Ernordeth became a member of the Fist Staff shortly after I took this office in 2013. During that time he has contributed across a wide range of projects, adding value to the gaming experience our club provides to its members. As I was reviewing his dossier recently I came to the realization that I had not written an award for him since his last promotion, and it is definitely time to remedy that.
Ernordeth has served as my Praetor for the past nine months, and a Magistrate for two prior to that. A month ago I extended his responsibilities to include reviewing the Gaming Shadow Academy Exams. During this time he has executed his duties far above my expectations. Review and approval of Gaming Submission requests for Clusters is a large part of the Fist Staff's job, while this activity takes small amounts of time for each individual review the work when viewed in its entirety can definitely add up over an extended period of time. As of 11Oct2015 Ernordeth has reviewed 3,154 Gaming Requests since November. That accounts for 59% of all gaming activities submitted during that time frame. The timeliness of this review is important, to me and to our members, Ernor's efforts ensure that rewards are distributed as soon as possible to the club's gamers. He has proven similarly efficient in his role as my Docent to the Gaming SA Courses, completing a review of 24 courses since taking on that responsibility last month.
Over the past year Ernor has also made several posts to the DJB News Page to provide club gamers with clarification to Fist Staff policies, as well as information on finding other members to game with, and general gaming knowledge. Ernordeth has organized seven different gaming competitions, five of which had greater than ten participants from the club. These include General Gaming: Tie Fighter) (2 participants), Mobile Gaming: Turkey Chase (16 participants), Mobile Gaming: Slingin Sants (19 participants), General Gaming: Jedi Academy (9 participants), Mobile Gaming: Beer Pong (16 participants), Mobile Gaming: ZigZag (34 participants), and Mobile Gaming: Jelly Jump (33 participants). Beyond these seven Ernor has been a Co-Organizer for an additional 11 Competitions, including several Gorefest Events which required manual computation of Clusters of Fire to be doubled prior to website improvements which made these activities automated.
Everything prior to this point in my recommendation is the daily grind of the Fist Staff. Activities which are required to keep the club moving, they aren't "sexy" and can often be construed as someone "just doing their job". I'd like to move on to the projects that Ernordeth has participated in now, activities which go beyond the requirements of the normal day to day activity, and often involve lengthy debate about how they will be approached.
The first project that Ernordeth tackled was the creation of Cluster Tables for Destiny in November 2014. This followed a trial period where we determined if there was sufficient interest in the game for it to become supported by the Club. The initial version of this table included not only the Strikes and Raids you see now, but also individual Story Missions. I required that each of these items have multiple runs to determine accurate times and that this documentation all be provided before signing off on the final project. To say the task that Ernor took on was easy or small would be a massive understatement. Ernor began work while the trial period was still in progress, to ensure that if the game was accepted his project would be ready to present to members of the club as soon as possible. Only a month after he completed it Destiny's Expansion (The Dark Below) was released. This brought about a repeat performance of the initial project, only a shortened timeline. Once again Ernordeth did not disappoint.
The new year brought about more change for the platform in the form of a complete redesign of what Clusters were awarded for as well as a Daily Cap limit. This was a significant conversation within the Fist Staff, with several different views on the problem at hand to consider. Ernordeth's contributions to that conversation as well as assistance with implementation of the solution were critical to the current system in place today. Since this time Ernordeth has repeated his review of Destiny's Cluster Tables for the second Expansion: House of Wolves (in June), and the Year 2 Taken King expansion (in September).
As the year progressed and we approached the Star Wars Celebration in April the Grand Master put out a call for a blast of information about our club on the News Page. The Fist Staff's contribution to this effort consisted of a summary of the gaming platforms that our club utilizes along with screenshots from many of them depicting groups of our members gaming together under the DJB Clan/Guild name. During this Ernordeth coordinated several of the screenshots and also provided writeups for some of the games which were used in the final project, as well as proofreading the News Post for me before the "go-live".
This past May the Fist Staff began a project which involved the creation of a new gaming award, the Cluster of Earth, for player versus environment activities. A significant part of this project which Ernordeth took on was a manual review of Clusters of Fire which were awarded over a ~2 year time period to determine if they would remain classified as a Cluster of Fire or be transitioned to a Cluster of Earth. Again, due to Ernordeth's contributions this portion of the project was completed ahead of target (by one month) and, more importantly, accurately. Following implementation we recieved zero notifications of an award that a member felt was incorrectly classified. As I think about it now that alone is probably worth a Sacramental award.
The final portion of the Cluster of Earth project involved determining how the two awards would be weighted against each other. As with previous discussions, this was held with many senior members and Ernordeth's input to the conversation was valuable in determining the end result of the project.
The final contribution I'd like to mention from Ernordeth was his immediate buy in the club leadership's trial of the Telegram App, which has become a very popular means of communication amongst members. Ernordeth saw an opportunity to expand this from just use as the DB General Chat Channel by creating a DB Gamer's Lounge for the Club. Discussion within the channel has provided our club's gamers a unique opportunity to more effectively find others to group with using only their smart phones.
Ernordeth, thank you for all of the contributions and hard work you have put into improving the gaming portion of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood Club over the past eleven months. Having you as my Praetor as been an amazing help and your willingness to present alternative options, even though I fight them sometimes, has made our club a better place. Congratulations on this, likely overdue, Amethyst Kukri!
-Valhavoc, Fist of the Brotherhood
Valhavoc, 2015-10-12 01:21:01 UTC