Hello Europe......this is Denmark calling:)

I have been a part of CLOWN for along period of time now, and Im very sad to see this great guild falling in to pieces.......

Its sad for me to see that almost the whole council has there main chars in other guilds(I understand it very well) But I would love to see CLOWN on its feet again and I would be happy to be a part of the rising of CLOWN

I know that CLOWN is far from being a high-instance guild, but there are a few thing we could do to make CLOWN "alive" again and fun to be a part of again........

First of all, there need to be a clean-up in members, to be able to invite new ones......

Secondly there need to be someone online from the council to invite and help new members........

In my opinion we need to invite peps that are leveling up, by that I mean level 40 and up to give more active players who are not just playing to go to high-instances......

These are some of my thoughts-I hope the council will take it in to concideration......

//Alessi

I empathise, Alessi, but I don't see this working. It's been tried before.

1. Yes cleaning up members might be a good idea, but what will our policy be with alts? Which members will be "cleaned up"?

2. Someone online who can invite. Crow's given pie wardens the right to invite now so there's usually someone around. As for helping new members, that's easier said than done sometimes. I guess it depends on what kind of help they need.

3. Completely agree with inviting non level 60's as they're more likely to stick around. Recruitment is the key to our problems. However;

a) We don't want to lose the CLOWN spirit and most people on Skull aren't exactly suitable or are already in other guilds.
b) Our recruitment process is a mess. I occasionally get people asking me if they can join and send them a questionnaire, but am never sure what they're supposed to do next.
c) Recruiting is hard work and we don't have the manpower. People might join the guild, see we only have ten people online, then leave again.
d) We can't get the expat CLOWNs back - they'll be disaffected if things don't work out, and will expect big things which CLOWN might take some time to deliver on.
e) We need an active leadership that somehow is immune to being discouraged by low turnouts and is always organising stuff, is always online and who has some really good ideas. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone.

You could ask the council to take it into consideration, but I suspect most of them are rather busy in various instances in various guilds. Sad but true.

Fixing CLOWN-in-wow would be an uphill struggle from day one, and the chances of success aren't very high especially with the current player levels. Perhaps it should be allowed to die, or perhaps we should consider organising ourselves as a non end-game/fun guild or something where it's normal behaviour for people to leave to do MC when they reach that stage.

It's only CLOWN WoW that fell apart...

The CLOWN guild is going along as normal as I see it - this site is just as popular as ever

Good luck rebuilding the WoW part - it's been tried by the council many times now, but I'm still hoping it all comes together again one day.
Maybe the best time to try this is when the expansion pack launches? I'm sure a lot will return to the game then, as well as lots of new people too

Never...ever... give up on CLOWN

Yes I had the same idea with the expansion pack. Until then I'm gonna be levelling my alts so I can play them in the expansion.

I doubt expat clowns (i.e. those in other guilds) will return for the expansion though - their guilds will also have things planned.

And Blizz really need to have something special for expansion endgame to avoid the same problems they have now. Frankly I can't see myself playing WoW that much longer unless there are things to do at endgame that only require small groups of people.

Well.....just a thought!

But it sounds hopeless then.......

But in my mind a guild where almost the whole council is playing in other guilds is falling apart!

Too bad

//Alessi

Like your ideas Alessi, what clown need is someone that realy do theese thing you talk about and I guess clown could get some new members and still be a great guild but not in the though to do end game instances as you say.
And yes its NOT good that we who are in the council dont have the main chars in the guild. We have to discuss this and let some new people into council that have the "spirit" like you Alessi

Bring in the clowns

Saurz - We definitely need to do something about the council, yes. However I fear that whoever joins it is effectively being handed the helm of the Titanic, after she's hit the iceberg and the captain has gone off for a stiff drink...

Alessi - it's important to note the distinction between WoW-CLOWN and CLOWN. CLOWN is all fine and peachy, but WoW-CLOWN is pretty much dead on it's feet as you say

All - I think we can have some fun events or something, if we make sure we get a good turnout they could be a great success and very morale boosting. I still have a half-planned scavenger hunt I could run.

All it takes to give it a real go is for those still in the guild (with their main toon) to talk it through and come up with a plan. Get the active members into the council and start from there. The council is probably, as said above, at this stage nothing but a bunch of names, rarely online.

Start talking to eachother and make plans for the future. There are still people playing WoW, isnt there? There are potential lunies everywhere. Just get the right people into the drivers seat.

"It aint over until the fat lady sings" (I bet a pie she has a beard)

Only a few guilds succeed...its all about the core leaders.

They must:

1) NEVER give up

2) be ACTIVE 24/7

3) be highly skilled recruiters

4) have energy and vision

5) must be total NERDS who live for a friggin game, period loool

I wuv you.

Always a Clown at heart. Quite simply you never leave clown.

