Icon

As all of you know, I don’t usually write on the forums. So try to bear with me here as I’m writing a big long fat post on the forums today :)

When I joined Icon, early February, I understood Icon to be a casual guild aiming to progress through raid tiers. The raid team was doing rather well having downed 2/8 HC. You guys told me however, previous raid tiers had been difficult due to roster problems. Now I believe we’re having that problem again. And I believe it’s Blizzards fault.

Of course, you wonder, how do I come to the conclusion that it’s Blizzards fault. I think Dragon Soul is too easy on normal mode which led to our progression on heroic mode. In turn this led, for me personally, to the assumption we are good enough to clear 8/8 HC. In short, I got greedy!
So my understanding of Icon is it becoming a casual heroic progression guild. And I believe this is where the problem lies. Approaching the raiding casually while trying to do heroic progression, in my mind, is not going to work. It would only work if we would have a set group of 10 players that would always be the same. But, as you know, that’s hasn’t been the case.

Now, if you define Icon as a casual progression guild, 7/8HC is a very good job! Truly amazing to have come this far and something to be proud of.
If you define Icon as a casual heroic progression guild, I think we should have been 8/8HC a couple of months ago. This leads to my biggest question: ‘what kind of guild is Icon?’ I feel we are running round a headless chicken, no idea of where we are going, what to expect and questioning every decision that’s being made.
Do I think you are a bad leader Gringo? No not at all! I believe you try to keep the car in motion while everyone is giving you vague directions. While you get blamed for every decision if it turns out to be a dead end. I’m here to say I don’t blame you as much as I blame anyone who hasn’t tried to help out. And I know, I’m guilty of that.

All throughout the progression on heroic mode, you managed to keep morale up. I know there’s been jokes made about focus and all, but they only started to come up when we started to get tired of doing Dragon Soul. You led your team into downing the most difficult boss on heroic mode. Would things have been different with Velcat leaving, I’m sure we would have downed Madness aswell. But I believe the success we’ve been having in Dragon Soul heroic, led us to a path we haven’t been before. And this, in my mind, requires us to redefine our destination.

Now, yesterday evening on Raidcall, I was told I’m criticizing but not helping out. That’s a fair way of saying it, as it is what I have done. But, my defence to this is, I want to know where we are heading towards before I jump in the driver seat. Are we going to be a casual raiding guild, focussing on getting normal mode cleared and try to do some bosses on heroic mode? Or are we aiming to finish the upcoming raid tiers on heroic mode? I think the first step in fixing what’s gone wrong now, is to find an answer to this question. The next step would be to ask everyone if he or she feels that’s what they want.

Answering that question would also lead to changing what kind of players Icon wants to recruit. If we are trying to get heroic kills, we should approach the recruiting that way. Getting inexperienced players to try to kill an end-boss, is not going to work. I don’t blame them for it, as you can only get experienced by actually doing it. Also, I feel it would be fair towards the trials to be honest with them. They join a 7/8 HC guild, probably expecting to having attempts on killing Madness. But, let’s be fair, we are having great difficulty on downing 6/8 some nights.

So this is my idea of the problem that we are having. Assuming my notion of the problem is correct, it leads to setting up a plan to get all this fixed.

1. First step, as I said before, is deciding what we are aiming for.
2. Ask everyone in the team if that is what they want.
3. Decide on the amount of effort is going to be required of everyone in the team. What do we have to do to achieve that goal?

If we decide to be a heroic progression guild, we should think of ways that would help out the progression. Like, having geared alts, so if we lack a class, we have one of our core players go on that alt. We know a core player is a good player, so by doing a little bit of effort, they can do very well and replace a less experienced recruit. Also, everyone knowing the tactics so we can avoid wipes because someone not knowing how to interrupt on Zon’ozz or dispelling on Spine. Knowing your class and knowing to play your offspec, is also part of it.These are just a couple of many steps to take to becoming a good heroic progression guild.

