Summary

Event: THB leaders and representatives meeting
Meeting Place: Thunderbrew Distillery in Kharanos
Meeting Date: Saturday, September 5, 2009
Meeting Time: 17:00 CET (Game Time) to 19:00

Proposed Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Status/forecasts from current THB guilds
3. Current status of THB raiding
4. New shared cross-guild channel.
5. Looting rules review and adoption of Suicide Kings for fixed groups.
6. Access to 25-person raiding groups.
7. Future Items

Actual Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Status/forecasts from current THB guilds
3. Current status of THB raiding
4. New shared cross-guild channel.
5. Looting rules review and adoption of Suicide Kings for fixed groups.
6. Access to 25-person raiding groups.
7. Future Items

Final Attendees

• Co-Coordinators
  • Basil - Roses of Dawn
  • Elsheindra - The One (Guild Leader)

• CursedCrusaders
  • Aelhaern (Guild Leader)
  • Moonsugar
  • Hugen (Njaal)
• Phoenix Legion
  • Shortstop (Guild Leader)
• The One
  • Shinytoaster
• Roses of Dawn
  • Kanine
• Ye Olde Geezers
  • Cannonblast
  • Jazhara (Guild Leader – arrived later)
  • Devion (arrived later)

Final Decisions/Major Points

• Welcome (Elsheindra)
• Status/forecasts from current THB guilds
  • Roses of Dawn: Business as usual. Slow adding of new people. Slow loss of old people. Most people are in GEM, but people use it to greater or lesser extent.
  • Ye Olde Geezers: Grown quite considerably over the last few months with quite a few who like to raid, but they're not especially vocal about it. With Team Phoenix having alreadty had trouble getting interest out of the new people, so... At the moment, guild applications are closed, although they're still taking some via whispers, but not "willy nilly off the street" (not like we did anyway)
  • The One: Same as usual. They have been accepting applications. Some of the new people are raid ready. Gawaine has joined Phoenix. Mevatal has several alts that have reached 80 and then he doesn't know what to do. One of Mevatal's 80s is a tank, but he doesn't feel quite competent at tanking, I think. Sonarakbadak also a possibility as a DPSer when he returns.
  • Phoenix Legion: People coming back online again. Raidwise, they will have a couple of Gimli's alts ready for raiding and likely some people that wants to join. They did lose a lot of people before the summer, but they didn't attend raids anyways. Recruiting low-level people and helping them get gear in low-level instances and so-on. We hope then they'll stay. Welcome to use GEM to try and get instance groups going. Non-raiding guilds don't tend to get a lot of epic geared people in.
    • Some discussion about posting messages on Blizzard's LFG Thunderhorn forums and having a working web site, possibly using something like guildomatic.com (http://www.guildomatic.com/), which has some free hosting as well as paid hosting, and it's easy to set up.
  • CursedCrusaders: We've been recruiting heavily recently, so big influx of new members, although we lost a few and got rid of a few unsuitable ones (applying quality control). Doing in-guild OS and 10-person Naxxramus. Still vetting new people, so not everyone has GEM details. Going forward quite nicely. Some longterm guild members are looking to raid but they're not geared up, so they've been running heroic instances to prepare for Naxxramus.
    • Elsheindra says that people only need dungeon level blues to go to 10-person Naxxramus and probably even the 25-person drop-in.
• Current status of THB raiding (Basil)
  • 10-person teams
    • Teams DarkSins, Coal, and Pink are solidly in Uduar 10 and Trial of the Crusader. Team DarkSins is only team to clear Ulduar (except Algalon)
    • Team Vermillion is in Ulduar solidly now and making good progress. They've downed 9 bosses in the last 10 weeks, 4 or those in the last three weeks.
    • Team Phoenix is in Naxx 10, where they have cleared but are working on clearing faster/better. Most recent run did 3 wings in a night. They've also done 3 bosses, we think, in Ulduar: Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, and XT. They might be going to Ulduar in several weeks if they continue storming through Naxx as they've been doing.
  • 25-person teams
    • Team DarkPinkCoal is made up of DarkSins, Pink, and Coal.
    • We had a 25-person drop-in Ulduar, but it was proving tricky, so we've tabled that for the moment.
    • We have a stable 25-person drop-in Naxxramus group which is doing well on Wednesday evenings.
  • Upcoming Groups
    • Cannon is running a new 10-person drop-in Ulduar group on Monday evenings. No sign-up via GEM, but it will be posted as an event. Cannon will announce it's open and form a team for that evening from interested people. The intention is that people (not characters) without fixed team spots will get priority, but it's also open to alts and mains if that's what it takes. If Cannon's unavailable, it will likely still run, but with Basil or Devion leading.
    • Basil and Elsheindra are planning a Wednesday evening 10-person drop-in group to focus on getting people practice and experience in Ulduar in a smaller group, with the idea that we might be able to get a 25-person team going in the future. Cannon suggests running it on Mondays, with the possibility then of being able to have a 25-person group later. This is still a work in progress.
• New Shared Chat Channel (Basil)
  • Current channel is very laggy. This is due, we think, to the mod itself being throttled by Blizzard in trying to share information.
  • Advantages of second channel:
    • Can give out the channel details to friends of THB as well
    • Would be lag free
    • Means initiates in guilds can be given that without access to events
  • Password or not?
    • If no password, then someone can set one and lock everyone one (Basil).
    • If no password, then unwanted people can enter and we can't get rid of them (Elsheindra) is more of an issue.
  • Problem with a password is WoW doesn't remember channel passwords, so our idea was to create a new GEM channel.
    • If that proves still laggy, then we'll try something else.
    • Decision: Create a new chat channel with password as discussed (ask your guild leader or THB reps)
  • "Default"
    • Need to be aware that whichever channel is selected as "default" in GEM is where GEM will show people online, etc.
