Suggestions and Feedback

[Wornag (Kronnor)]

I have to agree with Sadok on this one. The new ranking concept is suitable for a high population guild, but for ours is just useless. Most of the ranks and specialisations probably won't even be used since I do not think we even have so many active members lately.
Also, people will now start to take part in events just so they can grind a currency to advance to a higher rank. This feels like grinding rep in the game just so we can buy new stuff from a certain faction. The old system was good as it was... If something is not broken why change it?
But the quest board is very good for adding rp between events and campaigns.

[Rhonya]

Also, people will now start to take part in events just so they can grind a currency to advance to a higher rank. This feels like grinding rep in the game just so we can buy new stuff from a certain faction. The old system was good as it was... If something is not broken why change it?
But the quest board is very good for adding rp between events and campaigns.

I'd like to shortly reply on this part.
That's the entire idea of the fangs. I have not been part of thinking up this system, but I am of opinion it's a great idea. We've had issues a lot with people trying to make events, but no one would show up unless they were lead by an officer. People (beside officers) eventually just stopped making events of their own, which was a sad thing, because not everything should be spoonfed by the officer team.
If people come to RP more now because they get a reward, it generates more RP, people want to lead events, because people now -do- show up because they're rewarded.
So that's only a win-win situation. You can't -grind- them, because you have to put effort into them, and RP through them, or create RP for it. So all you do is create more RP, which in turn means more people show up, which means people will want to join, because we have so much going on.

[Mozrogg]

I think people are getting too hung up on the whole fangs and specialisation and titles and what-not, that is simply a little incentive for people to actually RP without their hands being held by an officer. In an ideal world people would be RPing 24/7 and no incentive would be required, but that isn't the world we live in. In my eyes, the whole idea of this concept is to simply generate more RP outside of the tues/thurs/sun rotation of events, which is a great idea in my eyes, and if it gives you something to aim for ICly well, I'm all for it. Humans are material creatures by nature. GIVE ME ALL THE FANGS.

[Kozgugore]

Long-ass text, but I'm left with no other choice here, it seems!

I will however make a suggestion, one for vigilance. My maths has never been perfect, but I do like to think ahead when I plan things... I'm not sure how often these fangs will be handed out or by whom and how... But I have this feeling that the middle ranks may very quickly become 'bloated', (bloated may be a poor word to describe this, but i'll run with it). By bloated, I mean those making events may not progress as quickly/suitably as those attending while those they give fangs to may quicly catch them up. I don't know, maybe thats why you need so many to progress? I could just be waffling, but as Koz said previously its a beta stage thing, and I -do- like the look of it, very much. It has awesome potential.

I'm not certain whether I completely understand what you're trying to describe, but as for having a lot of people "stuck" on the Proven rank: That's not necessarily a bad thing. The Proven are -supposed- to make out the bulk of the Paths, after all. Though advancement both beyond that and even beyond Oathbound is, in the end, completely optional. No one -has- to force himself to collect enough Fangs to advance to the next rank. They can only do so if they feel enthused enough to actually make an effort for that, but by no means will they miss out on anything IC or OOC by not doing so.


And as for Sadok's post: From the text you quoted from the Skype conversation we had a while back, there are a few lines that actually put emphasis on exactly what it is that we're trying to achieve here:

The guild is a tribe, of course, and a nomadic tribe is basically a mobile village, and a village is a self-sustaining society with different roles that benefit the community â€" hunters, craftsmen, mystics and elders. Yank the focus back towards that and as long as you provide some cool events, the rest takes care of itself.

New Bloods learning from their tutors, Gosh’kar/Thur’ruk telling tales and performing everyday rituals, Nag’Ogar/Rrosh-tul hunting and crafting armor/weapons, Gul’thauk/Varog’Gor policing the tribe and taking care of threats inside and outside, and the Chieftain at the head of the whole society as its figurehead and leader.