If we decide to be a casual guild aiming for a normal clear and a few heroic bosses, there’s steps to take aswell. Like, being honest with everyone about what Icon is aiming for. Emphasis should lie on having fun while raiding instead of pressure on performance.

Now something else I want to mention is that I feel we have come to the point where continuing this road is damaging as much as it is fixing. The core group is tired of doing Dragon Soul, and people have started to drop out. I believe we should decide to stop pushing for 8/8HC and take some time of raiding. Two or three weeks wouldn’t be too bad. Meanwhile we can reform the guild the way we want, and approach everything in that particular way. For me at least, I can say I will have more fun raiding in three weeks and not mind the wiping as much due to learning the fights.

As you wrote a wall of text, expressed your thoughts and your feelings, I do the same somehow and I will tell you my story :).

Once upon a time, a french 24 years old IT went to New York pushed by the desire of travelling and live adventure.
There, as diplomat/cryptographer, i was living nicely experiencing a new world open to me. As tired as you can become in capital size city, I had the need to escape a reality i had soooo long time desired. Blizzard released WoW and one month after, a small Ret paladin called Ederlezi was born in a small town Goldshire of the realm Draenor. First of my guild "Childrens of Korn" to achieve the level 60, i pugged like many at that time instances named Stratholme and Sholomance. Those two were dropping dungeon set lightforge and valor.
I did participate to war effort of the gates of Ah'Qiraj, ran my firsts 40 men in MC.

Time to move in Serbia came. I made new friends and we decided to start playing WoW again. My best buddy there picked up Wildhammer, a priest called Hazalrus (Anagram of Lhazarus) was born. One Month or Two after, TBC was released and we were all level 70. Pugging and fighting , i made my way alone to karazhan. My friends, not so much rich, dropped their subs and me. Alone i was seeing people running in tier 4 while i had my frozen shadowcloths (fucking BiS for almost a whole expansion). At that time, there was famous guild like "Sorrow" clearing the firsts bosses of black temple while 98% of the realm even did not put a foot in Hyjal summit.

Shy, i took my destiny in hand and made my first app. After few days, I proudly became a "Silverwing Angel". Astonishing !!! In 3 weeks from an half Kara experience, i went to TK and cleared everything till solarian. The guild was alive, people were chatting, discovering new bosses, strategy and tactics.

SSC, bim bam, hydromancer and lurker down.

Then,

It happened. Quarels, discussions, ragequits and that sentence from an officer : A guild is not a democracy. Questions flooded my brain, feelings were twisted.
My time in Swa had come to an End.

Lost, alone again with my frozenshadowcloth, i made a guild. It collapsed few weeks after. Joined small one, it merged then split. People were more and more geared and T5 was so fuckin awesome for priests :/ No more vent, voices, leaders, technic words, the game became sad suddently.

The day after,

Shammadam, herald of the Icon, best of best guilds, was spamming trade for god knows what. Come on !!! Today, i take my balls and i apply.
Ok !!! my gear is shit and i still carry the same fucking FSC ( u understood what ;) ) for monthes but everything they have to give, i'll take it.
Experience, loot, laugh and cry.

Here comes in play, Gurex and Polsedra aka (sex psycho and bag psycho) lol :)
You'll maybe think i'm twisting reality but i spent an hour and half with them explaining how i specced and why. I had job interview irl who were easier :D u know !
From the invite, i had my one month trial period extended of 2 damn weeks by (Fuck you) hoggy !!! :D I still hate him for that even if i fake feelings now ... ^^

Whatever :)

Loads of quality time, lots of work too. Icon was a "casual" raiding guild, yeah !!! 2nd Best ally 25men guild of Wildhammer, experiencing content that 95% people at that time had no chance to see on the realm. Raid time was 20h-24h, 3 times a week, no guild repair, no fish feast, no cauldrons.
If you did not have pots, you were pissing 24 peoples. It brings some Duty, some respects.

