Well the original plan was that I had started this blog and would continue with it. Then a friend of mine asked me to help with and contribute to www.domain-admins.com so everything I had planned for this blog I then moved to that site.
A couple of weeks ago the ISP that was hosting the Domain-Admins.com site got hacked (or so they claim) and we lost 2 years worth of work. Now thats not too bad, I can understand someone being malicious, it is after all what I spend my working day guarding against. What is absolutely unacceptable was that they had absolutely no backups.
How the hell, in an IT company who's entire existance depends on the safety and integrity of its data can you NOT have backups?. It absolutely boggles my mind.
So if I can get any of the data back and oh god I hope I can, I will be updating this blog rather than domain-admins.com. I will upload all of the old stuff here.
Off to try and see if I can save any of my data.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Guilds Part 1
Guilds
With the massive expansion of the online genre happening I thought I would write a little introduction to one of the newer aspects of the phenomenon, the online "Guild" or "Clan".
Guilds are funny beasts, they exist entirely in virtual worlds and tend to focus on a single virtual world or game, they inspire passion and the sort of closeness amongst their members that a few years ago would only been found on the sports field.
Also known in some circles as "Clans" or "Teams". Anyone who has ever played a game online knows what these are, for those who don't I have created this little guide. If you accept that "You don't get to choose your family but you can choose your friends" as a truism then the clan is the online circle of friends of the 21st century.
A Clan or Guild is essentially a group of like minded gamers who gather together to achieve a given set of goals within a game framework. Team goals can range from the more casual, but no less hotly contested goal of domination in a First Person Shooter such as Quake or crushing the opposition in a Real Time Strategy Game such as Command and Conquer.
The penultimate level of this type of competition is the more complex and on occasion heavily
personal race to raid targets in games such As Everquest. There are also "Clans" and "Gangs" in non combat online games such as the Sims where people gather their virtual avatars to hang out in virtual malls together. It seems the human social drive is a lot more powerful than was ever realized.
There are also a variety of Guilds known as "Gaming Guilds". These are groups of friends who are not dedicated to a single world or game, but instead play a variety of games while continuing their association across the genres. Possibly the biggest and most famous of these would be "Organisation:Drow" AKA Venom AKA Blood of the Spider. I have encountered a few of these types of Guilds including the Underground Warlords and The Syndicate. These guilds are huge and very very hard to manage, requiring hours of unpaid work from Guild and Website admins and leaders.
The interests of such groups can range from a focus purely on the gameplay experience of their members through to being virtual gaming portals with links, reviews and subsite hosting for their members.
These virtual relationships have begun to be studied by serious academics, the two leaders of which would be Nick Yee and Damion Schubert. Nick Yee studies online and virtual relationships from the point of view of an academic doing research for his PhD whereas Damion Schubert looks at them from the point of view of both a player and a professional, successful game designer. Damions site also has some great links to other sites looking at such things as Online Economies and the science of game design and management.
From the point of view of a common player a Guild offers several things. It offers other people in the game from whom you can learn the mechanics of the game, it offers people to chat with, to game with, to raid with, to achieve the sorts of things that require more than a single group to complete. Beyond even that, it can offer friendship, "mateship" and even the opportunity to meet people in real life.
"In Real Life" is also commonly known as 'IRL' and the acronym will be used here from now on.
In short a guild can fully flesh out an experience that even within the framework of a massively multiplayer game can be a lonely one. A good guild can help advance your Avatar and gain you respect within the game world, a bad Guild can create you a reputation that may even follow you from game to game or world to world.
There are many different types of guilds and then there are sub classes within the Types. For example within a Massively Multiplayer game that includes an element of Player vs Player (PvP) you will have Player Killer (PK) and Anti PK guilds. Good guys and Bad guys. I can only really speak for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORG) genre of Guilds as that has been my primary playground for the last few years but many of the guild types can be applied across game genres.
First I need to explain the difference between Hard Core and Casual gamers in relation to MMPORG's.
A Casual Gamer is someone who can log on to play anywhere from 1-10 hours a week. They often have families or commitments outside the game. They want to be able to login, achieve something within their limited playtime and log out without major penalties to themselves. The 'High End Game' is not where they are headed, they are there to hang out with friends and maybe peek timidly round the corner while the Uber Guild (See Below) is cleaning out the Dragons and/or Gods.
A Hardcore gamer is someone who plays as much as they possibly can. This can range from 15+ hours a week out to 60+ hours a week. The Hardcore tend to haunt message boards and information sites. They go into an encounter knowing as much as they possibly can about that encounter. They will max level within weeks or months of a game going live and will stay up at MaxLevel for years. They are often rich within the game world as they are the first to get their hands on rare sellable items and/or spend a lot of time earning cash through tradeskills.
