Tiger - Venture Co.

... just if you guys were wondering what it's about.

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=921474&p=1&tmp=1#post921474

... treading a fine line between being too serious and too relaxed.

World of Warcraft is a game. We all play it more or less for the same reason - to have fun, however, different people have fun doing different things, making it very delicate to bring down to the common denominator.

The game is also about group effort in achieving certain goals and overcoming certain obstacles in the way, and the "fun" factor comes out of the feeling of success and accomplishment afterwards. Making it through with a group of people that you can rely on is something that only deepens that feeling because basicaly we get a quick "accomplishment burst", meaning that we never get anything done in real life as fast as we do it here. For example, maybe you have to work on conquering certain high end instance for a few months before you manage to do it, but in real life, almost no accomplishment can be acchieved with merely a few months of sweat invested into it. You can work on getting rich in WoW, and do it for a few months and achieve it, but in real life, getting wealthy in a few months is very, very rare.

Every individual has to figure out what fun is for him, but at some point, if he joins a group effort in doing something, then that goal becomes his own. Having fun, depends on the situation. For example, at this moment, we can get a group of 7-8 level 60's and go and have fun in Stratholme, and finish it, and achieve something, and not care too much about discipline and bad pulls. You can joke and fool arround and still succeed.

Organising a raid to ZulGurub for example takes time to get 20 people online at the same time, needs reading up, testing different tactics and approaches. Everyone takes their piece of responcibility to do their part of the race. Fun factor here is at this point not in "fooling arround", but winning the game - people depend on you. It is like playing football. Sometimes you play with your friends in the back yard, you are barefeet and half - drunk and nobody cares about the score, other times you play a match with your club and you want to win-you can't be half drunk and barefeet there, and you have to care about the result at least to some extent. In both cases you are having FUN, but you are having different kinds of fun. Determining what "kind of fun" we are having at the moment is crucial that you don't find yourself barefeet in a football match that gets your team to quarter-finals. The coach and the rest of the football team won't be too happy about it.

That said, nobody will force any of you to do anything that you hate doing. You just have to keep in mind that its not only about you, its about all the people that are involved in doing something. If for example, you are in a totaly silly mood one day, and you know you can't be concentrated, just say so - and if we are doing something that requires total determination and focus, just don't do it, or be open with it and say "guys, I can't keep my self together today - I will tag along, but don't count on me with anything too heavy" Everything works, and by talking we can work everything out most of the times.

Perun

... something to think about.

I want all guild members to participate in this. Send an ingame mail to me, or even better, send a mail to w0wtiger@yahoo.com.

We need members. However we want to get people that will fit into our overall mentality and are interested into doing the same things we do. We want an initial burst of 5-10 new members of mid to high level and after that a steady trickle to fill the ranks. Current short-term goal is to be able to get 15 level 60 Tigers online at the same time. (we can do 10 at this time).

Here is your assignment: I want you to think about and suggest a way how to recruit those kind of people. It has to be something unique, because frankly there is a ton of similar guilds fighting for members out there. All suggestions, even the most silly and illogical ones are welcome. More of you participate the better.

Perun

... care for some burn and pillage?

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-theventureco-en&t=41624&tmp=1#post41624

The Dark lady has spoken to me. She wants The Tide to go to war when the sun hides (21.00 server time) an army of undead, orcs, tauren and trolls from The Tide will march into the southern kingdoms of the alliance. We be coming north from the burning steppes and march through lakeshire, darkshire, sentinell hill and from there march on to goldshire and stormwind. If you are horde and not from the Tide we could still use your help too! (make a non-tide raid next to ours) ((I hope you all come in great numbers and we can all have some world pvp fun)) Let the War for the south-eastern kingdoms emerge! (I also would like this to be more RP then the normal wars where you see /spit all over.. so please.. hold your *lol* and *ZOMG* but keep it fun for the roleplayers too ;))

Uraniumus

The Tide is organising a world pvp event, we could join as a guild. I'm sure Dance Macabre will be doing the same so we will organise something. Good thing would be that we organise our own raid group that will move with the main body, but we can communicate and organise and keep out of killing civilians and such - which usually spoils events like this. All in all it will probably be fun.

