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General: Who Are The Syndicate?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Recently, MMORPG.com's Angie Webb attended Syndicon in San Diego, California. During the convention, Angie visited with game luminaries but also had a chance to check out The Syndicate itself. After all, the entire convention was arranged as the annual meet-and-greet for the guild called The Syndicate. Just who are The Syndicate? Find out in Angie's profile of this groundbreaking gaming guild.
Who are the Syndicate? I had no idea who these guys were. Everyone I asked seemed to have heard of them, but knew nothing about them. I like a good mystery and so they became like the Masons of the video-game industry to me. My assignment was to collect information on the games that were being shown, but it became my own personal mission to find out what I could about this elusive guild.
Read more of Angie's The Syndicate profile.
Comments
Great article Angie. This is one of those things in gaming I had when I first started in UO but havent been able to find again, that guild that was a family, not just a group of people.
Thanks for not telling us what the Syndicate is . . . a nice article that touched on soime highlights from a convention, but nothing about who or what the Syndicate is. Perhaps next time you could check the title of the article to remember what you were supposed to be researching. One interview with a relatively "new" member? That's all. A mention that Sean was around, but you didnt get to talk to him? Didnt try to talk to him? The title of the article should perhpas ahve been "A Quick Look at Syndcon".
Gaming since Avalon Hill was making board games.
Played SWG, EVE, Fallen Earth, LOTRO, Rift, Vanguard, WoW, SWTOR, TSW, Tera
Tried Aoc, Aion, EQII, RoM, Vindictus, Darkfail, DDO, GW, PotBS
Not sure what the point of an article like this really is. It's about a guild. Great. So what? It's not even part of a series (like Guild Spotlight on: blah blah blah).
Samhael: Playing the devil's advocate here:
How many guilds do you know that have annual conventions around the country AND attract top tier developers? The Syndicate is clearly -much- more than your average guild.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you say so. I don't see the appeal. Of course, I don't see the appeal of tattoos either but some folks seem to like them.
LOL @ Samhael. I agree. :P
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Samhael
You can learn more about us on our guild website.
As far as having an appeal or not, it is as you said, personal taste, from my point of view considering the incredible amount of guilds that get disbanded every day, and the huge role of guilds on MMOS, a story like ours hopefully can help potential guild leaders see that it is possible to last, grow and still be and feel like a family where everyone knows each other and are friends with each other.
Best regards,
Euqsarrat - Member of The Syndicate
I've been with my own guild since 2003, and this article struck a chord with me.
We like to think of our guild as a gaming community, not jsut catering to one single game, though ofc some would be more popular than others
but we are always looking at the horizon for a new challenge.
We also organise guild RL meets, not on the scale of The Syndicates but they are still gatherings that touch each and every one of it's members in one way or another.
We have had births and marriages and sadly a death within our community and all have been celebrated/remembered within the games we have played over the years, and it's always heartening to see that we are not alone in the way we approach our gaming, it's not just a geeky hobby, it's a social event which has enabled me personally to make some very good and lifelong friends around the world who I have been able to play alongside and eventually socialise with in RL.
Guilds aren't just about raiding, not the good ones anyway, they are about creating a safe haven away from the turmoil of life, a place where each of us can relate to one another in one way or another.
My guild is my own personal Cheers
been looking for a guild, or family, like this for a long time. sounds like an awesome guild. wish i could find more storys like this one
I have to give those guys props. I founded TeamEgo back in 1989 while playing 300 baud modem games, our core group have known each other as much as 20 years and of course we all think of each other as family. I happen to know Russel and John (who played along side TE back in the days of Genie on Cyberstrike), and yet the boys in Syndicate understand the marketing of their guild far better then someone like myself, which I applaude them for.
I think there are probably tons of guilds out there that feel more like family, chase down multiple games that don't get the coverage many guilds do. I do know this, the guys and gals in Team Ego are my family, in 20 years we have watched as members have died, held each others hands through hardships such as loss of a child and divorce, and we are still together, and still love to kick your F**king ass in whatever game we play!
Cheers to Syndicate, may they have many years of success.
Carl
TeamEgo.com
Wonder if they all have Level 3 cyberbrains after this long .........
There was this awsome legion in AION that went by the name of The Syndicate.. They had the first lvl 50's in their legion on the server i played on.. They were ofcourse oppisite faction of me so the first few weeks i spent in the abyss if i died it was usually to one of them.. Fregion was one of the only servers in AION where the asmos were actually takeing forts from the elyos..
Then one day the leader of The Syndicate posted on the AION forums saying he was done with the legion.. Maybe he could tell that AION was a doomed game and there was no reason to stick around, idk.. But after they left Elyos took over and have held almost every fort since then lol..
Idk if they are related at all but it jus got me thinking..
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
This is a good article,
It is good that the Syndicate is getting some visibility because its ways are not unique, these are shared by many old guilds since that time still in existnace.
Our guild is also a familly and albeit not as big as LLTS (we played on the same Server back at the time of UO and our guilds cooperated in several occasions), it is still going, still together after all these years, in the very same fashion, and it is really great.
Glad to see Dragons is still kicking
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
You don't find The Syndicate. The Synidcate finds you.
UHm, did I miss something, just another guild getting an ammount of self promotion.
The only thing that impresses me is the fact that the industry supports these fellows for whatever reasons.
Otherwise just another bunch of nobodys who have too much free time to spend on non real life related activities.
I have a group of friends , I play online with them do we feel the need to use guild mechanics not at all why because we feel it is all about gameplay not self promotion, someday you may understand this. The syndicate obviously feels they need to go further i guess something is lacking elsewhere.
Nice that the OP has found a group he feels he can live with.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I find it interesting,especially the timing.I would like to know the reason the guild started,i originally thought of UO,but that game was 1997.I go way back to Quake and Unreal series,Quake was 1996,so i imagine that was when MANY guilds started.So i wonder what game did the Syndicate pla ythat made them form this group?
Syndicate might be officially on record as the oldest,but i would imagine several others from 1996 still exhist.Without any hesitation i easily thought of a VERY old group i remebered from my UT99 days,they were called Warrior Nation,signified by the WNx prefix.They were competitive and had many members,they are an all around guild.I notice their copyright alone is 1998,so they may very well be older,probably from the same 1996 era.
Since 1996 was the real boom era for shooters,albeit started a bit sooner i would say most of the long standing guilds are from that exact same time as the Syndicate,we may very well hear from someone on these boards that was in a guild from 1996 Quake days.Heat.net was a HUGE online resource,unlike Blizzard's battle.net it housed any PC game and had tons of guilds forming.I would bet there might very well be some guilds from the 1995 Heat.net days still living on through their kids.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This article reminds me of my old Guild in Ragnarok
we were a small band of players, we had only 36 members, but we all lasted together from 2003 until 2008, none of them ever left, we were all so close, from strangers in game, to become friends, and then guildmates and finally most of us becoming friends in real life. except some that is living in another country so unfortunately they cant make it
these kind of stories are what moved me the most, because honestly, since we disband in mid 2009, i have never seen a guild that can bonds that well anymore, it's now mostly a recruitment that is just for the sake of progression
sure there are still lots of this kind of guilds out there, but it's countable and hard to find
sometimes when we talked about the past, it's just amazing !
So What Now?