Guild:Cry Havoc (Bronzebeard US)

Guild History
Cry Havoc is one of the oldest continuously operating guilds on the Bronzebeard (USA) server. It was founded on March 17, 2005 by Hordekillah, not quite 4 months after the game's launch date.

Over the years, the guild has survived a variety of shake-ups of the sort that have caused other guilds to disband. Also, there have been several full or partial mergers with other now-defunct guilds, including WoW Board Of Trade, Avatara Descente, and Swords of Destiny.

The original guild leader and founder, Hordekillah, began serving a tour with the US Navy in mid-2005, just a few months after the guild was created. While he was gone, Whitelotus took over guild leadership for the next several months. At the end of 2005, poor raid attendance and other issues led to a major shakeup where many of the guild's officer corps and roughly half the active players left the guild. When the dust settled, Paladin class captain Siryn had assumed the role of guild leader. Siryn's tenure as guild leader lasted several months, and was a period of rebuilding. After Hordekillah returned from deployment and once again become an active player, Siryn returned leadership to Hordekillah. He stayed as leader until early 2008, when another Naval deployment led him to turn leadership over to Mythriel, who had been the guild leader of Swords of Destiny prior to that guild's merger with Cry Havoc.

Officer Structure
The guild's officer structure is fairly simple. Below the guild leader there is a "General" for each character class, and one or two players at the rank of "Captain" that report to the General.

A recently added rank is "Strategy Advisor", denoting players whose primary responsibility is to lead raids and figure out fight strategies.

The officers meet once a week or as needed for special circumstances. Additionally, the guild's website features an officer-only message area and a variety of special functions that help the officers to manage the guild.

Guild Rules
Cry Havoc has a well-defined set of guild rules that have been cause for both admiration and derision. Many players admire the way Cry Havoc's guild rules attempt to codify a relatively straightforward philosophy that emphasizes creating friendships and having fun in the game over issues such as loot. Unfortunately, there are also some players who view the rules as overly long.

Looting System
Cry Havoc does not use a points-based system for looting. Instead, the loot rules come down to this: figure out who is eligible to roll for an item, based on the requirements in the guild rules, and then have everybody do your basic random roll. Highest roll wins.

Player Eligibility
Recent invitees to the guild are ranked as "initiate" and are ineligible to roll for anything during the first few weeks of membership unless there is no veteran player who needs the item. This keeps the veterans from being beat out by new players (one of the prime goals of most point-based systems), while in practice the initiate still gets a fair amount of loot that isn't needed by the veterans.

Players are not eligile to roll if they would be replacing an epic item with another raid-drop epic item of a similar level. Players are eligible if they would be replacing crafted items and/or vendor/reward items.

Players are not eligible to roll if they have already won an epic item on a raid that week, unless all other players have also won something.

Website & Voice Chat
The Cry Havoc Guild website features message forums, a membership roster, strategy guides, videos, image galleries, polls, and much more. There is an event calendar where players can sign-up to attend upcoming raids.

There are a variety of special functions available to officers to help them view and vote on membership applications, approve new accounts, and perform other administrative functions to manage the guild. Officers can see who's signed up for raid events and even view the player's talent specification, which is automatically updated from the Blizzard Armory.

Cry Havoc uses TEAMSPEAKfor voice-chat during raids and general play. Setup information can be found on the guild website.