This is the first In-game Movie that I am impressed with. Nice size, brightness, good sound, gfx and atmosphere. Tho the 2 guys are still not getting hurt, it looks like hgl can be quite intense

KoP

Greetings,

As you all may know, one of the topics of the alliance meeting that didn't get *too* far out of control was the formation of some alliance based PvP teams. One of the decisions was that I would take point on it and organize the teams for GvG and HA. As with any PvP group just starting out, it's important to know who can do what so that we don't sit around saying stuff like "uh, so who wants to monk?" Because of that, I'm going to be asking for some basic information from people before we even begin to start meeting on a regular basis or discuss what build we'll be using. After all, it's a little hard to put a team together if you don't know what your teammates can do.

Also, I'm going to arrange different groups based on ability. Now before you start crying elitism or whatever, let me explain what I have in mind. First, this applies only to GvG. The HA group is going to be whoever shows up can play. GvG will be divided into two different types of groups initially. There will be one group for beginners that have very little, if any, GvG experience and one group for people that have experience and generally know how it works.

The beginner group is not likely to do more than scrimmages, just because of the controlled nature of them. When this group meets, it will basically be a teaching session, really. There will be at least one or two others there with a good amount of experience to help explain things to people. Everything from skill selection to what the flag is for. Bear in mind that the best way to learn is to do so you will be playing matches, just not ranked.

The second group, which is for people with experience, will meet and have a prechosen build for use. Depending on the number of people that show up from each guild, we may rotate players or do unrated challenges against other guilds that are not neccessarily a part of the alliance. Because of the requirement of four players from a guild we may or may not play ladder matches.

Next, there is the issue of a meeting time. To start things off, I am going to set days and times now. If there are too many issues with them then we can change them, but for now these times will be it:
I'll work out the different time zones later, for now these are the Eastern US times (which is EDT atm)
Beginner GvG: Saturdays, 3 PM
GvG: Tuesdays, 9 PM
HA: Wednesday - Friday, 3 PM

One more thing: because this is PvP, we will be using Vent. For the beginner teams, having a mic is not required but recommended. For all other teams you must have a mic so you can communicate with the team.

For those that want to participate, I would appreciate you leaving the following information either in this thread or in a PM sent to me:
Name: not your real name, just one that I can use to easily recognize you.
Account Name:
Your time zone and its relation to GMT:
Classes you have PvP experience with:
In order, the classes you feel the most comfortable playing:
Type(s) of PvP experience you have:
How much you've played...
GvG:
HA:
Where you've spent most of your PvP time:
Roles in GvG you have experience with:

If the times I have listed are bad for you, please provide the time when you are most likely to be available (I don't need to know your entire playing schedule, if you say weekdays after 7pm I'll get the idea). If those times can work for you, then, well, I don't need to know your schedule since that'll just confuse me.

I'll be posting this on every allied guild's forums, but the ones I check the most frequently are RB's (obviously). If you need to contact me the easiest way to do so is by PM. In game communication is fine too, but my play time is mostly random right now and if there's a lot of chat or I'm involved in something I'm likely to miss a whisper. If that happens, don't take it personally, it wasn't done on purpose.

edit: No, I don't know how I managed to get that heart attached to the thread.

At last night's Alliance meeting, we had ~6 members of RB in attendance, and at least a dozen allies. Sciros has said that he'll post screencaps of the chat; hopefully those will go up soon so y'all can read the discussion for yourselves.

We all agreed that we need to do more events and stuff as an Alliance, including getting an Alliance PvP team, or teams, together on a regular basis. Wyrm will be handling the PvP logistics for RB. We are going to attempt to hold some sort of alliance event next month, although it hasn't been firmly decided upon yet. When we do schedule events, there will be notices about them here in the forum, and also in the guild announcement that you see when you log into GW.

There was one major issue raised that we will need to discuss as a guild. That issue is a potential change of the Alliance Leader guild from RB to Arch. I will admit that I was thoroughly blindsided by this, as were (I think) all the other RBers online at the time. We told our allies that we would need to talk about this, and decide what we, as a guild, wanted to do. Here are the points that Arch and KTHX (Life being mostly silent) made:

1. Arch is regularly the guild with the most members online at any given time, while RB has only a few, or none, online much of the time.

