The Vindication Race To the Top Challenge Vindication is announcing a Spring campaign, beginning February 3, 2012, to launch the next level of guild development and growth. This is an overall guild effort concentrating substantially on raiding efforts. Here are a few words from Polycrates regarding the nature of the guild, the reason for the challenge, and the details of the rewards. This is a very lengthy guide detailing the guild raiding strategy for Vindication. While it's all interesting and helps you get a feel for why we do what we do in Vindication, the important information about what effects you is near the end, so please take the time to read this information. The Goal: Heroic Mode Progression by mid April The Results: multiple raid teams, 3 of which are on weekly heroic mode progression, two on normal mode DS progression, and one or more teams clearing half or more of normal progression DS. Increased guild growth and activity, bringing a more robust guild experience Guild economic growth resulting in heroic class team gearing and preparation Class and profession based guild mentoring and development which makes your job of clearing the content easier The Reward: The Vindication Race To the Top challenge brings raiders into direct competition to reach the farthest, fastest. Vindication will be distributing 114,500 GOLD in prizes to the winning teams. Team Challenges: Heroic Mode Teams: Team One Team Two Team Three Regular Progression Teams: Team Four Team Five Newly launching team: Team Six If you are going to be up to the challenge, you will need to research your class, raid fights and strategies, and do the work of getting the best gear and preparation possible. The guild forums have Class forums where our Class Officers and others are taking the time to put guides, useful information, and resources there. They've taken the time to tell you what works for you. Get involved, read the forums, add your own contribution there, and let's help each other get to the top and win the prize. We are also looking for more class officers to fill out the ranks and help develop the guild resources. Current Openings: Druid, Paladin, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior Class Officer positions Class Forums: Death Knight Druid Hunter Mage Paladin Priest Rogue Shaman Warrior Warlock Every guild raid team generates a certain amount of activity within the guild. Each week the guild gets a cut from this activity, whether it be guild dungeon achievements, raid achievements, loot percentages from raid and non raid activities, etc. Loot is also brought into the guild bank that isn't needed, and either auctions to generate more guild gold or is used to further prepare our raiders. The more active a raid team is, the more guild activity in general is spawned. Raiders that are successful rarely log on only to raid. You can't be geared enough to do progression raiding without being on more than just the raid times. So, you raid, you prepare, do LFR, heroics, farming, etc. You also tend to bring your alts to the guild, and they also generate activity, some of which goes to the guild bank. More active characters bring yet more active characters, all of which are engaging in guild activity, generating guild gold. It works. Call it trickle-down economics, but it's actually more like trickle-up in this case. At any rate, the guild takes in several thousand gold per week from those activities. Raiding and other activities help to finance our raiding needs in Vindication. Weekly repairs for raid teams, materials for raiding, etc, all cost gold. Each team is currently capped out at 200 gold per raider per day for guild repairs. So a team of 10 members can spend up to 2,000 gold if everyone on the team maxes out, which we don't. It's hard to explain but the math extended out shows that the more raid teams and consequent increased guild activity it brings, the higher the weekly intake of gold to the guild. 4 raid teams means an increase to guild bank of 366g per week. 5 raid teams brings it to 762g per week. 6 raid teams brings it to 1,117g per week. 7 raid teams brings it to 1,497g per week. 8 raid teams brings it to 1,648g per week. 9 raid teams brings it to 1,922g per week. 10 raid teams brings it to 2,162g per week IF you keep all 10 teams on regular mode, BUT Why would you? If you have 100 people raiding and they're all still doing regular mode, you've failed miserably as a guild to advance through any reasonable expectation of guild progression. SO When you reach 10 teams you should have transitioned the guild teams to a 2-tier system, meaning: 4 or 5 teams are progression teams advancing through Hard Mode progression 3 or 4 teams are working on clearing normal content of the current raid progression 1 or 2 teams are starting out and making reasonable routine progress of at least half the content. When you use this formula: 10 raid teams bring in an excess of 2,739g per week. That doesn't sound like a lot of gold for going to all the work of having 100 guilded characters in weekly raids. But that's 2,739g AFTER all guild repairs and needs are met. In other words, that's profit. Here's where your guild banking officer comes into play. If you won the lottery, you wouldn't just put it all into a regular savings account at the bank, forgo all interest earning potential, and hit the ATM up weekly to use it until it's gone. No. You have some income generating potential there now. You invest a portion of it into investments that earn a rate of return. You make money. The guild banking officer is in charge of taking some of those resources, investing in items that resell at a profit (working the auction house) and returning gold to the bank, He's also in charge of managing the inflow of goods that are in excess of what we need, or those which don't meet our needs, and generating gold from them. That 2,739g per week can easily be 10k per week when managed correctly. Now, do we do all of this hard work just so that we can all work hard and the guild bank can get rich, but still only give us our allowance of 200g per week in raid repairs? No, definitely not. We do it so that we can raid, so that the guild can be successful in all of our guild vision objectives, and so that we get all that we can out of the game. The guild