I would also add that our STO fleet is split in two, it dose work and vary well.

Hi Jedilicious, I'm Zepari, the "Guild Leader" whose name you can't remember, lol. Pleased to meet you. You or anyone else can, as always, contact me via PM on this site, or directly to my email address: Zepari@live.co.uk

I was hoping to have an answer for all the suggestions that have been posted and talked about in guild chat before I posted a full update in the Announcements forum. However, I'll answer all your questions relating to the Alt guild and chat channels here first. Oh and the thread I was talking about in guild chat earlier where I said we would be splitting the guild is here:
http://www.knightsofstonewall.com/forums/cantina/37831-chat-channels

DakonKor's post has all the information about why we chose this method of guild management, so I'll just add to that by answering your well thought out points and try not to repeat what he has already explained.

1) The guild is not struggling. We have a great group of people here who regularly go out of their way to help each other. The first few weeks after launch we difficult with the restrictions we had on the Republic side, but thanks to Doogiegood, Aldente, the other officers and all the Lieutenants, we managed. Thank you to you all! We currently have 15 Captains with multiple characters who are in place to help with invites and we still have a lot of Lieutenants aswell with invite ability. If anyone does have a problem and can't get invited after a few hours, then they should let me know and I will arrange to invite them at their convenience.

2) I am very aware of the drawbacks of having to split the guild by class, especially with the guild achievements. However we did consider all the alternatives as DakonKor said, including the ones mentioned in this thread. We didn't have time to wait for a guild wide survey as we were fast approaching the guild limit and we don't want to have to turn anyone away.
We don't want to impose any draconian entrance requirements that limit who can join as that goes against the Stonewall ethos of non-discrimination. The overflow idea of having anyone who joins from now on put into a different guild was also discounted as we had done that with STO and found that we were segregating the real life members rather than just their characters.
We couldn't introduce a minimum activity requirement of two months or even one month as all the characters are less than a month old.
The two choices we were left with were to level band the guilds so that when a member reached a high level they would be entitled to join an "elite" character guild, or the current choice. We chose the class banding because level banding would only postpone the problem until we had too many high level characters to fit in one guild and then we would face this problem all over again.
Despite the drawbacks, class banding seemed the best decision as it was the most permanent and most energy economical in the long term. Also when guild banks become available, the items placed there will be most useful to characters of the same class.

We will of course be reviewing this decision regularly with the input of all the members as the guild grows and new problems emerge.

3) The Stonewall chat channel was never just for invites. As in STO it is a vital communication tool and intended for general use or the whole Stonewall community, no-matter which ingame guild they are in, to socialise. Again as with STO the plan was to disable guild chat once we had need for an Alt guild and use the Stonewall channel only. However I'd like to see if keeping the guild chat available for discussions relating to specific classes is possible without dividing the social aspect of the game.

4) The need for an Alt guild is not about having space for new members. We do not have enough room for the alts of all our current members and we don't see the need to make members pick which character they want to play most and only allowing that one to interact with the rest of us. The splitting of the guilds is to allow us to include all characters, not invite new members, that is done via this website.

I hope I've answered any outstanding questions and added to the other officer's explanations.

We are planning to start holding informal guild wide meetings on a regular basis to get the input and opinions of all the members and, as always, myself and all the officers (current and future) are willing to chat to anyone at anytime about your concerns.

Zepari

Quote by intristin

Quote by Varel

Quote by intristin

As far as the name, Soldiers of Stonewall, it's OK, I don't see how a smuggler can be considered a soldier however. With that said, I can't think of a word that would cover both classes either so I guess that's fine. :P

They are called Soliders of Fortune for a reason. Smugglers will take advantage of an opening to make sure they can continue to make a profit and will defend their advantages with a passion.

I didn't even think about it that way but your right, and I stand corrected. B)

It's all good in the hood! :-)

Quote by Sidanis

Not everyone reads the forums and those that don't might find themselves logging in and guildless, wondering what happened.

