Introduction

Established in early 1996, The Syndicate® is the most successful Virtual Community in the history of Online Gaming.
We specialize in Game & System Testing, Strategy Guide Writing, Consulting On Systems Design and Round Table Feedback. We are a very well organized, professional, mature organization that has been involved with MMO projects for many years. The quality of our work and our ability to deliver on time and maintain the secrecy of the projects we are currently working on is one of our hallmarks.

In addition to Game Development focus, we have a strong focus on growing our community, building friendships and in making the online gaming community better for all gamers. Some of our current projects include our alliance with industry leader Prima Games to help create the best Strategy Guide content possible; consulting relationships with Game Developers to help create better "next gen" gaming content; formalized testing agreements where we focus heavily on providing value added feedback to improve the final gaming product; and finally we are also currently participating in most MMOs. However, we only actively recruit new members for our presences in two major MMOs which are the worlds of Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. The Syndicate isn't just a guild, we are the industry leaders in gaming excellence.

There is far more to share about The Syndicate and what we stand for. Come in and explore our site. Read about our rich history, browse articles written about us, check out our Charter and FAQ to learn what makes us tick, read about the games we are a part of and much more. Step inside, for The Legend of The Syndicate awaits..

News

Killer 2100 Test

May 11th, 2010

The Syndicate is a proud partner of Bigfoot Networks. Bigfoot creates top end network interface cards (NICs) and The Syndicate provides testing and feedback on upcoming products. Bigfoot released an article HERE describing the formation of that relationship. While Bigfoot products are very nice and thus the majority of the feedback is positive, the Syndicate's role is also to seek out issues and bugs so they can be corrected before the product hits the shelves. In the case of the 2100 test, there were many very good things to say about the card and also some important things that were found and corrected. If you are looking for a little boost to your gaming, a Killer 2100 is a good card to give you that edge.

D-Mails On TenTonHammer

Apr 14th, 2010

Earlier this year, TenTonHammer asked if we would be interested in doing a series of articles for them. That article series began in mid-April with the following theme: Join The Syndicate's Sean "Dragons" Stalzer twice a month for D-Mail, a look at social and player organization trends in today's online games. Sean is Guild Leader and CEO of The Syndicate, a 630+ member multi-game guild currently in its record-setting 14th continuous year of existence. The Syndicate is committed to gaming excellence in every stage of game development, maintaining a consulting and testing presence with game development companies and co-authoring nearly a dozen Prima Games guides as well. A complete listing of all the D-Mails can be obtained HERE and they touch on topics such as Community drives revenue; preventing knee-jerk reactions that destroy communities and quality recruiting practices.

Pocket Legends Goes Live

Apr 3rd, 2010

Spacetime Studios has released its iPhone MMO titled Pocket Legends. The Syndicate had several dozen members working with Spacetime since 2009 on the MMO. We wish them great success with their launch! It was a very fun project to support because of the speed at which an iPhone game gets developed relative to a traditional MMO. We were able to see feedback shaping the game much more rapidly and watched the game mature a great deal from the very early stages and turn into a polished product ready for launch.

PAX East

Mar 27th, 2010

At PAX-East this year, The Syndicate had a presence on one of the panels. Ethan Gilsdorf, author of "An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms" will be moderated a panel that discusses "MMO Gamer Behavior 101". Also on the panel were the co-CEO's of Pure West (the makes of the MMO documentary Second Skin) Victor and Juan Carlos Pineiro. The audience was full almost an hour before it was due to start. The questions from audience members were great and the conversations continued well after the panel had concluded.