Legend of the Syndicate

In the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, guilds live and die like generations of fruit flies. In the time it takes you to read this review, another group of friends will probably have decided to go their separate ways. Due to what is commonly referred to as 'drama', and the nature of the currently most popular online game, the modern MMOG guild tends to be a short-lived affair. A book published about a single guild, then, has to be discussing a singular organization. And indeed, The Syndicate has lasted for over a decade. Well known in both Ultima Online and EverQuest, and going strong into the days of World of Warcraft, they've had numerous public successes and some notorious failures. Their tale is a strange, and utterly personal view of the history of Massive games. It's also highly self-aggrandizing and probably contentious, but that's to be expected. Legend of the Syndicate is a publication worth reading by anyone interested in the history of the Massive genre, or the future of social networks online.

Legend of the Syndicate
author	Sean Stalzer
pages	224
publisher	Avari Press
rating	6/10
reviewer	Zonk
ISBN	978-1-933770-02-4
summary	A concise history of one of the longest-lived guilds in gaming.

To hear Sean Stalzer tell it, The Syndicate is the noblest, most amazing online community ever formed. Guildleader of the organization, founder, and head of the guild's social network via a 'benevolent dictatorship', Stalzer is also the author of this title. The book primarily consists of written descriptions of the guild's history interspersed with fictionalized accounts of in-game events. On the page, guild actions become larger than life; at over 500 members, the guild itself seems the same way.

At first blush, it's hard not to see the whole thing as a little silly. Massive games are an incredibly important part of the future of gaming. Outside of guilds who compete in pro gaming events, though, I think most gamers see guilds as a convenient way to make friends and play the game. Organizations to be taken seriously, for sure, but not something you really consider being a part of your life ten years from now.

The Syndicate, just the same, is a very different outfit. What Stalzer has set up, and what the book is 'selling', is a group hundreds strong that operates under the slogan "In Friendship We Conquer." Over the years the organization has trademarked its name and logo, has beta tested over a dozen Massively Multiplayer games, and consults with a game guide publisher. The Syndicate now seems as much a business arrangement, or fraternal organization, as a gaming guild. They have a yearly conference that regularly draws more than hundred people, with game company representatives attending to brief them on in-development titles.

As a history of the guild, it actually works very well as a reflection of the Massively Multiplayer genre. The group moves with the trials and tribulations of Ultima Online, through to EverQuest, and then on to World of Warcraft, as I imagine many other individual players and guilds have done. By examining and discussing the guild's successes as an organization, Seltzer does a surprisingly insightful job of highlighting their good points. Though they've been decried as elitist and single-minded, The Syndicate can honestly make many claims to success.

What marrs the good story (the fictional one) and the inspiring tale (of real-life camaraderie) is the propagandist tone of the work. It is to be expected that Seltzer would feel pride at what he's put together, but likely as a result of this being a first published offering the book sometimes reads a lot like a recruiting pamphlet. Another 'first effort' sign is the lack of polish in phrasing and (unfortunately), spelling. The list of games that they've tested is riddled with errors. Further runs of the book, one would hope, will correct these fundamental errors.

Ultimately the audience for this book is somewhat narrow; folks interested in the history of the Massive genre will find this interesting, and avid players of EverQuest or UO have probably at least heard of the guild. Certainly, for members of The Syndicate, they now have something guaranteed to wig out their family members. "There's a book about your little club?" Outside of novelty value, I'm not sure there's a lot of other people who might find this text enlightening. For those few, though, a peak behind the curtain at The Syndicate will be fascinating. Propaganda aside, you have to hand it to a group that's kept it together for over a decade. The chance to see how that worked out is a unique one, and well worth taking.

If you're in any way interested in the book, Gamasutra has a full chapter of the book available online. The offered text, Chapter One in the book, takes a look at the guild's formation.

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You can purchase Legend of the Syndicate from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

I guess they didn't last too long, after all.

Re:Sex, drugs and on-line relationships

I remember two people in a guild I was in accidently typed a message into the guild chat instead of between themselves and it became obvious what they were doing.

