Eric: Can you give me a little history of how The Acolytes began?
John: I have been an avid MMO’er since the days of Everquest. The game that solidified my love for MMO’s was Anarchy Online by Funcom. I decided to take a stab at starting and running a guild for the first time. The guild became so successful that I was chosen to be highlighted in the MMO chapter of the book,
Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. I thought to myself that I wanted something more than just one guild in one game. I decided to start fresh with a new name as the old name was very specific to the game play and story within Anarchy Online. Then on April 11th, 2004 the Acolytes were born for Age of Conan. On January 4th, 2008 the Acolytes officially became a multi-game community by opening up a Warhammer Online Division. This new division started with just 3 members. One of whom was my second in command of the entire community, Cach. He was able to organize 105 members before the October launch of Warhammer. With me already establishing the Acolytes as a dominant force within Age of Conan, the Acolytes of WAR with Cach’s lead made the Acolytes the #1 guild on the Phoenix Throne server. Since then our popularity has grown throughout several MMO communities. We are currently engaged in Mortal Online, World of Warcraft and we are heavily anticipating Star Wars: The Old Republic.
I wanted to create a community for like minded adults to enjoy and relax with video games after their long days at work as the Community is meant to be a source of enjoyment for my members. Once your average guild starts feeling more like work, players tend to lose interest. That is why we like to refer to ourselves as a community more than a guild. Players here are people first and the video games we play are secondary to our outlook. It is nice to come home and know that there will be other people that take part in the same interests as you no matter your race, religion or political views. We are very accomplished in every MMO we enter, but we have a great time along the way because of our community outlook.
Eric: How does the guild decide which games to focus on? Obviously by looking at your site it is clear that there is no raiding/pvp focus on WoW (Although with a Vent channel I would expect members also play it). Is there a reason that the guild has shyed away from WoW? (PVP balance issues, lack of interest, Supporting Smaller Development Teams)
We don’t dictate which games our members should be playing. Considering our first supported MMO was Age of Conan, this is our strongest branch, by numbers, at the moment. For each branch we require a certain amount of dedicated members to the new MMO and I try to gauge if the game will be a success from the start, and by proxy the new division. From those people we discuss what they would like in a guild for that game, the specifics of how division leadership works and the interested members either suggest or Cach and I pick the leader of the new division. With this system in place it lets me oversee the entire community’s direction as well as having dedicated people to uphold the quality we like to carry with our name into each of our MMO branches. This is also the beauty of our community, since we have dedicated people within each of our branches it allows the freedom of our members to either enjoy one particular MMO or any of the MMO’s we currently support. To support this kind of structure it is a necessary to continue to keep growing in numbers. Due to our quality image and success in our MMO’s over the years we have grown leaps and bounds since my very first member, Skullcrusher, six years ago.
Our community was originally created for Age of Conan. At that time WoW was already a well established MMO and almost all of our members that were playing WoW were looking for something different. It wasn’t until recently that we decided to create a branch for WoW. We have come to accept that WoW has been a powerhouse in the MMO gaming field and that its status will not change anytime soon. As the community continued to grow over the years it became apparent that more and more people that used to play WoW were interested in playing it again at some point. The logical step for the community was to support our members that wished to retain their friendships, and forge new ones, wearing the same guild tag that they have come to enjoy.
As for raids/pvp in WoW, those aspects are slowly growing as the membership grows. The members we have in leadership roles in that division are skilled players in both raiding and pvp. We don’t have just one focus in any of our games. This has helped us to not only be a force in both pvp and pve, but also to have strong participation and achievement in both areas at the same time.
Eric: Your recruitment policy seems tough (I say that in a good way), have you found that using this formula leads to quality over quantity in fostering the sense of community that it seems like the Acolytes focus on?
Absolutely! I am definitely not an island in this community. Not only do Cach and the other officers contribute greatly to the decisions we make as a community, but the members are always encouraged to have a voice. This is their community as well as ours. I have seen many guilds that recruit by spamming in whatever global chat they have available and blindly accepting anyone who applies just to have the numbers to accomplish their goals in a game. I have seen others who invite based on skill alone, even when the player may use some less than desirable (and sometimes unethical or offensive) tactics. To be an Acolyte, you have to be willing to be a part of the community we have built. You have to have integrity and respect for the players we associate with (inside and outside our community). We respect the people in our community and we respect their opinions. Everyone has a voice.
The standards of our recruitment have varied over the years and from division to division as well. We have always prided ourselves on not having an overt recruitment campaign, but instead utilizing our members and word-of-mouth reputation for recruitment. The process may seem long and arduous to some, but we have found through trial and error that the best way to continue to build our community is by the strengths of the player base over sheer quantity of players. The community itself, by servers, ranges from the biggest guild population (AoC) to smaller but more dedicated guilds (MO). The standards and reputation that we have established as a community is shown in our recruitment process; we believe that incoming players recognize that we are here for something more than just a day-to-day guild.
Eric: Xbox Live and PSN are probably the worst community experiences in the world, rampant swearing, racist language, and overall crass conduct is part of a typical experience, what does the word ‘community’ mean to The Acolytes?
We feel that community means being part of something you can be proud of. To meet new people that you would have never met in your life time if it wasn’t for this community. The key to a successful community is to always remember that there is real living, breathing person on the other side of those online characters. What these people do in their real lives vary in occupation and location around the world, but we all share a common interest, video games.
