Extra Extra Core Group Nominee's EPIC FAIL

As part of Triple Triad's initiative to re-vitalize the guild and get it's members out of the dulldrums we have begun scheduling Naxx runs effective earlier this week. Due to several factors though it would seem that the core group could not be contacted appropriately in order for this excursion to become reality. This is a dire sign for the raiding future of Triple Triad as it is a clear sign that those who plan to raid with the guild at current, may not be reliable additions to the raiding schedule.
We will be continuing to monitor the situation over the coming weeks with subsequent Naxx schedules during our expected raid times.

7:30 Server - Be online!
8:00 Sever - Check attendance, find replacements if needed.
8:15 Sever - Summon stragglers and move into Naxx
8:30 Server - First pull!

in the advent that the raid forms and is found Lacking in their gearing (will be calculated via be.imba.hu with a goal of 300 gear score) we will fall back to our secondary raid objective!
The 10 man raid will reform as two 5 man groups which will be tackling heroics during the hours normally set asside for raiding. (generally this will wrap up no sooner than 1am server)

So why are we going to do heroics if Naxx isn't a possibility?
1. Because we want the people we're waiting for to get geared up. As a raider that's on hold waiting for these last few people to gear it's in your best interest to assist them when possible
2 You will be RAIDING with these people regularly. Coordination and familiarity with the people you raid with can make or break the gorup. You need to get accustomed to working with these people.
3 It's during the time you should have had set aside for guild activities anyway... if you flake out on these runs then we'll expect you're the one who will be leaving us high and dry when we start hitting Naxx... so we'll save everybody the trouble and use this time to gear up your replacement.

If you can not be available for this event then you are showing that you can not be available for Triple Triad raids and as such will no longer be a candidate for core group membership.
3 Absentees will result in probation where you may be asked to wait in the queue for a few runs until you show that your availability has improved. a 4th no show after confirmed sign up will result in a suspension from raiding until a subsequent group is formed.

Officer seating changes underway.
Okay yeah it's old news BUT... the Ranking Page has been update to reflect the new system, still some in game tweaks that need to be made
A few officers need shifted to their new ranks.
Officer alts will be grouped in with the rest of the alts (lots of demotion spam so will need to be done by Tyreant or Captains at time when few people are online)
The permissions to bank tabs and such need adjustment to reflect the finalization of the ranks

Also some changes on the website which are not so appearant. First and foremost the newly promoted officers have been given moderation privlages on the website to adjust scheduled events, post polls, and moderate forum posts (move posts that belong on a different part of the forum or edit/delete posts due to their content if needed)

Also old news to some but just puting it out again; Towmater given his knowledge and abilities is *cough*has been*cough*  designated as a Site Admin giving him full access to remove, add or tweak features of the site as he sees fit. He's had the authority to do so for some time since he helped me with a few troubleshooting issues a while back but just taking a second to recognize the fact and thank him for his willingness to help.

Some features that peeps can still take advantage of if they haven't already realized:
Guild Bank page. Officers can download the WoWstead addon which will log the bank contents when they view it in game and create a file that can be uploaded to the site. This file syncs the bank page with the in game bank and members can then browse and request items via the website which they may not have access to in game in cases where they can not often be on at the same time as an officer. Tyreant will receive a private message on the website and then be able to mail the items out when he get's in game. This is a PAID feature, yes removing the advertisements is nice but that 7 bux a month really goes to features like the Bank and Live Chat features on the site. If they're not being used is it really worth that much just to prevent a silly little banner?

Schedule - This is not just for officers and raids! if you need an instance, a group for a quest chain, anything that would be made easier if you could schedule a group in advance you are able to list it on the schedule! Many people I speak to were under the impression that only "raid leaders" could post events when the truth is any guild member is capable of doing so in order to get peeps organized for group activities without having to resort to "/g Hey guys anybody wanna help with -----". You can have the group waiting for you when you log in. This is especially helpful for those who have limited play hours and don't normally have time to pull together a group for such things... if you can only play an hour a day and the instance takes 45 minutes you'd only have 15 minutes to get it started and still have time unless you planned ahead to have some peeps standing by when you logged in at that time!

