A New Dawn: Discussion

[Sadok]

...you should just post it on the defiasRP forum.

Really. It would shut them all up, as they need to be.

I can't help but agree with it all though.

I'm not really interested in either an act of reciprocal sabotage or even about 'saving' DB, whatever the end result would be. I'm just content to clear the record with our own members and let them come to their own conclusions.

It'd be easy to go public and start a shitstorm, but that's not really my style, and it's not helpful in our early days on AD to gain a reputation for being involved in high-drama either.

So I would appreciate just discussing it here.

[Rashka]

*Picks out whacking hammer and whacks Nograx into the dirt.* AND I USED TO LIKE THAT PIECE OF S***.. Ugh. Ergh. Sad to see them act like that. But hey. Suddenly what I thought of AD is how I think of DB! So something positive came out of it I guess. Just sad to see it end like that.

[Okiba]

Its not really suprising really, just a bunch of people clamouring to be kings of a mole hill.

Even if we don't do anything to them on DB, they should be made aware that we are aware, so to speak.

Yoda put it best...

"...This is why you fail."

[Gridish]

To be honest, this is something that has been eating at me ever since I first read the logs. I remember sitting in class while I read the logs and I was happy I wasn't near anything that could log me into WoW or I would've gone balistic on a few individuals in those logs. It just saddens me that people can be such backstabbing buttholes. I don't really have any other words for it really. I guess I just feel let down by what were supose to be some type of friendly people. It just reminds me yet again that nobody should be truly trusted.

In the end I'm glad we could get the tribe out of that toxic enviorment and I hope we'll find true allies, like the Shatterskull Marauders, on AD.

Much sad and mad.

[Groshnok]

...you should just post it on the defiasRP forum.

Really. It would shut them all up, as they need to be.

I can't help but agree with it all though.

Edit: I would also recommend those individuals have thier alts 'scoured' from our rosters, on both servers.

MFW it gets posted

[Okiba]

Would be madness, indeed.

I however deffer to Sadoks judgement. We don't need the drama from people who's opinions effectively are no longer relevant.

instead, when they inevitably come to AD. Which they will, Karma will be a bitch.

[Rhonya]

The officer team has had a lot of discussion on how to handle all the crap we were getting, but indeed, we kept it away from most of you and the outside world on purpose for exactly those reasons.
For myself, I was very upset by all this for several weeks already since we announced our move, seeing I also got a bucket of crap over me personally from some people, but it really shows how close we as an officer team -and- as a guild are that we'll just stick together and help one another.

So, suppose I'll just take this opportunity to say thank you guys, you're the best. Even those of you that didn't know, being so supportive of the move and with the donations and your generally good moods and such, that really lifted my own mood and confidence again.

Let's keep this up guys. <3

[Groshnok]

Want to make a serious reply now I've read that full chat log.

Wow. Just wow. What a load of elitism and hypocrisy. I'm surprised b some of the individuals making the comments in there too, also. Complaining about the lack of RPers then refusing to try to recruit certain RPers of the ones that stayed behind? I know many in their guilds with extremely flawed or overpowered characters, yet they think they are too good for some of our remainder?  For a group desperately trying to save RP, they're not doing a very good job there.

Trying to re invigorate RP PvP? It's a bit too late for that, isn't it lads? Who the fuck are ye going to RP PvP with? Have they not noticed Alliance is dead? It's funny that they try to flaunt this as a big feature of the realm, considering AD's Whispers of War campaign does have minor elements of RP PvP. Speaking of AD, the way they look down their noses at AD RPers was quite amusing, considering how many guilds have left this server and now make their home there. The fact that they thought ADers would be dicks for a DB advertisement on their forums was very confusing. They'd be up in arms if one started posting on the DB forums.

The blaming of things on ORB. While the splitting of Horde forces in pre WoD had both sides to blame, we have tried our best in recent months to reconnect with other guilds. But it seems as if we're thought of as nothing but insular RP snobs who ignore all others. It seems our efforts to reconnect we're all in vain, sadly. Oh well, let them all band together till one guild becomes the new blame.

I'm happy to see we've disproved their remarks on funding. Our few "best friends" are not the ones who got the money, we've made a hugely successful drive at maintaining a good core membership going into this new server and I am damn proud of this guild for achieving that. We've stood together throughout a time that can often dissolve a guild, as some in that chat thought would happen. I'm very excited for the future of Orcs of the Red Blade and cannot wait for what's in store. Hell, the fact of random RP with travelling RPers is just going to be so amazing after spending so long with only RP in a number of guilds.

I think what angered me the most about that chat log though, was the people in it who would often appear friendly, and some who even wished us well and came to the final event, who turned out to be glad to see the backs of us and spitting venom in that chat log. The elitism shown is baffling, considering the childish antics of some of those guilds members and officers. Nograx and co. turning up like some biker gang to fight Rhonya? Grogglefutz showing up at the send off to fight Rargnasha, who hasn't even been here for what, five, six months? Why even bother doing these things if you're trying to spread the message of DB being "the friendly server"?

It's very disheartening and even upsetting to see people I thought of as friends, and people I thoroughly enjoyed RPing with, so eager to spit this venom, and even with some pretend that the reason this guild is gone from the server is that we were all killed. It's horrible to have such a bitter taste in my mouth leaving the server I loved so well the last year and a half. But do you know what? Roll on AD. Leave these toxic arseholes to wallow here.

I'm sorry this turned into a rant, I didn't mean for it to be so.

[Sapphire]

I'm actually a bit surprised. I didn't thought DB's reaction would be THAT bad. I knew it was going to be bad but not this bad.

Oh well..
I'm still at your side. It will take a while before I can RP with you again (not as an orc and most likely cross faction) so, again, good decision and good luck! 

[Vezara]

Very sad that so many think so little of us, really. :/ And it's kinda wierd how they both hate us, and at the same time make such a big deal about us leaving and how it'll ruin RP for DB. xD I guess when you leave a server, that's when other guilds show their true colors. :/ I also gotta say I'm glad we proved them wrong about the funding thing, and that's really awesome!

The officer team seems to have handled this thing very well, so good work all of you.

I wanted to make a longer/better post, but Groshnok already did a good job of saying what I was thinking. xD

[Umaua]

Sounds much like religious cults, to which you join for life and if you leave, you matter no longer. All you are is a piece of ¤#&%/

[Gashuk]

Well don't get me wrong, I didn't know that this was happening to such a degree but I was aware (as I think most were), of our reputation especially since announcing our leave so I am not in the slightest surprised by the logs.

The fact remains that OotRB became an extremely secular guild, as someone who RPed for a fair while outside of the guild as I fell out of love with Gashuk as a character, I can impress that from an outsider's perspective, it can be an extremely daunting prospect to try and intergrate yourself with the Tribe without being in the Tribe.

I see this secularity in two-folds; firstly, it contributes to what the outsiders felt as our 'elitism', we're big, old and had our fingers in most pies with an overwhelming amount of characters, characters in power positions, and chances to create some really good roleplay. And we did. For ourselves.

But can I sit here and slate our officer team for providing an exceptional experience for a huge playerbase with constant events, riveting story-lines and nomadic progression that made our Tribe feel alive beyond any other guild I have ever been a part of? No.

I also refuse to acknowledge that OotRB are 'elitist' in any fashion, because a guild that would raise their own cash to suppliment those that can't afford a realm change, a guild that would accept nearly every single application made providing it's legible and has somewhat a grasp on orcish lore, a guild that would happily spend months and months teaching those who cannot RP how to RP as Newbloods - can simply not be labeled 'elitists'.

Yet the point must be addressed, the reason why our reputation went south is purely because the guild as a concept, didn't play well with others. Yet that is what we're going to have to do a hell of a lot of on Argent Dawn, we will have to deal with plenty of characters that are both alike and completely different to those that we left behind on Defias, so as self-sufficent as we have become (and I cannot applaud Sadok especially for that effort), I do think that the time has come to grow out of our own shadows and be a more social Tribe that doesn't always take the forefront of every situation.

