News from the AIE Council

UMAMI News

• Made a few tweaks to help officers in their standard workflows.
• It now has officer listings for each game. Just log in to UMAMI, and pick your game, and click the Officer tab at the top.
• UMAMI features coming Soon™:
  • Will be adding ability to have Guardian or Defiant characters for Rift.
  • Integrating with other systems for example, AIE wiki logins.
• We (i.e., Stigg) continue to add features and make fixes. If you have a request, or bug to report, use support.aie-universal.net
• Remember: if you have to reset your login, it asks for your email.  But when logging in, use your login name—not the email.  Your login name will be in the email you get when resetting your password.
  • Question from Dornoll: Can change your UMAMI login name?
    • A: It can be changed, but we have to do it. Just private message Stigg on the myextralife.com forums.

Guild Hats!

• We will be selling AIE branded baseball caps soon.  We had some at Dragon*Con, and now they will be available to all guild members.
• So—buy one and show your guild pride!  (But also to help us pay for our websites, bandwidth, and so on.)
• Acuzod will be giving away one of these caps on the AIE podcast!

News from the AIE Games

World of Warcraft—Lanctharus

Lanctharus spoke on what is expected of AIE members–for our new members, but as a reminder for all everyone:

• We expect courtesy and respect to your fellow guild mates and WoW players
• Guild Chat:
  • Family friendly.  Don’t say anything you would not say in front of your grandma, your kids, or your boss.
  • The aieLFG channel.  This is to keep group requests out of guild chat, but also to allow non-AIE friends/characters to find groups with us too.  Occasionally we get a troll—just tell an officer, and /ignore the troll.
  • Since we get many questions on how to become an AIE officer, Lanc described what it means to be an officer in AIE:
    • Part of a large team.
    • More of a customer service representative than a raid leader or policeman.
    • Maturity, flexibility, and sense of humor are all essential qualities
    • We had a question on why the “no all-caps rule” exists for guild chat. Besides the fact that it quickly escalates and is annoying, we offer this additional justification: on why caps lock is considered harmful.
• Tetsemi presented some metrics on the AIE WoW guilds—in summary:
  • By the most recent count, we have 9006 characters in the AIE WoW guilds, spread over 11 co-guilds.
  • Since we just did our periodic purge of inactive characters, this means we have over 9000 AIE toons that have logged into WoW in the last 3 months.
  • Tetsemi has made a wiki page with the detailed metrics and charts.

EVE Online—Senile

• Senile spoke on how EVE is different than most other games we play.  It is more of a simulator, and can take a little to “click”.
• Please contact any existing AIE EVE officer if you are thinking of playing EVE !
• AIE has split into 2 corporations in EVE, one in high-sec, and one in low-sec: AIEU and AIES.
• AIEU (AIE Universal)
  • AIEU as a part of (Reddit based) TEST Alliance has steamrolled over rival Against All Authorities or “Triple A”, taken an unprecedented amount of space, and made its new home in the Delve region.  TEST Alliance and its allies now control more space in the game of EVE than any other coalition (or if that’s not true it’s pretty close to it).
  • TEST and AIEU are continuing its beat down of Triple A and have pursued them into their own region of Catch.  In the last week we have captured a few of Triple A’s critical systems – basically just to make them uncomfortable and for the lols.  It’s pretty great.
  • The corp itself has a new CEO in Rahst who could not be at the Town Hall because he is in Hawaii for 2 weeks, but wants to say: “Thanks to Stigg for his leadership and his 2 years of service as CEO.  I think without him, AIEU would still be tooling around in high sec worrying about kill board statistics.”
  • Our corp has had some good activity and actually had 2 corp roams in a week fairly recently.  However, our primary hurdle as it has been for some time is recruitment.  We need and want to get more people in corp.
  • Other than that we are doing OK and making our living in our new home.
• AIES (AIE in Space)
  • The application process has greatly simplified, but new members are placed in AIES.
  • AIES is looking toward the future, and exploration of the bounty hunting system.
  • Enjoy exploding with Tuku.
  • New ships and ship doctrine coming with the expansions and our plans concerning that.
  • A call for EVE highsec industrialists to come help with that effort.

