When did they ruin GuildCafe? I made a GuildCafe page a while ago, but when I went to my new guild’s site there to try to connect to it, I could not edit my The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ status. Going in to edit my games only lets me see the first six, with no option to reach the rest, and I cannot even delete and re-add the game.
Why don’t we make a lousy version of MySpace, intentionally focus it on a limited audience, then change the name and bork the tools so it is even less useful?
I shouldn’t blog after midnight.
: Zubon
Maybe Sanya Weathers can fix it. (yes, I was kind of surprised that she joined such an obvious Titanic – a solution to a problem that nobody really has)
I dunno, this has been my opinion of GuildCafe for a long time now.
I don’t like walled garden websites so much, unless they’re very focused. So it’s better than MySpace in that regard I guess, but far less useful / interesting than sites dedicated to specific games.
They’re expanding to cover Xbox games now? Wonderful.
Yeah this site really stinks now. They even removed blogging. I also like how terrible it looks with that pop up window to edit your info that always times out or doesn’t update properly. All in all bad experience. Even GAX Online.com is better than that site now
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to pop in and say that I am sorry about your perceptions and some of our failures. GamerDNA is the merging of GuildCafe.com, 360voice.com and Uberguilds Alliance… it is a complicated project merging the technologies and focus of different sites into one community… But, it is a challenge I signed up for. Sometimes it might have been easier to start from scratch, but we didn’t… and we are plowing forward.
We have a team of people who want to build a great experience and we work day in and out to get there… the road is long… but the work is challenging and fun, and we are happy for the growing community that we do have and the support they are giving us.
I have only been at the company three months, but I am happy with the progress we are making… and theyway I look at it, regardless of the history of the site, I only see GamerDNA as three months old… a beta that we scrambled to launch in under two months.
We have big plans… we need to make more progress, at a faster pace… and we know where we are falling down. So I appreciate the feedback and am happy that there is a conversation… even if it is where we are falling behind. :)
Cheers,
Trapper
VP, Products
GamerDNA.com
tmarkelz@gamerdna.com
You know I’m here for work because I’m not using my Eating Bees ID ;)
What got me involved with my present employer was the president’s original vision. I have believed since I did my first guild beta in 2001 that guild leaders are THE keys to success in the gaming industry. The corporate strategy outlined to me had guild leaders as a central component. I saw a chance to try out some of my pet theories, to build stuff for my favorite people, and to get paid for it.
Things have evolved since then, but there’s still enough of the original vision left to keep me interested. And we’ve finally got a programmer on board to do nothing but fix the current guild tools and implement new ones.
The plan never was “Facebook/Myspace for gamers,” or “guild hosting.” We’re hoping for something a little deeper than that. Instead of connecting users to each other, or instead of giving everyone a profile page and calling it a day, we’re trying to build something where players have a much larger context. Imagine a site that lets you present your experience like a resume, and identifies you as exactly the person someone else needs, whether that someone is a guild leader or a game company or a friend.
Argh, I hate trying to describe it, I sound like a dumbass.
Every game you ever played, every raid you ever went on, every time you laughed until you almost peed yourself in guild chat, it all went into making you who you are as a gamer. Without even one of those experiences you’d be a different person in some tiny, tiny way. Every person you ever crossed paths with as a gamer, from some trashtalking loser you fragged to the person you quested with for fifteen hours straight, was a connection to a larger world. That connection has meaning. They’re like the roots of a plant, making you firmly a part of the world.
If you take all of this stuff, and harness it, it’d be a lot bigger than just another profile page.
I’m sorry, I’m not the marketing guy. It’s hard to explain. And really, at the end of the day, I just want to build stuff that makes life easier for my guild leaders, and stuff that could make life easier for community managers.
But I’m babbling. Z, it sounds like a bug, honestly. If you didn’t report it, email me your profile name and I’ll take a look. In THIS regard, my job is still what it was when I worked for a studio ;)
I used Guild Cafe for a Guild Page, and had so many complaints of slowness, time outs, etc. My page kept breaking, and was not user friendly.
Hopefully it grows, as I tried to use GAX Online as my site to discuss games, the guild and blog. But it’s sexual bent and overly chauvinistic attitudes(semi naked girls all around), proved to cause too many issues at my workplace.
Good luck on the new GamerDNA.
I actually like the site and we do use it as our guild’s headquarters. So far no one has complained about slow access or any other issues.
However, I did like the previous personal pages better. They were much easier on the eyes and easier to navigate.
GAX Online is a MySpace for gamers. What I’ve seen of GamerDNA is the opposite approach… I would say Facebook, but I hate Facebook as much as MySpace.
Anyways, Sanya has the basics of it, a sort of online resume for yourself.
Yes, the site has a long ways to go, but the ideas are solid and the user base from GuildCafe should hopefully give it a large enough base to stick around.
I personally never found Guild Cafe that useful, but GamerDNA so far has been straight forward and provides for a much easier system to track my online exploits.
The biggest problem with these sort of sites is the fear of contributing all this information and potentially losing it when the site eventually goes tits up. I don’t advocate that any site will be up indefinitely, but GamerDNA is offering a lot of tie-in tools to help bloggers such as myself make the most of the FREE service.
Heartless, is that *really* you? ;-)
I have not visited Guild Cafe in a while and just did. Oh my, they have changed a lot.
Update: For what it’s worth, I have 16 games and could edit them all no problem.
@Heartless – We will be opening up a full API of your data… so you can take it with you… slated for end of summer. :)
I’ve never used guildcafe, but recently was directed towards gamerDNA, and am actually quite enjoying what it is in its current form. So saying – I don’t know about features I’ve missed, since I wasn’t there before.
perhaps a little more attention on the migration might help, but zubon, you have a direct line to the peoples in control now. Give ’em a hand in pulling out the chunks that you want to make better.
From what I’ve seen so far, I can create and edit things fine, so I’m wondering if this is specifically a flaw that has hit things ‘moved over’ from the old stuff?
That is me and normally I don’t give happy anything to anyone, but I’ve been long waiting for something worthwhile to track my online exploits. Xfire almost made it for me before it started causing far too many problems with the games I was playing, thus why I am more interested in a website. Most notably, a website that has promise to tie in with what I started to first track my online opinion: my blog.
But let me get angry. I fucking hate GAX Online :)
@Heartless
NOoooo…OMG, I agree with you…
ARGH
My life is OVER
/wrist
(PS: Yes, Gax was cool, but has other underlying issues…bummer)
The technical problem is that GamerDNA does not support Internet Explorer. I know, I know; I don’t drive a stick shift, either.
And I refuse to play a game where I need a resume to access content.
GamerDNA supports IE. What version are you using? Not sure what your other comment means.