Meeting 14 - October 8th

[drazzl]

Foreword

The guild has had a rough few months and tossing another curve ball your way. Selanas will be stepping down as GM due to unforeseen time constraints from things changing in real life. As such, Viv and Moo will be stepping down as well as their condition for being part of staff was the team aspect. At about the same time, me and Mira had approached the GMs with concerns we'd had about the state of the guild and desire to get more involved again. It didn't seem prudent to go into another month-long nomination and election process when there's no one else left of the original nominees. So, barring any objections from the community, me and Mira will be picking up as GMs again. 

We understand these sort of change ups are rough on the community and sincerely hope this is the last one the guild has to deal with for a long while. While there was support for me and Mira taking control back at last night's meeting, only a percentage of the membership showed, and we want others to feel free to speak up and share their thoughts, questions or concerns about things and we ask for the chance to address them.

We've seen a bit of a downward trend with the guild over the last several months as Mira was away from game, I hit burnout, the tumultuous changeover of power and people leaving, end of expansion doldrums, a lack of new recruitment and a more lax atmosphere in the guild. We'll be hitting the ground running trying to get things back on track to where we're all having as much fun as we all want to. We've also taken to opportunity to add to the original mission statement for the guild to reflect our growth as a community, add some new direction, but also explicitly express ideas we've tried to keep to.

Events and Initiatives

Fashion Show

• While technically not a guild event, we are the sponsors for it and want to encourage our members to approach it as if it were one. The first show was Sunday night and was quite successful. It has some kinks to iron out, but many of those were due to problems arising at the last minute. 
• The second show will sometime in December, date and theme tba.
• Sponsorship of the event brought in 2 new members and resulted in making connections with others rpers on the server as well as the creation of a new RP channel (See RP forum for details).

Roleplay

• We're restarting rp events, run by Mira, that will occur twice a month.
• We'll be starting small for now since the last model with more involved storytelling ran into problems with attendance. For the time being we'll be doing rp through older raids, designed in a more episodic fashion so there won't be a need for backstories or even using the same toons all the time. These will also double as lore runs for those interested in exploring that.
• The first venture will be into Naxxramas on Oct 20th.

The Buddy System

• For those of you who aren't clear on what this initiative is, it is the name for our outreach program to welcome new members and try to help people work their way into the community.
• We're resurrecting the program again and streamlining it further. All veterans in the guild have access to a new forum for it with details. We welcome any members willing to volunteer to help out here and we'll give you access as well. Talk to Ten for access.
• Buddy Day - is the public face of this program. It is time set aside where people can ask for help from other members in completing objectives they're struggling with or maybe look for assistance power leveling a toon. If we don't have any of those things to do in the moment, we look to use the time to do things together as a guild such as guild challenges, questing, clearing old raids etc. Mira and Sal will be sharing responsibility for running this event which will be twice a month opposite RP weeks.

End of Expansion One-Shot Events

• If you need to complete Shaohao Rep or work on that Bone White Primal Raptor, it is time to get your kill grind on. We'll be posting some of these events sporadically in the remaining weeks of the expansion to set up groups to tackle these faster.

Pet Battles

• It is school season again, so Yon is going to be busy and we'll have fewer Safaris on the calendar for awhile. Mira will try to pitch in where she can here.
• We'll be trying to bring to a fruition plans to set up a server-wide tournament. We think this can bring more diversity to our existing tournaments which tend to feature the same players. We'll also add ample prize rewards to go along with more epic battling.

Vent Socials

• We've started running hangouts once a week in vent with the rule that no game talk be allowed. This is time where we just spend time as friends, getting to know each other or goofing off. These will be in the early evening on Sundays or Mondays.
• What started as a joke is now a thing, VV Afterdark, late night adult talk. After last week's discussion of rape culture, we think this may be a venue for other topics like race/gender, religion and politics - all those taboo subjects. We can promise discussions will remain civil but they get heated.

Anime Club

• It's like a book club, only we watch anime instead. Discussions are held every few weeks in vent on Wednesday nights, with some cross-posting onto the forums. Check out the Anime Club forum for more details.

Raid Team

• Ten (me) will be getting involved as a raid leader again. Since I have a more serious persona when it comes to raiding, I'll be taking charge of the Heroic team next expansion aiming for more competitive play while Moo will remain in charge of the Normal team providing a more casual raid experience.
• We're announcing plans to build a Mythic team. We have about half of the roster needed currently, but we anticipate this taking 6-12 months to get this set up as we don't recruit people into the guild specifically for the purposes of filling raid slots, it doesn't fit with our social values. 
• With the expansion winding down and no progression goals for our team, we'll be focusing more on completing side objectives and finishing some prior content on heroic. For side objectives, re:we want to start getting experience for our newer raiders and evaluate new members to the guild as well test out the new patch's impact on our current class choices to better assess our raid potential for next expansion.

Old School Raids

• This event series has been running for about 2 years now stemming to a prior guild and we feel it's gotten a bit stale. To shake things up we'll be rotating in different goals each week such as:
• The event series started as a way to obtain achievements. Mists raids will now be on the menu with proper gear to tackle these things with fewer people. Older raid achievements will largely be by request as veterans of the event series have the ones they want.
• Plenty of people would like to work on or finish completing older legendary weapon questlines. We'll still farm ICC, Firelands and Dragon Soul for people who want them.
• There's tons of bosses that have rare mount drops. While it is easy to solo hunt for Ashes of alar of the Onyxian Drake, the mounts from Throne of the Four Winds, Dragon Soul or any of the myriad of Mists' boos mounts require a group. So we'll dedicate a night to farming these.
• Lastly, we recently completed Herald of the Titans for several of our members. We had fun doing it so we've decided to keep our level 80s around and clear more content at level, so well periodically get in a night of legacy raiding. We're still going to hold on to our Herald gear though, so anyone who wants to get this achievement, or join in on the action in general, go ahead and start leveling a toon and we'll get you set up.
• Sal will be in charge of this event series, so talk to him about what interests you.