Just need to give people a reason to care and invest themselves, ICly and OOCly. What they do should feel like it matters -- while something may be called a rank, a helpful way to look at it is a 'job'. Give everyone a job and some theoretical and practical thing to do in between events, and it starts to feel like an IC community.

To use the Path of Strength as an example, since a common refrain in the past has been that they have nothing to do outside of battle: any tribal society’s fighting force are warriors during war and hunters during peace â€" ergo they should be in charge of feeding, clothing, arming and supplying the tribe. That’s basically the easiest RP there is, because everyone needs to eat, wear things, wield weapons and use things.

The other two paths have even more obvious and applicable non-combat roles. The Path of Cunning are basically scouts, spies and police. You could give them a diplomacy role too, as double-agents gathering intelligence. The Path of Wisdom are your priests, scholars and lorekeepers.

Above all, I think the guild just needs to remember its concept and bring that to life in as full and immersive a way as possible. A successful, practical concept is a self-sustaining entity. If you make people feel like something interesting and fun is happening, they will log on and they will participate.

These few snippets each resemble some of the thoughts that went into this new prestige rank system (which I also explained to you in quite some detail in that same Skype chat, which you didn't seem as overwhelmingly opposed to at the time). The guild will be, indeed, like a self-sustaining society with different roles in the community. This is done, more so than before, by giving people a chance to throw up notices on the notice board to ask for help or to try and get people to do something they need. This is also done by allowing people to choose a Specialization, which signifies to all the other members that member X is a [profession] and can seek out that exact orc in times of need. Everyone has a role that they can play out, given the right circumstances. Ideally, everyone has a place and a particular role of importance.

By ensuring everyone's appointed to a specific Path, the increased number of orcs belonging to each of them should allow for more Path-specific events and, as we've taken to calling it, "flavour" for each path such as war bands and shaman meetings or specific Path-related events. I'll add to that that I'm very much aware that there's a chance we might not end up having enough people in each path to commit to Path-specific events regardless, and that would be a shame. But we won't know until we actually do try to streamline the process and make it a simple case of trial and error. If it fails, there's nothing stopping us from ironing things out even more or, if need be, revert to the previous rank system.

At present, this has been changed to a trial rank, three junior ranks with five strata of sub-ranks each with three unique names (fifteen total, plus the generalised form, for twenty new sub-ranks), the lower sub-ranks not strictly considered officially part of said junior rank, and the penultimate highest junior sub-ranks having their own sub-sub-rank of champion, with forty-three separate but multi-choice sub-sub-sub-ranks, which are all nominally voluntary but encouraged, along with two separate currency grinds with exchange rates!

Which means that the tribe’s structure has went from six distinct concepts along three paths to sixty-six separate concepts. I fail to see how we can ever meaningfully depict this with a guild whose active membership rarely exceeds twenty online players even during good times â€" and indeed, the last time the officer-team spoke on rank reform, it was to reduce the number of ranks, rather than increase them by a factor of ten.

I don’t want to be funny, but I’m a reasonably intelligent person. I’m not a genius, and my memory’s not great, but I consider myself at least average. I’ve been a strong believer in keeping things neat and simple. How do you possibly expect people to remember all of this without constant reference to various explanatory threads? Tribal societies were formed of large overlapping professional bounds, such as ‘the hunters/warriors’, or ‘the wisemen’. I’m afraid that the new structure is grossly inefficient, and certainly a case of less equalling more.

I'll start off by saying that it feels like you seem to be needlessly complicating things with your explanation here just to try and prove your point since at the core of it all, it honestly isn't all that complicated. Whether something is complicated or not is probably a subjective matter, but I get the feeling that the main problem here is that these are too many ranks -in a single change-, rather than altogether. I won't deny that there's some truth in that. There are, indeed, a great many changes when one looks only at the number of ranks that have been added. However, bear in mind that someone won't have to learn each and every rank from the top of his head. Someone entering the Path of Strength has little reason to be forced to know every single tier of the Path of Wisdom, and vice versa. I -will- say that having so many rank names is not ideal, but was chosen in order to give each individual Path its own separate identity. As mentioned before however, this is still a system we're very much experimenting with. Be it in the ranks, the amount of fangs required or the rewards. Plenty of things may still be subject to change, which is why feedback is not a bad thing either (so long as it's done so without any manner of needless passive-aggressiveness).

