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The Syndicate first came to our attention a couple of weeks ago, when we noted the meta-guild's 14th anniversary in The Classifieds. Its 600+ members (across both World of Warcraft and Ultima Online) enjoy ties to all sorts of intriguing gaming and charitable projects: writing strategy guides, beta testing, games consulting, raising support for military troops through gaming. A visit to their web site yields pages and pages on the group's history and projects.

Considering such massive numbers inside such a sprawling organization, you might be tempted to conclude that these gamers must be very, very "hardcore." Not so fast. In fact, The Syndicate's in-game philosophy uplifts long-standing, person-to-person relationships and group fun above all else. Outside projects such as games consulting and strategy guides focus on material for the typical gamer – that's right, not the bleeding edge. We dug up what's going on inside this gargantuan guild in an interview with Dragons, its founding GM, president and CEO.

Main character Dragons
Guild The Syndicate
Server US Zul'jin-H

15 Minutes of Fame: We can't really begin a discussion about The Syndicate without outlining the multi-game scope of the group. Where can we find Syndicate members?

Dragons: We have a presence pretty much everywhere in the MMO universe, but we only recruit new members via two games right now (Ultima Online and WoW). That is due primarily to having massive presences in both games (350 in WoW and 200 in UO), and the requirement that we have to know a person very well for them to join.

That's an immense number of players! What's the focus in WoW?

The Syndicate does not have one definable or overriding style. We are an online community whose focus, as our trademark indicates, is proliferating gaming expertise and building camaraderie among our members. So first and foremost, we are a very large yet very close-knit (because we recruit only like-minded adult members) community of people who share a common passion for gaming. WoW is one of the games we play together, and within that world we have progression raiders ... we have casual raiders ... we have altaholics ... we have full-time PvPers ... I cant' think of any full-time RPers, so that is one area we probably don't have much participation in.

But regardless of what a person most enjoys doing in game, our core rule is: Guild First. Said another way, the game (the loot, the quests, the raids ...) never comes before our friendships. We simply do not have in-fighting or drama or loot whores or people quitting because they can't get spots on raids, etc ... Our culture is not anywhere close to what is typically defined by the term "guild."

The Syndicate formed even before UO had hit the internet. What was the impetus for creating the group?

I was involved in what passed for online games back in those days. It was the 28.8 modem days, on 8MB 3DFX video cards (if you were top-tier in your computing hardware). I was involved in a guild in a game where one band of bullies pretty much had the whole server afraid. When the bullies showed up in the town one day and nearly the entire guild I was a part of were there, I decided to lead them out into battle. Only ... hardly anyone followed.

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