Transmission from the Grand Moff

March 17th Meeting notes -

Just want to thank everyone for their participation. Your input is important and things can come out of these meetings that will be good for everyone.

Here are some take aways from the meeting we had:

If anyone is having problems with anything on the website – let me or Jan know – if we can’t fix it we will forward your “ticket” to our expert Enjin player who will probably be able to fix it.

Sith Element is going to be putting some of their characters that are level 50 onto our roster for the purpose of deepening our pool for Hard Modes and for raids. They will be joining up at the website – but they are going to maintain their guild for their alts and lowbies. So if you see them in/on our in game guild roster make them feel welcome. They will be joining our forums and signing up for events as well. Leahloo and McFingers joined us at our meeting today and McFingers swapped one of his toons over. Hopefully more to follow.

Ragnorum and Telka are looking for DPS Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays for a 4 man hard mode group. The toons they are runnin those hard modes with are called Bruticus and Lexeen. Hit them up- they are tired of puggin’. I could be wrong on the days and I hope they will correct this post if those days are wrong.
I am always available to fill out a hard mode group – I got one of each role. Just gotta let me know – I will usually switch over from what I am doin’ to fill out a group.

You can look at the guild roster in game to find out who has alts and there is also a thread here that says who’s who for alts.
I just want to say thanks again for all the support you all give and I am glad the Black Watch is going strong in SWTOR. I believe we are going to try a hard mode 8 man raid next week – so be on the lookout for that.

For the Sith Element folks that have recently joined us – please check out tbwgaming.com/calendar for upcoming events and to sign up. For raids we have been going with the first 4 dps people that sign up and if someone drops out to let someone else run they got first crack at the following week’s event on the same day. Sometimes the groups are set before hand especially for KP because we are trying to get it down still. Although that really hasn’t worked out 100% so sign up anyways I say.

Congrats to the guys for beating Soa again tonight. Jan, Odum, Blaine, Necridos, Ragdan, Cavon, and Bloodshadow. I would throw my name in there but I laid dead at the bottom while you guys won. Thanks to Tekat for allowing one of the folks that hasn't run through EV to get in.

If anyone has any complaints and/or suggestions I hope you will talk to me so we can get stuff straightened out. I am completely inept when it comes to being a “guildmaster” so your advice is welcome. I hope you will have a solution and be willing to participate in correcting whatever the problem is if you are able too. I appreciate you all for creating an atmosphere that is really laid back and I hope this will continue.

Update 11 April 2012

Progress continues – I wanted to take some time this month to clarify roles. I got to talk with one of our active LT’s who suggested this and so as requested here it is. Thanks Blood!

In the beginning I set out to make the roles adaptable in response to the group not make the group live up to certain assignments. That is still my goal. Something I have been reminded of lately is we are not the military. Certainly we have put out guidelines – but really most of that stuff is common courtesy. I also do not want to over organize or get lost in the weeds – cuz as we all know this is just a game.

When it comes to guild ranks – remember that prior to SWTOR launching TBW played two games – STO and WoW and we also had relationships with other groups in those games. We called them alliances or what not. Of course we are hoping to absorb them and likely they are hoping to absorb us – but until then we are going to respect they enjoy their special group names (GoW, SE) and they respect we enjoy ours. So here are the SWTOR ranks and what is expected out of each of them.

Recruit – Anyone that plays SWTOR can be a recruit with TBW SWTOR – just say “hey I would like to join”. We bring you in and ask you to fill out an app at the website. You can or you cannot. We aren’t going to kick you if you don’t. In fact if you fill out an app – you may have to tell one of us you did it so we can get you a promo. Once you fill out that app your journey begins…

Members - I realize that a lot of people just want to play a game and don’t want added responsibilities added to that. Basically if you fill out an app at tbwgaming.com you are a valued member of TBW. We would like to get to know you in vent and what not and hope you will join us and let us hear your voice so we can start forming opinions about you --- just kidding. Perhaps if you hang out and we ain’t chased you off and you are active in the guild we will promote you to Lieutenant.

Lieutenant’s are super members with the power to invite to the guild and make promos to member. They should also be able to type member notes in the roster page. This helps us keep track of who is who. Also officers in our other games and officers in alliance guild will have their officers at this rank for the same reason to invite their members into our guild. Currently we are the Empire side guild for the Gods of War guys and the end game guild for Sith Element people. If you are going to advance beyond here you got to take a little bit of responsibility (sort of).

Officers in SWTOR, save for one, were active people in STO who were transitioning to SWTOR or who had spent some time playing SWTOR Beta preparing for launch with me. So really it is a “good-ol boys” club. They are the guys I have around me to help me do things that need to be done in the guild and that haven’t had long periods of disappearing without a trace. They are people I trust and that I consider friends. Basically these guys are the old guard or Nick’s Clique or “not the funnest bunch of guys in the universe”. Really just people that were familiar to me and active in the community. Maybe not the best criteria for picking Officers – but that is what it is.

