So sorry, I didn’t see this message until now! I’ll add both yourself and Zhilin, see what we can cook up 
I love the idea that each of your members is a title rather than a name. The Doctor. The Wretch. The Executioner. That’s fantastic and gives everyone some identity right away! Sucks that you’ve closed the door to recruitment, I’d have loved to give your guild a shot for myself <3
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Don’t worry, I’m sure once we experience the inevitable drop-off, our doors’ll be open again.
And thank you! It not only serves to make every individual character seem cooler, it means no one’s name has to be shared on these forums if they don’t wish to be.
I’d love to see other guilds take up the practice.
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Suggest you update the forum and member list, and maybe add limits to who you can recruit and accept.
Thank you for your suggestions. While it might not be clear, I do believe there already are limits, namely:
OOCly, we desire people who are imaginative, honest, open minded, tolerant and compassionate. If you can DM events, we -especially- want you. We want to foster a friendly, relaxed culture in the guild.
If you mean the tone and style for which characters we pick up:
Chaotic Good, with a Warhammery tone for our events.
May also apply to characters. A guy with a halberd can be as badass as someone clad in full enchanted armour, so long as they’ve faith, allies by their side, and lots of gunpowder.
We boast a purposefully broad variety of different characters of different races and classes with their own bold styles and themes. Interesting roleplay has developed from the inevitable conflict and congruence that results from their differences, and efforts to find common ground.
There’s no formal member list, either, these are just fun introductions for characters who come into the guild.
If you’ve any interest in working with our guild or contributing in any way, send an in-game mail, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
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Seconding (or thirding?) the love for the naming conventions and introductions, it gives a lot of life and culture! Especially if it can be used as a roleplay hook for people to approach the guild ic. Such as: “oh I heard of you… you’re the [insert name] who [insert tale].”
I’ve been writing roleplay summaries for my guild for some time now, as I have amnesia IRL and it helps me remember what we’ve been up to in our roleplay as well as share it with the server. It’s a good exercise for helping my memory, and means I can go back and reread! But like you, I’m averse to putting peoples names on the forums incase they don’t want it, so I’ve been giving little monikers based on profession or infamy. This thread makes me want to get more creative with that!
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Awh, thank you!
My general method is I start by asking them a bit about their character, I combine that with elements provided in their TRP descriptions. The rest is just writing between those two lines, careful not to give too much away, while also emphasising what this character uniquely brings to the fold.
Players in WoW have great attachment to their characters, some of whom have developed over years, therefore the more you can validate and respond to their choices and individuality, the merrier.
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I agree! Rhaethas as a character is very important to me (to the point I have funnelled maybe more of my budget to art of him than I possibly should have oops (holds everyone at gunpoint to look at my art gallery)) and the fun of roleplay is how he develops from the circumstances and people around him. In turn, I love seeing how he affects my friends characters and seeing their development from the circumstances we face in our guild.
The beauty of roleplay is collaborative artwork! Everyone is creating their own part and making the world more lifelike. Which is why I love seeing things like this, I adore that you’re building off of other peoples creativity - it is the “yes, and” energy I want from roleplay.
While I don’t have the characters/time to invest in another guild as a member, I’d love to roleplay more with people from your guild as I see them around Azeroth. Is the unofficial discord server open for social members? Or do you guys prefer it just as Fellowship members only? No worries if the latter!
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I completely agree!
We do indeed have an unofficial Discord, please speak with Rushin for an invitation.
Golic was actually hoping to get in contact with The Meridian Edict, he’s hoping to reach out to them, as well as a few other similar guilds such as the Veiled Covenant and the Ashen Talons.
He’s hoping to form if not an alliance, then at very least a ‘congress’ of other adventurer/monster hunter guilds to discuss what threats they are chasing, and how they may aid one another.
I’ve sent some in-character letters out, asking which day’d suit the various leaders best.
This’d be one evening in the week between 8th-14th July.
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That sounds really really awesome! One of our members mentioned recieving a whisper about that, Raphai would be the best one to contact though all of our officers including myself will probably be unable to reply until Monday. I think collaboration could be really fun depending on if our atmospheres mesh etc!
I’m personally intrigued to see where it goes! I love seeing ways of connecting guilds happen! It feels more lifelike having other groups to interact with!
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That’d be wonderful!
What I can say is Golic has had one tentative response back from one of the guilds.
The 11th seems to be the day they’d be most likely available, but confirmation has yet to be guaranteed, as they’re trapped in the Dread Wastes. It’s a good thing Grummles are good couriers.
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After a long effort, Golic has decided to give himself a pause.
Within our ranks, we have tweaked his vision.