RIFT—Xiaxian

• As of Patch 1.10 we now allow Guardians to join AIE in Rift, thanks to Stigg Guardians players can apply now via UMAMI.
• New Officer- Welcome Ayhood the latest Rift Centurion!
• Pre-expansion lull
• Wednesday Night Weeklies!
• New Ally Guild <Catari Honour Guard> part of the Machiavellis Cat Gaming Community – We had our first joint effort last Monday and had great success killing bosses 1 & 2 in HK.
• Patch 1.11 – Pre-Expansion patch, HUGE class changes, crafting changes, Account Wide Planar Attunement, New World Event.(for those WoW players, this was similar to patch 5.0!
• Storm Legion Expansion – Drops November 13th, 2013. Eagerly anticipating this! Looking forward to Guild housing, Player housing, 10 new levels, 2 new continents and so much more!
• One final thing worth mentioning, on top of Rift Lite which allows play from level 1-20, Nov. 7-11 all previous subscribers are welcome to come check out all the new changes just before the expansion. Any characters level 1-50 may play for FREE all weekend. We are going to try to have number of veteran players around and in vent that weekend if anyone wants to come check it out with AIE.

Star Wars: the Old Republic—Pelell   (speaking thru Max)

• State of AIE in SWTOR: Almost 11 months have passed, we went from 7 co-guilds total down to 3 (2 Imp, 1 Pub) due to a few server consolidations. Currently, we have about 7-8 active SWTOR Officers manning both sides. The current population is about 600-700 Imps, 350 Pub, though not all of these have been recently active. We have not done any purges in a while in anticipation for F2P.
• With F2P (free to play)coming out in the next few weeks, details are trickling out on what will be accessible to F2P players, preferred players, and full time subscribers. After messing around on the PTS the past few days, I am about 50/50 on whether I like it or not. I don’t dig the nickel and dime-ing that EA is doing (having to pay to display your titles, hide your head slot, or get more tool bars, etc.) but I do like the randomness of the Cartel Packs. Some of the things on the PTS may change with more input from players on the SWTOR Forums. Please voice your concerns, comments there, or there is also a thread on the EL forums as well.
• A reminder for those returning when F2P goes live, if you had a forced name change, make sure you fill out a new app in Umami in order to get re-invited. There will be too many to have us manually go back and change them on the fly.
• Guild events: Over the past 11 months, we have had quite a few events. We had Pancakes for AIE, Neuriod’s Scavenger Hunt, a Summer Ball, a Running of the Beefcakes, and celebrated Remembrance Day in the game to name a few. Currently the LoL Ops team is organizing a World Boss run, with the ultimate goal of eliminating Nightmare Pilgrim mid November. Check out the forums for details. Thanks to Machia for organizing this, due to my incessant prodding. We are always looking for new and creative events from members as well. Feel free to organize on the forums and use the AIEGuild hash tag on Twitter.
• The future of AIE in SWTOR: As stated above, we have a bare bones crew running the show. And for now, it’s working. However, depending on the influx of returning or new players, we may find that we need to readdress our current Officer roster and add to it. We are being cautious before jumping the gun on anything just yet. In the meantime, please have patience with the current SWTOR Officer Corp while we try to get you back in the guild, post F2P. For now, we have a solid group of individuals who are still having fun with the game. So long as we retain these people and there are AIE community members willing to play, AIE in SWTOR will be around for a long while.

STEAM—Beefmaster (represented by Dee Dee)

• The AIE presence with Steam pretty much began with the AIE Team Fortress 2 (TF2) server started by Lanctharus in August 2010.  Lanc ran this until January of 2012, when Beefmaster took over as TF2 administrator, and Dee Dee came on in May to help manage the server and community.
• Beefmaster was made director of AIE Steam, charged with growing that community and what things AIE members can do with Steam.
• They created an AIE Community page in August 2012, and also got a section in the forums for all Steam games.
• The AIE Steam short term plans are to get more people on the community page, and involve more multiplayer games.
• Long term, the Steam platform has plans for Steam hardware, and AIE is considering integrating UMAMI with Steam via their provided API.  This would help getting people into TF2 servers, etc. and finding AIE friend to play any Steam game.
• Questions:
  • Q: Is there a PayPal button for folks to help pay for the $25/month TF2 server?
    • A: We don’t have a specific PayPal button for this, but are going to make one.
  • Q: What is TF2?
    • A: Dee Dee explained it is a multiplayer FPS, with PvP and Man vs. Machine game styles. It has a fun art style and overall sense of humor.
  • Q: There seem to be many AIE groups on Steam, which one is the “real” one.
    • A: The official AIE Steam group is at: steamcommunity.com/groups/aieguild

