If we eren't a Guild site what would you change?

[Mr. Analog]

My suggestion then, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.



I have offered to do things in the past (such as providing content, or offering my technical expertise) but there was such an overwhelming lack of interest in what I had to offer that it wasn't worth me wasting my time. Sorry but that's the truth.



Bottom line is we talk a great deal about what should happen here and there but we never sit down to meet about it or discuss things in detail. Hell, we don't even have bar napkin scribble notes to compare. The will is there, believe me, but the interest is lacking. I don't work in a vacuume and I certainly can't guess what kinds of things you need done around here that I might be able to help with so don't tell me stories about people who have tried to contribute to the site content and "failed".



To answer your questions, the forums are fine, don't change 'em. I think on that we can all agree. As for the site, well, unless there is something there I need I probably won't visit it. And yes, it is impossible to have a specific and general focus. They are mutually exclusive, a specific focus is exclusive while a general focus is inclusive.



I have to refer back to Shayne's post though; basically he lays it out rather smartly. We either go one way or the other, the point is we have to choose before we make any site shattering choices. I don't want the gaming group to splinter, and contrary to popular belief I'm not trying to make this happen, but we have to address where you, the site owner, sits on this one.

[Melbosa]

I have offered to do things in the past (such as providing content, or offering my technical expertise) but there was such an overwhelming lack of interest in what I had to offer that it wasn't worth me wasting my time. Sorry but that's the truth.



Bottom line is we talk a great deal about what should happen here and there but we never sit down to meet about it or discuss things in detail. Hell, we don't even have bar napkin scribble notes to compare. The will is there, believe me, but the interest is lacking. I don't work in a vacuume and I certainly can't guess what kinds of things you need done around here that I might be able to help with so don't tell me stories about people who have tried to contribute to the site content and "failed".

I wasn't being specific, as there is no need, so I am sorry if I offended you in some way.



And to put this plan and simple - for me this is one site I really enjoy working on and improving... with some strategy and design considerations... informal and relaxed.  Anything beyond that, and this will feel like work, which will make me loose interest fast.  If anyone has ideas, concepts, development or other, feel free to just do it and so us a prototype... let the creative juices flow... you don't need me to tell what to do, nor do I expect you to feel I must.



I swear some of you guys are taking this too seriously for a bloody community site.

I have to refer back to Shayne's post though; basically he lays it out rather smartly. We either go one way or the other, the point is we have to choose before we make any site shattering choices. I don't want the gaming group to splinter, and contrary to popular belief I'm not trying to make this happen, but we have to address where you, the site owner, sits on this one.

You want my stance... well if you haven't guess it already here it is:



Righteous Wrath is a website and forum primarily focused as a Guild community, with MMOs and Online Gaming in mind.  It is open to be beyond that to meet the members needs or wants, so long as the hardware and software allow, and does not overshadow the primary focus to the point that it is lost in the sea of topics.



I think we are already on this direction with the current forum layout, and I know the primary elements of our previous website reflected this, and is my hope the new design will just expand on it, and allow for more diversity and dynamic delivery of website content.

[Mr. Analog]

So...

over these years there have times of promises of content, of development from members, that never came to pass... empty in the end as well intended as they are.

So you had expectations and yet

You don't need me to tell what to do, nor do I expect you to feel I must

You don't!? Huh? Wha?

I swear some of you guys are taking this too seriously for a bloody community site.

Oh, I see, by belittling issues they just aren't worth talking about? This has to get sorted out eventually. What is it you expect me to say or do? I have to re-iterate. I am not angry I'm just a bit confused as to what you want out of a user like myself.



You say you want to run this site like a Guild, but, you want it to be informal and relaxed with little or no structure; this does not compute Wil Robinson! A Guild is all about rigid control and defined guildines that all members abide by.



All I am suggesting is that we drop the pretense that we are a Guild and adopt the model we have evolved to; a gaming clan.