Requirements:

- You have to be a mature, down to earth person ready to work and function in a team.
- Your character has to be level 40 and up.

At this time we are in need of:

Druids
Hunters
Priests
Mages
Warlocks

Currently we don't recruit:

Rogues
Warriors
Shamans

If you fulfill the requirements and fit one of the needed profiles please send a mail to:
w0wtiger@yahoo.com

... how Nurgs and Harry and Karashi got our honor back

This saturday after ZG, Nurgs, Harry, Karashi and a couple of guys from Dance Macabre went into Stratholme and gave the baron a major spanking. 8 of them altogether I think. Congratulations to the winning team, we have yet to do it 5 man. Good job guys!

Perun

... or how High Priestess gave us another showe down into the dirt

On saturday we managed to gather 20 people for entering Zul Gurub, although 2 of them were outside help. Unfortunately very shortly after, two of the raiders had to go, so we had 18 alltogether. We had a nice little whipe just at the begining of the instance, becuase of missunderstanding of which group is pulled, so we pulled both :) ... other than that we had a nice and more or less clean run up to the high priestess. Getting used to those bat riders exploding though - we still died alot becuase we were backing up too late.

Big thing is we took the priestess down to 63%, almost out of phase one, when we tried the first time, but we didn't have enough DPS on her, so by that time our AOE group ran out of mana, so the bat adds kileld us. In my opinion if we had a full raid, we would take her beyond phase 1. We tried a few more times with different approaches untill our equipment went bad and we had to call it quit. All in all, better than last time. I have to stress here for all of you current and future participants: LISTEN TO THE RAID LEADER, DO YOUR JOB AND DON'T ASK THOUSAND SILLY QUESTIONS. LET THE RAID LEADER RUN THINGS AND DON'T TRY DOING IT YOURSELF - YOU WILL GET THE CHANCE TO ORGANISE AND LEAD RAIDS. DONT MAKE THE LEADER'S JOB TOUGHER THAN IT ALREADY IS!

Here is one pic I managed to take before we entered the instance:



Perun

There is some info about the upcoming content in 1.11 and 1.12, and little about Burning crusade:

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=883462&p=1&tmp=1#post883462

I found this part interesting, especialy story-wise, as were unfolding the story behind Stratholme at this point, so the next thing caught my interest:

# In patch 1.11: Naxxramas! - the massive necropolis floating above Stratholme, home to Kel'Thuzad

Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it's absolutely massive. You'll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It's a 40-man raid zone, and it's bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we're up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it's going to be hard. Really hard. We're hoping to release it in the spring.

Now, I know we are struggling for manpower to mount Zul'Gurub at the moment, and that we are far far from being able to organise 40 man raids, but it is something to look forward to, because we ARE doing things.

... or how we managed to give Stratholme another cleaning, so that Baron can wipe the floor with us.

Five of us, four tigers and Favio from DM have set out to clean the undead side of Stratholme yesterday, and while the whole run was so smooth that it doesn't get any smoother, having some bad luck while fighting Ramstein eneded in a whipe, but since we cleaned the entire place really fast, there were no respawns yet so we just ran straight to the end.

Now baron was another story. He isn't really the easiest boss out there, in fact he is quite hard in a 5 man group, and that was evident, since we almost havent been able to budge his health bar down. Well ... as always ... we patch up, heal up, rest and come back with vengeance.




UPDATE:

Link on stratholme to study some Baron info for the next time: http://www.wowwiki.com/Stratholme

Some people say that the warrior tanking should pull him to the corner of the room so the AOE mage can stand in the middle of the room and kill the adds, and still be out of reach of his aura. Key is keeping the baron and his skeleton adds separate, because he consumes them to heal up.