We are going to do everything in our power to keep this from happening. Once we have the Officers and Captains in place to handle this task, we will be handling this with people as they are logged into the game.

A worst case scenario would be we try sending a couple of in-game emails to try and arrange a time to help someone get their characters aligned.

We are not going to go on a /gkick rampage.

Once we have the Leadership in place, the realignment for any one character who is logged in shouldn't take any longer than a few seconds.

We don't have a deadline for when we get everyone aligned, it will be a process that happens as the timing works for everyone. That said, the more we can get realigned quickly, the better, so any cooperation and help you can all provide will be greatly appreciated. This minimizes any perception of favoritism of one guild over another. We are still Stonewall, we are just finding a logical and equitable way to distribute our membership.

Like I said I understand the need and I'm okay with whatever you guys decide, it's also good to know that moving between guilds will be voluntary. (if I understand it correctly)

I just hope folks understand that no one is trying to create any drama here but trying bring up what their issues are, for the care they might have to the guild.

Quote by intristin

As far as the name, Soldiers of Stonewall, it's OK, I don't see how a smuggler can be considered a soldier however. With that said, I can't think of a word that would cover both classes either so I guess that's fine. :P

They are called Soliders of Fortune for a reason. Smugglers will take advantage of an opening to make sure they can continue to make a profit and will defend their advantages with a passion.

On a more serious note:
I think we all need to take a deep breath here and realize that the need for a guild split is actually a good thing. We have people who WANT to be members of Stonewall, no matter what the form. The game hasn't even been out for a month so I think it's a little too quick to call for people to be cleared out of the guild. I'm sure as time passes guild cleaning will happen but less than a month after launch isn't the time to start. We just finished the holiday season and people will start to get back into their usual routines. We may see an increase in the number of characters that are leveling up.

This will be awkward at first but guild growth normally is. As Dakon stated before (I am paraphrasing here) we can't plan the guild around what-ifs and maybes. We have to work with the way the game is now. As to people being moved out of Knights, I highly doubt that the officers are going to go on a /gkick rampage. I'm sure it will be more along the lines of asking members if they feel comfortable to move their toons into the correct guild, and encouraging new members to apply to the "proper" guild.

We just have to keep in mind that things will work out. :-) until then the next round of shots off the shot boys are on me!

I did say that the officers have discussed this and we have made a decision for what we believe is the best set up for our guild. In future we can always improve and smooth out the bumps.

Quote by Jedilicious

1) The guild is already struggling to manage two guilds in-game. Work out the hiccups and bumps first, get your Officers and Captains lined up, work the bugs out of the invite process... before adding more work. Simple economy of energy: keep it simple.

We don't have the luxury of waiting, we are within touching distance of the cap. If people are trying to get their friends or alts invited to the guild and we can't accommodate them because we were too busy fiddling with our officer set up, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree it wouldn't be a great situation.

Quote by Jedilicious

2) Separating by classes: Often times quests and missions require multiple classes for assistance. The simple fact that enough of one class type (even Jedi tanks/healers/dps) may not be available at the same time means you'll be needing other classes to help. The separation of classes will result in more chatter in the Stonewall custom chat channel.*

Is more chatter in the Stonewall Custom chat channel a bad thing? To be honest, I don't imagine people will talk any more. People ask in the guild chat for groups much more often than they search through the guild lists. I think you're trying to pull problems out of the air with this one.

Quote by Jedilicious

3) Future guild achievement systems will most likely require an assortment of classes in one guild.

We can't be making decisions based on game systems we don't know anything about or if they are coming at all. For all we know in a few patches Bioware will up the character limit of the guild and we can all jump back into the pile together.

We are doing what we believe to be the best action for the guild. In future if the situation changes we can re-address.