• Looting rules review and adoption of Suicide Kings for fixed groups. (Basil)
  • This would be an additional/optional system for groups to use, not as a replacement.
  • If accepted, we would have an info page detailing how it works, so people would know and it wouldn't be a surprise.
  • Basic working is that it creates a numbered list with a person associated with each number. When an item comes up, group members can bid. Whomever is highest in the list (i.e. 5 is higher than 10), wins the item and drops down to the very bottom of the list.
  • Where people start in the list can be configured. Cannon says it might not make sense to random in a casual drop-in person, but it would make sense for a new, regular raider. We need to decide this. Gimlinox thinks it's OK for a fixed team to have Suicide Kings but when outside raiders come to help then regulars get first priority and if not then anyone want to roll, so you don't get new people in the list all the time.
  • Jazhara says one issue with using it is that he doesn't want to see lists reset as people were quite upset to have worked to get a good spot and then have the list reset, even though that was voted on. Cannon says that not randoming everyone would have also made people unhappy. Jazhara suggested keeping the first ten spots or something. Cannon said over half the people on the original list weren't raiding anymore.
  • Cross-guild issues: The mod works across guilds, except for synching lists. Synching only works within the same guild.
  • Attendance: It's not a DKP-like system. Your position stays the same if you're not there. Your list position only changes when you attend raids.
  • Drop-In raids: Cannon thinks it's still worthwhile using it on 25-person drop-in raids.
  • Item Bidding: Aelhaern suggests some people might not bid on an item that would be an upgrade in hope of a better item later. In that situation, it does go to off-spec or possibly to people at the bottom of the list, Basil says.
    • Decision: We will add SKG as an optional looting system to THB.
    • Decision: The looting rules will be updated with a description, some guidelines, some examples, and a FAQ.
    • Decision: We need to look at finding someone who can potentially modify the mod to be more suitable for THB use, including a) synching across guilds probably using the GEM channel as a communications medium, b) make it more user-friendly for managing/changing lists, and c) export/import the lists somehow so it can be posted on web sites or possibly used to manually sync the lists.
• Access to 25-person raiding groups (Basil)
  • Drop-in 25-person group is pretty much well open to anyone, although someone only in greens might be put onto substitutes list and only taken if we have space. Preference is people signing up on their preferred character and then they'll be taken in order. Some exceptions, like tank. The suggestion is that tanks come along with their DPS spec, but they can still roll on tank loot because that's their main spec. Shinytoaster points out that the tank doesn't get any experience then. Basil says they need to poke the raid leaders then.
  • Drop-in 10 Naxx: We could and should encourage people to get more 10-person groups going.
  • THB Reps: We need to do a better job of communicating with our members that if they want to be raiding or have issues, they need to talk to us. We're the people who know what's going on and we're also the people who can help sort things out or shuffle things around.
  • 25-person Ulduar:
    • Cannon says we want to get as many people raiding regularly as possible. In order to do that, we need to get more 10-person groups. In terms of Team Vermillion, it's a pain that they can't go and we're sympathetic, but it would be very difficult to rotate 40 people through 25 raid slots. By all means, Team Vermillion can sign up as replacements/substitutes in Team DarkPinkCoal. No guarantees of spots of regular spots, but we'll do what we can.
    • We're not adverse to having two 25 teams, but we had a lot of trouble with that in the past with Naxxramus. We got two teams together, but if people didn't show, we couldn't fill the spots because both teams were running on the same day. Ally has some ideas about Team Phoenix and Team Vermillion possibly forming the core of a new 25-person Ulduar group. Cannon said the major problem was "the grass is greener", so one team was perceived as being the most desirable group with the other team being seen as castoffs. There are also problems with people signing up for 25-person Ulduar who shouldn't even be in 25-person Naxx. It's not necessarily because of their gear, but it could be because they don't play as well as their gear should allow them to do.
  • Class Mentors: Basil says we can't formalize this yet, but if we can get other people to volunteer to train or advise people on how they could be doing better, it would be a start. Many people are probably willing to take advice, but they don't know who to ask or don't want to trouble other people. Shinytoaster suggests class forums would be helpful. Elsheindra is working on something but is also cognizant that not everyone will want to post that they need help for all and sundry to see, but would feel comfortable talking to one person.
    • Decision: 25-person Naxxramus will continue as is. If they want to be gearing up a main, they should let Basil know so he can try getting the right character in so they're rolling on their main spec and getting experience.
    • Decision: Team DarkPinkCoal 25-person Ulduar will stay the same, although Cannon needs to update the rota graphic and the GEM list. Team Vermillion is welcome to sign up as a subs, though there's no guarantee for spots.
    • Decision: Get Ally (Team Vermillion) to talk to Morganan (Team Phoenix) about using both teams as the core of a new 25-person fixed team.
    • Decision: Construct a list of class advisors and distribute this to raid leaders and THB reps.
• Future Items
  • Revisit SKG/looting rule changes in 6 months or so to see how it's working out (Elsheindra)
  • More frequent meetings (Basil)
  • Creation by Elsheindra of general THB information documents on how teams are formed, structure of THB, etc. Has this happened?

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