-You- Can Help!

[Nostra]

Seeing as we have such a small group of GMs as well as having just opened the server up more we would appreciate any help you have to offer to improve our server. Be it with maybe helping newcomers to settle on the server, helping others with their profiles or read through a few introductions to say hello and, if the person seems a bit lost, offer some friendly advice.

If you have other ideas on how you can help know that you are welcome to come to any of us and share them!

[Hawk]

You could select a few Grunts/Heroes to do some GM jobs for a week, then select different people afterwards. A roter, if you will. Not sure if I spelt that right, but yeah.

[Nikodemos]

Be it with maybe helping newcomers to settle on the server, helping others with their profiles or read through a few introductions to say hello and, if the person seems a bit lost, offer some friendly advice.

I've already heard a number of folks claiming to have experienced such problems as OOC chat in /s, harassment of characters, and so forth. Nearly everyone who has claimed such has said that all they did was add them to the ignore list. I want to point out that that is not a valuable solution for the community. As has been posted numerous times already it is best to whisper the player guilty of such actions in attept to notify them that they are breaking server rules. This should be done in a kind manner, in attempt to better educate them in the ways of CoTH. Everyone really needs to take a positive outlook on the new intro system for the time being and take strides to aid new players arriving at the server. Finally if such attempts to curb their actions are not successful, rather than simply clicking ignore you should instead take a screen shot of the conversation (inlarge the chat box as much as you can for clear view) and pm it to a GM.

I know all this has been gone over in other posts but it doesn't seem to be getting through to some of us. Enough ranting from me though and time to get this topic back on track.

I would love to help in anyway possible as far as helping new members ajust to the server. I teach occasional GHI courses OOCly ingame, but I've got plenty of time ussually so if courses pretaining to server lore, premittable character conceptions, etc, would be valuable I am game for whatever. I know most of this is all covered in various forums but I believe I would be safe to say that a number of players spend much less time on the forums than ingame.

Last of all, I have come up with an idea that may or may not prove useful. Perhaps such courses could be required to those found guilty of offending such rules, perhaps after a first or second offense depending on the severity of the actions. With a probation of sorts, in which the character taking the course is monitored for a time to insure that they do not continue their actions in spite. I would assume that most cases of rule breaking are based from a lack of knowledge, as adverse to intentional wrongdoing.

Please reply with any feedback concerning your thoughts on this subject.

[timmyd123]

I'm more than happy to lend a helping hand to you guys. I try to help newcomers out as much as I can in general when they come to the server by letting them know they can get in on my RP and whatnot, giving them information such as what the global channel is and what the forum components do, how the vouching and character profile system works etc.

I've noticed that suddenly we seem to have a batch of new players coming our way and if I hear of anymore coming online I'll be sure to get in touch with them and let them know that we are readily available for support and that they can turn to the rest of the community before GM's for simple problems.

I'll take a gander at some character profiles for you and if I pick up on anything that contradicts lore or is abit 'mary sueish' I'll let them know so that hopefully they're fixed by the time you guys get to reading them to save your time.

Thanks for the continued hard work guys! I'll do what I can to help ease things up for you.

[Dotsy]

Rule/Policy Enforcement
I've heard several people saying they've had to place people on their ignore list for the very first time since comming on the server. These people ignoring the players have been on the server for quite some time, and just now come to use their ignore list.

A good thing to remember is that we can help enforce the rules too. Reporting players for breaking rules and policies actually does help the server to an extent by making it more enjoyable and fun for the majority of people.

[Nostra]

If you place a player on the ignore list it doesn't really help in the long run, better to take it up wit ha GM so that we at least are aware and can talk with the troublemaker otherwise the player will still be there, since you can't but all their characters on ignore in one sweep.

Edit: On another note, although it's lovely that you guys help comment on the profiles but unless you have something constructive to say it's better to stay silent, since otherwise you just bump the profile to the top which means it will take longer until we get to it, seeing as we go bottom and up.

[Dominique]

As a complete newbie, I'd say the things I have the most dificulty with, is how I'm allowed to talk to people and where, and who I'm allowed to bug about my silly little issues.

If I have problems in game for example, and need some ooc knowledge... I think.. I've read somewhere that it's okay to write ooc as long as you use brackets? I wouldn't do something like that in /s, but I hope it's at least allowed in /tell?

And then... would people get annoyed if I ask questions, that might seem trivial and maybe even stupid, to someone who's been on the server for long?
At least with this thread I know a few people now, who I hope will be able to stand these questions *smiles apologetically* So thanks for this thread.

Also.. it's taken me a while to figure out where to find what, when it comes to rules and such, and I'm sure I'm still missing a few. I do have some common sense, but there are a still things I don't know where to find.
For example.. How do I find out when the server plague happened, and where it spread to?

I'd just like to say thanks to those who offered their help. Don't think I'd have ever gotten into the server without this thread. *bows*

[Nostra]

If you check to the top left on the site there's a link called "Rules" if you click that it should take you to where all our rules are, and from there it should be easy to find policies and such as well (just use the wiki Index, heh). Among the policies you should find one for Chat, there there's a link to both a FAQ and a rather detailed policy.

As for questions, I doubt anyone would get annoyed if you ask questions, if you feel that could be the case you can allways ask/PM a GM about it.

I'm not sure what plague you're talking about, it's possible that you happened on some reference to the pre-wotlk plague we had as an explanation to the low population, but now a days that's old and not in use since we reset the server to Retail-WoW lore. Although there's been some new events that are purely server lore.

[Dominique]

I found the rules, but I think I just got a bit confused by some of them. Thanks for that anyway, I forgot where the chat one was, so that will come in handy.

As for the plague, I found it under server lore on the wiki.
Didn't know it wasn't in use. This actually makes me even more confused *chuckles*
How do I see which things are current and which arent?

[Cressy]

I have to be honest, after being asked the same question (may I level past 50 even if I don't have a profile/are a grunt) I get a bit agitated. I answer the questions but then tell people to refer to forums.

Also, when it comes to things they are supposed to do before creating an account and posting an intro (like reading the rules/policies especially) I get a little annoyed but I haven't ever been snappish.

Just remember, answer the question and tell them to look through the wiki since much of the questions they will/do have are there.

/shrug.

[Kaghuros]

That plague is the same one from the Scourge event on Retail that opened Northrend in 3.0. It's current server lore and it's directly in line with what happened on Retail servers.

[Dominique]

Aha, okay. Thank you. I wasn't around for that event, so it didn't connect, but I was told about it, so I know now, thanks.
Now I can get on with my character creation.