March 3 aid signup

[Alram]

Sign up here if you like.
ATM Mistique and I are signed up. He had an accident last night and couldn't make it. He was not injured.
I might not be around as much this week; we'll see.

edit: oops I misspelled raid in the title of this topic.

[Xame]

Yuri will be there. I also signed up on the alliance site.

I'm a little concerned that we will have the numbers to hit ZG with a full 20 week after week. Although the two guilds have the numbers, there will always be a few from both guilds who cann't make it (Mystic also mentioned someone from LS would be out the next 2 weeks). I believe we need to continue to "speed" raid ZG on Fridays just for the experiance and kill the snake boss. But we need to find others if we want to progress to the other bosses. Our best showing so far has been 17-18 players. It will also provide an option for those who want to 5-man a regular instance and not feel they have to raid every week or stay up to 4am ST.

I don't have a solution to our problem. I think LS's is working out well and I think we need to build on that success. Please note, I'm not desperate for another alliance (and you know my headaches from pugs), just saying we should keep our eyes open for mature players to give us more options.

[vor_lord]

Sign up here if you like.
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Guildportal appears to be broken, and I'm not sure I ever got approval (I did sign up).

At any rate, I am very questionable for Friday as the in-laws will be coming to visit. I should not be counted on for this weekend.

As far as our struggles with ZG, I think that if we don't start to see more consistent attendance, we may have to start running it like how Keepers of the Dusk do. By this I mean it is not a joint guild raid with guild rolls, etc. It's run by the lurkers, and we have a list of people outside the guild that we invite regularly (like folks from the Lost Souls). Loot rules would be simplified a lot to be more PUG friendly etc.

We're just a few people away from being able to make this work at present it seems.

[VoiceMan]

I agree. With the current situation as it stands, we will not see much success in ZG. I know not everyone cares too much about ZG, but we'll have the same problem with AG20, which I know some people are interested in. And frankly, the whole idea behind a guild alliance was to see new content the Lurkers couldn't get to on their own, and at this point, it's not working the way we wanted it to. I personally would like to see us be pretty consistent with the 20 man stuff each Friday, working through ZG, and mixing in a AQ20 trip every couple of weeks or so. I also think we might give some good thought to filling up the raid in much the same way KotD does, even though it will likely mean slow progress, as we search for people who are good players, but having been the pick up man a couple of times with KoTD, I have seen how it can work. Obviously, I can speak only for myself, but those are my thoughts. I didn't like how last Friday worked out. Everyone who was there was very patient, etc, and we were finally able to make some thing happen, but if we plan on ZG all week long, I don't want to find out Friday night that it's not going to happen. :P

[Kevin]

Well keep in mind that I had to bail last Friday from anxiety related issues as well. I understand that even with Treesh and I there we would have been a bit short but that does cut the numbers. Really the issue is to consitently be able to 20 man you need about 25-27 people. And to 40 man you need 50-60 people. And then you of course open up the waitlist issues.

It's not working quite as well as we wanted because we are still a little short on the numbers. But Mav will be joining us soon which helps a bit since we are soo close to having consistent numbers.

[vor_lord]

Well keep in mind that I had to bail last Friday from anxiety related issues as well.  I understand that even with Treesh and I there we would have been a bit short but that does cut the numbers.  Really the issue is to consitently be able to 20 man you need about 25-27 people.  And to 40 man you need 50-60 people.  And then you of course open up the waitlist issues.

It's not working quite as well as we wanted because we are still a little short on the numbers.  But Mav will be joining us soon which helps a bit since we are soo close to having consistent numbers.
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If we use 25 as ballpark, let's see:

Mogo
Marn
Rogoll
Conc
Durambar
Fazuul
Yuri
Octord
Necrali
swirlytracks
Xarhud

Vasska
Finalscore
Olan
Amentet
Syonn
Mistique
Nephelim
Whopperjr
Feero
Deadpriest
Rainz
Ranaros

That gives us 23 off the top of my head -- 11 Lurkers and 12 Lost Souls. We should be adding Mav in a month or two I hope. It seems we get about 8-10 of the 11 Lurkers, and 6-8 of the 12 Lost Souls, giving us 14-18 which is a bit shy. Maybe this Friday is skewing my perception, perhaps we're closer than I thought. Maybe a different time? I know that would be tough for me, but perhaps a bigger mass could be obtainable on a different night?

