The Guild Sphere – Prime Defense

This week I sat down with some of the leadership from Prime Defense, a PvE focused Republic guild with close ties to their guildies. Hope you enjoy the Interview.

Where did your guilds name come from?
Our guild name consists of two words. Prime as in top quality, best or perfection and defense as in defenders of the galaxy.
Can you give me a quick 2-3 sentance description of your guild?
Prime Defense is an active and tight knit community filled with members from around the world. We strive to provide a relaxed environment where members can hang out and get to know each other while still retaining a serious attitude in game while running PVE instances or participating in tactics based PVP.
How did your guild come about?
Our guild was born from another community that went under the name The Royal Echani. During the summer of 09, the leader of The Royal Echani vanished without word, and the guild fell apart as no one was left in charge and nobody had access to the website controls. During this stage of the guild, I was a high ranking member and I decided to gather up many of the remaining members so we could form a new community called Prime Vengeance. Over time, we realized having the word vengeance in our name was quite Sith esque, so we then made a guild vote presenting many new guild names, the winning name being Prime Defense. Having around 20 or so active members from the get go gave us a huge boost in guild development and activity, so Prime Defense progressed rather quickly. We started racking in very good members, upgrading our website, building a fantastic community as well as creating a very wide recruitment net. All of these aspects have shaped us into the gaming community we are today.
What kind of play style do you focus on in SWTOR? PvE, PvP, RP
We focus primarily on PVE content but we also plan to run smaller, focused PVP activities and events for the guild. If I was to give a solid idea of the level we plan to to take in each role, it would be 80% PVE and 20% PVP. We also have some light role playing features but we don’t role play in games, or when talking to each other. However, we have a HUGE section in our forum completely dedicated to member made RP literacy as well as guild wide, text based role plays. Also, we occasionally have events where small groups of members will take part in organized role play scenarios in private chat rooms.
What is your guild set up in? How do you run your guild?
Our guild uses a council and co-leader model. We have two leaders who run the guild, update the website, deal with problems and handle most guild related issues. However, we also have a council to deal with larger guild issues, discuss additions, members, occasionally promotions and where the guild is headed as a whole. We also allow the entire guild to vote on major issues that effect the experience for the members directly.
How serious do you play and/or run the guild?
The guild runs in a very social, relaxed state when we aren’t in game. However, our members know that it’s crucial to be serious, vigilant and skillful while running things such as difficult raid encounters.
Do you have ranks or a certain hierarchy in your guild? If yes, could you tell us a bit about it
We do have a rank system in our guild. Each class is assigned an equal amount of twelve ranks, and we rank people up based on activity and guild contribution.
  • Jedi rank set: http://primedefense.net/pd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=94
  • Trooper rank set: http://primedefense.net/pd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=97
  • Smuggler rank set: http://primedefense.net/pd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=95
Why did you choose the Republic?
Our previous guild ran as a republic guild, so most of the people who transfered to Prime Defense wanted to be Republic. I think it’s mostly due to the class types, and the higher display of “heroism” within the Republic stories and class designs.
Why do you run a guild?
I run a guild simply because I enjoy providing and managing a community for a group of like minded people. I generally have a lot of free time on my hands, which gives me plenty of ample opportunity to properly manage and run a guild along with the other leader. Furthermore, I relish in designing and improving the guild website as well as creating new guild features to present prospecting recruits and current members.
Raid Planning?
Our guild definitely plans to run raids throughout the the leveling process and beyond end game. As we are a PVE centric guild, we plan to run raids as one of the guild’s main focuses. We currently have three companies set up(soft divisions) under the name of the “Prime Army”. This is to assure organization and activity while raiding on weekdays in respect to the fact that we are an international guild. Since most of our North American members are at work or school while our European members are mainly active on weekdays, we assign all of our European members to a European only group(Ark Company). As we are mostly a western guild, we have two companies for our western players (Justice and Myst company). We can schedule raids for specific companies during weekdays, to make sure everybody in the guild has an equal raiding experience throughout the week. This by no means results in players from certain companies being excluded from raids because their company doesn’t have a raid a certain day, everyone from the guild is allowed to raid with any company if they happen to be on at the time. This is only to provide an extra layer of organization and friendly competition within the guild. If you’re confused, feel free to visit our company page.
http://primedefense.net/pd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=66
Are you always open for new recruits or do you want to keep a certain guild size?
We are almost always open for guild recruits, however we plan to stay under 100 active members at the moment.
Age Requirement?
We require all recruits to be at least 16 years old to apply.
Guild size?
We are a very large for pre-release community
Active Member Count: 70-80
Forum Post Count: 30000+
Forum Topic Count: 2500+
Please do not treat our size as some sort of “zerg” guild. We are an extremely tight knit community, and we dislike being viewed as something else.
What makes your guild stand out from everyone else? What makes your guild unique?
We offer plenty of actively used guild features rarely or not found in other online communities. These include a company system, a guild podcast(Prime Cast), member titles, member achievements, an exceedingly active chat room, large RP forum section, our own domain and a high quality website providing a sleek and organized home for the guild.
How do you spend your time until release? Do you know each other in real life or do you spend a lot of time on forums?
The guild plays a multitude of other games during the wait for TOR. Some of the members also know each other in real life. However, 90% of the guild has not met in real life(yet). We host many gaming events, tournaments, guild wide roleplays and more on the forums. We also have an extremely active chat room, you would find yourself baffled to find nobody in the chat room at any given time, as there are almost always 2-25 members logged onto the chat at all times.
What Other Games are you currently playing as a guild?
We play a wide list of other games across all genres within small and large groups as a guild. Some include Left 4 Dead 2, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Borderlands, Jedi Academy, World of Warcraft and we even host our very own Minecraft server. Even if you don’t find a game you would like to play with the guild, then you can simply make a forum post introducing a game or asking if anybody owns it. Chances are you will find members to play with.
Guild systems in other MMOs? (Likes/Dislikes)
I really admire the guild system in World of Warcraft, especially after cataclysm. The guild achievements were a fantastic addition, and many of the smaller features such as guild bank permissions, notes, guild messages and more come in very handy for a leader.
If somebody is interested now how and where can they apply for membership?
If you’re interested in Prime Defense you can simply visit our application hub for class recruitment status, links to important information as well as our application section on the forums.
Links
Application hub: http://primedefense.net/pd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90&Itemid=72
Website: http://primedefense.net/pd/
Thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=109124
SWTOR guild page: http://www.swtor.com/guilds/6583/prime-defense
One last question, if there was one thing you could ask the Dev’s to include, what would it be?
I would definitely ask them to include guild starships. Even though this is already somewhat confirmed, I think it would be an extremely important and impressive feature to add to SWTOR. It would just be fantastic to be able to have a customized area where your guild members can hang out, meet up, craft and duel among other great ideas the developers could think up.
Thank you guys for taking the time to talk to me about your amazing guild, hope to see you in game this Fall.
If you would like to have your guild featured in the Guild Sphere please send an email to ralley752@gmail.com Be hearing from you all soon