5v5 In the Pipe

This week Maylei and the League of Legends crew will host a 5v5 IGC tournament.  All members interested in signing up should read this thread.

Here are the tournament rules and guidelines:

Information

Map: Summoner's Rift

Game Type: Draft

Matches: 5 if possible.  Expect at least 5 hours of playing LoL.  Breaks will be taken in between matches.

Requirements

Must have at least Summoner Level 20,

Must be eligible for Draft Mode (16 available champs, free ones count too),

Must be a member of IGC in any given chapter or a general member.

Selection

Signups are on a first come first serve basis.

You can still sign up if over 10 people sign up as a backup player.

Team Selection: Everyone will be assigned a number (1-10) and I'll run a program to sort the teams randomly. Every game the teams will be randomly sorted again, that way we play with and against a wide variety of team members. Odds will be on one team, while evens on the other.

Winning & Prizes

Winning: The player(s) with the most total wins at the end of the tournament will be the winner(s).

Prizes: I'm considering offering prizes and I want to know what people think. Can we do this without official prizes? Prizes will likely be a small ($5-10) of Riot Points or other cash shop game points (such as Guild Wars 2 Gems) depending on which the player wants.

Bonuses: If people are willing to stick around we can play ARAM (All Random All Mid) and Dominion matches too.

Additional

Spectating: 2 spectator slots are available. Spectator slots will be given to backup players as a priority. If you wish to spectate and don't meet the above requirements (you are interested in LoL for example as a new player) than you can still sign up as a spectator here to watch the games.

If interested, hop in the thread and post up to reserve your spot!  Good luck and have fun guys!

IGC Seeks to Add FPS and RTS Chapters

Anyone who has been listening to our past couple of meetings or spoken to me lately has heard me cryptically talk about growing IGC into something bigger and better this year.  This past week I set aside some time to put my thoughts down on paper and I've come up with a plan to make the community much larger.  Some of this is born out of the failings of the MMO genre to deliver us something substantial.  Often new games rise and fall within just a month or two and that creates difficulties when trying to maintain a large playerbase spread over several different games.  Luckily for us we've had a pretty good retention rate on players and many have come back to join new chapters as they're created.  That is one of our great strengths, but man cannot thrive on recycling alone! (Yeah, I made that up).  We want fresh meat for the grinder, and we want to try a little bit of everything too!

With all that said, we're going to take a big leap into a very deep pool.  By the end of this month I plan to introduce IGC to the rest of the gaming world as a community looking to break into and attain successes in worlds outside of our norm.  I'll be posting an APB, which the entire community is currently assisting me in editing and finalizing, which will state our goal.  We wish to bring First-Person Shooter and Real-time Strategy game-based groups into our mix.  We've setup preliminary forums and webspace for potential additions and are pretty much ready to rock 'n roll should we get a a bite or two!

I know it's hard to imagine just how profound a change this might be for us.  Whenever we add a new chapter, it just kind of coexists with everything else.  They do their thing, and sometimes we move around channels or get visited by other IGC members in our channels for a chat.  We meet new people all the time in our individual game worlds and sometimes those players want to be apart of what we have here.  Up to this point it's been pretty "easy", looking back.  Managing four guilds certainly doesn't sound like a walk in the park, and it isn't, but the leadership of this community has made it all very enjoyable and entertaining for me.  I can't complain when I have great leaders that are able to handle their guild business and keep me in the loop.  Those guys set an example for their members more than I ever could.

But enough about that!  Here's the deal:  If you are a member, or just passing by even, love FPS/RTS games, have or want a clan, are looking for some love on the web (I mean hosting btw, none of that weird stuff!), desire a new name and/or image, or just want to be part of something that isn't just "these guys I game with", then IGC is willing to take you on if you think you can meet our standards.  We really do have a lot to offer and anyone here will tell you that.  Just click the four links to the right of the slideshow and that should give you a pretty good idea of how we roll day-in and day-out.  Game here and expand IGC into something bigger than just a MMORPG community.  That's right, WE WANT YOU to bring us something like never before.