Perhaps the Guild Portal site will help. How many are signed up there? More than anything what I think is lacking is a good way to communicate with the Lost Souls. It's the expectation of having enough people that isn't met that is tough. If we knew we wouldn't have enough, then we could plan to do other stuff. Really UBRS with Lost Souls/Lurkers is still a good option.

Would it help if we had an established backup plan? For example, let's say by 8:30 we don't have 16. A backup plan in place would help (quick UBRS run followed by 5 mans for example). If we have 16 at 8:30 we could go for Venoxis. If more have shown up by then, go on, if not, break off into 5 mans?

Just some ideas. We just may need to get the Lost Souls used to regularly coming at a scheduled time to make this work -- maybe a couple more weeks to see the average of what we get from them will give us a better idea how close we are to regularly fielding a 20 man raid.

[VoiceMan]

Just some ideas.  We just may need to get the Lost Souls used to regularly coming at a scheduled time to make this work -- maybe a couple more weeks to see the average of what we get from them will give us a better idea how close we are to regularly fielding a 20 man raid.
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I think a big part of this is trying to discover how many of the LS people are interested in the content we're trying to get to. I know many of the LS people are more concerned with PvP rankings than anything else, which will make it virtually impossible to try and count on them to attend regularly (unless they're truly interested), but so far it seems we only have about 4 LS people interested/able to come raid on a regular basis. This past Friday, I believe we had 6 or 7 LS signed up to be there, and yet we only had 3 who actually showed up. Mistique had an auto accident, so I certainly don't blame him for not being there, but if all we're going to get regularly is 4 or 5 people, we need to figure something else out for the other empty slots in the raid.

[Alram]

The Guildportal site is up now. I am burned out from last week. I'll be there Friday night, but I don't feel much like organizing things this week; if somebody else would like to communicate with LS this week that would be great. I don't expect to be playing much WoW this week either, so even if I weren't burned out, I still would not be available in game to chat with Mistique or Olan or whoever.

[bonemage]

I should be there this Friday. I also signed up on GuildPortal for the raid.

My current hope for the Friday runs is to get a regular, solid, full 20 man raid of ZG. I still have interest in 5 manning Scholo, doing DM North tribute runs, doing UBRS with the Lurkers, and ensuring that our groups are successful. I might opt for a PUG 20 man raid if I'm not needed with the LS/Lurkers group as I did last week. There just isn't much left that will progress Durambar in the other places or in raiding 5 man instances, so my interest there has waned considerably.

We still lack the numbers to make much progress in ZG, and that is where I'd like to focus my efforts. I think we should start actively recruiting players to make the weekly runs, with the focus on making ZG progress. I don't think seeking another guild to ally with is going to yield what we need to be successful in ZG. With the Lost Souls, we have a larger pool of great players to get things done on various nights, but my primary reason for pursuing a guild alliance was to get to the 20 man raid dungeons, and that has not been met. We are much closer, but in my opinion based on the experience of the past several weeks, that we have added about 4 Lost Souls members whose goals and schedules make them compatible for the Friday runs. That still has us many players short of what we need. I like what we have with LS and I'm not suggesting we destroy the alliance, but they should know that we're still looking for more.

I think it is time we put together a post for the Terenas Realm Forums. We have a very specific type of player we are looking for, a very specific schedule, and a very specific goal. Hopefully we can pick up a few more classy people with similar goals and schedules. We should also start filling up extra slots with pickup people prior to planned start time, with the same goal of finding good, regular people to play with. A couple of good players could allow good word of mouth recruiting, and that should give us an acceptable sized roster to pull 20 players from. I think that any classy player who regularly shows should be able to achieve the same roster slot security that any Lurker or Lost Soul can obtain, regardless of the tag under the name. Those that sign up and then not show (without cause) just can't have a slot held for them in the future, though they're welcome to still come. I'd like discussion on this matter.

