Raiding Eligibility Questions

[walrob]

Thank you all for your input.

Iââ,¬â,,¢ll address this in chronological order, but first some general points which seem to have been missed by many of the respondents.

1. My original post comprises of three tenuously-related, but nonetheless separate, topics. Firstly an expression of how I feel about a specific event, secondly a request for information, thirdly an expression of thanks.

2. The questions I raised in the second part of my original post are purely a request for information. They do not imply anything. I am simply requesting information to better form an opinion, not jumping to conclusions without knowing what I feel are most if not all the pertinent facts (I donââ,¬â,,¢t know if I know what I donââ,¬â,,¢t know).

Firstly to TL.

You are incorrect in your assertion that ââ,¬Å"The first of the above questions doesn't help youââ,¬Â. It is important to know how people think of the Guild. Feedback as to whether the members of the Guild think of the guild as Social, Hardcore, or something else does help me in forming an opinion from which to further this debate in a constructive manner.

Kracââ,¬â,,¢s post mainly refers to himself. I seek a wider view of guild policies and how the Guild is runââ,¬Â¦chiefly who I go to for advice, and for suggestions, complaints, and for praise for jobs well done. Again, there is a tenuous link, but they are wholly separate issues.

As for posting to a public forum, this is an appropriate place to raise this issue. As I clearly stated in my original post, this issue affects more than one person. Indeed, there are five dMr members that have expressed their dissatisfaction to me directly. These cover all classes (Tank, Healer, DPS). Given the limited number of dMr members I know, it is highly-likely that there are more disgruntled members; the silent (yet significant) minority?

It is therefore wholly appropriate that this is aired as a general discussion in this forum. It allows all to voice their opinion in a considered fashion, it allows those who may otherwise think that they are alone to realise that they are not, it avoids repetition and minimise the ââ,¬Ëœworkââ,¬â,,¢ of class leaders, it allows for consistency and the communication of the evolutionary direction of the Guildââ,¬â,,¢s, and finally, it is open and transparent.

I do not understand why you think that this forum is an inappropriate place.  Would you elucidate please?

As for a quicker answerââ,¬Â¦I am in no hurry.


Sithy
I was disappointed with not raiding, but I accept disappointment is part of life (it is rare for someone to get to my age and not experience plenty of it). However I was put out by the manner which it was done, as I expressed in my original post.

FatBob
As to being lockedââ,¬Â¦it was not unreasonable for me to assume that I was in the raid, as I had been accepted and had been waiting around for 20+ mins when I was asked to leave to make way for late-commers.

If experience and gear are priority, then those of us with lesser gear and lesser experience have no way of gaining it, so itââ,¬â,,¢s ââ,¬Ëœdeadmenââ,¬â,,¢s shoesââ,¬â,,¢. As our numbers have been swelled by an influx from outside the guild who do have the requisite superior gear & experience, it is not a stretch to say that those who are currently not raiding regularly will rarely, if ever get to raid 25-man ICC fully unless we PUG it. Those raiding (more) regularly will always have the edge.

A stream of consciousness flows from your comment ââ,¬Å"Last night was a progression night starting at festergut which requires extreme levels of DPSââ,¬Â

1) To take part in this (the main) Guild-organised activity you need high DPSââ,¬Â¦by my understanding of the term, Iââ,¬â,,¢d call that ââ,¬Å"Hardcoreââ,¬Â more than ââ,¬Å"Socialââ,¬Â.

2) There is a general lack of communication about raiding and what we, as a Guild are trying to achieve. From my perspective, ââ,¬Ëœcoming up through the ranksââ,¬â,,¢, there has been a marked shift in direction over the past 6 months. Less emphasis on the fun and social aspects and more on gear and progression. If that is the way that the majority wish to go, then so be it, but it would be nice to have been given the option to air opinions before it happened, (with the implied necessity to comply now that it is in place).