It's been a real blast thus far and nothing could be better than bringing in a few seasoned gamers looking to headshot n00bs and zergrush baddies.  I will be spamming the send/receive on my mailbox in anticipation!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to making some new online friends!  See ya!

This article was our 2012 April Fool's Joke!

Major League Soccer comes to IGC!

In recent weeks I've spent a lot of time talking about community.  Anyone who has listened to me for even a millisecond has probably heard me droning on about expansion into new games.  Well that just wasn't good enough!  So I set out on a mission to put us in a bigger and better position in the gaming world.  Meanwhile, the recording of our community meeting a few week back caught the attention of a Major League Soccer team.  To my surprise, they really liked what we had to offer.  As it turns out many of this team's players dabble in MMO and other games.  Apparently they had forwarded our website url and my contact info to Team Owner, Joey Saputo, who got ahold of me via telephone shortly thereafter.

Mr. Saputo and I had a great deal to talk about.  He asked about our community, its structure, the current player base and of course sponsorship opportunities.  I was able to answer most of the questions he threw at me but there were some things just out of grasp for the time being (like funding).  Needless to say he accepted all my answers and decided he wanted to bring his team here.  So to IGC, I present the Montreal Impact, IGC's newest addition and first foray into athletic gaming!

This is a very exciting time for all of us here at IGC, myself in particular.  Joining forces with a real life soccer team is just crazy!  It's something I never thought would happen in a million years, and yet here we are on the cusp of something new and spectacular for us.  Of course, a new chapter means a lot of change too.  But before I get into that, I want to outline what this team brings to our community!

The Montreal Impact play like they've got nothing to lose.  They're a scrappy young team, sporting a record of 0-3-1 this year, with a lot of heart.  Unfortunately most of them only speak French so communicating with them might be problematic.  All members of IGC, including Trial Members and F&F status players, will all be granted season tickets to every game the Impact play for the length of their contract here at IGC.  That is to say, the next two seasons, at which time we will go back into negotiations to renew their status as a part of IGC.

In exchange for this, all Montreal Impact players inherit the same rights that all current IGC players have.  They will be able to move between chapters freely and utilize our TS, forums, and all the other perks that come with membership.  Over the next few days I'll be setting up their forums, which will be utilized to discuss plans of action, team plays, and a variety of other soccer-related topics.  Head Coach Jesse Marsch was particularly excited by this prospect.  He had this to say about the merger:

Of course, this was all said in French and is probably only a rough translation of what he actually said.

So what's gonna change for the members here already?  Well a few things!  Firstly, we'll be seeing a lot of new names and faces on TS and on the boards, but we're used to that already.  To help us get to know them better, the Montreal Impact staff have struck a deal with a local college that utilizes online classrooms.  Every Saturday morning, it will become mandatory for all members of IGC to attend these classes to take part in a six-week course to learn French.  If you already know French then you're excused, otherwise you've gotta show up.  Classes will be mixed too, so you won't just be going when everyone in your chapter attends.  We'll fit everyone in though, so don't worry.  As a bonus, everyone completing the course will receive a sweet-ass certificate and a regulation soccer ball signed by the whole team!  Sweet, right?

I'll be posting more updates as they come in, since this is just too big a deal to contain in one small post.  In the meantime, prepare yourselves for the impact (haha) this is going to have on every one of you!  This is a very exciting time for us and I don't want anyone to be left behind.

So until next time, rock on everyone!  (I should probably learn how to say that in French.)

The Secret World -- Part of the IGC Future?

A number of IGC members have approached me with interest in this game, and they are seeking guidance and leadership.  As Community Manager, I would normally take it upon myself to play the game and get the guild off the ground, but eventually I would need to hand the reins off the someone else.  I can't play every MMO in the world after all!