[bonemage]

One additional thought: I don't think we'll have enough for ZG this Friday, so we need a backup plan. I think even before we start adding PUG people (if that is a course of action we take as a guild) we need to have a full roster and be more organized than we currently are. Doing a 50% PUG run will not reflect very well on us, as it won't have the proper feel of our group, so I think we should make non ZG plans for this Friday, and work on adding new players for the week after. Of course, if we get 16 LS/Lurkers show up on Friday, there's no reason we can't do ZG then, but I don't think that ZG is a realistic goal for this week.

[Concillian]

I think it is time we put together a post for the Terenas Realm Forums.  We have a very specific type of player we are looking for, a very specific schedule, and a very specific goal.  Hopefully we can pick up a few more classy people with similar goals and schedules.  We should also start filling up extra slots with pickup people prior to planned start time, with the same goal of finding good, regular people to play with.  A couple of good players could allow good word of mouth recruiting, and that should give us an acceptable sized roster to pull 20 players from.  I think that any classy player who regularly shows should be able to achieve the same roster slot security that any Lurker or Lost Soul can obtain, regardless of the tag under the name.  Those that sign up and then not show (without cause) just can't have a slot held for them in the future, though they're welcome to still come.  I'd like discussion on this matter.
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This is something I created before when talking about potentially using the realm forum for recruitment. After your post, I made some modifications to it updating for present status. Perhaps this can be a starting point:

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Lurkers are looking for a few more people so we can reliably hit the 20 person content out there.

We are largely mature people, both in age and attitude. We will not discriminate by age, but we will by attitude. The majority of us have spouses, jobs, children, etc… and real life is important. Because of this, we are not die-hard players who are on every night. We frequently have enough to go to 5-person type content (strat/scholo/BRD/silithus rep/etc…) 2-3 nights a week, but it is difficult to plan for such with most of our schedules. In addition to those kinds of ‘informal’ runs that just kind of pop up, we have one night per week of regular scheduled instance play.

This night is Friday night starting between 8 and 8:30 pm server time. Usually we have at least 3-4 hours of solid playtime, with another 2-3 hours a few stick around for a separate, smaller “post run” sometimes called an “eye-bleed run” or “qwerty-face run”

This scheduled time has been in effect in the guild as ‘normal instance time’ for many moons. Players have progressed through the game using this time for SM, Maraudon, BRD, and some have been capped for months using this time for 5 manning Scholo, Stratholme, DM, etc… Now many of us have seen this content repeatedly and are itching to get deeper into ZG and AQ20. We have made some friends and had some solid ZG groups, but not with enough consistency to see a full 20 players every week. At this point, our primary goal is to start seeing a full 20 players for the Friday night runs, but if you are not yet 60, don’t let that deter you from considering our guild. We will accept the right person of any level.

Some Lurker traits:
- We are primarily PvE players. We have some players who spend time PvPing for some fun, but nobody has done PvP more seriously than getting rank 8 or just doing some rep with the various BG factions.
- We generally do not use profanity. You’ll hear some over TS or see it in chat from time to time, but it will be rare. There is no written rule prohibiting profanity, we are just the kind of people who don’t generally use it.
- We use Teamspeak for voice communication. We expect people who will be interested in 20+ person content will be willing to use Teamspeak.
- We tend to be very group-play oriented, and enjoy co-operative play. We do not dictate people spec a certain way, yet we still have multiple protection spec tanks and heal-centric builds on our priests, shaman, and druids just because they enjoy group play more and want to spec that way. We don’t necessarily do a DM tribute run because we want the tribute, we do it also because we enjoy working together co-operatively.
- We are the kind of people who don’t feel right when you start into a PUG for Maraudon with 3 level 50s and one guy says ‘hey I got a level 60 warrior and rogue to come along, this will be cake’. We are the kind of people who would rather try to 3 man it with like minded and appropriately leveled players than to get a “walkthrough”.
- Because we enjoy these challenges, we feel our co-operative play is quite good.

