Winter 2014 State of the Guild

[RJO]

Final Fantasy Success
2010 was probably the most disappointing and challenging year in the guild’s history. The year started and continued through to the summer with no main game to play together.

Our hopes rested with Final Fantasy XIV releasing in the fall to do away with the “Dark Summer of 2010” blues. Final Fantasy XI was the catalyst for the formation of Aureus Knights and, needless to say, the prospect of a spiritual successor to the game that laid the foundation of our guild was very exciting to us.

When fall came and FFXIV 1.0 launched, we were in for a fast disappointment. Most of the members of the guild were lucky if they managed to keep interested long enough to see out their free trial. A game on which we had put so much of our hopes turned out to be our biggest disappointment, and the blow coming at the end of such a bleak year was a serious challenge to the guild - we honestly weren’t sure for a time if we’d come back from it.

Gladly, we moved on from that terrible year, but we’ve developed a bit of a cynical streak since then and our willingness to pursue all AAA North American MMOs is now long dead. In fact, our guild meme “there’s plenty of time before launch” comes from the FFXIV 1.0 era.

So when the time came around for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, we were skeptical. VERY SKEPTICAL. Some of us were in the Alpha and the first phase of beta and, honestly, it looked like the game was heading for disappointment once again. In Alpha, it looked like not enough had changed. In Beta, there was still a niggling fear that not enough had changed, but on top of it performance was such that the lag was terrible. For the people who lived through the lack of UI response from XIV 1.0, the lag of that first beta weekend felt all too familiar.

But we stuck with it, even though we’d been hurt before, we really did want to believe. We all so desperately wanted a successor to FFXI we were willing to ride it out through beta and see what happened.

The Community Leadership Team maintains a list of upcoming MMOs and we grade the games on a three point scale - 1 for "we likely will skip it," 2 for "we are watching it closely and think we will likely play it" and 3 for "we are committed to playing the game."

A Realm Reborn started as a 2, through those early days was bumped back to a 1, in the next few betas clawed its way back to a 2 and by the time the more public betas (phases three and four) rolled around it was solidly a 3. We really were confident that Square had managed to pull off a miracle - they had managed to make a worthy spiritual successor to FFXI.

Now we find ourselves approaching patch 2.2 and we are six months in to the retail release of the game. To say this chapter has exceeded our most optimistic expectations would be a massive understatement. We’ve had approximately 400 people come through the doors and added more than 300 members to the guild.

On any given week we have more than 100 guildmates getting together and taking on some of the toughest content the themepark MMO world has ever seen. We’ve had great social events, we’ve rallied together to raise an insane amount of money to build a killer house in the game and so much more. No matter what criteria we use, Final Fantasy XIV is the best chapter Aureus Knights has ever run. I want to take this opportunity to thank the following people who have dedicated their time as Chapter Officers and made this possible: Artex, Gingersnaps, Maimonides, Naylan, Sarvas, Slippers, Zen, Zro and the members of the Community Leadership Team who have spent time working on the chapter (Bigcedric, Daku, ehrie, Gagtech, Kiylie, Okaria, Pops, Raiak, Serv, RJO).

I would also like to thank anyone who has volunteered time helping out with events or coordinating our raid flights. Each and every member has found a way to step up when needed in this chapter and it’s a large part of why we’ve been so successful.

Patch 2.2 promises a lot of great new content and I suspect when I’m writing a State of the Guild a year from now I’ll still be writing about the great things the members of this chapter are participating in.

Looking Forward

The future is also looking bright. On the horizon we are keeping our eyes on two games for chapters. In the long term, we are looking at Everquest Next and Everquest Next Landmark.

Everquest Next is still a long ways away, so continue to watch these newsletters and check the forums often to keep up to date on our plans for our next great adventure in Norrath.

Coming up in the much shorter term is Wildstar, which releases on June 3rd. We plan on having a full chapter with a dedicated officer team.

At the same time this newsletter releases we will be starting up a poll to select our faction for the game. This poll will run until the completion of the second beta weekend that is open to all pre order customers. So if you are planning on playing the game, get your pre order in (pre orders start on March 19th) and check out both factions, then have your say by voting in our faction poll.

To learn more about Wildstar, check out the Wildstar section in this newsletter.

Exciting New Things

Just before I wrap up this State of the Guild, I want to tease some upcoming changes to our web community. Over the course of the guild’s history, our website has evolved quite a bit. Coming up over the next month or two you’ll start seeing a new evolution of that. Our existing web community platform is going to get a massive update that will allow our members to participate in our community in ways they never thought possible. That’s all the teasing I’m going to do for now, but I will leave it at this: Get excited, and get ready for some revolutionary stuff.

Great Time to be a Knight

Never in the guild’s history has this tagline ever been so true. We have a great chapter in FFXIV, a great casual games group and more to come in the coming months. I hope this finds you well and I hope to see you in game soon.

On behalf of the Aureus Knights Community Leadership Team,
Ryan "RJO"