zomgwtffaisdead

[draven]

soooo... with all the happenings as of late i felt like... sharing...? spewing...? venting...? ... conveying? we'll go with conveying, as it is a generic enough term, some of my thoughts on this silly game and all the people i now consider friends that i've played it with over the years. i'm mainly just throwing this out there to everyone and no one, so take from it what you will, all or nothing or something in between. it is in large part derived from any of the things that could be said starting with 'remember when...' and reflections on the way things have gone, could have gone better, and perhaps even what could be. i'll apologize in advance for the rambling

it is a difficult thing to try to run a guild such as ours, where there are no real strong leadership personalities that have the time and are willing to put the effort into running a guild in general, let alone one that makes its best attempt to accommodate everyone as best as possible, which is an impossible task to begin with, and yet is a relatively successful and progressive guild. however, i think we have gotten to a point where some things no longer function particularly well, for a variety of reasons, a lot of which are caused by our guild personality and structure, or lack thereof. i could go into details, but i'm pretty sure most people have the same sense that something isn't quite right and needs to be fixed. it is easy for those of us known as officers to lose sight of how we should be doing things that are in the best interest of the guild as a whole, especially when a lot of us also have that pesky real life thing interfering with our wow time, and i for one apologize for not being around much as of late and not doing as much as i could have to help try to improve things. to that end, hp (inori for those not aware), is pretty much the only person that i personally can say has consistently maintained the patience, dedication, sense of fairness, and consideration that made this forged alliance what it once was, and for that i thank him.

with reference to the subject of this little post and for those who may be concerned, forged alliance will never die. if nothing else, raids will consist of some noob rogue hanging out in crossroads (assuming it's still there) ganking lowbie horde because it's fun. however, before that time comes to pass, i would encourage people to participate more in the organization and functions of the guild, write posts / suggestions / rants / express frustrations, try to run raids, help someone out with a lowbie quest / instance, whatever you think might help. this guild was founded on the principle that we are a family of sorts and all have an equal part in the guild. unfortunately it has become clear that we have strayed from those ideals as of late. if anyone would care to help, i still think we can make things better.

it is disappointing to see people running away, but obviously everyone is free to do as they like, especially when it is your time to spend playing this game in whatever way you find most enjoyable. i wish you best of luck in your new adventures, hope to see ya around, you will be missed, but thanks for coming

[WarmApplePie]

With regards to FA I've always been one to give my 2 cents.

1) Get the GM/Officers figured out. There needs to always be people in a position of leadership online.


2) Recruit, recruit, recruit.


3) Model yourself after Crisis. I'm sure they aren't the originators of this particular guild model but it really seems able to please all types of raiders. They have their main progression raid and then they have their alt raid.

3a - (Progression Raid) The progression raid is very structured. You lose DKP if you don't flask or pot when they tell you to. You lose DKP if you cause repeated wipes or cause the raid to hit enrage timers. You lose DKP if you're late to the raid. You get bonus DKP for being on time. Exceptions are not made at the cost of raid makeup. This raid is Progression focused obviously and anything that detracts from that is delt with for the sake of the guild.

3b - (Casual/Alt Raid) The Casual raid is still structured, but not to the degree that the progressions raid is. DKP is a lot less strict or else not used at all. You could make up any loot rules you want. Performance is still monitored and needs to be appropriate for the tier you are on. You can not put the feelings of 1 person above the good of the raid. If you've got a subpar player they need to be removed from the raid, even if its only the Casual raid people are there to down bosses and have fun. Failing is not fun.


4) Recruit, recruit, recruit. Everything revolves around having a large enough player base that you are able to form reliable groups with good group makeup. Above I talked about having to boot subpar players, well recruiting helps with that too. Because if you have more players then you have more knowledge. For instance (going to pick on mages just cause) since Benvolo left, there is nobody around to help our mages. Our mages consistently did lower DPS then should have been expected from them. Both in regards to the content we were on and the gear they either had or had available to them. If you recruit and have a larger player base, and therefor knowledge base, then there is going to be someone in the guild that can help them out.

4a) When recruiting be less selective. I'm not saying to grab all the high schoolers. For heavens sake no. Keep them out. 21 or older is still a good policy. But get out there on the forums and tell them what you've got to offer. We people apply for jobs, they are looking for good benefits. Same thing here. Good structure will be your benefits. A consistent raid that makes weekly progress is your benefits.
4b) /gkick early and /gkick often. Recruit lots of people, but don't put up with bullshit. Hold people to the same standards that made this guild home for so many of us.


