bucklersofswash.up-your.com

Yeah, you read that right. That’s our new website. The address is just super sexy. There were several other options, but after hearing the .up-your.com domain, the guild leader himself said I couldn’t pick any thing else (so I didn’t).

Sign-ups and Badge Run Raiding.

I think I’ve found the event manager I want, but alas, I’m at work and can’t actually check it out. It’s an addon, and I believe that everyone would have to install it to work, but it looks like it will work like a charm. More information to come on this later. If you’ll follow me, I believe I have some things to discuss about Badge Farming Raiding…..

Badge Farming 101

1.) Unless instructed to stop by the raid leader or a healer, tanks will continue to chain pull trash.

2.) All Classes should bring consumables to increase their effectiveness. This means flask/pots, mana/wizard oil, etc.

3.) Farm/progression raiding is work. I personally find a successful quick raid to be more fun than a wipe-ridden joke fest that takes 2 more hours. Leave the goofing-off for an event that it was meant for. If you really want to goof off in a raid, do it in a level 60 raid for fun.

4.) Listen to the raid leader, and save yourself the blame. Wipe when asked and only use battle rez, ankh, etc. when asked. Here’s an example:

If the leader calls a wipe, please just die, and save us the 10 minutes of you running away and then running back. If you can vanish or feign, that’s fine, but do it within a 30 sec walk from the rest of the group.

5.) If you are going to be AFK, make it less than 2 minutes and give advance warning so we can not let it slow us down. Also keep AFKs at a minimum. People who aren’t there for 1/4 of the raid shouldn’t be getting all of the benifit.

6.) Buffs will be applied (if applicable) before a boss fight and after a wipe. If you’re missing a buff on trash that isn’t a salvation, don’t expect the raid to stop while we buff you up.

7.) Buffing should take no longer than 1 minute. If you are missing a buff that you think you should have, save our ears and put it in raid chat.

Changes on the Horizon

The guild is very big, and all of the sudden we’re having issues getting proper raids together. The clash between hardcore and casual is begining to rear its head. I’m pretty sure this happens in every guild when it hits this size and I want to do something about it. Here’s the issue though. I’m one person with one account in a guild with over a hundred. I can ask, beg and plead until I’m blue in the face, but if no one or few people listen, it doesn’t really have any effect.

I really want to progress into tier 5 / 6 content and sunwell too, but I don’t want to do it with extreme rules and measures, such as attendance policies. That being said if we have a consistant raid group for 25 man tier 5 content going, there will be a new loot system installed favoring those who attend most often. As for the exact system, I don’t know what will be in place, and until I can have a consistent group, meaning 70% of the people are the same week to week, the /roll system stays.

I will be running my raids with a more serious tone starting this week. I want things to go faster and smoother. I’d like to know what I’ll be working with ahead of time, so I know if I have any special needs for a raid. Here’s what I’m doing about it:

1.) I will be using a sign up system for any raids I run (system still to be determined). If you want to go to a scheduled raid, you must sign up for it in advance. I will let more people sign up than the raid will hold, and I will select the best group available from the characters on the list. I will be running two Karazhan groups and will get as many people as possible a chance to raid. Group two will be a badge farming run and the weekend group will be a progression group.

2.) Badge farming raids will be run at full speed. The tanks will continue to chain pull unless a raid member dies or a healer calls out to drink. Goofing off in vent will result in a global mute if it interferes with the raid. This mute will be removed after 5 minutes. If the goofing off persists, I will find replacement. This being said, there will be several non-raid events purely set up for fun.

3.) Progression runs will be run at the fastest speed possible. The raid leader will explain fights if anyone has fought a boss 2 or less times. After that, you are expected to know the fight. If you do have a question, I will always ask for any questions before I ready check. I will do my best to provide all information that is needed, and will call out for all battle-rezes , Divine interventions, tanking assignments, etc.

If you have any other suggestions on how to improve our raids, please let me know with a comment.