becomes the engine to dramatically enhance our gaming experience. The increase in income into the guild bank makes it possible for us to cover enchanting, gemming, gearing, and other costs. It buys you armor kits, spell thread kits, patches, gems (good, expensive gems), costly enchants, specific gear pieces, as well as materials for guild cauldrons, feasts and other buff food and potions. All of this needs to be covered by the guild bank ultimately, and all of this is very necessary to get us to the level of progression in raidng that we expect from our guild. Do you think you can do hard modes without having your gear properly enchanted, gemed, etc., and without having flasks and buff food? You'd be off the team in no time. The guild needs to be in a position to help you achieve your highest raid progression potential. Now, for those in guild who will say it, and there are a bunch of you, there always have been, that we're barking up the wrong tree by building more teams while not focussing on filling the current teams that are struggling, let me say this. I've said this more times than I can count on both hands. I've posted it on the forums in lengthy forum posts. I've had conversations about it in guild chat, on vent, in the forums, in emails, etc. The guild should be, and is capable of doing more than one thing at a time. If you can tell me that in a guild of over 700 that we cannot focus on more than the needs of filling 2 empty positions on a single 10 man team at any given time, then I give up. I'm a failure as a GM if I can't fill 2 slots out of 700 people and a big pool of people out of guild to pull from. The reality is we always think big in Vindication. Vindication has always been and will always be about big, sweeping, grandiose ideas and visions. Some guilds have plans, we have a vision. Some guilds have officers, we have an entire leadership structure. The fact is, we can build teams, place teams, and continue to build the guild and the new teams. The team captains and the guild leadership need to be able to continually build and focus on their own teams. We do not ever do one thing at a time in Vindication. There simply isn't enough time for that to ever amount to anything. We've had the equivalent one tier gear level each six months in this game. We have to multitask and aggressively go after our goals. The ideal process: 1) Raiding Officers and Honor Guard identify new talent both inside and outside the guild, and get them in here. 2) Class Officers identify guildees of their own class, working with them to help dramatically improve their game and usefullness to the guild. 3) Honor Guard helps form teams that are ready to start raiding. 4) Raid Leaders work with their respective teams to continuously build the team, fill the slots, improve the output and training 5) Class Officers continue to develop new and existing talent to increase the scope of the guild and the potential pool of talent for raiding and guild needs, as well as to improve the prospects of the current raiding teams in their progression 6) Honor Guard continues to take this developing talent and new talent from outside and form new teams 7) As new teams are formed, leaders are developed to carry out the team needs, return to step 4, rinse and repeat. 8) Guild Implementation Core Cheiftain (Kiashie) continues to oversee raiding sector of the guild while Guild Preparation Core Cheiftain (Skitzofrenik) continues to oversee the development of the guild talent pool. 9) Any problem resolution is handled by our Guild Problem Resolution Officer (Atriel) with the objective of identifying the problems and reaching a solution that restores fellowship with the guild and demonstrates the value placed on guild and guildee alike. 10) Win (although this is not a point, it's a continuous process of .... in the words of Charlie Sheen, winning) You've read all of this, and trust me I can be wordy, but I'm including all of you for once in the leadership process that we in guild leadership have talked about continuously. Here's the kick off of our effort to make this happen on a guild-wide scale. We're kicking off our efforts to reach our new HM progression goal by offering a reward system. We've stated April 16, 2012 as the deadline for our first guild goalpost. To sweeten the pot and to recognize the massive amount of effort that goes into reaching this goal, we are going to be awarding the following incentives for this first goal. First All-Guild Raid Team to down the first boss in DS on Heroic Mode: Each player receives 5,000 gold and for the following month an increase in guild repair costs by 50% Team Captain receives 7,500 gold First All-Guild Team to completely clear DS on regular mode: Each player receives 3,500 gold Team Captain receives 5,000 gold Second All-Guild Team to completely clear DS on regular mode: Each Player receives 2,500 gold Team CAptain receives 3,000 gold Rules: These accomplishments are to be in Standard 10 man raid format, not LFR. All bosses must be downed by the regular raid team or their regular substitute players. If in doubt see Polycrates. Full clear must be done in 1 week raid time, without extending the raid lock. Teams can potentially be the first to down reg and first to down HM and win both prizes. Teams only have until the dealine of April 16, 2012 to achieve the contest results in order to receive the award. I know this makes it hard, but it's a huge goal, huge task, and huge honor or recognition in pushing the guild to the next level, and so it's a very substantial prize. All total the guild will be handing out 114,500 gold in prizes for this set of goals. This is huge, but also very important to the guild. I encourage all of you to try your hardest to help make this happen. Vindication is about big, sweeping, over the top vision. We've always been about being bigger and better in so many ways than simply being a progression guild. You all know that if you're only about progression, there are other guilds for you. We want the total package in a single guild, which means a balance. We value you all very highly, and are proud that you wear our guild name above your character as you go out into the world of warcraft. Help make Vindication proud and raise the banner of your guild and your team for all to see.