2010
Ten Ton Hammer - About The GWR
(Oct 2010):
The fine folks at Ten Ton Hammer also ran an article about our Guinness World Record™. An excerpt from the article is:
MMORPGs are well known for their guilds and strong communities and few online gaming guilds have survived the test of time as long as The Syndicate. Founded in 1996, The Syndicate has survived in the constantly evolving MMOG market and managed to maintain continuous operation since its founding. This is no small achievement and the feat recently earned them the Guinness World Record as the oldest online gaming guild. Check out the official release below for all the details along with an image of the award.
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MMORPG.COM About The GWR
(Oct 2010):
The Syndicate receiving the Guinness World Record¸™ was big news and MMORPG.COM ran an article about it. An excerpt from the article is:
Not long ago, MMORPG.com profiled the online gaming guild called "The Syndicate". This group is so entrenched in the online gaming world that it even has its own convention every year. The Syndicate can add another feather to its proverbial cap with the announcement that it has been entered into the record books, The Guiness Book of World Records, to be exact. The Syndicate is now the oldest online gaming guild in the world.
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SOE Forums 2.0 Unveiled At SyndCon
(Sept 2010):
At SyndCon 2010 SOE unveiled their new Forums 2.0 concept. Ten Ton Hammer released this article about the forums becoming the first news site to reveal the innovative step forward that SOE is taking. An excerpt from the article is:
Designer Nathan “Hipshot” Pearce and his team have three prime directives for the project with a working title of “Forums 2.0”. First, SOE is going to great lengths to make the forums multimedia friendly. Spence explained: “Forums haven’t changed in a long time, but the way people communicate has. Back seven to ten years ago, it was heavily text-based. Now people communicate with multimedia and video, so that’s what we’re moving towards… We don’t want to do ‘just text,' text is too boring."
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Curt Schilling At SyndCon
(Aug 2010):
At SyndCon 2010 TenTonHammer sat down with Curt Schilling to talk about his upcoming RPG titled Reckoning. An excerpt from the article is:
A lot of buzz has been circulating around Curt Schilling’s game company, 38 Studios, and their upcoming projects: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Copernicus. Schilling has long been an avid gamer, playing wargames such as Advanced Squad Leader (which he now owns), RPGs, and online games from Ultima Online to World of Warcraft. Ten Ton Hammer’s own Ethec sat down with Curt Schilling at SyndCon 2010 to talk about 38 Studios’ upcoming projects and gaming in general.
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Profile Of The Syndicate
(Aug 2010):
MMORPG.COM did a profile on The Syndicate based on what they observed and learned at SyndCon 2010. An excerpt from the article is:
Who are the Syndicate? I had no idea who these guys were. Everyone I asked seemed to have heard of them, but knew nothing about them. I like a good mystery and so they became like the Masons of the video-game industry to me. My assignment was to collect information on the games that were being shown, but it became my own personal mission to find out what I could about this elusive guild.
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MMORPG.COM Interviews Smedley
(Aug 2010):
TenTon Hammer was also at SyndCon 2010 and they interviewed Smed as well. An excerpt from the article is:
Last weekend, SOE President John Smedley appeared at the ninth annual meeting of The Syndicate, a thousand-strong influential multi-game guild in its fifteenth year of existence. Actually, “appeared” is a misstatement – the man affectionately known as Smed chatted, commiserated, dined, and imbibed with the members, all the while fielding untold numbers of questions and absorbing countless rants during the five day event. To top it off, Ten Ton Hammer was on hand to ask Mr. Smedley a wide range of questions from DC Universe Online’s impending launch to the fate of Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. His answers appear below.
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MMORPG.COM Interviews Smedley
(Aug 2010):
John Smedley was one of the guest speakers at SyndCon 2010. He was interviewed by Angie Webb from MMORPG.COM after a panel discussion he led during the event. An excerpt from the article is:
I went to speak at their Austin conference last year and I was so impressed. If you look around here, I don’t know if you’ve spent much time with them yet, but you see the families, you see the single people, and the married people playing. It really is a family and I like that. I like that a lot. I offered to host the conference here this year. I brought my son last night and I’m bringing my wife tomorrow. These are the kind of people that I want to hang out with and make games for.
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Killer Nic 2100 Eval
(May 2010):
The Syndicate did work for Bigfoot Networks testing their high end Killer Nic 2100 card. Attached you will find an article about how we met them and about that initial testing engagement. An excerpt from the article is:
At the end of a week we got a thick report, precisely distilled from the combined impressions of 5 different Syndicate members, and full of deadly feedback about things as diverse as the user interface, the prototype packaging and the red lights on the inside of the Killer™ 2100. What impressed us most, though, was the density of the positive feedback. It wasn’t all fun and games – The Syndicate pointed out many possible improvements in our beta software, and we’ll be passing lots of these improvements on to you, not only for launch but also in future updates to Killer™ Network Manager. Nice to know that there really is a secret society out there that delights in "crushing the bones of our enemies and wielding the burning light of justice." And they’re on your side.
