The Dark Draenei

Hi fellow guildies!

This is an update on the latest news happenings.

General News

• I updated the Code of Conduct to include chat and vent conduct. PLEASE READ
• We will be giving away 500 gold to the member with the most weekly guild achievement points. This will be starting next Tuesday (reset day) and continued until the following Tuesday. So get your points on!
• We will also be looking a Tuesday nights as a guild raid night. This raid will usually be a lower level FUN raid for members and satisfy the guild raid achievement. This will be recurring however the raid dungeon is subject to change and most likely be a guild PUG depending on members available at the time.

Raider Nation

I'm currently working on the roster for Raid Team 1 (RT1), I'm about 80% done and hope to finish this weekend. I'm sad to say that not all of those interested will be able to make the team. Example is that we have an overwhelming number of ranged DPS (RDPS). Please don't be discouraged if you don't make this team. Some members will be considered as backup status and others may be included as Raid Team 2.

We are currently in need of the following classes/specs.

1-2 Melee DPS (MDPS) - no specific race

1-2 tanks. 1 main and 1 OT. These will be active backups.

1-2 Heals. 1 tank healer would be nice. These will be backup positions. (Prefer non-priests)

The dedicated raid days and times are still being worked on. Only a handful of members submitted their availability. WE NEED MORE!

There is a raid application posted in the navigation menu that members intersted in raiding can fill out and submit. We will review and be in contact.

Death Squad

The Death Squad is still recruiting members!  If you're interested in PvP action, contact xcoder (or xlordt) for more information. There is a pre-made battleground scheduled for the end of the month. This is just going to be a guild event getting people familiar with battlegrounds and tactics..more training for Rated BG events. Sign up today on the game calendar!!

Recruiting

The Dark Draenei is still currently recruiting more members. We're trying to focus on higher level members for raids and PvP but all members are welcome! If you see or know of anyone, talk to them and send them an invite.  We're also very short on a couple of classes..namely Shaman's and Warlocks. Those are the prize bounties!

Keep checking the website as I've said before, much more information can be posted here than ingame. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me here on the website or ingame.

Thank You,

~Shamit~

Hello Everyone!

So, as to try and keep things fresh as well as get member more active socially, I've decided to try something new. As the guild has grown far more than my expectations (THANK YOU ), trying to keep members active along with fun becomes a tough challenge. As I've said before, we have lost a few good members to the inactivity of events and guild participation. I have consulted with a few people and decided to take a chance and develop a new concept within The Dark Draenei.

We will have two divisions (I don't like to use the word division. We're still all members of The Dark Draenei. Also, I hate math) within the guild. The Dark Draenei Death Squad (for PvP) and Raider Nation (Raids). The thought process (maybe not logical) for this is that members could more readily identify with their particular taste of game play within the guild. If you're associated with the Death Squad for instance, you can chat up other members and team up for BG's. Same goes for the Raider Nation members. A while back I asked in the daily message to please indicate your preference either PvP, Raids, Solo. This was so we could get an idea of the make up with the guild. Thank you.

Q. How will I know what division I'm in?

A. If you indicated in your notes PvP, Raid or solo, I will go through and make an officer note assigning which division you would be in. This will be a temporary fix until I can readjust the guild ranking system to incorporate the division ranks. This will take some time as blizzard doesn't make modifing guild ranks easy.

If you want to remain unassigned, that is perfectly acceptable also. But you may not be offered invites to BG's or guild events as readily.

With the guild being this large, I thought it might be a little easier to manage activities and guild events more efficiently having split the two major styles of gameplay. Each division will have a leadership. These leaders will be officer level and will be responsible for guild sponsored activities as well as organizing events (keep checking the game calendar!) and handling guild drama within that division.

Also, the guild website (this here site) will have a forum dedicated to each division so members can hangout or post and discuss topics of interest. Again, the website has a much greater capacity for information than anything ingame. Please use it. Knowledge shared is knowledge gained. We also have 25slot vent that is available to members. The vent info can be found on the website or ingame under the guild info tab. 

Below is a breakout of the leadership at this time. (Subject to change)

Death Squad

Leader: xlordt

Leader: voodomaster (currently on hiatus)

Leader: (vacant)

Raider Nation

Leader: holyhell/booyah

Leader: deathninja

Leader: (vacant)

We will be looking for candidates very soon to fill the vacant positions, so if you're interested, keep watch on the website for announcements.

Please note that along with the leaders mentioned above we still have a general officer corp (any member with rank of Overwatch or above) that will be available and willing to help or handle most issues that you might have. 

This is still a work in progress, so some changes may be ongoing.

As always, if you have any ideas, suggestions, pithy comments, please contact me or a leader. I like to hear what the members have to say and that's how the guild can continue to grow.