In that same Skype chat that you mentioned, you quoted some of your own pieces from, you also said this:

I guess a helpful way of thinking about it is thinking about what you would do if OotRB was a new guild you were launching, instead of something that's been going along for a decade. Focus on what you think the guild should be, then think about how to make that a reality.

If I were to make a new tribal guild right now, these would be some of the things I would implement. A self-sufficient means for player interactions (the notice board) and a rank system that allows people to keep on longing for more and gives incentive to RP (prestige ranks). The main point to note about the latter is that one isn't -required- to climb it if they don't want to. They can just keep on sitting on the Oathbound rank is that so suits their needs. But through regular bits of RP, it should be easy enough to gather up a few Fangs and to, eventually, climb up nonetheless. I believe you referred to this kind of concept as "cynically manipulating the typical WoW player's insatiable need to acquire pixels and empty titles in a desperate search for any kind of self-worth" in the Last Post thread yourself. And that's what it is in the end. Only in this case, it ultimately serves the purpose of feeding random RP (and therefore, fun) to people who choose to participate in that.

Furthermore, it’s natural that when coming up with over fifty new names, they’re not going to all be original or distinct. Yet there’s no obvious logical flow in particular between the various sub-rank and sub-sub-rank names. For instance:
- Why is a seer a rank rather than a specialisation, given that it specifically refers to someone with supernatural talent for augury, not someone who grinded 40 of a currency?
- Ditto for keeper and caller, which are not ranks but distinct talents. Why is a keeper above a caller? Why is a keeper below a seer? They could realistically come in any order and make the same amount of sense.
- Shadow and Reaver are even worse, because of their sheer generic nature.

The very first place to cut out the bloat would be here, given the purely arbitrary nature of many of these labels, and the fact that they seemingly overwrite the genericised sub-ranks of Oathbound, Seeker, Proven and Chosen, which don’t seem to have any particular descriptive use and could just as easily be filled with numbers one through four.

This is a question that could be asked for pretty much -any- (RP) guild out there. Why do they have the naming structure that they have? Why does "Legionnaire" come before "Veteran" in some guilds, even though the one might just as easily imply the other in a historical sense? Because you need to build structure somehow. And you sure can create structure by naming a rank "Number 1", "Number 2", "Number 3" and so on, but that's hardly going to create any immersion. Having said that though, there -has- been thought put into the order of the current rank structure and if one would ask, it can easily be explained why the one comes before the other.
Anyone that does have ideas for better names is quite welcome to come up with them. Once again, the system is a WIP. If enough people are in favour of it, we can just as well drop the sub-ranks and stick to only the normal ranks (Proven, Chosen, etc.). However, as I pointed out, the sub-ranks have at present been chosen to be included so that they would give each individual Path an identity; a structure of their own. That's exactly what I would have done, had I wanted to create a new guild. Certainly not when it would be a small guild due to a lack of people, but I would in this particular case because I believe this guild has the potential to have enough people to accommodate multiple ranks by now. Even if it's just for the sake of encouraging people to keep climbing that ladder.

In addition, this new structure is ostensibly designed to increase initiative, but in multiple regards, it only restricts opportunity until you’ve grinded enough currency. Some questions:
1- Why do you have to grind 60 Fangs (or complete on average 30 missions!) before you can lead a warband, if the goal is to enable more people to use their initiative?
2- Why does the Alpha, the right-hand of an Elder, need his own right-hand of a Champion? And what do they even do in any meaningful sense, in a guild with 20 people in it at the best of times?
3- Why do you have to ‘earn’ a member spotlight? Why not take a moment to highlight a newer member making a splash, or otherwise ask people to volunteer instead of locking it behind a 40-fang grind?