I have raised the banner high and proclaimed to the heavens  that our clan of friends is probably one of the strongest on the net (well that's the way I think!). I have brought friends of mine from a vairety of sources and asked only that we live together like a band of brothers and can game, joke and discuss various topics on our great forums to various degrees of our own liking.



Am I wrong? Are we not a group of friends who may or may not share the same taste in gaming? Do we just want to devolve into a group of slotted powergamers farming gold and pwning root in a single category?



All I want is for us to be the best we can; and to me (at least) that means flexibility.

[Mr. Analog]

Incedentally, yes I do get hung up on terminology. It really does bother me that you want us to cram into the Guild model.



Being in a Guild means working at a game, and I am not about that at all (and I can safely assume no one else around here is). As a Clan however we can all play various things under the Clan banner. We're the Righteous Wrath chess playa's, or CCG'ers, or RPG'ers or FPS'ers, etc, etc. Again, we are more a group of peers having fun than a group of gamers trying to pwn an MMO.

[Mr. Analog]

Just an FYI, look a the time I was posting my responses, I apologise if I got a bit emotional there. I don't want to add extra stress to anyones life. But, this thread is all about what I would like to see changed. If you don't agree, that's fine with me just don't take obvious shots at me please.

[Shayne]

I still think you outta add in some google adds to the bottom and/or top and/or right side of the forum.  Thats a metric ass load of page loads and such, might be a good source of revenue for things like a LAN party.

[Melbosa]

/shrug



That is all I have left.  This is way more serious than I ever wanted it to be.  I've never said I wanted to run a strict, dictatorship of a guild, nor do I want to run a group of developers with high ambitions and strong will - at least not as a side hobby. I just wanted a place for everyone to share, express and have fun - with a loose but not lost focus.  Alas I feel as if I just keep repeating myself.  Obviously my vision of a Guild and others differ... and hey that is what being human is all about.



I no longer wish to continue this discussion for I value friendships and personal feelings above this site, which is just a website and a discussion forum, and I can tell that this is becoming personal to some where there was never any intention of so.



{never understands why things get so personal so fast - *sigh*]



I will thank you all for those who gave me specific ideas as what we could change or improve.  If you have more specifics, please keep them coming.

[Mr. Analog]

Anyway, let's get this thread back on topic...



If this weren't a guild site I would like to see:

-Reviews (games, movies, dvds, etc)

-Gaming articles / guides (Heroscape, D&D, MMO, console, PC, Disc Golf, etc)

-Humour articles (photoshops, funny writing, etc)



I mean, that list is pretty much everything that rocks inside the forums and the I would like to see on the site (IF it weren't a guild site).

[Mags]

Well, I have been watching this thread continue, but I am still waiting for it to find a focus. It seems that it got off base from the second it started.



Yes this site was started as a guild site. Period. It was then hijacked into more of a community site by those most active on it. And that has not necessarily a bad thing.

It is certainly one of the most active guild sites going, that includes sites for guilds with thousands of members that I've been to.



But, the negative of that is it tends to intimidate new members sometime (which is what I believe is Mel's concern perhaps), at least that is what the new on-line members have told me in game. Which is basic human nature, just like walking into a party where you know no one, and everyone there knows each other, it's hard to fit in right off. They come expecting to find a forum on guild matters and goings on and tend to be overwhelmed by the ferocity of the Lobby, and the people there that aren't even playing games with the guild.



But, to make the site guild specific, it would essentially kill the current community that has grown here and would cause us to start over. I donno if that is what we want at this point or not. Certainly we should have been more focused perhaps in the beginning and been more rigid on the focus. But I think we all were caught up in the fun of the "newness" of it, and the apparent success in the animal that it became.



Also, I think it's important that we remember that more is not always better. There is a community feel here that could also be crushed by rapid expansion by over zealous people moving in and steering it into what they want it to be. Seen this many times on other sites as well, and when people try and steer it back to what they originally intended then it can kill the site as a whole. (My general feelings on Hytek personally as well).



