The Avatars is a guild that was started by a group of real life friends and we form the officers core of the guild. Why did we form the guild? We did so because we wanted to have fun and have the best WOW experience we could. If this sounds like your kind of thing, well, we are the guild for you. This charter contains the rules that govern our guild. While it may seem overbearing to have things so codified, we have made it this way for the benefit of both officers and members. Members can see exactly what the guild expects of them and know where the lines of conduct are, as opposed to finding out what the boundaries are by pushing them and seeing where the officers snap on them. As for the officers, it is easier for us to handle someone who is stepping out of line and creating problems for other members when we have something we can point to and say “here is where it says you can’t do that, and you agreed to it.” Having the guidelines set out for everyone to see helps to foster trust between the members who want to have fun and the officers who must take the necessary steps to ensure and protect that fun atmosphere. Please take your time and read through this charter, paying special attention to the application procedures and the section on unacceptable behavior. We realize it is perhaps a bit long, but we felt it was better to make sure everything needed was in here and then streamline things at a later time. In any case, read away!
Application Procedures
As a growing guild, we are interested in promoting the expansion of our ranks and meeting cool new people by new admissions to the guild. However, we also do not want to hurt the guild experience for our members by recklessly inviting people who turn out to be troublemakers, firestarters, etc. So, we’ve got a few simple guidelines that govern the admissions process and yet hopefully remain as hassle-free as possible.
- Every new applicant must have a sponsorship from a current member. This should not be difficult, as almost all new members are people who know someone in the guild or have run into one of our members somewhere along the road.
- Every full member has the ability to sponsor an applicant. However, members, once you sponsor someone, your sponsorship rights go on a “cooldown” for one week after your applicant becomes a full member. Once that period has expired, you regain your ability to sponsor another applicant. This helps to keep incoming applications to a reasonable, manageable level for the officers to handle. After all, we enjoy helping out the guild by handling all of the organizational work, but we also like having some spare time to actually play WoW.
- Once a sponsorship is filed, the applicant is invited and given a one-week trial period, during which he/she will be casually evaluated by the guild and its officers. In other words, there won’t be any interviews, required instance runs to test playing ability, or anything else like that, but the officers will be keeping an eye on how the applicant interacts with other guild members and looking for any tell-tale signs of problems that the applicant may cause (ninja looting, inappropriate behavior toward other members, etc). At the end of that week, given officer approval, the applicant will be made a full member. At this point, his/her sponsorship rights will go on the same one-week “cooldown” mentioned above. Congratulations! You’re a member of the Avatars!
- Prospective applicants – do not be discouraged by the fact that one or two of these steps require officer approval. In a sense, officer approval rests on a presumption of acceptance. What this means is that when officers look at you as an applicant to decide whether you’re in the guild, you do not have to make a showing to us of why you should be in the guild; rather, we’re looking to see if you’re showing us you should NOT be in the guild based on your actions. A word of advice – we are a social guild at heart, and we seek above all to protect that atmosphere.
- Current members – in this process, the officers put a LOT of trust in you. We expect you to use your best judgment in sponsoring applicants to this guild that you believe will be a good fit for our growing community. We do not want to discourage you from helping to grow our population here in the Avatars, but at the same time, it’s no fun for anyone if we’re constantly having to boot potential and recent applicants. So, get to know the people you’re going to sponsor a little bit, much as the officers do with the trial week, use good judgment, and issues with this should be few and far between.
DKP System/Raiding
The Avatars are not a heavy raiding guild. We will not require our members to do any amount of raiding or gear gathering, though members are absolutely welcome to do any and all raiding they like. Raiding is only a part of what WoW offers to its players, and thus it is only a part of our guild activity, not its main focus by any means. However, it is still a part of what we do, and something we enjoy, thus we will organize raids for members to go on if they like. To that end, we are installing a DKP loot system to keep things as fair as possible for those members who go on the guild raids. The system the Avatars guild will be using is the Variable Price DKP system. For more information on how our system works, or to check out your current DKP if you are a current member of the guild, please go to the DKP thread on our front page.
Unacceptable behavior
Here in the Avatars, we keep a general code of conduct among our members. Basically, we ask that all members conduct themselves as maturely and adultlike as possible. There will be no ban on profanity in guild chat – after all, we’re adults here. Besides, if profanity bothers you, that’s why WoW installed the profanity filter; simply turn it on. In the same vein, we often joke around with each other, and sometimes those jokes get a little off-color. Again, we’re adults. What Avatars expects from its members is to keep these things in moderation, and if you are offending someone, cease immediately. Our highest priority is a relaxing, fun environment for all of our members, and anything that jeopardizes that will not be allowed. Keep it (relatively) clean and keep other people and their feelings in mind.
As far as other things – keep guild chat for chat. If you want to link items or send a damage meter to someone else, do it in tells. When actually playing the game, stick to the WoW unwritten code of ethics; no ninja looting or anything else of that sort. We here at the Avatars like to show other WoW players that we are good, honorable people, and as a member, your actions reflect back on yourself and the rest of us.
If problems start to arise, the officers reserve the right to review the situation on a case-by-case basis. Penalties can include removal of sponsorship rights, inability to go on raids if the problem caused was in that environment, or outright expulsion if the infraction was serious enough. Expulsion is assuredly our last resort, but it is a tool we will not refrain from using if the need arises. We ask our members to conduct themselves in a respectful manner so that we never have that need.
How we operate
We are a guild based primarily around having a good time playing WoW in a fun atmosphere. We do a little bit of everything, from raiding to PvP to questing to just hanging out and talking with our other members. We like to see our members interact with each other as much as possible. If someone needs help with a quest, feel free to help out if you can. Going to make an instance run? See if fellow members would like to go. Please do your part to keep the guild as harmonious as possible. Remember to be forgiving – if someone says something that catches you the wrong way, don’t get mad, just let them know and work it out. If you take someone new to an instance run/raid and they make a mistake, don’t give them problems about it; rather, take the opportunity to teach them so they can do it better the next time. Feel free to talk to the other people in the guild in your class about talent specs, gear, etc – everyone gets better when we talk. In essence, enjoy the WoW experience, enjoy the Avatars experience, and do what you can to help others enjoy it, too.
Guild Bank rules
The Avatars does operate a guild bank, and Virulian is our officer in charge of it.
Items - all items can be purchased from the guild bank at a rate roughly equivalent to 1/2 auction house prices. This is up to the discretion of the guild bank coordinator. All item donations are permanent - no returns will be made. The items can be bought back at 1/2 Auction house prices just like everything else. Item requests can and should be addressed to Virulian or his alt, Astralyn. Items will be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. There will be set max limits on some items that we tend to get in bulk in the guild bank - the excess will periodically be sold by Virulian and the proceeds will go into the guild fund. Once we start to get items in the guild bank that are very expensive and hard to buy completely in one go, payment plans can be worked out with Virulian
Money - Monetary donations are to be made in increments of 1g - no loose change, please. Until all guild bank tabs are bought, the guild bank fund will go solely toward purchasing tabs; once tabs are purchased, the fund will be used for guild repairs and respecs for raiding purposes.
If there are any questions, feel free to use the guild bank forum on this site to make your concerns/inquiries known.
If you've made it this far, congratulations!
That's our guild charter. For any questions, please refer to the relevant threads in our forums or contact an officer, either through PMs here on the site or ingame. Cheers!
Subject: ~Guild Charter~ 
Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:28 pm
