Wednesday, August 29, 2007


Turmoil, ladies and gentlemen. My once peaceful World of Warcraft guild has been going through a . . . transitional phase.
There are about seven players in it. Over half of those have characters approaching end-game content. The problem is that all of the awesome end-game content is set for 5, 10, or 25 character raids.
We can do the 5 character stuff no problem. The stuff we can do with 5 people is like . . . I don't know . . . half as awesome as the 10 person stuff. I won't even do the "awesome deficit calculations" on the difference between the 5 person and 25 person stuff.
In short, I've been asked to recruit new players into our once tranquil guild. The Innkeepers (known realm-wide for smart assed comments in and out of guild chat) need to open our previously firmly sealed gates to admit an unwashed mass of strangers.
No more will we be able to speak at length in guild chat about Flash Gordon without fear of someone not being old enough to know who that is.
One simple "Guns and Roses is my favorite old-time band" could send our core members into one of two states -- Either they will curl into the fetal position and harden up before needing to be placed in some kind of state home, or they will unleash a great chat-based backlash against the younger member which could leave the little fellow's monitor smoking with seared-in, old-guy, get-the-hell-off-my-lawn text no Yu-Gi-Oh screensaver can ever heal.
The important part is this:
"Innkeepers", while funny, is not a name that brings in people. If we are going to make an active effort to expand our ranks, we need a name that gamer nerds will identify with and want to join.
The name must be, for a time, more awesome than our seven members can really justify in order to bring in high-level strangers from across the Intertubes to play with us.
Members were assigned specific tasks last night. Some are researching various raids and instances which we plan to eventually pwn. Some are casually inquiring about possibly disgruntled members of other guilds in shady, back alley deals where gold may change hands in exchange for insider information. "Ultramoo the Warrior has a potion problem, eh?"
One user is developing our new guild website complete with raid schedule and member email accounts.
I've been tasked with finding us another name.
A more uber name.
A name to strike fear into the hearts of n00bz.
I got nothing.

3 comments:

tess said...

My current (active that is) guild name wouldn't help you much...

I seem to not really be a good "guild name thinker upper"... Although, my first guild "Is Short" (for gnomes and dwarves) was quite amusing. My second guild "Arboreal Doom" was sadly not appreciated by anyone other than the BF and myself.

However, SBTALOL is slowly building it's own small following, despite the fact that only the BF and myself are lvl 70 yet...

Guild drama is rather lame. Don't let yourselves get stuck in the DKP lifestyle.

Garrick said...

Server Busy Try Again LOL?

I love that!

tess said...

Yep yep, you got it right! =)

It's because those of us who founded the guild all got to know each other on the WoW customer service forums (where the sbtalol term was coined).

Only one person in-game has figured out what it meant so far... Oh well =(