The Sea rides high the waves,
Above the Sea;Clouds
flow and drift through blue void.
Seeming tho it was
Oil on webs of water.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Welcome to the Internet
This is incredibly True.
This should flash up on every copy of internet explorer as soon as you access the internet.
This is a mirror of the original, posted at Deeplight.Net. It was written by Robert "redpaw" Jung, Webmaster, managing editor, chief techmonkey of Deeplight.
Welcome to the Internet.
No one here likes you. We're going to offend, insult, abuse, and belittle the living hell out of you. And when you rail against us with "FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!", we smile to ourselves. We laugh at you because you don't get it. Then we turn up the heat, hoping to draw more entertainment from your irrational fuming. We will judge you, and we will find you unworthy. It is a trial by fire, and we won't even think about turning down the flames until you finally understand.
Some of you are smart enough to realize that, when you go online, it's like entering a foreign country ... and you know better than to ignorantly fuck with the locals. You take the time to listen and think before speaking. You learn, and by learning are gladly welcomed. For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you - you get it, and are welcomed into the fold. Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief - we didn't want you here anyway. And some of you just never get it.
The offensively clueless have a special place in our hearts - as objects of ridicule. We don't like you, but we do love you. You will get mad. You will tell us to go to hell, and call us "nerds" and "geeks". Don't bother ... we already know exactly what we are. And, much like the way hardcore rap has co-opted the word "nigger", turning an insult around on itself to become a semiserious badge of honor, so have we done.
"How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!" You may have owned the playing field because you were an athlete. You may have owned the student council because you were more popular. You may have owned the hallways and sidewalks because you were big and intimidating. Well, welcome to our world. Things like athleticism, popularity, and physical prowess mean nothing here. We place no value on them ... or what car you drive, the size of your bank account, what you do for a living or where you went to school.
Allow us to introduce you to the concept of a "meritocracy" - the closest thing to a form of self-government we have. In The United Meritocratic nation-states of the Internet, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Everyone else watches from the stands. You may posses everything in the off-line world. We don't care. You come to the Internet penniless, lacking the only thing of real value here: knowledge.
"Who cares? The Internet isn't real anyway!" This attitude is universally unacceptable. The Internet is real. Real people live behind those handles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It's real enough to change government policy, real enough to feed the world's hungry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a paycheck. Using your own definition, how "real" is your job? Your stock portfolio? Your political party? What is the meaning of "real", anyway?
Do I sound arrogant? Sure ... to you. Because you probably don't get it yet. If you insist on staying, then, at the very least, follow this advice:
1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
2) Use your brain before ever putting fingers to keys.
3) Do you want a picture of you getting anally raped by Bill Clinton while you're performing oral sex on a cow saved to hundreds of thousands of people's hard drives? No? Then don't put your fucking picture on the Internet. We can, will, and probably already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equally offensive website.
4) Realize that you are never, EVER going to get that, or any other, offensive web page taken down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off people like you. Those of us who don't run those sites sometimes visit them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.
5) Oh, you say you're going to a lawyer? Be prepared for us to giggle with girlish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains current copyright and parody law.
6) The Web is not the Internet. Stop referring to it that way.
7) We have already received the e-mail you are about to forward to us. Shut up.
8) Don't reply to spam. You are not going to be "unsubscribed".
9) Don't ever use the term "cyberspace" (only William Gibson gets to say that, and even he hasn't really used it for two or three books now). Likewise, you prove yourself a marketing-hype victim if you ever use the term "surfing".
10) With one or two notable exceptions, chat rooms will not get you laid.
11) It's a hoax, not a virus warning.
12) The internet is made up of thousands of computers, all connected but owned by different people. Learn how to use *your* computer before attempting to connect it to someone else's.
13) The first person who offers to help you is really just trying to fuck with you for entertainment. So is the second. And the third. And me.
14) Never insult someone who's been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn target on your back.
15) Never get comfortable and arrogant behind your supposed mask of anonymity. Don't be surprised when your name, address, and home phone number get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a printed satellite photograph of your house to drive the point home. Realize that you are powerless if this happens ... it's all public information, and information is our stock and trade.
16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.
17) You aren\'t going to win any argument that you start.
18) If you're on AOL, don't worry about anything I've said here. You're already a fucking laughing stock, and there's no hope for you.
19) If you can't take a joke, immediately sell your computer to someone who can. RIGHT NOW.
Pissed off? It's the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feelings. Don't ever even pretend like I've gone & hurt them.
We don't like you. We don't want you here. We never will. Save us all the trouble and go away.
