Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Combine

I'd like to take a moment to jabber on about The Combine.

See, I made The Combine (we call it The Combine and refer to it as the Guild, we are The Combine. It's a name. We happen to be a guild.) when I decided to jump on the clan-making bandwagon. Nobody else was doing it, so I was essentially the first guy to really make a clan for the sake of making a clan, and be able to say "I made a clan before the game was released. I don't care if it's stupid, but I did it."

At the time, I recall the major clans were were StellarStop, which is more of a fansite community. Really, it's a fansite. There's a link. Visit sometime. There was also the Void Alliance, which collapsed.

See, StellarStop was founded as a community and bunch who would get to know each other before the game. The Void Alliance was a 'heavy Roleplay based/milsim' clan. Founded on the 14th and 16th of July, respectively.

So it was a good 10 days into it that my ego hit a peak and decided to found a clan so I can say, 5 years from now, "I FOUNDED A FUCKIN' STELLAR DAWN CLAN BEFORE YOUR CHARACTER EVEN STARTED!"

Riiiiiiight.

So on the 27th of July, The Combine showed up, and man, that'll be remembered as a dark day.

See, I started The Combine as a Tech-race specific guild to help myself. Ya know, let it grow and crash eventually. Every clan I ever started and/or joined died or I left for some reason, so I figured this would wouldn't be any different. It'll die a few months into the game and I'd write a heartfelt goodbye and join some other loser clan or something.

That plan went screwy when The Combine actually took off. Now I had problems. People were really coming in and we were becoming a respected clan because I kept stressing intelligence and maturity in the opening that only intelligent, mature people showed up.

So I overhauled the thread, shut down recruitment for a few weeks and rewrote that trash into something useful. Took it seriously. I'mma actually run this shit and make it last, because my plan of building an ego just died with a load of awesome people flying in.

The original Combine thread is over here.

Current Combine thread is here, and a helluva lot better.

See how the original sucked ass and the new one didn't?

In the time between I panicked as my plan died and I actually took responsibility for a well-established and well-stocked clan, the Borg and Titan Empire were founded, on the 3rd and 10 of August, respectively and they started snatching up people, useless, inactive as well as mature and intelligent.

See, we mighta been founded weeks earlier, but we never became the biggest or best because our leader was a dumb, egotistic fuck who tried to manipulate our collective ass into making him more respected and when he finally got his act together, the others were way ahead. Wait a sec...

Okay, so short version is, when I got swamped by people who were awesome, responsibility kicked me in the balls and I took it up, building [bold, unjustified declaration]one of the best clans in-non-existent-game[/bold, unjustified declaration].

As it turns out, when I redirect the effort I usually use to promote myself, I can do some pretty awesome stuff.

Like The Combine: The Offsite, Official Forums!

The Combine: The Twitter!

The Combine: The Facebook Page!

Okay, maybe the Facebook Page is a little much, but you gotta admit, I do some pretty insane/stupid stuff when I put my mind to it. Like found a guild for the sake of founding a guild. And then actually turning it into something meaningful.

Since then, a whole bunch of other clans have jumped on the bandwagon and most never quite take off (or get any members at all). See? Jump on a bandwagon first and they call you trend-setter. Do it too late, and they call you unoriginal copycat.

Shit.

I'm a leader now.

And I got stuff to do.

You know what, founding, building and running a guild has been a learning experience thus far. I've been stressed out, I've panicked, I've jumped with joy at the prospect of new members, I've overseen discussion, participated in them, we've made ourselves a known guild and I was at the head of it.

With the above in mind, I can say one thing with utmost sincerity and honesty;

It's really, really hard, please don't make me do it again.

I mean, really. Do you know how much effort goes into doing shit like that? If I knew, I woulda found some other way of getting an ego trip. So watcha say, Combine! Let's not crash and burn/spontaneously collapse or appear destined for greatness and die overnight like the Soviet Union did?

Also, if you look up near the top of my blog, you'll see a fish tank (with fish). Click inside to feed them. That's one fishy for every Combine member, rounded down. We're at just over 20 at time of this posting and I can safely say we have the best people here.

If the fishies aren't busy eating and you move your mouse cursor around in the tank, they follow you around. See, it's a responsibility. You can either be nice and feed the fishies, helping others, but losing attention and love they give you (or your cursor), or you can have a fleet of mindless drones following you and asskissing you at every turn, who never quite find happiness with you.

Thing is, when you're leading them around in little circles and fun shapes, you're not always getting pampered and you might just as well be leading them away from the edges of the aquarium, to swim freely (or if your guild is dumb, to swim back into the wall). And when you're feeding them events and plans, you've got a responsibility not to treat them as your personal army of do-anything-I-say drones and have to keep them functioning to what the community as a whole wants.

That's what it's like to be a leader.

It's hard.

Regards, IVIilitarus

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for writing this. I've never been with a clan from the very beginning before, so I never know what they think and such when they establish a clan.

    Understanding the thoughts of the leader and the occurrences from the beginning really makes me feel more of a part of the clan.
    _____

    "Do you know how much effort goes into doing shit like that?"

    Ohh, I've been the leader of a clan once... for a day.
    'Tbegan whilst I was playing Castle Wars a very long time ago (before Clan Chats)... I've found a partner, and we've always traveled together during the war and we'd fight together. Eventually, a third person joined our party, and more and more people joined. Eventually, we were this giant group of people and we were diabolic and destructive in the battle field (even though we were Saradomin).

    I've then come up with the thought of forming a clan, and the people who's joining now will be the veterans. So we've grouped together and I explained my plan with my poor grammar and shtuffles. Everyone concurred and I grabbed a sheet of paper and started writing everyone's names down. Being slightly childish, I then started drawing symbols representing everyone. I asked everyone what they'd like their symbols t'be, and I drew't. However, they will never be able t'see them.

    I was very excited and proud of my clan. I've then started writing out plans and fictional lore of our clan.

    After that night, I've never logged back in until a week later. I've never seen any of them except for one again. And that one who I did see has joined another clan during my absence. I was filled with disappointment.

    Years later, I still held the hopefulness that I'll one day start a flourishing clan. I became inspired after the clan chats, and the rediscovery of my old clan papers. However, this inspiration was abolished one day whilst gathering charms from Moss giants the second day Summoning was released. Two high-levelled people appeared and started killing the giants with me. One of the two was very nice. She gave me food and conversed with me. Eventually, the other one asked me if I wished t'temporarily join his clan chat so that I had more people t'talk to. The two people turned out t'be the leaders of this semi-flourished clan. I've explained t'them my aspiration of starting up a clan. However, I've eventually fallen in love with the people there, and decided t'let my ambition leave me.

    I am still loyal t'that clan today.
    _____

    Hmm... I love your fish analogy. I've noticed that when I try t'reward just one, the others rushes in and steals a piece. This reminds me of within my clan, a person was ranked up once. Another person complained about how he's been apart of the clan for much longer than that other person, and he has not been ranked and how that was very unjust of her. The leader ranked him afterward.

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