Quote by Jedilicious

4) *The Stonewall chat channel ideally should only be used for inviting new members. New members enter that channel and if it's full of cross-guild chatter, group invite requests, Flashpoint assistance chatter, the new members are going to get missed... or flustered, or overwhelmed. As it is now I have gChat and Stonewall channel in one tab and it's hard to keep up with what's being said in both channels. You'll scare off potential new members if they sit in that channel and can't get assistance through all the chatter. If you want a cross-guild chat channel, make a new one and keep all chatter in there... but don't jeopardize your invite channel.

I understand your concern that we may miss invites but I don't believe it will be an issue. We ran our Star Trek Online guild with one chat room and missing invites due to too much chatter wasn't a massive problem.

I think our guild has some of the best members I have ever known and I have absolutely faith in their willingness to help any new members trying to get an invite. I have this faith because I have seen them doing it. They are wonderful.

Quote by Jedilicious

5) In the GChat discussion an officer stated (paraphrasing) 'this change is needed to allow room for new members to join.' My suggestion: Don't sacrifice providing quality of service to your existing members just to lure in more new members. Take care of what you've got, build on it and make it better, then worry about getting new members in.

This is never going to be the way we operate. We don't turn people away at the door when they haven't done anything wrong.

Our guild is a place for anybody who wants to play SWTOR in a friendly environment and we (officers and members) will provide an excellent "quality of service" weather have 500 members or 10000 members.

The day we close our doors to new members for fear of neglecting the old is the day we should close down the guild all together. We are here for everybody.

Quote by Jedilicious

A) Thin the ranks of the current guild. Many of us made multiple start up toons, but are only now leveling one or two. Ask those who created (and guilded) lower level toons - that they may never play again - to voluntarily remove those toons to help keep the rosters clean.

SWTOR isn't like any other MMO. It's entirely story based and people may (and probably will) want to create their own little army of alternative characters, so they can get the most out of the game they are paying for.

As long as there is another way, we won't be kicking out peoples low level characters only to invite them again once they go back. This game is going to be altoholic heavy and we have to be prepared for that.

Quote by Jedilicious

B) Institute a minimum level requirement for new members and new invites... say lvl 10?. It's easy to get a toon to lvl 10 and getting that far generally implies it's a character you care enough about to keep playing. This is VERY common in other MMO guilds and this one step alone will help minimize the sheer volume of low level toons that no one ever plays after first creating... and could have avoided the current crowding problem you're experiencing.

I don't want people to spend the first 10 levels of their characters alone, when they should be spreading their excitement and enjoyment with their guild mates.

They could be leveling up their brand new character right next to a guild friend and never know because we have excluded them both.

We don't do things how lots of other guilds do them. We do things the way we feel is best for our guild.

Quote by Jedilicious

C) If you absolutely need to make a second guild, don't make it class-specific. Simply lock Knights of Stonewall to new invites. Put new members and alts into Soldiers of Stonewall and let that build up/balance out.

The officers spent a lot time discussing this and we decided on a class specific system. To discuss everything again would only mean we end up at the same decision.

Every 2 months prune the rosters of toons that haven't logged in in the past two months (they can always ask for invites again later). To keep the two guilds balanced, simply lock one to invites until the membership grows ahead of the other... then lock that guild and reopen the one previously locked.

We probably will get into a system of removing characters from the guild when they have reached a certain amount of time without being played. But we are only 3 weeks into the games life so this doesn't need to be decided right now and doesn't effect the current situation.

Quote by Jedilicious

D) Finally, and perhaps most disturbing to me... Someone specifically asked about this decision to split when it was announced in gchat and he was told by the Guild Leader that there was a discussion topic on the forums... and that 'since no one had complained about it on the forums that the decision had been made to split the guilds.' The member specifically stated that he felt this was a decision that members should be allowed to weigh in on. He was told by the Guild Leader that members HAD been given an opportunity to weigh in on it.

However such an opportunity was not provided to the membership. That's very different from an officer discussion where the decision was made.