This leads on to the subject of the incorporation of former Ovo members into the Guild. Donââ,¬â,,¢t get me wrong, I see the influx of new people as a chance to make more friends and as such, is to be welcomed. However, how much consultation or discussion was there with the general membership? Indeed, who was involved with their integration into our ranks? This a discussion probably best left for a separate threadââ,¬Â¦but as I said, this is a stream of consciousness.

Can you clarify please: If you are intending to ââ,¬Ëœallowââ,¬â,,¢ under-geared toons into ICC 25, on the first few bosses, will this generally be on Thursday nights and then better geared toons take on the Lich Kingââ,¬â,,¢s minions on Sundays & Tuesdays?

DFE
Good man. I applaud your team spirit. Nuff said.

Drakelin (Semi)
I am not sure what your points are.

Maypal
Nice concise, echoing the sentiments of DFE. Equal praise is due.

DannagE
Again, good to see the team spirit in you too.

TL (again)
OMG, I actually agree with you! 

Sithy (again)
While FatBob has probably allayed the concerns of those dMr members who have contacted me, some of the questions in my original post remain unanswered:

Are raid spots open until:
- invitations are made? (I just added this one)
- the ââ,¬Ëœofficialââ,¬â,,¢ raid start time?
- the raid actually starts?
- some other time?

I canââ,¬â,,¢t seem to find info on:

- How many officers are there, who are they, and what is their function?
- How many Class Leaders are there, who are they, and what is their function?

Is there a list somewhere, maybe on this website (link please)? If not can one be created please?

Robert
Aka Treekin

[walrob]

Formulating ideas prompted from the posts here I have a few suggestions which may or may not help. Incidentally, some of the same ideas have come from more than one person, independently of each otherââ,¬Â¦great minds think alike?

First:
Where the sign-up for a raid is full or oversubscribed AT THE TIME OF INVITATIONS (20:00) the 25 most eligible players who are online should be invited. Should any decline, those who have signed up and are online but were not invited in the first round should be invited.

Only once these two criteria have been met should others be invited, irrespective of who they are or what gear they have. Those who make the effort to be online on time get rewarded while those who are disorganised or canââ,¬â,,¢t be bothered (making the majority wait for them) donââ,¬â,,¢t get to raid. Obviously exceptions for occasional  lateness (notified in advance) could be made.

Second:
Several people have expressed an interest in this ideaââ,¬Â¦Have a second tier of raiders to run through the ââ,¬Ëœlowerââ,¬â,,¢ Northrend raids on Guild raid nights.  In order to see all the game, Iââ,¬â,,¢d be quite happy to start at Naxx (or whatever the lowest raid is) and work my way through all the raids to ICC. Thus the lesser-geared members of dMr would be gaining experience, team cohesiveness, and hopefully a bit of loot on the way.

I would ask that an officer or senior raider with experience of these raids come along to guide usââ,¬Â¦maybe a different one every week (no-one wants to be stuck with the noobs indefinitely ?

If no one else wants to do it, I would be happy to try to organise this with some input from an officer (and with access/tuition on use of the Calendar).

Third:
Can we have a Social Officer (if one does not exist already) to organise events outside core raid nights (eg non-ICC raids), put people together (eg someone wants an enchanter), groups for group quests, etc.? I am NOT volunteering

Robert
Aka Treekin

[TeaLeaf]

Wal, I think I was arguing that your question was difficult as one is undefinable.  Tell me your precise definition of a social raiding guild and I'll tell you whether we are one or not.  That was my point, one man's green cheese is another man's turkey.

Are we a social raiding guild?  Sure, in the broadest sense.  Do you feel more motivated on a Thursday evening if you are a member of a social raiding guild rather than a guild that raids socially?  No.

The only thing we are certain of is that we are not 'hardcore'.  Is it hardcore to put a raid group together that meets the dps requirements to kill a boss?  It is arguably daft to put together a different group.

