New User Information

Welcome new member!

This guide will take you through all you need to know to become a part of this growing guild of ours.

What do I need to do first?

1. Since you are reading this you have allready completed step one and created an account on our webpage. I suggest you familiarise yourself with it since it’s importance is growing the bigger the guild gets. During this guide I’ll bring up things you can do on the webpage but the true usefullness comes from your activity. You may upload a picture of yourself to your profile if you wish.

2. Go to the introduction part of the forums (you find link to the forum in the menu to the left) and write a short introduction to yourself. This is good in case people want to know a bit who you are. Try to include any other characters you are playing and optionally some way to contact you, like mail or IM.

3. Write and send in a back story to tomas[at]it-designer.com. You can read more about backstories further down. This is an important step since we are playing on a roleplaying server. We expect our members to create a character with a personality and not just an avatar made to grind gold for no reason.

4. Get to know your fellow players. Try to have as a goal to learn to know something new about another player every time you log in. It helps to have the addon NotesuNeed. More about that under Addons further down. The more you know about your fellow players the easier it will be to work together, get help and the faster our guild will evolve.

5. Play, have fun, be active on the webpage and in guild events and welcome to your new family.

Who do I ask for help?

There are several ways to get help in The Night Council, something we are very proud of.

1. Any question can be asked in guild chat (guild chat accessible by starting your chat with /g ) and most of the time people are very fast to give helpful answers.

2. Your class councilor (see Guild ranking system further down) is a player whos job is to help everyone of your class. When he/she is online you can ask him/her for help and expect a nice and friendly response. This is a person who has gladly taken on the responsibility to help you out.

3. Don’t be afraid to whisper (using /w username chatmessage) a high level player in the guild with a question or request for help. We have all gotten help on our way up and will gladly repay our generous helpers by passing help along to new level climbers.

4. The webpage! Asking a question on the webpage is a good way to get response. When answering here we try to give a more elaborate answer that can include links to further information. This is also a good way to create a bank of knowledge for all other members.

5. Ask any high councilor or our guild leader Anomalia, they are all friendly people who like to help out whenever they can.

Meetings

Every sunday at 7pm server time we have a meeting in the town hall of Lakeshire. This meeting is often followed up by a guild event. The event can be anything from going after a big giant to elaborate roleplaying quests. It’s important to note that during the meeting, and whenever you talk in /s mode, we require that you are in character. In normal chat we expect everyone to roleplay their character and keep from doing reference to real world or to WoW being a game. Refrain from comments like “That level 58 horde had it coming to him.” or “You look like a greek warrior on a Harley Davidson!”. In guild and party chat we usually speak ooc (out of character). Try to show up to the meeting as often as possible since it’s a great way to get to know your fellow guildmates. Get the Group Calendar addon to see whenever we have a guild event.

Backstory

We proud ourselves on that we expect our guildmembers to have a developed character story. We want our players to experience an adventure together. It’s not important that you play every quest in roleplaying mode but it is very important that as time goes by your character developes his personality and his own character storyline. It can be hard to come up with a backstory that you feel connected to, especially if english is not your first language or if you don’t have much experience in creative writing, but we will help you out.

My first tip when creating a backstory is to steal! There are many great works out there, especially if you look at greek and roman literature, that is very suitable for stealing. Shakespeare himself stole a great deal from old works and you Tolkien fans out there are probably aware that most of his works are stolen from one folklore or another. So steal stories or parts of stories and adapt them to your character.

At any stage of your work you are free to send it in to tomas[at]it-designer.com for comments. I can help you with everything from proofreading, friendly comments, professional critique or even a rewrite. If you feel that you have the story you want but lack the words to paint it, just give me the story and I’ll paint it for you.

Examples of backstories:
TomWolf finds Moso
Spatra becomes a Shadow Priest
The rebirth of Xarra
More

I recommend everyone reading the (very) brief version of Azeroth history, a truly amazing source of information:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2518021025&sid=1

My alt and I

Some players are altaholics, some players have an alt they play every now and then, some people want to create a twink for battleground. No matter what reason you have, most of us sooner or later gets more then one character and most of us want to include that character in our guild as well. Our rule is that you can add a new alt when all your current characters in the guild have an approved backstory. The exeption to this rule is if you create a twink for our battleground teams, these twinks are encouraged to have a backstory but not as a rule.

Rules

We are a friendly guild, the rules we have or not set in stone but we have them to help us run the guild smoothly.