This should flash up on every copy of internet explorer as soon as you access the internet.
This is a mirror of the original, posted at Deeplight.Net. It was written by Robert "redpaw" Jung, Webmaster, managing editor, chief techmonkey of Deeplight.
Welcome to the Internet.
No one here likes you. We're going to offend, insult, abuse, and belittle the living hell out of you. And when you rail against us with "FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!", we smile to ourselves. We laugh at you because you don't get it. Then we turn up the heat, hoping to draw more entertainment from your irrational fuming. We will judge you, and we will find you unworthy. It is a trial by fire, and we won't even think about turning down the flames until you finally understand.
Some of you are smart enough to realize that, when you go online, it's like entering a foreign country ... and you know better than to ignorantly fuck with the locals. You take the time to listen and think before speaking. You learn, and by learning are gladly welcomed. For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you - you get it, and are welcomed into the fold. Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief - we didn't want you here anyway. And some of you just never get it.
The offensively clueless have a special place in our hearts - as objects of ridicule. We don't like you, but we do love you. You will get mad. You will tell us to go to hell, and call us "nerds" and "geeks". Don't bother ... we already know exactly what we are. And, much like the way hardcore rap has co-opted the word "nigger", turning an insult around on itself to become a semiserious badge of honor, so have we done.
"How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!" You may have owned the playing field because you were an athlete. You may have owned the student council because you were more popular. You may have owned the hallways and sidewalks because you were big and intimidating. Well, welcome to our world. Things like athleticism, popularity, and physical prowess mean nothing here. We place no value on them ... or what car you drive, the size of your bank account, what you do for a living or where you went to school.
Allow us to introduce you to the concept of a "meritocracy" - the closest thing to a form of self-government we have. In The United Meritocratic nation-states of the Internet, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Everyone else watches from the stands. You may posses everything in the off-line world. We don't care. You come to the Internet penniless, lacking the only thing of real value here: knowledge.
"Who cares? The Internet isn't real anyway!" This attitude is universally unacceptable. The Internet is real. Real people live behind those handles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It's real enough to change government policy, real enough to feed the world's hungry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a paycheck. Using your own definition, how "real" is your job? Your stock portfolio? Your political party? What is the meaning of "real", anyway?
Do I sound arrogant? Sure ... to you. Because you probably don't get it yet. If you insist on staying, then, at the very least, follow this advice:
1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
2) Use your brain before ever putting fingers to keys.
3) Do you want a picture of you getting anally raped by Bill Clinton while you're performing oral sex on a cow saved to hundreds of thousands of people's hard drives? No? Then don't put your fucking picture on the Internet. We can, will, and probably already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equally offensive website.
4) Realize that you are never, EVER going to get that, or any other, offensive web page taken down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off people like you. Those of us who don't run those sites sometimes visit them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.
5) Oh, you say you're going to a lawyer? Be prepared for us to giggle with girlish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains current copyright and parody law.
6) The Web is not the Internet. Stop referring to it that way.
7) We have already received the e-mail you are about to forward to us. Shut up.
8) Don't reply to spam. You are not going to be "unsubscribed".
9) Don't ever use the term "cyberspace" (only William Gibson gets to say that, and even he hasn't really used it for two or three books now). Likewise, you prove yourself a marketing-hype victim if you ever use the term "surfing".
10) With one or two notable exceptions, chat rooms will not get you laid.
11) It's a hoax, not a virus warning.
12) The internet is made up of thousands of computers, all connected but owned by different people. Learn how to use *your* computer before attempting to connect it to someone else's.
13) The first person who offers to help you is really just trying to fuck with you for entertainment. So is the second. And the third. And me.
14) Never insult someone who's been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn target on your back.
15) Never get comfortable and arrogant behind your supposed mask of anonymity. Don't be surprised when your name, address, and home phone number get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a printed satellite photograph of your house to drive the point home. Realize that you are powerless if this happens ... it's all public information, and information is our stock and trade.
16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.
17) You aren\'t going to win any argument that you start.
18) If you're on AOL, don't worry about anything I've said here. You're already a fucking laughing stock, and there's no hope for you.
19) If you can't take a joke, immediately sell your computer to someone who can. RIGHT NOW.
Pissed off? It's the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feelings. Don't ever even pretend like I've gone & hurt them.
We don't like you. We don't want you here. We never will. Save us all the trouble and go away.
The Middle is always behind the Edge
Microsoft, ahhh Microsoft.
