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General: The Syndicate Update
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller recently had the opportunity to sit down with The Syndicate's Sean Stalzer to talk about The Year of the MMO and what the guild has planned for 2011. Check out what's in the works for The Syndicate and leave us a comment or two when you're finished.
The Syndicate still maintains a presence in Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. They also have groups of players who are active in different MMOs such as RIFT, Aion, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. They have been successful in keeping everyone together for a long time and maintain over 500 unique members. The group is currently working on a second book about guild mechanics and also has a section that includes player expectations. In talking with Sean, he understands the needs and hopes of the MMO player better than anyone. The best is that our conversations are not monitored by a marketing representative who will say, “Sorry you cannot talk about that.” When Sean and the Syndicate work with game companies they do so from a player standpoint, trying to get developers to understand what players expect in online games.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's The Syndicate Update.
Comments
Big deal. This is a clear example of why game companies put so much focus on courting big guilds. No mega-guild speaks for the community, only the portion which absolutely has to follow some crowd like a bunch of silly sheep.
Catering to big guilds is a sure-fire way to alienate players who don't need to be part of the crowd. No wonder it's becoming a trend for people to play a game for the first month, then drop it.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Don't think much of their guild to start with, any developers consulting with them has bats in the belfry. Attempting to please groups like this means ignoring the majority of your player base, not a good idea at all.
QFT. No one carries about this guild save those IN the guild. This is not good journalism, folks. Next why don't you write a piece on my pet hamster IPWNDJU?
Uhm, this is an article on the front page? There are forty billion guilds in the world, all of them equally uninteresting to anyone but their members. Surely this should be posted on the forums instead of the front page?
Word.
Uh, Ive been playing MMOs for more than a decade on "hardcore" level and Ive never heard of this guild before.
Mass recruiting members is easy, recruiting good players is another ballpark.
The Syndicate, sounds more like a giant corporate of sheeps if you ask me.
Quality > Quantity
And as noted above it is kinda unfair to the many guilds out there who are just as sucessful if not much better than these guys.
Why did you waste my time with this article? I think I could have had a cig in the time i read it and would have spent my time better. No offense Syndication.
I saw a movie once that did an interview with the syndicate (I had never heard of them prior to this documentary), and they were the most pathetic group of greasey losers I have ever seen.
An article about a WoW guild? Come on.
That's rather depressing if developers are listening to one random GM's opinions on what players, 'want'. If what your stated above is he's ideas they don't appeal to me and frankly are unworkable. Cross game instant messaging, between different games from different companies? Never going to happen. The mobile app stuff is a waste of time as well, if I want to check something out about my guild at work it's called a guildsite, I personally don;t need to stay in 'contact' all the time.
One of the largest areas of change that The Syndicate is considering is in guides and online access. Sean talked about breaking down game guides in their current form as they are mostly released at launch. Well, for many MMO players launch is over in no time and they are on to new content. Sean talked about breaking game guides down into different areas and having them accessible to players in different sections. Instead of buying a full guide, you could buy parts of a guide that you really need. How many times have you been stuck on a boss and been forced to look up information on that boss alone. It happens all the time. A giant guide is not going to give you what you need in the moment. The Syndicate is working on building these style game guides to give fellow guilds the tools they need to sole their raids. This idea sounded really promising and hopefully we will see this type of set up in the future.
Are you talking about Brady guides here or something? I don't quite understand. If you mean boss tactics then most people just get them off the internet...for free. There's also all sort of resources for most games for free, i would not pay for a guide to something like this and think it's a terrible idea.
EDIT: Had a further look into this and there working with Prima Games, I guess that makes more sense now but I still stand by what I said.
LOL, "gamers first" "on our side of the fence"?!
These guys are nothing short of self marketing promotionalists with their own agenda.
A game is just that... a game, not an emotional crutch.
I thought that this was going to be about a new game called The Syndicate, it sounded interesting until I realized it was about a guild.
Cross game chat , we can do that easily with Raptr.
Yep another wasted article on this guild. Why does MMORPG allow this crap to be put up. And for game companies to listen to them is nothing more then a joke and a loss at profit.
I don't care how old a guild is or how large they are; that is great however unless they pull in millions a year and make a game worth playing then why waste the time focusing on them. Game companies need to focus on smaller guilds to see what they can do to help improve their play style.
