Guildwork - The Future of MMO Guildhosting/Networking

[FailureMidgard]

It makes it easy to keep in touch with friends on games, which is a lot more convenient then browsing forums.

I'm not debating that, I just don't understand how "deeper communication" will occur in that setting, it seems to me quite the opposite will occur, and I hope that it doesn't end up replacing sites like BG or EJ, as I think that would be a huge detriment to the MMO community, though I'm fairly sure it won't.

[Stanislav]

I'm not debating that, I just don't understand how "deeper communication" will occur in that setting, it seems to me quite the opposite will occur, and I hope that it doesn't end up replacing sites like BG or EJ, as I think that would be a huge detriment to the MMO community, though I'm fairly sure it won't.

Our goal is to not replace anything (well I guess except other guild hosts & personal guild sites), however if you can manage your guilds, keep in touch with your friends, why not also discuss game mechanics?

[Yugl]

And the negative isn't about the site itself. It's about someone's belief on the implications of the site.

That said, it will probably mean more frequent communication rather than deeper communication, but leave the semantics arguments for outside of the thread if possible.

[FailureMidgard]

Our goal is to not replace anything (well I guess except other guild hosts & personal guild sites), however if you can manage your guilds, keep in touch with your friends, why not also discuss game mechanics?

Nothing wrong with it, but BG/EJ doesn't cater to the average player really, whereas you are trying to. I'm not trying to say either is full of amazing players, but I think most people that come here at least -want- to be the best they can. When you start catering for the more average players, that general attitude dissipates. Also, both BG and EJ, at least at one point, had decent mods enforcing rules to allow for this. FFXIAH comments/forums are kinda the opposite.

I'm not really trying to be overly negative, just pointing out how I see things.

As a side note, how customizable will guild sites be (Sorry if this was covered somewhere, I didn't see it)? Is it going to be a cookie-cutter all guild sites will be the same? Or will there be a decent bit of room to individualize/personalize them?

[Maguspk]

I think Guildwork is going for bringing everything together on one site to more easily integrate the game and organization especially with regards to a guild, or linkshell. Forums are great for discussing but that's it, guildwork is obviously aiming to give you a canvas you can shape to fit everything you need to manage and keep a guild informed, organized and overall connected.

[Stanislav]

Nothing wrong with it, but BG/EJ doesn't cater to the average player really, whereas you are trying to. I'm not trying to say either is full of amazing players, but I think most people that come here at least -want- to be the best they can. When you start catering for the more average players, that general attitude dissipates. Also, both BG and EJ, at least at one point, had decent mods enforcing rules to allow for this. FFXIAH comments/forums are kinda the opposite.

I'm not really trying to be overly negative, just pointing out how I see things.

As a side note, how customizable will guild sites be (Sorry if this was covered somewhere, I didn't see it)? Is it going to be a cookie-cutter all guild sites will be the same? Or will there be a decent bit of room to individualize/personalize them?

I am aiming for more then elitest players you are right, but at the same time I am trying to make a site so that even "elitest" guild leaders (like myself) would be proud to use it, and I think I am slowly accomplishing it that.

As for customizable, I will compare it this way, we are Facebook, and sites like GuildPortal are Myspace. On our standard accounts we will let users change the logo, and we might have different color schemes, you will also be able to change widgets to work the way you want (and their placement). That is about as far as it will go for the visual aspect. Further down the line we will be adding a template system, however it will only work for full domain sites rather then *.guildwork.com. The reason for this is, so when people browse Guildwork, the flow is not broken. So if you visit your site through Guildwork you will get a Guildwork layout, if you visit via your domain you will get your templates.

[Aevis]

very nice work, i must say. it makes me very happy to see something like this going public. i personally programmed a full ffxi point / event system phpbb mod which our ls is using for ~2 years now. while i really like how far i got with it, i also had to tell everyone that it was specifically made for ffxi and i won't do the same thing for ff14. i just can't find enough time to do all of it again. thus it's really nice that a project like this exists, as most of the other known options are simply not satisfying (which was one of the reasons that i started my own).

cheers and keep up the good work.

p.s. i made a post on our site to link to this thread and hopefully get even more attention

[Yugl]

You could intentionally have separate forums if you want to retain a distinction between BG and casual players. I'm not sure if that would be your ultimate goal, but just throwing that as a suggestion if it is.

[Severance]

On the point raised about it being average and not elitist, given it's a guild hub with DKP there is likely going to be a tendency for endgame shells to use it rather than every social guild around. Should keep it to at least being high levels using the site rather than everyone. I can say that from the beginning Stan has had no intention of making it a centralized discussion community; he shouted at me for raising the idea of stamping out BG. :<

[Stanislav]

Thanks everyone for the wonderful response so far. It has definitely pumped some extra motivation to work faster for myself and my friend.