1. Roleplaying vs. OOC (Out Of Character) chatting
1A. /s and emotes are for roleplaying. Any out of character comments in /s should look like this:
(OOC: Sorry for that joke, my character can be rather annoying at times)
1B. Guild chat is mostly OOC. Language is English.
1C. Channel TCN (password: tnc) is for role play. Here u can chat and role play with others IC (In Character).
1D. Party/raid cannel varies when it come to roleplaying depending on group.
1E. In the battleground/arena we are mostly OOC and use some of the following voice programs: TS/SKYPE/VOICE CHAT for coordinate our team play.
1F. Role play every time when u are in guild event!
1G. Dungeon raids are mostly OOC. (because we run them many times and there is no point to make it role play every time we do the same dungeon again)

2. Guild issues
2A. If you have issues with another player in the guild, turn to your class councilor.
2B. If you have problem with your class councilor, turn to a high councilor or Anomalia.
2C. If you have problem with another guild, turn to your class councilor, a high councilor or Anomalia.
2D. If you have problem with guild leadership, ask someone you trust to take part in a conversation with the leadership about the issue.

3. Economy and Guild Bank
3A. Don’t beg! We don’t accept begging within the guild or outside the guild. You may ask politely for a loan but accept a no.
3B. Tab 1 in the guild bank is free for all to take what they can use. Don’t sell things you take from the guild bank.
3C. Contributions to guild bank is both appreciated and noted.
3D. If you are interested in an item from a tab other then 1, talk to your class councilor.
3E. Citizen can donate money to guild bank if they want to.
3F. Councilmen will pay tax of 1 gold/week if they are able to.
3G. Clerks will pay tax of 3 gold/week if they are able to.
3H. Captains will pay tax of 4 gold/week if they are able to.
3I. Class Councilors will pay tax of 5 gold/week if they are able to.
3J. Gold in guild bank is used for buying bank slots, buying raiding, battleground and arena buffs, repairing gear after guild raids.

4. Misc
4A. Members are required to follow WoW terms of service. This includes but are not limited to rules against buying gold, spamming, harrasment of other players, inappropriate names, using exploits in battlegrounds and arena and various gold scams.

Guild ranking system

These are the ranks and their responsibilities in the guld.

Probationers

Newcomers to the guild. This is where you start out until you know if you want to stay.

Citizens

This rank shows that you are interested in our community and like to take a part of it!
You can get this rank by just creating account and make a profile and write a backstory for your character and be active for a period of time.

Council Men

They are active members who has been in the guild for a longer time and proven their comitment to the guild.
To get this rank you need to be an active and helpful member of the guild.

Clerks

The clerks responsibillity is to be active on the webpage, especially in their class forum, and to make sure that taxes are payed. This rank are for those interested in developing the guild.

Captains

Captains are our PvP organizers. Their goal is to help you get into a premade together with guildmates and will also help you understand the battlegrounds. Ask them for explanaition on battleground goals and strategy.

Class Councilors

Each class should have atleast one class councilor. These persons have taken on the responsibillity to care for all members of their class and help the out with issues in the guild, with their class or basicly any question that might arise. Your class councilor is your first stop for information and help. Class Councilors also have the responsibility to reqruit new members of their class.

The High Councilors

They organizes and run guild events. The high councilors take the decisions on what direction our guild will move. They also have the responsibility to help guildmates whenever possible and to act as diplomats with other guilds.

Guild bank

Use it! Especially make sure that you take things you can use in tab 1. Tab 1 is free for anyone to take what they can need. If you are interested in items from another tab, talk to your class councilor.

Trade between members

The Night Council is not a bunch of strangers put together in a guild. We work towards being a family, a group of close friends. To achive this we try not to profit from eachother. If someone requests something and you feel that you can afford to give it away for free, please do, someone will do the same for you. If the item is a bit more expensive, try to give it for a price that is fair. You are not obligated to give anything away for free but try not to sell things to guildmates to make a profit yourself.

When it comes to loaning money. If you need a loan, ask polite. The expected answer is a no. Not loaning money to someone is not seen as impolite or rude in any way. If you do loan money to someone the terms are to be fair. That means no interest on loans. No deals that you get 20G back for a 10G loan. If you are a regular contributor to the guild bank you can also ask a High Councilman for a loan from the guild bank. When you have a loan within the guild your main priority should be to pay that person back as soon as possible.