2. RB members are not very visible in Alliance Chat.

3. Arch has brought in the last two guilds added to the alliance, namely Life and KTHX.

4. RB is not seen as being very active in organizing Alliance activities or interactions - this appears to result from RB's reliance on these forums as our major source of communication. Other guilds seem to rely more on in-game chat (whether alliance chat or otherwise).

Conclusion: the Alliance should be led by the most active guild, which is Arch.

Now, I've tried to distill those points down to their essence, and leave out any provocative language so that we can discuss the idea on its merits. All I'll say is that I found the criticisms of our forums confusing, and even Sciros admitted that he didn't think that making new dedicated alliance forums would solve all our problems. And in our discussion of organizing Alliance events, everyone seemed to agree that forums were an essential part of the communication and planning process. So, let's not worry about exactly how fabulous our forum is, but rather think about Alliance Leadership.

A few points:

1. When we left the ZoS alliance and started up this one with Arch and Fail, we intended for there to be no leader. It was to be an alliance of equals, and KoP even set up a "phantom guild" to be the nominal leader of the alliance.

2. When Arch suggested that we should just dispense with the phantom guild and have RB lead the alliance, many of us (myself included) voted to have a phantom guild as leader anyway. I mention that to remind us that we never went into this with the idea that we had to be the leader guild. I really don't want this debate to become some odd ego-driven conflict.

3. Our original idea of the "alliance of equals", as conceived of by RB, Arch and Fail, has fallen by the wayside. Fail dissolved, and two other guilds who did not necessarily expect/demand an "alliance of equals" structure have joined the alliance.

4. The "leaderless alliance" idea turned out not to be so practical - someone has to do the button-pressing involved with inviting new member guilds, etc. That was why Arch pressed for RB to take the leadership directly, so as to streamline the process.

5. RB hasn't been very active in evaluating potential ally guilds - one only has to look at the [KTHX] poll to see that. We've got mostly abstentions. I don't think it's the case that we have been totally shirking in this area - after all, Jude did recruit Fail in the first place. But we need to make an honest assessment of whether our guild is really interested in recruiting new allies and evaluating them.

6. I don't think that the assertion that we've been slacking on trying get allies together to do stuff in game is fair. One only has to look at the forum to see that. However, for whatever reason, our allies won't come here. The result is that our allies don't see our efforts, or participate in them. Unless we make a specific effort to advertise our ideas for events/team variants/whatever in alliance chat, or on our allies' forums, I don't see this changing.

7. The sense that I got from the allies at the meeting was that they really want Arch in the leadership position. They seemed quite adamant about it; my reading of it was that they want change now, and aren't willing to wait to see if we become more active. We can't stop them from leaving the alliance and forming their own, if it comes to that.

So, I think what we'll be deciding in the near future is whether we want to join an Arch-led alliance, or just go our own way as an un-allied guild. This is what I'd like your opinions on.

My personal opinion is that I wouldn't mind having Arch be the leader guild. Their members really do seem to almost live in Guild Wars, while we're much more "restrained" in our gaming. If they want to take over the reins, I don't have any objection. It will make inviting new guilds to the alliance easier, especially if it's mostly Arch doing the recruiting. And again, I'd like to emphasize that RB did not intend to be the leader guild when we started up this alliance. We should not look on this as some sort of attempt to dash all our fondest hopes and ambitions! (besides, it'll save me untold platinum pieces if I don't have to send the invites!) While I don't do a whole lot of activities with most of our allies, I like playing with folks like Uca, and would miss them if we decided not to ally ourselves with them. So I'd rather be in an Arch-led alliance than none at all.

That's my $0.02. Please post your opinions here; tomorrow I'll put up a poll so that we can formally vote on what to do.

I suggest posting ur IGN and best way of contacting (eg email) of the officers of each Guild.

Ill edit this post to include those submitted already.


RB:
Hawkmoon Of Realms - Leader hawkmoon at triad.rr.com (note: replace the "at" with @ - I'm just trying to stymie the spambots)
Warblade - Officer Guild Wars Wiki - Primary Guild Page Editor
WarBlade

Arch:
I I O W N E D I I - Officer g8r111@gmail.com, ingame or on Arch forums.
Uca Firewind - Officer ucafirewind@gmail.com

Life:

Fail:

Please welcome Hawkmoon as the guild leader of RBGW.