Guild Wars 2—Durus

• Membership. We’re just a few months into release for GW2 and the guild is doing well. We have eight officers and just over 400 members with roughly 15-30 active players per night. Applications are still being accepted and individuals new to AIE may apply during the first week of each month.
  Our great community keeps the influence currency streaming in as they represent our guild on Dragonbrand.  This allows us to provide weekly advantages to the membership, and we have maxed out all the guild characteristics available to us in the game at this time.
• Events. The community has organized several recurring events despite all that there is to do with any new game.  Friday night leveling, and world versus world Thursday evenings have been fairly reliable and a lot of fun for the guild.  Every weekend since launch we have the luxury of activating all the main boosts available to guilds in the game (experience, influence, karma, and gathering gains, etc.
• Currently The holiday season is ramping up and the game is currently experiencing its first major content update: Shadow of the Mad King.  Many are hitting level 80 and still experiencing the vast world of Tyria, collecting karma and armor sets.
• Things to Note.
  • Secure your account. Use both the web interface and the new authenticator systems to add a measure of security to your account. Do not share any passwords, or reuse the same ones you have elsewhere.
  • World v. World is a little topsy-turvy at the moment with free world transfers still active. The populations are still greatly in flux as some committed WvW folks are continually transferring from realm to realm in an attempt to ensure their success in various match-ups.
  • Get involved!  Make use of the forums, Ventrilo and in game guild chat. While things have been quiet lately given all that there is to do in the game, lively interaction between community members is always a great supplement to a fun game!
  • If you have any questions, you can generally track down an officer in-game or in Ventrilo. Feel free to shout out or send a whisper anytime.
• Question: What is the status with server transfers?
• Answer: They are currently still free, and we expect them to stay that way until they get “guesting” working.  Guesting allows you to group cross-server, and was planned for launch, but is not implemented yet.

The Secret World—Sindrake

• AIE: TSW been steadily trucking along for the past three months with a small but dedicated crew.  The Secret World has three factions, so we maintain a cabals for each in order to be as inclusive as possible to any AIE member who’d like to join us.  We saw a sharp decline over the past couple of months, but at this time I would say that our roster has stabilized, and we are starting to see some growth again.  Our focus is, and has been for some time, trying to generate more interest in TSW.  We would love to have more people to enjoy this amazing game with.
• The AIE: TSW game has gone through our guild expansion readiness program, and reached the final phase, and is a full “domain” on par with our other games like WoW, Rift, EVE, and SW:tOR.  This means they are fully integrated into UMAMI, and have their own section in the myextralife.com forums.  Congrats!
• Since launch Funcom has delivered on their promise of new content update each and every month, and we have seen the release of an in-game barber and plastic surgeon with expanded appearance options, revamped Lairs which provide a very casual-friendly alternative to dungeon running for people who’d like to gear up for the upcoming raids, new Nightmare Modes for existing dungeons, a group finder, more clothing options, and lots of new missions.
• There are lots of big things in the works for The Secret World, like improvements to the new player experience, combat animations, reticule targeting, a huge new adventure zone set in Tokyo, and new auxiliary weapons.  The next content patch is set to include the first raid, which is set in New York City, an optional reticule targeting system, and lots more.  Supposedly it will be a huge update, the biggest yet.
• We have two weekly events that consistently have a solid turnout.  We run dungeons on Mondays and Lairs on Wednesdays.  These events are open to everyone, and are intended to provide a comfortable environment to get people involved in TSW’s group content with us.  We continue to make progress into the harder dungeons, but we are also very happy to run the early dungeons with new members.  The week also was our first attempt at taking on Lair bosses.  It went really well, and everyone had a lot of fun.
• AIE may be small right now in TSW, but we love this game, and we’re not going anywhere any time soon.  With new content to experience every single month, there’s always something to keep us busy.  There is talk of a revamped and extended trial in the works.  Details have not been released, but we’ll keep you all updated when that happens, and we hope more people will give TSW a shot.

GERP—Stigg

GERP is our Guild Expansion Readiness Process.  It’s the recipe for how AIE expands in to new games!  It is meant to involve anyone in the guild that wants to get involved.  In the Town Hall, Stigg made some comments regarding GERP:

1. The GERP is not done!
2. We have 2 games that have gone through GERP, but we have more coming. For example, expeditions going now:
   • Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO)
   • MechWarrior Online (MWO)
3. All guildies are encouraged to bring up any games they thing would be good for AIE to get into. Read up on the GERP on the AIE Wiki, and post in the Imperium Ludi section of the forums.

The AIE Podcast:

Acuzod, Alludra, and Ghomus all remind us to download and listen to the AIE podcast each week!

Podcast (townhall): Play in new window | Download

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