How can we improve the guild in 2015?

[Daisemiin]

As one who just joined, I looked first to the Forums to see what was happening in the guild and not much is posted here. There was also a page I stumbled into while getting ready to sign up, with guild events. It was on the website but not in the Forums I think. I lost it, and would like to find it again.

The people I have met are great, the greenwall chat is fun, so I dont really have much to suggest to improve things.

[Turarts]

For guild events, a majority of things are posted at converttoraid.com/guild

It has a calendar that shows upcoming events and you can sign-up for most events there. It may direct you back here for certain events, just make sure to read the description for the event

[Slim1256]

As someone that is thinking about starting up a raid team, something that would be nice to have would be a consolidated calendar of the"official" raid teams that are active, showing the days and times that they raid.

Basically a generic seven day calendar that shows raid teams and times.

This would help so that I can see if I'm picking a time when a bunch of teams are already raiding (and therefore I may be competing for raiders in that time slot, or filling in with PUGs). It would also help people looking for a team to see what teams are raiding during times that they're available, so they can seek out posts and raid leaders to inquire about open positions.

-S

[PatKrane]

As someone that is thinking about starting up a raid team, something that would be nice to have would be a consolidated calendar of the"official" raid teams that are active, showing the days and times that they raid.

Basically a generic seven day calendar that shows raid teams and times.

This would help so that I can see if I'm picking a time when a bunch of teams are already raiding (and therefore I may be competing for raiders in that time slot, or filling in with PUGs). It would also help people looking for a team to see what teams are raiding during times that they're available, so they can seek out posts and raid leaders to inquire about open positions.

-S

Like this one available in the Team Pages section?

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=4377

I realize that this may not be a calendar view, though it does have days and times.

[Slim1256]

Holy cow. I've spent quite a bit of time in the forums, and must have completely overlooked that.

It would be awesome to convert that to a google Docs Spreadsheet laid out by day... I might take a stab at seeing what that looked like.

[Weru]

Still waiting on that margarita machine for the office kitchen.
One thing that I think could help a great deal would be an in-game guild group/raid app. Much like Blizzards current LFD tool, but more focused toward CtR. I would envision something very similar to the Blizzard group creator, but would also have calendaring to list out future events for more structured raid/event organization.

Just knowing a few friends who have returned, but have chaotic schedules that do not allow them to commit to a team makes me believe a good majority or our players are in a similar situation. Blizzards LFD tool is a huge step forward, but you have to go outside of our community which means you do not make real connections. People also resist using webpages and forums. Having the ability in game to bring up a ctrlfd tool and see a list of adhoc as well as future raid and guild events would help out a great majority of our players.

Just a thought, but we don't have to develop something.

Group Calendar 5 already has cross guild functionality built in as well as iCal support. End users are not required to use the addon, but they can. It only requires players to partner from each guild (ie. what our officers already do). I'm thinking with the iCal support that it 'could' be tied into the website event calendar if it is an actual calendar. If not there are programing ways to send the events to an iCal to update the Group Calendar 5 which then sends the invites across the guilds.

[Wears]

Still waiting on that margarita machine for the office kitchen.
One thing that I think could help a great deal would be an in-game guild group/raid app. Much like Blizzards current LFD tool, but more focused toward CtR. I would envision something very similar to the Blizzard group creator, but would also have calendaring to list out future events for more structured raid/event organization.

Just knowing a few friends who have returned, but have chaotic schedules that do not allow them to commit to a team makes me believe a good majority or our players are in a similar situation. Blizzards LFD tool is a huge step forward, but you have to go outside of our community which means you do not make real connections. People also resist using webpages and forums. Having the ability in game to bring up a ctrlfd tool and see a list of adhoc as well as future raid and guild events would help out a great majority of our players.

Just a thought, but we don't have to develop something.

