guild-meetings
Latest
The Guild Counsel: How guild meetings can help your guild
I know what you're thinking after reading the title of this week's column. Why in the world would anyone want to have a meeting in-game when many of us spend our days in meeting for our work? But holding a short guild meeting every so often can actually help curb guild drama, boost morale, and bring your guildmates closer together. The relatively short time spent bringing the guild together can pay off later on by reducing time spent on drama created by miscommunication, low morale, and frustration. In today's Guild Counsel, let's take a look at why you should consider holding a meeting and how that guild meeting can improve your guild overall.
The Guild Counsel: It's time to meet your fellow guildmates
While game conventions are usually focused on video games, panels, and really cool fan-made costumes, one of the best parts of going to a con is meeting up with fellow players. And for guilds, an opportunity to finally put face to names is a major moment. While players might shy away from guild meet-and-greets, it's actually a terrific opportunity to strengthen ties and cut down on the potential for drama in the long run. More importantly, it's an important step toward making gaming seem less "weird" and more like any other "normal" group activity or shared interest. In today's Guild Counsel, let's take a look at why guild members should come out from behind the computer screen and attend a guild meet-and-greet.
EverQuest becomes ever after: A talk with Linda Carlson of SOE
When it comes to getting involved with community, Sony Online Entertainment's Director of Global Community Relations Linda Carlson knows it well. Most often seen tromping around conventions dressed as her beer-craving Dwarven alter-ego Brasse, Carlson was a fixture at SOE's Fan Faire events and author of her own gaming comic long before she ever started working for the studio. As we had the chance to find out recently, this was due at least in part to EverQuest changing her life many, many years prior. While these days meeting up with someone you've met online is considered fairly commonplace, when you look back to the earliest days of MMO gaming, it generally was not something many people did. Even if you did meet someone from "on the computer," they tended to be folks from one or another BBS -- local connections that were easily made and just as easily dismissed. The idea of not only meeting someone online in a romantic fashion but leaving the country you live in to see him/her was considered completely insane. "What if you don't get along? Or what if he/she is a murderer?" your friends might ask, since this was all really new territory and nobody quite knew what would happen. Still, some early MMO gamers like Carlson gathered up their courage and took that gamble. In honor of Valentine's Day, we interviewed Carlson about how her EverQuest connection became an "ever after" -- join us after the break!
Breakfast Topic: Local guilds
A few weeks ago while I was browsing the official forums, I noticed an interesting guild recruitment post. Someone was recruiting for people not based on class, skill level, or preferred play style, but rather on geographic location. He was hoping to create a guild of people from Portland, Oregon. It's an interesting idea, and one I've sort of kept in the back of my mind since I saw the post. I like to think that most of us, these days, have started to realize that there really are other, living, breathing, flesh and blood people on the other side of the keyboard. In fact, many of us have met some of these people at conventions and guild gatherings. There's also many families and friends who have decided to play WoW together. However, building a guild from the group up to be a "local guild" seems to be a different beast altogether. You're not meeting up with each other after having been in the guild for a while, or playing for family ties. Instead, you're looking to get actual benefits, game-related or otherwise, of being in a guild of other residents of your city, state, province, or what have you.