However, I would really appreciate suggestions on features of the site (after testing), so we can improve on things that are already done.

Anyway its late, going to get some sleep,

[Cymmina]

I'm not impressed. I understand the amount of work that goes into this sort of thing, and I am not trying to belittle that, but the site does not function.

I use a minority browser that isn't lucky enough to get on your short list of "supported browsers". I'm used to that, sometimes sites look or function a little funny, but 99% of the time it works fine. Your site doesn't function because the base site doesn't exist. If you strip away the JavaScript, there is no way to interact with the site. That is completely wrong. JavaScript is supposed to enhance an already functioning website, the sugar sprinkles on your cupcakes. Cake first, sprinkles last.

Looking at the site with a "supported browser", I see no justification this at all. It would be one thing if your superduper fancy JavaScript editing didn't work, but viewing a simple page doesn't even work. JavaScript simply for the sake of JavaScript.

[Sho]

This is gonna be amazing for FFXIV. Kudos to an excellent job.

[Aevis]

stuff

appart from the fact that the requirements may change later, saying that something doesn't work without matching the stated requirement to make the site work...wow

[Therin]

stuff

What browser are you using? I see no justification in not using Firefox or Chrome. Ever.

[Lokim]

This is a minor suggestion, but consider allowing more than 12 characters for passwords. One of my "default" passwords for stuff like this is 13 characters long, and on the rare occasions that sites restrict you to 12 it always annoys me.

Further down the line we will be adding a template system, however it will only work for full domain sites rather then *.guildwork.com.

Excellent! I was going to suggest/ask about that. When you say "template" system, do you mean that the pages will still be hosted on Guildwork but served via the custom domain? Or are you referring to something more like an API? I can definitely see myself setting up some custom Wordpress templates,widgets and plugins to interface with Guildwork if it's the latter!

[McGoonagle]

What browser are you using? I see no justification in not using Firefox or Chrome. Ever.

Probably Opera. I was enthusiastic about it for a while. It does some things very well and has a substantial minority presence in Europe. Even so, FF and Chrome are free, and I don't see any reason not to at least have them available.

[Katoke]

Utterly amazing.

[Therin]

Probably Opera. I was enthusiastic about it for a while. It does some things very well and has a substantial minority presence in Europe. Even so, FF and Chrome are free, and I don't see any reason not to at least have them available.

I used to use Opera back in 1997 or something when it was the only browser to use tabs. But, now, they all do.

[Hanyoko]

Not sure what you have in place for the Item DB; but please make it able to have very robust queries; Somepage item search +5

[Gunslinger]

What browser are you using? I see no justification in not using Firefox or Chrome. Ever.

Nothing wrong with Opera, especially with the emergence of the mobile market. That said, it's a good desktop browser, too.

The site looks interesting, I'm kind of withholding judgement to see how things break down. A site like this has a few concerns:

1) Do the creators/maintainers play any of the listed games? While playing the games is essential to know what kind of features need to be implemented, there has to be a lot of trust from the users if this is the case. IE. "I didn't get the TOD for KB... oh, let me just scan the "X server" database." Please know this isn't accusatory, but it's something you (and users) should think about.

2) What are you planning to make the "premium" features? Have you decided yet?

3) Since you're essentially a stated for-profit company (right?), you should probably get your legal stuff up there asap, especially now that people are making accounts and such, even if it is beta.


You guys set up to handle scaling this up when it takes off? I think the idea in itself has a lot of promise. It's nothing revolutionary imo, but it does a lot of stuff better than most hosting sites, and it's a good vision for what it does. A bit snazzier than your standard phpNuke/modified eqDKP systems, and the social aspect is pretty nice.

Hope your security is up to snuff (I imagine you're taking it seriously), because I imagine China is going to have fun with your site once you 'take off.' I haven't signed up for an account yet so I don't know if you're doing this already, but you may want to recommend that people use a UNIQUE password unrelated to their MMO password. Common sense for 'most of us,' but I promise some people will do it. If you ever have to store player IDs/emails for spidering purposes (I'm not sure how the other MMOs work), having a matching password would just be the other half of the key and make you a honey-pot for China, etc. (I guess this also ties into concern #1... but you'd have to be pretty stupid to exploit this ) I imagine you're also going to salt/hash passwords so that'll be secure, so maybe you're not too worried about it outside of MITM?

Anyway, I wish you guys success and I'm sure you've thought of most of this ^ already.

PS. I really like your logo from a design standpoint . Your site is also very clean and simple- keep it that way! It's going to be interesting to see what this becomes!