We know that our schedule dictates that we will not be progressing at an alarming rate. What we are hoping is that there are some people like us, with real life demands that preclude raiding 5 nights a week, but still want to see the content, and fit with our normal Friday timeframe. We aren’t looking for specific classes, we are looking for specific people.

The Terenas Lurkers Guild was born from forum regulars at www.lurkerlounge.com If you sound like you are a good fit for our guild, please visit the forums there and look at the sticky post in the general WoW forum ("The Crossroads") about in-game guilds. Because we are not the only guild of Lurkers, recruitment must be through the methods mentioned in this post. Therefore, direct in-game communication through the WoW mail system is not the way to speak to us about joining the guild if you are interested.

If you sound like the kind of person who fits in with Lurkers, has Friday nights open and can attend with good regularity, but would like to remain in your own guild, we may be able to accommodate this. Please speak with us through the same methods outlined for joining in the sticky post on general WoW forum at www.lurkerlounge.com .

[bonemage]

There will need to be some alterations, as the focus seems to be on recruiting new Lurkers. I don't think we're recruiting Lurkers, just looking for those that want to raid once a week in ZG with mature players. The focus should be on recruiting those that are looking for a regular raid of ZG on Friday evenings. The parts about what we're like and what type of player we're looking for are good though.

[vor_lord]

It's the first week with a place to sign up (on guildportal). If it appears that again we'll be too short to try ZG, we can explain that we need to change a few things about the runs to accomodate players not from either guild. This would mostly include removal of guild rolls. We need to keep LS informed as to why and what -- we still want those that are wanting to come to come. Loot rules will still be fair, it just won't be a two-guild only run. Keepers of the Dusk have demonstrated this approach can work.

At any rate I don't think we need to decide so quickly things aren't going to work out. We have two data points so far. Last Friday was certainly not the norm for us (we were missing 3 regulars), it may not have been for them. I think we see how things pan out this week, then decide whether or not we need to start recruiting (a forum post may or may not be the best way).

The good news is that we have a good set of healers and tanks, and filling in holes will be easier since we have that.

Let's have solid backup plans for Friday (I won't be there) so that things are smoother in the event there are not enough for ZG.

[Alram]

I sent this today at Guildportal to Mistique.

Hi, At present you are the only Lost Soul signed up for this Friday.  Does that mean nobody else is coming? Alram

[vor_lord]

How about this idea, everyone? Let' s postpone trying to get regular ZG runs until after the 1.10 patch (and probably some time after that depending on how nice the T0.5 sets look). The reasons behind doing this:

• Currently we would need to start recruiting others to join our raids to have confidence in sufficient numbers. Any progress we might make in this area would likely be thrown off by new emphasis on the T0.5 sets anyway. My guess is that many of us will be very interested in the new 1.10 sets and we'll be wanting to return to 5 mans and smaller dungeon raids (some people already are missing those anyway).<>
  
• We still have a lot of gearing up needs, especially for newly (and soon-to-be) capped characters. This includes a bunch of Lost Souls as well as Lurkers. Being better geared will help us succeed in ZG, especially if we are a short a couple of people. Xarhud will cap anytime, Keshoga isn't too far, and we also have a couple of others who might also join us at level, all of whom need gear.<>
  
• I think more casual environments will help us foster a better relationship with the Lost Souls, leading to hopefully more interest in our ZG raids when we start them again. If we can get many of them interested, even if we still have to find some others to fill holes we won't have to find very many.<>
  [st]
  I still would like for us to do things with Lost Souls regularly on Friday nights -- it gives us a bigger pool of people, helps foster good relationships, and opens up UBRS runs. If we don't do things with them our little alliance will start to falter, but it feels like it already is with the ZG raids.
  
  It's frustrating for everyone to have plans that don't come to pass.

[Concillian]

I like this idea better than trying to shoehorn a couple of pick-ups into raids.

Maybe not giving it a specific timeframe like "after 1.10" but just saying we are going to keep 5 manning / small raiding for a while.