And that was the day I stopped three-boxing. Sorry about that!

This meme isn't yet relevant

That people self organize and play games together is interesting, but it hasn't happened on a grand scale yet. When political candidates are wooing votes with their stances on virtual property or virtual crime, then MMORPGs will be seen for what they are... vast playgrounds full of like minded people who are relatively inexpensive to reach en masse. I dread that day. I get enough spam in trade chat now from gold farmers.

I've never heard of them

I've played all three of those games and never heard of this guild.

Re:I've never heard of them

rbanzai wrote:

I've played all three of those games and never heard of this guild.

I was a member of a very top end guild in EverQuest (still #1 today); up until I quit about a year and a half ago. There was a small handful of guilds that were in serious running for the "top 5"; with many expansion races being decided by a matter of minutes for the first 3 finishers.

I've heard of the Syndicate, but they were always in that "tier 2" level of guilds. The kind of guild that the top guilds usually recruited from. They were good, but they didn't usually finish expansions before the release of the next one, and that left them behind in the second wave of finishers.

~Rebecca

More Syndicate hype

The Syndicate has been trying for years to make itself out to be some kind of mythic uber-guild, largely by spinning tales about how big of an influence they've had on the MMO genre. To hear them talk, you'd think it would be impossible to create an MMO these days without letting them test it early on.

Like most close-knit online communities, there's a tendency to see your community as far more important and influential than it actually is (see: bloggers). This is just another example of a group with a charismatic leader believing its own hype.

Sean will do anything to make a buck.

Sean needs a psychiatrist- and that is the end of it.

Who in the hell would buy a book written by the founder of an online club? And lets face it, its a club- like the 4H Club.

This is about profit and money for himself, and over the years, you can see a Sean emerge from ultra-paranoid and stealth identity, to a person who has taken extra steps to thrust himself into the public eye.

My own experiences in this guild as an adult member of 3+ years says this:

The size of this is grossly exaggerated- their registry of members never changes

The roster also is full of duplicated members- so if you are a member and playing 5 games, you have five alias, and thus those 5 names count as "membership"

There is an "elite" group within the organization that simply dont pay for their resources, thanks in part to the fair number of members that are minors who are willing to pay "dues" so that the elite group can be paid.

The list goes on- but so freakin what.

Not much different from FPS games, then...

Seriously - Clans have often formed and vanished before they'd even played their first match. Some have lasted as long as a specific MOD have, while others have spanned many a game, and continue to this day (though not as many as there once were, IIRC).

Just like MMPORG's, some groups were casual (they did it more as a social event than anything competitive or rather, 'striving to be the best'). Others have members that perhaps loathe each other, but at the same time they're such good players, they stick together for the success rate.

Drama and BS aside (which happens quite often), once in awhile you simply fall into a pile of friends you meet at a server and everyone just clicks. It doesn't matter what game it is, you simply hang out and enjoy the hell out of each other as much as you enjoy the game. (I'll happily spare the planet a long boring tale of how many an odd night was spent while the ex was at work, and I was playing on an old Quake2 Weapons Factory server. Suffice it to say that many of the players on that old TCA-owned box had come to recognize each other as friends. It was also kinda funny to have someone in spec reading poetry over chat, while we were killing each other repeatedly. Crap - too late. Sorry 'bout that).

IMHO, nothing really changed from the days when everyone was an LPB and everyone played something that didn't require much thought beyond (maybe) what the other team might be doing to steal your flag.

/P

Leadership is key

I've been an officer in a high-profile GW guild in the past, and currently lead my own guild. The former was the first-ever GW guild, and is still doing very well. Mine as well. Yet, in the time I've played the game, I have seen MANY guilds fall apart, even those that seemed like they'd go on forever. And every single time, it has come down to a question of leadership. "Drama" is always waiting to happen, and good guild leaders (and officer groups) will either prevent it before it does, or handle it swiftly and decisively *if* it does. Those that don't will eventually lose their guild.