UPDATE #2

We tried the tactics above today in a 8 man raid, we got the Baron down to little above 50%, at that point our casters ran out of mana, which resulted in a whipe. Next time we will try mounting more damage on the baron so we kill him faster. Gear with some shadow resistance also wouldn't hurt, and mage being 60 instead of 57 would probably make a considerable difference when cleaning adds. This should be perfectly doable with a level 60 team NOT clad in epics, so we are just going to trial and error untill we get it right.

... testing 1-2-3

Eru and me sat down and did some talking - this is what we came up with. Mind that the system might change as we start using it in practice, if/when we discover flaws in it.

We will maintain a list of each end instance ZG, BWL, MC, etc and for each raid you participate to the end as decided by the raid leader you will get one point. Sometimes if someone have kids, for instance, and need to quit by emergencies and he have attended more than 75% of the raid he will still get a point as decided by the raid leader.

These points will be used to gain a slight advantage when rolling for high end loot as shown later.

1-3 points - no benefit
3-6 points - +5% to the roll ie you roll 5-105
7-9 points - +10% to the roll
... up to a max of 25%

Epic items will be controlled by master looter and distributed on NEED basis only, if there are no NEEDERS and the item is not BoP it will default to the guild banks (we will roll for each guild present) and redistribute within the guilds. If it is a BoP(bind on pickup) a need roll for those not having got one epic, a need roll for those that got one epic and lastly a greed roll.

If you win an epic, you will get -1 pts on your total dungeon score. This do not apply to greed roll won BoP.

If you win an epic you will not be allowed to roll on another until all needers for that kind have one each during this raid.

Blue items will be controlled by master looted and distributed in normal N/G fashion. An exemption to this rule is set items. If you have recieved a blue set item you will not be able to roll on another until all needers have one each.

Green items will be distributed in a round robin fashion. If you need a green item being found, take it up with the guy that find it and make a deal, buying or if he want to hand it over freely. Do this by whisper not to disturb the entire raid with it.

Krag and Monk had some valid concerns, and Krag also came up with some alternate suggestions if you want to chek it out:

http://www.rper.org/showthread.php?p=48482#post48482

... or how we failed to gather enough manpower but still did some killing

We were 5 people short for ZG on saturday, maybe BECAUSE we put it up too late (thursday I think). We also had no mages at all, as both Tiger and Dance Macabre has a serious shortage. We however have some up and coming ones, and I hope we can groom them to 60 in a reasonable amount of time. Untill then we will do as we can with what we got. I will again use this oportunity to urge all of you to INSTALL GROUP CALLENDAR NO MATTER WHAT LEVEL YOU ARE - so you can have a grip on what is happening. Those of you that have it installed already, BOOK YOUR PLACE if you whish to go on a raid. Maybe we do have a shortage of personell atm, but sooner or later we will have more, and what happens if 12 Dance Macabre and 9 Tiger wants to hit a 20 man raid = BOOK YOUR SPOT!.

Also, Grats ZAIGERNE on dinging 60! ... all of you that are close by, being 57+, blas through those 3 levels as soon as possible so we can do stuff. The reason why we had a Level 60 limit on Zul'Gurub is that in those instances, there is a huge difference between 58 and 60. There is huge difference between 60 with decent, and 60 with a bit better equipment, so you can imagine how big it is for those 2 levels. Last time we were in there, we did well with some people taging along arround 55, but we didn't manage to take down none of the bosses.

We didn't have 20 people, but we had 15, so we went to BRS and cleaned both of them - lower and upper. I must congratulate all of you that participated because you showed a tremendous teamplay ability, because we worked as a well-oiled machine in there. Everyone did their job, and did it right, and that makes me really happy because as we raise in numbers, we will become a considerable force. Ashrak went with us for the first time, and he did his part very good - congratulations Tiger!