Gaming community: IRONFIST
New World: Lilith - US East
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Burning Legion> Alliance(We transferred to Illidan)
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Illidan> Horde
SWOTR: IRONFIST <Satele Shan> Empire/Republic
Does anyone know if they ran The Syndicate on Fregion server of AION when it first released.. That was the main legion for asmo side of fregion, and i knew because i was on the main legion on the elyos side and The Syndicate whooped our ass for about 1-2 months straight on fort raids.. Until all elyos legion banded together and drove them back, the leader actually disbanded the legion after they loss all their land and it had been proven a lot of the members were just plain d-bag's.. But i'll never forget the fort raids i ran against them (leaded our legion in raids) and they'd litterally have 50 of their asmos vrs like 150 elyos and whoop our butts because of how organized they were.. Hats off to them, but when elyos finnaly learned to zerg and organize it was over..
Still idk if the two are even related lol
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
I have to agree with everyone else here. One article abou the Syndicate is fine, a novelty about a guild but continuing coverage about an above average sized guild that's been around (off and on), for a while? This isn't why I visit mmorpg.com. If you are insistent about covering guilds, cover DIFFERENT guilds. Lord knows there are hundreds/thousands of very large, interesting guilds across the mmo universe.
What has The Syndicate achieved recently? There are other guilds just as big. It's not hard to have a big guild when you tirelessly recruit.
According to WoWProgress, they didn't even get HLK 10
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
This is nothing more then a recruiting tool done by them....
Gaming community: IRONFIST
New World: Lilith - US East
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Burning Legion> Alliance(We transferred to Illidan)
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Illidan> Horde
SWOTR: IRONFIST <Satele Shan> Empire/Republic
I don't understand the real purpose of this article in particular, but I understand the focus on them. Most of the "what did they do?" stuff is probably from loners and people who join 1 shot guilds, and mainly WoWheads who've had MMOs spoon fed to them.
The Syndicate is a multi-gaming guild that focuses on team work (i.e. personal skills and the ability to mesh) as opposed to purples, and have made connections to the industry along the way (they have their own convention that companies such as SOE attend, if my memory serves me correctly). You can call them sheep, and I understand that, but personally, I've been playing MMOs for over a decade. I'm done with 1 shot guilds that are maybe around for a few expansions and the drama they tend to have. If a guild doesn't even have forums I won't give them a second thought. While I have no interest in joining The Syndicate, their claim to fame is lasting for as long as they have and being fairly balanced, and I deeply respect that. I always get access to top end pvp or raiding, but I rarely take it (or I joy from it for a very small amount of time before I get bored), so multi-gaming guilds are the only things that stick out to me any more.
I've played on their side, and against them. It's a guild... whatever.
I want the 30 seconds back I wasted reading this "Article"
Emberlord ~ Defiant to the End!
Lasting a long time is not hard when you refuse to die lol.
Since I'm one of the people that said "What have they done?" I'll respond and say this--I expect players trying to be representative of the gaming community to represent a pretty common achievement in the gaming community.
HLK was no easy task in wow, until the 30% buff when everything in ICC became easy as long as you weren't playing with idiots.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I was in a guild called "Raven Syndicate"
the guild leader of "The Syndicate" sent our leader a cease and desist on the web site for our guild and demanded we change our guild name. He threatened him with lawyers and said they had a copyright on the name "Syndicate" for gaming purposes.
ya.. seriously these guys did this. Our guild leader pretty much laughed it off and told him to bring it on. Nothing ever came of it.
Sad thing is Inever heard of this guild today. I used to be in one a long time ago. We had guilds in eq, eq2, wow, lotro, swg, eve and others, we even had one of our guild mates make a special paitn job on his race car to promote our guild and won a race and gave us a plug on national tv at a nhra face. So they are not the only guilds to have done this kind of things.
Addendum all I can say was we had 6 years of gaming with that guild. Until one day the guild leader decided he was god. And demanded folks cal him that, he actually wanted folks to bow down and call him loard at the throne he had built in his mustafar bunker. I refues to bow down to him even though he was role playing as a sith lord.
...
Srsly?? I this post shocked me and I am laughing my @$$ off LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
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I dont like the idea of the guild wanting to make "small guides", which is cool, except they are working with Prima, to sell these one off guides. I then stated that a guild "for the players" should not being worrying about a profit, or their name, or their reputation. But if they truly were FOR the PLAYERS, they would be doing this for free, online type guides that in my opionion are way better then a book anyways. (content changes, ink can't). Never heard of this guild, dont know if they are the biggest, i think they are just the biggest self-promoted. I just hate when i see a group saying they represent a larger group, while doing things to undermine said group..like making them dish out more cash.
I laughed at the copyright comment above... Maybe they have an Apple employee?
If you think they are doing it for the self promotion and think it isn't cool. . let the thread die.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!