Just this past year we as a community donated $450 for the Breast Cancer Foundation and my second in command of the community, Cach, matched it dollar for dollar for a total of $900. We have actively sent care packages to our troops overseas to show our support. We will continue to do things for future charities and groups as we feel we can do more as a community then just play MMO’s and FPS’s. We feel the very essence of a community is about helping each other out and helping out those around us.
Eric: Friendships that are started online often have a stigma of being lesser then those in real life mainly by those with little experience in the matter; do you think your guild does enough to maintain a deeper sense of community beyond an updated raid calendar and DKP system?
Not everyone in our community will meet face-to-face but we believe that we have facilitated an environment for our members to build long lasting friendships with people they otherwise might never have the chance to talk to. Over the years we have seen our members forge these friendships with those late night gaming stints and regular play schedules with each other. It’s not always our philosophy or our direct doing that these friendships are made from. Our community is built on the principles that no matter ethnicity, beliefs or views the core product of anything is respect for your fellow man.
We have one of the most active forums that I have seen. Our members chat continually from work and home in the chat box on the forum site, and we have about 125 posts made daily on the forums. We have had almost 10,000 posts in the past three months alone. These range from game mechanics and strategies to pictures of their pets to random posts about their computer or their personal physique.
We all meet in vent once a month to touch base with the full community, but every night our vent is full of members. Some members are playing together and some are playing a different game, but chatting with the others. We don’t lock most of the channels and separate members playing different games. Often, members who aren’t playing any games will stop by vent to chat with friends.
One of our favorite stories to tell about the bonds created within the Acolytes comes from a Canadian Acolyte and a Turkish Acolyte that struck a friendship playing late night and early mornings in Age of Conan. They exchanged instant messaging info to have chats during their work hours, which would prove to be beneficial in the short future. As the Turkish Acolyte was traveling abroad he was arrested by local authorities and was subject to being held in jail without any means to bail himself out. He was able to contact his Canadian Acolyte and they quickly arranged a wire-transfer of money. If it wasn’t for these members meeting each other within the Acolytes, and taking it on themselves to create a friendship out of game over in-game actions the Turkish Acolyte might have spent a good long time waiting for rescue from a foreign jail.
Eric: Girls that play video games, especially in the traditional hardcore capacity of MMO’s (raiding and PVP), occupy an incredibly strange place among the gaming community, and at least in my experiences a girl is usually met with surprise and usual indignation, is there something about guild interactions that change the male-female gaming dynamic in a positive way?
Having several female friends that play MMOs and are honest about their experience has helped me to refine and shape the guild’s interactions with male and female players alike. The reality is that females ARE often treated differently in MMOs. We have worked VERY hard to ensure that people treat ALL members of the community with respect regardless of gender. We shut down comments meant to belittle and/or degrade the abilities of women in MMOs. The guild leadership actually realize that women can be just as good of players (in PvE or PvP) as men can, and not only encourage, but require our members to do the same. This isn’t something that is just in writing in our forums (it is there as well), but it’s something that we do every day. Because of this, we have some of the most skilled and active women in their games in our community, and a very active female population.
Eric: What are your thoughts on Blizzard removing the planned forum feature that put every player’s real name on each post on their official forums?
As a community we try to keep our members from disrespecting the games overall community and we’ve had discussions both in our forums and in Ventrilo over the proposed REAL ID forum modification from Blizzard. Although we have many members on both sides of the fence, we can definitely see the benefit of such a program to cut down on the trolling and flaming attempts caused by internet anonymity. We also see the other side of the fence, where we must respect each others privacy and how easy it could be to obtain information on another player for malicious intent. We go through strict policies within the Acolytes to ensure that the real identities of our members are only given out by the members themselves and we stress to them to only share personal information if they are comfortable with it. Overall fostering the idea that your actions have consequences, even in a virtual setting, has a good premise but the protection of their personal information is far more vital.
Eric: Is there anyway that The Acolytes go beyond the online space, ie meet ups, other community events?
Yes. We have had many members of our community meet up with each other. Just recently we had a group of members meet up and take part in a rafting adventure in Canada. For now it has mostly been those that live near each other across their respective countries. As I said earlier, we have people that live near each other that may have never met each other unless they were part of this community and now they are great friends. At times I sit back and think of what I have created here. All of the hard work that gets put into this community by everyone to make it function is worth every minute for the sheer fact of providing entertainment and an atmosphere that everyone can enjoy. We are planning on having an AcoCon sometime soon to get everyone together for the first time. We are still in the planning stages of that, but we are looking to have it in Las Vegas.
Eric: It seems like every time a guild is mentioned in the gaming press it is because of some kind of drama, is there anyway you can keep these incidents at bay or is it just a natural part of guild interactions?
Drama is pretty much unavoidable, especially in large communities. Our motto is that not everyone has to get along and be best friends, but you must respect each other or else this is not the place for you. As I head up this community I am a firm believer that a guild’s or communities successes are not just based on in-game achievements or accomplishments. I feel the most important measure is how one deals with the inevitable drama. This is what is going to set any guild or community apart from the others.
In my opinion it is unfortunate that guilds tend to get press for drama. That is why we are honored by your interview to highlight the positive aspects of our community and to show what good we can do for others. Hopefully we can spread a positive image throughout the gaming press to show what kind of impact these gaming communities can have on society.
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