Greetings, from a new member

Hey, everyone… my name’s Mike. I was running around with you the other day as Krimhild, and got curious, and, well, here I am. So, I thought I’d introduce myself.

Real Life

I’m a computer programmer in Colorado Springs, currently working for a government contractor. Prior to that, I was in the Air Force for 7 years (a computer programmer there, as well), though I’ve never had the chance to go overseas. I’m a quarter Scottish, and have the red beard and freckles to prove it. I’m also single, 30 years old, and unfortunately still working on my degree in computer science (University of Colorado in Colorado Springs).

My hobbies can be generally summed up as “gaming”… I play Warhammer Online of course, as well as a dozen or so other computer and PS3 games. I also roleplay 3 nights a week (Dark Heresy, Star Wars Saga Edition, and 4th Edition D&D), and play several miniatures games. One of the big reasons I play Warhammer Online is that I’ve been playing the Warhammer tabletop game (and roleplaying game, for that matter) for 6 years, and have some 8000 points of dwarves (nearly half of which are Slayers for my slayer army). I also play Chaos (both Warriors and Daemons) and Wood Elves, and used to have an Empire army, but I sold it to a friend to get him into the game. I also play Warhammer 40k, namely Dark Angels, but also Tau, Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Daemons, and Witch Hunters. And I also play Protectorate and Circle in Warmachine/Hordes.

MMORPG’s

I got my start in MMO’s back in ’98 with Ultima Online. I still have an active account, and play a few times a month on the Baja shard as Smythe or Brunhilda. Since then, I’ve played Everquest (4 years), DAoC (5 years), Star Wars Galaxies (2 years), World of Warcraft (2 years), and Warhammer Online (since launch). I’m pretty much the definition of “casual gamer”. It’s not that I don’t spend much time online… I play 6 hours a night 3-5 nights a week. It’s more that my online time is spent mostly chatting, exploring, or generally goofing off. Every now and then, I go out and get a level or so, but since I’ve been playing since launch and my highest character is level 16… well, you can draw your own conclusion as to how often that happens (to be fair, I started on Volkmar, then moved to Ostermark, and now I’m here… so I’ve gotten to lvl 16 like 5 times now over 3 servers, but still). I don’t plan on moving this time.

Gaming Philosophy

At the core, I play games to have fun. My job is long and tedious, and when I get home, I don’t want another job waiting on me. That’s the main reason I wanted to join you guys… I needed a guild where I could feel a part of the guild whether I’m showing up at every raid or just chilling in a cave by myself somewhere. I’m an Explorer type, and take great fun in exploring both the content and the mechanics of the game. One moment I’m particularly proud of was in DAoC, when they had the old relic keeps. I spent a couple of days (and about a plat) mapping out catapult areas around Albion and Midgard’s relic keeps, using Trigonometry to determine where I could place the catapult such that I could hit the inner keep door without aggroing the guards (a good chunk of that plat was spent at the healer, mind you). I also remember the Crauchon Research Crew, where my friends and I would head out to Dun Crauchon to test out siege weapons and various open field RvR tactics on the less-than-willing Alb-zerg. As an explorer, I’ve already been running around in the Tier 4 areas (haven’t made it to Tier 3 yet, of course), using my patented “noob stealth” ability, that I’ve honed over my many years of MMO playing. I even took part in a BO warband in Tier 4… for about 3 minutes, until someone one-shot me :P
Each of the characters I play has a different, yet similar, personality. Eirynn is a punster who likes to focus on strategy and tactics, and has no problem commanding a warband. Krimhild is a generally agreeable person, who doesn’t like to lead if she can help it, and usually just wades through combat, putting fire to as much as she can. Karduz is a fairly stoic, soft spoken person, who prefers advising to leading, but doesn’t mind taking the reins if he needs to. Blackraine hates to lead and generally sticks to the fringes of the warband, giving her more freedom to move around in the battle. Torek is loud and vulgar (in the classic sense of the word… plain spoken, more or less), and generally too concerned with getting to the next fight to have time for any sort of real leadership. These personalities generally develop on their own, based on my playstyle with the characters, and what I find myself doing most of the time. They, in turn, influence when I play those characters… I play Eirynn when I’m looking to beat some destruction face in and no one wants to start a warband to do it. I play Krimhild when there’s a decent warband around, or when I just feel like seeing big numbers pop up on my screen. Each of my characters kind of represents its own part of my personality, and I’ll probably post more about character biographies later.