In an ideal world we'd be able to discuss every major decision on a guild-wide basis but we have ran out of space and time. We have members from all of the globe and a lot of them have different work and play schedules.

Trying to get a guild wide discussion going and one that ends with some sort of conclusion and doesn't continue forever (which with lots of different views tends to happen).

It just wasn't feasible for this discussion.

Quote by Jedilicious

I haven't been in the guild long, and I'm sorry that I've apparently become a bit of a lightning rod by expressing my opinions, however I feel that I've walked into a bit of a bait-and-switch over here. The lack of communication, and the open misdirection at times, sadly has me feeling like this guild isn't really about the members at all.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not yet seen much to suggest otherwise.

I don't know where you get this "lack of communication" from but it's completely false. We're not a game development company hiding behind the walls of a office building. We're here on the forums, we are playing the games you are playing. We have a private message system built into the guild website.

There is many different ways you can discuss your concerns with an officer. I think we have been very open and honest about some of the problems we have faced but I'm not going to allow anybody to imply they are worse than they are.

The guild progressing nicely and in the next few weeks the officership will be expanded and we can start moving forward together.

I completely understand the need to create a new guild due to current limitations within the game.

Coming from WoW where I was part of Taint on the Horde side and La Familia on the Alliance the amount of subguilds was mind boggling.

What was done on the Alliance side if I remember correctly (I'm sure Daddy might correct me on this) is that Alts are placed on a separate guild, pruning is done on the main guild (La Familia) every 90 days to remove players that don't play anymore and there's a second guild that was created just to accommodate new players when the main guild got full.

It actually might be easier to just start inviting new folks into a new guild than "kicking" anyone that isn't a Jedi from Knights and having them being re-invited into Soldiers.

Not everyone reads the forums and those that don't might find themselves logging in and guildless, wondering what happened.

Of course whatever you kind folks decide is fine, I'm also sure that a new chat channel will be created for invites only or guild chat.

Quote by Elikal

I see. Thanks a ton already.

A friend told me 90% of his software from XP did NOT work on Windows 7 anymore, even with "compatibility mode". I know this mode never worked under XP for most of my old Windows 95, back when I changed to XP, so I am kinda distrustful to this mode anyway.


EDIT: Also, which card is better: the NVidia GeForce GT520 I see in one of the new models, or my "old" NVidia GeForce GTX460?

Your old card is actually better and just to reiterate what other fellow guildies have said most of Windows XP applications work on Windows 7 out of the box, only very specific, usually corporate applications might not work. (old versions of SAP I think, etc...)

Quote by Jedilicious

D) Finally, and perhaps most disturbing to me... Someone specifically asked about this decision to split when it was announced in gchat and he was told by the Guild Leader that there was a discussion topic on the forums... and that 'since no one had complained about it on the forums that the decision had been made to split the guilds.' The member specifically stated that he felt this was a decision that members should be allowed to weigh in on. He was told by the Guild Leader that members HAD been given an opportunity to weigh in on it.

This must have been a miscommunication or a misunderstanding of some kind. Zep and I were the only Officers on at the time that this came up in chat and both of us were well aware (and specifically stated) that the decision needed to be made quickly and therefore didn't feel we had the time to openly debate this among the general membership.

I think we can agree that coming to a concensus on a forum is like herding cats. The thread about naming the overall Stonewall group of guilds is a pretty solid indicator of that.

As for "active misdirection" or "bait and switch", I will definitely need clarification. I've been a member of Stonewall for a little over a year now, and only recently joined the Officers. I know for me, as a member of the guild, there weren't any expectations promised to me other than a welcoming and friendly environment in which to share a common interest.

Because of my "newness", up until recent circumstances required me to step up, I had remained more an observer than active participant as an Officer. I'm not sure what might have been promised that was not delivered or what active deception was orchestrated and to what end.

