A few years ago I created a guild that continues to live on to this day. During the course of my leadership I tried to do my best to keep a united and fun guild. Unfortunately not everything was smooth in running the guild. We had spies, betrayals and other drama. Needless to say it even spilled into the forums and involved other guilds.

Here are some tips that I learned based on what I noticed was very effective. In addition some tips I've learned from marketing books and real life interactions.

Set A Goal

What is the purpose of your guild? Are you out to create havoc in the land or perhaps save make a league of heroic individuals. Your ability to communicate what your goal is an how your guild member communicate this to others will help establish your identity.

Additionally, this will help you recognize the profile of the guild member you want. If you want a very aggresive player killing guild you wouldn't want a dozen of loving teddy bears would you?

Create Rituals

Rituals are a great way to help your members feel like part of the clan. It might be an initiation ritual or a inside joke that you make every time a new guild member comes online

    M ost of us us the same standard pieces of hardware to play online, but we all have different areas surrounding us. Even though we most likely get absorbed by the game we are playing, we tend to be unaware of our surroundings until we are sitting down waiting for the rest of the raiding team to arrive and we look around for something to munch on like a bubble gum or a leftover cigarette to smoke.

   Believe it or not you do have an effect on your surroundings when you are just being static and clicking your nights away. If you don't believe me, take some before and after pictures, and you will see what I mean.

Having said this, what is your gaming area like?


The World is My Gaming Area!

   You are a gamer on the run! ok no I meant on the Go!  you have this uber powerful (or maybe 600mhz) laptop that fullfill your needs of grindfest and guild chatting whenever you go!  Long time waiting for your plane to arrive?  No worries! there are thousands of orcs waiting to be slaughtered by your all mighty axes, the gods of the server know that 3 hours waiting your your late flight will not be enough to get to level 57!!

  

   Back in the day the F word was almost unheard of when people spoke about online gaming. But as time has gone by the words has become almost common place. And players use it to talk about everything. Some small companies use it all over their websites, and other more serious companies like Blizzard or NCsoft don't use it almost at all in their products.

   There are posts everyday in every single forum with the F word in its header. And there are flashing banners in every website with the word on it.

   When I first saw it I must confess I was truly excited, I was completely sold to the idea and I have even stood by the F word. And later it stopped meaning something cool and turned into something annoying and desperate.  They now use it almost for everything and I think they should use a similar term rather than keep recycling it over and over again.

Nowadays I get mixed feelings when I hear it:

"Oh no, here we go again"

"That's great!"

"F***  really?!"

   Even though the F word is easier to re

Introduction

   Through the years women have not been allowed to participate actively in the military combat activities from the armies in most parts of the world. Very few women can be recognized as famous military figures such as Jeanne D’Arc. Until very recently women have acquired a more important role in the military institutions. No longer are women seen as just helpful for cleaning and cooking, which are just ancient stereotypes. Nowadays, women have gone to great lengths to prove that they can do whatever men can do, but can they beat us in the art of war?

In this article we will try to examine the role of women gamers in a MMORPG environment as commanders, military strategists, soldiers, and warriors.

War Simulation

If we consider online games to be a war simulation, we would have several elements we could compare to a real one:

Finite Resources

  Such as gold, mana, potions, elixirs, hp, etc.

Diverse Team Members with Different Skills

   Which represent the different classes we find in every game: mages, warriors, archers, hunters, etc.

Different Maps that require different strategies

   Low visibility maps, open planes, wo

When you start making friends online, you will soon notice that you  should  make your own privacy policy for yourself before playing  online. If you are new to mmo’s then you might be positive about it and just give your new in-game buddy your email. But just what is going to happen on the long run?

And He/She Never Came Back (Gone With the Lag)

Yep, just like the title states, you said "Hi", he/she replied back, you hunted for  a few minutes if not a couple of hours, and you never saw him again. He is never online in his messenger account and he hasn't replied to the 10 private messages that you sent to his forum inbox.

