Daily Thoughts: Brawler’s Guild Woes

Upcoming patch 5.1 is bringing with it a lot of changes and new content. One of the most controversial items seems to be the Brawler’s Guild. Despite the first rule of Brawler’s Guild being “don’t talk about Brawler’s Guild”, there is a lot of talking going on – primarily about the way that a player can gain access to this content. For those who don’t know anything about this feature, here’s the description from the patch notes:

Brawler’s Guild

  • Underground fighting rings have sprung up in Stormwind and Orgrimmar that will give brawlers who have their mitts on an invitation a chance to earn bragging rights by testing their solo PvE mettle against some of the toughest creatures found in World of Warcraft.
  • Players will prove their skill, and increase their rank with the Brawler’s Guild, as they win matches against some of the most difficult solo encounters in World of Warcraft.
  • Entry into the brawler’s guild is by invitation only. Invitations can be found on the black market auction house or by invitation from somebody within the guild.
  • As their Brawler’s Guild rank increases, players will unlock additional rewards and activities within the Brawler’s Guild.
  • Brawlers on a realm will gather together into the blood spattered ring to watch as their peers face down their own opponents. They can watch the battles in progress to learn from hardened Brawler’s Guild veterans as they wait for their own turn to fight.
  • If this is your first night at Brawler’s Guild, you have to fight.

Black Market Auction House invitations means that only the wealthiest players will have access to the Guild at first and has some people upset. I think it’s awesome and can’t imagine a better way to handle it.

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Daily Thoughts: Item Level is the New Gearscore

To be oh so cliché, the more things change the more things stay the same. WoW is no exception to the rule. I’m not talking about whether or not new bosses or gear are too similar to old ones, which are complaints I’ve heard from a couple of fellow players who’ve been wowing since vanilla. Nope, I’m instead here to talk about players and how regardless of what is added to the game, we’re always going to act the same way. Prior to cataclysm and 4.0.3 I suppose, gearscore ruled pugs. The gearscore addon, which attributed a point value to each piece of gear and gave a “score” for each player based on that gear was the loathed standard from which players were judged before being invited to a random group or raid. Not content with mere players making their own system for judging the “goodness” of others, blizzard implemented the average item level. Viewed on both your character sheet and on your armory profile, it is the new number from which all characters must be judged. I say this sarcastically of course, as there are much more important factors; see: Skill. Now instead of a gearscore requirement, we see “looking for heals for *instance*, 350ilvl or higher”

Along the same lines are the recruiters for small or social guilds and their message. Prior to cataclysm we’d see “Friendly leveling guild looking for members of all levels. Have tabard and 4 bank tabs, pst xxxx for invite”. Quite often after spamming a couple of those, random /trade trolls bash the poster, mocking their guild tab message. Usually undaunted, they continue the recruitment spam. Now the trolls have a new topic to mock the social guild recruiters for, “we’re a level 4 guild…”

Anything else you can think of that we keep doing over and over as players? Aside from standing in fire.

Daily Thoughts: Officers

So, it’s probably worth noting that I’m not referring to the kind of officer that you see in the little video above, this post is instead going to be about guild officers as opposed to Russian police that don’t want to be eaten by wolves. I’m sure you can see the similarity though. Guild officers go through a lot to keep the guild running, especially good ones. I think a lot of players don’t appreciate what the leaders of their guild go through in order to make it function cohesively, or at least as cohesively as possible. Continue on to read a little about what your officers do for your guild and how you can help them out – hint – it doesn’t involve cake.

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Guild Recruitment: Band of Thorns, US-Thrall Horde

Band of Thorns (BoT) is looking for a few skilled raiders to round out their 10 man teams. They’re looking for a couple more melee dps (enhancement shaman preferred), a couple healers (not paladin), and one or two ranged (mage, lock or a boomkin would be nice, but aren’t those mythical creatures?).

The majority of BoT has been raiding/playing together since Vanilla/BC. They went 9/12 heroic in ICC (before cataclysm) and are 5/12 in the first tier of Cataclysm content, as of this posting. Raid times are currently 9pm server Tuesday/Friday.

All raiders are expected to show up to raids on time, be properly gemmed/enchanted/flasks, and have fun. Raids, and guild chat in general, keep a pretty light and fun atmosphere even when they’re getting serious for a kill. So, although they’d love you to read Elitist Jerks (or similar) to know your class, please don’t be one.

Their website is available at bot.wowstead.com, or contact Minmon or another officer in-game if interested.

Need to fill your roster? Feel free to email me at contact (at) alternateimage (dot) com with your information.

Daily Thoughts : The Importance of the Right Guild

My guild is a very friendly, casual guild with a longer history and has had great success in previous tiers of raiding. We got hit hard by the end of expansion blues. Several of our more active players and officers took extended breaks, a few players quit wow, others had some real life issues take them out of raiding for a span. Several months ago, raiding almost completely stopped. We went from a 25 man guild progressing dutifully through ICC to not having the online members to fill a 10m ICC. At this point, we had downed 8/12 bosses in Icecrown in 25m and I believe our 10m group was 11/12. We were often tied or close for 3rd horde progression on our server. Admittedly, not a power-house server, but we were making progress. Even as we were doing fine, set to continue, the series of personal burn-outs and real life priorities reduced us to 1 of 6 active officers.

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