These players also often Multi Box ( own two or more computers and two or more game accounts and play two or more characters simultaneously. If you are playing with more than 4 PC's and Characters you are playing a "Hydra") The hardcore tend to drift into Raiding or Uber guilds and tend to be more focused on advancing their characters and in seeing new zones and killing new monsters.
Casual and raiding players tend to be attracted to specific guild types, however there are no hard and fast rules for the type of Guild a player may join. A Hardcore player may join a Family guild simply to be the big fish in the small pond and be happy there.
Family Guilds
These are made up of people who are playing for the "experience" and the friendship of other players. The family guild is really there more as a chat channel for its members and to allow members to come together to help each other. These types of guilds are usually strongly represented on the so called "Role Playing" servers that are supported by many MMPORG's.
These guilds don't usually raid or aim for the "high end" of the game. They are really there for the fun. They can be made up of hardcore and casual members although the hardcore tend to move on to Raiding guilds if their needs are not met within the structure of the guild. Family Guilds will have a heavy emphasis on friendship and the mores of family life when recruiting. Such Guilds can often contain several hundred members.
Casual Guilds
The casual guild sounds a lot like the family guild but with less emphasis on 'family'. The casual guild is often made up of a small group of real life friends and is created largely for the members to be able to 'hang out' together, they are often made up of people with limited play times. You will rarely find the Hardcore player in such a Guild unless the entire Guild is made up of a small number of Hardcore IRL friends..
Raiding Guilds
Raiding Guilds are designed around the concept of the raid. Within the MMPORG genre there are several method's of joining together with other players to achieve something. Soloing - Obviously doing something yourself, Grouping - joining with 4-6 others players and raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players. A Raid is often a complex scripted even where all of the members of the guild have to do their jobs simultaneously and in a proscribed manner in order to achieve a given goal. Often this goal is to do with the death of a big target such as a Dragon or Giant.
Raiding Guilds often have strict rules which players must adhere to or be forced out of the guild. For example the Guild may raid 6 Days a week and attendance at least 5 raids a week is mandatory. Players in this type of guild tend to be the hardcore type.
Uber Guild
These are the Superstars of the guild system. This type of guild will have mandatory online time and raid rules. They tend to be run with a strict multi tier structure and penalties for broken rules are severe. This type of guild is pushing the boundaries of the game system all the time, they are the first to kill the Dragon and be the first into the Evil Castle. They will maintain websites where they can tell others of their accomplishments and non Uber Guilds can go to
drool. The membership of the Uberguild is heavily influenced towards the Hardcore player.
To make life interesting the boundaries of Family, Casual and Raiding Guilds can often blur. For example you can have a Family\Raiding Guild that is capable of killing the big monsters without the heavy strictures placed on members in a normal Raiding guild.
Guilds are living breathing entities. They change and flux constantly with changes in membership and the needs of the guild members. You may initially join a Casual Guild that grows into a Family Guild over the years. Then the Guild may have an influx of hardcore players who want to raid. These players may attempt to steer the guild towards being a Raiding Guild. Sometimes this will work and the Guild will evolve towards its new form, more often than not the guild will split into two smaller guilds.
Sometimes the Guild will disintegrate completely and two new Guilds will form, or the original Guild may continue on its way and the split Guild will take on a new name. Guild names can be passionately fought over when a guild splits with both sides claiming the 'right' to the original Guild name and all the history attached to it.
Guild names or 'Tags' are proudly carried and insults to the guild name can be treated with all the seriousness of an insult to a set of Gang colors.
These are all my personal observations from many years of involvement in the MMPORG genre. I have had my share of flame wars over perceived insults to my guild. I have had Guilds disintegrate under me and helped build guilds up. It is all part of the fascinating fabric of the web.
And at the end of it all I am a Proud member of The Southern Armada. Don't like what I have to say or feel like insulting my Guild?. Come join me on the Proudmoore server in the World of Warcraft MMPORG and you can tell me to my "face".
With the massive expansion of the online genre happening I thought I would write a little introduction to one of the newer aspects of the phenomenon, the online "Guild" or "Clan".
Guilds are funny beasts, they exist entirely in virtual worlds and tend to focus on a single virtual world or game, they inspire passion and the sort of closeness amongst their members that a few years ago would only been found on the sports field.
