Possible guild merger with New World Order

[Fleyon]

I'm not the leader, of course, so nothing here goes passed without Splishy's consent.

 I am discussing with the leaders of New World Order (a friendly raiding guild, with some people you may know: namely Bigheal and Jackal) about a possible guild merger or partnership. I have yet to recieve a go ahead for any of the plans I put forward and I have made it crystal clear that we need to form a compromise ourselves.

 The options I gave them were:

 1) A full merger. Whereby Seeds of Glory disbands and all member transfer into NWO. We use their website.

 Possible Pros

 - We have full access to raids for BWL, AQ and the like.
 - There are more people available for shared activities like helping others out.
 - We meet new people

 Possible Cons

 - Larger guild may equal less attention
 - Lower levels may miss out on help, as raiding guilds are aimed at raiding.

 2) A partnership. Whereby we share the same website, but we stay seperate guilds. We should have access to raids...but it is dependant on people using the website to plan them.

 Possible Pros

 - We should have access to the raids.
 - We will stay a close community.

 Possible Cons

 - Communication between the guilds 'on the spot' is difficult without some form of instant chat programme externally running.
 - Some fear that NWO will take priority in guild places and drops due to them being the hosts.

 Please remember, and I quote from..Roxor (or someone else ^^); nothing is compulsary. We do not HAVE to do anything, though I know some members want to and some don't. All changes are fully reversable. Should a change happen, noone is being forced to take part in it.

 The way I see it, these are the pros and cons of our current guild state:

 Pros

 - We are a close guild; everyone knows everyone well.
 - We're all nice people, except Hikikomori who is an evil undead using an Orb of Deception.

 Cons

 - It will take a very long time to get to the stage of being able to raid ourselves.
 - We rarely have enough people online to do select things ourselves.

 I do not mean to go completely against what I have said about taking one step at a time. I'm merely offering you the oppurtunity (provided NWO gives me a good word) to recieve a boost. In the end; we'll all be level 60s looking for our tier 1s and 2s.


   Anyways, that's about it. www.nwoguild.com is the place to go if you want to read up on the targetted guild.

 Peace.

[Taligecko]

hmmmm for some reason im naturally hesitant against the guild merger.  I myself am willing to wait it out for when we can raid within our own guild.  I'd prefer a sort-temporary partnership with a guild wherby we would be more 'raiding-buddies' until we can become fully self sufficient.  Either that, or we go on a massive recruitment spree and get the players required to be a raiding guild.  I'd be more than happy to wait it out and spend the rest of my time levelling other guildies when I reach 60.

I may be being too conservative and worrying too much about being drowned out by this other guild and losing the name and the closeness our guild has built up over time.

oh and one more thing, when are we gonna get the BG squads going???

[Zzarde]

I agree whit Taligecko. thoes time that i have been in a merge the resulte has been that in time has everyone left the new guild.

[rox0r]

Well, contrary to what I've said in the past I'm fully supportive of a guild merger.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that this happens to all guilds of the type that SOG is. Once a guild has got a few of it's members up to 60, those members want to start doing the activities that they worked so hard to get their character to 60 for, namely instances and raids.

There are only two things to do at 60. One is to improve your equipment, and the other is PvP which ultimately boils down to achieving the same goal. There are of course other peripheral quests and wotnot and you can always just make money but you get the picture.
You can of course help others with levelling their characters to 60 which is cool, but you can only do so much of that before you begin to think to yourself 'why dont I just start an alt and level at the same time whilst helping them since I'm gaining nothing here'. That may be an awful way of putting it but ultimately we're all human and we all pay the same price to play the game.

As it stands, SOG is a 'helper' guild i.e. it exists to help people up to reach 60 in a friendly environment and that's cool, that's a great environment to level up in. But once you get to 60 you have to then think 'what's next?'. You want to go out and get your first dungeon armour set which means endgame instancing. That means starting with five man instancing in strat/scholo/lbrs. Now, when you can't muster up enough for a five man instance to achieve that within the guild your only option is to pug it....and pugging is no fun.

To achieve the balance of delivering the material and organisation required for level 60 players whilst keeping hold of a friendly 'helper' environment is a difficult thing to do. It requires a large, active, organised and strong group. Only once you have this can you hope to a ) keep hold of level 60 players and b ) attract new level 60 players who are skilled, active and of the classes needed. Currently, we do not have this kind of guild. Recruitment drives will not be very effective since we dont have anything to attract level 60 players.

