New Loot System: TreeKP
Posted by thideras | Filed under General Information
Yes, I know the name is a little off-the-wall, but it fits well. We are looking to completely redo our loot system to the point where it is custom. This new system will be called “TreeKP”.
The systems will be based off of the Loot Council, but with a backbone of DKP and gear rating system to make gear decisions substantially faster. The main problem is loot distribution time when there are a lot of people that want a single item; trinkets, necklaces, shields, tier tokens, etc. People usually rolling for these items have the same level item already, are equally skilled and do extremely well. We can eliminate 2-3 if they got gear recently, but that usually leaves us with 4-5 people left; how do you decide without anything backing it?
The solution is a loot council with a backbone. What do you mean by “backbone” Thideras? I mean a partially hidden DKP/EPGP system that can be transparent to the end raider. Everyone can see how they are doing point wise, but they won’t “bid” on an item like in traditional DKP systems. This allows us to know how often people are getting gear, which is a major flaw with loot council. Another aspect that we are using is completely new, the raiders assign values to gear upgrades to show how much of an upgrade an item is. 1 means the item is a side-grade and generally not worth it, 10 means the item is BiS.
With those two systems, we take the strong points of each and none of the weaknesses. I will be refining the details of TreeKP this week, so look for an update shortly with a lot more depth.
Dear Shadow Council
Posted by thideras | Filed under General Information
As some of you may have noticed, I retired from Exodus and the Shadow Council server in general. There was nothing in real life that made me do this, it was purely one person. You know him as Cathulu, self proclaimed “leader of Exodus”. I’ll attempt to explain my reasons for leaving in a civil manner and hopefully keep it well organized.
When we joined
Sckep, Prithivi and myself all came from the server Dalaran. We did come as a “package” deal as we knew each other outside of the game and were rejected from guilds for that very reason. Guilds don’t like “package deals” and I understand why. I believe a lot of the drama did start with this. I can only speak for myself, but I’m a trusting person unless given reason to not be, this also bit me later.
Before Icecrown
During Ulduar and Trial of the Grand Crusader, we made some amazing kills and eventually moved to the top of the server, everyone was proud of the guild and had good reason to do so. We went from server 4th or 5th on the server to 1st very quickly and I’m proud of the progress that we made.
Progression during Icecrown
I’ve noticed that our progression has become stagnant. I don’t mean in the sense that we weren’t progressing, because we were doing fairly well. The problem is Exodus has become a literal “Zerg” guild. Why properly theorycraft a fight when you can just do as many attempts as you want in a night? People get tired of failing an entire night without knowing what is really going on.
What Cathulu says, goes
Exodus had always been a Council run guild, but Cathulu strong-armed the guild into a monarchy. Instead of giving his officers the power they needed to run the guild, he attempted to completely run it himself. I’ve talked to past officers and I’ve even seen it myself as the healing lead; we had no say on who gets in. If he wanted “x” sat, they were sat; absolutely no arguing even if you had the logs and logic to prove they were doing substantially better than “y”. So, now we are sitting people based on what one person wants and have to somehow explain this to the raid members. How do you even do that? Tell them, “I’m sorry, but even though I’m healing officer, I have no say on what healers actually stay in. I’m being forced to sit you because the GM says.”? I’m not sure about other officers, but I was 100% honest with the healers, so I actually did let them know.
Being honest with players, how not to do it
Shortly after Archtype X broke up and joined Exodus, we found a few players that were sitting a majority of the time. The one that I noticed was Prithivi. She was frequently promised to be brought in for fights, but those promises were quickly broken. After a few weeks of this, she finally stepped down from raiding. During this time, Cathulu was attempting to “soften the blow” for me by attempting to change what I think about Sckep/Prithivi. According to when I started, “All drama related issues are to go to Cathulu”. Why? He isn’t the guild therapist and certainly doesn’t have a degree for it. He wants to learn about the bonds between people and then manipulate them. He attempted to do that with me and partially succeeded, but we caught it before it got serious and talked things through. An old officer stepped up and told us what Cathulu was trying to do. He didn’t like Prithivi and wanted her to stop raiding, but didn’t want to lose Sckep or myself. Why he couldn’t just come out and tell us this? I would have probably been upset that he wanted to do it, but at least I wouldn’t be as furious as I was after learning what he tried to do. What makes even more interesting is that he did this with multiple people. He attempted to make them look bad so they would step down, sit them all the time and then lie to their face about what was going on. There are MANY good raiders that were lied to, saying they were better than their replacement and that they would eventually get in. All he did was tell people what they wanted to hear, they weren’t being replaced.