Perun

... or how to effectively function in a team

Thing is it is entirely possible for one to solo his entire leveling carier in WOW, but past a certain point, if you want to be able to effectively participate in instance raids, you HAVE to function as a part of a well-oiled machine. You can be a player with great skills, you have great weapons and armor strapped on you, but if you don't manage to learn the teamplay aspect, and your role in it, you will fail on the entire front. Maybe you have been teaming with pickup groups, maybe you've even be lucky to end up in a few good ones, made of experienced players, but pickup groups rarely go beyond UBRS, because its just almost impossible to get the required level of co-operation and mutual reliance in a group of people that is playing together for the first time. Thing is, that in good teams, people know each other, know what to expect from each other, and function under certain rules, which you MUST accept in oreder to function inside that group. You must do your part of the job, do it right, and let other people do their jobs. Only that way you can tackle the hardest challenges! Depending on your class you can fit into single or multiple roles, for example at the very basic level:

- Damage dealers: Rogue, Mage, Shamman, Druid, Warlock, Warrior ...
- Crowd control: Mage, Druid, Rogue, Priest ...
- Healers: Priest, Shamman, Druid ...
- Tank: Warrior, Druid ...

As you see, single classes can usually fill more than one role, although most of the times they only fit one in practice, you must learn to fill all roles your class can fill so you can fill holes in your plan once things get hairy (maybe druid takes the damage dealer role initially, but then he realises situation just got hairy, and he dumps the damage dealing and starts healing, or he realises tank is going down, and goes to bear form to take over - most of those things are pre-determined, but sometimes you need to improvise. Everyone doing the right thing, and saving the day when it gets to the improvisation part is what separates good teams from the great ones. If I try to describe how and what for every class and role here, it will take ages,and lots of space. Best advice I can give you in a few lines, when you start going out with your future team is:

- first, as this is very important! BE PATIENT .. there is no hurry. If you have a date, or you go out with your friends, or your mom is making dinner - do not go on the raid. Once you do, your team counts on your presence and by leaving, you let everyone down. (Off course RL comes first, so if you have a kid you need to put to sleep, or make dinner for or anything, it IS more important then being in a raid, but we plan things in advance, so try to keep it down as much as you realisticaly can. Do not rush ahead and do things on your own, lay back and try to spend as much time as you can observing what everyone else is doing. Sometimes pulling that one mob a second too soon, or a second too late means a wipe, so be patient and let other people do their job while waiting for your turn.

- Second, but even more important! LISTEN TO THE RAID/TEAM LEADER! Raid leader is someone that has all the strings, and plans who should do what at what time, so everything goes well. Listen to the instructions and obey orders. Somewhere down the line, you will maybe fill the role of the raid leader later on, and you will apreciate people that listen what you say.

Do that, and in time, you will learn the strings of your class. You will be someone that your team mates can rely on. Don't do that, and you will become someone that people will avoid having in the team, because you will make them unsafe and insecure. The choice is yours.

Alright Tigers!

Time is coming to sharpen your blades, pack up your gear and grease up your boots. We are going to hit Zul'Gurub again this weekend. Don't dress heavy because the air is humid in the jungle. We are going to unleash some beating and bashing ang general whacking and mayhem upon the troll tribes residing in there, together with our allies, and hopefully be lucky enough to get a boss down this time. The exact time has yet to be established. Untill then you can do some reading on:



http://www.thottbot.com/?z=10885

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/zone.html?wzone=93

Perun

... or how we burned and pillaged all the way to Darnassus

For all of you that have been with us, thank you for being there. Keren provided us with a really unique and fun experience. Those 3 hous went by in a blink, and we managed to reach Darnassus, had a short skirmish inside, but after we were overwhelmed with guards, we pulled back through the portal and met all the opposition that came after us on the other side, where we effectively took a role of an meat grinder untill opposition became really heavy, and incoming from both the portal and the griffin, so we eventually bit the dust. We held them at bay for quite a while and I even got me some elven ears as a souvenir *wink*.

All in all it was a blast, looking forward to another round ...

Here are some pics:

... or how we go and learn how to send ally backside to kingdom come!

Today we meet with our allies to get into practice some group pvp skills. Everyone closing in on their 60's that want to join the war games book your place in the guild calendar. The more the merrier.

Keren's post on today's event:
http://www.rper.org/showthread.php?t=5376

Field manual:
http://www.rper.org/showthread.php?t=5367

Perun.