The truth is (please grab a box of tissues) you were never meant to be.  As sad as it sounds, maybe he/she has a busy life or simply thinks he/she has an obligation to give away some personal contact information upfront.  Don't worry it's not because you said that you are 35 and still sleep with a teddy bear.

Stalkers Inc.

So your friend turned out to be very active, he/she is always online, and always has the messenger service open to send you the latest  guild gossip.  You made a spec

There are four major temperaments that include most if not all of the players' personalities of the online worlds, the different temperaments are represented by colors: Blue, Gold, Orange, and Green.

    Read the description and check if you identify yourself with the following characteristics for each color, be honest to yourself, you are not fooling anybody. After you are done scroll down and read the suggestions for your color.

The Blue Temperament

Their purpose is to find their purpose in life.

• Need to feel unique
• Value close relationships
• Encourage expression
• Share emotions
• Make decisions based on feelings
• need harmony
• Get involved in causes
• Look beyond the surface
• Bring unity to society
• Compromise and cooperate
• Feel compelled to make the world a better place

The Gold Temperament

Strong beliefs in the benefits of discipline

• Are dutiful and stable
• Need to be useful
• Value order and organization
• Make and keep commitments
• Are powerful
• Are prepared
• Desire punctuality
• Measure worth by completion
• Safeguard tradition
• Have misgivings about anything that fosters change
• Value structure and security
• Want rules

The Green Temperament

The purpose in life is to find solutions

• Seek to understand the wor

   When I traveled trough the virtual worlds I've found many dangers, hostilities, odd situations and people that have tried to take advantage of me. In real life, heroes rarely appear out of nowhere, risking their lives to keep us safe from harm.

   While playing online I have found myself placing a steel barrier before meeting anyone. Whenever someone makes an attempt to contact me all kind of cautious thoughts pop in to my mind:

What does he/she want?

Is he/she a scammer?

Is there an ambush waiting for me?

Is he/she a stalker?

   Very few people I can really call my friends online, I don't consider myself paranoid but I am aware of the many players that don't mean what they say, or rehearse what they profess.

    Among this wild interaction environment there is one act that is far more memorable for me than slaying the same boss monster for the ninth time. I am talking of course of an act of true heroism.

    When I was about to be exterminated without mercy by a monster they came out of nowhere without saying a word they put there own safety in the line to save me. In the worst case they are ki

Something New, Something Old, Something Borrowed, Something Copied?

The term "New Game" usually means that you might expect a different experience from a new product. Nevertheless, the tem in the video game industry very rarely means that it is an entirely new concept. Most of the games we can obtained that are "New" are following a specific formula or sequence of events that we are already familiar with.

For example First Person Shooters (FPS) you know that of course you will have to shoot your way through the game, but there are many things that have been done that have renewed the genre since Wolfenstein 3D. Great examples of excellent landmarks for the genre are Call of Duty 4 and the Halo series.

In the early years of MMORPG development not many developers worried about similar games popping out, because it was just very expensive to take on a project like a MMORPG and there was not enough demand for online multiplayer games.

Recently, Maplestory one of the games with one of the largest communities has seen a very similar game come into the market. I have never played Maplestory but I tried the alleged clone to see what was my experience like

  Through the games I've played, even though they are not many I have found a recurrent problem in each one of them. Either I get too many useless things on mi inventory and/or my inventory is full before I even do my third quest. My inventory tends to get filled with lower level quest items that are worth close to nothing, or don't sell well because nobody does that ~boring quest~.

  In some games I even need to do a special inventory quest which is usually of royal pain proportions. I know that it would be too much to ask to have infinite inventory, but I wish we could have more useful items overall.

  In game design theory, dead squirrels are useless things that players carry in their inventories, which is something game designers should try to avoid. But apparently MMO developers didn't get the memo, because we have to struggle to get all the dead squirrels out of our way when we are trying desperately to find a health potion.

Wish list

  I wish I could do more with things inside games, for example if I have a rock, a string and a stick I could build a rough bow. But so far I haven't found a class that "Invents stuff".

  I wish I had a search function where I c