Open Message to those that expressed disatisfaction to Wal:
Talk to an officer.  
If you're an IT-professional and you had a problem with your plumbing you would not talk to a fellow IT-professional to get it fixed, you'd talk a plumber.  Do the obvious, behind the scenes whinging is really not helpful.  Not a single officer has posted to say they have received a single comment, so stop doing yourself a disservice people, talk to the officers who are the people who can help you - they do not have ESP!

Everyone can of course make a post here to say that they have a question, but it is quicker & easier often to ask the question direct to that person rather than force a public reply.  The problem is that some of what you ask is already there for you to read but you did not see it, so I have answered some of this for you.  Someone could have told you that had you asked verbally or in a whisper.

[DannagE]

I think we are a social raiding guild that really wants to progress. I think if we were hardcore we wouldn't be having these conversations on the forums as we would have a team of 25 going to ICC25 every day until we cleared the place!!! Atleast with a 25man running every day everyone would get a run

[TeaLeaf]

I canââ,¬â,,¢t seem to find info on:

- How many officers are there, who are they, and what is their function?
- How many Class Leaders are there, who are they, and what is their function?

Is there a list somewhere, maybe on this website (link please)? If not can one be created please?

Robert
Aka Treekin

As I said before, did you not find any of this info in the in-game guild list?

At the top of the forum under 'Community Structure' you can find this link:
http://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/awards.php

It has all the members of the community with the appropriate roles across all games, not just WoW.

I'd agree that the 'job description' for these unpaid volunteer positions needs to be better defined, but I happen to know it's being looked at in Council at the moment, but don't expect a 5 page summary!  I did look for a job-description of the Council members, but tbh I have not seen a single guild site where their job-description is other than 'the guys in-charge'.  CL roles might be better clarified for sure though.

[Whitey]

While FatBob has probably allayed the concerns of those dMr members who have contacted me, some of the questions in my original post remain unanswered:

Are raid spots open until:
- invitations are made? (I just added this one)
- the ââ,¬Ëœofficialââ,¬â,,¢ raid start time?
- the raid actually starts?
- some other time?

I'll answer this by letting you know the mechanism we use to get the raid together.  I can't tell you a fixed time as we can't start the raid until we have a viable raid group for the content we are planning to raid but we always plan on having the group ready for the raid start time....

• Approximately 30 minutes before the raid start time the officers get together on Team speak and start looking at who has signed up and what might be needed/what raid options we should look at.  Until last week that mainly involved seeing if we had enough people to run a 25 man or should look at one or two ten mans...  Thankfully we no longer have that issue and can run 25 mans every official raid night.

• 15 minutes before raid start time the invitations are sent out to everyone online who has signed up or expressed an interest in joining the raid.  If they accept they are added to the raid group for the reasons Mal outlined in his post.
• During the next 15 minutes the groups are shuffled around to make sure we have the correct number of tanks/melee/ranged/healers for the raid we are going on.  Anyone joining the game during this time who has accepted in the calendar is added to the raid group for consideration.
• Once we have the groups set up and are happy we let the people in groups 6 and 7 of the raid know they are on the subs bench.  Groups 1-5 can then enter the instance.

I canââ,¬â,,¢t seem to find info on:

- How many officers are there, who are they, and what is their function?
- How many Class Leaders are there, who are they, and what is their function?

Is there a list somewhere, maybe on this website (link please)? If not can one be created please?

Please have a look at this thread as it has details of the class leaders.
You can also see who the officers/class leaders and raiders are from here.

[walrob]

Thanks Whitey, that is really useful.

Robert
aka Treekin

[walrob]

Wal, I think I was arguing that your question was difficult as one is undefinable.  Tell me your precise definition of a social raiding guild and I'll tell you whether we are one or not.  That was my point, one man's green cheese is another man's turkey.

Are we a social raiding guild?  Sure, in the broadest sense.  Do you feel more motivated on a Thursday evening if you are a member of a social raiding guild rather than a guild that raids socially?  No.

