Reach for the stars!

Its good to set goals

Throughout this entire process I've been keeping a "to do list/set of goals."  It has helped me stay focused (for the most part) and has pushed me forward.  Unfortunately, my process has been slowed down a bit because one of our cats destroyed my mouse.  He chewed right through the wiring and the touchpad on my laptop hasn't worked properly since I got the computer.  So anyway, now that I've completely been sidetracked, I'll return to the subject.


Returning to the World of Warcraft

Its looking like I won't be able to get enough money for a game card until around the end of September or the beginning of October.  Until then, I can at least do some planning and set some goals.  I've been giving some thought to what character race and class I want to start out with.  I'll be starting brand new characters on Blackhand-US when I return.  Hopefully, in the future I'll be able to faction change and transfer my level 80 huntress over and possibly my level 63 priest.  I also have some other characters; a level 55 warrior, level 43 druid, and a level 30 mage.  All of these characters were Alliance though and as I'm planning on going Horde, I'll likely not be transferring them.

I'm thinking about starting with a Blood Elf Hunter and an Orc Deathknight.  I'm choosing a Deathknight mainly because they're the quickest way to make some money early on and I'll need that gold to get the guild underway.  Instead of starting other races for my beginner characters, I'm picking a Blood Elf because their starting area will likely be less affected by the changes coming in Cataclysm.  I want to wait until Cataclysm before having any Trolls, Taurens, Undead, and of course, Goblins.   


Recruitment

Having the guild begun, I can now start recruitment.  I plan on using a few different methods to recruit the guild's officers and members.  I will post on a large number of WoW-related forums (class forums as well as general forums), including the official Horde recruitment forums and the official Blackhand-US forums.  I also plan on making a couple recruitment videos; one to specifically recruit officers and one to recruit the general membership.  I will also be recruiting while in-game, using the guild recruitment, trade, and general channels. 

I've never made a recruitment video and as such, I've looked into the program(s) needed as well as researched the recruitment videos of other guilds.  Sony Vegas seems to be the most recommended program to edit and create the videos and Fraps is the best program to use in order to capture video from the game.  I've found some freely distributed music to use for the video also.


Dark Council Short Term Goals

Once the officers have been recruited, we can begin expanding the guild.  Holding a meeting over imVox once a week as well as posting on the guild forums, should help us get organized.  Some of the things we will need to decide on are:

• What kind of loot system we would like to use,
• Which guild website hosting service we want to use (I've narrowed it down to three that I prefer),
• How many members we would like to have in total (I'm thinking 100 to 150), 
• How long will the trial membership be for regular members (I'm thinking 2 weeks), 
• And how long the trial period should be for raiders (I'm thinking a month). 

 I can't wait to get this going!

Updates

 Ch-ch-ch-changes

After reading various blogs, I discovered a problem in the guild structure I have.  Having separate alt ranks for Fallen, Drudes, and the Haradrim creates an opening for someone to take advantage of our guild.  Someone could look up our guild on our website or in the Armory and see what characters have higher ranks.  Then they could make a character and say they are said character's alt.  In turn, this could leave an opening for them to take advantage of the rank and remove items and/or gold from the guild bank.  They could also use the opportunity to sabotage or plant drama within the guild, because they would essentially be posing as an officer.  Therefore, I made some changes to the ranks:

• Haradrim, Drudes, and Fallen no longer have their own separate rank for alts.
• There is now one rank for every alt character which holds the same guild rights as Fallen.
• The new rank mentioned will be called Abomination.

I've also altered the blog slightly by adding a picture to each post.  This will hopefully make the blog a little more attractive to look at.  I edited the posts themselves as well, separating longer paragraphs into smaller ones to make them easier on the eye.  Apart from basic blog edits, I've come to a couple important decisions regarding the guild.  First, I've decided which realm I will start the guild on.  Second, I have decided not to use Ventrilo, but have chosen to use imVOX instead for the guild's voice chat program.


A place to call home

The realm I have chosen as the home of the guild will be Blackhand-US.  It was a close race between Blackhand-US and Ravenholdt-US, but I think I've made the best choice for the guild.  Blackhand-US has a nice sized population that ranges between medium and high, in favor of the Horde around 61%.  There is an average amount of lower level players and a good amount of players with no guild.  Both servers have their fair share of QQ and immature trolls, but as I mentioned in my previous post, there's no real way to get away from that.

Probably the most importance factor to influence my choice was that Raveholdt-US is a RP-PVP realm and while some people wouldn't mind a non-RP guild starting up there, its not what the server was built for.  The majority of the guilds I found on Ravenholdt-US were RP guilds and a guild alliance with them would create some unnecessary difficulties.  I didn't want to start the guild out with a reputation of going against not only Blizzard's purpose for this realm, but also against the majority of the players and guilds on the realm itself.  On Blackhand-US, I found 4 different guilds Demoniac could possibly form an alliance with while on Ravenholdt-US, I didn't find any that fit my criteria.


Communication

In the past, I've had experience with both Ventrilo and Teamspeak.  While they both offer an acceptable service for the voice communications of a guild, they are also both fairly complicated and can be expensive.  I'm aware there are some people who offer free channels on their Ventrilo, Teamspeak, or Mumble servers, but I haven't found any that offer free individual servers for guilds.  That is until now.

A voice communications program called imVOX offers guilds their own server for 30 people at one time, for free.  As part of this service, you can customize various features (backgrounds, server icon image, profile information as well as personal user photo.  As the server admin, you can also create channels, set passwords for channels, and assign admin rights.  As a small guild that's just starting out, this is more than ideal.  It only took me a few minutes to get our guild server setup and ready for recruitment interviews.   

If, at anytime, you find that a server for 30 people isn't enough for your guild, you can always upgrade to an inexpensive Pro account.  With the Pro account you can create up to 10 different servers with up to 250 users connected across them in total.  This would be ideal for larger guilds who want to have people running 25 to 40 man raids as well as 5 man groups, all at one time.  The price imVOX has set for their Pro account is $24.99 per year.  That's simply crazy when you consider that the average service offering either Ventrilo, Teamspeak, or Mumble on average cost anywhere between $20.00 to $30.00 per month for only 100 person slots.

Don't just take my word for it though, be sure to check it out for yourself: http://www.imvox.com/