A while ago I was informed about a new book "The Syndicate - Beyond The Legend" by Sean Stalzer, also known as Lord Dragons, Guildmaster of The Syndicate. The book is a sequel to "Legend of the Syndicate", which covered the first ten years of the guild.

My own Ultima Online experience goes back to 1997, where I played on the Atlantic shard and I distinctly remember several characters on that shard having LLTS attached to their names. This was before player guilds and guild abbreviations were available in the game, so a character's name was the logical spot to show your guild affiliation. LLTS stands for "Long Live The Syndicate", which is the slogan and battle cry of the guild.

Who would have thought that fourteen years later The Syndicate would still be around, or even that they would be publishing a (second) book about their history. All this made me want to read the book to see what memories (if any) would be brought back to me.

The subtitle of the book is "Secrets to creating a succesful online community". The first section starts with a recap of the first ten years of the guild and then focuses on the years from 2007 until now. Because The Syndicate is a guild that is present in most popular MMO's the book you will find interesting reads about EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and of course Ultima Online. Also, there are some chapters dedicated to the yearly Syndicate conference, known as SyndCon, where guild members and representatives of the game development companies meet each other.

The second section of the book explains the S.U.C.C.E.S.S. factors that you need to create and maintain a succesful guild. Those are Stability, Understanding, Culture, Compatibility, Excellence, Size and Staying Focused. If you are serious about running a guild and be there for the long run, I highly recommend reading this section.

The third section of the book is about the future of online gaming, and focuses on the expectations of players today. Such as; Community Tools, the "Always on" and "Play anywhere" concepts, Setting the proper difficulty level and Communication.

After reading the book I found myself pleasantly surprised. Even though the amount of Ultima Online references in the book is small compared to the ones related to other MMO's (mostly WoW) there were quite a few memories brought back to me. And the second and third sections of the book are an interesting read, no matter what MMO you are playing right now.

Further reading:
- The Syndicate website
- Order book at Lulu

Xena Dragon