The only thing we are certain of is that we are not 'hardcore'.  Is it hardcore to put a raid group together that meets the dps requirements to kill a boss?  It is arguably daft to put together a different group.

Open Message to those that expressed disatisfaction to Wal:
Talk to an officer.  
If you're an IT-professional and you had a problem with your plumbing you would not talk to a fellow IT-professional to get it fixed, you'd talk a plumber.  Do the obvious, behind the scenes whinging is really not helpful.  Not a single officer has posted to say they have received a single comment, so stop doing yourself a disservice people, talk to the officers who are the people who can help you - they do not have ESP!

Everyone can of course make a post here to say that they have a question, but it is quicker & easier often to ask the question direct to that person rather than force a public reply.  The problem is that some of what you ask is already there for you to read but you did not see it, so I have answered some of this for you.  Someone could have told you that had you asked verbally or in a whisper.

Right, where should I start. At the beginning I guess.

As I clearly sign my name and character name at the bottom of each post I would appreciate its use. I would also ask that you moderate your replies to be less patronising and antagonistic.

Social, hardcore, progressive or otherwise is open to interpretation. I was asking others to give me their opinion, not have an individual define it for the whole Guild...thus the whole point of asking in a 'public' forum.

It does make sense to assemble the required characters to complete a certain task. That does not answer the query of the direction that the Guild is heading, which has since been answered by others.

While I understand your plumber analogy, it does not hold water in this instance (sorry, couldn't resist). People confided in me precisely because they do not want to go to officers, but wished to express their frustration without appearing to rock the boat. I have no such qualms in seeking information and conferring the dissatisafaction of others.

I assume that this analogy extends as a message to all those who may be dissatisfied, including those who have not directly confided in me as well?

I object to the use of the term 'force'. Is this forum not about discussing dMr issues? Does not asking a series of pertinent questions such as those I posed earlier in this thread, in this multi-user (as opposed to public) forum fall into that category.

I could not whisper people as I didn't know who was responsible for what...see my previous two posts. Thanks to Whitey, I am now in a better position to target any specific questions I may have. However I still intend to post topics of general interest on these forums, despite your objection.

Robert
aka Treekin

[Drakelin]

The whole point of people sitting out on the first bosses is to allow the people who need the gear from these bosses the chance to get it. You should not think that "hey I'm doing all the work here so I should be in for the whole raid". The people who need the gear should be more of the opinion, that people who would have been in competition for their raid place have stepped aside to allow for them to gear up. People who actively step aside should then not be penalized because they were not involved in the first 3 - 4 bosses. In my opinion they should be applauded for allowing other members to raid / gear up.

ive also stepped out to let others come in that i have no issue with, what i am talking about is when we are killing 5 on 1 night but 1 person steps in for particular boss to get a drop, it would be diffrent if it was on 2 diffrent raid nights, but its not, and its a time breaker also with the summoning the other guy and all, waste of time by my opinion, its fair enough to do just not in the middle of it all and have to switch back and forward

[Whitey]

Having people swapping in and out is something we will need to get used to.

We will be trying to help get people geared up on the bosses we have on farm and will also be looking to swap people in and out for specific fights where we need different classes for that fight.  

That has to be a better proposition than we were looking at two weeks ago, where we were on the verge of dropping down to a 10 man raiding guild.

[Sithvid]

Not happy at being quoted out of context.

This has stopped being constructive in my opinion now.

To clarify my position I would not be afraid to contact anyone, and did not whisper Rob as I was afraid.
Rob I'm not saying that, that was stated, but it could be interpretted that way. I would appreciate quotes done to be within the thread not previous ones, i.e specific to the subject matter.

The last thing any sensible raider would do if omitted from the group would be to whisper an officer in the raid, they are already occupied.