Group Calendar 5 already has cross guild functionality built in as well as iCal support. End users are not required to use the addon, but they can. It only requires players to partner from each guild (ie. what our officers already do). I'm thinking with the iCal support that it 'could' be tied into the website event calendar if it is an actual calendar. If not there are programing ways to send the events to an iCal to update the Group Calendar 5 which then sends the invites across the guilds.

Only disadvantage I see from this addon is you have to send an invite to everyone for each event? With close to 9,000 members that would be alot of whispers to send out. Other than that it looks like it would have potential.

[Weru]

True. I could talk to the author and ask if there is a way to copy the event to each guild's calendar without creating multiple instances of the event. Maybe there is a way?

[Weru]

I was thinking about this more and was getting ready to contact the Group Calendar 5 Author when I saw a post that GC5 works with an OpenRaid.us addon to import calendar information... Whhhhattt?

BLUF: So I went to OpenRaid, and I'm not sure if you know this but you can create a 'virtual guild' of any number of guilds on any number of servers.

How does it work?
You should know that an OpenRaid Guild is not a World of Warcraft guild. You can even use a different name.

To keep it simple: an OpenRaid guild contains one or more World of Warcraft guilds. To explain further:
1. An officer or guild master of a World of Warcraft, can register it as OpenRaid guild.
2. Multiple World of Warcraft guilds can be combined into one big OpenRaid guild.
3. Your guild members that have an OpenRaid account, are automatically added to the guild.
4. You can join OpenRaid guilds without being in the linked World of Warcraft guilds!
5. You can be in multiple guilds, and WoW guilds can be linked to multiple OpenRaid guilds!

** And a Roster of your guild automatically imported from Battle.net.

source:http://openraid.us/guilds/about

So, here is what I was thinking as a starting point.
Probably some problems that I haven't thought of yet, so don't shoot me. I'm also not sure if the Officer Pool has any agreements/feuds with OpenRaid or Group Calendar.

- Create the CTR Megatopolis guild on OpenRaid with the subguilds imported.
- The Event Coordinators create the events as guild events in OpenRaid and mark them as private. This will send the invites to everyone in the "virtual guild" and keep it from being browsed up on OpenRaid by people that are not in the guild.
- I would recommend using the OpenRaid site for the signups, because - why reinvent the wheel?
- OpenRaid also has an addon to make importing the invite list into WOW easier for the Raid Leader(s). They can use this or manually copy the battletags to preform the invites.
- Group Calendar 5 is currently being re-written to correct an import problem with the OpenRaid addon. Once this is done if you have both addons, you can import the OpenRaid events directly into your WoW calendar.


To me the selling point is that you can create on giant CTR guild to put the events into an manage signups. Everything else is nice to have.
This would allow us to have a private area on the OpenRaid site for CTR events that invite all CTR members without spamming each character (since you get one email per account). If players want the event on their in game calendar they can use the OpenRaid addon and Group Calendar 5 once it updates to import it directly or just add it themselves.

IMHO, I know that we have skilled programmers on the team, but why re-invent something that many of us already use and is free for the guild to use. You could use an IFrame on the site to bring the OpenRaid page into the CTR website if you really wanted to but a link to the giant CTR on OpenRaid would probably be just as easy.

I didn't ask OpenRaid support, but I'm guessing that pulling a listing of guild events from the calendar is just a script to produce something like what they have on http://openraid.us/events

Backup Info:
- Creating/Editing/Managing Events -

phpBB [video]

- Getting started with OpenRaid -

phpBB [video]

- How to use the OpenRaid Addon -
http://openraid.org/addonhowto.pdf

[Weru]

Oh, and I think the OpenRaid name should be CTR Titan.

I was thinking.. dangerous I know.. that with OpenRaid, the guild raid teams could also list their regular raids as well. I know this sounds counter intuitive but you can post it as a guild event, private, and in the comments list it as a regular team but allow people to sign up as reserve people. This could be rather helpful as then the raid teams would show up on the weekly calendar as well as making it easy for players and teams to find fills for players that can't make a raid due to RL.

It could help with the raid team calendar, the event calendar, and for guildies to have a guild only LFR tool.