Monday 17 November 2008

The Guild That Is Ravenswing (From Thog's Blog 17/11/2008)

Hey hey!! It's another fascinating blog from Thog!

I'm so glad I picked the name Thog for my character - it rhymes with blog woohoo!

Sorry if I'm hyper but I write this while under the influence of diet Vimto, I've currently got 7 empty cans dotted around my desk - this is after the 5 or so that were removed at the start of the weekend. While my partner Denkai loves Diet Coke, I prefer something with a little more fruity flavour, hence the diet Vimto.

I've also bought her some Christmas presents which are currently sat out in the car because I can't think where to store them, except possibly at Khat & Rav's (Ravanna) house. It's a new dilemma for me in that this is the first time I'm going to be living with someone for Christmas, it is fantastic but it does raise some issues, like where to hide presents so she won't find them.

I'm not looking forward to when we decorate the house for Christmas either. Myself and Denkai have slightly differing tastes, in that she is tasteful, and likes nice ornaments dotted here and there, while I, having been brought up by Khat & Rav, am more used to jamming as much decoration everywhere as I can. I remember the year that Khat hung a huge decoration directly above the toilet, so anyone wanting to use the toilet over Christmas had a decoration in their face. Unless you pushed it onto your head, in which case it made a hat even more embarrassing than those little paper ones you get in crackers. Anyway I'd best get onto my subject of the day, which is WoW and today the Guild.

I do feel that this is slightly ironic, writing about WoW when I haven't played it all day (I've been out shopping) but nevertheless I wanted to go into a bit of detail about the guild we all belong to.

Okay.

I started playing WoW when it first came out, back in... 2004? Let me check Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge. Yes, 2004. I played it for about 6 or 7 months, and took a years break, before getting back into it. This time, I got Rav, and then Khat, addicted to the game, and before long we had 3 PCs set up in the house purely for WoW!

Me and Khat were in a number of guilds (Chaos Legion and Legions of Archimonde if anyone remembers - hi Boomstar from the former and Rouper, Abruzzi and Thevoid from the latter) which we really enjoyed, but after so long for whatever reason the guilds collapsed. So Khat, possibly the least technical of all of us, decided to take on the task of creating a guild, and Ravenswing was set up by Khat on 17th March 2006.

For a long long time, we were purely social, with guild parties, with drinking, eating and raiding the alliance. Plus we've played games like Hunt the Rogue (a couple of our characters had high-level alliance rogues, so while we ran around Tirisfal Glades trying to find them, they snuck around and sapped our guildies randomly!), Murloc Hunt (the most Murloc Eyes returned to me in an hour won!), and an elite SM Cathedral run - ten Level 70s charged straight for the cathedral boss, and AOE'd the hell out of the entire instance! I've never seen Cathedral cleared in 3 minutes before.

Now we've gone from purely social to a social-raiding guild. The problem with being purely social is that some of our favourite people leave because they want to go raiding, so we try to cater for everyone.

When it comes to people joining the guild, we don’t care what level you are, as long as you’re nice. And you don’t ask us to run you through Wailing Caverns. Or ask for money.

I do admit that a pet hate of mine is begging. People who ask for gold... not good. That and BOOSTING!! If guildies want to group up and do something, that’s cool. But what a lot of people in the guild want is to be away from those whingey people that just want to be run through instance after instance after instance without even a thank you.

We've sometimes taken a bit of critisicm (I've spelt that wrong - criticsism? I can't spell it!) because we don't do ranks by level, people get a promote because they’re online, chatty, nice people. People have been promoted because of a good joke. And demoted because of a bad one (only kidding!)

We aren't against raiding, we raid several times a week, but if you do want to raid, you need to be kitted out for it. I have in the past talked (and will talk again) about how to raid.

We don’t automatically hate people that leave the guild either. Some of our best people join and leave the guild several times, to try different things, to help someone else starting up a guild we don't mind. And if they were nice people, they're welcome to join us again when they want to. Plus sometimes it's really handy to have friends in other guilds when you're trying to fill a raid up!

Some of the questions that we get from people:

Q: Can you boost me?

A: No. We don’t boost. If you want to ask a guildie for help in an instance go for it, but not moan if they say no. You’re better off getting a group together and going for it – in fact a high level may be more likely to help 3 or 4 people in one go.

Q: Can you give me money?

A: No. Why should I? Just because I might be a high level and have a lot of money (to you), why should I give my cash to you? I want my elite flying mount!

Q: Can we go raiding?

Maybe. Chat to the guildmaster (Khat) or one of the officers and see what they think. The Raid Organiser, Rhinoboy, is often a good place to start.

Q: Can I run an event!

A: Sure! Remember that the guild uses the GroupCalendar mod to keep track of raids, parties, pvp nights and other events. So if you want to run an event, make sure it is on GroupCalendar, make sure people are told about it (over and over again if need be) and make sure it isn't at the same time as another event.

Q: Do we have a guild bank?

A: We have a guild vault, plus two NPCs with stuff like bags, potions, food, drink and gear - Babe and Teenraven. If you want something just shout and we’ll have a look. And please feel free to send anything you don’t want in to us.

Q: Why won’t you promote me?

A: Can be a number of reasons. What have you done to be promoted? Do we have room for another person at that rank? Have you annoyed the guildmaster or one of the officers? Talk about it to us, don’t moan, and we’ll discuss. Be aware that some people don’t get promoted as quickly simply because we might not have seen much of you (if you are online at times when we are not). One big thing, which I cannot stress enough. I SAID I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH... Please do not say "Can I get a promote" because that is the one sure way of not getting promotion!

Q: Will I get kicked if I'm not online for a while?

A: If you have not been online for a month then yes, unless there is a reason. For example, if you are going on holiday, let us know beforehand and we won't kick you. Plus if you've been active in the guild and worked your way up a few levels then you'll probably get a longer breathing space before being kicked.

Okay folks, that's me for another day - time for some WoW!

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