Quote by Halish

We have discussed this on the officer forums and during officer meetings and have taken the decision to split the guild up as we are very close to the member limit.

I believe we'll be posting details of the in-game structure changes when everything is created and ready.

I don't believe there is any public discussion at this time.

I see several potential problems with this.

1) The guild is already struggling to manage two guilds in-game. Work out the hiccups and bumps first, get your Officers and Captains lined up, work the bugs out of the invite process... before adding more work. Simple economy of energy: keep it simple.

2) Separating by classes: Often times quests and missions require multiple classes for assistance. The simple fact that enough of one class type (even Jedi tanks/healers/dps) may not be available at the same time means you'll be needing other classes to help. The separation of classes will result in more chatter in the Stonewall custom chat channel.*

3) Future guild achievement systems will most likely require an assortment of classes in one guild.

4) *The Stonewall chat channel ideally should only be used for inviting new members. New members enter that channel and if it's full of cross-guild chatter, group invite requests, Flashpoint assistance chatter, the new members are going to get missed... or flustered, or overwhelmed. As it is now I have gChat and Stonewall channel in one tab and it's hard to keep up with what's being said in both channels. You'll scare off potential new members if they sit in that channel and can't get assistance through all the chatter. If you want a cross-guild chat channel, make a new one and keep all chatter in there... but don't jeopardize your invite channel.

5) In the GChat discussion an officer stated (paraphrasing) 'this change is needed to allow room for new members to join.' My suggestion: Don't sacrifice providing quality of service to your existing members just to lure in more new members. Take care of what you've got, build on it and make it better, then worry about getting new members in.

Not just trying to bag on the decision... so here's some constructive suggestions for how else to handle this and alternatives to splitting the guilds by class:

A) Thin the ranks of the current guild. Many of us made multiple start up toons, but are only now leveling one or two. Ask those who created (and guilded) lower level toons - that they may never play again - to voluntarily remove those toons to help keep the rosters clean.

B) Institute a minimum level requirement for new members and new invites... say lvl 10?. It's easy to get a toon to lvl 10 and getting that far generally implies it's a character you care enough about to keep playing. This is VERY common in other MMO guilds and this one step alone will help minimize the sheer volume of low level toons that no one ever plays after first creating... and could have avoided the current crowding problem you're experiencing.

C) If you absolutely need to make a second guild, don't make it class-specific. Simply lock Knights of Stonewall to new invites. Put new members and alts into Soldiers of Stonewall and let that build up/balance out.

Every 2 months prune the rosters of toons that haven't logged in in the past two months (they can always ask for invites again later). To keep the two guilds balanced, simply lock one to invites until the membership grows ahead of the other... then lock that guild and reopen the one previously locked.

D) Finally, and perhaps most disturbing to me... Someone specifically asked about this decision to split when it was announced in gchat and he was told by the Guild Leader that there was a discussion topic on the forums... and that 'since no one had complained about it on the forums that the decision had been made to split the guilds.' The member specifically stated that he felt this was a decision that members should be allowed to weigh in on. He was told by the Guild Leader that members HAD been given an opportunity to weigh in on it.

However such an opportunity was not provided to the membership. That's very different from an officer discussion where the decision was made.

I haven't been in the guild long, and I'm sorry that I've apparently become a bit of a lightning rod by expressing my opinions, however I feel that I've walked into a bit of a bait-and-switch over here. The lack of communication, and the open misdirection at times, sadly has me feeling like this guild isn't really about the members at all.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not yet seen much to suggest otherwise.

Haters gonna hate. :P

Never been one in real life, so I'm going to take full advantage of being able to play a pretty boy in this fantasy life.

Zepari is expected to make an announcement about the guild restructuring within the next day or two. Given the incredible pace of growth in just the first 3 weeks of launch, we had to discuss, and implement a restructuring concept quickly or risked alienating new and existing players with the need to constantly juggle the membership rolls. I am aware of several members who have been awaiting the restructuring in order to get an alt invited into the guild.