1. Warbands are not to be mistaken with one's ability to organize any kind of random hunt. Warbands have been a concept we've been playing around with a long, long time, which I still believe would be an excellent addition to the aforementioned "flavour" that each Path could sincerely use. Warbands have a use of their own when it comes to this kind of flavour RP - one that can only be realized once enough people have been added to the Path of Strength, so until that time, it's not really something one will have to worry about to begin with. In due time, we'll hopefully be able to realize the warbands plan (along with the other rewards mentioned for Alphas). Suffice to say though, it's - once again - a simple addition that should encourage tribal flavour RP. Moreover however, you seem to imply that people aren't allowed or able to have any initiative before they would earn this rank. On the contrary: People are showing initiative - and creating RP for others and themselves - by working towards that rank. The created RP is the main reward one should reap here - not the Alpha privileges which are primarily there for flavour and E-peen.
2. I'm not sure where you got this idea from, but the Alpha does not have a right hand in the Chosen rank. The Alpha is the only right hand here.
3. Because from the very start, the member highlight was made up to give extra attention to members who deserve a little bit of extra recognition for their efforts done in the tribe.

I’m afraid

I don't mean to take the words out of your mouth, but I think this is where the core of the problem might lie. The impression that I'm getting is that you've become afraid of change - be it in the tribe's structure or otherwise. Now as I said before, I realize full well that these changes are indeed a lot to swallow at once. I completely agree with you in that. We originally hadn't even intended on changing the in-game ranks to the new ones right away, just to experiment around with it first. But in the end, going all-out seemed the better option to at least make sure that everything would be made as clear as possible in the end, rather than having some vague ranks floating around in the old rank structure. That might make things a bit challenging right now, but as soon as everyone -has- gotten used to things, it should hopefully make things a lot smoother. As for newcomers who are just getting acquainted with the system? You earn your New Blood Marks, you choose your Path, and then you earn Fangs through random RP for special rewards within that Path if you have any interest in climbing the rank ladder. It's as simple as that. One isn't going to be forced to advance or forced to choose a specialization if they don't care for it or forced to care about earning Fangs at all.

Yes, the amount of new titles can be a bit overwhelming. Once again, that's something I certainly will agree with you and I'm open for suggestions otherwise or, if a majority prefers it, to remove the individual Path's sub-ranks at the price of the aforementioned Path-flavour I mentioned. But other than that point, I can't really say anything other than the fact that I believe this is a change we needed to make. The truth is that we -do- need to shake things up a bit. Not only to continue innovating and to ensure we don't keep standing still in our own progression as a guild, but also because barely two weeks ago, there were hardly any people online whatsoever. Compared to zero people online two weeks ago, we've had several people online today before it was even "event prime time". I'm not saying that has something to do with these rank changes alone, because we've had a few people returning to the game in the meantime as well, but the long term will simply have to prove whether or not the prestige rank system has a positive influence on member attendance and initiative. So far, I see plenty of increased activity rather than a decrease due to anyone being particularly confused. Perhaps it's just a spur of the moment and things will die down, but this is not something we'll ever find out if we just keep on speculating and hoping that random RP will -somehow- come back by itself.

To conclude, one thing I have to point out is that you used the word "grind" six times (one of which from the copied Skype log, but with the same intent) in your post. I personally believe "grind" is an incorrect word to use in this entire system, however. Yes, you grind for them in the sense that you gather X amount of nonexistent pixel items, but I feel "grind" is used in the negative context of the word here. You do not earn Fangs by doing something repetitive and boring like one would do in the general context of MMO "grinding". You earn these Fangs, without any further obligation, by creating and participating in RP; Pro-active RP that's made outside of events, which is something I feel is safe to say we've been in dire need of. So to use the word "grind" in the sense that you do, would do a disservice to what the entire point of the system is supposed to be.
Another thing to bear in mind lies in the very name of the system: These are Prestige ranks. You don't earn anything by them other than prestige. It's not about what someone does or doesn't deserve or can't do: It's about what you're obliged enough to do in order to create or participate in random RP and whether the incentive thereof is enough for you to participate in that. If not, fair game. One can just as well not pay any attention to the prestige ranks whatsoever and still keep on doing their own, personal thing in the tribe without having to learn a whole new dictionary of ranks.

