As the Guild Leader of Epoch Gaming and have been now for the best part of the last 7 years, I am not going to thrill you or try and sell Epoch Gaming too you by the wow factor of flashy graphics and over hype. What I am going to do, in as less words as I can because I go in to greater detail on our website, will just be realistic with you. We as gamers here at EG are just plain sick and tired of the whole game hopping process that MMORPG companies have forced us into with this *notion* of casual gaming. I despise the terms hardcore and casual gaming as I prefer to believe that it more boils down to how you manage your time in game and what you achieve with this time spent playing versus being able to just be unattentive and non-focused at the key board for 8+ hours a day. I also believe this gives companies an excuse to be lazy, uninventive, unimaginative and just simply down right abusive to us as paying customers. Our plans are to give people a reason to log in and continue to log in rather than have this massive turn over effect every 6 months due to burn out, lack of content, drama, new release titles side tracking people’s attention and so on and so on. The ideology is simple. Games are inevitably becoming more casual as time goes on, this is unavoidable and there is nothing we can do about it. We can’t change it and most of the time, people leave or quit a game for a number of reasons, but the main two reasons I see people leaving is mainly due to lack of content and content/expansions not being released quick enough to keep these people content and a reason to log in and play. The second reason is, Guilds tend to form a basis around one game and one game only, if that games population goes south, the game is terrible or the above issue effects a large portion of said guild, well, let’s keep it simple and just say that rats tend to follow the pied piper. So after spending a lot of time analyzing it and talking it out with other guildies, we would like to put a social experiment in place so to speak based of a few variables that we know as gamers are becoming the norm today. I will go over this in point form to make it easier to read: What do we know about the current MMORPG market today? We know that games are released with enough content to last roughly 6 months, dependant on amount of time played, but for most people who have been playing games over the years, you will notice the trend that most gaming companies follow and it’s pretty simple. Their 6 and 12 month forecasts seem to show a rapid drop in numbers during that period at which point server mergers happen to repopulate dead servers and then over-hype of the next expansion to draw players back. There is more to this scenario, but I won’t go into it here. We know that companies are more ever evolving to a casual gamer player base by time spent vs reward and in return, even players who play less still find themselves running out of content in newer release titles today. We know that most guilds that happen to be created for just one specific game fall apart if the game itself looses a large portion of its player base. Lemmings affect anyone? As an Australian based guild, we know that we don’t exactly have a wide range of numbers to recruit from like our US and European based counterparts do, which makes all the more reason for us to become a much more community driven based guild for ease of entering a game with people we know and can trust, rather than having to build up that in game relationship to be noticed as trustworthy, loyal, dedicated and driven for success. I could go on with more, but I will stop here. So what’s the plan? Using the above information, the plan is rather simple, we choose between 2 games. We spend a strict 6 months in one game while we know that an expansion is being worked on in another game. Once we have exhausted the content in one game, we move to the next game while we wait for an expansion to be released in that game. The concept is simple and reasoning is simple. We set an amount of goals and achievements on the forums that everyone wants to achieve, an in game bucket list so to speak and we cross those goals off as people do them. This way, by the time we have seen it all and done it all, we can all safely and happily move over to the next game without that burn out feeling kicking in. What happens when you get burnt out on a game? You don’t always return to it, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. So to alleviate this, we simply stop while the going is good, move to second game, fresh and brimming with new content and rehash the process, because let’s be honest, you were going to do it anyway right? I look at it like this, for most gamers, if you aren't playing the game we are playing, you are playing something else and if you aren't playing that game you are playing something else and so on and so on. For alot of people, they might spend 20+ hours a week gaming across several titles due to this very issue of not enough content in 1 or 2 titles to keep them actively logging in with one guild. Let me clarify something here though, we are still in the talking phases of this, we would not be constantly jumping from game to game to game, but rather an equal time share between 2 titles only. This requires a specific type of player, dedication, loyalty and drive for constant success and most importantly, a community of people you can hang out with on a constant basis. Epoch has made mistakes in the past, giving people the benefit of the doubt too many times, extending our hand to people/guilds who have burnt us and that has come around and bitten us on the preverbal *** and as such, we have decided to cater to a niche crowd who want long term community orientated gaming over this instant gratification crowd. So what does that mean? It means if you have no intentions of staying in Epoch through thick and thin, then Epoch doesn't want you. If you have no intentions of being a part of the Epoch community and are self centered and selfish, then Epoch has no place for you. If you are a game hopper and always rushing to that next title, blindly like the rest of the sheep out there, go right ahead, in another guild other then Epoch. If however, you are looking for a place to kick back and enjoy your time playing with veteran gamers who have been around for the best part of 20+ years gaming and love it to death and the ups and downs that are associated with it, then by all means, come on in!!!! At the end of the day, it is about keeping people logging in rather than losing them forever. Community and friendships we develop online don’t have to suffer because of these greedy companies who do nothing but wish to make a quick buck, so I say instead of giving in to the market, let’s make it work for us. Stay tuned for more info on this and for those of you who like the idea, hit us up with a PM for further information or just head to our website at Epoch Gaming.