It's there i understood what was a guild. What's a challenge ingame.

Icon is a casual semi Hardcore guild imprinted for years now by the sweat of geko, naku, shamma, guff, darkmoon, antonsilver, hogannum the pink, viperman, elgringo, polsedra, incision, babybadger, panzerbadger, simildanach, stdk, darkmoon, shana, deathhulk, maybe not hollowchill but who cares now :P, morkai, elderberries, cherrypie, nux, crispedro, shalcker (penance me), Xanza, askaban, blizzer and sooooooo soooooo many raiders[...] Ammenti, badmutz and me (Haz) loghen.

For the last 2-3 weeks, i feel the guild sliding into the nether, a kind of killin mop pre-sleep. Also, i decided to help recruit. I spam trade alone, noone asked me to. Two very nice app popped out, we recruit flers and mighty. Simi comes back from deadly WH.

Ofc, expectations are big, we got madness to kill to end the cycle. The road is not straight. One Maintank just disappeared, one healer returns to irl when another just ... quit...
In 2-3 weeks, simi, mighty and flers are getting used to our way and we clean everything till spine like we were doin before. We one shot hagara, we one shot warmaster and in one fucking night, mighty and flers succeeded with lol to heal us to the 3rd scales of spine. Evenif they are trial in Icon, Icon is their guild now, their home. In one, two weeks i dunno, they'll be raiders.
If they decide to clean the mop with us, i'll be proud to have them on my side fighting gods knows what panda's will bring on our path.

I've been trial, raider, officer and then social and then hardcore social. You dont need a rank to be active, you can work tactics, logs, fish, bring jokes and mood, socialize, be kind to your guildies and buy them mount (hint hint ammenti :P), prepare pots, cauldrons, help define a raid setup, help define recruitment, remind slacker to sign in/out, hunt the noshow, semishow, everything in fact who can improve raid experience, give stack of red gems like ammenti generously gave one time. There's no code, no obligations and thats what help the guild.

On their side, officers are doin Guild leading/managing and raid leading.There's nothing to discuss about it cause it's the job that noone wanna do. It's so hard and time consuming, they do it.

We dont need discussions in 3-4 points, plans how to do or whatever. Everyone on the realm is tired of the content, of wow and even tired of some personality. Respect your guildies, be prepared, help how you can, be on time and try to say before a raid if u cant attend. it really doesnt go far.

That said! There's one boss to kill and the expansion is finished. While waiting mop, we can farm achievements, do whatever people wants to.

The guild just progress with the will of the guildies, nothing else. It got a lead.



At last, if you are asking yourself why a social hardcore is doin all of that, wall of text, spammin trade, etc ...

It's just cause " I'm raiding for my people"

I make music for my people

in short , same shit always happens every expansion, icon always bounces back!

IMO the sentence that sums it all up, and sums up the any problems we have gotten ourselves into...

#6252312 Haz wrote:

I've been trial, raider, officer and then social and then hardcore social. You dont need a rank to be active, you can work tactics, logs, fish, bring jokes and mood, socialize, be kind to your guildies and buy them mount (hint hint ammenti :P), prepare pots, cauldrons, help define a raid setup, help define recruitment, remind slacker to sign in/out, hunt the noshow, semishow, everything in fact who can improve raid experience, give stack of red gems like ammenti generously gave one time. There's no code, no obligations and thats what help the guild.

I wont waffle on too much and bore everyone with a story that everyone probably has heard from me moaning and complaining about a 1000 times before, but basically Icon died (or atleast went into a coma) in BoT/BWD when Doc decided he couldnt do it anymore as it was too much hard work, and TBH didnt blame him one bit.

So, like a fool and as someone who didnt want to see our guild die, and didnt want people who wished to carry on to lose out on their fun, I said sod it... grabbed the bull by the horns and pushed like mad to try to piece things together... a job I didnt want at all, but for the guild I was willing to try.