[Kozgugore]

And yes, I know that post is far too long. What can I say, I like to torture my fingers.

[Sadok]

Firstly, I’d like to note that I don’t mean to cause offence, and there’s no passive-aggressiveness intended. You’ve asked for feedback, and this is my feedback â€" as I noted before, I would love to be proven correct, frankly. If a bunch of changes are made, they may as well be positive changes.

These few snippets each resemble some of the thoughts that went into this new prestige rank system (which I also explained to you in quite some detail in that same Skype chat, which you didn't seem as overwhelmingly opposed to at the time).

That would be specifically because the scope of just how much was being added was unclear. At the time we spoke, you were proposing a three-tier prestige system, of which one would be Oathbound and the final would be Alpha (both of which already existed to a degree).

To be honest, I was just glad you were excited about an initiative, because without breaking officer kayfabe, I had been worried about your disengagement for a while. But given that my objections largely centre around less being more, it’s natural that I’d become more opposed to an idea when you add more stuff from the last discussion.

I'll start off by saying that it feels like you seem to be needlessly complicating things with your explanation here just to try and prove your point since at the core of it all, it honestly isn't all that complicated. Whether something is complicated or not is probably a subjective matter, but I get the feeling that the main problem here is that these are too many ranks -in a single change-, rather than altogether.

Needlessly complicating things? Not any more than is already apparent in the new structure, to be honest. Sixty-six is a larger number than six, in terms of delineating the Path structure. If you must retain things the way they are now, I feel like the path-specific sub-ranks are simply unhelpful and confusing â€" in the quest for giving each path its own identity, the tribe as an entity becomes significantly more complex and muddled.

There are, indeed, a great many changes when one looks only at the number of ranks that have been added. However, bear in mind that someone won't have to learn each and every rank from the top of his head. Someone entering the Path of Strength has little reason to be forced to know every single tier of the Path of Wisdom, and vice versa.

This, for instance, is not a selling point. Graduating from a structure everybody understood in full, to one so complicated that members of one part of the tribe can simply shrug at the complexity, because they probably don’t need to know anyway, is not an upgrade by any sense of the word. Especially from an IC standpoint of being able to easily identify a chain of command in the field of battle or other conflicts.

If I were to make a new tribal guild right now, these would be some of the things I would implement. A self-sufficient means for player interactions (the notice board) and a rank system that allows people to keep on longing for more and gives incentive to RP (prestige ranks). The main point to note about the latter is that one isn't -required- to climb it if they don't want to.

This could naturally be said for the last rank structure, so it doesn’t have any specific bearing, positive or negative.

This is a question that could be asked for pretty much -any- (RP) guild out there. Why do they have the naming structure that they have? Why does "Legionnaire" come before "Veteran" in some guilds, even though the one might just as easily imply the other in a historical sense? Because you need to build structure somehow.

We RP within the setting, and either in Azeroth or in the real world, certain ranks and words accrue meaning with time and internal logic, or slowly become detached from their original meaning yet retain usage. The latter was the in-universe explanation for the original archaic orcish ranks, such as Nag’Ogar or Varog’Gor, which were spiritual successors to former Clan Redblade ranks that more literally reflected their meaning.

Of course, that was all player-made lore used by Akesha and others to justify certain changes within the framework of the guild’s mythological backstory. Is it truly so unreasonable to want similar attention to detail and in-universe logic with any new ranks, rather than just saying “why not?” and pointing to the often inane rank-structures of other guilds.

2. I'm not sure where you got this idea from, but the Alpha does not have a right hand in the Chosen rank. The Alpha is the only right hand here.

Well, what do the Chosen do? I don’t understand. It doesn’t seem like they exist for any IC or OOC reason other than to have an additional rung of the ladder, while downgrading the Alpha competition notion down one rung.

barely two weeks ago, there were hardly any people online whatsoever. Compared to zero people online two weeks ago, we've had several people online today before it was even "event prime time”.

