It’s the final weekend before Mists drop. I’ve spent the past few nights frantically getting myself and the guild ready for next week’s expansion. Mists marks the third straight expansion where I’ve held tenure over a guild. After going through two expansions, I’ve a pretty good idea of what guilds and players should do to help get ready. There’s plenty of posts from others on that already. In this case though, I’d like to share what I’ve done personally and how the guild’s faring.
Personal preparation
Consumables
- Flask of the Draconic Mind
- Mythical Healing Potion
- Swiftness Potion
- Swim Speed Potion
- Volcanic Potion
- Drums of Forgotten Kings
- Severed Sagefish Head
Rearranged my bars so that they were all there for easy access in case I need to refresh.
My character
Had to readjust a ton of my stats and enchants. I’m not tackling raid bosses anymore so I’ve adjusted stuff out of hit rating. Switched my talents and glyphs to better account for leveling. I also started putting my gear into void storage that I wasn’t planning to use or banking things that I didn’t necessarily need.
Day planning
If you’re playing at midnight, make sure you rest up and crash first. Take a nice long nap. I plan to go to bed late afternoon/early evening. Also, set an alarm so you don’t oversleep. Make sure you stand up and stretch every hour or so. Jog in place or do something to keep the blood flowing. Don’t overdo it on the energy drinks. They’re a great short term burst of awareness but you’ll end up crashing after the effects wear off. I’ve got two cans of Amped waiting just in case and I plan on making a few sandwiches (and pepperoni sticks).
In fact, read this post by Serrath if you plan on undertaking a gaming marathon as the post includes tips on staying healthy and mentally alert. Hell, ignore the rest of this post and go read Serrath’s.
Guild preparation
With the help of the other leaders, we went over the guild and what needed to be done.
State of the Guild address
Collaborated with the officers on this one. The State of the Guild address is designed to look back at the previous expansion and highlight the negative along with the positive. The next part should include guild plans for the future and what the intentions are. If there’s anything new or different you’d like to focus on, this is where you specify it.
Be specific in your goals and set something that’s both tangible and realistic. Aiming for a world first might not be realistic but looking to clear out an instance on normal or hard mode before the next tier of raiding opens up can be. If there’s anything you want your guild to do, mention it (such as farming for mats).
If there’s a timeline for your raiders to hit the cap, mention that too. With us, we’re raiding the moment the instances become available be 10 or 25.
The guild bank
We engineered a massive sell-off of everything unessential. Anything that we couldn’t move was sent to our offshore guild bank. That guild bank is used to sit on older mats which aren’t as used as much. We’ve asked players to deposit any raw materials or BoE items they come across into the bank if they were willing to spare it for disenchanting and other profession levelling purposes. I’ve converted and cleared out several bank tabs for this already. There’s still a tab full of gems and food that need to a vetting out (but we’ll get to those later). Deposits will be open for people to use mobile banking to dump stuff into.
By the way, I’m glaring daggers at the guy who deposited 16 x Enchant Weapon – Avalanche.
Personnel management
We’ve been working hard at recruiting and adding players to our ranks. One of the biggest recurring problems throughout Cataclysm was raid days lost due to attendance. The final number was absolutely unacceptable to me so we’ve made a concerted effort to resolve that. Players on our PvP team have expressed interest in raiding. We’ve also been referred a few times (5 guild member referrals gets you a t-shirt, if they pan out).
Our current roster sits at:
- 3 tanks
- 16 melee
- 16 ranged
- 13 healers
Ranks
I only made one change here. We used to have two raiding ranks: Authenticated players and unauthenticated players (this helped with bank access rights). Most members in the raid have authenticators. I changed the second rank to raid trial members instead to help track those easier. We were running into problems where we’d occasionally forget to “promote” players. The other ranks consist of officers, alts, social members, and our dedicated PvP teams.
My bad.
Revising the site and reviewing policy
One of the very first things we did was re-examine all of site documents. Anything that was outdated was immediately updated. Special care was taken on our recruiting forms. We decided to re-do it from scratch since a few of the questions that were Cataclysm specific were no longer applicable. We took a hard look at each question and asked ourselves if it was something that we really needed and managed to knock off a few that we felt could be answered elsewhere.
Most importantly, I updated the guild background with a picture of Chen Stormstout in the middle of our logo. Have to Mist-ify the guild site somewhat.
Now it’s just a matter of resting. We’re a day and some change away from a whole new continent of really fun stuff to do!