Guild History
(as originally told to me by Fredolf)
10-15-2015, 03:04 PM
The Beginning (2005 - 2010):
Back in August 2005 Dungeon and Dragons Online began alpha testing. During that time a small group of people started gaming together regularly. In November of 2005 the public beta test opened for those who could get beta keys. A group of about 10-15 people started gaming and chatting together. They decided that they should create a guild. Sonno, Looped and Damarkin took the lead, paid for a site and started setting everything up and The Old Timers Guild was born. It started with Sonno as leader but then progressed into a 3 person team of Admins with Sonno, Looped and Damarkin leading the guild. Many of the early members started taking on leadership and officer roles in game. Transworlder came on as the first moderator of the forums and began doing the background stuff on the website. He was made an Admin and shortly thereafter they realized that an even number of Admin’s did not work when voting so they added a 5th.
They started setting up forums for additional MMO games as the guild started to branch out and grow larger. We also entered the realm of web-based games, non-MMO games and working on relationships with development companies.
The Growth Years (2011 - 2015):
Most of the older Admins had stepped down when this time in the guild started. During this time we experienced a huge growth in membership as many new games were released within a short time. Each chapter was overseen by a Chapter Leader who then reported to their Admin liason. Each Admin was overseeing multiple games and overseeing chapter issues and guild direction. The face of the guild at this time was seen as Lord Marshal, one of the 5 Admins during this period. Due to his dedication to the guild and the time he put in he was given the honorary title of Founder. During this time as well donations were at an all time high from the members (thank you to those who have donated). Due to the donations (and an admin being audited) taxes needed to be paid and the Admin team decided that the guild would be best served by making it an LLC due to the growth and to protect the members and those volunteering in leader positions. Thus The Old Timers Guild, LLC was born. The period during which the LLC was formed was neither quick, nor without significant discussion of all sides. Everyone was pretty exhausted by the end and we, unfortunately, saw our biggest turnover in leadership during and shortly after the change over. We owe a special thank you to the team that lead us through that and stuck it out until the changes were wrapped up: Magistos, Calvyr, Eviee, Kylarrah, NightAngel, Ase, Cefwyn, Provokeme and Lord Marshal.
The Present and The Future:
As we have moved forward we have made changes that have worked to streamline some tasks and to address deficiencies that we saw. A membership team was created to help streamline the process of getting new people into the guild. We began focusing more on social media and put a group in charge of that so our name is out there. We put an emphasis on Game Development and put a team there to communicate with developers and get us involved in more alpha and beta tests. You usually cannot go into a mobile game without finding “OTG” somewhere.
April 1, 2018, The Great April Fools Day Mumble Massacre
OTG has a long tradition of the admin team having fun on April Fools Day. This year was no exception…but little did we know that our Mumble host had an April Fools day surprise of their own: they went out of business and shut down our servers at 5pm Central time on April 1st. We did not know that fact for several days, but once we learned they were no longer in business, the OTG family sprang into action and within a few days we had a new Mumble server back in operation.
May the Fourth Be With You
May 4th, 2018 saw the launch of the new OTG web presence. We launched a new main website with a sleek, modern design along with a modern forum platform here on Discourse. Our desire is to bring the community closer together by removing artificial boundaries. We are one community with multiple gaming interests.
List of members still active since the beginning: (that we know of forgive us if we miss anyone)
Baltak
Barake
Damonvile
Dendro
Dennis
Fess
FisenWylde
Hobart
Kaybin
Kilgore61
LatemYveah
LupisNoctis
Myth
Rhialto
ScottWar
Slyxen
Transworlder
Wraith
LoganV
Valamar
DCGoth
Simdor
List of people who have served as Admins:
Eviee (current)
Cefwyn (current)
Provokeme (current)
Hossman (current)
Blastie (current)
RevZMan (current)
SidonieAlaise (current)
Thisnthat (current)
Alvok (RIP)
Dalkin
Ase
Calvyr
Magistos
NightAngel
Lord Marshal (Honorary Founder)
Kylarrah (twice served, RIP)
LuckyShot
Fredolf (twice served)
Draznar
Barake
Simdor
Isa
Matthias
Shadowrun
amysrevenge
Logun24x7
Viloric
Damarkin (Founder)
TransWorlder (Founder)
Looped (Founder)
Sonno (Founder)
Game Interviews About The Old Timers Guild: