Gnomicidal Maniacs
'lo folks,
Here are some updates to keep people up to speed with what is going on and what's coming up.
I hope to do at least one of these every quarter going forward, but who knows what will happen, or if you will even be interested.
Christmas Break
As the Festive Period approaches (rather too quickly) the guild will be having a 'shut down' of sorts between 22 December 2021 and resuming again on 5 January 2022. No planned or guild-organised events will take place and we will not expect you to log in or participate in anything during this period.
If there is any activity, it will be voluntary. Should you be away, or expect not to resume your normal activities on/around 5 January then please let me know as soon as you can so I can update logs.
We thought this would be a good idea to allow everyone a nice break over Christmas, with no pressure from your fave guild, to take part in anything.
Guild Overview
2021 has been a great year, overall, for us. Though, it has been our first real year as a guild. We have seen some great people come and go for various reasons, and we have learned a lot of lessons over this time.
With the external factors at play, the guild is still holding together nicely. We have a great core group and that's something we are very proud of, the overall community is fantastic and I have had a lot of comments about how welcoming we are.
If we look at numbers, we can instantly see that they are down. They are everywhere. You can see an up to date (as of the time you access) report here: https://gnomicidal-maniacs.com/gnomicidal-maniacs/guild-report
We have a few things planned for the new year that should help overall, and I will detail that below.
In general, while our numbers are low, we are in a good place. Keep that great work up everyone, you should be very proud.
Operations
As everyone knows, our site holds a lot of information and acts as more of a central data hub for our guild. Here you can see reports, logs, posts and an audit of players as well as upcoming events.
The developer has put in a great deal of work and I think it is an asset to our community as a whole - so it is worth every penny in my opinion.
What we do need to see more of, is the interaction between Events & Player Sign-Ups.
The officer team use the sign-ups to confirm roles, numbers and if an event is going to go ahead and it is vital that you confirm your attendance. Remember: you can sign up via the site, through Discord or in-game. If you sign in-game, your attendance will be logged when one of the officers log in and can sync your data.,
To ensure a smoother interaction, if you sign as "Tentative" you will be considered a "No"
If an event does not have the required members (so if a raid is short) the night before it is due to go ahead, it will be cancelled. We need to respect everyone's time as 3 hours for each raid night is a lot of time.
We understand that life happens, so we would ask that you contact the GM, or one of the officers, as soon as possible to advise you would not be able to attend - even a quick message on Discord is enough.
This will start effective immediately.
Recruitment & Engagement
A topic that not everyone is comfortable with, but one that we all need to be aware of.
It is important that everyone keeps an eye out for players that will fit into our community. It is the duty of every member to recruit individuals into the guild and help us grow our community and keep up engagement.
While this is very difficult in these times, we all need to band together and try to encourage others to join us. There are some amazing folk in this guild and they joined us for one reason or another, and we know there are more amazing people on Argent-Dawn - we had some Alliance convert to our cause, we can do it again!
We have been posting adverts on Discord (from the Guild of WoW to the official WoW server), and we will be looking at other avenues to promote our great guild. If you are interested in helping out, please get in touch with me and we'll have a chat.
Engagement levels have dropped over the past few months and we would like to know if there is anything we can do to improve this. Feel free to give your feedback on Discord or give one of the leadership team a shout - they are more than happy to listen to feedback on where we can do better and if there is anything we can do.
Discord
Over the next few months, you may see some changes to how our Discord is laid out and used. We are going to be looking at utilising this tool to best serve our community needs.
When we have more on this, we will update you!
-----
I'd like to end by thanking everyone who's made the effort to make this guild a fantastic place. I could not be prouder of you than I am and I'm always telling folk how fantastic this guild is.
I wish each and every one of you a fantastic end of the year and I hope to have an amazing 2022 with you all so we can explore 9.2 and the next expansion together.
Marc
