An Overview of <Journey>

[Mosez]

An Outline and Introduction:
I. Are you the Ideal Applicant?
Qualities we look for: Raiding experience, personal responsibility, maturity, deference to others, consistancy, teachable, flexible, and leadership.
II. Our History
Some of the strongest leaders, oldest raiders, and most unified raiding core on the server is found at <Journey>.
III. Our Purpose
Reuniting skill for casual end-game content.
IV. Our Activity
Here we discuss Raiding, loot, out-of-raid, and our vision for Journey’s future.
V. Our Application Process
Learn how you can become a part of the <Journey>.


I. Are you the Ideal Applicant?
We start out with this topic simply because we believe your time is valuable. If you find that you do not exhibit or agree with most of the following comments than we thank you for coming by and giving us a look over and ask that you would recommend us to others that you feel may fit our rigors.

1. Raiding experience, in some form, is a strong plus. We prefer extensive raiding in BC and are always partial to fellow vanilla-wow raiders. Having said that, raiding experience is not a requirement if you can show adept skill and wariness in a trial raiding environment.

2. Personal attention to gear choice is important. We recognize not everyone has had access to 25man raids but everyone does have access to Heroics and farming. We expect a minimum of Heroic 5man gear with appropriate gems/enchants/glyphs.

3. We are all adults that prefer to raid with adults. Although our raiding minimum age is 18 we are willing to consider very mature 16+.

4. Personal deference to other raiders is a must. It happens to be that many in our guild hold to a more conservative morality than most. With this in mind we need all of our raiders to be willing to show deference. Deference simply means willing to set aside your personal “rights” for others who might be offended. At <Journey> we keep guild and vent chat rated PG. F-Bombs, your sex life, strings of profane expletives, and overall obscene or perverted topics are not found at Journey. If you can’t raid or play without being a sailor or a perv than <Journey> is probably not for you.

5. Consistency is important. We prefer raiders who can be in our raids 80%+ of the time. We do not have any hard-core rules on participation except that we expect communication if you will be gone for an extended time and that you do your best to form your schedule so that you can be consistently at raid times.

6. Teachability and flexibility is a major plus. We want skilled, knowledgeable players, yet it’s possible someone here can offer a valuable suggestion or two. We need players who can take kind criticism properly and who can be flexible for the betterment of the guild. It may be that we ask you to consider respecing for a certain encounter. Ideally we enjoy playing with those who know more than one spec or role for their class. (i.e. Warrior DPS or Tank, Priest heals or DPS, Pally heals, DPS or tank, etc..). Dual speccing is not a raiding requirement.

7. We like leaders. Our guild was created and formed by a group of leaders all of whom assist one another in the leadership. Although every guild has a GM, at <Journey> we are lead by a Council of 4 who confer with our Officers in leadership decisions. Member input is crucial to us and we expect you to not just play with <Journey> but to “own” it.


II. Our History
Our raiding core comes from original-WoW raiding guilds some of which were a part of the original BWL-clearing and AQ40 raids. Moving into BC we were all active in end-game raiding. Our experience is deep and our unified leadership is well established.
When Wrath was released, Journey began as a 10 man guild. After clearing 10 man content, we sought 25 man raids and formed a co-op with the guild <Uprise>. After much success, many Uprise members chose to merge into Journey's core and help us build our first internal 25 man group. Since then we have grown and have a firm footing in the 25 man raid scene.
The name <Journey> was assumed simply because we want to enjoy “the ride”. Instead of blowing through content for server firsts or raiding 6 nights a week so as to have no life – we want to enjoy the Journey, and WoW is part of that Journey. We found out about the 70’s band only days after our formation.


III. Our Purpose
<Journey> was formed during the release of Lich King with three purposes in mind:

1. to reunite a core group of excellent veteran leaders and players who happen to be real-life friends.

2. to grow and form an excellent raiding team, who via talent, focus, and study, could accomplish 3-4 nights of raiding progression in 2.

3. to enjoy end-game content without the raid burnout, drama, DKP, and constant turn-over rate of many end-game guilds.


IV. Our Activity

Raiding:
We raid only two nights: Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30 - 11:30pm EST. Although we love to talk smack and be stupid we are business for these 6 hours of raiding. The point is that we have more fun accomplishing more than average in less than average time.

Loot structure:
For progression content we utilize the Ni Karma system. This system provides some reward to those that consistently raid while giving a "fighting chance" to those that may have missed some nights. A full explanation of the Ni Karma system can be found in this thread.
For completely farmed content we often do Need/Greed group rolls while limiting the amount of epics per night so we spread the wealth around.

Out-of-raiding:
The majority of us are RL friends and therefore naturally offer to assist in the leveling and gearing of alts and "Friends and Family" members. These are casual players who we invite in for social purposes but are not a part of our raiding core.
Many players enjoy BG and PvP content as well as title achievements and other aspects of the game. Although we raid only officially raid 2 of 7 nights our guild is full of action every evening.

Our Outlook
Having proved we could dominate 10 man content, we moved on to 25 man raids. We have since met with great success and have seen almost all released raiding content. We are respectful of one another and are understanding when Real Life inevitably interferes. Our outlook is always a positive progressive one and while we aim to remain with the top ranking guilds on Gilneas, we will do so without threatening the casual schedule Journey was founded on.


V. Our Application Process:
1. Read this entire thread.
2. Fill out an application which can found in the left menu under "Membership".
2. After a quick evaluation of your app we will either ask you to Trial here at Journey or we will file your application for the future and recommend that you continue your guild search.
3. At the trial process you will be considered a priority back-up raider. This means that we will be working hard to get you into every raid possible knowing that we reserve the right to sit you if we must. The period of your trial can last as short as 1 week and as long as 4 weeks. During this process our leadership will be making evaluations and suggestions.