Why? The answer is simple -- people really only care about *playing the game,* and of course they see drama as a hindrance in that regard. Once they see that they spend less time playing the game and more time worrying about "what will happen to the guild," they want out.

The guilds that survive for extended periods of time are laid-back ones that put the goal of just playing the game first, and make it a point to ignore or avoid all of the surrounding personal issues that come up.

This Is Spinal Tap

Spinal Tap was a movie making fun of bands who take themselves waaay too seriously. It's funny. We laughed at it.

So, let me get this straight: this is a serious book -- autobiographical no less -- about a bunch of adults who take themselves seriously as game players?

This is like irony folding time....

Re:This Is Spinal Tap

But this guild goes to ELEVEN!!

Laughing

at you or with you? Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference in the Irony Folding Zone.

it begins...

Apparently uncontent with endlessly spamming trade chat with "Now Recruiting" messages, Syndicate is now resorting to spamming the shelves of your local Barnes and Noble. gg, syndicate... gg

Stalzer or Seltzer???

Good job Zonk. Way to go botching the guys name throughout the entire last half of your review.

Vanity publishing strikes again.

Seriously, just do a quick Googling for Avari Press. Gaze upon the bare-bones website, and the less-than-professional cover shot of another one of (and quite possibly only other one of) their books. Marvel at their head office in the middle of nowhere, where you can personally mail your manuscript to them, no literary agent required!

If this had been published by an outfit like Baen (or, Jesus, like Prima for that matter), it might have been worthy of comment or review. The fact that these jokers can't even be arsed to do proofreading and spell-checking speaks volumes of their professionalism.

Groups of Friends Last Longer

I got on the online gaming bandwagon during WarCraft 2 on Kali and since then, I have played with the same group of friends, in some capacity or another, under the same clan/team/guild name, ever since. We transcended WarCraft 2 and remained in contact as good friends ever since. It had nothing to do with loyalty to the name or game, just the people you are playing with. Not everyone played every game with the group and the group did not expand into every game. People do their own thing if they want, but they are not cast out or not longer considered part of the group. We are friends first, teammates, clan mates, guild mates, second. Hell, in the early days of WoW we all played under one tag, but eventually one group went another way and had a rival guild in the same server. Sure there were some heated moments, but sure enough, nobody was cast out and we played the next game together.

I do not believe in a group having a legacy for influencing this or doing that. At the end of the day, the only thing that counts are the friendships your forged and ended up valuing more than a great record, an epic item, or prestigious rank/title. I would boost the accomplishments of my group of friends to be far and above more impressive than any accomplishments an 'entity' has achieved.

I doubt it.

Another 'first effort' sign is the lack of polish in phrasing and (unfortunately), spelling. ... Further runs of the book, one would hope, will correct these fundamental errors.

Probably not. Zonk's been posting stuff for a couple years now and still hasn't figured it out.

Goonswarm

The largest and most influential guild I've ever heard of would have to be Goonswarm / Goonfleet, the Eve Online alliance of players from the Something Awful forums. They have over 2000 characters, and even with alt accounts there are over a thousand members. They've taken on some of the most powerful forces in the game, even the developers themselves, and had a drastic influence on the course of the universe. But they're still not godlike, they're subject to drama, and they're unified at least in part by the meta-guild of Something Awful. People from Something Awful have also taken on pretty much every online game, including Second Life and City of Heroes, and the griefing of anshe chung was a pretty big story. If you want an influential guild, you have to look bigger.

So?

Many college fraternities have lasted since the early 19th century. Would you read a book by some fraternity president talking about how kick-ass his frat is?

Anyone else catch this moronic contradiction?

From the beginning of this review:

Legend of the Syndicate is a publication worth reading by anyone interested in the history of the Massive genre, or the future of social networks online.

From the end of this review:

Outside of novelty value, I'm not sure there's a lot of other people who might find this text enlightening

Thanks buttnugget. You actually made me waste 3 minutes with that opening "future of social networks" line. waste.

O rly?