[TeaLeaf]

Seriously Rob, I used one of three names given in the post.  If it offends then I apologise and offer to change your forum name to one you like.  If it was the abbreviation of it then colour me sad, I tend to shorten names for ease (many people do) and no offence was meant.

You asked the hardcore/social question and I answered it immediately.  However you cannot define what social raiding is, so the question is one that you can only answer by saying we raid for progress, socially and with limited raid time compared to some other guilds.  DMR does not need to make a formal declaration as to what we are, we have public statements on this site already as to what we are established to achieve already.  

You suggest that we have 5 members who find themselves unable to trust any officer in the guild sufficiently to feel comfortable speaking to them about a problem they have.    No member would want to stay in the guild if that were really the case, they would leave to find an environment within which they had trust.  OTOH, if they have respect for the guild and its members then might wish to go talk to an officer about an in-guild problem to see if it can be fixed.  Members should always feel happy to speak to officers about any problems they have within the guild, the whole dMw community is built on that basis.

Remaining silent, hidden and only having potential complaints aired through a third-party when no detail is provided or substantiated is pretty pointless, it's just muck-throwing.  Anyone can throw muck, but I simply do not believe that a member could not find sufficient trust in any single officer to talk to them.  If they really feel that way then they should consider their position as DMR cannot implant ESP into its officers to solve problems about which we have no detail.  

Problems with Guild Members

If anyone has a problem with a guild member, then the first thing you should do is to talk to that member and explain and try to resolve the issue. If you are unable to do this, let an officer know, either by a whisper in game or by Private Message on the forums. Please give as much detail as you can to the officers so we can take fair and appropriate action.

The guild membership standards are pretty clear here, hence my suggestion to talk to an officer and provide some details.  So in answer to your question, yes it does apply to all guild members equally, including the ones who have not spoken to you or any officer.  Rocking the boat is trying to deal with it in public initially rather than privately as requested by these standards.  If you are unhappy with the word 'force' then I withdraw it, but I felt it described the way avoidance of a private discussion required officer input in a public thread.  Of course this does not stifle discussion, but if every problem was dealt with in public all the time then the world would be a pretty negative & depressing place.  Why upset people when you can deal with things privately?

Some of my frustration with your responses is down to the fact that you say you were not sure who was responsible for what.  Surely a whisper to an officer to ask a question is an easier route?  I am amazed that a guild member is unable to figure out that an officer is a good place to start for such information and I did give you that same information in the post before Whitey's reply which you referred to and thanked.  There is almost always an officer in-game too, so the opportunity to ask a question is almost endless, so that's why I might have appeared a little sarchastic given your skipping of some (in my opinion) basic information.

If you feel slighted, then you have had an apology from me, but at least you now know the correct way to deal with such problems.

[walrob]

Having people swapping in and out is something we will need to get used to.

We will be trying to help get people geared up on the bosses we have on farm and will also be looking to swap people in and out for specific fights where we need different classes for that fight.  

That has to be a better proposition than we were looking at two weeks ago, where we were on the verge of dropping down to a 10 man raiding guild.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clarifying the position.

Robert
aka Treekin

[walrob]

Not happy at being quoted out of context

If I have misquoted or misinterpreted what you intended to convey then I am truely sorry. My intention is to clarify the raiding position and confer the frustration of several dMr members, including myself. I have no agenda other than this. Could you be more specific so I may remedy this please?

Robert
aka Treekin

[dokken]

Just some simple observations. I have been in a number of guilds and have to say this one is a joy. The officers in my view are fair helpful and do a great job. The raids are well organised and hence progress is made, you only have to PUG a few to see the difference. The new members joining have added some serious DPS and have allowed the guild to move on. I see the guild as a team effort, a group of friends. On the days im not in a raid its nice to be part of the progress and if im not good enough for the raid then I d rather work hard and get my dps up to get in next time. I certainly dont want to be carried but would rather contribute fully to the raid. I would hope we can all move on, appreciate what we have, the guild is operating in the high end content which is great to be part of.
Tony