5) Quit kidding yourselves. 2 dkps lists ago, the last one that was all FA25's had only 5-6 people that were there for every raid. Rathr, me, Inori, Namas were the 4 I can remember. I'm pretty sure there was one other one there too. Was probably Thandrenn but I dont remember it for sure. The rest of you guys are just kidding yourselves if you're thinking you have time for the progressive raid. You'd be the alts casuals. And thats completely fine, thats awesome as a matter of fact. Remember that Raid attendance spreadsheet I did awhile back? I remember having to go with horribly low raid attendance expectations just to get a respectable number of raiders up there. I think we had 12-13 people that were making it 60% of the time. That ain't gunna fly.

6) Counter arguments - So you're saying thats not the kind of guild we are, we're casuals, we're not hardcore. Well that attitude is why we are where we are at. We didn't start off this way. Back in BC we didn't have 100% attendance from 25 people but it was a far cry from where we are now. At the start of WotLK we lost some close friends and we made excuses for them. We didn't fill their spots because we were hoping they'd come back. Instead we took lesser geared, lesser skilled players with us while we waited for them to come back. And then as the fail got bigger and bigger, more people left. Once the train got rolling it was hard to stop.

6a) Now there may not be enough left to even have a progression raid. But still you'll need to recruit enough to fill raid spots and allow good make up. Then while you're doing that you'll have to weed out the less skilled/geared players into the casual raid. You'll still need to have 2 raids to please everyone. Your progression raid just won't progress as fast as other guild on the server.

The point here is to use the mold. Obviously you'll have to adjust it to meet your specific needs.

[Tsuni]

When I think of why to join a guild like ours, I look back to when we found FA. We had a 10 man group that farmed the crap out of Kara, but our server was dieing and we wanted to find a guild that's just starting the 25man progression. I found a post on the Destromath forums about a guild that had a couple Kara groups and was working on Gruuls every week. When we joined the guild, we gave enough extra members needed to solidify 25man nights. My first week on Gruuls we didn't kill him (and we were nervious about what we got ourselves into lol), but soon after we were getting easy kills once a week.

We joined FA looking for a guild that's starting the BC progression curve. And other people joined as our progression hit where they were and their goals. I think a big problem right now is....why join a casual guild? In BC, you could have your small group of friends and farm the heck out of Kara. But if you wanted any progression after that, you had to join a 25man raiding guild. And if you were casual, you'd try and find the relaxed casual raiding guilds. (Like FA). Now you keep your 10man together and you see everything. Our group back then had a 10 man going and we wanted to push in to 25man progression. I don't know if we would have even looked for FA if you could 10 man everything.

I can go pug the latest instance in 10 or 25man and not deal with any guild politics, dkp systems, etc. I don't have to sign on when the guild tells me I need too since there seems to be always someone throwing one of the raids together. Heck, I don't even have to worry about raid progression since Blizz likes to reset the gear gap every patch now.

I guess my point is, while there's been issues in the guild, is I wonder what a casual family raiding guild can even offer anyone anymore. What can we give to attract the people this kind of guild attracted in BC?

Normal modes are easy enough to pug, and hard modes are hard enough you want to find a semi-hardcore guild to do them. I partly feel that by making normal modes easy enough to be pugable, they hurt the need for casual raiding guilds in general. Which makes it hard to recruit and keeps people from searching and applying. I could be wrong and there's players all over destro wanting a casual raiding guild, and we just need to find them.

I personally think our best bet is to find a small guild of 10 man raiders to absorb that are interested in going to the extra mile to get 25mans up and running. (Similar to what we gave to the guild when we joined) A big push of energy and new blood would be nice. Other than that, it's just finding good, patient players looking for a guild like ours.

[Ofie]

I agree completely with Eric. Restructuring the guild to the form of Crisis would not work at ALL for 90% of us. We need to find people that are willing to absorb their 10 man into ours, or people looking for a guild that's specifically like ours. FA is far from dead.

Recruiting would also work fine, but mass recruiting bodies, again, wouldn't work for our type of play. Personality meshing is the best thing we can look for right now. Trial and error and whatnot.

[Jon]

Looking forward to more fun going forward with all you peeps. Best of luck to all those that wanted to move on for more consistent 25 man-raiding, or were not happy and needed a change. No hard feelings to anyone, see you all in game.

Heading out on a vacation, see you all later next week!