Still I don't even know if I am on topic for this topic, if not disregard I guess. But if we are unhappy with the current state, we should define a focus and stick to it. There is no way that this not going to kill the current community that we have built as I see it. There are way too many directions that people would want to pull this thing, and every way is going to ostracize others. So we should be clear that we want to loose what we got before moving forward.

[Darren Dirt]

So what Melbosa is basically saying is that, while RW is a guild forum (that mostly plays MMO), it doesnt stop the forums from being full of "whatever".



Really, thats all that I care about.



As long as we can still plan an upcoming heroscape game, the next D&D adventure, disc golf outting, LAN party, chat about politics, religion, technology, games, love, death, sex, violence; then honestly, im not sure i care what RW turns into (no offence to those putting in the hard work).



Im with MrA in that RW means more to me as a forum of people i know discussing "whatever" then a forum for a MMO game.

Agreed! And on that note, there is a serious lack of threads on the subject of DEATH. Weird, that.  :?

[Fedora Gal]

Obviously my vision of a Guild and others differ

Agreed, I think that it seems everyone has a very different idea of what a guild is. SOME guilds are about owning a game or pwning as I believe it was put, or farming or furthering the guild so it's the best. I don't think we've ever been about that, a guild is what you make it, not some pre-conception. And I've seen folks who call themselves Clans behave just as badly.



I think Mags said it best:

if we are unhappy with the current state, we should define a focus and stick to it. There is no way that this not going to kill the current community that we have built as I see it. There are way too many directions that people would want to pull this thing, and every way is going to ostracize others. So we should be clear that we want to loose what we got before moving forward.

I like things the way they are, I do wish more folks would go to the main site, and hopefully with the new dynamic content we are planning on implementing they will. But as Mel said, try to do to much and the thing you considered a fun side project turns into work.



Mags also brought up a very good point:

the negative of that is it tends to intimidate new members sometime

This hits bang on, because we are a group of friends and there tended to be a lot of lets plan what Edmontonians are doing this weekend in the lobby before we had the new user groups. It was a tad intimidating for new members to want to post, I would feel like an outsider in that situation personally.



In summary, as I'm going to leave this thread alone now:

* I don't think we should change the forums one iota, they are what we have made them and I think that's what we all love about them.



* Website should be about us, our beginnings etc. Highlighting if possible the topic of the week or day in the forum (upon the discretion of the Dev's as to ease of updating etc.)

--If someone has an idea for a section of the website, and they can commit the time to updating it themselves without altering the layout of the current site, they should submit those ideas/proposal's to Mel and Mags for approval. Ultimately someone has to be in charge of final content say, if 15 people all start updating content it'll become chaos and there will be a lot of arguing.



We've already seen some of that in this thread alone, and it's silly really.

if it ain't broke, don't fix it

you said it! I don't think it's broke!

[Cova]

Hmm..., I might have to start checking this site during weekends, I kinda fell out of the conversation there.



Anyways, I still stand by my previous posts as I believe they are simple statements of fact.  I haven't yet really expressed an opinion on what the focus of the site should be - I've merely stated that a focus needs to be chosen, and that the site should follow that focus.



Now, a lot of the arguments here seem to revolve around guild vs clan vs whatever other term people want to call RW.  Lets just look into this a bit, and I'll start with this quote...

That's not technically accurate, a Clan is a group of gamers who game together for the fun of it. A Guild works together in a social hierarchy with defined roles to accomplish a task.

Where did this definition come from?  Wikipedia has a nice page that pretty much meets my definitions for both terms over here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_%28computer_gaming%29  Basically - I don't see that clans, guilds, or whatever else you want to call them are any different from each other at all, but that the name usually results more from the game being played.  FPSs and RTSs usually have clans, MMOs usually have guilds, etc.  Now RW is a clan/guild that spans many games, from FPSs (Battlefield 1/2 come to mind), MMO's (CoH, WoW, AC2, etc.), right down to pen-and-paper RPG's, LAN-partying, etc.  Personally, I call RW a guild, because of the games that I play as a member of RW, they are all MMO's, and thats the accepted term for a group of players working together.  RW is far from a "hard-core" guild in terms of structure or getting things done (what Mr. A is refering to), it's far more of a casual, just have fun type of guild.