... or how to survive in a materialistic world
I noticed a few times that sometimes people join the guild and shortly after start asking for someone to help them out financialy wether its a loan or donation. First thing, being high level does not automaticaly mean that person has accumulated a huge pile of gold sitting in the bank. Second, giving a loan to someone means you need to trust that person. In RL you could loan cash to your friends that you know for years, yet you probably won't give it to someone you just met in a bar or on the street. When you join a community such as a guild, you need to build up thrust before having such whishes. Third and final - making money in WoW is not all that hard and although not everyone knows HOW to do it, everyone CAN do it successfully with less work invested then you think. Nothing comes free and some work definitely has to be invested in the process. For those of you that just started out, and are broke and have no basic knowledge, instead of giving you the fish, I'm going to show you how to fish.

• Dont spend cash on armor or weapons for the first 20 - 30 levels, unless you find a piece of equipment really dirt cheap, because you are going to outgrow things so fast that investing a considerable amount in them is throwing money out of the window. Get to business and do some quests, because many quest rewards at those levels are much better than anything you can buy.
• Take up a gathering profession, or even two gathering professions if you are in dire need (mining/skinning worked well for me). Any profession will work, but somehow I got the feeling that at the beginning most money can be made out of mining. Run arround your starting arrea and mine copper. You can sell a full stack of copper ore for 30-50 silver in the auction house, depending on the day. That means that if you are lucky, you can hit 1 gold by selling 2-3 stacks of copper ore. Stones you gather in the process also sell for decent money. That 1 gold piece doesn't seem as much anymore right? :) ... if you took a secondary gathering prof like skinning, you kill alot of mobs for quests, you can skin every one and sell the leather in the AH for whatever price it goes at that moment.
• You can also sell Wool cloth and Silk cloth in the AH for decent money. Killing humanoid mobs can get you xp, some nice drops and piles of cloth at the same time.
• Sell every single green item you don't need to the vendor. You get less cash for it than selling it in the AH, but you don't have to lose time and mess with prices, and re-sell if you fail to sell it and pay AH fees and such.
• Forget enchanting as your first profession, it costs alot of money. In fact, you can safely forget every production profession untill you get to 40+.
• Once you have accumulated some money to begin with, one more thing you can do is you can scan the auction house for items like wool or silk or pearls, mageweave, ore, stone .. in fact anything that sells in big amounts on daily basis. Look for really cheap bids and buyout prices and bid on them or buyout, then put the same item back into the AH for a normal price and you made yourself a profit without ever leaving the AH. Takes some practice, and time to get the feeling how much certain things cost and what cheap is, but once you get a frip on it, it works really well. You are probably going to make some bad deals in the process, but as long as you make profit overall, it is not that important. Word of warning - unless you absolutely sure, don't invest into single things that cost alot, you will find it hard to sell it and you may lose money. Safer deal is to get relatively cheap things that sell alot.
• Optional: make yourself an alt character that you park in a big city and leave it there, so that you don't have to run back to the main city every time you have full bags on your main, you just run to the first mailbox and mail it to your alt. Your alt can put things up for auction, or store items and cash.

Here you go... Now get to work and you are gonna have more money than you realistically need in no time.

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general-en&T=875752&P=1

Shortly, blizz is going to introduce some new stuff to dungeons such as Sholomance, Stratholme UBRS and LBRS, and also lower the player cap from 10 to 5 for strat and from 15 to 10 for UBRS .... Never been to UBRS without a raid, but both Strat and Sholo are a nice trip for a 5 man group, takes cooperation and its fun to do. Single thing I have AGAINST these changes are respawn times, which they should increase. Thing is that when you take apart a place like Sholomance in a 5 man group, it takes time - alot more time than in a raid becasue you have to take it in a more controlled manner, which means that when you near the later part of the instance, mobs that you killed in the beginning will start respawning, so if you are unfortunate to make a mistake near the end of the instance, or maybe wipe at the last boss, you will be unable to run back, you will have to repeat the entire instance because everything will respawn by that time. Discuss!