"There's a book about your little club?"

Nobody gives a shit.

Wrong guild?

I'd figure this would have been something better from FoH or Afterlife.
Or even something about the old Mercs guild when this here interweb was still young to most of the public.

Though I guess in the case of FoH this book was already written via their public forums.

Still, I wouldn't consider the Syndicate to be *the Guild of Guilds* or anything so I find it somewhat odd that this was done, and that it made Slashdot.

Who's going to read this?

A 300 page book for a target audience of people who "forget" to eat, sleep and/or see to their bodily functions.

-Maybe- if they put it in game, as a quest, with a 1337 epic as a reward. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Syndicate game.

Man, I thought this was about the old Syndicate [wikipedia.org] computer games. Great game. :(

Wow . . .

Literary tea-bagging. Who'da thunk?

Not as well known as they like to dream

"Well known in both Ultima Online "
Off their own shard ("server" for non UO players) virtually no one has ever heard of them.

Played UO for 9 years and only reason i have even heard of them is because i modded for a while one of larger UO forums there and even then had to think a bit until i remembered them

It's a common thing in UO, guild thinks it is UBER and MASSIVE because on their shard a guild of 20 plus people is large when it is situated in the middle of an active server population that is only measured in the hundreds (as all UO shards are), even more so in a game where there is little need to guild up

As to reading their book, no thank you been in quite a few guilds, even led a few and living the pointless and childish drama was bad enough i definatly don't want to read about someone elses

Perhaps not very interesting..

Ultimately the audience for this book is somewhat narrow; folks interested in the history of the Massive genre will find this interesting, and avid players of EverQuest or UO have probably at least heard of the guild. Certainly, for members of The Syndicate, they now have something guaranteed to wig out their family members. "There's a book about your little club?" Outside of novelty value, I'm not sure there's a lot of other people who might find this text enlightening.

Ah, but don't forget librarians [slashdot.org] interested in talking to "digital natives"!

hmm

powergamers are such weird little self important creatures.

I mean forging new friendships is great, but please, all you are achieving is changing numbers in a database somewhere.
I'd never read a book about it...

Club lasts for ten years, so what?

People belong to their local chess/football/cricket/crafts/etc clubs for much longer than this. So what's new or special about this?

Being a group of people who share a common interest but are separated by distance and communicate via distance-media tools, umm well that's been going on for some time too.

Sorry, struggling to see the novelty in this..

Spelling

It is only fitting that you misspelled "peek" in your review, soon after complaining about spelling issues in the book.

I for one..

I just read thier phamplet and..

I for one would like to welcome our new Self important Goglike MMO Guild Overlords.

Read the phamplet and you too will know of thier greatness and overall power in the gaming community! ;)

I heard of them in DAOC, assuming it is the same group. They were a nice size and they were "evaluating" the games worthiness for thier guild. If they like it, the server would be filled with Syndicate members who would then rule the server. After that 30 minutes diatribe from them, I said, "so then he answer would be, you don't know which direction Camelot is then, thanks, " and I walked away.

Stalzer, master of wasting time

I think a more important aspect of this book to focus on is the colossal waste of time involved. Not only has the guy been wasting probably years worth of time playing online games but has now wasted who knows how much time putting together a book about it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy wasting time as much as the next guy but I think this Stalzer guy has taken it to a whole new level. I hope its at least written in 1337 speak and full of emoticons.

I played EQ on Tarew Marr...

... and wasn't even in the top 20 guilds, unless you go by sheer size of the guild. They epitomized the newbie zerg and were totally a stepping stone guild. Their guild leader was always pretty full of himself, but this is a new dimension of lameness.

Don't believe the hype

I was in the syndicate in EQ for a short while, i had some interaction with dragons. He's one of the most insane, psycotic and weird people i have ever met online. And that's saying a lot since i post on realfek.com The only thing LLTS has going for them is that they spam invite any idiot who applies, and pretend it's an accomplisment they have over 500 members It really isn't. All their high and mighty talk and stats on their website are made up and in Everquest at least their guild was the running joke of the server (Tarew Marr now drinal). They never amounted to anything in there. They had such a high turnover rate that while i was in TS (about 3-4 months) they had at least 50 people go in and out of the guild. they are a sad reminder that if you yell loud and long enough, people will start believing your nonsense....