Roleplaying in The Night Council

We play on a roleplaying-PvP server and that means that we expect you to roleplay. So what is roleplaying, to what extent are you expected to follow the roleplaying standard, what if you have never roleplayed before and what if you don’t like to roleplay at all?

Roleplaying is when you interact with other players as your character instead of as a player. When two characters meet outside the bank of Ironforge they may ask eachother how the trade is going or how about that horde raid earlier, wasn’t it pathetic? The characters can’t talk about the latest update to the auctioneer addon because a dwarf have no idea what such an addon is…that’s player talk. Such comments should be in (()) or started by OOC:. ((This is an out of character message))
OOC: So is this.

You are expected to roleplay in everything that happens near your character. That is with emotes and normal chat. We consider the silent chats, like whispers, guildchat and party chat to be OOC by nature unless you want to roleplay that two priests are using mind control to communicate to eachother. Whenever we have a guild meeting you are expected to roleplay your interaction with other members.

If you have never roleplayed before or don’t like roleplaying you can always have a very silent character. Perhaps even a mute one. We hope that you try to interact with others like you think your character would. This is the main reason why we are so hard on the character backstory. We want you to have an idea on how your character would act in different situations. If you want tips and ideas on how to roleplay, talk to your class or high councilor.

Try to set personal goals. It can be to get a wardrobe of 20 different dresses, collect all possible pets in the game, slay 200 blood elf players or reach level 70 with enough gold to buy an epic flying mount. These goals are great basis for roleplaying. Just figure out why your character wants to achive it and roleplay away!

PVE in The Night Council

The Night Council takes pride in being a helpful guild. We really try to let as few requests for help pass unhelped as possible. So what can you expect help with and how fast?

First of all I want to point out that even level 70 players often have personal goals to strive for so at times they might actually be really busy. Please try to be understanding if nobody around seems to have time with you at the current moment and try not to let it discourage you. Some times nobody seems to listen but if you are patient someone will soon hear your cries for help.

A common thing to ask for is help with dungeons. If you are lowlevel it’s quite easy for a lvl 70 to boost you through a dungeon for quests or drops. Don’t be shy to ask for a run through dead mines, shadowfang keep and if you are looking to go through Wailing Caverns you can always ask Shamien…it’s his favourite place in the game.

You can also ask for help with quests, understanding where to go, installing addons, getting price checks on things you want to sell on the auction house or learning new strategies for battleground or dueling. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

When you start getting closer to level 70 you will find that other level 70s are very eager to help you. That’s because they know that soon they will need your help as well. We are growing and slowly we are getting more and more level 70 players to do the end game content. This is not our main guild goal but it’s something many members are looking forward to.

PVP in The Night Council

Battlegrounds and Arena are great ways to get quality gear and more then that it’s a really great way to spend time together. To do this efficiently you will need a voice program, more on that further down. TNC have several arena teams and when you get closer to level 70 you can start looking for other players to team up with in 2, 3 or 5 player teams. In Battleground we try to play together as often as possible since that gives more chances for well trained tactics.

We are currently building a level 19 battleground team. The core of the team are made up of twinks, that is characters with the best possible gear and really expensive enchantments. A twink can cost between 300-900 Gold to create. You don’t have to be a twink to play together with this team when you are between level 17-19. Just ask in main chat if anyone have a lvl 19 character and want to play some Warsong Gulsh. We are hoping to slowly build teams in the other brackets as well.

Programs, Addons and Webpages

There are a few programs and addons that we want you to install and some more that we think is benefitial to you but purely optional (personally I have more then 200 addons installed). There are also a couple of webpages that you might find useful to visit quite often.

Programs:

Skype - www.skype.com
This is an easy one. Skype is a great way of interacting with your fellow guildmates. If you don’t have a microphone you can still hear them and if you play an arenamatch or a battleground with just a few guildmates skype is an easy way to go. With more then a few it gets a bit loud to have everyone on real time voice though and a click to talk option is to be preffered.

Ventrilo - www.ventrilo.com
We have a ventrilo server where you can voice chat with your guild mates. This is also a must have for raids and battlegrounds with more then just a couple of participants. You’ll find that many premades won’t let you in unless you have Ventrilo to atleast listen to what the raidleaders sais.

Our server:
IP: 194.237.240.8
Port: 3809
Password: nightcouncil

Teamspeak - www.goteamspeak.com
Teamspeak is like Ventrilo, just not quite as good. Have both installed and you are ready to participate in all raidgroups out there.

