GUILD RULES : Today's Date: Saturday, September 4th, 2010
	These are your basic rules for the guild; These rules can be enforced at the discretion of the guild leaders, and exist as anything from zero tolerance to simple guidelines. They’re all quite reasonable and easy to adhere to, but simply set the precedence to keeping the guild enjoyable and successful. No flaming or attacking fellow guild members Any problems that you have with a fellow guild member of Cats in Hats should be brought to the officers in order to be solved in a reasonable fashion. Any attacks against a fellow guild member, either in game or on the message board, can be enough cause for removal. Don’t over-react and let your temper ruin the atmosphere for everyone. Participation Attending Guild raids is a requirement of CiH. Please let an officer (or post on the forum guild member area) know if you aren't going to around for a month due to whatever reason so we (officers) can forecast for future raid numbers/events. If you are being botted by someone and are going to be online during our scheduled raid times, expect a tell from an officer.You NEED to let us know BEFOREHAND! On guild raids, a member’s presence is required and insisted upon by the guild. Members are required to drop whatever they are doing and show up AT or before raid time. Participating means doing what is required of your class. Not fufilling your class obligations can mean no attendance for a raid, removal from a specific raid, and for folks that continue after being warned, are subject to the deguilding process as defined previously defined under balance of power. Guild progression The focus of CiH is to progress in EQ. Not farm crap for your twinks or your friends. While we all know that friends are good and twinks are fun they do NOT at any time override our dependence on each other for doing the things that progress the guild forward. While this is hard to police as well as very difficult to find some people hiding online on twinks, they are eventually caught and noticed. If you decide to play that twink in off hours its totally up to you, but you can be sure that if you don't help folks with your main in off hours... You won't get help either. The guild officers/GL are responsible for giving the guild a goal and purpose. We are reasonable in our choices, and the guild is expected to attempt to follow them, not oppose them. If you have ideas on anything to enhance Cats in Hats as a guild, please let us know and post about them or tell us in game. Guild Morale and Negativity Guild morale is very important, and the attitude of each and every member directly affects everyone else’s experience. Over the top negativity is not permitted in guild chat. Things like “Why are we even doing this raid?” and “We don’t stand a chance, lets log” don’t help anything. The AFK Rule We all know and understand people need to go afk. It's a fact of life. We have to have bio breaks, feed the baby, acknowledge the spouse etc. So here's the rules. 1): You tell your group you have to go afk. 2): You put a group member on auto follow and tell them they are on auto follow. 3) You turn on AFK and place the name of the person you are auto follow on. If an officer sends you a tell and you don't have AFK on, you don't have auto follow on or you haven't told your group you LOSE all attendance for that raid. No exceptions. 4): AFK during CR and during mid fight deaths are also very serious. Long ass Cr's and folks not "getting back into the fight" can cost WAY too much time waiting on slow CR and mid fight AFK not taking rezzes can cause a wipe. Highly serious about this. 5) Constant AFKing isn't allowed. If you have to constantly afk you affect our ability to complete events. If its deemed by CL and officers that you are afk enough to be a detriment, or believed you are there just to soak up attendance only to come back for loot calls you can be denied attendance, removed from raid, both.. or a history of this can lead to escalation of punishment. (see violations) (Yes this rule has some big teeth in it. Random, unknown AFK's are killing us. We have no problem with people going AFK on limited basis, but communication is key, you MUST inform your group and the raid you are afk by using the /afk feature or you lose attendance.) Blatant Disobeying Officernoobie01 says in guild chat, “Don’t gate, everybody fight!” Tedule says in guild chat, “No way, Draccir just died! We're all gonna die! I’m gating!” Simple enough! Ignoring a raid command, being asked to stop doing something and continuing to do it or any other obvious and blatant ignorance of an officer’s directions will get you docked KKP for the raid, booted from the raid or other (see Violations). Sustaining Membership Communication is important to the upkeep of the guild. For this reason all members will be required to report any extended absences (more then 5 days) to their class leader or an officer. We don't need to know your real life or anything. A simple I will be gone for X amount of time is fine. Anybody gone for 3 weeks without any communication will be removed and replaced. Loot See Loot System on main page for loot rules. New members New members are added to the guild after they submit an application, and it is posted on our recruiting board and majority officers and the class leader approve it. Once a person is invited to join they will remain an applicant (minimum 30 days), after that time they must meet at least 40% raid attendance to make full member status. Any trial member deemed to be not cutting the mustard can be deguilded by majority officers and CL. If an