- Samuel

Class Forums – Up & Running

This news is actually a few days old, but I haven’t really announced it. On our guild website I have created forums for each class. These forums will be moderated by myself until we have put class leaders in place. At that time they will moderate their respective class forums. Of course to even see these forums you’d have to be a Guildcafe member, and added as member to our website. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of the guild is already registered, but I would like to get that number closer to 100%. If you’re not a member and want to know how to join, then keep reading…..

1.) Create a Guildcafe account.

2.) Email me – bucklersofswash@gmail.com

- Include your guildcafe name (character name too if different).

3.) Wait for an ingame mail or tell from me. Then check your guildcafe messages and verify your Bucklers membership.

4.) Technically, you’re done, but some other things you can do:

A.) Claim your toons in the roster (if they aren’t there, let me know)
B.) Post on the member forum threads (bio, recipies, raiding, etc.)
C.) Add a post to your class forum (if so inclined)

As always, if you have any issues, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to help.

Class Leaders

There has been some discussion (mainly in whispers) to me about setting up class leaders, or guild “experts” on each class to help other players learn the ins and outs of their classes. I guess this would be almost like an lower rank of officer (unless the person already is an officer), and that way people could look in the guild to see who’s online and know who’s a class lead. The whole point would be to have people who play their class well and are also good teachers and motivators. Basically, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best at your class, if you can’t give a good expanation why.

So… I’d like some input from people who are interested in being a Class Leader….

If you, or someone you know is really good at playing thier class, and shows at least a shred of common sense when talking to other people, let me know, and I’ll get a list of people together for the officers to review. Pending the guild master’s approval, we’d post the Class Leads in the guild info page. I’d also set up class forums on the guild website, and they would be moderated by the class leads (which everyone is joining right?). I think this would help us a great deal with gearing, talents, playstyle, etc.

Things we should be doing as a guild.

So, there are 99 accounts tied to our guild now. And while some of the accounts are inactive, a good majority are not. And, from what I have seen, there’s some top notch talent, and good people in this guild. I would like to keep it that way, so here are my ideas for having fun and progressing. Be warned, while worth the read in my opinion, this post is long….

1.) We need to organize another raid group. We’ve had a new wave of members recently and they are, I’m sure ready to raid. We’ve been able to take a few with us to the 25 man raids, but we’ve gotten to the point where a third 10 man group is an option that should be looked into. I’m not really into the whole raiding with two groups a week thing, but if need be, I’ll volunteer to lead the raid for a few weeks to get everything started. As it turns out, I’ve got some experience leading a new group into Karazhan, and even some Karazhan tanking skill.

2.) We need to have some fun. I’m going to host a Level 1 Hogger Raid on Saturday, April 12th, time to be determined later. Also, I’d like to start doing some organized battlegrounds, and will soon change the poll to find a good time to do them. I wouldn’t mind hosting a Gnaked Gnome Race either, but that takes some planning, so I’ll get to working on that later.

3.) Continuing on the idea of fun…. I want to get 5 man lvl 70 teams together to compete in a pre-bc instance competition. We could even do a buy in per team and award gold to the winning team. The only real rule would be that you would have to do a full clear of the instance, no partial clears. We could start with something easy like Deadmines or Stockades (which could possibly be cleared in under 3 minutes with the right team), and maybe someday we could have a BRD, or other insanely long instance run, but that would take forever.

4.) I would like to lock down a solid 25 man raid team. I know that sometimes people won’t be able to go, but that 25 man team would have alternates for that reason. This way we have (hopefully) a core group of about 20 players that are always in the group. If we do this, we will be able to progress much faster through the content, and perhaps with the new badge loot even see most of endgame before Wrath of the Lich King. That goal didn’t seem possible before 2.4, but with the new badge loot, it may be possible. That being said, if we can’t form a consistent raid group that is used to raiding together, that will probably slip back to impossible.

– Six months ago, this guild was fairly small, and couldn’t down all of Karazhan. Now we have two groups who can do that, and many characters geared to take on tier 5 and 6 content. Since we’re bigger now, and moving up the rankings, we need to stick together and work together if want our successes to continue. Thanks for all the hard work you’ve done and have yet to do. If you have any suggestions or ideas to help keep this awesome group of people progressing and having fun, please let me know.

- Samuel