Now then - back to the topic at hand, the focus of this site / forums.  I think it should be to support the RW 'guild', and hence should be devoted to all of the things that all of the members of the guild participate in - with sub-sections (or sub-forums) for each general category.  We already pretty much have that, with sections for WoW, CoH, pen-and-paper games, etc.  And just because we are a gaming site/forum, I don't have any problem with having an off-topic forum, because members will at times want to discuss things not related to whatever game(s) they're playing at the time.  Hell - the forums for my WoW guild before I quit had a section called "Drunken Masters", just for the 3 or 4 members of the guild that knew each other IRL and liked to go on drunking trips and chat about it on the boards the next day.



Problems like when the WoW players wouldn't register/check the forums - I've had to deal with that one before too (my EQ guild had exactly the same problem).  People won't come because there's no content, no content gets produced because there's no people.  I'm afraid it's up to the current board-members, and the guild-leaders for each individual game, to fix that problem - make content.  People won't register an account here till they have to - if they have to do it to become a part of the guild, or to see when the next guild event is, then they'll register.  Once thats done they're far more likely to come back, and to participate in discussion.  Yes, it might cause a few people to leave, but honestly is it really a problem to lose a few people that won't even put in the effort to register on a forum?  Probably the same people who don't participate much in the guild in whatever game they play either.  Every semi-successful guild I've been in in an MMO has required registration on the guild forums, to make a post into the applications forum with some basic info (as simple as name and why you want to join, up to strict forms with tons of details) to apply to be part of the guild.  You check back in the forum to see your application status, and none of those guilds seem to have problems with getting members to check the forums for things like times of events.



Anyways - my backup job finished running, I'm off to rebuild a server so I'll leave this to digest for a bit.

[Mr. Analog]

I got my definitions from both the dictionary and from my own experiences online.

guild

n : a formal association of people with similar interests



clan

n :  a large group of relatives, friends, or associates.

From my own travels on the web I find more often than not that clans are less organized groups of players that play PFSs or other twitch games where working together simultaneously is the key to victory whereas I found that Guilds form more readily in games that reward more structured communal work in a disconnected way (prevalent in MMOs).



So again, I got my previous distinction between Guild / Clan based on the actual word definitions and my own experiences in both MMOs (Asheron's Call, WoW) and other games (Tribes, Battlefield).



Semantics is a hobby of mine.

[Cova]

While I'll agree that the "clan" term is used more often for FPS's, I don't think it has anything to do with how the players are structured.  I've seen some very hard-core FPS clans that are extremely structured, with rules for when you must play, punishments, etc.  I've seen some very loosely knit guilds in MMO's.  And "structured communal work" is actually NOT what's required of a large/successful MMO guild - though such guilds often have some type of way of tracking things like who can craft what, etc. it's not nearly as important as the ability to work together simultaneously.  To use WoW as an example, you don't even zone into Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair, or the other new raid content that's been released since I quit unless you have 30+ (preferably 40) players that are very good at communicating and working together.



As for your dictionary.com quotes - there are just as many that would define it more in line with what I'm describing:

An association of persons of the same trade or pursuits, formed to protect mutual interests and maintain standards.

And the one you quoted just doesn't seem to carry quite the same meaning when you quote the entire line:

a formal association of people with similar interests; "he joined a golf club"; "they formed a small lunch society"; "men from the fraternal order will staff the soup kitchen today"

In fact, I would say that most of the clan definitions are more formal than the guild definitions, since most definitions of clan refer to tribes of people, or families and blood-lines.

[Mr. Analog]

Whatever, potat-o / po-tat-o. Point is we should be organized or not, someone has to decide.