applicant doesn't meet the requirements listed under their class they will remain an applicant until those requirements are met. An applicant cannot win loot over a full member at any time. They are in the guild to prove their skills and usefulness to the guild. At the end of the 30-day period if the applicant does not have a 40% attendance, two things can happen: - 1) Extension of trial period based on officer and CL decision. Once 200 raids are met then full member ship can be granted by majority officer vote. - 2) Failure of trial Communication Check the message boards at least 3 times a week. There is lots of very good information that is posted there. Some members spend hours putting up quest information. If you need this information print it out! Don't drive the hard working CiH members crazy with questions that are clearly answered on the message boards. Recruiting Recruiting of new members will be handled by any character wearing a Cats in Hats tag; We do have a recruiting officer but please do not make him do all the work. Effective means of recruiting are using the EQplayers profile tool to view unguilded players profiles. Another way is by word of mouth or an in-game friend. Once either the guild leader or recruiting officer receives an application either in-game (EQ mail) or e-mail, it will be posted under the adopt me section of the forum. If you believe you are an excellent judgement of character and know what to look for in specific classes (ie. gear / aa) then please send us a PM requesting access. Official Raid Time Raid Time is 7:30pm to 12:00pm EST Saturday through Thursday with Fridays off. GL and officers will vote on other days (holidays) off as needed/desired and will be announced in Guild chat. Raids outside this time will be un-official and no guild member will be forced or goaded into coming against their will, nor will it affect their points/attendance. We all should strive as best we can to be on time to raids and stay as long as possible. Parses can be taken at anytime during official raid time, but are normally done on a regular time table from the start of raiding until raid is called off at the end of the night. Being on time is important in RL to your Jobs, School etc. We normally allow a few mins to allow late comers to catch up, but this isn't a guarantee. The "Catch 22' is that we want to reward folks for being on time doing the clearing and boring stuff but not penalize folks just running a few minutes late. So in accordance, showing up late to a raid can mean a missed parse if you aren't on at the time its done or are afk in guild hall or some other zone. We have to have a certain number of members on to get started on raiding, enough late members can have negative effect on how fast we get started and what we are able to choose as a target. Raid target rule A raid target is brought forth in either guild say or officer chat. Quite often we actually use EQ voice to speak to the guild about possible targets and get feedback from everyone. Officers vote yes or no for that target, votes will be called for twice. If you are silent then a silent vote = yes. If the majority is no, then another target will be brought forth. Also, no random spamming of targets during voting. A simple yes or no will do. Deguilding Yourself rule We have all been mad at any number of things at one time or another, and if you are upset you have many options available to you but Deguilding yourself is HIGHLY discouraged. If you deguild yourself for any reason purposefully, then want to come back, Officers will have to vote on putting you back in (Majority rule) and you will suffer a 50 KKP deduction. VIOLATIONS Our basic form of punishment for violations of the above will follow this progressive scale unless otherwise noted. 1) Warning 2) 50KKP penalty 3) Deguilding NO CHEATING There is a ZERO tolerance policy for cheating. This means using any non authorized 3rd party software to change the normal behavior or capability of the standard EQ client, or using an exploit in game such as duping items. If there are complaints that we can verify that indicate you have been cheating or have gotten benefit from someone else who is known to be cheating, you will be removed, no warning. If your account has been suspended or banned due to exploits or cheating you will also be removed. This will be a permanent removal with no chance of re-application. This removal process will require agreement of a super majority of officers/guild leader (60% - or 5 of 7 officers/guildleader). In addition the accused will be given the chance to refute the evidence, in the case an error has been made. You are responsible for your characters and anyone playing them or who has or will play them at any time. Any action committed by a "previous owner" or any action committed by "my friend who bots me sometimes" is wholly your responsibility and you will be held completely accountable for it. Everyone is required to maintain an active EQPlayers profile and having a MAGELO profile is nice but not required. This is just a basic guildline. Some violations are obviously more serious than others and would warrant bypassing a step or two in serious occurances. Anyone receiving such a warning or kkp penalty will be noted on officer boards and the details. With these basic rules, and the Item Policy criteria that everyone strives to meet, the guild is an easy-going and enjoyable experience for everyone that is a part of it. These rules are here for the rare occasion where problems arise, but most of it is common sense, leaving us to enjoy the fact that we rarely have to use them.