individuals have transitioned between the teams without adequately informing the leadership of their previous team. I want this to stop, we are one guild with a shared mission of trying to make the game a better place for all of us. My hope is that by exposing the raid groups and the processes for entry, that it will be extremely clear how transitions should work. Additionally I would like to see rosters posted of the current members of each raid, that way there can be no doubt in when someone is encroaching on the domain of the other raid. I am not saying there can be no transfers of lineup… I just want the entire process to work more transparently.
And Then I Actually Played…
I won’t lie… most of my night last night was spent dealing with various guild business in trying to create this new vision. Additionally I spent more than a bit of my time counseling players and trying to smooth over rough spots. Shortly after I had talked to Arria and brought him into he council he designed to run a heroic scenario. I took a break from leveling Gloam to do so, as my Paladin still had not finished the quest that guarantees a 500+ epic of some sort. The biggest struggle in gearing my alts has been on trying to get a weapon. I had heard from many friends that weapons DO actually drop from the loot bag you get from your daily heroic scenario. Problem is so far in all of the scenarios I had run I had not actually seen this happen.
So I went into the run expecting to get a few valor points, but not really expecting much from it. I am so thankful I took the break from my rogue because I walked out with a shiny Immaculate Pandaren Hammer of the Earthshaker. This actually is about the ideal weapon for a retribution Paladin, so I can finally stop sucking it up with my 450 weapon in LFR. It was a fun little run but I failed miserably at tanking the pirate boss with the saber. I had never actually used it, and I was trying to move out of the fire while hitting the cooldown and just got oneshot. On my deathknight I never use the saber and simply move out of range. So we missed the bonus by a few seconds, and I feel bad about it… but everyone that was with me was fine with it. They were happy to see I managed to pull a weapon. Now I just need to get the same success with my shaman… twice.
I am all about the concept of class specialists, but I maybe want to tweak the idea a bit. In a raid guild you often times have class leads or class officers, that are responsible for that class. What i would like to see instead if a Mentors section on the forums. Similar to the Artisan idea, folks would be able to sign up to be a class/spec mentor. For example I would be more than willing to mentor folks in the ways of Blood Deathknights, and to some extent Protection Warriors, since I have played both for extensive amounts of time. Like Ath said, she would not be comfortable tutoring someone in the ways of protection paladins, but she would be an amazing holy paladin mentor.
Really good ideas I am totally stealing them 🙂
Congratulations on the upgrade Bel!
Scarybooster, I like your idea about having class experts that people can go to when they want to ask questions. My only worry is that for hybrid classes people often specialize in one aspect of it, and are not so good at the others.
Using myself as an example – I keep up to date on paladin healing information, and because I’m regularly raiding I understand how what the guides say can connect to how people play.
On the other hand, I would love to have someone who is knowledgeable about ret paladins to talk with in my quest to improve my offspec play. You can read guides all you want, but it’s never quite the same.
And I’m completely clueless about protection paladins.
I was in a guild before that had class specialists to answer and questions for a specific class if needed. They weren’t officers, just class helpers. I was the Priest helper.
In another guild we had raid group names. They were a lot more fun than Team A and Team B. That way Team B didn’t think they were the bad raid team. The raid leader got his folks together and took a poll if a few quick names that would be easily recognizable in chat for coordination. Like, “15min for invites Poopstains!” That would tip off the Poopstains to start getting anything they needed to start raiding.