Xfire - www.xfire.com
MSN for gamers. It’s an Instant Messenger that sends the message to you while you are in the game and lets you respond without minimizing the game. It’s a great way to let others be able to contact you even when you are in the game and they are not. Another nifty little feature is that it keeps track of how much time you spend in different games. At the time of writing I have 646 counted hours in WoW and 1107 in Counter Strike Source. I won’t mention how much I have in my poker clients (or in Sims for that matter).

Curse - www.curse.com
The Curse client help you to keep your addons up to date. It checks every now and then and lets you know if an addon you’ve installed from curse is updated. It also lets you install addons from curse with a single click.

Addons:

If you are new to addons you can always ask in guild chat for help or turn to me (TomWolf/Rexch) and we’ll go through your first addons together.

Group Calendar
This is one of the addons we expect you to have installed. On group calendar you can see when we have guild meetings, when we plan to have raids or bigger arena matches.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/1958/

Omen
This is a MUST HAVE for everyone who wants to participate in raids. This is a threatmeter that lets you and everyone else know how much threat each player is taking from the mob. This is vital since it helps the tank to keep threat and avoid situations where the boss suddenly wipes out the healers or DPS.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/9101/

Cartographer
This is also one of those we consider a must have. It gives you the ability to see coordinates on your map and also shows your guildmates where you are on the map. Makes helping eachother a great deal easier. This is also a needed addon for some other addons that we recomend like WHDB and Questhelper (more about them below)
Read the installation instructions when installing.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/4947/
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/9496/ (Cartographer with extra databases..need some extra addons installed)

Auctioneer
This is quite a complicated addon but one of the most common out there. It helps you keep track of the auctionhouse and if you scan the AH enough times you get a fairly accurate estimate of what things are worth. Don’t trust this addon until you have atleast 14 scans spread evenly over atleast two weeks and even then you should be careful to trust it to much.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/78/

WHDB and Questhelper
These are two great addons for helping out with quests. WHDB gives you information from Wowhead directly in your questbook in the game and Questhelper actually gives you a route, where to go next to turn in a quest or to gather materail or kill mobs needed for a quest. Both great addons. Questhelper may break in upcoming patches as the original author aren’t working on it anymore. Others have stepped up to keep it up to date though, so we’ll see.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/10121/ (WHDB)
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/9924/  (QuestHelper)

flagRPS2
This is not a requirement but something that we like to see more people use. It lets you enter a description of yourself that others with the addon can read. Great for roleplaying.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/3694/

Itemrack
This might become obsolete in upcoming patches since Blizzard is looking to implement a similar feature in the game. It lets you save preset sets of gear to switch between. Great for fast switching between pve, pvp and rp outfits.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/1482/
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/10835/ (fan posting of an update that isn’t official yet)

NotesUNeed
This is one of my top addons. It lets you keep notes on other players or just general notes within the game. When your friendlist starts to grow it’s really a great tool to keep track of who people are. Especially if you are like me and like to trade with people.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/1715/

WIM
A whisper IM. Makes whispers act a bit like MSN in game. Also one of the addons that I consider to be up there on top. Doesn’t give an edge in the game but it really makes it more comfortable.
http://www.wimaddon.com/

PetEmote
This is a fun addon. It lets you do a /pet command the same way you do /me commands to emote your pet. /pet growls produces Tomwolf’s Dragonhawk Moso growls. For others with the same addon it just produces Moso growls. Also great for roleplaying.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/3538/

Itemsync
Opens a window where you can search for any item and quickly link it to the chat or find its’ stats. Very handy when talking about loot that you don’t have yourself.
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/ItemSync

SW Stats
Ever wanted to know who made the most damage in that dungeon? SW Stats is the addon for you. Keeps tracks of damage, heals and much more.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/2091/

Websites:

There are plenty of websites out there so I’ll just give you a couple to get you started. These are sites I think all players should atleast know about. Take some time and look around at each of them.

www.wowwiki.com
Big site of usergenerated information. This is a treasurechest of information when you are bored.

wow.allakhazam.com
Best database for pricing information.

www.wowhead.com
www.thottbot.com
Good databases for information on items and quests.

wow.curse.com
Good site for addons.

www.wowinsider.com
A lot of people blogging about WoW.

www.wcradio.com
Podcasts and live radio shows about WoW. Great for keeping your mental health while grinding. My favourite show is probably the wowinsider one.