Our Forum Blog from April, 2010

Jawdslayer recently approached me saying he wanted to be doing more in the game. Not only did he want to be doing more in the game, but he had a plan. He specifically wanted to start off by organizing a regular heroic dungeon group. Maybe in the future, he thought that group might be expanded to a guild 10-person ICC group.

As he's relatively new to the guild, he's probably unaware that we've had dungeon nights and alt nights and even a 10-person ICC guild group (although that seems to have imploded after a relatively short period of time). He's willing to try to lead and organize, so I gave him some advice and pointed him at some people who might be interested.

In retrospect, though, I think it might be easier if we just tried resurrecting the Monday night guild runs night idea again. So on Monday evenings, starting at 19:30 Game Time, people show up on time and we try to create as many 5-person heroic dungeon groups as possible. What we can't fill out of the guild, we can try grabbing out of the Roses, or out of the dungeon filler tool. I've picked Mondays as it's a low raiding night for most of the guild, so people shouldn't be committed to other things.

If you are interested in a regular daily heroic run (even if it's just for the daily random), particularly in the afternoon or early evening, get in touch with Jawdslayer. He'd love to hear from you!

Elsheindra

Gerrardicus, prior to leaving the guild, sent me an in-game message saying he was unhappy about things, especially how he'd been working hard with Leony to improve their characters, but all their teams disbanded. He was willing to give it one more week for things to change.

The officers and I spent some time discussing the issue, both before the mail and certainly after. We constructed a response and sent it by mail within the week period. In retrospect, I think the information is useful for everyone. I've therefore reproduced the mail here.

Thank you for your recent in-game mail. The officers and I are aware that you're unhappy, but we're not really clear about what you realistically expect me or us to do.

I'm sorry that your teams have all disbanded. Leaders are volunteers and can stop at any time or change their minds, and they do, particularly in response to changes in real life. That's probably a fact of life in a casual raiding alliance. The officers and I agree that changes are often not very graceful and are often very sudden. Communication could be better, we all agree, and that's something the THB Reps and THB Raid Leaders will need to work on.

Everyone in Scarlet, including you, had the opportunity to become its leader and prevent it from disbanding. Being a leader is pretty difficult and few people really want to do it or are able to do it successfully. I don't blame people for that. We can't compel people to do things. Instead, Basil and I, as the THB co-coordinators, try to find players willing and able to take on the responsibility. That doesn't always work out as well as everyone would like. Again, that's a fact of life in a casual raiding alliance. Given the choice of getting people raiding at least some time versus not at all, we'd probably make the same choices.

All of the officers felt that you were confused about the relationship between the guild and The Honourbound Alliance. The One and the THB are not one and the same thing. As a THB co-coordinator, I help facilitate allied raid groups getting together and make policies that help those groups work (looting rules, etiquette rules, etc). I'm not responsible for what happens within a given raid group. That's up to the raid leader and their team for the most part.

As The One's guild leader, I try to help my members do things in game that they want to do, but it's not my responsibility to make raid teams for them or even to find teams. I don't have any ponies or magic wands, alas! Again, it's more that I help facilitate, if possible, what people want to do. In the end, though, each member has to help themselves. In fact, it's the first rule of the guild.

As discussed in the forum thread, Blizzard has pushed the end-game more towards raiding. As such, many of our members our involved in raiding, because that's what there is. That does not make the guild a raid guild or even a "casual raid guild." If you are primarily interested in raiding and want to be guaranteed a spot in a team that won't disband, then I suspect you need to look for a guild whose purpose supports guild raiding, rather than a casual, social guild that raids as part of an alliance.

The officers and I couldn't think of anything constructive to do within the guild with respect to the issues you raised. At this point, unless you can suggest something specific that you would like to see done, I think we're going to have to wish you well on your adventures and luck in finding a guild that more meets your needs.

Yours truly,

Elsheindra
and The Officers of The One

Someone wants to eat Basil?
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/233.html

A very good friend of mine has launched an online campaign to get people to sign up to the UK donor register scheme. He has personal experience as his 4 year old boy had a combined liver and kidney transplant last year which saved his life.

If you live in the UK I would urge you to visit Donors Save Lives and sign up to the scheme if you can.

Thanks

Val

Just a little screenshot I grabbed from the recent One and Friends "Run to the Sunwell"

Here, Basil is briefing the troops prior to our assault on Brutallus. It was all very complicated. But we all knew we'd be safe if we stood by the tree.....

Once upon a time there was little Kari who liked to wander on his little wasteland.
The wasteland was a result of a nuclear war.
Little Kari enjoyed his time there, many times vanishing for over week without contact to anyone.
Well, except the mutants that lived everywhere in the wasteland.
Little Kari liked to run around in his power armor shooting ghouls and
other things that looked very much like Breicor.