And TBH, until fairly recently, I kept pushing. Despite unexpected problems, lack of focus nights, moral drops, ppl having RL issues, and all kind of extra hassles that appeared along the way.

Then DS comes, and until a few months ago, we had a pretty smooth run... yes we had the odd issues that ppl can pick out sure, but we progressed well... why? cuz we had basically a set team of 10 players who signed in 3/3 and everyone wasnt sick of the content. What people obviously didnt seem to realise, to get the smooth run still took a lot of work from some people, both behind the scenes and in raids. Not every raid was full, and required a lot of looking ahead at raids and seeing the signups, PMing people to swap around raid sign outs, nudging/chasing slackers, cheering ppl up when they have been upset by others, motivating ppl, etc... all time consuming work that anyone can do, but not many even thought about doing, but because we progressed well... very few noticed.

Then we hit healer problems when Vel had unepected RL issues, with a team as tight as ours it was bound to cause problems, why didnt I see it and do something to allow us backup? well I guess I hoped we could push that bit extra before anything happened... why didnt everyone else see it and do something about it? I dunno, you tell me.

Now everyone can look back and point at problems that were there, but can any of you honestly stand up and say that the problems didnt happen because of something you did or didnt do? I know I can say I did some things badly, and made some wrong calls at times... but I tried.

Now I aint saying you are directly blaming me Mutz, but the fact that we had that chat we had when a few decided to pointed at all the problems in the "system" that got us here, is infact blaming the people running the system, who are people who are no different to you...but they were willing to push and try. When infact, that conversation should have been between yourselves and should have been "how can we help the people trying to run the show?" or "how can we do our bit to help the guild?"

Now I think its safe to say you all knew I was stressing trying to run everything and keep it smooth, but do people honestly think that a way to solve the problem is to correct the people who have been trying hard? As I can tell ya, all that does is lower the moral of the people who are trying hard to keep the moral up. And to top it off we have people who say things like "if this doesnt change and get sorted then I am going to leave", what? are my pay cheques getting lost in the post or something?

Its simple: If you want it... you push for it. We cant change what we all did or didnt do, but we you start thinking as a team and push and help out now if you want it!

Put it this way, If the guild died tonight I can honestly turn around and say "at least I tried my hardest to keep it alive!"... can you?


edit: sorry... I lied... I waffled!

Talk about making a guy feel guilty :p (Joking ofc) *Hi btw*


To be honest, i do feel terrible that i was unable to help you guys go 8/8.

Not going to pretened like i know whats going on atm or offer ways to fix it... But i will leave you all with an update of "Velcats Life"

Well first thing is for the first time in a long time i have not been playing any games, infact since the whole situation i have only turned my PC on if i wanted to chill out and watch a film.

I also decided sitting at home alone was not doing me very good so started going out on a few days with random women (And recently started going out with one of the girls i went on a date with)

So as "My life" is heading ATM things are most deffo starting to look up.



But then we come back to WoW. And to keep you all knowing...... I 100% will not be back before panda land, and there is a 90% chance i will not be back when it's released.

In the past i have played 2 games (Counter strike and WoW) both of which i played in a guild/team and i always "give it my all" to try and be the best that "i" can (Basicly by playing stupid amounts/reading/maths/etc.) and now with this break that i have had i realise that i need to put that kind of energy into RL.



But.... I do think (For whatever reason) you guys give me more credit for being a "good" healer than i deserv. Sure i was OK and had tha odd "clutch" moment, but we have all done that at some point.

You should all deffo try and sort out what problems there are that are holding you back ATM (Im assuming it's recruitment?) and with the ending of an exp it's always going to be a PITA, but keep at it and im sure you guys will get 8/8 before it's over (Not sure how long is left of cata btw :p )

I will still pop on the forums while bored at work to see how you are all getting on tho. And if anyone would like my Facebook or anything like that, let me know.



Anyway, sorry for going wayyyyyyyyy of topic (Should have started my own thread really)