The changes:
1. Embracing the discord. We will be using Discord fully. All events will be announced in Discord.
2. Cementing the vision. We’re here for a specific type of roleplay. Most of us got hooked to ‘Elden Ring’ in the forum post. Elden Ring means above average difficulty events, serious themes, epic adventuring, spanning character arcs as we prepare for The War Within’s worldbuilding: we’re not here to kill old gods, we’re here for something, a meaningful reason for each of our characters. From now on, the Fellowship of Blades main story will be a commitment to adventuring, sustaining the Fellowship, gathering strength, readying supplies, solving issues at hand, helping flourish the Fellowship in preparation of ridding the world of the approaching spectres of doom.
3. Taskboard. A small but nice addition: a separate channel is to be made where we can post things the Fellowship requires to aqcuire or do. Why?
- Let’s say you come online but you don’t find what to do immediately. Check the taskboard - that way you have something to RP around if you want. Example 1: Problem: Character X requires gemstones. Solution: find a jeweller IC, roleplay the interaction out. Example 2: Problem: The Fellowship requires a large box of iron ingots for armor repairs, but there are no smiths around. Solution: plan an event to retrieve some iron ingots from bad guys! This is completely up to your imagination, but adds something nice to plan or think about while you’re not home.
- To add some flair, as shrimple as that.
4. Hierarchy and ranks. While a flat hierarchy sounds wonderful, we move to a formal table of ranks so people know who they can approach for current proceedings.
Rank additions:
Aegis. A nonviolent, non-combatant role. It’s those who heal us, they are the guardians of the Fellowship - just to separate so everyone knows who’s what.
Bladeguard. Basically an Alliance-side officer rank, along with Crossguard. Those who are willing to stick with the concept and head-fast it.
Chosen. This rank can be conferred by any Bladeguard or above to any Aegis or Blade they think have shown true commitment to the cuse of fighting aberrations and serving the cause of balance. It confers no command privelleges, but it does provide kudos, and is intended as a reward.
Renaming the Gauntlet to First Blade. This is for clarity for the outside world to understand who are to be approached for recruitment, IC and OOC guild matters, etc.
5. Limiting the Fellowship oath to ranks above Blade and leaving a relaxed formal greeting in the ranks. Taking an oath is incredibly serious. We are limiting it to those characters who have decided they wish to fully commit to the cause.
Booty Bay trade caravans declare an increasing activity of missing personnel in Northern Stranglethorn. Sightings of Palemane and Bloodscalp trolls infused with dark energies are surfacing in the jungle scouting reports.
Void Trolls are not just a new threat; they are a herald of something greater, a whisper of the Void itself encroaching on our reality. Action is not just necessary; it is imperative. The jungle watches, and it waits.
The Fellowship continues its mission in Stranglethorn and WE ARE RESUMING RECRUITMENT. Come hang around! discord.gg/ZUhppxPuDE
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Such a shame to see great potential wasted. I was going to look into joining this guild after I got back from holiday but now it seems everything cool about it has been stripped away. The no Discord rule in particular had me interested; it represented a welcome change to the OOC/out of game driven play with people who just post stories and art in Discord and show up for events only. The second cool thing was the lack of hierarchy, but I guess the mai authoritah fantasy has its roots too deep.
Damn, what a shame. And I cant help but wonder if this had anything to do with the sheer amount of people the guild recruited who, instead of embracing the fresh takes and ideas, chose to instead poison them and turn them into just another run of the mill AD adventure guild.
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What the hell lol. I mean, this is such a really weird turn of events. I understand that RL can happen and everything so I hope all is good with Goldengaze but it’s still a shame to see that his guild was essentially taken over and a lot of his initial vision was tweaked beyond recognition.
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I’ll respond with complete honesty, I wanted to keep a lot of the original features in the guild as well. But, the flat hierarchy didn’t really work in practice. With the numbers we had, everyone turned on me alone for leadership and guidance, and it quickly led to burnout on my part.
A hierarchy, and officers, were requested by my members as a result. As for the Discord, while I didn’t personally want it (and I have voiced my disapproval of it several times), I had to respect the demands of my membership as well, as this was something they requested, and quite adamantly at that.
Part of the difficulties of democracy is compromise. My membership generally presented the message that if I didn’t bring the reforms in, the guild would soon collapse. They desired these tools mostly to help run the guild even with my absence.
While indeed different, the unique features seemed to have the general effect of stressing the members of my guild, and so I have to listen to their voice, even if it’s not what I had in mind.
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Thanks for the honesty, brother. A couple of us who are generally dissatisfied with the state of AD were monitoring the guild from afar (being very impressed with the original concept) and what you said here lines up with what our speculations were seeing post after post of changes moving away from the original concept as a result of mass recruitment - which we all thought was the main error on your part. It is hard to deal with that large a pool of people, especially when you’re trying to push a cool new vision that goes against the current norm.