They are like your Granny, nice to have around, occasionally she makes you cookies, but every now and again she opens her mouth and just plain embarrasses herself and probably you. I will explain where this is going after a little bit of a digression. I have written 2 articles as introductions to the world of the Massively Multiplayer Game.
I play MMORPG's on a daily basis and I have a reasonably good idea of what the hell I am talking about, I can write on the subject from an informed viewpoint. At one point I considered writing an article covering the language of the Multiplayer Game, after some reflection I decided not to for two reasons. The first and most important is that it's an enormous subject. The language of the MMPRG, much like that of the TXT Generation has evolved from acronyms and shortenings of words due to most people (Like me) having crap typing skills.
Thus instead of writing "I will be right back, I have to leave the keyboard as I need to go to the bathroom" a player will write something like "brb, afk for a bio" This is translated as "Be Right Back, Away From Keyboard for a Biological break". There are literally thousands of these acronyms and bits of slang. I once saw a guide to MMPORG speak that was Everquest specific on the EQLive forums, towards the end of its life it had expanded out to about 15 pages.
Here is a very basic primer to give you an idea of the type of thing involved in this new language. It is a vast and very new subject. Not even Nick Yee has done any significant research into this proto language. I don't know if the "serious" language researchers of the world simply don't regard it as worthy of study, but from someone who "speaks" this language reasonably fluently, I can state it is definitely evolving into a language very separate from its parent tongues.
The thing with online gaming speak is that it gets in your head, I actually find myself thinking in MMORPG speak. For example, if I find something funny, I will still physically smile or laugh, but I wll also think "lol" (Laugh Out Loud) to myself. I will have little conversations in my head and suddenly realize that I am actually thinking in the language of the MMPRG rather than fully articulating my thoughts in my native English.
The second reason that I didnt write anything on this subject is that the language, to an extent, is game or even Genre specific. Much of the core language is trans-game but a lot of it will evolve within a game to discuss specific aspects of that game's dynamics. Some parts of the language will work in some games and not others. For example in MMPRGs where it is possible to join a Guild type organsation the reference /GU will refer to speech made in the guilds chat channel. This is due to the use of the prefix /GU to speak in the guild channel rather than locally. In use you would see "Wow man, did you hear what johnny said in /GU the other day?"
In a Multiplayer FPS talking about /GU wont mean anything. Yet the commonly used phrase "Woot!" meaning that something good has happened (Woot I just soloed that MOB!) is used across all genre's and types of gaming. The phrase has even made its way into main stream media in places. It is claimed that this phrase evolved out of the FPS phrase "We Owned the Other Team!". Meaning that your team has decisively defeated your opponents.
On top of all of this there are the online worlds of the script kiddies, the BBS freaks, the Hackers and Phreakers, the IRC bots, web chat fans etc. It is truly a massive and in some cases disparate community, yet at a basic level they are all still able to "speak" the same base language.
The particular language dialect within the gaming community, will be different depending on whether you are playing a fantasy based MMPRG such as Asherons Call, Everquest or World of Warcraft, a more "realistic" type of game like The Sims:Online, a Multiplayer First Person Shooter like Halflife, Doom3, Unreal Tournament, Quake, a Science Fiction like MMPRG like Star Wars: Galaxies. Each game will have its own specific phrases and acronyms, as well as sharing many similarities across the Genres.
The reason the whole thing came up was a friend sent me this link on Kids online speech from Microsoft. I dug around and also found this on Teen Speak and this on Gaming Lingo. To me this kind of thing is like trying to learn the English Language from a single page of instruction written by someone 100 years ago. By the time Microsoft tries to write up a primer on this, it has already evolved well beyond them.
Ok its a way to start understanding the language, but if you ever truly want to understand your childs "L337 5p3@| <" (Leet Speak) you will have to go online and learn the language yourself.I will write up a short history of Online Languages and their evolution, as far as I understand it some other time.
They are like your Granny, nice to have around, occasionally she makes you cookies, but every now and again she opens her mouth and just plain embarrasses herself and probably you. I will explain where this is going after a little bit of a digression. I have written 2 articles as introductions to the world of the Massively Multiplayer Game.
I play MMORPG's on a daily basis and I have a reasonably good idea of what the hell I am talking about, I can write on the subject from an informed viewpoint. At one point I considered writing an article covering the language of the Multiplayer Game, after some reflection I decided not to for two reasons. The first and most important is that it's an enormous subject. The language of the MMPRG, much like that of the TXT Generation has evolved from acronyms and shortenings of words due to most people (Like me) having crap typing skills.
