What do you think of the update?

The forums are usually a good read because they remind me of all of the other ways people play the game.

There are many opinions on the update and the guild event, and I thought I'd throw one on the pile. The Boggs guild event has been, at least for our guild, an excellent experience, and probably the biggest shot-in-the-arm the game has seen for quite a while.

It gave our guild something to rally around that didn't require a ton of gemming. Sure, a few of us shaved a few hours off here and there (favoring sleep over dedication), but for the most part, we were able to complete the event because we planned and coordinated, as an entire guild, to make it happen.

We built our roster from a pretty constant 40 up to 49, just by inviting some of the active players from our R&R guild over to join the main guild during the event. (We always leave one spot open, because you never know who's coming knocking when. We set the rule that anyone coming over from R&R was automatically excused from rumble minimums for the event, because it was about tackling the sailing event, and about a guild reunion. It gave us a great chance for some of our old-timers (said with respect & admiration) to take a break from resting over at the swim-up bar and spend some time aboard the big ship to catch up with the rumblers and newer members. In that sense alone, it meant new energy for the guild.

The open alliances we've made over the last few months with other guilds allowed a guest or two to visit from other guilds, to help push us up to 49, and it gave some of our newer members a motivation to get to work on some overdue observatory maintenance.

There was a unique joy to signing in and finding that we'd earned another event reward here and there, even while we weren't playing, because we had the whole guild going, sharing tips and strategies and sailing routes.

Leading up to the end, it had us all checking the game and chat obsessively to watch the numbers get closer to the mark. A few of us were ready to pounce at the last minute if it came down to a narrow miss, because the thought of a few officers spending gems to earn all 50 crew 1,000 gems each - that's just cool in a way that we haven't seen before. As it turned out, we didn't have to do any big push at the end, which was a nice surprise.

It was a bunch of work to plan and get there, and admittedly we couldn't have done it if we hadn't spent a long time making the Seadogs a good place to be, but I've seen plenty of sentiment in the forum lamenting the attrition of guilds and the decreasing number of guilds to be matched with during rumbles. Up until now, guilds were pretty heavily geared toward the social (chat) and battling (rumbles), so you got a lot of rumbling guilds and farming guilds, and plenty of the sleepy, inactive, "ghost town" guilds, where most of the players hadn't signed in for weeks or months.

Now we have an event that has given guilds another angle - this is a new advantage to being in a guild. You don't have to actively rumble or gem to be a good event guild (but if a battle event comes along, maybe it gives you an excuse to). You don't even have to play more than a few minutes a day to enjoy the sailing aspect (if you time your sails carefully). If we play this right and share ideas with newer players, we might see more guilds forming to take advantage of these events. In the long run, this means a better experience for people who move from ghost towns into new active event-driven guilds.

I can even see "event guilds" forming - semi-active players who don't want to play that often, but who enjoy the occasional binge when an event is on, and the whole guild has a chance to work on it together. It's certainly a different pace from rumble guilds and farming guilds - something in between that might open the game up to a whole new category of semi-casual players.

That means more happy players, which means more gems purchased, which means more new features for all of us.

As some of those new guilds start to dabble in rumbling, it means more "friendly" rivals for us big rumbling guilds to match with when we play!

I can see this going places, so personally I wanted to congratulate Midoki on a new feature that was a big win, at least in our experience. Looking forward to seeing what comes next!

 

To Lynsey,

As to Number 5 above - Plunder Time will be tweaked...you will only get event tokens if you win your attack. I'm sorry but this goes against what plunder time seemed to be about and now becomes an individual battle event instead of a challenge to see how much grog and gold can be stolen. In my humble, powdermonkey opinion, you might want to make that a different event.

LaFitte

 

I just wish that one day we would have a guild versus guild competition where the win is not bought with gems. This is still the number one complaint I have and I hear from my group.

 

You have to win to collect tokens?!

On another note. Does anyone have lodging available for 75 unneeded and unemployable thieves?

 

I do!! Very useful those, could get me a good couple of million gold/ Grog or more with some left over for them
What's the catch? Cook for a week....I do a great roast rat!

 

75 masked women wielding knives....no catch. And nothing to be worried about...really!