Maybe we should approach Fridays from the standpoint of:
Primary plan -- Various 5 mans or UBRS + 5man or whatever scenario
Secondary plan IF we get 18+ players by 8:15 -- ZG

So that we'd only go to ZG if the planets aligned and everyone showed. In this case the 'backup plan' requires little thought and is very cut and dry, while the primary plan is the difficult one to hash out, and because it is primary, DOES get hashed out instead of being an in-game discussion wasting playtime.

[bonemage]

I'm fine with putting ZG raiding off for awhile, but not for long term. Raiding ZG only when the planets are aligned and we have 18+ LS/Lurkers is going to be too sporadic to yield much success in ZG. With little hope of ZG happening, there is no reason to worry about raidlocks, so the chance of having 18+ that aren't raidlocked goes down, especially considering that several members of the LS/Lurkers group have already been (some more than once) into ZG with another guild. I'd like to get a tight unit that is capable of downing Hakkar in an evening at one point, rather than just killing Venoxis once a month. We'll still need to expand our pool of players to make the 20 man instances anything more than a curiosity. I like Concillian's plan for the short term only.

I do, however, think it's wise to gear up some, and see how 1.10 pans out and how that changes what we want before pushing hard at ZG progress. At our current pace, we'll only get a few runs in at most prior to the next patch (unless it is delayed, this is 1.10 we're talking about). Those won't be too productive, and will sabotage any recruitment efforts with an expected hit to attendance coming.

I would like to continue to do things with the members of LS every Friday.

As far as plans for this Friday, I need to do Scholo in a 5 man. I know that Feero of the Lost Souls has interest in 5 manning it as well (or at least did last week.) I need to get the Major Mana Pot recipe and the transmute water to air recipe, so that is what I would personally prefer to do.

[VoiceMan]

Well, I'm ok with what most of the guild is wanting to do. I'm fortunate enough to get the occasional invite to ZG with another guild, so I can still progress on my class set items, of which I hope to be complete at least one. I do think we need more people to regularly attend in order to be able to realistically field a ZG group. It doesn't appear right now that LS will be able to bring ten people each week, which leaves us with some roster gaps. I too do NOT want to stop working with LS..we just still need some more people, whether we try and find those people now, or wait til post 1.10.

With regards to this Friday, if Feero can go, and is still interested in 5 manning scholo, then he can go in my place as healer. I want to go to Scholo, but I have no real reason to go other than the hopes of drops off Jandice http://www.thottbot.com/?i=23232 and Gandling http://www.thottbot.com/?i=23551 I also have loot hopes from Drakk http://www.thottbot.com/?i=19166 so I'm also good for a UBRS run. With us being minus Necrali this Friday, we'll be just a tad short on healing, depending on who from LS can come. If both Feero and Deadpriest can make it, we'll be fine either way. If only Feero can come, then between Xarhud, Fazuul, and Mogo I expect us to be fine in UBRS. I guess if I had to choose a preference, I'd prefer going on the 5 man Scholo run, but if we have others who need the quests etc. there more than I do, it's certainly not a problem.

[Xame]

I don't really have a great need for loot from anyplace, except to finish off sets (for fun). My main goals would be to free up some quest space. Thus, this list is for 5 man'ing:

Strat dead (quest to kill bosses) 3 quests, if I remember correctly
Scholo (working on the series) 1 quest
LBRS 2 junk quests (finding belongings and the head on the spike quest)
DM - Tribute full run with the follow on quest as the "King" (has a chance for my last piece of good blue loot)

Farm UBRS for the skinner.

And kill the dragon is SoS after I talk to a dragon in disguise. I'm sure I have others lingering around in my quest log, all elite. We might consider also a 5 person run followed by some Elite quest log clearing.

I'm completely flexable since none of this will upgrade my gear in a large way and I have quests almost everywhere. Also most of my needs are to feed my professions.

[bonemage]

Change of status for me. I may or may not be on Friday. If I do make it, I won't be on before 8:30-9:00 realm time.