Thus instead of writing "I will be right back, I have to leave the keyboard as I need to go to the bathroom" a player will write something like "brb, afk for a bio" This is translated as "Be Right Back, Away From Keyboard for a Biological break". There are literally thousands of these acronyms and bits of slang. I once saw a guide to MMPORG speak that was Everquest specific on the EQLive forums, towards the end of its life it had expanded out to about 15 pages.
Here is a very basic primer to give you an idea of the type of thing involved in this new language. It is a vast and very new subject. Not even Nick Yee has done any significant research into this proto language. I don't know if the "serious" language researchers of the world simply don't regard it as worthy of study, but from someone who "speaks" this language reasonably fluently, I can state it is definitely evolving into a language very separate from its parent tongues.
The thing with online gaming speak is that it gets in your head, I actually find myself thinking in MMORPG speak. For example, if I find something funny, I will still physically smile or laugh, but I wll also think "lol" (Laugh Out Loud) to myself. I will have little conversations in my head and suddenly realize that I am actually thinking in the language of the MMPRG rather than fully articulating my thoughts in my native English.
The second reason that I didnt write anything on this subject is that the language, to an extent, is game or even Genre specific. Much of the core language is trans-game but a lot of it will evolve within a game to discuss specific aspects of that game's dynamics. Some parts of the language will work in some games and not others. For example in MMPRGs where it is possible to join a Guild type organsation the reference /GU will refer to speech made in the guilds chat channel. This is due to the use of the prefix /GU to speak in the guild channel rather than locally. In use you would see "Wow man, did you hear what johnny said in /GU the other day?"
In a Multiplayer FPS talking about /GU wont mean anything. Yet the commonly used phrase "Woot!" meaning that something good has happened (Woot I just soloed that MOB!) is used across all genre's and types of gaming. The phrase has even made its way into main stream media in places. It is claimed that this phrase evolved out of the FPS phrase "We Owned the Other Team!". Meaning that your team has decisively defeated your opponents.
On top of all of this there are the online worlds of the script kiddies, the BBS freaks, the Hackers and Phreakers, the IRC bots, web chat fans etc. It is truly a massive and in some cases disparate community, yet at a basic level they are all still able to "speak" the same base language.
The particular language dialect within the gaming community, will be different depending on whether you are playing a fantasy based MMPRG such as Asherons Call, Everquest or World of Warcraft, a more "realistic" type of game like The Sims:Online, a Multiplayer First Person Shooter like Halflife, Doom3, Unreal Tournament, Quake, a Science Fiction like MMPRG like Star Wars: Galaxies. Each game will have its own specific phrases and acronyms, as well as sharing many similarities across the Genres.
The reason the whole thing came up was a friend sent me this link on Kids online speech from Microsoft. I dug around and also found this on Teen Speak and this on Gaming Lingo. To me this kind of thing is like trying to learn the English Language from a single page of instruction written by someone 100 years ago. By the time Microsoft tries to write up a primer on this, it has already evolved well beyond them.
Ok its a way to start understanding the language, but if you ever truly want to understand your childs "L337 5p3@| <" (Leet Speak) you will have to go online and learn the language yourself.I will write up a short history of Online Languages and their evolution, as far as I understand it some other time.
Why I hate Clerics'
I have to post this. This is one of the reasons why I love Southern Armada.
This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.
Why I hate Clerics
A little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax. I log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob. Group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics. anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)
watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.
did i mention i hate clerics?
ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.
stunned silence.
oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.
first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.
fuck i hate clerics
This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.
Why I hate Clerics
A little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax. I log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob. Group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics. anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)
watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.
did i mention i hate clerics?
ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.
stunned silence.
oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.
first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.
fuck i hate clerics
Guilds and Clans in Massively Multiplayer games: A Primer
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, also known amongst the psychological community as the "Third Place".
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 and the need to group with other like minded individuals is spilling into the completely virtual worlds. There is also a type of Guild known as "Gaming Guilds". Generaally 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 1-20 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
Raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players.
A Raid is often a complex scripted event 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 over the uber items the Guild has aquired for its members. 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 FamilyRaiding 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. 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 www.Ausguard website and you can tell me to my "face".
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, also known amongst the psychological community as the "Third Place".
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 and the need to group with other like minded individuals is spilling into the completely virtual worlds. There is also a type of Guild known as "Gaming Guilds". Generaally 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 1-20 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
Raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players.
A Raid is often a complex scripted event 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 over the uber items the Guild has aquired for its members. 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 FamilyRaiding 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. 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 www.Ausguard website and you can tell me to my "face".
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