Incomplete list of players that were put through this
Prithivi
Kanaus
Yssis
Elyndria
Opollo
Putrid
Jhone
Theeslan
Jaieden
Jaconso
Theylon
Velinaras
Even this short list speaks volumes. All were told they were good and were never told that they had been replaced. This list does not include officers, but there has been 6 officers that have left during the time that I’ve been here. I’ve talked to a few of them, but it isn’t my place to openly discuss why they left. I also only included previous members that I knew went through this, so I’m sure this a long list before this and eventually a long list after.
Cliches
Anyone that is in the guild, or was in the guild, please check your chat history logs. You will see that he attempts to gain your trust through (what seems like) pre-calculated phrases. “Your a good friend, who, strangely, i’d do anything for”. I mentioned this to a friend after looking over my logs with him for the past 6 months and he found the exact same quote. Repeat this for other phrases, ad nauseam. After this discovery, I find this much more disturbing than I originally thought. Why would someone think out phrases to gain trust and use them on multiple people? I just don’t get it. Please, keep an eye out of these; don’t fall into the same trap that I did. Cathulu also keeps using the “I’ll just give you GM” phrase a lot when confronted with raid members leaving. It is purely a defense mechanism used to defer raiders from leaving. I believe that I’ve heard it around 6 times so far in the past few weeks; he will never follow through. He will also use promotions in the guild to convince members to stay.
Dear current and future raid members
Don’t let Cathulu lie to you about us. We were good players that caught on to the games he played. He claims that only reason we left is that we were “bad”, which is quite the opposite. I know, for a fact, that he is bribing people to stay in the guild by promoting them. I also know that certain people in the guild (you and I know who you are) that are attempting to drag our names through the dirt. Feel free to say whatever you want, the people who knew me won’t believe a word you have to say. The final thing I learned is that when leaving a guild, you learn who your real friends are. I was duped into believing that most of the guild liked me, when exactly the reverse was true. I’m sorry for trying to be funny and a good raider. Both those traits come naturally to me and it is extremely difficult to try and be “bad” and “unfunny”.
Dear Cathulu
I know that you “never wanted to talk to me again” and you sure do a lot of talking to me after saying that, but I would like to dedicate a full section to you. How mushy! I know that I originally said that I was “branching out” when questioned as to why we left, but I believe you deserve to be told what I really think. You are responsible for the downfall of this guild. You are the one that switched it from a council to a monarchy. You are responsible for good players leaving the guild. The only thing I will apologize for is seeing through your guise and letting others know. I’m fine with Exodus continuing on in the future, but you shouldn’t be leading it; you don’t deserve as good a guild as this. I honestly can’t believe there are people out there willingly taking advantage of someone that is trusting. You are the literal definition of scum.
The “After Exodus” story
I won’t discuss who is involved with the new guild, but we are starting one. The keen-eyed may have noticed that the page title at the top of the website has changed. We will run Unchained like Exodus should have been run, a council of good, honest raiders. No one “owns” or “runs” the guild by themselves.
All this discussion of the guild is making me sappy! Ha, tree joke. I can hear the “/facepalm” emotes from way over here on Borean Tundra. Anyways, if you made it this far, thank you for hearing another side of the story and I hope it clears things up. As always, I loved Shadow Council and a lot of the players there, but it is time for me to leave.
Any of my friends are welcome to talk to me.
After speaking with a lot of our former members, I’ve noticed that a lot are reporting that Cathulu told them “they were the best x in the guild”. If this happened to you, sign up on the site and leave a comment!