It's a hard thing to do but like Fleyon says, everything is reversable. We can merge, see how it works out and if people really dont like it then it can go back to how it is or work something out.

It's all well and good saying that we can get people up to 60 to address these issues but what about those who are already at 60 and have been for a long time? All we can do is either wait longer, take the above actions or leave.

A partnership is a good idea in itself but as Fleyon has already pointed out there are some risks. Personally I feel that these sort of arrangements end up as a 'us and them' environment. Them being the bigger, organised raid guild would likely, even if not with malice intended, would see us as the lesser 'reserves' to be used if there's nothing else. It can sometimes be difficult with loot distribution but most importantly the biggest killer is the fact that they use a dkp system and we dont. Invariably this would get messy and my inclination is that the other guild would be given preference on the epic drops.

It certainly would be a shame to lose any sort of 'family' feel to the guild, which I don't think a merger would do, but the brutal truth is that if it stays as it is now it can't progress and mature and the level 60's will become more frustrated and dispondant.

I'm a stubborn old git and won't leave a horse till it's dead but even I have to admit lately thinking about taking my 60 to a raid guild and leaving my alts with SOG so that I can do things like MC and AQ  

[hikikomori]

MERGERFTWTBHKTHXBB.

[Rafaar]

Well, im 60. Not long, but enough to want run instances every day. I'm really happy to helping others, but in fact it is for a purpose. As soon as we have few active players on 60 (priests, mages) named Zzarde, Becka, Nildolwen and others, we may start thinking about instances again. I know it takes time and i know people are bored, to be honest i'm as well.
Already.
Not with helping, but with spending my time on gathering herbs etc, when im on my own.

I do understand concerns of Roxor and Fleyon, and partly do agree, but merge would destroy us as US i'm affraid. And partnership won't work, i don't think they really need us, they will use us to fill holes. And at the end of the day some of us will become useless for them. In that guild we are persons, there we could become another "number"

I don't know how others, but i would give us 2-3 weeks to lvl chars up, and than, if we arrange a meeting, maybe we could have like 20 60s. And this is something. In the weekdays we can do Scholo, Strat and BRD, and weekends we may try something bigger.

I really like atmosphere in our guild, thats why im still here and why im pushing towards that idea.

For me it can be the way, if there would be the will of others. To help and to lvl. (to serve and to protect lol)If it wouldn't happen, i will have to start looking after another guild.

This game is to have fun, not to be bored, and thats why i do understand higher 60s

[Mulero (Maaert)]

What on earth is a dkp system? (i know what it is in the context of pvp, but inside instances... keh??)

On the subject of helping in the leveling other characters, this is a great idea... a couple of sunken temple runs and some questing in wpl and zzarde/becka will be ready for blackrock depths.  the same goes for other characters in they're level range.

I heavily dis-agree with the guild merging with nwo or any other guild primarily for the fact that some people have put a lot into this guild to make it what it is (inside and outside of warcraft) (also not so much me either lol), and merging with a larger guild will mean the foundations people have worked hard to achieve were purely to feed this larger guild.

However i can see no fault in the idea of having a section on this forum for other guilds to post when they are planning things, or having a section on their websites for the same.  As long as we agree the loot rules at the beginning there shouldent be any problems.  Though, it does seem hard enough to get people in our guild to read the forums let alone other guilds.  Whereas I do agree with what Raf is saying above, surely filling spots in raids is the whole point of the exercise, and with a little time we shouldent need to enlist the help of other guilds to do big raids.

Other opinions/ideas on this cross guild communication/alliance would be greatly appreciated!

[rox0r]

The DKP system is a mechanism to facilitate 'fair' distribution of raid loot, as opposed to the free roll system which is proven to be highly problematic and unworkable in 20/40 person raids. It is not exclusive to WoW and is used in many MMORPGs.

It is an addon that all raid members must install to be allowed to raid. The system will award you so many DKP (dragon kill points) for completing raid instances. Once you have received enough DKP you can then bid on loot items within the raid with your saved DKP. Other players may also bid but there are often restrictions as to who is 'allowed' to bid on various items.

