First of all, please feel free to move this into a more appropriate section of your forums if you're interested, or delete it if you're not.

Right, instead of writing this out all again, I'm going to copy/paste exactly what I approached my own Guild with, so we're on exactly the same page:



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Right, I'm in a sticky situation. Through nobody's fault, (except possibly the game designers) I'm not currently getting everything I want out of my Guild. I'm paying a monthly fee to play this game, but I'm not playing it how I want to, and it's driving me nuts. (Like a steering wheel plugged into my belly button? NARF! Uh, sorry.)

Basically, I've got a hankering to do more 25-man content, and I've got unfinished business in Ulduar still, but we don't currently have enough interested people in this Guild to make regular trips there, and my dark psychic powers are not yet strong enough to bend your feeble minds towards doing my majestic bidding. That's perfectly cool, I don't want to force people to play content they're not interested in just to make me happy.

This has resorted to me pugging a lot, which is mostly about as fun as having sharp things stuck in your eyeballs, but pays off just enough to make the pain almost bearable. I know I'm not the only one too, as I've seen a fair few of you about in these pugs, and I've a seen fair bit of chatter on a similar subject in guild chat.

Generally, this means we have two options:

#1 - Put up with it, and live with the dissatisfaction that we're not getting what we want out of our subscription fees, except through infuriating pugs.

#2 - Quit the Guild, and find an alternative group of suckers to do the content we want.

For me #1 is not an option. I'll probably wind up quitting a game I otherwise enjoy if I put up with it for too long, and if I have to choose between quitting the game or the Guild, and hopefully without sounding too harsh, I think we can all agree it would be stupid for anybody to quit the game when they can adjust it to make it fun again.

However, #2 is not an option for me personally either. I like playing with you lot, I like the Guild's attitude and the varying silliness we enjoy together, and I'm not about to trade that in completely to do the content I want, as it would probably mean I'm doing the content with complete gits.

So instead of going with the usual, I'd like to suggest option #3:

#3 - We arrange special "pugs" with another Guild on a regular basis. A very loose, very flexible guild alliance, if you will.

We pick one day a week when neither Guild has their usual raids, and we agree to supply a certain amount of players each. We use a simple to track loot system such as Suicide Kings, or even roll if that's too much trouble.

We make a shared chat channel that all people interested in these raids can join, and we agree on a simple set of rules about such things as AFKing and flasking/food-buffs to make the raid go smoothly. We handle all of the sign-ups for our Guild on our forums, they do it on theirs, we chatter a little in our shared channel to make sure we've got the right mix of classes. ("We've got 2 tanks and 3 healers signed, the rest are DPS. We're a little low on ranged DPS, but we've got 2 AoE healers")

We only keep the agreement going for as long as it suits either party. We can grab other players from outside Guilds to help make up the numbers on the night, if we need more, as long as they're good enough for us. ("LF one more Healer, two DPS for focussed and disciplined TotC25 run, please whisper at least partial Achievement. We will be completing the instance, so please don't whisper if you're unable to commit the time for this.")

We'll only need to find 5 players per Guild if we're interested in doing Ulduar-10 Hardmodes, for a shot at Algalon. (And I am going to kill Algalon before Cataclysm hits, with or without you horrible lot.)

Basically, it will do the same thing as raiding in a pug, but we'll have more warning of the time and date, and we'll know that the players will be of a much higher quality than the usual pugs that bring so much dismay.

I know there are other Guilds out there in the same situation as ours, because I'm seeing a lot of players from very good Guilds in these pugs, and I've seen a couple of respected Guilds asking for more numbers to make up their 25-man runs. Hell, I did a TotC25 pug the other day where the group was made up of focussed, experienced players, and we one-shot the first four bosses.

I'm quite happy to approach other Guilds and chat with them if none of the Officers from VBN want to play Ambassador. My first choice might be Tok's Fury for this, but we can discuss that in the following posts.

The great thing about this is that we only need a few players from the Guild to make this work on a regular basis. Worst case scenario, we have nothing to lose. Best case scenario, those who want it are getting in an extra TotC25 run every week, with all the extra Emblems and loot that entails. Mmmmmm, purplz



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Now that's over and done with, first of all let me link our website so you can see what we're all about, and check the usual rules we raid by:

Villains by Necessity

(In case you can't be bothered to look it up, it's very similar to what you guys do. No ninja-AFKing, please don't be late, and gem and enchant your gear properly if you're "serious" about raiding. Mainly, it's about having fun while not being a complete drain on our chances of winning the encounter.)