Billing and Ventrillo pages - Okay these areas people might intentionally avoiding for various reasons but just a reminder; both the Ventrillo and the Website use a Guild Pay system. You can help with a financial contribution via Pay-Pal to help keep the site add free and keep the vent server up and running. Tyreant has fronted most of the costs thus far and I've made my own small contributions as I could afford but as we all gain from these funds any help from our members is appreciated... if enough can be raised for Vent in particular we can do things like Upgrade to a bigger server or pay in advance for bulk discounts and and the security of knowing the Vent subscription is already covered well in advance. I'm not asking for a hand out here I'm just reminding everybody that if you CAN and WANT TO it is an option.

Triple Triad has established a point based loot system for raiding. You will now find the standings and Recent Loot list under the Raids & Events > ARP & Loots
The looting rules section of the Handbook has been updated to reflect the new system. It's really not as complicated as it seems but for first time raiders it will take some getting used to. If you have any questions or concerns please address them in the Forums and a timely response will be made to help clear things up.

Several Looting Systems were evaluated Prior to establishing this system which is actually a combination of all the strong points in order to minimize the drawbacks.
Suicide Kings: A Priority List, whoever is top of the list has loot priority.
                   + Looting bumps you to the bottom of the list so everybody gets a turn.
                    -Easy to exploit the bottom of the list as there is no penalty for the last guy on the list to keep looting.

Standard DKP: Points Aquired for Kills are used to Bid on items
                      +Rewards those who give the most effort
                       -New and Casual players stand little chance of competing
Zero-Sum: Points earned by others spending. Looter spends X DKP everybody else receive X DKP/Players attending
Fixed Pricing: Item is assigned a fixed value by a Loot Council. Person with the highest DKP Wins
            +Both Variants of DKP systems created to deter unfair bidding practices
            -Both inevitably still suffer similar issues of DKP
Effort Points/Gear Points - Maintains a score for DKP and another for DKP spent under Fixed Pricing rules. Best Ratio Wins.
             +Because of the ratio even new and casual players are capable of being competitive.
              -Uses a Fixed Value system which requires a Loot Council to "fairly" assign a point value to every potential raid drop. (Complicated)
Shroud DKP: Similar to Straight DKP, points are awarded for participation rather than boss kills.
              +Rewards players for their support in progression rather than the number of notches on their belt.
              -New and Casual can't compete with those who attend regularly.
/Roll 100: built in game system or masterloot with /roll 100 on items
             + Everybody has an even chance because fate and luck decides
             - Hot/Cold dice can play havock on guild ability to progress to harder content
Need before Greed - whoever get's the biggest upgrade get's the upgrade
             + Players who need the item most get the item in question
             - Veterans who have already seen a few decent drops will "dead end" quickly as casual members rotate thru the raid groups

In the end the system TT has adopted is a cross between EP/GP and Shroud DKP and some might say Suicide Kings. Using attendance based rewards rather than only rewarding those who sucessfully and regularly get full clears allows even "rookie" raiding groups a ARP earnings. The percent based expendatures makes it a less extreme version of Suicide Kings and leans toward the type of table adjustments seen under a EP/GP system.

Mialala Jenkins morph style.

Nov 10th will be our first year anniversary!  Congratz to all that stood the test of time, lasted through my erratic decisions and improved the guild that we all have become to love.

We have a full list of events and awards to do on this great day.  Lets make it a day we will never forget :)

The actual date of celebration is TBD.  Event details to be posted soon.

List of events:
Guild Leader kidnapped!
The Guild Officer's have kidnapped Valifor and are holding hostage.  The whereabouts of Valifor have been reported in Redridge.  The kidnappers were last heard saying something about feeding the Murlocs!  Come save the GL before its too late!  Prizes awarded to the first brave and honorable guildee to save the Guld Leader.