Also known in some circles as "Clans" or "Teams". Anyone who has ever played a game online knows what these are, for those who don't I have created this little guide. If you accept that "You don't get to choose your family but you can choose your friends" as a truism then the clan is the online circle of friends of the 21st century.
A Clan or Guild is essentially a group of like minded gamers who gather together to achieve a given set of goals within a game framework. Team goals can range from the more casual, but no less hotly contested goal of domination in a First Person Shooter such as Quake or crushing the opposition in a Real Time Strategy Game such as Command and Conquer.
The penultimate level of this type of competition is the more complex and on occasion heavily
personal race to raid targets in games such As Everquest. There are also "Clans" and "Gangs" in non combat online games such as the Sims where people gather their virtual avatars to hang out in virtual malls together. It seems the human social drive is a lot more powerful than was ever realized.
There are also a variety of Guilds known as "Gaming Guilds". These are groups of friends who are not dedicated to a single world or game, but instead play a variety of games while continuing their association across the genres. Possibly the biggest and most famous of these would be "Organisation:Drow" AKA Venom AKA Blood of the Spider. I have encountered a few of these types of Guilds including the Underground Warlords and The Syndicate. These guilds are huge and very very hard to manage, requiring hours of unpaid work from Guild and Website admins and leaders.
The interests of such groups can range from a focus purely on the gameplay experience of their members through to being virtual gaming portals with links, reviews and subsite hosting for their members.
These virtual relationships have begun to be studied by serious academics, the two leaders of which would be Nick Yee and Damion Schubert. Nick Yee studies online and virtual relationships from the point of view of an academic doing research for his PhD whereas Damion Schubert looks at them from the point of view of both a player and a professional, successful game designer. Damions site also has some great links to other sites looking at such things as Online Economies and the science of game design and management.
From the point of view of a common player a Guild offers several things. It offers other people in the game from whom you can learn the mechanics of the game, it offers people to chat with, to game with, to raid with, to achieve the sorts of things that require more than a single group to complete. Beyond even that, it can offer friendship, "mateship" and even the opportunity to meet people in real life.
"In Real Life" is also commonly known as 'IRL' and the acronym will be used here from now on.
In short a guild can fully flesh out an experience that even within the framework of a massively multiplayer game can be a lonely one. A good guild can help advance your Avatar and gain you respect within the game world, a bad Guild can create you a reputation that may even follow you from game to game or world to world.
There are many different types of guilds and then there are sub classes within the Types. For example within a Massively Multiplayer game that includes an element of Player vs Player (PvP) you will have Player Killer (PK) and Anti PK guilds. Good guys and Bad guys. I can only really speak for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORG) genre of Guilds as that has been my primary playground for the last few years but many of the guild types can be applied across game genres.
First I need to explain the difference between Hard Core and Casual gamers in relation to MMPORG's.
A Casual Gamer is someone who can log on to play anywhere from 1-10 hours a week. They often have families or commitments outside the game. They want to be able to login, achieve something within their limited playtime and log out without major penalties to themselves. The 'High End Game' is not where they are headed, they are there to hang out with friends and maybe peek timidly round the corner while the Uber Guild (See Below) is cleaning out the Dragons and/or Gods.
A Hardcore gamer is someone who plays as much as they possibly can. This can range from 15+ hours a week out to 60+ hours a week. The Hardcore tend to haunt message boards and information sites. They go into an encounter knowing as much as they possibly can about that encounter. They will max level within weeks or months of a game going live and will stay up at MaxLevel for years. They are often rich within the game world as they are the first to get their hands on rare sellable items and/or spend a lot of time earning cash through tradeskills.
These players also often Multi Box ( own two or more computers and two or more game accounts and play two or more characters simultaneously. If you are playing with more than 4 PC's and Characters you are playing a "Hydra") The hardcore tend to drift into Raiding or Uber guilds and tend to be more focused on advancing their characters and in seeing new zones and killing new monsters.
Casual and raiding players tend to be attracted to specific guild types, however there are no hard and fast rules for the type of Guild a player may join. A Hardcore player may join a Family guild simply to be the big fish in the small pond and be happy there.
Family Guilds
These are made up of people who are playing for the "experience" and the friendship of other players. The family guild is really there more as a chat channel for its members and to allow members to come together to help each other. These types of guilds are usually strongly represented on the so called "Role Playing" servers that are supported by many MMPORG's.
These guilds don't usually raid or aim for the "high end" of the game. They are really there for the fun. They can be made up of hardcore and casual members although the hardcore tend to move on to Raiding guilds if their needs are not met within the structure of the guild. Family Guilds will have a heavy emphasis on friendship and the mores of family life when recruiting. Such Guilds can often contain several hundred members.