I mean look at this site! Look at the history! Look in the mirror... well not for too long, dont want you feeling sick.

Bring in the CLOWNS!!!

Cya all in the next game soon!

By "CLOWN guild falling apart" Alessi do NOT mean the overall guild, but only CLOWN in WOW !

Clean up the guild list in WoW, kick all the inactives after posting here first, and start with those active and get more new active recruits ...

Maybe minimize the counsil to 2-3 members instead of 5-6 or how many there is now ... The more to decide the more difficult to solve things ... You don't see 5-6 managing director's of a company ..

Just my few cents ...

I'm not entirely sure what kicking inactives will do. Most are alts anyway and some irregularly log on to say hi (Slin and Morri for example). But they do no harm being in the guild list.

Something needs to be done about the council. I'm a bit unhappy to see that there's been no discussion in the council forum - I suspect most council members don't visit the site anymore or if they do just lurk. This is really not what we want council members doing.

Yes, it's not CLOWN that's on it's last legs but like it or not WoW is the game that most active CLOWNs currently play and a dying guild there doesn't do wonders to CLOWN generally.

Adenas wrote:

.....WoW is the game that most active CLOWNs currently play and a dying guild there doesn't do wonders to CLOWN generally.

I doesnt make wonders to CLOWN generally, I agree. But nor does it harm CLOWN generally. This has happend before over the decade we've been around. Its not fun when game specific guilds takes a setback but the community will survive.

That said, I still belive those still active should do something about it. No one else will. Our site might not be the best forum since we see the same old faces here all the time

Have there been tries (serious ones) ingame to make a roadmap for the future? There might be people who would like to give it a try if asked?

I agree with Demos, a smaller council makes faster decisions.. Let's face it - the WoW council never agreed on anything

Kicking inactives does tidy up the list.. but that's all it does. It doesn't change anything about the actual problem. Myself and Morri do occasionally play our Skullcrusher toons - and we play them because we are in the guild.

I hope something can be done to save CLOWN WoW.. but as I've said before, I think it's WoW that's at fault here, not CLOWN. The game just doesn't encourage communities as other games do - it only encourages 40 man teamwork which is a completely different thing.

Gloom wrote:

I doesnt make wonders to CLOWN generally, I agree. But nor does it harm CLOWN generally. This has happend before over the decade we've been around. Its not fun when game specific guilds takes a setback but the community will survive.

Yes but will the community survive in the game? Channel pie is all very well but everyone on that is busy most of the time so one of the original functions I had envisioned it as being good for (helping to organise groups when everyone has jumped ship) is no more. All it is good for now is chat, which is fair enough but not what we need.

Gloom wrote:

That said, I still belive those still active should do something about it. No one else will. Our site might not be the best forum since we see the same old faces here all the time

I'd like to get more people using the forums but I don't think there is really any way to do that - we already advertise it pretty well in-game.

Unfortunately WoW doesn't provide any in-game forums. Now that would be a feature.

Gloom wrote:

Have there been tries (serious ones) ingame to make a roadmap for the future? There might be people who would like to give it a try if asked?

We just don't have the manpower. There are probably on average around eight guildmembers online at any one time. To all intents and purposes that's it for the guild in WoW as you can barely organise a 5 man group let alone a 20 man raid.

A roadmap. What would it include?

We'd need to recruit. Who will have time? No-one I know. What do we say to prospective recruits? No we're not a large guild, although are quite friendly, and cant' even organise a 5 man group to BRD let alone a 40 man raid to MC. All our more active players have left ages ago and now have little to do with us.

We'd need events. Which ones? ZG needs 20 people and unless recruiting works (see above) this is impossible currently. Who will organise them for more than a couple of weeks after tonnes of waiting around for players and pleas to an impassive world that we need more every time one is organised? Not anyone I know. We can't even rely on channel pie to bail us out as people are already booked up weeks in advance on various raids and are unlikely to commit to a CLOWN raid even if they weren't.

We could get those who've left to come back? No way; most wouldn't want to. They think they've seen it all before and that this attempt to revive the guild will go the same way as the others. They all have other commitments now every night farming BWL for pretty purple swords.

No, I think WoW-CLOWN is pretty much dead. We have passed that critical point and without a lot of hard work over a period of months I don't see a way out of it.

Slinver wrote:

I hope something can be done to save CLOWN WoW.. but as I've said before, I think it's WoW that's at fault here, not CLOWN. The game just doesn't encourage communities as other games do - it only encourages 40 man teamwork which is a completely different thing.

20 man teamwork is hard work. 40 man teamwork is REALLY hard work. Unless we get some nutty organise-mad people in to run this sort of thing and go nuts recruiting I can't see it happening for CLOWN. Either we work out a way to be comfortable as a non end-game guild or we potter along as we have been doing recently - as a mere nametag and tiny guild chatroom.