Holy Cr*ap, its been a while

Wow.... Im that dude Eli he's talking about :-) I cant believe it... man i love the internet..

Wow

Just read the sample excerpts.
That was the most self-serving, pompous piece of fluff I have ever laid eyes on. "The first kick of the baby in the womb"? Awkward metaphors ahoy.

LOL

They trademarked their guildname. What an incredible way to waste money. Checking the armory for WoW I found that there were 61 guilds with the name 'The Syndicate'. So what was the point of the trademark?

That aside, I read the first chapter and it's rather worthless. So some guy created a guild and that guild (or guild name I should say) has stuck around for a long time. Big deal.

I wonder how much Slashdot got paid to main page this bit of tripe.

These guys are nothing...

Nobody knows who they are because nobody cares and they haven't accomplished anything. Here is his Armory link: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet. xml?r=Zul'jin&n=Dragons [worldofwarcraft.com]

This is the future

I think communities like this are the future. I consider it part of the evolution of the early gamers getting into their 30's and 40's, having kids and jobs, but still wanting to game

I am a member of a somewhat similar community, where the games played change over the years, but the community stays the same. We're not as old or as big as The Syndicate described here, but the story sounds very similar. We are celebrating our 5th anniversary this month with just over 300 members.
The whole thing started as a starWars:Galaxies guild, but has since then supported over 30 different games, from online-DnD to ScorchedEarth3D to Battlefield1942 to World of Warcraft, playing in both European and American competitions.

I am therefore a proud member of The Conclave international online gaming community and can easily forsee us still being around in 10 more years.

See www.conclave.cc for more details.

Clarifying Some Facts

One of the characteristics of The Syndicate is that we do not often post in public. Rare exceptions are made and given this unique opportunity from Slashdot, we wanted to take a moment to clarify some facts about The Syndicate, as it exists today. There are a great many personal opinions expressed here and none of those are being commented on since we do believe in everyone being entitled to an opinion. We did want to clarify some factual inaccuracies. A) The book is not about a 'guild.' It is about the creation of a virtual organization that is part guild, part community and part many other things. The questions asked by several in the vein of "what makes xxxx guild so special as to have a book about it?" are accurate ones. Guilds are a dime a dozen but I think you will find something interesting and different about The Syndicate since we are not a guild. We are an online organization. B) Some comments were made about The Syndicate recruiting anyone and actively spamming gaming worlds for recruits. We definitely do not do that. We actively solicit NO ONE in any gaming world. We reject nearly all applications that come in. And we only add people we are very close friends with which most often means we add relatives, real life friends and co-workers and people we have gamed with for a long time that share our values, goals, playstyles etc... Details of our policy can be found on our site as well as in the book. There are some guilds out there that have chosen to use our trademarked name that may exhibit those characteristics but The Syndicate of today does not do that. Back in our very early days we did have lower standards which we also talk about openly in the book. The standards of 8 years ago are not the standards of today. We have learned from the mistakes of the early days back when the one posted who indicated they were a "3+ year" member was with us. C) A comment about us having a presence in DAOC was made. We have not had a presence in DAOC. That is/was one of the copycat groups. D) A comment was made that we espouse ourselves as a high end content guild. That is not accurate. The Syndicate is not an online gaming guild. We do not exist for the purpose of playing X or Y game and defeating content. We are, among other things, a virtual community that exists for the purpose of growing and enhancing our friendships (among other things). We use online gaming as one mechanism for growing those friendships. And some of our members do participate in end game content whether that be raiding or pvp or whatever the game offers. E) A comment was made that our roster is artificially inflated such that every persona a member has in any game they play is individually recorded. That is inaccurate. Currently The Syndicate has about 600 individual, active people who are members. They are divided between UO, WoW, our guide writing team and our beta (formal and informal) testers. We have about 120 people on an Inactive list that we do not count towards our total. We do not count persona's or characters. If we did the number would be in the thousands. F) As part of an incorrect statement that we recruit everyone with a pulse it was alluded to that we have large turnover. Currently, we lose about 1 member every 3-4 months who choses to join another guild. We have no internal drama.. no members quitting over fighting.. no personality issues resulting in quitting etc.. Our only real source of "turnover" is people that leave online gaming entirely due to real life reasons. There was a time in our history that was not the case which we also go into in the book. Today's Syndicate has more than 85% of the guild having been with us 1 to 11 years and that percentage goes up every month. In closing, we want to say thank you to Slashdot for taking the time to review our book.

