As you can see from the graphic, I procured for myself a whiteboard. While I still believe in my trusty note/sketch book, using the whiteboard was a boon to my creativity. For the last couple of days I was brainstorming ideas for the new WoW AddOn that I wanted to start working on but I wasn't quite getting as far in the design as I had wanted to. I knew that I wanted to work on the Guild Alliance AddOn but I had no idea where to start. Earlier in the process I was writing down, in words, the ideas on functionality and the user interface..., but none of it was inspiring to me. It began to dawn on me that I needed a way to quickly jot down and "prototype" idea that were in my mind and it was then that I knew what the answer would be. So I hopped into my car and drove off to the nearest Staples.

I bought three whiteboards. A large whiteboard that was small enough that it could comfortably sit on my lap but large enough that it could hang on a wall or sit on a tripod stand for presentation type settings. I also bought a smaller whiteboard that is about the size of a clip board. I figured this would be good for idea sessions on the go. It will easily fit in my computer bag but also is big enough to freely scribble ideas down onto. The third whiteboard was slightly smaller the the second and now resides on my refrigerator as my kitchen "wish list". ;)

So, armed with the proper tools, I began developing the design of WoWGuildAlliances! I began by taking an already developed user interface for player organization, the guild pane of the social window in WoW. For this first past quick rendition of the WoWGuildAlliances interface, I took many of the already established features for guilds and applied them to guild alliances. In figure 1 you can see the initial interface design and features...

...with buttons and functions that should already be familiar to almost every WoW player. Like the guild pane of the social window, the alliance pane is mostly taken up by the guild roster. The guild roster would show a list of the currently online members of all member guilds in the alliance. A check box at the top right of the window would allow the user to also show all Offline members of the allied guilds members. A button in the lower right hand would allow the user to cycle through additional member data. Also similar to the guild pane, the alliance pane will display the alliance name in the title bar and provide an area underneath the roster for displaying the alliance MotD (not shown in figure). Three buttons across the bottom of the pane, labeled "Alliance Information", "Add Guild", and "Alliance Control", provide the user with access to a free text box for information about the alliance, a means to add a guild to the alliance, and a window to provide access control to alliance functions, respectively.

In addition to the alliance pane, I drew an initial version of the access control pannel...

...which was a verbatim copy of what was available for guild control functions. My initial idea is that each member of the alliance could be given a rank and permission set in addition to those already established in their individual guilds. This might change in future drafts as I flesh out what exactly it means to be a member guild in an alliance but at the current time it seems like appropriate functions of alliance management.

So, now that I have an idea of what the user interface might look like and some of the functionality the AddOn will provide, I can begin to tweak the concept of the guild alliance. I chose to mimic the already available interface of the guild pane for two reason. First, the learning curve for the AddOn will be small for anyone already familiar with the guild interface. Second, and more importantly, what I'm trying to provide, functionally, is an alternative to having to have a large, and often a difficult to micromanage, guild population. To this end, I am seeking to provide the same functions that guilds provide but with an additional organizational level. Therefore it only makes sense to copy those same functions into this AddOn's design.

Some ideas that I would like to incorporate into the design but didn't make themselves obvious in the above concept drawings were inter-guild chat functions, calendar integration, and guild membership management. The main function that would actually be helpful to most users is the ability to communicate with the alliance membership. This is to be achieved through the use of a new chat channel called /alliance that would function as /guild chat currently functions. Additionally, much like /officers I would like to provide a channel called /leaders which would allow the leaders of each guild to communicate with each other in a private channel. Calendar integration would consist of the same functions that are already available in the calendar except that alliance membership would ideally be available to the calendar. Finally, guild membership management should have the same tools that guild membership have, including the availability of console commands, such as those that can be found at the World of Warcraft website.

Wrapping up, I'd like to point out two other AddOns that are currently available for players that are related to the guild alliance concept. The first AddOn is an earlier attempt at the guild alliance concept, called Guild Alliance. It appears, however, that the project manager, Sarumanthewhite has abandoned the attempt several months ago and at this date there is no fully functional version of this AddOn available. I might attempt to contact this person at some future time when my own version of the AddOn has started to materialize. The second AddOn is called Guild2guild. This AddOn provides functionality will will allow two or more guilds to relay their /guild chat channel communications between each other. I have tried out this AddOn and it does seem to work as intended. While I think I am going to tackle the additional chat channels in a different way, it might be good to use this AddOn as a reference to chat functions.

So here starts my entry into the big boy world of WoW AddOns. Wish me luck. ;)