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D-Mail #2
(May 2010):
The D-Mail series continued on Ten Ton Hammer with the second article discussing ways to encourage players to think before they act and thus promote guild longevity and reduce drama. An excerpt from the article is:
This week, in D-Mail #2: Knee Jerk Reactions, Sean looks at how game developers can slow down ragequit-prone guildies before they do something rash through, of all things, a clever marketing gimmick?
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PAX-East Interview
(Apr 2010):
After the panel Dragons was a part of at PAX East, he and MMORPG.COM sat down and discussed gaming, The Syndicate, old times and forum trolls. That chat turned into an article on the site. An excerpt from the article is:
Sean’s gaming bio is similar to many of his generation, one that I am proud to a member of, starting off with many single player games back on the Commodore 64 and a 300 baud modem. Many of the younger readers may need to look that one up on the web. For us older gamers, there are both fond and horrific memories of these first generation home machines. The first Bard’s Tale was one game that Sean remembers in particular.
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D-Mail #1
(Apr 2010):
Ten Ton Hammer began running a column entitled D-Mail which was written by the GM of The Syndicate. The focus was on community and the synergies between player retention, revenue and player enjoyment that an increased focus on Community brings to a development company and the greater player community. An excerpt from the article is:
From a business standpoint, the failure of that community results in a loss of revenue. In some cases that loss is temporary, but in other cases it is permanent. Individually, none of us make a hill of beans worth of difference to the bottom line of any MMORPG, but collectively we are the SOLE reason the games exist. When communities are not afforded the tools and structure and rule-sets they need to thrive and succeed, the instances of major failures causing loss of revenue go up. So back to part of the original thesis of this column: strong communities make for a more profitable game.
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Working As Intended Podcast
(Mar 2010):
The team at MMO Gamer host a regular podcast titled Working As Intended. They interviewed Dragons about The Syndicate in Episode #23 of their podcast. An excerpt from the article is:
Welcome to the 23rd episode of the Working As Intended podcast! In this week’s show we’re joined by Sean Stalzer, sometimes better known by his nickname “Dragons,” to touch on the finer points of what it’s taken to keep The Syndicate, one of the largest and longest-running guilds in MMO history, up and running for over 14 years, and the relationships it has built with developers over that time.
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(Mar 2010):
TenTonHammer published an article about The Syndicate that touched on a number of interesting areas and themes. An excerpt from the article is:
I asked Sean whether it bothers him that the measuring stick for guilds is their ranking on the server or sheer number of members rather than the guild's longevity and culture. "I think it is a case of misplaced priorities for two reasons. One, you need to kill the content, but killing it first really contributes nothing to the game. Two, the number of guilds that are in contention on server or world firsts is less than 5% of the total population. From a business standpoint, building content for those groups is a really dumb idea. You're never going to be able to build it as fast as they're able to play it, unless you make it really hard, in which case no one's going to beat it. You want to make it winnable by the masses. But you should never design for the power gamers - they could all quit tomorrow and the bottom line of these companies would be negligibly affected."
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WoW.com 15 Minutes Of Fame
(Mar 2010):
WoW.com followed up their previous article with one in their fifteen minutes of fame section. An excerpt from the article is:
Considering such massive numbers inside such a sprawling organization, you might be tempted to conclude that these gamers must be very, very "hardcore." Not so fast. In fact, The Syndicate's in-game philosophy uplifts long-standing, person-to-person relationships and group fun above all else. Outside projects such as games consulting and strategy guides focus on material for the typical gamer – that's right, not the bleeding edge. We dug up what's going on inside this gargantuan guild in an interview with Dragons, its founding GM, president and CEO.
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WoW.com Profiles The Syndicate
(Feb 2010):
WoW.com profiled The Syndicate and it's success in celebration of our 14 year aniversary. An excerpt from the article is:
Kudos to The Syndicate, the oldest continuously operating online gaming community, on marking its 14th anniversary. The Syndicate includes a robust WoW Horde community on Zul'jin. With more than 625 active members, The Syndicate prides itself on a lack of turnover and drama, claiming that more than 550 of its members have been with the guild more than year.
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Stratics Interviews Dragons
(Feb 2010):
The UO Stratics team interviewed Dragons and explored the history of the guild and dove into some of the reasons for its success. An excerpt from the article is:
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.”
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MMORPG.COM Interview
(Feb 2010):
The team at MMORPG.COM interviewed The Syndicate about its 14 Years of success and what helped to make that possible. An excerpt from the article is:
Do you ever see an end to The Syndicate?
In 14 years that is the first time anyone has ever asked that question. I would like to think there is no end to The Syndicate. We have been taking steps in recent years to increase the permanence of the entity. We have been putting the logistics in place to allow it to carry on virtually indefinitely. I personally have no intention of closing it down and I think the 600+ members would echo those thoughts. Its a pretty passionate group and as long as we keep our focus on our core principles and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, there is no reason to think we wont be looking back on this question 20 years from now.
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