State of the Guild - November 2013

Online, November 12, 2013 (Newswire.com) - A lot of things have changed both with the Guild and the game since the last State of the Guild Address in May. Without dwelling on the past I would like to highlight a few things before giving some insight as to the direction we are looking to move the guild in the coming months.

We've had the pleasure of experiencing a decent amount of new content sprinkled in since our last update. Both Czerka and Oricon content drops have given us new dailies, flashpoints and operations as well as some overhaul of the PVP world within the game. All of this has led to what seems to be a significant uptick in both game participation as well as guild participation.

After a rather lackluster September recruiting drive we've experienced unprecedented growth in October and into November. With only five new recruits during the month of September we saw a full thirty five new recruits come out of October and the numbers are still growing thanks to the efforts of many of our dedicated players and their recruitment initiatives. Our experience and rep bonus percentages are maxed out solid at 10% and participation in organized events is steadily climbing. Keep up the good work guys, the more quality players we bring in the better the guild and game is for all of us.

We've seen some changes as far as the officer positions are concerned. After discontinuing with the experimental assistant officer positions we've moved more towards a band of tight knit dedicated role specific officers. As often happens, scheduling issues and real life have conspired to rob us of some of our officer talent from time to time but everyone has stepped up to fill in where needed in order to keep things running and I greatly appreciate all the help our officers provide.

In addition to our core group of officers in the form of PVE (Endeavour), PVP (Ryakiri) and Co-GM (Stavia) we've added the new High Command Officer position of Guild Training Officer. Nessus was kind enough to step up and take on this role and he's done a fantastic job. His knowledge and experience had already benefited a number of our players so he was a logical choice for such an important position in a community focused guild. I won't steal his thunder, but I do know he has some great plans in the works for training guides, events and other material that will help us out tremendously.

Unfortunately while we have gained many new people we've lost a few as well, mostly to circumstances outside of the game. One of those was our former Community Support Officer, Draygon. Being a community focused guild this is a position of vital importance to us. The officers have been scrutinizing our current guild roster for a suitable replacement, hence some of the recent talk in guild chat and the forums and a recent poll. Once we review and refine the requirements for the position we will be opening this up as another High Command Officer position shortly for those who might be interested in expanding their role and responsibilities within the guild.

We've also had a member initiated effort to expand our in-game event offerings outside of our current prime time schedule. The guild and its officers are fully behind this effort and are dedicated to providing whatever resources we can to help bring more organized content to a larger group of our members. Expect to see more on this initiative in the coming weeks as well.

The game itself has some exciting new content and refinements coming in the next few weeks as well. Chief among these is what was formerly labeled the SSSP (Super Secret Space Project) now known as the Galactic Starfighter expansion. This is expected to drop for paying members the first week of December with the 2.5 game update. A few members of the guild have been fortunate enough to be invited to participate in the closed beta, myself among them. While I can't legally disclose any details about it due to an NDA I had to sign in order to participate I can say that it's an exciting new aspect of the game that I think a lot of people will enjoy.

Always trying to keep things fresh, we are offering a number of new events since we instituted the new event schedule. Among these we have the new monthly event the Shadow Guard Tournament, a chance to get together for some friendly PVP and win some prizes. We're also running Flashpoint Monday's as part of our training and gearing initiative. In an attempt to give Role Playing a shot in the arm we're also running a tabletop inspired Structured Role Play campaign on Fridays that anyone is welcome to participate in. And finally we'll be introducing a revamped version of our monthly Star Wars Trivia event on November 18th, which we are marking with our Random Star Wars Question of the day on our web site.

As December brings in the holidays look for some fun holiday related events both on the web site and in game. We have tentatively scheduled our holiday event for Monday December 16th. While it's still in the early planning stages I expect it to be just as fun and exciting as last years event, which was a huge hit.

The guild is expanding, the game is evolving and we are being carried along with all of it. We have some very exciting things on the horizon and I'm proud to be able to share them with such a great group of players!