Heart to Heart
Over the past month I have been criticized because of spreading my time between the magazine, the social adventures, and the livestreams. Words were spoken that both hurt and have truth to them. The truth I realized is maybe it's not so transparent what I'm up to.
So let's get honest here. Gaiscioch as a whole, since Storm Legion in RIFT launched has consistently had members pulled away for other games. In GW2 we launched with over 1700 active members. Today we have about 435 active players of which 340 use the website. ESO launched with 1400 active players and now sits closer to 160 using the site regularly. The small guilds sizes are eating our community alive. Just as it did in BDO, Archeage, Aion, GW2, and ESO. This is a huge problem in MMOs today.
Why do we need all these people? Gaiscioch is a Casual Gaming Community. With a 500 person roster we will see 100 at peak times. Most of the time it will be between 30 and 50 people. Spread those people across the level range and you end up with a couple people similar level. This all comes down to you having someone to play with that's your level and plays at the same time you do. We are a global community. 100 people that live in the same timezone would be more active than 100 people that are split across 67 nations. Just because everyone's playtime is different. We need vastly more people to give players the ability to play with others.
With small guild size limits we are forced to take a non-casual friendly approach. We end up having to turn players away that we normally would embrace. Gaiscioch was created as a home for the discarded. The players the other guilds passed up because they didn't play every day. This epidemic threatens the very purpose we were created for. With these limited guid systems we can't with good reason keep players in that are not playing constantly. Which in turn hurts our community, our players, our family.
Now i'm doing everything I can to influence games in the future to embrace larger rosters to allow a home for the casual player. But this is a full fledged epidemic. Aion launched with 70 people rosters, BDO 100 person rosters, Skyforge launched with a 9 person guild roster that you had to grind like hell to increase it each person. Guilds are getting smaller and a casual community just can't find a home in this environment. We either have to change who we are or hang on for dear life hoping that something comes along that we can call home.
The fact of life is that every month about 5-10% of the population leaves for other games. This means we need to bring in 10% more people every month to fill those seats. This hasn't been happening in any of our chapters since we started trying to run 2 chapters concurrently. This realization is why we are going all in on Guild Wars 2 to try to keep this thing alive long enough for us to find a home that we can stretch our legs in.
So why the magazine and livestreams? This is all about building contacts. Contacts get us early access to games that might be a suitable home. The game industry changes constantly. People who work on Angry Birds today work on the next big MMO tomorrow. It's important to have relationships with these developers so that our name is on the forefront of their brain when they start looking for testers. It also gets us in with developers. It puts us on the forefront of the early stages of development which is the ONLY phase where our voice will be can truly be heard. Once a game has hit beta, it's already set in stone. If we're going to change the direction MMO's are going we need to share our perspective before things are in stone. These relationships are critical to our future survival.
For example, thanks to our SOEA Livestream of Echo of Soul we got a larger testing opportunity. Thanks to our Gaiscioch Pioneers testing team performing so awesomely, Aeria Games now has us on the short list to test Bless Online. Bless Online, might be the closest thing to a chapter candidate we've seen in awhile. However in Korea they have a 150 person guild limit. If we get involved early enough we may be able to change this when it arrives in the west. If you remember ArcheAge had a small guild size limit, but after working with Trion we managed to scrub that and have it increased. Even if we can change that It's still a bit too soon to tell but it has separate PvE and RvR that doesn't force PvP on PvErs. There's a few hurdles it still needs to clear but thanks to our relationship forged with Aeria Games we will be there as systems begin making their way west.
These are all puzzle pieces I'm using to get us home. The end game goal of all of this is to find a home that we can all enjoy that will allow our family a chance to stabilize and grow just as we did in the early days of RIFT. This is all about finding Chapter 6. Once we find that home I won't have to devote so much time scouring the horizon searching for hope.
This is not just a Guild to me. Gaiscioch is my passion, its my hobby, it's the way I pay tribute to the memory of my Grandmother, Oldroar, Jexia, Morrigana, and Zurdot. I won't let it die as long as i'm alive. We will endure the hard times and celebrate the good times. Even if we go back to go back to being a handful of oddballs like we did in the early days of Warhammer. Eventually I will find that home, even if I end up having to build it myself, and we will rebuild. In the end all of what I do is to ensure our survival and keep Gaiscioch fun for all.
My door is always open. Join me in discord. Ask questions, just come in to say hi, chat with me. I want to be a part of all of your lives if you let me. I sit in a room at the top of Discord so any of you can drop in say hi, ask a question, or get information as needed. I'm not secluding myself or trying to hide. I'm making myself absolutely available to all of you at any time. I have discord on my phone and respond to private messages at all hours of they day. Feel free to drop in and say hi and let's start building a friendship that lasts a lifetime.
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