Now what I would like to see them do is to organize HM FP’s and other group activities in the game. I would like them to be the go to people for help with equipment or obtaining equipment or for a host of other game activities. I want them to come to me and tell me what they want to the be the Officer of – “like I want to be in charge of the Ministry of Information”. Some of ‘em do it, some of ‘em don’t. If it seems unfair just please know I am addressing it.

Now we have been blessed with a ton of really good gamers in my opinion and just good people in general. I do want to make a fluid transition here with this Officer corps. I want to continue to produce named titles – if a person has a specific job i.e. Telka (Raid Leader) – they are an Officer Plus or an Officer XD or whatever. They got a little more accessibility than regular ol’ officers.
With the guild bank coming out we will need a quartermaster – the inquiries about it have mostly resulted in “if no one else does it, I will”. Let me tell you something – I don’t want to force anybody to do anything they don’t really want to do. I am of the same ilk. So I really need someone to go – “I want to be the quartermaster”.

All right enough of the rambling – I wanted to share with you all something that I think sums up TBW (you guys) wonderfully…
“You guys are awesome players…I love the fact you guys are patient with newer 50’s. It’s not immediate pressure to be fully geared and not ask questions” – Kara from Sith Element

I don’t want to embarrass Kara too much calling her out – but she has run with a lot of us and I was just really impressed that is how she saw us – because that is how I would like us to be seen. So please continue to conduct yourselves in a way that conveys this. You have done an excellent job representing yourselves.

End Holocall (how nerdy is that?)

Update: Thanks to Blaine for taking on the duties of Quartermaster - please refer all guild bank matters to Blaine or myself.

Hasn't been quite a month - but I am going to be gone for a week starting 10 May. My youngest daughter is having a baby. So I am going to be with them. I will probably be in contact - but not as frequently as you have become accustomed. My real-life rarely kicks in.

Up front I want to remind everyone that we are a “mature”, casual, end-game focused guild. Now I am sure we all have different definitions of what that means. To me it means we are adults who show up to play this game for fun with a focus for raiding and group stuff at max level. We put aside personality conflicts focusing on enhancing the group. We avoid drama the best we can. I think we do this pretty good.

We are in our fifth month since launch. I couldn’t be happier with the guild. We have been able to attract and retain some old school, long time gamers. Many of you have been in with different groups of folks and have been with different games. One of our missions is to attract and retain you here. I am glad you have joined us (well most of you…I kid). Now as you arrive I am hearing some concerns for some tools and systems we are trying to utilize.

We have instituted the DKP system for raiding. Many of you have the experience of using this and it seems that there is more bad experience around it than good experience. Since we want to keep a casual atmosphere it seems that a DKP thing would be more hard core. I have never had experience using DKP until now. I am of the impression that if used properly it can be very effective at ensuring folks that raid get geared evenly. I am keeping my eye on this. It only takes looking at the tally sheet to know we haven’t been really stringent with using this. We are using it now to get folks familiar with our implementation of it to build trust with you. Telka has implemented a very wise plan to gain your trust. If your experience was bad elsewhere, we are not them. For those of you that really don’t raid or are just leveling to 50 … we run two raids on Friday nights in regular story mode to get Columi gear for people to get them ready for Hard mode raiding. Friday night runs are NOT DKP runs. In my opinion we are doing very well at offering opportunities to our members for experiencing the full potential of their characters while attempting to maintain a casual atmosphere. WE haven’t excluded anyone from raiding in hard modes either; there are at least two guys with Rakata gear that we got in a raid as a new 50. I do need your feedback as to how we are using DKP and if it is being used effectively or not. I am approachable – please pull me aside to communicate your concerns – or just sit on them and let it fester ‘til you hate all of us.

We put up a site that has a nice parser we want to use – we have been getting pushback on this because of previous bad experience. I will speak for myself – I was afraid to use it cuz I would be embarrassed that my numbers sucked. It wasn’t that bad. For a guy like me tools like this help me to try and get better. I realize not everyone is interested in that and just wanna play and chillax and all that sorta thing. Which is fine. You do not have to use the parser. We would like people to use it. We aren’t going to have a damage requirement to run a raid. At the same time you gotta realize that if your numbers suck it will slow the progression. We are not going to hold it against you though if you like playing your character the way you got it set up. I might not personally understand it – but that is my problem not yours. At the same time if your numbers suck and you want to make it better you will know who might be able to help.

You have to risk being vulnerable to use something like this and you have to trust that the group is going to have your back not stick a knife in it. So I hope you will trust us and when I say us, I mean all of us to have each other’s back. Again if used properly it will help our progression and help us to get as many people to enjoy their end game experience more. Again I appreciate the feedback I have been getting. Let’s police one another to keep things casual and friendly. Let’s use these tools we have in place to get better (if you want too).

My final words are read our forums and use the calendar at TBWgaming.com. The calendar can be found under the “About Us” tab by selecting upcoming events. Please see me or Jan if you have any problems. If you don’t want to talk to one of us, then talk to someone you are familiar with and ask them to bring it to me.

awesome - thanks man.