Continuing the Iron Helm story, when we were starting it, we first had to decide how we will run it.
The first thing we did was to divide responsibilities.
SHM took the internal organization, Cpt Dungeness took the diplomacy section and I took the Warfare one. At times, we all do a bit of each but we felt that it was important to divide these 3 chapters which are big enough of their own.
Later on, Lodswe has been great help and through all his help he has earned a leading place. Lana with her vivid temperament has been an important figure for HELM as well. Pirate Roberts has also been helpful during his short times in the guild as he was taking newcomers by the hand to teach them battle tactics.
By the hand training is something we do not generally do because we believe that in the long term, this is impossible. Any training guild can keep by the hand training for a short period of time. For a long period of time, you will inevitably grow bored (as a teacher) or out of time. Therefore, the training guild should operate in a way to ensure longevity in its training. The best way to do this, is through quality guides and an active shoutbox.
Especially this active shoutbox was my personal reason in starting HELM. After I left PK leadeship, I started a new guild called NewB. I had many new recruits but since I was the only experienced player around, I was not enough to entice them into the guild and have an active shoutbox. This resulted in loss of interest for me as well. I came close to retirement that period. I was used to PK activity where there were dozens of new messages per day. Now in HELM, at times the messages are hundrends per day. That's what keeps a guild alive in my perspective.
The first good period of HELM was undeniably the period where Xanadu and Danik were part of the guild. There were more fine players during that first good period (Kart joined too a little before the end of this era) but most should be inactive right now. I remember in a clear way the days after the bulk of this good first era left. They left in a bulk as it usually happens in departures from a training guild as I can now see. The shoutbox suddenly got a lot quiter, we lost some of our best members and we simply had to start over.
Again, the multiple leadership model worked out well. Lodswe started that time to help tremendously. We kept recruiting - we recruit a lot. We are now nearing the end of another good period as we currently got a lot of good players in our ranks. Players that can leave their mark on the game. Hopefully this time the exodus will be more controlled to allow us to start from the middle point instead of the starting point once more.
But today is the start of our Festival!
In case you missed it, we will be splashing out
120 000 000 on prizes for the contests we will announce! The prize money has been raised by senior members of our guild and 20M of them will be returning to guild members for guild-only contests. The rest 100M is for everyone to claim!
With this, we start then!
Lefty wrote:Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,
And drink to the Iron Helm before it shall fail;
Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,
For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:
So fill up your glass,
For life will soon pass;
When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your pirate king or your lass!
Congrats to a fine guild,
Tom Lowe
by Sir Henry Morgan » Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:21 pm 