It’s difficult to credit a certain change for increasing activity even before said change was announced. Activity fluctuates up and down, and for a range of reasons, including event quality, plot relevance, seasonal variances, and in particular officer activity, which has most certainly picked up the last fortnight in spirit. There are ways to kick things into gear without restructuring everything, and indeed I welcome the Notice Board concept as a method for generating RP. I simply dislike the accompanying wholesale rank changes.

I don't mean to take the words out of your mouth, but I think this is where the core of the problem might lie. The impression that I'm getting is that you've become afraid of change - be it in the tribe's structure or otherwise.

I don’t want to be funny, but mischaracterising me as being afraid of change? The officer forum is littered with my various brainstorms for new rank structures, and I specifically proposed many of the recent-ish rank changes such as Gul’thauk, Alpha and Marks of the Red Blade.

The only difference is that I didn’t press forward with a change if it wasn’t better than the existing system. Change for change’s sake, or just to “shake things up” as you said, isn’t a universal positive. Furthermore as I noted, many of these changes involved reducing ranks rather than increasing them tenfold â€" so is it truly shocking to imagine I might disagree?

I understand that this is your baby, and you wouldn’t have implemented it if you didn’t believe in it, but please, to characterise anyone against one or more elements of a whole raft of announcements as being ‘afraid of change’ is simply an unfair and reductive way of looking at things.

[Rhonya]

Needlessly complicating things? Not any more than is already apparent in the new structure, to be honest. Sixty-six is a larger number than six, in terms of delineating the Path structure. If you must retain things the way they are now, I feel like the path-specific sub-ranks are simply unhelpful and confusing â€" in the quest for giving each path its own identity, the tribe as an entity becomes significantly more complex and muddled.

Just want to note again, even though I also did on skype already..

There are -no- 66 ranks. Specialisations have absolutely nothing, and then I mean nothing, to do with ranks. They're for flavour. -Extra-. On the sideline. Something as ideas for people to work towards. No ranks. No nothing to do with ranks. So the only new ones are the '3' total other ones and a few sub ranks that are only important once you're on the path itself to know to point out which path you're on and giving that something special. It's really not that hard.
So far I've only heard people how positive they were after reading things through and actually coming on a few missions so far which people are happily posting up and coming to, they're getting along well with the new system so far Perhaps here and there will need to be pointed out about the ranks or things, but that would've happened with smaller changes to.

So I got no complaints so far, give it a few weeks for people to get used to it and learn the ropes and pass it onto new people, and we'll be perfectly fine.

[Revax]

Just like to point out that I, as a person who gets easily gets confused by things, have not gotten confused by the new rank stuff.

[Rashka]

So without reading any of the above, I just wanna give my five cents. I LOVE the new idea of this ranking system. To me it seems very motivating. \o/

[Kozgugore]

I certainly don't blame anyone else for just skimming over these little walls of texts. For me personally, this will certainly be the last bit I'll be saying about this particular part of the discussion because I don't believe we'll get any further at this stage right now. I've reached the point that I've had to sit down and try to pose a decent enough response over the course of three hours, so I'm going to try and keep this however short I can.

That would be specifically because the scope of just how much was being added was unclear. At the time we spoke, you were proposing a three-tier prestige system, of which one would be Oathbound and the final would be Alpha (both of which already existed to a degree).

Nowhere did I mention there were only three ranks. In fact, I used the word "progression tree", which already implies a wider progression than that. Nothing has been added any more but the exact names of each individual rank of the basic structure that I laid out at the time. Granted, they -are- a lot if you count every single sub-rank in the paths, but it's impossible to add a bit of complexity without doing just that. And personally, I do not mind the slightest bit of complexity as opposed to the simplicity that you promote, so I guess that's simply a matter of opposing ideals.