Plans

I originally was going to make my own guild, but I couldn’t get enough of my RL friends to commit to playing the game to get the guild off the ground. Thus, I’m hoping to bring some of my former plans to this guild. When I created Eirynn, I created her with the intention of starting an in-game cult of Myrmidia. In the Warhammer Old World pantheon, Myrmidia is the goddess of tactics, and I wanted to create a way that I could develop various tactics for Warhammer Online, and have methods of employing those tactics on the battlefield. As a “for instance”, I always felt in DAoC that certain classes were intended to perform certain functions. Champions, for instance, were comparatively useless in long, drawn out fights due to their cooldowns, but could do a lot of initial damage by using their insta-casts all at once. Bards, with their various instant crowd control spells, could also make a huge impact in the short term, but the cool downs kept that from lasting too long. Pairing the two with each other resulted in a highly mobile group that was adept (theoretically) at flanking the enemy and taking out key targets (healers and crowd control) before the enemy could react. Similarly, Rangers and Nightshades worked well together in keep defense, where a Nightshade could act as a spotter in stealth, while a group of rangers in the courtyard used /groundassist to get the nightshade’s target and pelt it with coordinated volleys. One volley doesn’t do much, but a full group’s worth does significant damage (that one, I’d actually tested). The same precepts are true in Warhammer Online as well. Certain classes are great for “front line” activities, while others are better at flanking, and still others are better at flank defense, and so on and so forth. Developing tactics that make use of these purposely unbalanced groups is part of what I want to do.

Oh, it should be noted, in DAoC, I was on Galahad/Hibernia as Blackraine and Jaffa... just in case anyone knew me :P

Well I can tell you that we do deploy a lot of strategy in our raids, however we do not close our warbands to the outside world. Thus we can not expect everyone to be a pro at their character. Having set maneuvers for us guildies that are in the warbands is one thing, but expecting the outside players to perform this way would lead to many grey hairs. The trick we use is lead by example. If i place a group of Gaiscioch / Alliance in each warband and they do what were supposed to the rest usually fall in line in fear of being dead. The Gaiscioch idea is to make everyone feel a part of a bigger picture. Whether there in our family or not I want them to have fun raiding along side us. It's this type of idea that has made us over 250 people large and only 18 have left since we were formed. That's a 94% retention, better than most I must say. Our philosophy is simple. Be kind to all, lead by example, and treat all as family. This is because even though someone is in one guild today, everyone is a potential recruit. You never know when someone will become family. Most people do not find the perfect guild for them right away, it takes a few lemons to know whats really important. On Thursday your welcome to join us in Tier 2 as we roll the Gaiscioch Trinity across the frontier, This is our triple warband formation. A 3 headed beast that so far has been unstoppable. Once you get the hang of how we like to operate and start feeling like a real part of the family I welcome you to try to climb the ranks to the rank Saighdear. This will allow you to start leading raids for the family, and carry a standard. I believe you will make a fine addition to our Raid Leader lineup. Also feel free to post your strategies here or in the Lore points section. We will have how-to guides available soon and It would be nice to see some strategic breakdowns of characters with pro cons and your thoughts on how a certain class can be best used. In the mean time get familiar with the website. I'm sure the Discovery engine will peak your interest.

