Guild Spotlight: Rising Arms

Name: Rising Arms
Play Orientation: FFA-PvP
Role Playing: None
Guild Size: Small-Medium (>40 members) and growing
Time Zone: US
Communication: Our Forums, and Ventrilo
Guild Hall Thread: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=41776
Web Site: http://www.risingarms.com/

What is unique about your guild?
Our name, like most guilds, is the first thing that anyone sees or hears about us, so we needed something original. “Rising Arms” is not only creative, but it also paints an image that suits our overall attitude and goals: teamwork and victory. Also, our guild is uniquely structured. Rising Arms is run by 3 Guild Masters of completely equal power and say in all matters, and we’re always in constant communication to keep things running smoothly. As you can already tell, we’re not the average tyrannical guild; Us Guild Masters are always open to ideas and suggestions from our members and we strongly encourage active participation by all.

The other thing that sets us apart from most other Guilds at this point is our aim for where we want to take this Guild. We’re serious about this game and this Guild and, while we like to have fun, when it’s time to get serious we fall into our places and get right on top of our game. We learn quickly and communicate effectively to come out victorious. The game may not be out yet but that doesn’t, and hasn’t, kept us from organizing and already beginning to work on our teamwork/leadership as well as individual skills. That being said, our standards for the Guild and our members are set high in order to be successful and accomplished as a team.

Who are the people of your guild?
We have three Guild Leaders and five Council Members in leadership positions. The three Guild Masters are Ciden, Kaelic, and Ramaweh. Four of the five Councilmen are: Barbaroi (Guild Manger), Krol (Recruitment Officer), Oxus (PvP Specialist), Wrygon (Guild Diplomat.) The General has not yet been appointed. We also have a few squad leaders that can be contacted if there is any interest in joining that particular squad.

What is your current guild size?
Our current guild size is about 40 members. We hope to have a minimum of 50 active and dedicated members by general beta, and upwards of 100+ by launch date.

What is your main time zone?
Rising Arms is based on the East coast of the U.S; EST (GMT -5.) Most of our members reside in the U.S. or Canada, ranging from -5 to -8 GMT. We won’t turn away members that are outside of this time zone, we just won’t be able to guarantee that we will have any guild-wide activities scheduled during their peak hours.

What servers are you gunning on?
We’re going to be playing on one of the first Free-For-All PvP servers based in the United States.

How do you look at interacting with other guilds?
We’re not hostile, but we’re not passive either. I like to call it “strategically aggressive.” We’re going to take what we can get and establish the fact that we’re going to be a force to fear, and that you’d be better off on no side than our bad one. Any attacks on us, large or small, will be treated as an act of war. Other guilds can only serve two purposes for Rising Arms- to help us or to hurt us. There is nothing wrong with establishing friendly relationships with other guilds and getting to know other people. We do not, however, plan on taking on the entire server alone. We have a charter, rightfully named “The Blood Pact,” written up in the case of a possible alliance. Once these rules are agreed on and/or amended (for the sake of the alliance) and the alliance is official, we will further take whatever resources, money, land, and power that we can. However, at this time we are not actively seeking an alliance- if we do create one, it will be done in game (after release.)

How are you structured socially?
As I mentioned earlier, we have 3 completely equal Guild Masters who have complete control (but we are constantly in contact with each other to discuss anything major.) Just under the Masters is ‘The Council’, a group of 5 members- The PvP Specialist, Recruitment Officer, Guild Diplomat, Guild Manger, and the General. Each position is fairly self-explainable. Next in power comes the Squad Leaders who are to lead their squad in battle- be it PvP, GvG, or PvE raiding. Under the Squad Leaders are the Militants. Militant rank is given to anyone in a squad. Anyone who does not have a title and is not in a squad is a Citizen. They are not required to be present for any PvP or PvE events, only that they act as representatives for Rising Arms in-game and contribute to the guild with ideas, resources, and/or their prestige-class bonus. Squire is our new member two-week trial period to see if they mesh well with the Guild in both skill and personality. They are then moved to either Citizen or Militant from there.

What is your take on player cities?
Player cities in Age of Conan are a huge deal- any and every major guild will spend hours upon hours along with many resources and a bit of a fortune to make their city as large and spectacular as can be. We have many members that have already, in detail, imagined up what they want Rising Arms’ city to look like and want a hand in creating it. That being said, though we’re all very excited for that feature, it will not be our top priority. We plan on pouring as much resources and effort that we can into our Battle Keep before our city for strength and defense purposes. It will still remain very important to design, build, and defend our city, but it won’t be the only thing we do. We’re mainly a PvP guild and will show our power through defeating any and all that stand in our way.

