Meet me at the Cafe

As I mentioned in an article last month, I’ve always been a bit of a guild hopper in the sense that each new MMO I play brings a new opportunity to join a guild and meet new people.  Thus, over the years I’ve developed contacts and friends from a wide variety of places that I try to keep up with as I migrate from game to game.  In the past, I’ve usually done this via email, but email addresses can become old and out of date as time goes on.  Eventually, it can be almost impossible to contact these folks.

I remember thinking a few years back that it would be nice if there was one central place on the net that all MMORPG players congregated.  A place that would be a central hub, where you could register your character name(s) across all games, making it easy to stay in touch with friends no matter what game you were in or how much time had passed.  Well, someone else not only had the same idea, but actually brought it to fruition in the form of GuildCafe. 

Warcry Network got to sit down with Sanya Weathers at AGDC for a brief interview where she talked about her move from EA/Mythic to GuildCafe earlier this year.  One thing I learned from the interview is that GuildCafe, in it’s current form, is still a proto-type.  It doesn’t have all the functionality that they aspire to have eventually.  Having created an account on GuildCafe a little over a month ago, I’ve seen a lot of what the site has today.  There certainly are ways for the community to connect already via forums, pictures, and individual pages where you can list your characters and MMORPG history.  I’ve already made contact with a couple of former guildmates by searching via character and guild name.  I had been pretty pleased with what I’d seen so far, but I hadn’t seen much of the “guild” in GuildCafe.

But Sanya says there is a lot more coming – specifically, a lot more of that guild functionality:

Traditionally, large MMO guilds can spend hundreds of hours alone on recruitment. GuildCafe hopes to simplify the process. They’ll allow individuals to create profiles for their gaming selves, complete with MMO resumes. Guild leaders can then sift, sort and filter to find the very best candidates for their group.

On the other hand, what Weathers calls a “guild purity test” allows gamers to audition guilds. Like a real purity test (Google it), this questionnaire determines the personality of a guild. If someone hopes to find a group of carebears, look for high purity. If someone else is the type that most recently harvested children in a certain FPS, then the purity test will find the guild for them.

This database of MMO gamers also acts as the “MMO facebook”. The reason Facebook itself doesn’t work is that no one uses real names in these games. If someone wishes to find that long lost friend from some old MUD they played in 1994, a search of the database might just do the trick.

“Guilds and guild leaders are the center pieces of the community,” Weathers explained. The site may never have the reach of an advertisement in PC Gamer or on Gamespot, but it does preach to the very influencers that game companies need to convert. Weathers pointed out that an ad in a major magazine might only be of interest to one of ten people reading, while that same thing on GuildCafe could potentially reach more than the actual numbers of eyeballs if people bring their entire guilds in with them.”

GuildCafe is already fulfilling my idea of an “MMO facebook” described above.  I’ve already re-connected with folks I haven’t seen/talked to in a few years.  But it sounds like they aspire to be much more than that.  Having guilds be able to manage their full recruitment and application process via GuildCafe sounds interesting, but I wonder how it will work in practice.  This site will first have to have that word of mouth working for it to become the hub for MMORPG players.  The tools will need to be good enough that guilds choose to recruit via GuildCafe as opposed to the message boards for their respective MMORPG (as is common today).  I think guilds will always recruit via their websites to some degree, but you never know.  One day you may visit a guild site and hit the “Apply” button, only to be told you need to register with GuildCafe, create your profile, and apply via that system.

I can see the value in having all MMORPG players registered in a central database, accessible by other players and guilds.  It would really help to build a sense of community across all games, not just the particular game you happen to be playing.  It would also help folks to easily search for long lost friends, and keep in touch even if they are not playing an MMO.  I was excited to read the interview, and I like the ideas they have in mind for the site.  It will be interesting to see if guilds and the greater MMORPG playerbase are enthusiastic enough about it to make it the new hub of connectivity.