The DKP system has one major drawback in so much as it only rewards those who attend every single raid that a guild goes on. Those people will always be able to outbid a person who is unable to attend as many raids and the loot distribution is thus balanced in their favour. If you are only able to attend a few raids a month it will take you a very long time to be able to outbid a more regular raider on a specific drop you want. In most cases you will usually have to wait until the instance is on farm status and all the regular raiders have gorged themselves on the loot they desire so that you can have a turn. This invariably means spending weeks if not months raiding for little or no reward. It can sometimes be the case that the regular raiders will even still bid on items just to shard them for a nexus.

The flipside of the coin is there isn't much better way of doing it. There are variations on the system but all revolve around the same sort of theme.

[rox0r]

To further qualify my feelings here;

I think it may not necessarily be the best idea to merge/partner with a raid guild like NWO. It may be wiser to find a guild of the same sort of size that is in the same position as SOG ie. mostly new 60's, lacking necessary classes and active players and wanting to progress to 20/40 man material. This would give us the combined manpower required for us to start the road to MC and above, learning the instances together instead of leaping on board with a group that are more experienced and will expect us to know the likes of AQ20 etc.

A merger with such as guild could be done in such a way that instead of one guild taking the other's name, a whole new combined guild can be borne where everybody feels they are entering something 'new' and no-one feels like an unwanted guest.

Looking at NWO's front page they have advertised the classes they are currently looking to recruit. This to me would indicate that they would not welcome an overload of fresh 60's with no experience or equipment for the raids they have spent time learning.

From a purely personal perspective I can see that they are advertising for one druid. That indicates to me that they already have restos/balance and likely a feral. It is highly difficult for a feral druid to be accepted in a raid guild and it would only take the immortal phrase, "we need you to respec resto for the guild" and it's time to be the littlest hobo again.

[Fleyon]

Hmm...well I don't want to disapoint anyone...and it seems doing anything in this matter is inevitably going to.
 With respects to the DKP system, there is a slight misunderstanding: You don't nesecarily have to enter every raid, you just accumulate them every now and then when you do raid. How serious you are a player determines how often you play, which complements how much DKP you have. In the end, raiding is about fun not loot. And also remember that everyone in the game is human, like us, the impression of raiding guilds seem to be that they are all hardcore geeks who would stab a co-player in the back for some purple items.

 The reason I chose NWO is because I know a few people there that are very nice; Magicolas, one of their leaders, is a very nice, reasonable guy and names like Bigheal and Lazee pop up as the nice, funny people in the guild.

 I'm looking both ways; I will support a merger or a partnership. My ultimate opinion is that if we tried a partnership, given a week or two, we would know for sure if it was going to work. And if we build relationships with them and they are infact very leniant about raiding positions and loot then it will be a very sucessful move.

[Splishy]

This has been brought up in the past (when we lost Bigheal) and I get the sneaking feeling that we're going to end up losing more high levels whichever course of action we take.

For the record (I think most people know my thoughts anyway, but just to clarify!) I'm happy to go along with the idea of a partnership (be it temporary or permanent) for raiding purposes, but I'm not keen at all on the idea of a full merger. I also agree with Rox about the size of any potential guild to raid with - we'd be better looking at a smaller guild around the size of our own - to raid with NWO we'd need to get to know the playing styles etc of too many people at once, so it could be just as bad as PUGing.

Just to wrap up really - I like this guild a lot, and I'm proud to be the guild master. We have a decent amount of level 60s and a healthy number of lower levels working their way to 60 and I think it would be a shame to lose the feel that we have, but I completely appreciate that some people want to be hitting MC/Onyxia etc NOW, rather than in a few weeks.

[rox0r]

hitting MC/Onyxia etc NOW, rather than in a few weeks.

Tad ambitious fella  

[Splishy]

yep, but you know what I mean...

[Amberley]

I have to agree with most people on this one, I love the guild the way it is.  Obviously there has got to be something in it for the lvl 60's that are wanting to do the high end stuff so a partnership with another guild our size could work out quite well.

Having heard a few things about NWO I seriously doubt it is the right guild to join with, it sounds a bit to 'do as we say or leave' kind of thing for me.  Granted that may change once I'm lvl 60 but I seriously doubt it.  

Amberley