The Syndicate

I was a member of The Syndicate way back in EQ days. I assume this is the same Syndicate with "Draagons" as the guild leader.

LLTS! And so on and so forth.

What?

If you are a virtual community and not a guild why is the title of your book Legend of the Syndicate: A History of Online Gaming's Premier Guild?

Oldest guild

I honestly dont know the oldest guild still going today but the one im in has been around sence 1986 yes i said 1986 heres a bit about sunclan The Sun Clan was started by Grunge on the Islands of Kesmai on Compuserve in mid to late 1986. In 1988 Ruddy took over the leadership of the guild from Grunge and in due time passed it on to Cabal in 1990. These former GM's have passed into the great gaming beyond and we no longer have contact with them. Djikooda was our next GM and he took office in 1993. During this time the guild moved from the Compuserve version of IOK to the newer version offered on GEnie/Delphi. Later he also lead the guild to another game on AOL called Neverwinter Nights. DJ handed the reigns of leadership to Shinshoba in February of 1995. Myschyf joined the guild in June of 1995 on NWN. She accepted leadership of the guild in September of 1995. It was with a great sigh of relief that she handed the job back to Shinshoba in February of 1996 In May of 1996 the Suns began to leave Neverwinter, leaving only a token force behind, and began the long journey to Legends of Kesmai. Shinshoba, however, tired and worn after leading the guild back to Kesmai, felt he needed to turn over the leadership of the guild to someone else. Once more Myschyf was called and she became GM again in July of 1996. The Suns also ventured into the world of Ultima Online during the open beta. As of September of 1997 Shinshoba once more assumed the mantle of Leadership letting Myschyf step down for a much needed rest. In March of 1999 Shinshoba stepped down as GM. Vazkor joined the guild in Legends of Kesmai and quickly ascended to the rank of Clan Master. In 1999 he became our longest serving Guild Master to date, holding the post for over 5 years. In September of 2004 he handed the reigns over to Kelset, former CM of Everquest. In July of 2005 Sunny took over Grand Master for Kelset Today the Suns have offical presence in Everquest and World of Warcraft, are active in Everquest 2 and Ultima Online, and are branching out as new games open up or go into beta. We are sure that Grunge never expected his creation to last so long or become so strong.

Legend of the Syndicate

I'm tempted to check this out; played EQ years ago...

Re:A guild made it on Slashdot???

The big problem with UO was that everyone who was the "bomb diggity" on their own shard thought they were the king of the entire universe. I was in The Black Company on Great Lakes (at one point, the largest membership in all of UO), and people like The Syndicate would do a server transfer over to our shard. It would usually go like this: 1) "0mgzz d00d, pr3pare to be pwned!" 2) "what do you mean you've never heard of The Syndicate?" 3) "Omg, you guys all hack and cheat, that's the only possible explanation why we suck" 4) "This shard sucks, I'm going to go check out Napa"

Re:Hrm

You obviously didn't read that first chapter online. He, and this rookie player with no where near the same talent, stood alone vs a whole 'nother guild!

Re:Does anyone know what guilds are mentioned?

I was Hypoluxa. UO was a ton of fun. I don't play many games anymore, but I have yet to find an experience such as Beta/Early Release of UO. Oh well.