The Elder Scrolls Online Whitestar guild is growing more and more. This little guild that was almost dead this summer is becoming vibrant of activity and dynamism. For sure @SabreWulf would be impressed by the change (note: this is a hint for you to come back). It's really amazing to see more activity every night when we log in the game, and see our events becoming successful!
But while it's something very good to welcome many new faces, it can also be something stressful for our members that are more shy, or that prefer to be surrounded by familiar faces. I do not want that anyone in Whitestar feel that "this is not the home they have known anymore". I want to be sure that each new name become quickly a well known member, a friend in the becoming. When you build a home, you need to be sure that the cement holding each brick together is dry before to advance further. This is excactly what I'll be focusing on in the weeks to come. I'll make sure the cement that bond us together is drying!

Monday: This is our Dungeon Night. I've included a small change, a meeting in Krang Manor Wayrest starting at 08pm (CET). So instead of wandering left and right while we are composing the groups, we can see every character physically, have some emote exchanges and transform the waiting time into a social activity. We will start the Dungeons run a little bit earlier this time, so players like @Animan that need to leave earlier have the time to participate to several runs. The players that can only log in later, such as @yorkeyg will still have the possibility to join up a group later. I'll be careful to mix up the group as much as possible. For example @jerrem and @Arjun that are friends already would be in different groups. If possible, and depending of the numbers of players participating, I'll mix up the group after each runs!
The Goal of this night is Socialization first. So the groups might not have the best balance in term of classes, and the instance might be scaled a bit low. But this will leave us the occasion to chit chat together and have lots of fun!
If you have only a low level character, do not hesitate to sign up the event. Some of us have several characters and could participate to low lvl instances aswell!

During the WEEK:
In between events, I really encourage everyone of you to try to group up with different persons. The goal is to be sure that this new guys, or this girl that just came back do not stay an unknown member. Some members are more shy than others, some member are more grumpy than others, some members are more social than others, some members are more serious than others, but I can tell you that everyone is Whitestar has a golden heart, otherwise, they would not be in Whitestar :)

Saturday:
I'll end the week by a little meeting on TeamSpeak and a gathering in game at Krang Manor. We will do a super wonderful awesome big guild screenshot! Be sure to have your guild tabard and dye your armor to match it! I choose Saturday because I'm hoping to see a lot of you available that day!
During the meeting, I'll take the chance to have everyone gathered on TeamSpeak to explains how the guild is working, what we are doing, what are our goals, how you can actively participate to build this guild, and explains you how to be an active member of the Whitestar community and mix up with the other members, those you may not meet in game cause they play WOW or other games.
It will be the chance for you to ask any questions you may have, or even to make suggestions if you have any!
After the meeting, we will continue the evening by a game of Hide and Seek in Wayrest. You can find the rules of this event written in the event description.

December:
The month of December will be a special month in Whitestar, as it will be the 5th Anniversary of the creation of the Community. It's also a month to share Joy and Love with everyone. I'd be very happy to see a lot of ESO members join up and participate to the December Challenges and to the recording of the Whitestar movie!

Thanks everyone to have read!

Dear Whitestarian!
December is soon at our doors! A month of celebrations, joy, friendship, family moments and fun! To conclude this year in beauty, I wanted to organise something special. Something that would carry the magic of offering, sharing, and caring! Something that would encourage everyone to reach others and build up more bonds accross our community. Something that will make Whitestar a even more warm and welcoming virtual home for all of us!

DECEMBER CHALLENGES
During the month of december, I'll post several challenges that you can choose to ignore, or choose to achieve. The Challenge will be stickied on first page together with the TIP of the day. You will just have to follow the instructions. You will not earn anything from doing this, beside hopefully some personal satisfaction and some funny moments. The "mission" you will get are community related, and do not requiere you to play any games. Everyone can participate even our members that are not playing a games with us anymore. It should not take you too much time and too much energy, unless, you choose differently.
I hope you will have a lot of fun doing those challenges and that they will help you to get to know our community and our members better!

WHITESTAR ANNIVERSARY
It's soon five years that Whitestar had been founded! For the occasion, I'll explore our old forums, track old post, and gather everything in a nice thread to commemorate the creation of our community and our history along those five years!
Everyone will be encouraged to share their best memories, and best adventures.

HAPPY NEW YEAR MOVIE!
I had planed to make a Whitestar movie long time ago already, but I never made it. This time, the project will be a lot more simple, and I promise to do it and release it for the first days of January!
This movie will carry our philosophy and bring something nice for the gaming community!
I would like to film our members (desiring to be part of this project ) sharing to the gaming community their best wishes for 2015. It can be a simple message, like "I WISH YOU THE BEST FOR 2015" or it can be more elaborate. Our members will be filmed in game with the character of their choice, and their message recorded separately on teamspeak.

Whitestar is a great, awesome, wonderful community and I'm really proud of how we have growth since we resurected the community. I believe we have done a good job so far and we have met plenty of great friends!

However there is also something that's not quite working as we would have hoped to and that's what I'm going to talk today.
During those 8 months we have created 5 guilds: Tera, ESO, WOW, Wildstar and ArcheAge. I'm not counting our Diablo Clan, because Diablo has always been considered as a side project.
On those 5 guilds, only 2 stand actives, the 3 others slowly dropped in unactiveness until we decided to officialy close the project. We could discuss the reasons for hours, but it doesn't really matter. Whitestar is a nomad community that jumps from one game to another. It has always been like that, and it will probably always be that way. It is actually our very reason to exist as a community.

We have decided with the Council we will stop to lose time and energy organise the presentation, organise the recruitment, organise ... the organisation of guilds that do not survive more than three months. Instead we have come up with a new concept:

THE GAME OF THE MONTH!

The game of the month could be a freshly released new game, an expansion or a particuliary cool patch that seems to arrise the interest of our community. This game would then beneficiate of a small organisation to allow our community to enjoy it together. This would include:

• Special presentation in the Game of the Month thread (not created yet)
• Organisation of a ingame guild with a leader (the most passionated member)
• Organisation of weekly events
• And that's it!

No recruitment, no promotion, no heavy organisation. No energy lost for nothing, no disapointement and no @Kitiandra cursed again!

This would allow the community to play a new game (or a old one) together without too much effort from the Council. That way, we have time to enjoy it purely and see if it stick with the guild on long term.
If some members really feel they have discovered THE game of their life, they will be free and encouraged to start to organise the guild more seriously. But this would be their responsability, their task. If they manage to form a stable core of members and keep enough activity during three months, then, the Council will fully support the guild and make it one another official guild of Whitestar. Only then, we will start a serious presentation, a recruitment campaign and a dedicated forum.

This change would hopefully assure our community a lot of flexibility, would responsabilise more our members of their own choice and passions, take away some stress from the shoulders of the Council so they can focus entierly on their task.
Do not hesitate to share your opinion in the comments below!