The Furious Angels
FA Discussion => General => Topic started by: Tbone on October 23, 2010, 03:07:04 pm
-
And the struggle begins! No doubt our challenge release caused a bit of controversy, seeing as some people called it pure genius while others called it lame guild spam. It seems the SWTOR moderators are a little wary of the whole thing, as they deleted our guild recruitment thread. FaintSignal got this in his inbox:
Hello FaintSignal,
We have removed your thread, "## Incoming Transmission from a faint signal..." from the Galactic Republic Recruitment forum, as it did not adhere to the Guild Recruitment Rules & Guidelines.
We encourage you to re-post your recruitment thread, but request that you ensure it is understandable. It is fine to RP in your thread, but if the message is too cryptic, you will not be able to effectively spread your message.
Unfortunately for FaintSignal, he can't PM back. So I had to reply as Tbone. This was my reply:
Hello,
I am the guild leader of Furious Angels, the guild that is currently recruiting using a cryptic cypher that sends you on a roleplay puzzle where you learn more about our guild as you go through it.
You recently removed our thread, saying that it violates the Guild Recruitment rules. I perused the rules, and I have not found how we have violated anything.
The first post made was a roleplay cypher that links to the beginning of our recruitment. Subsequent posts were made by my guild leaders outlining the purpose of their specific units.
It is true we are not your usual cookie-cutter guild. We're not just going to post our guild name and whether we like to RP/PvP. While I appreciate your opinion on what and what does not make for good recruitment, this method has proven to be wildly successful as well as respected by the community as a whole.
I would like to think that the SWTOR community leaders would be encouraging creativity and unique ideas, rather than censoring and stifling it.
If you can point out which guidelines I am breaking, I will try to adjust, but I would really like the freedom to recruit how I would like as long as I'm not breaking them (needless bumping, guild chatter, etc.). We have been able to do this in other gaming communities with no problem.
I believe if you had left the post alone, it would not be long before someone would have posted "Oh, this is those Furious Angels guys". We prefer to peak curiosity and have the information available to those who seek it, rather than spoon feed it to the masses.
Please feel free to peruse our site at www.thefuriousangels.com to learn more about who we are and our history with this type of thing.
I would like to repost my guild recruitment thread, but I will wait to get a response from you or wait to see if "Don't be too cryptic" is added to the guild recruitment guidelines. If I don't hear back from you, I will assume that I am ok to post until I receive further information about the guidelines being broken.
Tbone
Leader of Furious Angels
We'll see what happens from here...
-
I think Tbone just bitch-slapped them. WITH WORDS.
-
What a shame... I really hope they see reason and allow us to repost our thread. I can see why it was removed due to the Moderator not quite "getting" it, but after reading T's reply if they still do not let us repost it would cause me quite a bit of respect for the forum staff.
-
I think people who don't understand it keep flagging it as spam wherever it pops up.
-
Here's what I got in response:
Hello TheTBone,
You are more than welcome to post your guild recruitment thread again, but we ask that there at least be a note in it that explains it is indeed regarding recruitment. Due to the mass-PMing that occurred with your guild messaging, we must exercise caution to ensure that the rules of our forums are enforced.
Please direct any questions regarding this message to bwacommunitysupport@bioware.com
Thank you.
I guess I'll see how I can make that clear in roleplay...
-
Ok, new thread is up:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=217630
Hopefully it is to their "liking". Masters, make sure you repost your stuff there, if it stays up!
-
I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy who replied with all our links is the moderator.
-
heh.
-
I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy who replied with all our links is the moderator.
Sneaker 2.0.
-
Sneaker 2.0... Does that mean you agree?
-
I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy who replied with all our links is the moderator.
Sneaker 2.0.
Well I felt that his post was a violation of the guild recruitment posting rules and reported it as spam. I suggest everyone else do the same.
-
Did you realize that the 'RP thread' was moved to 'Off-Topic'?
These mods really take their jobs way too seriously.
-
Did you realize that the 'RP thread' was moved to 'Off-Topic'?
These mods really take their jobs way too seriously.
This is The Old Republic goddamnit! Do NOT fuck around!
-
That actually is good for us. The more buried the threads with all the answers get now the better. At this phase it will be better to seed the challenge through the recruitment thread and by us becoming more active with posting around the community with our swanky sigs.
-
I have a few replies back and forth with the mod that I will post when I am back at a computer. I too got the impression the mod is another guild leader who is peeved with our recruitment attempt. Either that or he has received a lot of complaints about. I will post more later.
-
Unfortunately a lot of people just arent thinking guilds just yet, because they dont know what server they are going to play on, much less if that guild would be. but based on the interview you gave me, most of these people are not your target anyway, so yes it may cause some complaints/contraversy, but you can weather that no problem.
