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The Syndicate Guild House (Trammel)
Guild Master: Dragons-LLTS
Owner On Sign: Elph
Co-ordinates: 45o 21'S 40o 55'E
Visited By: Fallon Valor
Visited On: February 21, 2010
Map to Location:

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ATLANTIC—The Syndicate (LLTS) is one of Ultima Online’s
oldest and largest guilds. Founded in February 1996, this historic
fellowship has gained notoriety not only for its in-game presence, but
also for its charitable work and accomplishments outside of the realm
of virtual reality. As LLTS celebrates its 14-year anniversary, this
author endeavored to learn more about the guild’s history from The
Syndicate’s founder and Guild Master, Dragons.
Founding
At the time of its founding, the mission of The Syndicate was to
establish a virtual community of friends – not an easy charter,
considering the technological constraints of the mid-1990s.
“We played on 28.8 Kbps modems (unless you were really high tech and
had a 32.2 Kbps modem),” Dragons said. “And in many ways, the whole
community was a rookie at what it means to be an online gamer. So
expectations were different and the methods to achieve them far less
sophisticated. Saying something like, ‘We wanted a friend focused group
that was loyal to each other and put a focus on building their
community,’ is not a statement that could be taken lightly 14 years
ago. These days, it is a common goal for many guilds, but back then
things looked much different than they do today.”
Elements of Success
Presently, the Syndicate is perhaps best known for its weekly
“Craftsman Day,” during which the guild furnishes a variety of free
crafting services to Atlantians, including item repairs, crafting,
enhancing, lockpicking, and more. Community outreaches like this one
have often thrust LLTS into the spotlight, but the core of guild’s
success runs deeper than community promotions, according to Dragons. He
describes a “Perfect Storm” of events that allowed The Syndicate to
develop a large, stable member base in a short period of time.
Said Dragons, “while it would be ideal to say every bit of our success
comes from careful planning and execution, it is more fair to say that
some of that success comes from the reality of when we were founded and
what the state of the online world was at the time, and its tolerance
for allowing us to make mistakes, and learn from them, and grow. We
were able to stand out from the crowd very early on and maintain and
grow that visibility over the years. That is nearly impossible for a
group to do today given there are millions of guilds in existence with
thousands rising and falling each day.
“Additionally, the drive to learn from mistakes and then not repeat
them was a major player in our success. Creating a group of 625+
people, with dozens of game developers as members, contracts with
development companies, our own studio with Prima Games to write
strategy guides, featured in a movie, having a book etc., inherently
means there were lots of [opportunities] to make mistakes. We have a
firm commitment to analyzing mistakes that we do make and putting
things in place to not let them happen again, if at all possible.
“And finally, I think perhaps the single biggest factor in our success
is our membership. We recruit a certain type of person and that
inherently means very few issues occur and there is a very high
motivation level to support the team, and that those individuals remain
members for many years. As such, there is a constant accumulation of
sweat equity in the guild by each member and a constant growth of our
culture, camaraderie and passion for the entity we all helped build.”
Challenges
The growth and success of The Syndicate is evident. Less evident are
the challenges that the guild has faced throughout the course of its
development. According to Dragons, the guild’s biggest challenge at one
time was a high turn-over rate. In response to this challenge, LLTS was
required to reconsider its recruitment process.
“In our early years,” Dragons said, “we had a very open door policy. We
had entire guilds merging into us. We accepted large numbers of people.
Frankly, that is a dumb policy if the desire is to build sustainable,
team focused, friend focused, drama free environments. That type of
policy breeds issues and is a reason many guilds have ceased to exist,
and why many groups have large turn-over rates. We learned from that
and tightened down our recruiting practices and have molded the process
into what it is today, where more than 52,000 people have applied to
become members, but very [few] pass the quality check. Now we have
virtually no turn-over. By way of example, in the last calendar year we
have lost 7 people who quit us to join another guild or who were
unhappy with some aspect of the guild. So we had a 99.98% retention
rate for last year. Recruiting is where the rubber meets the road for
guild development and we made some major mistakes with it early on and
then adapted and learned from them.”
Evolution
Ultima Online has changed a great deal over the past 14 years,
as has the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMO) industry
as a whole. The Syndicate has similarly evolved in response to these
changes. Although The Syndicate’s core values of “Friendship, Loyalty,
Team Focus and Guild First” have remained unaltered over the past
decade and a half, the guild as an enterprise has developed into
something of a trans-game, trans-genre organization.
“When we were founded, we were a guild that intended to play UO. Today, we are a virtual community with an incorporated arm of the organization that does play UO, [World of Warcraft], and most other MMOs out there, but does so much more than that.”
Beyond gaming, LLTS has involved itself in many real-world causes,
including conducting charitable work, legally tradmarking and
incorporating the guild, authoring books for publication by Prima
Studios, hosting conferences for members and gaming industry
professionals, serving as consultants for MMO development, and being
featured in numerous articles, books, and documentaries. According to
Dragons, it is endeavors like these, as well as the guild’s trans-game
presence, that sets The Syndicate apart from other Atlantic-based
guilds.
“The primary difference,” said Dragons, “is that we are not an Atlantic or even a UO based guild. UO
and the Atlantic shard are an integral part of our roots and our
history, but long ago we moved from being a ‘guild’ that was on [the]
Atlantic shard of UO into a virtual community spanning many
worlds and reaching into the real world, and then finally morphing into
an organization that has a day to day impact on the future of MMOs, has
massive success in the strategy guide market, has a hugely successful
annual conference, and really blurs the line between game playing and
game developing.”
Despite the guild’s ventures beyond the realm of Atlantic, Dragons
affirms their steadfast commitment to the Atlantic community. In
Dragon’s view, 14 years of existence is only the beginning and he looks
forward to the future development of LLTS.
“Longevity, Size, Leadership, Loyalty, Membership, Retention, Impact on
Game Development, Industry Influence, Recognition – for virtually any
meaningful metric of success, The Syndicate sets the standard,” Dragons
said. “With 14 years under our belt, in many ways we are just getting
started. New strategic partnerships continue to be forged that will
result in continued positive impact on the future of MMO gaming. We are
very excited about what the coming years hold, not only for us, but for
the entire gaming community. Long Live The Syndicate!”
Dragons has played Ultima Online since its the pre-alpha test. His guild, The Syndicate, is celebrating its 14-year anniversary this month.
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