As such, I'm looking for someone to come into our community who has a strong interest in The Secret World, and build our new chapter.  You would need to have some history of guild leading (and success therein).  Of course you would not be alone in this endeavor!  Since I've done this twice before, and have over 10 years of MMO guild leading and structuring experience myself, I will be your personal assistant throughout the entire project, even after you find officers for your guild.  After sometime, I'll let the reins go entirely and just watch your progress.  We have had great success in each of our guilds using this format.  As Community Manager I do not lead your guild, that's all yor and the officers you pick, but I do peek in from time to time to make sure our philosophy, goals, and standards of recruitment and the like are being enforced.

In short, I'm looking for someone to come into IGC and make something great within The Secret World.  No, there's no pay, and everything is free, from web access, Teamspeak use, and the rest.  We are just a group of players who loves gaming and seeing new names and hearing new voices just as much.

If you are interested in this position, contact me immediately via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  I look forward to speaking with you on TS for a short Q & A with me and the other guild leaders (we have to approve you of course!  Don't worry, we don't bite).  Seriously though, we really want to build something amazing in The Secret World and bring in about 30-50 more members before June 2012.  Is this you?  Then what are you waiting for?!

You can see the full post on the matter on The Secret World Official Forums.

I've been putting off writing this article for the better part of two three weeks now because I simply hate to lose things.  Earlier this month IGC lost one of its guilds as it picked up another off of TOR's launch.  Violent Impact officially collapsed after the holiday for a number of reasons, one of which includes the difficulty of keeping a raid guild together under the conditions that Trion allowed to persist within their game.  Unlimited server transfers, buggy instances, and the like were all contributing factors to the guild's end, but regardless of those facts, the outcome was the same.

I'd like to keep things positive though by taking a look back of the successes of the guild, as they are both a testament to the quality of players we brought into the community (and are still around too; more on this in a bit) and the greatness of IGC as a whole.  During its lifetime (3/11-12/11), Violent Impact succeeded in obtaining a plethora of server firsts.  They were active on both the PvE and PvP fronts on Keenblade.  At its inception, VI was only the second guild to become part of the Impact Gaming Community--VI is what turned us into a community!  We expanded from just Neutral Impact into a two-guild community that had high hopes and strong leadership.  I'll never forget its string of leaders or the accomplishments they (the guild) have (these cannot be taken away from them with a simple 'had').  So many of the players were just amazing people and a lot decided to stay on for future games.  Many others joined Radiant Impact, our newest chapter, which plays Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Leadership held VI together through the worst of times.  Its playerbase kept it raiding 3-4 nights a week.  The friendships that have been made are unbreakable bonds now and since the guild's disbanding, a good portion of the guild still graces us regularly with their presence on Teamspeak and the forums.  I'll never forget all the good (and the bad!) times I had in helping shape VI at the start.  I enjoyed watching it blossom into a fully functioning semi-hardcore raid guild in a volatile gaming environment.  Where ever the players now unaccounted for have gone, they remain the true lifeblood of what the guild was and still, and we wish them the best in their gaming endeavors.  We can only hope they will somehow find their way to us when VI is reborn.  Yes, Violent Impact is in fact NOT dead!

Naughtius, the guild leader of Violent Impact, has assured me that the guild will be reformed for the upcoming release of Guild Wars 2 later this year!  For the time being everything about VI simply remains in hiding (some of it in plain sight) and many members will make their triumphant return in AreaNet's follow up to their previous smash hit onling multiplayer game of dragons and mayhem!  That said, we will inform everyone when recruitment for GW2 is opening up ahead of time.  If you're interested in a group that is looking to smash face in GW2 in the near future, then check back often.  We'll still be here (:p) and I guarantee you'll have one of the most amazing groups of players at your side if you do!

Good luck to Violent Impact in its future endeavors!

We will be glad to see your return in Guild Wars 2!