Thank you and see you ingame!

~Holyhell~

Hi Everyone!  Lots of stuff taking place lately. I know I know about damn time.   Anyway, just wanted to update you on some of the stuff.

1) I'll be having a few polls up, to just get some fun information. So check back and PLEASE vote!

2) I'm looking at a couple of other webhosts for our guild. I really would like to have our own (I have a domain and space) but I think some of these hosts have some good widgets and tools that would make life easier. And save a lot of headache for me. ;) You can have a look see at the URL's below. Please browse around and play with everything you can and leave me some feed back about each site. Keep in mind that I just started them the other day and have limited content so far. Post some stuff and play around..just testing anyway. :)

   www.thedarkdraenei.guildzilla.com   www.thedarkdraenei.enjin.com

3) One other but just hit some technical difficulties. I hope it will be worked out soon. Will nice! If not, I have a backup plan, just not as perfect. 

UPDATE: Ok well, I tried. Good news and bad news. Good news first. The Dark Draenei guild now is now on Twitter! YAY! So now you can keep up with the latest happenings of the guild by the comfort of your own phone. ;)  You can follow us  Follow @shamitTDD  Please have some patience with me as I'm new to this whole tweety thing.  Now the bad news. Some shithead has taken the dark draenei name for twitter, hence the shamitTDD tag. So for now we'll have to go under shamitTDD until I can devise a remedy. <evil laugh>

SO FOLLOW US!!!

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE!!!   We now also have Facebook and Google+ pages! Yes, we are going ape-shit crazy with social. If you prefer facebook (i feel sorry)  or if you prefer Google+ (for the real people) both are a little thin on contect at the moment, I just started them today. Please feel free to stop by and post something. This is a community involvement project and YOU are the community. Enjoy!

Hi everyone!

Over the next week or so, I'll be putting together a Raid Team. This team will consist of experienced raiders and non-experienced raiders. It is my goal with this team to help some of those just getting interested in raiding and yet keep the experienced raiders active. Not going to kid you, this is very difficult aspect to do. Most of my experience I've either seen hard core or casual. I would like to keep this as casual as possible but yet maintain a consistant team and activity.

If you are interested in raiding, Please contact Shamit (on the website here) or Hölyhell ingame (mail or pst) and I'll add you to the list. PLEASE contact me with the toon that you would like to be raiding along with spec (tank, heal, dps), and perferred day/time (see poll) for example. Alts may be utilized depending upon the class/spec makeup.

Currently due to my work schedule raids will be either Saturdays or Sundays (times TBD). Other raids my be scheduled and lead by other members which is perfectly acceptable. Please be mindful of the raid lockouts and time conflicts.

Also note that we will be starting with lower level raids to be confidence, tactics and communication. Also so new raid members get a feel for the experience.

So please, if you're at all interested in raiding, feel free to contact me to sign up or any other questions. I'll be looking at scheduling something probably mid January after some logistics.

As it stands already we NEED tanks. Even beginner tanks will be welcome and we will guide you through. Raids can be intense, but I hope to have a casual/learning and above all FUN mood while playing. EXPECT WIPES...lots of them. ;)

For raiders, there will be some perks. Repair bills will be partially paid for from the GB as well as access to the raid pots/buffs. Also as a distingushed member of the Raider Nation! (yeah, it's copyrighted, but so what!)

REQUIREMENTS:

Just a couple of requirements that potential raiders should/must have.

Omen Threat Meter (or equiv)

Deadly Boss Mods (or equiv)

Voice chat (ventrilo or equiv) see website forum for vent info/setup.

Healers -> some kind of heal add (healbot or equiv)

Here's a quick little post of a cool website. Ever wonder what a certain item is going for on the AH on various other realms? Or even on our realm?

Check out AHSpy. Just type in the item or partial item, then select the realm. You will then be able to see the prices and other stats of that item. :)

Come on all you maggots! Drop and gimme 20!!

Hello everyone!

Ok, so a friend of mine talked me into giving PvP a go. Those of you that have been around me know that I suck at pvp. However, I'm getting my feet bloody and will give it a due diligence. I started with my rogue and soon found out that..well...rogues are kinda difficult to operate in pvp. So my mage is next up and oh hell ya! I went from being an embarrassment for the rogue class to top listing on the mage.

I still need a LOT of work to understand all the tricks of the trade in pvp. And since I know there are many of you in the guild that pvp, I was thinking of starting a boot camp primer for us newbies. 

So, I'm looking for someone or a couple of people that would like to educate a newbie group of pvp'ers and work on basic tactics, spells, maps, etc. Basically the ground work for a pvp team or two. This boot camp will be a group exercise on a determined day/night/time were we us our vent and work together. 