We need to take this transfer as a fresh slate in an RP Community; the Tribe is but one Tribe, a small Tribe of Orcs from different Clans, yet on Defias, we had become more than that. We were the Rebellion Leaders, always the Warlord of -any- Campaign we either came across or forged, we were more than what we could healthily be. I hope that on Argent Dawn we can find ourselves again and hopefully escape the posionous attitudes of those we left behind.

[Lars]

On the tribe often being in a primary position in many events bit. I'll have my say!
I can't speak for anything while Rarg was in charge, or really since after I quit.

However, for a long, long time whenever there was a big event OrB tended to be one of if not the largest. The more time past the more it was like this. I remember events where Undead guilds, elven guilds, SGE and Orb came out in same numbers. Towards Cata this was not really the case. If 1/3rd to 1/2 of all people at a big event is of a single guild that guild will get infulence just because of numbers. Said influence might be undeserved. However any event that wants the group to come must somehow cater to them (or just not care if they show up or not). I can see how that makes people annoyed if they create events.
Then there is the fact that we've had orcs who when not in leadership positions organized HUUUGE events. Both Gnash and Rargnasha have done RP-PVP events for the full server where we orcs haven't always been happy with how things played out.

Often we made events because no one else did.

So on the "sitting back" part. I'm fairly sure that if there are more events to interact with our officers would gladly take some time of in the event and control making. (Even if they are the wonderful people they are and have far to many ideas for events and shit than really is healthy).

-Also, on the hub part. We never were against a hub. We've even said multiple times we'd use it when in the area. And historically we have proof of this. When crossroads was a hub, we spent more time around it. When Guldenjuju had his bar we spent more time there and lots of orcs went there every week no matter where we were camped for the fun.
We just don't want a hub because moving around and making the world feel "big" is a thing most people in the tribe find fun.

[Sadok]

The fact remains that OotRB became an extremely secular guild, as someone who RPed for a fair while outside of the guild as I fell out of love with Gashuk as a character, I can impress that from an outsider's perspective, it can be an extremely daunting prospect to try and intergrate yourself with the Tribe without being in the Tribe.

I don't personally feel like Zhakiri was ever made to feel unwelcome from an OOC standpoint, and from an IC standpoint, while my character specifically dislikes trolls (this goes back years), I can still recall him at our campfires in Frostfire and Nagrand (he was one of the trolls Sadok disliked the least). I think tension and dislike is part of RP, especially when it develops into begrudging respect or friendship. The only thing I don't personally approve of are people attacking each other wantonly, because that's more a method to forcibly drive people away than create RP.

I see this secularity in two-folds; firstly, it contributes to what the outsiders felt as our 'elitism', we're big, old and had our fingers in most pies with an overwhelming amount of characters, characters in power positions, and chances to create some really good roleplay. And we did. For ourselves.

I guess this depends on the timeframe you're talking about. Rargnasha-era OotRB was a bit of a power-trip for Rargnasha's benefit, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way -- including myself, as I stopped playing twice over that period. Ultimately the reason Rargnasha isn't around anymore is linked to that.

The Kozgugore-era tribe was a lot less hands-on in terms of leading stuff, and I like to think that since WoD hit, we've also been more flexible in that regard. We’ve been involved with most of the major stuff going on like Horde Gatherings and Kosh’harg, we've never been a million miles away from the other guilds and we've often shared camps with them -- and we specifically took the last few months to focus on our own guild plots because of how much we’d been doing with other guilds in the run up to WoD (the Tanaris, Twilight Highlands, Blasted Lands stuff).

Indeed, the Horde Gathering was specifically redrafted by ourselves (and approved of by the others) to remove any leadership role, as it had become too bloated and egocentric for its own good. We invited BWC to plan a cooperative Kosh'harg, but Grim wasn't interested. We invited everyone to Kosh'harg and only BWC and trolls turned up. And I'd been trying to test the waters for a cooperative RP-PvP campaign in 6.2 with no leaders, but that was doomed to fail. Sadok "ran" the Arcane Conclave, but anyone who attended one of those events can attest that it was a facilitating position rather than a leadership position, and almost certainly not done for my own benefit (I hated organising those things).