Important stuff !

We haven't yet established a full bullet-proof looting rights system that we will use in raids with our allies. We are working on it, and will come up with something that will be simple and effective. Untill then, any of you being in a raid should establish and agree upon rules before they start the event. Keep in mind that having better gear is all arround good thing, not just personal - you want that Priest that will be healing you next time to have more mana right?- or that warrior tanking for you to be able to take more abuse - take what is useful for you in becoming better at what you do, and give up things that can help others become better at what they do. These are people that you will be raiding all the time, so making them better means your own survivability will increase and you will be able to do things easier/more secure/more efficient.

... or how we cleaned up that smelly den of orcs called UBRS

UBRS raid went really well this saturday, we were only stuck once in the egg-place, and that mainly because we were unfortunate that the first wave of mobs went the wrong way, so the situation was almost impossible to finish clean. Other than that, we took it slowly and in a controlled manner, and never actualy were in any serious danger. I took a few screenshots that I will post later.

GUILD CALENDAR addon is up and running, and I encourage everyone that wants to participate in whatever is going on, to install it and keep track of events, cause there will be alot of things going on, and at one point we will stop broadcasting everything on the guild channel all the time. Both Tiger and Dance Macabre are using the same calendar. Everyone is encouraged to both book and participate in events, but I ask that you are serious, and if you do organise something, to bring it to the end, since both guilds are involved.

update 14.03 I promised some pics:

This saturday at 16:00 Dance Macabre is organising a raid to UBRS. Eru informed me we have 6 spots for our members. Raiding instances like UBRS and going to Sholomance, Stratholme and Dire maul will allow us to get into decent gear so that we can handle places like Zul Gurub down the line.

Perun

Download and install an addon called GUILD CALENDAR at http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=2718.

Will allow us to easily coordinate raids and events, wether with our guild or with our allies.

The following are the current ranks in our guild (in order from highest to lowest):

1. Tiger Leader - Guildmaster

2. Pack Leader - Officer

3. Armorer - Officer

4. Fang

5. Claw

6. Tiger

7. Tiger Cub

8. Unproven

9. Tiger Puppet

Tiger Leader: This is your guildleader :)

Pack Leaders: These are the officers. Pack Leaders are voted into position by the current Pack Leaders, Armorers and the Tiger Leader based on overall knowledge of guild workings, ability to lead and take charge, combat abilities, etc.

Armorer: This is an officer title as well, but with the special job of helping guildies with their armor, talents etc. Armorer is voted into position by the current Pack Leaders and the Tiger Leader based on the same criteria's as the Pack Leaders.

Fang: This is a title reserved for Tigers who are doing pvp in form of BG's or Arena teams. Guildmembers ranked "The Fang" has the same responsibilities and privileges as Tigers. The Tiger leader will - together with the Pack Leaders and Armorer - decide who needs to be ranked The Fang.

Claw: These are the hardcore raiders who does a lot of instances with Tiger. Guildmembers ranked "The Claw" has the same responsibilities and privileges as Tigers. The Tiger leader will - together with the Pack Leaders and Armorer - decide who needs to be ranked The Claw.

Tiger: Tigers are the backbone of the guild. They represent our most important members. Tigers have the responsibility of looking after newer members, as well as helping the Pack Leaders with issues that arise. Tigers will make certain to inform the higher ranks if there is a concern within the lower members of the guild. 6 weeks time in the guild is required to achieve this rank and this is the highest non-officer rank you can achieve.

Tiger Cub: Cubs are the newest members of the guild. A cubs job is to make friends and learn the game/guild. 1 weeks time in the guild is required to achieve this rank.

Unproven: Unproven are not yet proven members of the guild. During the first week, unproven must prove to the rest of the guild that they belong but following the rules set by the guild. An easy task, and one that will keep the guild strong for the future.

Tiger Puppet: This is the rank reserved for alternate characters.

.... or guidelines as someone once said :)

Alright Tigers!