Needlessly complicating things? Not any more than is already apparent in the new structure, to be honest. Sixty-six is a larger number than six, in terms of delineating the Path structure. If you must retain things the way they are now, I feel like the path-specific sub-ranks are simply unhelpful and confusing â€" in the quest for giving each path its own identity, the tribe as an entity becomes significantly more complex and muddled.

I have no idea where you pull the 66 number from, but even if you count the individual Path and Elder names into the equation, you'll find no more than 25 rank names on the new chart that's been laid out. Specializations, as mentioned before, serve no purpose in the hierarchy of ranks other than the kind of flavour that individuals themselves could just as easily have put in their own MRP/TRP description far before this system was introduced (and which some actually already did. Marnosh for example already titled himself a Gladiator). So yes, I do think you are needlessly complicating things.

This, for instance, is not a selling point. Graduating from a structure everybody understood in full, to one so complicated that members of one part of the tribe can simply shrug at the complexity, because they probably don’t need to know anyway, is not an upgrade by any sense of the word. Especially from an IC standpoint of being able to easily identify a chain of command in the field of battle or other conflicts.

It's not meant to be a selling point for that matter. You're simply not going to be forced anywhere along the line to learn every single rank from the top of your head. The Oathbound to Alpha rank, sure. Those would be useful to know. But they're five rank titles in total which have a clear enough hierarchy if one looks into the meaning of the names. Once more, I won't be opposed to removing the sub-ranks if enough people do agree to that - it was one of the things I was less certain about myself from the get-go - but I feel it's best to set up a poll for that to make every voice count rather than now, when people are more likely to skim over these walls of texts anyway.

Having said that, wasn't the whole point of the tribe not being purely militaristic one of the major problems you tried to point out in your previous post? With the sub-ranks, you'll have a structure that deviates from the usual military-oriented rank names by offering a deviation from the Path of Strength names, which can still be used for military situations. For a guild that's always tried to strive to radiate some manner of village or tribal RP, it's always been quite the challenge to come up with names or ranks that aren't purely military-oriented. Had I considered it a possibility, I would have gladly even gone as far as to include a "civil" path to go alongside the other three as well (which is sadly not an option due to obvious reasons).

This could naturally be said for the last rank structure, so it doesn’t have any specific bearing, positive or negative.

Yet the obvious flaw with the previous rank structure, as has been shown over the past eight years that the system was active, is that no one had any incentive whatsoever to climb that ladder. So I personally believe there certainly is a more positive bearing and addition to the new system.

Is it truly so unreasonable to want similar attention to detail and in-universe logic with any new ranks, rather than just saying “why not?” and pointing to the often inane rank-structures of other guilds.

It certainly isn't, but I feel it's unwise to create archetypes and rank names with flavour as intricate as the likes of Nag'Ogar or Gosh'kar in simple sub-ranks. In these cases, I do feel a bit of simplicity is more warranted, as to prevent people from having to learn another set of unintelligible, self-made orc names. For example, one of the options was to use existing orc army names for the Nag'Ogar path, but was opted not to be used in order to avoid a connection with the official Horde army. We've simply gone with the best options that we could think up within the officer team, and that's the only and simplest explanation that I can offer at this point, without going balls deep into the details that went behind the making of every single rank name.

Well, what do the Chosen do? I don’t understand. It doesn’t seem like they exist for any IC or OOC reason other than to have an additional rung of the ladder, while downgrading the Alpha competition notion down one rung.

The same reason the others exist. That ladder is exactly -why- they exist. To have another prestige rank to strive to and to create the friendly competition that the concept of the Chosen Champion represents, instead of what the Alpha rank used to have but barely got executed because it had to be set up by officers first-hand. It was Makaroth who came up with the Chosen Champion idea and I thought it was an absolutely brilliant addition that could present immensely entertaining RP. How that turns out remains to be seen when we actually have some Chosen to choose from, but that's all just a matter of time while the system is getting its bearing.