I think inevitably, there are always going to be some people who are unhappy no matter what we do. Given that some of the negative feedback was that we were too involved and domineering, others were that we’d already abandoned the community. I suppose what they have in mind is that we just freeload of other GMs’ events, but the sad fact is that those people haven’t exactly been reliable themselves.

More recently, the officer team only heard about Exi’s RP-PvP events whenever they were already going, I was around for one of Baji’s social Saturdays and not a single Falling Leaf was online, we held that night with Ashal Anore and only 3 showed up. The Shattrath stuff was done without our involvement, and we've been completely left out of the loop of the recent Orgrimmar stuff (although the AD move could excuse that).

I don’t think it’s a sin that we’ve prioritised our own members over some sense of ‘the community’, when the whole concept of our guild is a nomadic tribal community. Our guild's concept shouldn't warp to the demands of others, just as SGE shouldn't leave Stranglethorn or the elves retreat from Silvermoon because some other guilds want them to. I'm an officer of Orcs of the Red Blade, not an officer of Defias Brotherhood EU. And nor do I think it's a sin to provide a consistent batch of good events over a handful of strange, unpredictable and hamfisted cross-guild initiatives that end up falling apart half of the time.

It is arguably a true criticism that under Rargnasha, he wielded too much power. Maybe some of that residual stink still clings to us. But all of our actions before and since then have been specifically aimed at redressing that, and I don't think it's necessarily fair to equate things in the past six months with things a year or two years back, because they were two completely different ways to run OotRB.

Yet the point must be addressed, the reason why our reputation went south is purely because the guild as a concept, didn't play well with others. Yet that is what we're going to have to do a hell of a lot of on Argent Dawn, we will have to deal with plenty of characters that are both alike and completely different to those that we left behind on Defias, so as self-sufficent as we have become (and I cannot applaud Sadok especially for that effort), I do think that the time has come to grow out of our own shadows and be a more social Tribe that doesn't always take the forefront of every situation.

We need to take this transfer as a fresh slate in an RP Community; the Tribe is but one Tribe, a small Tribe of Orcs from different Clans, yet on Defias, we had become more than that. We were the Rebellion Leaders, always the Warlord of -any- Campaign we either came across or forged, we were more than what we could healthily be. I hope that on Argent Dawn we can find ourselves again and hopefully escape the posionous attitudes of those we left behind.

I think this is a valid point, yes. The Red Blade tribe was always supposed to be a small, relatively unimportant group amongst the Horde. We're not supposed to be the big fish in the small pond, even if that's what we were OOCly. The dictates of our relative size in comparison to a shrinking RP population, and the tendency for us to be the ones organising or involved in a lot of cross-realm initiatives skewed our importance in a relative sense, and AD will hopefully put that part of our concept right.

Believe me, I'm looking forward to AD Horde being large and varied enough to where there's not this massive pressure on us to deliver things for 'the community', and we can kick back and play a hands-off role. As someone that's been in an officer role in OotRB for over three years on and off, I actually hate making events and organising these huge initiatives myself. I don't do it for an ego-boost, I do it because it generates RP for others and gives them enjoyment. So being able to make fewer events and letting others do more is gonna make my own life significantly easier.

So viva AD, I'm looking forward to making some new friends.

[Gashuk]

I will only address one point in that post because I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of it; perhaps in my own lacking gametime I've missed some of the strong efforts to redress the reputation of the Tribe and I concur that it is not a fair representation of us, just that it is the representation of us. Viva la Argent Dawn, I hope that it does allow us to repropose ourselves as a small nomadic Tribe and allow you guys to have some hands-off time.

Yet;

I don't personally feel like Zhakiri was ever made to feel unwelcome from an OOC standpoint, and from an IC standpoint, while my character specifically dislikes trolls (this goes back years), I can still recall him at our campfires in Frostfire and Nagrand.

Zhakiri was around as much as I could make him, it fitted his character concept to be a bit of an outcast and a wanderer which meant I could feasibly roleplay an evening with the Tribe rather than the Skulls but this came at a huge expense and affected my relationships in both groups. Whether it was seen or not, felt or not, I know that it was difficult maintaining any significant relationship with the Tribe when I was not actively a part of it; and was part of my decision to make a re-draft of what Gashuk had become because I missed it, a hell of a lot.