One day he noticed unusual activity near the destroyed city of Washington DC
and went to check. Little Kari though he would just find another bunch of ghouls searching
for food but this he found a super mutant, many times bigger than little Kari in size and wielding
huge mace made of wood and junk.

Quickly little Kari sneaked to a good firing position to ambush the super mutant and took aim at his head BAM shot fired, however the super mutant unluckily turned a little and the round hit the super mutant's shoulder.

The super mutant started to yell and started charging against kari with his mace in his hands ignoring completely the hole made by the hunting rifle.
Little Kari started to unload shot after shot to super mutants chest but the super mutant ignored them completely and continued to charge towards him.
Little Kari started to run as fast as he could ignoring his safety from other creatures living in the city ruins.

Sadly, little Kari wasn't fast enough and the super mutant was almost at range to him however while running little Kari was building something using his fork, pouring some nuka-cola into his flash light, adding parts of his bolt gun and poof done, a working light saber! then little Kari proceeds to cut the super mutant into pieces.

After making clean work of the super mutant, little Kari starts to travel to his hidden place near the ocean and continues to repair a crashed small plane that he could use as escape. However another human survivor has noticed little Kari's plane and think it's in working condition so when little Kari is resting, he steals the plane but due to not completely repaired systems the plane ends up crashing into the ocean and sinking to the bottom.

After little Kari wakes he notices his plane gone but finds a ID card on the ground near where his plane was that has name "Mr. Basil" on it. Few days after the plane crash, a ship can be seen off the coast with huge text on side "EVILE CO.", little Kari decides to sneak to ship but gets caught when he attempted to board and gets himself locked up.

However the captain of the ship only called with name "Ein" lets little Kari go and offers him a place on the ship which little Kari accepts.

Last time little Kari was seen is when he was in his locker room wearing new high tech wargear with a smile on his face.

The end.

-Greedy Bastard

PS. Bunnies.

My name is Michelle A. Hoyle. Most of you know me as Elsheindra, the leader of The One for the past five years and co-coordinator of The Honourbound Alliance here on EU-Thunderhorn for the past four years. I'm many (we'll not say how many) a few years into working on a new doctorate at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. I'm examining learning and learning communities in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. As part of my Ph.D. work, I've just launched my first survey where I'm investigating why you play World of Warcraft and collecting some demographic information about players and game avatars.

This is the first survey of several, but this one is important because the subsequent surveys will be designed around responses from this one. In particular, it asks you to write a short piece about why you play World of Warcraft from which I'll make a list of common motivations. What those motivations will be exactly, I don't know. That's why this is research.

In recognition of the work required, if you complete the survey, you'll be given the chance to enter a contest to win a Blizzard store pet as a prize. At least three pet codes will be given away. If the survey is wildly popular, I'll increase the number of prizes available.

Ideally, I need at least 50 responses . I'd be grateful if you could take the time to be one of those 50 people and help me with my research so that I can graduate some day. The survey will probably take no more than 30 minutes and you don't need to complete it all at once.

Note: The survey is only open to those 18+ . This is because of rules about collection of data and participation by minors. I know most of you are 18 or over, but there are some who aren't. Sorry if you can't participate.

The official survey information page is http://bit.ly/WoWSurvey If you have any problems or questions, feel free to contact me in the game, via a comment here, or using my project's official address of wow.learning AT sussex.ac.uk.

Thanks,

Elsheindra
(AKA Michelle A. Hoyle)

Hello folks,

I just wanted to say sorry to my guildies for not being able to keep the icc 10 man team running. I have been moved onto a random roster pattern and as such do not know when I will be available to play wow. I did not anticipate this happening so quickly but none the less it has. Hopefully I will still see you when I get a chance.

W

First of all we're sorry for any brain damage this movie might cause.

The movie took long to do as it was on hold for a while.

For some reason the movie bugs a little for me and does not allow fast forward or rewind and will not work if you try.

The movie also contains a high amount of typos and some errors in the video which i didn't notice.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1809258/WoBWotF.mp4

Enjoy (We can always hope)

-Greedy Bastard

Blizzard announced yesterday (beware the date!) of their new system for comparing your gear to another players:

The Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number a.k.a EPEEN

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/equipmentpotency.xml

very funny satire of the ever so popular gear score addon, classic april fools blizz

Derthon and Breicor are proud to present their movie!

This movie is more of "View to past" of ourselves rather than anything special.

It contains high volume of screenshots which sadly isn't that interesting but
it helped to make the movie size much smaller with good compression and video quality.

Without any other chats, Enjoy!

EDIT: This was an april fools.
-Greedy Bastard