Casual Guilds
The casual guild sounds a lot like the family guild but with less emphasis on 'family'. The casual guild is often made up of a small group of real life friends and is created largely for the members to be able to 'hang out' together, they are often made up of people with limited play times. You will rarely find the Hardcore player in such a Guild unless the entire Guild is made up of a small number of Hardcore IRL friends..
Raiding Guilds
Raiding Guilds are designed around the concept of the raid. Within the MMPORG genre there are several method's of joining together with other players to achieve something. Soloing - Obviously doing something yourself, Grouping - joining with 4-6 others players and raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players. A Raid is often a complex scripted even where all of the members of the guild have to do their jobs simultaneously and in a proscribed manner in order to achieve a given goal. Often this goal is to do with the death of a big target such as a Dragon or Giant.
Raiding Guilds often have strict rules which players must adhere to or be forced out of the guild. For example the Guild may raid 6 Days a week and attendance at least 5 raids a week is mandatory. Players in this type of guild tend to be the hardcore type.
Uber Guild
These are the Superstars of the guild system. This type of guild will have mandatory online time and raid rules. They tend to be run with a strict multi tier structure and penalties for broken rules are severe. This type of guild is pushing the boundaries of the game system all the time, they are the first to kill the Dragon and be the first into the Evil Castle. They will maintain websites where they can tell others of their accomplishments and non Uber Guilds can go to
drool. The membership of the Uberguild is heavily influenced towards the Hardcore player.
To make life interesting the boundaries of Family, Casual and Raiding Guilds can often blur. For example you can have a Family\Raiding Guild that is capable of killing the big monsters without the heavy strictures placed on members in a normal Raiding guild.
Guilds are living breathing entities. They change and flux constantly with changes in membership and the needs of the guild members. You may initially join a Casual Guild that grows into a Family Guild over the years. Then the Guild may have an influx of hardcore players who want to raid. These players may attempt to steer the guild towards being a Raiding Guild. Sometimes this will work and the Guild will evolve towards its new form, more often than not the guild will split into two smaller guilds.
Sometimes the Guild will disintegrate completely and two new Guilds will form, or the original Guild may continue on its way and the split Guild will take on a new name. Guild names can be passionately fought over when a guild splits with both sides claiming the 'right' to the original Guild name and all the history attached to it.
Guild names or 'Tags' are proudly carried and insults to the guild name can be treated with all the seriousness of an insult to a set of Gang colors.
These are all my personal observations from many years of involvement in the MMPORG genre. I have had my share of flame wars over perceived insults to my guild. I have had Guilds disintegrate under me and helped build guilds up. It is all part of the fascinating fabric of the web.
And at the end of it all I am a Proud member of The Southern Armada. Don't like what I have to say or feel like insulting my Guild?. Come join me on the Proudmoore server in the World of Warcraft MMPORG and you can tell me to my "face".
Intro
I've done this the better part of all my life, writing that is. When I was a kid I would carry a note book around and a smooth writing ink pen with me everywhere. I was famous for it at school. Bullies would avoid me in case I "wrote about them". I'm not sure why that would have been a threat worthy of granting immunity from bullies but it was.
So anyway, the basics. Male, 35, of European descent, born in South Africa, traveled to New Zealand when I was 5 and grew up there. I spent most of my working life in the hospitality industry running bars and restaurants, usually for a pittance and with the added bonus of getting no respect for being extremely good at my job.
So I decided to go back to school and study for a computer qualification. I graduated in 2000 and I've been working at the New Zealand Herald as a systems administrator ever since.
I've been a Geek all my life but its only recently that I have 'come out' so to speak and found the confidence to express my love for all things Geek. So this is my first post, one of many. I know I will move on and move up and I have in the past lost a lot of things like diaries and PDA's. This gives me a third party method of keeping all my random bullshit in one place.
So anyway, the basics. Male, 35, of European descent, born in South Africa, traveled to New Zealand when I was 5 and grew up there. I spent most of my working life in the hospitality industry running bars and restaurants, usually for a pittance and with the added bonus of getting no respect for being extremely good at my job.
So I decided to go back to school and study for a computer qualification. I graduated in 2000 and I've been working at the New Zealand Herald as a systems administrator ever since.
I've been a Geek all my life but its only recently that I have 'come out' so to speak and found the confidence to express my love for all things Geek. So this is my first post, one of many. I know I will move on and move up and I have in the past lost a lot of things like diaries and PDA's. This gives me a third party method of keeping all my random bullshit in one place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)