Yeah, closing the warband to outside players would also have other unwanted consequences, such as earning a reputation as "elitist" and such, so I definitely understand the desire (from the standpoint of maintaining a good reputation) and necessity (from the standpoint of needing more people) of leaving the warbands open. That said, the Gaiscioch Trinity sounds like the perfect time to try out some combined arms ideas, multi-group formations and movements, etc. Most people in DAoC were far too focused on the "ideal 8-man" group to try things on such a large scale, so I'm glad to see you all bucking the trend and taking it to the enemy. That's the difference, in my mind, between mercenaries and an army... I'd rather be with the army, which would seem to be here.

By the way... how does this "Discovery Engine" thingy work? Do I need to be the first to discover something, or do I put it in when it's the first time for me, individually?

No, The Discovery Engine is a first come first serve exploration rewarding engine. The first one to put the location in for a given Title, History & Lore, Battle Field Objective, Keep, Castle, Tome Unlock, etc gets the points. This is to reward those that explore and find those rare titles. In addition it shares the information with the rest of the family so that they too may gain that achievement. Here in the Gaiscioch Family we think We before Me and therefor as a whole we stride to make the family better. Down the left navigation you will see: Title Unlocks, Tome Tactic Unlocks, Trophy Item Unlocks, Pocket Item Unlocks, History & Lore Unlocks, Boss Lairs. Inside each of these pages is a list of the already discovered unlocks. As you explore enter in anything you find to be awarded points. Title's are the most valuable and History and Lore is the least valuable. Soon we will also have a page for Keeps (Tier 2), Castles (Tier 3 & 4), Battlefield Objectives (All Tiers), and Easy, Normal, Hard Player Quests. Pretty much anything with X/Y Coordinates other than map unlocks goes into the discovery engine. Titles you get for clicking on yourself do not. They have to be unlocks that require exploration.

Regarding Warbands, by Tier 4 I plan to be arranging 5 to 7 warbands of people working together. Our alliance alone can fill 3 of those so the PuG's can fill in the gaps. Perhaps we can show a Double Trinity someday and really scare the crap out of the destro. 6 Gaiscioch led groups all colliding on a bunch of destro sounds like a fun day to me.

Welcome Mike. I must say that I've enjoyed my time playing with Gaiscioch immensely. I think you'll enjoy our family. We tease, joke and respect each other. We have quite a few "characters" in Vent and it's not unusual for me to laugh myself silly over some of the things that are said. Just don't put your auto-follow on Don unless you are working on your "Aaaaaaaah" badge. Don't follow Rhiannon unless you are trying to get lost. Don't follow Edana unless you are a healer. And don't follow Corae (me) unless you want to be picked off from the rear by Destro. I have a slow computer and usually zone in last... well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it... it has absolutely NOTHING to do with me being A.D.D... and easily distracted... what was I talking about?

All I have to say is, bring a clean pair of underpants for every raid.. you never know where you might end up with a dirty underwear :-P Welcome to the family! from my own personal experience I've found a nice home here for myself (and still trying to convince the husband), and wouldnt want to be anywhere else for order ;) Hopefully you will get the same warm and fuzzy feeling too, hehe and as Corae pointed out... dont follow the crazies... unless you want to die. Cheers, Edana

Welcome Mike - love your ideas and I hope by T4 we can use some of them since I have similar concepts running around my brain. I can see a 1/2 of WB of WH's all stealthing in and taking out some healers - espe shammies - I hate those shaman. Or 1/2 a WB of WL's all targeting the same person with their lions - working together and taking them out - I have already seen the tactic used by Destro in T2 and T3 with Squig herders - when I was playing my BW, I must have ticked someone off since not too long into the fight I had 4 squigs on me and let me tell you - it wasn't a good feeling. Haven't seen us doing it yet - but don't actually see a lot of WL's around lately. As you said - there are many possibilities like that - and I personally love that type fo strategy. Safe journ.

Yeah, the white lion's lion can do a decent amount of damage. I've seen more than a few people get solo'd by one because they weren't paying attention to it.

Welcome Mike I was in UO on Baja server as well as Lethos in the New Outriders guild. Ring a bell? Anyway good to have you in the family and hope to fight along side of you soon Leath/Richard