Hide and Seek
Are you the hunted or the hunter?  Come join in on the fun.  Two 5 man teams, Red Team and Blue Team.
Both teams will hide in the confines of Stormwind as follows:
Red team will hide in the Mage Quarter or Old Town.
Blue team will hide in the Dwarven District or the Park.
This event will be timed.  Prizes will be awarded to the fastest team to locate the other party.

Mirage Raceway competetion

Naked deadmines run

PVP Elimination contest
Think your the best?  Enter our PVP elimination contest!  Prizes will be awarded to our Elite members.  Let the beatdowns begin!

Costume contest

Cross country race


Many other activities include:
Snowball fight.  A stockpile of snowballs to hand out towards the end of the party..  Once they're all passed out, we'll give the word and then everyone can let loose! 

Leatherball annoyance.  Throw balls at the officers all night long untill they skin you alive.

Party attire.  Don't have a pirate costume?  No worries, we'll be providing Savory Deviate Delight for all! 

Fireworks.  A month of stockpiling will help make sure the close of the party is one to remember.  Free fireworks for all, or bring your own.

Refreshments.  In addition to the actual events, we'll have plenty of party beferages.  Drinks on the house!

Annual Awards Ceremony coming soon!!!!!
Best dressed, recruiter, cook, most funny, loved, friendly, cash, popular, etc etc etc,.....many more.


Post a forum topic, list your anticipated attendance, etc etc.  Anyone with an in-game cam will be loved forever...or hated depending on how embarassing the events can get.

Okay working on a display for the Server Status other than the widget. I managed to hijack the header code so it's up there now with who's online but the only source I had for a display was RGPoutfitters and their server status only updating every few months it seems... some haven't updated in over a year! Anyway that's a work in progress.
Also I've worked with Area 52's Gard a little bit and put together an RSS feed reader. The WoWstead team is working on a widget for one but until then we just decided to "borrow" the one the nice people at Google use for their RSS feeds. Copied teh code and modified some of the content for appearances... the result is what you see between Welcome and News. It might be buggy so let me know in the Tech support Forums (it's like 5am here and I can't promise that my fingers are hitting all or only the buttons I tell them to).
Current Feeds are from the WoW.com, WoW Insider, and WoW Vault but if you don't like those and would perfer other feeds let me know and I'll see what I can do about that. Again just post a suggestion in the Tech Support area for these or any other things reguarding design, layout, bugs, or suggestions for the site.

Moved the Online Now over with Officer List and Server Status to make room for a new music player. Song are on random, or you can select your own track. The pop out player will auto-play and let you listen as you browse the site. If you're listening on the embeded player it will interupt your tunes every time you change pages within the site. (I recomend using the pop out if you want the entertainment while you browse forums and post topics). I can put up to 100 songs on the playlist and atm it's just a few WoW selections from Nyhm and the Level 70 Elite Taruens Shamans. This DJ does take requests!

Busy day for everybody. While listening in to the action as Triple Triad made their way back to Kara I kept myself busy bashing away at website till it succombed to my will! We've all gotta do our part right? While they get the phats, I'll give a good place to show 'em off! w00t! So... I spent the past 9 hours collecting and organizing useful URLs, comparing notes with various members of the wowstead community (Big thanx to Quintessence and ABA guilds for their contributions) debugging a whole lot of HTML because well... every time ya fix one bug you usually cause a few more... lol Anway the final result is the new navigation panel you see at the left side. It allowed me to offer a much more streamlined access to the pages as well as taking up far less space than the old one. Because of that I was also able to gather up pretty much every wow related link I could get my hands on and get them organized into something that peeps might find useful. For the lazy ones that don't wanna browse the listings I've also addes search boxes for the Wiki, WoWhead and Curse (addons) Take a look at some of the info, poke around the site..

If you find any errors, broken links, things that need to be removed or changed in any way please feel frree to send a message or start a forum topic where we can discuss what other things to do on the page. Anyway that's about it for me tonight.

Oh, the Handbook pages are a little jacked up and appear blank, those are mostly place holders for the info to be typed in later and a lot of the winks open in this window and take you away from the site but I'm working down the list making them open in a new window so you don't have to leave the homepage.