Yesterday evening saw the first login to Elder Scrolls Online, or any MMO, for that matter, since we’ve returned from China.
Zharyon
That’s the name of our guild- yesterday, a commenter here made the connection between this blog and that guild, so i think i can tell now. I would have done it soon, anyway. Why we’d use such an unusual name? Well, it’s kind of a long story that i’ll probably tell when/if i make an official introduction post here, but to make it short- google it. We wanted a unique name that wasn’t descriptive like “Order of Light” or something- we wanted a name that wasn’t taken but still somewhat good on eyes and ears and we came up with that. It has been used a couple of times, but i think 800 results on Google is ok in terms of uniqueness.
That fear i expressed when i was sick and had to cancel guild events the last time i got sick? Well, turns out that two weeks of going to China might have made it true. We were only two players logging in, with a third one patching up on a night where i had planned to venture into a dungeon (to be fair, i scheduled that event more or less as a trial for organizing dungeon runs without consulting anybody else first).
We need bodies
The thing is: casual, social, tight-knit or not- we need to up the game a bit. We need more life in our community- or at least i do. 3 of us more or less only log in when we have a scheduled activity, i haven’t seen two recruits in quite some time, so in the end, our roster is at about 3-4 players who log in from day to day (but usually not daily). That’s not enough. We’re spreading ourselves to thin there. So i was beginning to think how we can gain a bit more traction without, you know, either disbanding, looking at another direction and/or recruit every Joe or Jane Doe that comes along.
I think the homepage might be one good way- disregarding whether we’d move to selfhosting and/or wordpress or not, it needs a bit more work to look attractive and show off who and what we are a bit better (if someone reading this wants to offer their feedback on what makes a good guild website or knows of some examples, i’d be happy for pointers). There’s one advantage in WordPress: it shows content much better than Enjin does. Let’s say other members would be interested in contributing to a “guild blog”, WordPress would be much better in handling this than Enjin is.
Of course that’s just a dream- in my experience guild members don’t like to contribute in this way. But still, it would also be a pretty good excuse for myself to sometimes post in german if i’d like (although, of course the activity would still be much lower than here). Still, it’s nice to dream- i love coop-blogging and multi-blogger sites and maybe, one day, some kind of project will come out of this.
Another thing i was thinking about was to simply cross voice chat off the list- now i know what you’re thinking, but with germans? “No Voicechat” guilds are actually quite popular- there are several communities that have this as their sole USP. We don’t use our server anyway and with Enjin only 5 slots come with the basic paid version of the website. So in the end, i guess it’s either moving to Discord or crossing it off. When i was looking for something like this in some english community, i drew a blank. Don’t know if this was about the game or maybe there’s just no market for these kinds of communities in the english speaking community.
We need continuity in our guild evenings
Another thing that propped up was that up until now, we’ve been dabbling in everything on guild night- we were in Cyrodiil, ran a dungeon, went to Wrothgar, the Thieves Guild and so on. What i’d like to do starting with the next guild evening in about two weeks is giving it a bit more structure- select something, then take it from the beginning up to the end. For instance, if we chose to start with Wrothgar, we’d stay there until we’ve finished all the content. Judging by the fact that Orsinium is supposed to have 20 hours of storyline content, that would probably take us ~15 weeks. Still, better quality, more continuity- i think that’s where we need to go.
Happy with what we have, but still have a way to go
We’ll have a chat about all this in our coming guild meeting (friday), i’m eager to see the results of this discussion and take some of that to action. See, i’m happy with what we have- we’re basically six semi-active to active players who like each other and share a very relaxed view on things like progress, wiping, online times and such. There’s no need to change that, it’s actually the opposite: we’ll try everything to keep it that way. But that doesn’t mean we have to stand still- we need to evolve, improve, gain some numbers in order to actually be more than a part of a good filled friendlist.
Party Business 
Heh, I was actually wondering how your guild had handled your trip to China. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the leader taking some time off (even if it’s a completely sensible thing to do) can send people running for the hills like nothing else…
Yeah, well. I don’t think it changed much in their personal behaviour in terms of logging in, it’s more about perception of scheduled events after a break. They get perceived as “more optional”, or when someone has to cancel because of an illness or other commitments or something. More optional can lead to the thought “i’ll join next time” and of course, it might be disappointing to see that there’s not much happening when the leader is away.
I have to say it was a bit, for me. The community wasn’t designed for me being the sole leader (i have a co-leader, after all) and/or highly dependant on my actions- but as things stand right now, it might be. One member tried to organize a dungeon run, but it didn’t take off and in the end, she also couldn’t make it.
Edit: oh, and also- it was “just” a dungeon run event, that’s usually not as highly regarded as something more social and guild-wide like a guild meeting or something with an open group size. People either don’t care about dungeons (nobody in our guild has seen more than three from the inside) or they expect them to be, well, stuff you can do every day.
It’s strange, though, isn’t it? I’ve always been a member in some guild, but i’ve never looked if the leader was playing a lot or showing much of a presence- i cared more about whether the guild organized something. Sometimes i didn’t even know who the leader actually was (The Arcane Light) until i saw him at a guild meeting. The thing is, a guild needs more than one person organizing stuff. If it has that, everything’s fine even if the leader is offline for some time.