What is your take on in-game taxes and loot distribution?
In-game taxes are important. Just like any real-life city or town, the taxes help to build and maintain public structures and will hold the same purposes in Age of Conan for the player cities. In the case that the city owner(s) are allowed to set the taxation rate, Rising Arms will only tax goods bought in our city by 10%, 15% at the absolute highest. Taxes set too high can upset its citizens and will discourage people from buying anything.

Loot distribution is another subject. Many times have I played a game and raided without getting anything more than experience points simply because I didn’t, or couldn’t, get any items that dropped. We will be using a distribution in which everyone wins. We took a look at two very popular loot system: DKP and Loot Council. Then we weighed the pros and cons of both. Our system will be a meshing of both systems into a hybrid type system that involves ARMS (Advanced Raiding Merit System) points as well as a form of a loot council. All the details will be worked out once we have numbers to work with in-game (just waiting for Beta, still!)

What excites you most about Age of Conan?
I don’t think that’s a fair question. Most of our members, including myself, have been following this game for many months and have marked their calendars for March25th, as well as requested off from work for the last week of March. Everything- The graphics, spell-weaving, player cities, the 5-directional attack system, the ‘M’ rating, and ESPECIALLY the drunken bar-fighting has had us all on the edge of our computer chairs for way too long, and I think FunCom needs to give us all beta keys ASAP.

How are you planning on communicating in-game?
Rising Arms has had a private Ventrilo server since the beginning of April and we plan on continuing to use Ventrilo for all in-game voice communication. Since our aim for quality and organization is so high, Ventrilo and a headset/microphone will be mandatory for all Guild Members once Age of Conan is released.

What are you looking for in a potential member?
We’re looking for maturity, dedication, experience- everything you’d expect to find in a serious guild. If they’ve been in a structured guild and have played other MMORPGs before, they shouldn’t have too hard of a time adapting to Age of Conan and Rising Arms’ style of play. We don’t want to be attempting to teach players how the MMO genre works in-game, because that would take away our time and our potential strength. We’re friendly and will help people who honestly ask for it, but we will not be responding to anyone who asks us questions in all capital letters and entire lines of exclamation points. We’d also like people who have an MMO background with a bit a leadership. If most of our members were a guild and/or class leader at one point, then they will be easier to work with, as well as they might have some very useful ideas for Rising Arms. The last thing we require of our members is a desire to win and be the best- because in the end, that’s what we’re all about.

How to apply?
Applying to Rising Arms is simple. Visit our site and forums at http://www.risingarms.com/ . Once on our forums, you go to the applications section and use our application template to apply (in order to make sure we get all the information we need.) Be elaborate and precise- we like to know our applicants’ true potential. Applicants are free to look at some of the other applications for ideas on what we’re looking for, too. We also like to talk to our applicants on Ventrilo before finishing the application process in order to get a feel for them as people and their personality.

Rising Arms is an established guild that’s been around for quite some time now. How do you look at the changes made in the game in the past months personally, and how do they affect your Guild (issues such as class changes, lore problems, server segregation…)?
None of the changes in the past few months have been a huge shocker to us as a Guild. A few class tweaks, a couple server issues, but nothing earth-shattering. We’re skilled and specialize in PvP and therefore adapt to changes on-the-fly in most cases. We’ll be affected once we’re in game and class skill numbers (be it damage, cooldown times, or the way they work) are changed on us through patches.

Final words from the Guild Masters:
“In these past few months, our guild has picked up many amazing gamers that were glad to join our ranks and take on the Rising Arms name: a fine mixture of in-depth strategists, devoted leaders, and dedicated followers. It is impossible not to improve as a gamer around this group. Come and join what we have become and may Crom have mercy on all of our foes.”
-Ciden

“We’ve grown fairly large in quite a short period of time. I’m excited to be a part of such a large community and our guild members’ anticipation for Age of Conan and Rising Arms’ success in-game has me ready to play this game even more. We’re going to make sure that everyone knows who Rising Arms is and we’ll be more than ready to back up the strength that we claim to have with brute and relentless force.”
-Kaelic

“It has already been a pleasure to help further the aspirations of our guild. The members, Squad Leaders, and overall guild structure are shaping up nicely. All we need now is the game to jump into. P.S. Oh and remember, we are still recruiting!”
-Ramaweh

All three of the Guild Masters would like to thank Funcom for developing a game such as Age of Conan, The AoC community, which is filled with many enthusiastic and excited gamers who are ready to jump into the game come March 25th, all the Rising Arms’ members for their contributions and dedication thus far, and most importantly- WarCry.com for always bringing us the biggest MMO news and for the opportunity to promote our guild through this interview. Hope to see you all in game!

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