It’s difficult to credit a certain change for increasing activity even before said change was announced. Activity fluctuates up and down, and for a range of reasons, including event quality, plot relevance, seasonal variances, and in particular officer activity, which has most certainly picked up the last fortnight in spirit. There are ways to kick things into gear without restructuring everything,

And yet I feel it was high time we did have some restructuring, because like I said, the previous rank system did not provide the intricacies that the tribe needed in a rank system in order to promote random RP. The lack thereof has been an issue for a very, very long time, as you well know. The notice board concept has come up as an idea before but found little leverage when it was first introduced. After some considerations, I considered prestige ranks the best, and in the end the only, solution to getting it to work properly. And as I said, I'm not crediting the change in activity to these changes right away. However, we've already had several undertakings and initiative that would not have been done otherwise - had the orcs no incentive or reason to even set a foot outside of the Crossroads.

I don’t want to be funny, but mischaracterising me as being afraid of change? The officer forum is littered with my various brainstorms for new rank structures, and I specifically proposed many of the recent-ish rank changes such as Gul’thauk, Alpha and Marks of the Red Blade.

While I would want to argue that some of the concepts you mentioned come from a collective of different officers' insights, the main difference to bear in mind is that these changes weren't in the same spectrum or scale of what's been done this time around and weren't -meant- to have as much of an impact at the time. I don't doubt that such a large scale change as this one can be frightening or intimidating to some, and I won't blame anyone for thinking so. All I've asked for thus far, is that it's given a chance to develop itself and to see where the chips will eventually fall.

The only difference is that I didn’t press forward with a change if it wasn’t better than the existing system. Change for change’s sake, or just to “shake things up” as you said, isn’t a universal positive. Furthermore as I noted, many of these changes involved reducing ranks rather than increasing them tenfold â€" so is it truly shocking to imagine I might disagree?

Once again, this was not a change merely for change's sake. Those are your words. It was clear to me that change was needed when those few weeks back, there was barely anyone online and something -clearly- had to be done for the long-term future of the guild. At this point, I don't see any reason to go back to the previous structure or a smaller structure because the entire point of the prestige system is to have -more- ranks rather than less. Keeping the concept vague without any tangible ranks to show for it, would most certainly not work out.

As mentioned before, I would at the very least be willing to see whether a majority of people would agree with things being any better if the sub-ranks of each Path were to disappear. In the end, they're just there for flavour anyway. I actually think it'll be more of a matter of whether people will actually choose to use the sub-rank names in practice, in-game, rather than the overarching rank names instead (Oathbound to Alpha). If there turns out to be a tendency to use the latter altogether anyway, I would most certainly not be opposed to removing them either.


Still not a very short response by any means, but I hope that at least clears up just a few things along the way. TL;DR, I'm not opposed to leaving the sub-ranks out if enough people believe that's the better course of action and I might see about a way to set up a poll for it, if in-game results don't already prove otherwise.

[Groshnok]

Gonna agree with Koz' point about activity there. In my opinion this expansion itself presented a hard task of RPing in (we were stranded in Draenor for months, hopping from place to place as raiders eventually got stale but there wasn't exactly room to do any other type of plot). I myself had to take a three month break because of how bored I was getting with RP. However this new system gives the opportunity for some interesting RP on days where we don't have any events, and is a pretty motivating factor to come online. My only hope is people do keep posting events to the notice board, I myself will try to create some. To me they're like side quests to the main plot of whatever the event chain we're doing is, they fill up time and also can allow for more character growth.

[Claws]

To much for my old brain and eyes.
Total lost after 2-3 pargraph  

Koz and Sadok fingers must be just little stumps now. 

[Rashka]

I have a suggestion for the notice board quests. How about, every 1 or 2 week, an officer can put up a special quest of sort, that has a deadline, and must be completed with atleast 4-5 other people? Sort of like a mini raid, or similiar, that could be a bit harder than the other ones, and award maybe 3 fangs? Just an idea :3

[Srelok]

I was actually thinking of a few like that, yes

[Okiba]

Thats quite a clever idea. a good calendar filler for a wednesday, or monday when officers have their meeting.