Review of Ranks

Today I posted here regarding the guild ranks.  There was a lot of discussion and some good points raised in the Facebook chat related to this.  I have now changed the ranks. Commanders is no longer a rank. There are currently three officers who were Commanders. The people who were officers have been demoted to Core Raiders. The new ranks that have been added are; Legacy Members, Alts and Returning/Away.  People who are not raiding are Social. The rank Community has gone. The rank 1st Officer is also gone.

The officer chat is exclusively for Officers and myself all other members can chat in whisper, party, raid or guild chat.  Hopefully this will make the guild chat more active.  There will be no further changes to the ranks for a few months so that we can see how this new ranking works out.  If you are upset about the changes remember they are in response to what you have wanted in order to make the guild run better.

You poor officers now have the combined roles of the old commander and officer jobs.  If you need help with doing any of these things let me know.  I'm open to feedback as always however, I would ask that you consider your responses and at least give this new system a fair chance.

Explanation of Ranks

I haven't been very clear about the ranks in the guild. I still need to do a lot of work in making this clear.  Its a work in progress. Below is an explanation of the ranks.

Guild Leader- Oversees and develops future plans for the guild.
                           Guild Management
                               Promoting, Demoting, Guild Kicking
                                   Communicating with guild members of all ranks
                                        Addressing the concerns of Officers and guild members
                                             Delegating particular roles to guild members
                                                 Supporting and guiding implementation of plans
                                                      Develop spreadsheets for information given to commanders
                                                          Source information for guild running
                                                              Meet with other guild leaders to discuss best practices
                                                           
First Officer       Raid Leader
                               Developing future plans for raids
                                   Meeting with Guild Leader regularly to discuss implementation of plans
                                        Overseeing player performance in raids
                                             Develop and maintain spreadsheets of relevant info to share
                                                 Promoting and Demoting raiders as required based on info
                                                     Keeping up to date on raiders gear and item level
                                                         Leading the raid
                                                           Recruitment planning and implementation
                                                              Developing possible guild mergers for raids

Commanders         Assisting with raid strategies
                                   Assisting in future plans for the guild
                                       Recommending changes to raid make and guild generally
                                           Recommendation of recruitment for raids
                                                Assessment of raider performance
                                                    Sharing information with the Guild leader and first officers
                                                          Implementation of plans for the future
                                                              Production of  Videos/Art Design sourcing Music
                                                                  Documentation of information spreadsheets & reports
                                                                       Developing and sourcing the best raid strats for our team

Officers                    Provide an example to guild members
                                     Recruit guild members
                                         Assist potential raiders in obtaining gear (taking ppl through lfr)
                                              Maintaining guild bank as required
                                                   Answering general questions about the guild
                                                        Providing support and information to Commanders
                                                             Assist guild members in fitting into the guild eg pvp or pve

Core Raiders                 Turn up for most of the raids
                                          Recommend strats (prior to raid) to commanders
                                             Recruitment of new guild members
                                                 Notify officers or Guild Leader regarding changes to schedule

Social Raiders                Turn up for raids as real life permits
                                            Recruitment of guild members if they want to
                                                 Notify Guild leader of item levels and what raids they want to do

All these roles are very important and I value all of the guild members and their input into the guild. If you are interested in being promoted to a higher rank please feel free to talk to me about this at any time. You can suggest particular roles that you think might warrant a promotion for example you might want to start and maintain a web page.  You may want to develop social events or in game events.  You may want to play a more important role in recruitment which may involve promotion of the guild in a variety of forms such as on the forums, youtube or trade chat advertising. The possibilities are endless.

I understand that a lot of what people have been doing in the guild goes on without everyone being aware of what has been happening.  Recently I saw that the Commander Role was being done by a few officers so I made a distinct rank for them.  I did this to reward their efforts and to acknowledge the importance of what they have been doing all along. The First Officer Role is a supportive role to my leadership as well as raid leading and is very involved. This role has also been acknowledged. The communication between the ranks may have been lacking lately and I am responsible for this. I'm sorry if I have upset anyone by including these new ranks however, I think that you can see by the work these guild members have been doing deserve recognition.

Hitting the Wall ..Dig Deep for the Team

The next raid tier is coming in June. We've been heading in the right direction to start strongly. However, we've lost a lot of our drive it would seem. Warcraft does get a bit mundane toward the end of an expansion or just before a new raid tier. Lets just keep on going guys if we can get some heroic tier gear for everyone we will be smashing through the last raid. We're going to have a week off the heroic raid and for those of us who are still keen we will PuG a group at the same times we usually raid.  The officers will try to help a few dps gear up enough to join us in normal and then heroic so we aren't struggling when two of our big hitter dps don't turn up. Life happens computers get over heated, poor old Mother Fucker misses two raids because of burnout and both times misses out on the weapon he most desires.

People who aren't officers and even officers don't have to log on and play that much. It's just four hours a week for raiding. It's a team effort and we've been doing such a mighty job lately. We've hit a bit of a wall lets just try our hardest to get over that wall.  There's some really fun fights in the next tier of raiding.  I'm asking you to dig deep for the team guys :)  It is just a game. I know its hard I've hit the wall pretty hard myself. The thing I enjoy the most about raiding is getting together with you lot, a bonus is that lately we've been kicking some serious ass and turning the corner in terms of working as a team. It would be a real shame not to take full advantage of this at this stage.

Have a look at some of the vids I've posted that might inspire you to keep going. If we can just push ourselves a bit who knows what we can achieve.  A special thanks to Aly 2.0's mates who came along last night to help out. Tink, Dahlia and Noobdps for helping us out and giving us a look at Blackhand.

I hope to see you all soon for some heroic boss killing

Gorefiend First Raid Boss Hellfire Citadel

Shadow Lord Iskar

Gear for the next raid  They are still working on this gear so it might turn out better looking in the end.