-
Here is the rest of our conversation:
I can understand how it can be misinterpreted, and I apologize for getting off on the wrong foot with the mass messages that went out. We wanted the conversation to be started organically by PMing a good number of active community members and roleplayers - to start a viral buzz. This worked, by I also see how some could interpret it as unwanted spam.
I've reposted and added a bit before the cypher that I hope is acceptable. I think it makes it fairly clear that the purpose is recruitment or "joining" something without going as far to say "welcome to our guild recruitment"! Please let me know if it will work, and thank you for working with me.
-Tbone
TheTBone,
Thank you for your understanding, but we fear the post is still terribly cryptic. While we hate to stifle your creativity, please understand that your viral attempt angered many of our community members, if you continue to do so without explaining your actions, we will need to remove the cryptic recruitment thread.
Arrrg, killing me here! Ok, I've added the text "Furious Angels Recruitment" with a link to our actual guild site, which I really, really didn't want to have to do. Please tell me this is acceptable.
We worked for 5 months on this, and I'd really hate to have to lessen what we've done. As for angering people, the viral side of things is done (most everyone now knows what it is about). Now I can't prevent people from reading our recruitment thread and getting jealous =P
TheTBone,
That bit you put in is enough to explain to people right off the bat that the post is about recruitment, and for that, we thank you. We do ask that you bear in mind that "bumping" the thread with further "clues" does violate the Guild Recruitment Rules & Guidelines, so please ensure your guild-mates temper their "transmissions" with relevant information as laid out in the guidelines.
Thanks again for working with us!
Thanks, we will do our best. The current transmissions are simply my captains giving the name of their Order (sub-division of guild) and what that name represents, so it is adding more information about the guild. Other than that, we just plan on posting cryptic responses that will encourage people to look deeper when they post questions and not post them merely to bump.
-
Honestly, I think all of this works out pretty well for us. Bad press is still press, they say. A lot of people know who we are now who had no clue who we were two days ago. Not only that, but they have a strong opinion about us - whether good or bad - which means they will remember.
Most of the reception seems to be very positive. Lots of compliments, even while judging our methods. We've already had over 10 applications in the past 48 hours, so we know that things are working as intended.
There's also a few naysayers who are following our posts and reporting them to mods (judging by what that mod said to me). This is also good. We've always lived in that line of controversy and it is where we strive. I'm an artist, so I enjoy getting a strong reaction, even if it is a negative one. The worst thing that could have happened is a luke-warm apathetic reception, but we got just the opposite.
It seems the SWTOR team is aware of us as well. Hopefully with my explanations, they will be a bit warmer to what we're doing, though for now it does seem they are watching us closely. The mass PMing was a risky move, and I knew we could get some whiplash for it, but I believe it has been worth it.
So what does this mean moving forward? Now that people know who we are or have something to associate us with, we need to show them who we ACTUALLY are. We need to be positive members of the community with intelligent posts. We need to really be careful about posting in our recruitment thread, as we know they are looking very closely and perhaps trying to find a reason to get it down again. I think we've won over a LOT of people. I'd like to win over enough of the SWTOR theme that we aren't seen as a possible hazard anymore, in due time. Those that we pissed off were gonna be pissed off at someone for some reason, so there's no sense in trying to change that!
I'm counting on you guys to be very creative and thoughtful in the SWTOR community right now to really keep us going in the right direction! Have fun!
-
funny you read all the other threads like grand army of the republic, they are bumping their own thread.
but thats the price of becoming an overnight popularity.
-
I posted this earlier today but it never went through:
"Still not acceptable...had to add more...hate life..."
lol...
-
Ouch...
So i take it if we want to bump our thread we're going to have to make posts like "Paitryn has ascended" and stuff like that?
Ugh, i wish the mods weren't such Forum Nazi's.
-
Yeah, I noticed that too. People bumping every time they get a new member. I'm not sure. I'll need to do more research.
-
Yeah, it is mentioned that you can 'announce' when you get a new member... lol... but you can't 'cryptically RP' :)
-
I'll just have to announce it in RP, I guess.
And we have received 12 applications in two days. They keep trickling in.
-
Is that the only acceptable way we can bump our thread? By announcing new members?
Am I the only one who feels that turns recruitment into a petty dick-waving contest?
"Hey guyz! We gots one more guy than u lol !!!"
-
Don't know how important it is, but if you want to rate a thread, such as our recruitment thread, when you're originally posting, at the very bottom, below the text field and check boxes is the thread rating pulldown menu. You can only rate it when you're first replying, hitting the edit button will not let you add/change a rating nor will replying a second time within the same thread.
-
Yeah I keep forgetting to do that.