The Dark Draenei already have a forum (The Dark Draenei Death Squad) dedicated to pvp. Please use that for posting tips and tricks and other goodies.

If you are interested in becoming an instructor for the inaugural class please contact me either by the website (shamit) or ingame on Holyhell and we'll get this going! 

See you on the battlefield! (I'll be the one dead at the flag)

~Shamit~

Hi Everyone,

Ok, I'm calling on the crew for some help. I'm getting kinda tired of our current guild host Wowstead. They are good for some basic setup but I've had some frustration with their forums and lack of customization. To that end I have already purchased a domain and started a piss poor joomla site. ;P  I'm hoping someone in the guild is a bit more of a techie geek than I am and can help me out setting up our own standalone guild site.

I'm looking for someone that is familiar with API and data extraction along with maybe a template designer. Like I said, I've started using Joomla (only because I'm a bit more familiar with it) but open to other options (Drupal, Wordpress). I would like as much of our current setup as we can get. ie. realm status, User accounts, vent module, etc.

Forums are also a big thing but I believe that should be fairly easy to add in. My little pet peev is to be able to customize with CSS and such. Yes, I like the eye candy. 

So if anyone is looking to help out, please contact me here on this website and we'll see what we can do.

Thank you,

~Shamit~

Congratulations to everyone in The Dark Draenei! We have finally made it through the journey and on Wednesday July 27, 2011, we reached Guild Level 25!

Thank you for all that grinding of quest after quest after quest. Thank you for all the guild event runs. Thank you for being a part of The Dark Draenei.

In the last few months we've seen The Dark Draenei grow exponentially. I remember when we couldn't get passed 100 for the longest time and now we've passed 300! Growing this fast, there are some learning curves but hopefully they are small and fast. I look forward to meeting all the new folks and continuing the friendship of the existing members. Again, congratulations to eveyone on this great milestone.

So, let's enjoy and get back to slaying Horde and Murlocs!

Thank you,

~Shamit~

Hello Everyone,

I know we've slipped off of our guild event/raid schedule as of late. Some of this is due to my work schedule and some do to lack of participation from members. I would like to bring the guild back into raiding and more active participation from the members. We have a few new members and even some alts that need some gear.

I have a couple of thoughts but would like your input and suggestions.

Raids

A big factor in raids is the need for participation and commitment. There is a lot that goes into it and if no one or only a handful of people show, its disappointing.

Please watch the videos or read the fights. There are plenty of videos that explain or at the very least give you exposure to the boss fights or raid. These will help YOU and the other members. We can explain some fights as we go, but that takes a long time.

Please use our vent. Even if you don't have have a headset, you can always listen in. This keeps everyone on the same page. If the group runs, you don't want to be the only one still standing there...trust me from experience. lol

Lastly, don't be shy about raising your hand and trying to lead. I'm sure you've read my previous posts about this but I'll say it again. One thing that about this guild is that we don't blame or point fingers. Everyone has to learn sometime and we all make mistakes. Don't be shy to try and lead your own raid or Heroic. We have experienced members that would enjoy helping and explaining the aspects of raids. Not going to lie, it's a high pressure job, but with good support, you'll make it through.

Heroics

Our heroics have become almost extinct. I will be looking at scheduling some heroics (the two new ones and some older) for gear and also exposing the members to our guild and how we roll. Unfortunately, my schedule is wack at the moment. [side note, I had planned for sunday but just got called in on sunday] So, for me, I'll have to be leading the heroics on a pug-like schedule. When I'm on, I'll give a shout out. Our beloved Voodo is taking a break but I'll try and find someone to establish a regular schedule. Any volunteers?

Heroics should be a staple of the guild events and should be continually in progress.

Mentoring

So, I've given some thought and maybe it would help some folks if there was a kind of mentoring program. Either for brand new people just starting WoW for the first time to show them the ways around or class basics. Or maybe for folks that would like to try leading groups. The mentors would work closely with the members and take the time to explain the aspects as well as show them online resources and such.

Let me know if you are interested in becoming a mentor or if you would like the help of a mentor. (I know when I started I asked a ton of questions from a RL friend and it took me about a year to figure some stuff out) We're here to help and make it enjoyable.

Above all, if anyone wants to run something, just ask or schedule on calendar. Most of the time, folks will be happy to help out.

~Shamit~

ps. Look for me under my alts...Hölyhell, Bòóyah or Golgothan

Hi all you blood thirsty hooligans!

We've created a new forum just for PvP. Xlordt will be the moderator. Here you can talk about strategy/tactics, specs, etc. Oh ya, this forum is also for verified members only because of all the top secret information. So you will need to verify your toon with the website...easy enough to do.

Happy Hunting!!