I am grateful to Hawkmoon for stepping up and relief me to pursuit other interests. You all know and love Hawkmoon, so I don't need to ask you guys to extend the same courtesy to her as you have bestowed upon me. TIA.

No, I am not going to say I will miss you guys - because I am not gone. A bunch of RBers will be playing Hellgate London for the next while and you are more than welcomed to join in if you happen to be playing it also. Otherwise, I will see you in the forums and hope to game with you again when GW2 comes out.

Cheers to Hawkmoon

KoP

If there's something you would like to see discussed at the upcoming alliance meeting, please post them below or let your guild leader know about them (unless you're in RB, in which case you're stuck with having to post them here).

As for myself, here are the topics I would like to see covered:
- People need to vote on KTHX - if you don't have access, make a post saying so.

- PvP interest among the guilds - how much do people want to get into it? Possibility of forming casual and competative groups?

- Alliance goal - Is there something we want to do as an alliance with a long-term goal? For example: do we want to start working towards holding one of the lesser towns?

- Daily/weekly alliance events - Interest in them? Nothing spectacular, just having set times for people to get together for missions, farming runs, AB, etc.

- "Big" monthly events - We all enjoy them, but who wants to be responsible for planning/hosting them and spreading the word?

- Use of alliance chat - Do we want to put restrictions on it? Such as no trade spam, no profanity, etc.

That's all for now, see you guys at the meeting (if not sooner).

So, a while back Jude was all "hey, you have to teach me some of those PvP inside tricks you know" and I was all "do I gotta?" then she was all "YES!" and so I did. Bear in mind I don't like thinking more than I have to, so I had to make some notes for myself. It wound up with me mostly trying to teach her how to kite. I figured I might as well post them. I don't like explaining things much which is why this is all still in note form rather than long-winded explanation form.

-use terrain to your advantage

-get behind obstacles to block arrows
--look at where the archer is and find a wall to hide behind
--if there are no obsatcles then try to have the high ground, don't let archers get in close

-make sure you don't box yourself in a corner, have someplace you can run to

-position yourself so you have a wall between you and the melee

-know who's more important to target

-be aware of the other team's positioning

-if a melee charges you, try to put another player between yourself and them

-don't brag, bragging makes you overconfident, overconfidence makes you lose

-don't be negative, you'll start believing it

-make sure your team knows what you're doing
--don't announce everything, but do announce overextending, who you're pressuring, etc.

-never clump together

stuff added since then:

-kite in small circles

-don't stand still

-don't overextend without an escape plan

I can add more if/when I think of them.

teaser:

The Underachievers were never very enthusiastic. They would never live up to their full potential and were always left behind by everyone else. But that didn't bother them at all. They kept on at their own, rather slow, pace.

In any case, the rules of the variant are (somewhat) simple:
- You can only raise one attribute for each level you attain. This means that your attribute levels have to add up to your character level. For example: at level 20 you can have one attribute at 12 and one at 8, or two at 10, or so on and so forth.
- You can only use 5 skill slots. That includes the slot for a res skill. If you want to bring a res then you'll only have room for 4 other skills.
- You can not use major or superior runes. Minors are acceptable.
- You can only put a rune or an insignia in an armor piece, not both.
- You can not do bonuses or get anything other than the standard reward when doing missions.

So, now that I'm able to spend time playing GW again, I'd like to get GvG going once again.

In the past, the meeting time that's worked best has been Fridays at 9pm EST. For now, I think we should go back to that, just to get things started. We can pick a new day/time if need be later on.

I suppose the first thing I should ask is if anyone out there is still even interested in GvG? Fox and Roland seem to have disappeared somewhat, so I'm not sure if they're going to be available.

Question 2: do people want casual or competative? I don't mind casual but I don't like going into a match with a haphazard team, it's nice to have at least some synergy in builds.

I think that's enough for now. Mostly because my brain is still a bit fried and I can't think of anything else atm.

Looking forward to getting some matches in with you guys again.