It has been a long time since I kept a blog, but I find it an assignment I am excited to begin working. It is an opportunity to share my thoughts about the components of what makes a successful community with my friends and classmates.
First of all, for those of you that are unfamiliar with what Neopets is I welcome you to read Michelle’s first post that explains about it. As Michelle explains, there are many ways to communicate with other players and many activities and games available on the site. Membership in a guild is quite common for an established player. Guilds are of various sizes and some are more active than others.
Like Michelle’s guild, the guild I belong to, Adults Gone Wild, is a private guild that is over a year old. I have been a member since February 2005 and I currently serve as part of the guild’s sub-council (council and sub-council are the leadership team for the guild that are responsible for planning events and activities for the group). AGW has about 50 members from all over the globe. The two major membership requirements are being extremely active on Neopets and an adult (18+). To stay a member, active participation on the message board is expected/required.
I joined AGW when I was taking a class where we were discussing online communities. I had been involved in a couple of other guilds that had minimal activity and conversations. To say I was skeptical about the existence of true community online might be understating my feelings. I was pretty sure that “communities” were really just a way for a guild leader to get people to donate items and money to them. My tune has changed greatly with my experience with AGW – a small community in a big game.
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