Specters Alliance Still Going Strong

Online Gaming clans come and go. However, there are a hardy few that stay in existence for the long haul. One such clan is the Specters Alliance or SA. The SA is different from most clans in that it dates back to 1998 and that it is also a multi-game club. Another, crucial, difference is summed up by
the most recent News post to the SA website :

StarWars Galaxies Division Shutting Down
Specters Alliance tries to maintain active gaming divisions as our supported games. It is my intent that each game that warrants supported status be played by at least 30 to 40% of the membership.

On that note, I am officially shutting down our support for StarWars Galaxies. While we once had a thriving population within that game, leading up to several months of great PVP action and character interaction, those times are far behind us. With only a small handful of members still maintaining active accounts we can no longer list SWG as a supported game. This doesn’t preclude members from playing it or enjoying it, we simply will not devote supported status to a dying game.

It was real….and it was fun. It’s just not real fun any more. JumpToLightspeed was hoped to have been the saving grace for the game - this in fact has only worsened the aspects of the game that make it more cumbersome than it is worth. With Fall upon us let us hope that another game stands up and merits our full support.

The SA policy of maintaining Official Divisions for only those games that “at least 30% to 40% of the membership” is what keeps the SA a strong force in online gaming. Otherwise, when a clan keeps supporting games that do not have much interest by the membership, what happens is that the clan becomes overextended and weak in too many games. One result is that the weak gaming support divisions become nothing more than “forum clans” with the really active gamers eventually leaving the clan as a whole. Eventually, the overall clan becomes nothing more than a forum clan even though the leaders may still engage in big talk about how the clan is the model for all other clans and how they are so highly respected and the like. Certainly, this is what happened at one multi-game clan that I used to be a member of.

As long as the SA holds to that guiding principle of active gaming, it should have no problem enduring for many more years to come.

P.S.: Another aspect of the SA is its creation of Game Club Central where the clan is promoted, but not in a heavy-handed way. This helps to provide the SA with additional exposure.