I'll also add that my Guild currently know as much about this idea as you guys now do. I posted the above in the VBN forums, I've had a lot of interested replies, but we don't have any hard details. We can work that out between us as and when we feel it necessary.

Anyway, lovely meeting you all, send me an in-game tell or come and abuse our forums if you have any questions/counter-proposals, and I'll hopefully see y'all soon.

x x x x

Taidan.

it sounds all a good idea and im sure everyone else would want to be appart of it, and would we be using vent or ts? and we raid all days so ill have to look at our calander where we can afford to loose a day off

We normally use Vent. I'll have to find out who from our Guild actually pays for the Vent server and run it by them, but I'm sure we'll work something out.

Okay, more copy/pasta incoming. Somebody asked me a couple of questions over on our own Guild forums, I figured I'd put my reply up here so you guys can see what Machiavellian schemes we have cooking up behind your backs:



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Okay, firstly, so we're all on the same page: Here's the page that Tok's Fury are currently discussing the idea on. There's not much there yet, but I'm sure you guys will be interested.

It's basically a direct copy/pasta of what I've written here. You can follow the links on their forums to see what they're all about with their raid rules, etc. (They're basically the same as ours.)

Secondly, we need to make some arrangements concerning the Vent server. I've no idea who pays for it, but they have the final word on who uses it and when, so we'll have to sort something with that. Maybe we rotate the password a bit more often, and use ours one week and theirs the next.

As for the loot, I think that maybe a variation on Suicide Kings would work, or we could just roll for it and ask people who have won something not to roll again for that particular run. As far as I'm aware, they normally just roll on their loot during their own Guild runs.

I would like to make an arrangement for the Trophies and crafting Orbs to be split equally between the Guilds, (with us taking it in turns to take one after the first is rolled for) so each Guild can decide in their own way what to do with them, and both Guilds will benefit equally. (Handy if both Guilds want to upgrade their Tanks as a priority, for example.)

I'm not sure if Tok's Fury are even interested in Ulduar-10 Hard modes and Algalon at this point in time, or if they'd rather do it on their own if they are, but if we do happen to form a Super-Group for that, Algalon's Quest and key should probably be rolled for again. We'll doubtless do it more than once if we do go there, so both Guilds should end up with access.

Personally, my priority when it comes to such things is to make it as fair and balanced as possible, as keeping the arrangement sweet for both Guilds will be of much more value in the long-term than anything we can grab in the short-term.


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Final Copy/Pasta of the day:


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The only barrier left to actually making this work is to find a day that suits both us and Tok's Fury. Apparently they have events 6 days a week (With Wednesday being their free day) but are willing to do a little bit of reorganizing to get these runs going.

A fixed day every week would make organizing these runs considerably easier, but of course we don't want them clashing with our own 10-man runs.

Any preferences? Would anybody who's not interested in these 25-man runs be offended if we requested that we avoid having VBN runs on a Wednesday for the next few weeks at least, and possibly longer if this all works out in a way that benefits both Guilds?

For this week, I'll see if we can get something going for the Saturday, Sunday or Monday. It's short notice, but I hope it'll be exciting enough that we'll get at least 12-13 from VBN to take part. If not, we can selectively pug the last few members we need to make it happen and just run it as a regular (albeit focussed and high player quality) pug, and we'll probably still march through it in a couple of hours.



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So that's the short of it. We need to find out which days you guys can do this, and hope that at least one of those days is the same day of the week that VBN can do it.

As for this week, if you guys are keen to rush into this for a quick clear, can you get around 12-13 people for Saturday, Sunday or Monday evening?

Okay, after having a quick chat with the rest of my Guild, we've figured out that Thursday, Monday and Tuesday would work best for us.

Could you lot make one of those days work?

Wow, you guys have your own trolls?

Ah, I see. Poor sap must have been declined by both Guilds already.

Anyway, we're going to need some communication from the Tok's Fury side of things at some point, if you're interested.

Hi there,

Nice to see some interest from another guild in willing to work together, would mean a great process for both of us.
Special when u come to a point that a normal ulduar run starts to become boring, starting to miss the challenge.
For the days u suggested, for me the only day(s) would be on monday (prefer the fri- sat- and sunday to be honest)
Those (3) days are planned for normal ulduar raids but sins we are growing slowly it is time to let the other people start
participating on it so that the real hard core can start to move on, offcourse we not let other persons down if they are
to short on players for it.
So to be short, if u look for a ranged dps and it is on 1 of the days i suggested, count me in.

Hope to raid with u folks in the near future