But what’s done is done! You’re a more empathetic person than I am. If it had been me, I would have just disbanded the guild and let whoever wanted reorganise it whatever way they deemed fit. It was a good effort, dude! Shame it went the other way.
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Vox populi, vox dei.
A lot of the heavy recruitment was pure enthusiasm on my part (and indeed, the part of those who asked to join). There’s not a single character in the guild I don’t love, and I think what we’ve developed is a civil and pleasant community filled with creative players.
I’m keen to ensure that their wishes are respected, even if they’re not necessarily my own. Guilds aren’t meant to be accessories to make the leader look cooler, or hammers for them to force their vision of Roleplaying on the world, they’re there as communities for like-minded people. My members were very keen and enthusiastic in their provision of constructive criticism, and I’ve tried my best to act on it.
While it would have been easier to disband the guild, the truth is, my membership -want- to stay together. However, if you liked the original concept of the guild, I’d love to see someone take that up and produce it themselves, as that’s a guild I’d actually like to be in as a player.
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Well they have a Discord now, so.
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alright, so I assume not having a guild discord causes some people to completely freak out because it’s so difficult to step out of your comfort zone and instead of encouraging them to look for roleplay elsewhere, you agree to a take over and for the vision of your guld to be completely taken over.
well, I don’t really agree that this is a sign of good guild leadership but ultimately it is your choice. as crazymon has said before, a shame.
he smiles at the camera
With the recent comments and criticism on the latest changes I feel the need to clarify one or two things that might have been misunderstood or not as clear to others as they are to us internally.
It is unfortunate that this rule had to be thrown overboard but to be completely honest here:
Discord is simply a very useful and convenient tool to use. The ingame-channels were since ever not a good way to communicate and to organize. Thats why people used TeamSpeak, made up websites and online-calendars for their guilds and so on. The methods have not changed, only the platform by which this organization happens.
On the other side having a discord server is not the main issue for “event-logging” and it is also not just about “stepping out of the comfort zone”.
Without a discord and alternative means people would also just log on into the game and see “ah, no event today, well I will do something else” and log off. If they even do that to begin with. The discord makes it more visible that people event-log and are just there to consume rp rather than to produce it.
It is the leadership as well as the playerbase who are needed to make it work. Discord, when used by a well-working community, would be an enhancement. And from what I can see the members of the guild still want to make it work and want to sail this ship together which is a huge compliment to Goldengaze.
He put us together on this path and pretty much everyone on our discord wants to make this ship sail. The only things we have to adjust is how we make it work. And that will take patience and alot of testing out because we want to play that vision he gave. Otherwise many would have abandoned ship already.
The issue is here the following:
The vision of a flat hierarchy could have worked if not for one thing - The mass of people joining in the first weeks.
To put it into numbers:
30-40 people were recruited into the guild over the first weeks. Around 25 people remained as active members, others either left due to IC-reasons or were kicked due to inacceptable ooc-behavior. We are also strictly against alt-characters in the guild. With that out of the way we have the following dilemma:
A flat hierarchy cannot work when its set up with such numbers over a very short timeframe. To have a community grow as flat hierarchy every character has to really know and trust the other characters in the fellowship and additions to it have to be vetted by all members. They have to be a family, growing from small numbers to larger ones over long time.
That simply was not possible as new people joined up while the already existing members still needed to sort their differences out and to trust each other. My character being one for example where many other characters had and still have to get used to and where there were IC-based discussions to even understand each others side. It takes time for characters to grow close and to share a bond to make a flat hierarchy possible, especially when the characters in question are very different to one another.
However where order can be build up it can also be torn down. I believe it is simply necessary for now to build up a structure and organization until everything has been settled and then those can potentially be lowered once strong bonds have been built between the characters ICly.
Goldengaze became burned out by the sheer pressure put on him by creating and building the guild with such large numbers all by himself. Not to blame him of course, we all can get overly excited by something we are passionate about, and we understand that all of this was simply too much for him. We support him by all means we have but we also understand that the concept couldnt have worked this way. So we are trying to compromise between the original vision and our individual input so that we can have the cake and eat it.
But it is understandable how the sudden change of core aspects of which the guild has been advertised of could be disappointing. Those werent choices we have made easily, behind each of them were long discussions over days between Goldengaze and those most invested into his vision and the guild.
I hope that this comment gave more insight into how things are currently and why the guild has undergone those recent changes.
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I vouch for the truth of Zaleera’s words. As she stated, we can always bring back features later if it suits us.
If enough of my member-base request the prior model or express a willingness to go forwards with it, I’d be more than glad to appease them.
For the moment though, they’d prefer the new model, and so the new model we’ll go with, at least until we’ve settled in.
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