Our goal is to get the Captains and Officers set up in both guilds by the end of this weekend so we can begin the not-insignificant task of realigning a guild as large as ours.

While I know some may disagree with how we are handling the restructuring, no single plan would have made everyone happy. We considered level banding, alt vs. main, and class banding.

Please understand that our intentions were to avoid any type of restriction on who could and could not join (such as a minimum level cap), and avoid any sort of division (real or perceived) that may have come by splitting the guild based on level or whether a character was a main or an alt.

By going with the class banding (Soldiers of Stonewall being the non-Force users and Knights of Stonewall being Force users), we provide as even a split as possible to make sure that we never lose the perception of having a large and active player base that might come with forcing alts into a back-up group, or forcing players of specific levels to move into an perceptively "elite" group. Be aware that eventually we will be following a similar path with Lords of Stonewall, but the need isn't nearly as pressing.

Plus, if you're anything like me, and you like to get into the heads of your character, you no longer need to explain away how your Trooper or Smuggler is somehow serving those religious nuts. ;-)

Given the strong story-driven nature of The Old Republic, there is a high likelihood that the motivation to actively level multiple characters beyond simple play style experimentation is going to be greater than most of the previous MMO's we have experience with. As an avowed altoholic who usually has lots of low-level characters and few, if any, high level characters, I have no doubt that I will be playing at LEAST 3 of the classes to experience the complete story. At level 32 with my Trooper, levelling has been a background thought I need to address between story arcs. The story, much to my surprise, has been the focus and motivating factor for me.

If game mechanics are introduced in the future that may cause issues with this class banding (such as guild achievements) we will revisit the issue in the future. That said I don't think we can plan the guild's future around "maybes" and "what ifs".

I personally believe that this method of splitting the guild will allow us to maximize the accessibility of Stonewall to as many players as we can, regardless of how far and how fast they can level a character. Stonewall is meant to be a haven from discrimination and I personally prefer to maintain as open a recruiting policy as we can, while maintaining a fun, safe, and welcoming community.

If we all make the effort to try and remember to use the Stonewall channels on both factions (/cjoin Stonewall if you haven't already), the impact on community interaction should be minimal in the short term.

If it's necessary, it's necessary. We still have the Stonewall chat. And being in different official in-game guilds won't prevent us from grouping together.

Slightly less convenient? Yes. But overall the ramifications aren't that bad. Easily outweighed by the advantages of having more guild members to do things with. :)

Quote by Halish

We have discussed this on the officer forums and during officer meetings and have taken the decision to split the guild up as we are very close to the member limit.

I believe we'll be posting details of the in-game structure changes when everything is created and ready.

I don't believe there is any public discussion at this time.

Soldiers of Stonewall .... S.0.S. was that planned? lol

We have discussed this on the officer forums and during officer meetings and have taken the decision to split the guild up as we are very close to the member limit.

I believe we'll be posting details of the in-game structure changes when everything is created and ready.

I don't believe there is any public discussion at this time.

I don't know but it is possible that the discussion took place in the officer forums. Zep did mention that there wasn't time for a long discussion and a guild-wide vote, so it all might have gone down in the Officer Forums.

It "might" be a reference to the What's in a name? thread.

Quote by Izzarra

I have had almost no problems running old software on windows 7, I still use a program designed for Windows 3.1.

I would recommend the HP, I have had lots of computers and the HPs have always been the most reliable pre assembled computer imo.

Actually I completely agree. I've got some old DOS software (mainly Star Trek: A Final Unity, Civilization 1, and Oregon Trail) that I occasionally run. Windows 7 runs this MUCH more easily than any previous Windows did. I also have not had any problem with running any XP software on 7.

I have had almost no problems running old software on windows 7, I still use a program designed for Windows 3.1.

I would recommend the HP, I have had lots of computers and the HPs have always been the most reliable pre assembled computer imo.