PvP

• We haven't given up hope on getting pvp events organized. What remains our obstacle is that our pvpers keep erratic schedules and are never on at the same time. Additionally, we've never had someone with the organizational skill and dedication to pvp to pull people together. If anyone feels up to the task, please speak up.
• We'll currently trying to bring someone into the guild who can get the events set up.
• In the meantime, talk to Ten if you're interested or post in the PvP section. It's helpful if we can get a count of those interested to make things easier to set up when we get to that stage.

Guild Challenges

• With the Cash Flow perk going away next expansion, these will be our mainstay for raising guild funds. As such, we'll be looking to do these on a more regular basis again. The last time we pushed for these we were building funds to pay for our 8th bank tab and before that when we were leveling the guild.
• Thanks to Nohwon's generous donation, the guild coffers are overflowing. Naturally we want to share this wealth and put it where it can do some good. In the past we've simply expanded the gold allotments people get per day, which are a healthy amount currently. This time we really want to reward those who consistently put in the time and effort to help the guild. So, for every guild challenge you complete, we will give you 50 gold out of the gold the guild accrues. You'll need to send a mail to Drazzl in game with a count of how many challenges you've done and perhaps the people who were also there, and I'll mail you your award. Note: raid challenges will be excluded as the amount the guild gets is generally needed to cover the team's repair bill for the week.
• We'll be making more of an effort to put up events to run dungeons and scenarios when Warlords hits. We figure the content will be somewhat challenging at the start and it's better to learn the dungeons together then flub our way through unknown experiences with dungeon finder.
• While on the topic of running stuff together as a guild, remember 40-man Molten Core LFR is coming. We'll be setting up guild runs for this as well.

Contests:
Current Contest - Ugly Transmog

• This contest will culminate in a guild Halloween costume party.
• We'll be directing some Old School Raids to do some Transmog runs to help you put together stray bits of gear to create awful ensembles.
• We're also announcing some prizes for this contest; an Orb of Deception and a Swift Love Strider. We'll also add in some gold prizes as well to sweeten the pot depending on how much participation we get.

Ongoing Contest - Throwing Down the Gauntlet 2-The Revenge

• This is another one of my personal challenges to players to test their skill and it centers around Proving Grounds. The further you go, the more of my gold you get to take (up to 21k), but I'm gonna make you work for it this time.
• Proving Grounds Silver is keyed to Flex raiding, while Gold is keyed to 10-man and Endless ventures into Heroic raiding. 
• There's a lot of guides and helpful resources out there I encourage you to make use of. To go the distance you'll need to master all aspects of your class; rotation, utility, glyph and talent swaps as well gear twinking.

Next Contest - Crafter's Scavenger Hunt

• Because our last scavenger hunt was very successful.
• This contest will begin when Warlords launches. It is a craft material drive to support our crafters in leveling up their professions where they can do some good with them. Crafting gear will be more valuable then it's been in a long while, and we think this would make a valuable difference in helping us be competitive at the start of an expansion.
• We'll be pulling out all the stops for prizes with first place being a Grand Expedition Yak and runner up prizes, to be unlocked, including choices of a Vial of the Sands, Depleted Kyparium Rocket, Skygolem, Mechanohog and Chromatic Panthers.
• In preparation for this, we'll be emptying out the guild bank. We're vastly increasing everyone's withdrawal rates to help us with this. Deposits will be restricted for the remainder of the expansion. Anything left in the guild bank will be sold on the AH and proceeds deposited into the guild bank.

Workshops

• We try to run 1 or 2 of these every month covering a variety of topics. Often these are at the whim of whoever is putting one together, however any topic you want help with, we will create one for it, just ask.
• Transmog - In support of our own contests and the fashion show, we'll set up a few of these. They may be more high level, going over tips and tricks of putting together an outfit or low level where we give someone explicit advice on an outfit and what to look at for alternatives.
• Class Training - I'll be resuming these when the patch hits and we all struggle to get used to how our class/spec has changed on us. These tend to be 1-on-1 comprehensive overviews of how to play a class covering dps or tank roles. We'll do work on a target dummy, examine glyph and talent choices and look over addon options. If you need help with healing, best to talk to one of the raid team's healers who plays a class. If you want time/help outside of a workshop, you need only ask.

Promotions

From Initiates to Member - Earthsblood and Deadlyheart
From Member to Veteran - Dugand

[Unsu]

Thank you for all the info. Looks like some good times ahead!

[drazzl]

Update:

Promotions have been applied and we've adjusted ranks for alts that were not consistent with mains. Let us know if we've missed any.

Guild Bank updates are in effect. Deposits may only be made to the first tab. All withdrawals should be doubled.

[drazzl]

2nd update:

We're allowing access to the valuables tab for Initiates for the remainder of the expansion. Start pillaging.

Raid plans have changed. After more consideration, there seems no real value to working on Heroic Sha of Fear or Heroic ToT. We chased down these older heroics for the purposes of improving our raid standing on the server, and any progress we make now is meaningless. These achievements can wait till a later point in time. We will be focused more seriously on our other objectives for the remaining few weeks.