Wednesday, January 24, 2007

WOW Guild Site slowly nearing completion

Well, the Sunken Temple Pilots seem to be slowly making a name for themselves, I'm getting players actually saying 'hey, I was teamed with a couple of your guys, and they were were really good', which is excellent, and exactly what I wanted, it seems we're training up players to be decent citizens of this new world.

If I can get to the point where my guild members can say 'hey, can I team up with you guys?' and get the response ' well, I don't kno- oh, you're in Sunken Temple Pilots, sure!', then I know I've hit my target. I'm not saying we're famous on our server, but the name does seem to have been noticed at least, even players who don't know our plans have bothered to message me going 'hey, cool name'. I have to admit I smiled seeing a guild doing similar stuff called 'Ghouls Allowed', I guess music means something to everyone, you're going to get an emotional response from most people just mentioning it.

We also passed 100 members a few days ago, which is quite an achievement for a guild under a month old, and especially so on such an old server, as old servers have far fewer new players, and old players tend to add their new characters to their current guild. As well as updating the guild website I've been using the in game mail to send a few pages out roughly weekly, to keep all players in the know, as my experience in other guilds, is that its nearly impossible to make all your guildies read a website, never mind actually use online forums etc.

I have had a cunning plan tho, and I'm be having a prize draw soon, for a nice shiny in game item, and to enter, you'll need to find the passwords hidden on pages on the site. I haven't done it yet, but I figure people who won't normally read stuff might be convinced if there's shiny things in it for them.

I've also been pleasantly surprised by the sheer positive feedback of players, and of the generousity both in and out of game of players. I've already had offers of people building forums for me, and offering web hosting space, and in game, people mailing gold to supply the guild, mailing me blue items, which are damned rare at low levels, and well worth a few gold if they'd chosen to sell them instead of donating to guild.

I think it just goes to show, if you give people the chance to be part of something based around decent, fair play, they don't have to be a nasty lowbie killing loot stealing shower of bastards!

to put it in context, we've got over a hundred players, of which I think about 80-90 are fairly active, and about 60 are on at least every couple of days, and we've lost about 5 or so, due to them being complete tools and not fitting in. I think I'm probably going to trim another dozen or so soon for not having been online in the last few weeks, my next target being 100 members actually being active, which I rate as playing at least once a week. I'm not going to start punting people out for not playing weekly, but I think if you haven't played in a month, you're probably not rushing back any time soon.

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

World of Warcraft Update

Well, as of Xmas Eve, the Sunken Temple Pilots were born.

I'm trying my hand at actually running a guild in World of Warcraft, as I felt there was a real lack of anywhere for newcomers to be, what are we going to get after Xmas and all the gifts have been opened? Yes, loads of new players!

So, a week later, and we have 64 players, some with multiple characters in the guild, we've only had to kick one out for being a tool, and in the main, the guild members are embracing the spirit I am trying to instill in them. To help because you can, not for rewards, to be patient with new players, and if you're being helped, you don't owe us, you owe the ones to come later seeking help.

What has surprised me is the number of really decent individuals willing to invest time in helping us, showing newbies around, getting them geared up and donating items to the cause!

Its actually close to the point where I can't give the stuff away fast enough, heh.

Most of all, only a week in, I've already got about a dozen players taking on responsibily for smaller groups of the players.

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